RADIANCIES OF FEAR

Fear is the greatest enemy of mankind. It is the creator of evil, for many people sin through fear. It is the maker of cowards and moral weaklings, the foe of all progress, the barrier to advancement, physical, mental, spiritual. He who is afraid dares not, and he who dares not, knows not, feels not, enjoys not. The fearful do not live; they merely exist, in bondage to a terror that leaves them neither night nor day. They know few of the delights of achievement, for they are afraid to dare. Fear throttles endeavor, stifles hope, murders aspiration. It is a hydra-headed monster of protean forms. It is a liar and a coward, a beguiler and a thief, a sneak and a poltroon, a slanderer and a cur. It comes in a thousand guises—sometimes as caution, then as tact, again as consideration for others, but ever and always as a deceiver and a destroyer.

If there is one thing above another that I wish I had learned in earliest youth, and I wish I had known enough to teach my children in their earliest days, it is perfect fearlessness. The only thing I fear to-day is fear. To go through life afraid of this and that and the other, is to take away all joy, all spontaneity, all freedom, all aspiration, all endeavor.

I used to believe and teach that we should "fear God." But the word "fear" as here used is not the abject, groveling, contemptible feeling that so many people imagine it to be. God has made us in His own image. He wishes us to stand upright, and greet Him as filial beings should, proud and glad to come to Him as "Our Father."

Fear makes us whine and whimper before God, and go to Him in the same spirit of dread that leads the Indian to feel he must always be propitiating the powers that be. If he does not pray and sing and dance and smoke the good powers will be offended, and will injure him, and the evil powers will be made more evil and do him more harm than they otherwise would. Hence month in and month out, because of fear, he seeks by his dances, and smokings, and songs, and prayers to protect himself from evil by soothing their possible anger and quieting their fury against him.

There is much of this same spirit in our old-time theology, and our present-day life. We are afraid of God. God doesn't want us to be afraid. Every man should therefore stand upright, afraid of neither God, man, nor devil. God is no tyrant to be turned from His purposes by sycophantic worship, or by "much speaking" and importunity. He is a reasonable God, a loving God, a just God, a merciful God, and abject fear will never change His plans as to His treatment of any human being.

As to being afraid of men, why should one man ever be afraid of another? Let us stand upright as men—one man just as good as another—if he is as good, and if he isn't as good, knowing that all the potentialities of godhead are within his own soul. We are gods, says Browning, though but as yet in the germ. Let us fearlessly develop the germ, or give it opportunity for development.

And as to being afraid of the devil, I have long since learned that the proper way to deal with what I suppose to be the devil—or his henchmen—is simply to straighten up my back, look him squarely in the eye, and definitely and positively bid him "Go to hell!" Even the most modest and refined of preachers, whether of the new or old type, will agree that that is the only place for the devil and his myrmidons.

I would have my children, myself, and the world afraid of nothing but of evil—and by evil I mean those sins that I myself know are evil—selfishness, pride, uncleanness, as well as the sins of the decalogue. But even here I would not let it be a fear that dreads falling into these sins. I would not anticipate or expect anything of the kind. Hence, in one sense I would not have them afraid of evil. Resist evil and it will flee from you. Harbor it not, do not dread it, but resolve to slay it by its opposite good. The evil is null if you live its opposite. There is no need for an unselfish man to fear selfishness. A man who gives freely never need fear that he will become a miser.

Yet people go through life afraid, and teach their children to be afraid, and thus lose nine-tenths of the love and joy and power and blessing of life.

Fear holds a large and powerful grip upon the human race. Scarce one woman in a thousand of the so-called civilized portion but is afraid of child-birth—a perfectly natural process that should be attended with all the angels of Love and Joy and Welcome, instead of the horrible demons of Fear. From the time of birth until its body falls into the grave the mortal is taught fear. We pay preachers, teachers, lawyers, and doctors, and much of their work consists of fostering our fears. I have a picture before my mind's eye now of one of the noblest and best women that ever lived. Her whole life was a self-sacrifice, an unselfish devotion to others, yet, such was the theology that had been taught to her that she was constantly in dread lest she had done wrong, she was ever sitting on the stool of repentance, and life was a gloomy, somber, awful thing to her, because of her "dread of an angry God."

