RAINBOWS EVERYWHERE.
PHILADELPHIA:
1856
PREFACE.
WE were about preparing a few words of introduction to this volume, the materials for which have been culled from the highways and byways of literature, where our eyes fell upon these fitting sentiments, the authorship of which we are unable to give. They express clearly and beautifully what was in our own mind:—
“If we would only bring ourselves to look at the subjects that surround as in their true flight, we should see beauty where now appears deformity, and listen to harmony where we hear nothing but discord. To be sure there is a great deal of vexation and anxiety in the world; we cannot sail upon a summer sea for ever; yet if we preserve a calm eye and a steady hand, we can so trim our sails and manage our helm, as to avoid the quicksands, and weather the storms that threaten shipwreck. We are members of one great family; we are travelling the same road, and shall arrive at the same goal. We breathe the same air, are subject to the same bounty, and we shall, each lie down upon the bosom of our common mother. It is not becoming, then, that brother should hate brother; it is not proper that friend should deceive friend; it is not right that neighbour should deceive neighbour. We pity that man who can harbour enmity against his fellow; he loses half the enjoyment of life; he embitters his own existence. Let us tear from our eyes the coloured medium that invests every object with the green hue of jealousy and suspicion; turn, a deal ear to scandal; breathe the spirit of charity from our hearts; let the rich gushings of human kindness swell up as a fountain, so that the golden age will become no fiction and islands of the blessed bloom in more than Hyperian beauty.”
It is thus that friends and neighbours should live. This is the right way. To aid in the creation of such true harmony among men, has the book now in your hand, reader, been compiled. May the truths that glisten on its pages be clearly reflected in your mind; and the errors it points out be shunned as the foes of yourself and humanity.
FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS.
GOOD IN ALL.
THERE IS GOOD IN ALL. Yes! we all believe it: not a man in the depth of his vanity but will yield assent. But do you not all, in practice, daily, hourly deny it? A beggar passes you in the street: dirty, ragged, importunate. “Ah! he has a bad look,” and your pocket is safe. He starves—and he steals. “I thought he was bad.” You educate him in the State Prison. He does not improve even in this excellent school. “He is,” says the gaoler, “thoroughly bad.” He continues his course of crime. All that is bad in him having by this time been made apparent to himself, his friends, and the world, he has only to confirm the decision, and at length we hear when he has reached his last step. “Ah! no wonder—there was never any Good in him. Hang him!”
Now much, if not all this, may be checked by a word.
If you believe in Good, always appeal to it. Be sure whatever there is of Good—is of God. There is never an utter want of resemblance to the common Father. “God made man in His own image.” “What! yon reeling, blaspheming creature; yon heartless cynic; yon crafty trader; yon false statesman?” Yes! All. In every nature there is a germ of eternal happiness, of undying Good. In the drunkard's heart there is a memory of something better—slight, dim: but flickering still; why should you not by the warmth of your charity, give growth to the Good that is in him? The cynic, the miser, is not all self. There is a note in that sullen instrument to make all harmony yet; but it wants a patient and gentle master to touch the strings.
You point to the words “There is none good.” The truths do not oppose each other. “There is none good—save one.” And He breathes in all. In our earthliness, our fleshly will, our moral grasp, we are helpless, mean, vile. But there is a lamp ever burning in the heart: a guide to the source of Light, or an instrument of torture. We can make it either. If it burn in an atmosphere of purity, it will warm, guide, cheer us. If in the midst of selfishness, or under the pressure of pride, its flame will be unsteady, and we shall soon have good reason to trim our light, and find new oil for it.
There is Good in All—the impress of the Deity. He who believes not in the image of God in man, is an infidel to himself and his race. There is no difficulty about discovering it. You have only to appeal to it. Seek in every one the best features: mark, encourage, educate them. There is no man to whom some circumstance will not be an argument.
And how glorious in practice, this faith! How easy, henceforth, all the labours of our law-makers, and how delightful, how practical the theories of our philanthropists! To educate the Good—the good in All: to raise every man in his own opinion, and yet to stifle all arrogance, by showing that all possess this Good. In themselves, but not of themselves. Had we but faith in this truth, how soon should we all be digging through the darkness, for this Gold of Love—this universal Good. A Howard, and a Fry, cleansed and humanized our prisons, to find this Good; and in the chambers of all our hearts it is to be found, by labouring eyes and loving hands.
Why all our harsh enactments? Is it from experience of the strength of vice in ourselves that we cage, chain, torture, and hang men? Are none of us indebted to friendly hands, careful advisers; to the generous, trusting guidance, solace, of some gentler being, who has loved us, despite the evil that is in us—for our little Good, and has nurtured that Good with smiles and tears and prayers? O, we know not how like we are to those whom we despise! We know not how many memories of kith and kin the murderer carries to the gallows—how much honesty of heart the felon drags with him to the hulks.
There is Good in All. Dodd, the forger, was a better man than most of us: Eugene Aram, the homicide, would turn his foot from a worm. Do not mistake us. Society demands, requires that these madmen should be rendered harmless. There is no nature dead to all Good. Lady Macbeth would have slain the old king, Had he not resembled her father as he slept.
It is a frequent thought, but a careless and worthless one, because never acted on, that the same energies, the same will to great vices, had given force to great virtues. Do we provide the opportunity? Do we believe in Good? If we are ourselves deceived in any one, is not all, thenceforth, deceit? if treated with contempt, is not the whole world clouded with scorn? if visited with meanness, are not all selfish? And if from one of our frailer fellow-creatures we receive the blow, we cease to believe in women. Not the breast at which we have drank life—not the sisterly hands that have guided ours—not the one voice that has so often soothed us in our darker hours, will save the sex: All are massed in one common sentence: all bad. There may be Delilahs: there are many Ruths. We should not lightly give them up. Napoleon lost France when he lost Josephine. The one light in Rembrandt's gloomy life was his sister.
And all are to be approached at some point. The proudest bends to some feeling—Coriolanus conquered Rome: but the husband conquered the hero. The money-maker has influences beyond his gold—Reynolds made an exhibition of his carriage, but he was