Thousands of people fear death because they have been taught that when they die they may "go to hell" for sins done on earth.

A mother was telling me only a few days ago of the perfect fearlessness of her boy until (when about six years of age) he went to a Sunday school, where they taught him their ideas of the devil and hell and God's method of punishing sin. That night he dared not go to bed without a light and woke up several times crying that he was afraid of sinking into hell.

Whatever preachers may feel it to be their duty to teach of hell and God's anger to grown men and women, I deem it monstrously cruel to put such fears into the plastic and trustful souls of the young.

Teachers, lawyers, and doctors are as bad as the preachers. We must avoid "night air," and draughts, and getting our feet wet, and not eating enough, and eating too much. We must not eat this and that, and must not do that or the other. Fear is instilled into our minds all along the pathway of life until if we are not healthy enough to throw it away and live our own fearless life, we are weighted down by the burden of our needless and senseless fears. All quack doctors work on the foolish and ignorant fears of the people, or their nostrums would never sell enough to pay a thousandth part of what their advertising costs. Fear is the club that scoundrels use to beat the ignorant into paying tribute to them.

I do not believe in these fears—to me they are all bad, and nothing but bad. I would banish every one of them from the human heart.

But, says an objector, you surely would not let your child go and handle a deadly rattlesnake, or send your growing and innocent girl into the company of expert rouÉs, or willfully sleep in a miasmic atmosphere, or inhale the poisonous gases of a badly cared-for plumbing system? Of course not. But neither would I be afraid of them. There is all the difference in the world between knowledge of danger, and fear of that danger. Let a child be taught definitely and positively the danger of handling a rattlesnake, but do not fill his soul with fear of it; impress forcefully and strongly the wisdom of avoiding evil company upon your daughter, but teach her to be absolutely fearless in the presence of the debauchee; seek to the full how to avoid all miasma and deadly plumbing, but be fearless about them. Fear is the product of ignorance; fearlessness of knowledge. If my child knows all the harm a rattlesnake can do, and all the power it possesses, he can avoid it as easily as not. Therefore why should he be afraid? The feminine fears of mice, rats, spiders, and snakes are evidences either of ignorance, or of a developed hereditary tendency to fear. In the former case the fearful one should be trained so as to remove her fear, in the latter she should resolutely set her will to work to overcome it, in which all her friends should sympathetically aid her.

Fear has ever been the foe of progress. Every advance step in all life has been taken by him only who had throttled his fears. Fire was conquered for the human race by the man who dared brave the strange and weird flames that grew and then disappeared. Prometheus—the fearless—is the type of all who have helped the race to progress. It is the same in every field of endeavor, on every plane of thought. Galileo, Newton, Savonarola, the barons of King John's time, Cromwell, Luther, Bacon, Captain Cook, Washington, Lincoln are but a few of the thousands of names of men who have dared, who have bid their fears depart, and in so doing have advanced the human race.

Joaquin Miller in his grand poem Columbus clearly shows what would have become of him and the discovery of the new world had he let the fears of the mate and his sailors affect him. Read it carefully with this thought in view. Indeed it is well worth memorizing as a standing lesson against fear.

COLUMBUS

Sydney Smith once well said: "A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage. Every day sends to their graves men who have remained obscure because of timidity. The fact is that, in order to do anything in this world worth doing, we must not stand shivering on the brink and thinking of the cold and danger; but jump in and scramble through as well as we can. It will not do to be perpetually calculating risks, and adjusting nice chances. It did very well before the flood, when a man could consult his friends upon an intended publication for a hundred and fifty years, and live to see its success for six or seven centuries afterward. But at present a man waits, and doubts, and hesitates, and consults his father, brother, cousin, friends, till one fine day he finds he is sixty-five years of age. There is so little time for our squeamishness that it is no bad rule to preach up the necessity of a little violence done to the feelings and of efforts made in defiance of strict and sober calculation."

Too often elderly friends, with the best of intentions, inculcate this fear into the hearts of the young. Never was there a greater mistake or real unkindness. It is nothing that the intent is good. One's intent may palliate any judgment rendered against the offender, but, the unfortunate result, the implanting of the fear, cannot so easily be forgiven. Oh that I could prevail upon older people to refrain from this terribly demoralizing habit of giving advice to the young that inculcates fear. Let me illustrate:

A young man is a clerk in an office. He sees an opening to which his heart and brain strongly impel him, but there is a little, perhaps a great deal, of risk connected with it. He goes for advice to his older friends. They, with their life-work practically finished, valuing their rest and content more than desiring to reËnter the battle of life, naturally are wary about an uncertainty. "Why not leave well enough alone? Why run the risk? What will you do if this fails? You will have given up a certainty for an uncertainty," and so on.

Ah! worldly wise though it seems, it is the most injurious and harmful advice that the young could possibly receive. Where would progress and advancement be to-day if many had not totally disregarded such smug, self-contented, unheroic advice! Thank God, youth is the time for adventure, for striking out, for making mistakes, for learning, for testing, for "proving all things," and holding fast to that which is good. Old age has had its day. It has made its mistakes and profited by them. Let it keep its hands off the young. Let them have their opportunity.

Herbert Spencer tells of throwing up a good job as civil engineer in order to experiment with a matter that a fortnight proved to be utterly impossible. Yet fifty years later he thus reviewed this apparently self-injurious act: "Had there not been this seemingly foolish act, I should have passed a humdrum and not very prosperous life as a civil engineer. That which has since been done would never have been done."

In other words, the act that shook him out of the rut, the contented, common, mediocre path, compelled him to find a new path for himself, and this called upon all the resources of his great and, to him and others, unknown nature, and he developed into the transcendent genius, the profound philosopher, whose writings had greater influence, perhaps, upon his century than those of any other man.

Hence I want to radiate the spirit of complete fearlessness, not only for myself, but for my young friends of both sexes, all the sons and daughters of men. I would calmly watch them plunge overboard into the ocean of life, trustful and confident, having first taught them the first few strokes of swimming—the principles of true and godly living—and then stand, fearlessly, and watch them strike out for themselves. I swam,—why should not they? God is in His heaven to-day watching the sparrows fly just as He was a score, a hundred, a thousand years ago.

In the mental world how fearful people often are of breaking away from old ideas. Only the other day a friend wrote me that he had been to a funeral, conducted by an orthodox clergyman. He said: "I imagine his is a very orthodox denomination, if he is a fair sample of what they believe. Glimmerings of a soul that hungers for larger things than its creed allowed was evident in his talk, however. Is it not pitiful, and more, is it not tragical, how people allow their soul-instincts and natural outreachings to be killed, or hampered, or stilled by what their befuddled brains or the brains of others have decided is proper, or accepted as proper, to believe?"

I can remember when good Methodists and Congregationalists were "kicked out of the church" for daring to hope that all men would ultimately be saved, and I have heard preachers and doctors fulminating against Christian Science and everything else that did not conform exactly to what they believed, and seeking to work upon the fears of their congregations to prevent any investigation. This kind of fear is unworthy the human soul. Be in a daring, a receptive, an investigative state of mind. I would radiate a readiness and willingness to listen to anything that has proven, or seems to have proven, a truth to another. I want to welcome truth from wherever it comes, whether popular or unpopular, wanted or unwanted. I would broaden my horizon, heighten my aspirations and deepen my conceptions of truth and be glad to receive from any source. I well remember John Ruskin saying to me: "Never read that book or listen to that sermon which you know beforehand you will agree with. By so doing you deepen the ruts of your own mentality." I want no mental or spiritual ruts. Good roads are never "rutted." I wish to be a broad, wide, well-paved, solid road, over which all truth may run, welcome, free, untaxed, life-giving.

In his Memory and Rime, Joaquin Miller in speaking of poets refers to them as "these men who have room and strength and the divine audacity to think for themselves."

When a man strikes out for himself, in thought and action, he does have to be audacious, in the higher sense of the word. He has to dare his fellow men, dare their criticism, dare their disapproval, dare to shock them, dare to grieve them, perhaps. He has to dare himself, throw down the gauntlet to himself in his struggle to become completely what he believes to be highest and best. It takes a great deal of courage to do all that, a great deal of resolution—an initiative that may seem impudence, a fearlessness that may seem recklessness.

The strength that makes it possible to do this must be a strength like to the divine strength. A strength ordained from the foundation of the earth as a part of man's birthright, to become a part of himself, when he begins to try for himself to conceive of higher good and to live it. The man who thinks only as other men think, dares act only as other men act, is as a babe in swaddling clothes, helpless, dependent. One can never be strong until he learns to walk alone, independent of another's hand to cling to or another's strength to steady himself by. One must learn to stand on his own feet, learn to keep his own balance, learn to step by his own volition. If he does not he becomes a cripple. Most lives are as the lives of cripples, and we help to make them so by our continued trying to force people to cling to us and our ideas, frightening them into believing that they are in great danger if they try to step alone. A little trembling of the legs as one first stands alone is nothing to be alarmed at. A few falls and bumps as we first step out never seriously injure us.

It is only when a life has strength to stand out alone, independent of its fellows, that its soul can take hold of God.

And I fancy that it is only when a life thinks and acts for itself, and allows its fellow men to think and act for themselves, that it is in a condition to really give help and to receive help, really in a state of mind to fulfill the commandment: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

It is one thing to be brave enough to do something which is hard to do but which your fellow men will approve of your doing, and an entirely different thing to do something hard but which your fellow men will not approve of your doing. Therefore I want to radiate into actual, living potentiality my belief that life consists in expression and not repression. By many this is taken to be a plea for license and want of self-control. Do not believe it! That is not what I mean. The expression of evil is not the expression of myself, for I long to do only good. Read what St. Paul says on the subject. And by "I," I mean my real self, as Paul did—not my lower self, my evil heredity, or whatever it is that seeks to drive away the good from me—I, the real I, the self which is, and which may not appear to the world, want to express all that is in that real self. That means that I must control, slay, kill, drive out all the evil that comes to me and demands that I express it as part of myself. It is not a part of my spiritual self, and if I express evil then I am not myself in that sense. But I want to have such perfect, such absolute control over all outward expressions that I shall ever and at all times express nothing but that which is good; and that which will be felt to be good by all people.

And yet we must determine what we should express. The thinking man and woman make their own standards. These standards, in certain great principles of honor, truth, nobleness, purity, are practically alike, yet most men and women are controlled by fashion, custom, society, rather than by their own cool, deliberate judgment. I want to radiate my protest against this state of affairs. I will be my own judge and not place the responsibility for my own moral life upon the judgment of any person, society, clique, class, or church. I must be saved by my own belief and life, not by the belief and life of others.

For years I endeavored to "avoid the appearance of evil." When at last, however, I discovered that the "appearance of evil"—the determination of what it was, rested upon the average quality of the minds of the community by which I was surrounded, and not always upon right, or truth, or justice, I made up my mind that for me, at least, God had a higher mission. I resolved, therefore, in His strength fearlessly to radiate a higher conception of things. An evil mind sees evil where none is; a filthy mind sees filth where is only innocence and sweetness. Was I to shape my life and conduct to meet the ideas of those who deem innocence and trustfulness, natural simplicity, and true-heartedness as "appearances of evil"? God forbid. Rather, by far, would I suffer in the judgments of men and women, cruel and untrue though they would be, than forego the life of natural trust, simple uprightness, that alone mean life to me.

And this is what I desire to radiate,—a positive, powerful, healthful, aseptic moral quality that will refuse to allow people to see evil where none exists; that will lead them to prefer to see, to hope for, to believe in, the good rather than the evil in men. Better trust and be deceived, than live a life of horrible mistrust. I know men and women are imperfect, and, like myself, composed of good and evil, therefore I am determined to radiate my belief in the good in them rather than radiate my belief in the bad of them.

It is worth while to re-read George Eliot's Mill on the Floss, to see how poor Maggie Tulliver was misjudged and cruelly treated purely on what people supposed was her wrong-doing. And I shall never forget the influence the following words had on me when I first read them. I would that the lesson they contain might be burned into the inmost consciousness of every reader of this book.

It is my earnest desire that I may radiate this spirit of courage, deep pity, self-knowledge, generous trust, and all that follows. And this, not in an abstract or theoretical way, but in the real concrete cases that one meets with in life. I am not too good to associate with the found-out wrong-doer if he is striving against his wrong-doing, and aiming to be better. I would not look down on any human being because of any sin. Though I want to grow to hate sin more and more as the manifestations of that which separates us from the Infinite, I want the sinner to feel that I am one with him in all desire to be free from evil, to be possessed only by the spirit of truth, purity, and love.

All great victories whether of peace or war have been won by the fearless, the unafraid. We honor the heroes of the past, of ThermopylÆ, and the fearless and brave of all nations and all time. Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade appeals to our love and respect for the virile, the manly, the courageous, the fearless, and it is the same spirit that thrills us when we read or hear Curfew Shall not Ring To-night. To save her lover the shrinking maiden was filled with high born courage and dared to hang on to the bell. Whether we agree with his beliefs or not we admire the bravery of Luther that led him to exclaim: "Were there as many devils in my way as tiles on the house tops yet would I go to Worms." Whether we approve of his ascetic life or not we thrill at the bravery, the simple-hearted daring of Francis of Assisi, who resolutely cast aside his patrimony and dared his father's anger that he might serve God in his own way.

Every advanced thinker, whose life and action spell progress for the race, has to be a daring pioneer. He must be an iconoclast; he must be self-contained, self-assured, self-confident. He must stand aloof from his fellows in the very spirit of the message he brings, for he dares—imperfect, weak, even sinful though he be—to be a teacher, a leader of others. And how natural, human, it is for those who live with or near him, seeing and knowing as they do, all his foibles, weaknesses, littlenesses, failures, sins, to magnify these things and by them hide the beauty and grandeur of the lesson God has given him to teach the world.

Our poets have given us some wonderfully vivid pictures of the fearless. Perhaps the greatest in all literature is Shelley's Prometheus. It is worth reading a score of times in order that its spirit of fearlessness might be absorbed. Joaquin Miller's Columbus, which I have already quoted, gives a marvelously vivid picture of the great admiral when even hope had gone from his own heart, when he could not pierce by faith the darkness of his own soul.

Yet though it was all darkness to his own soul, and in his own soul, he kept on. His orders were "Sail on!" And his courage and bravery brought him to the light of the new world.

Browning in his Prospice opens with the bold and daring interrogative: "Fear death?" and, after showing what there is to fear, exclaims as in an ecstasy of fearlessness:

I want to radiate the active consciousness even when I am storm-tossed, beaten down by fierce winds, compelled to stay my journey by the sand-laden, hot sirocco of the desert, dashed upon the cruel rocks by tempestuous waves, frozen by the blizzards of the North, that I have nothing to fear, that nothing can harm me save myself, that God is over all and in all. As David called upon mountains, and all hills, fire, and hail, snow and vapors, stormy wind, to praise Him, fulfilling His word, so would I call. And in calling I would rest and be at peace.

And I want to radiate to others my fearlessness for them. They need not fear though the heavens fall. Many a man fails in the fierce conflict raging in his own soul because he has been taught to fear the fierce judgment of an angry God. I want with all the vehemence of my nature to radiate a spirit that will kill and bury forever such fear in human souls. Let no one daunt you by such teaching. Under all circumstances, brother, keep your face up!

Look ever to the stars!

If, in the conflict, you lose heart, do not let your face down so as to be covered by the mud into which you are sinking. Battle on, though you are finally swallowed up—or fear you will be. Go down face up, and let the last thing your expiring gaze rests upon, be the stars above. Though the mud and mire cover your mouth so that you cannot cry out,

Look up to the stars!

Though it rise higher, and cover your nostrils so that you cease to breath,

Look up to the stars!

Though it flows into your very eyes,

Look up to the stars!

My word for it, my soul for yours, the God of men will take that last expiring glance of yours and make it the lever that shall pull you out of the mire and set your feet upon the rock and establish your goings, and

Put a new song into your mouth.