"The world is God's seed-bed. He has planted deep and multitudinously, and many things there are which have not yet come up."--BEECHER. One of the richest and best of the smaller class of American cities is New Bedford; and the secret of its wealth and beauty is _oil_. It is but a few years since the immense fleet of vessels that made that thrifty port their home went out with certainty of success in their dangerous enterprises, and came back loaded down with spoil. All that beautiful wealth was won from the deep, and for years as many ships came and went as there were dwellings to give them speed and welcome. But the glory and the gain of the whale-fishery are past. The noble prey, too persistently and mercilessly pursued, has retired northward, and hidden among the icebergs. Now, when a ship's crew win a cargo, they win it from the clutches of eternal frost. It seems certain that the fishery will dwindle, year after year, until, at last, only a few adventurers will linger near the pole, to watch for the rare game that once furnished light for the civilized world. All this is very unpleasant for New Bedford; but are we to have no more oil? Is nature failing? Will the time come when people must sit in darkness?
A few months ago a man in Pennsylvania took it into his head to probe the ground for the source of a certain oil that made its appearance upon the surface. Down, down into the bowels of the earth he thrust his steam-driven harpoon, until he touched the living fountain of oil, which, gushing up, half drowned him. Now, all the region round about him swarms with industry. Thousands of men are hurrying to and fro; the puff of the engine is heard everywhere; tens of thousands of barrels of oil are rolled out and turned into the channels of commerce; eager-eyed speculators throng all the converging avenues of travel, and a waiting world of consumers take the oil as fast as it is produced. Men in Virginia, New York, and Ohio are awaking to the consciousness that, while they have been paying for oil from the far Pacific, they have been living within three hundred feet of deposits greater than all the cargoes that ever floated in New Bedford harbor. For hundreds, and, probably, for thousands of years, men have walked over these deposits with no suspicion of their existence. Geologists have looked wise, as is their habit, but have given no hint of them.
The simple truth appears to be that when, in the history of the world, it became necessary for these firmly-fastened store-houses of oil to be uncovered, they were uncovered. Nature had held them for untold thousands of years for just this emergency. When the whales ceased spouting, the earth took up the business; and "here she blows" and "there she blows" are heard in Tideoute and Titusville, while New Bedford sits sadly by the sea, and thinks of long absent crews to whom the cry has become strange.
I cannot but look upon this discovery of oil in the earth as one of the most remarkable and instructive revelations of the age. It has shown to me that, whenever human necessity demands any thing of the world of matter, the demand will be honored. Whenever animal life, or the muscle of man or brute, has shown itself unequal to the wants of an age, Nature has always responded to the cry for help. Inventors are only men who act as pioneers, and who go forward to see what the human race will want next, and to make the necessary provisions. An inventor has profound faith in the exhaustless resources of nature. He knows that if he bores far enough, and bores in the right direction, he will find that which the world needs. He is often no more than the discoverer of a secret which nature has kept for the satisfaction of the wants of an age. A lake yoked to a coal-bed would generally be voted a slow team, but the inventor of the steam engine saw how it could be made a very fast and a very powerful one; and we who live now are able to see that the discovery was made at the right time, and that, for the emergencies of this latter day, it has really quadrupled the power of civilized man.
Think how nature has risen grandly up to meet every occasion for new resources. The revolution wrought by steam in the business of the world created great wants, every one of which was filled as soon, as felt. Quicker modes of communicating thought were needed to give us all the advantages of the increased facility of carriage, and Mr. Morse was permitted to uncover the telegraph. More money was wanted for the increased business of the world, and the gold fields of California and Australia were unveiled. It has always been so. In the march of the human race along the track of history, nature has pulled aside the veil in which she hides her treasures, to display that which she has kept in store for every epoch. In all the future I have no doubt that whenever oil shall be wanted, oil will be had for the boring. The world is fitted up with supplies for all the probable and possible wants of the human race. We are treading every day upon the lids of great secrets that await the wants of the larger style and finer type of life that lie before us. Discovery has but just begun, and will, I doubt not, be as rife in future ages as in this. There is no end of it: yet the world is a thing to be weighed and measured. It is so many miles around it, and so many miles through it. Never mind; it has more in it than humanity can exhaust.
When we talk of the material world, especially in its relation to the constantly developing wants of man, we talk simply of the kitchen and larder of humanity. We have not ascended into the drawing-room, or conservatory. The moment we step out of the consideration of manifested nature, we come into a world which may neither be weighed nor measured--the world of thought. I suppose that no author has ever entered a large library and stood in its alcoves and studied its titles long without asking himself the question: "what is there left for me to do?" It seems as if men had been reaching in all directions for the discovery of thought since time began, and as if there were absolutely nothing new to be said upon any subject. Yet every age has always demanded its peculiar food, and every age has managed to get it. Certain great and peculiarly fruitful subjects, blowing in the sea of thought, have attracted whole fleets of authors for many years, and they are doubtless chased away no more to return; but, here and there, while time shall last, strong men will bore down to deposits of thought unsuspected by any of the preceding generations of men, and there will gush up streams to light the nations of the world. For the world of thought is, by its nature, exhaustless. The world of thought is the world in which God lives, and it is infinite like himself. We reach our hands out into the dark in any direction, and find a thought. It was God's before it was ours; and on beyond that thought, lies another, and still another, _ad infinitum_. If our arms were long enough, we should be able to grasp them as well as the first. All that it wants is the long arm to give us the command of deposits that would astonish the world. Authors have become eminent according to their power to reach further than others out into the infinite atmosphere of thought which envelops them.
Authors, like inventors, are rarely more than discoverers. If God, who is omniscient, sees all truth, and apprehends the relations of every truth to every other truth, all an author can do is, of course, to find out what God's thoughts are. And every age is certain to find out the thought that is essential to it. When the world had exhausted Aristotle, and the wide school of philosophers who embraced him in their systems, Bacon, self-instituted, stepped before the world as its teacher. He came when he was wanted, and his age gave him audience, and took the better path which he pointed out to it. It was in the golden age of the drama--the age in which the drama was what it never was before, and will never be again--a great agent of civilization--that Shakspeare appeared. We call his plays creations, but surely they were not his. He no more than discovered them. The reason why they stir us so much is that God created them. His age wanted them, and he had the insight into the world of thought which enabled him to enter in and lead them out. The reason why we have not had any great dramatist since, is, that succeeding ages have not needed one. The great men of later ages have not recognized the drama as a want of their particular time. I am aware that there is nothing in this to feed human pride, but I do not recognize food for human pride as a want of any age.
We are in the habit of talking of the old authors; and we read them as if we supposed them wiser than ourselves. We try to feed on the thought which they discovered, but it is in the main very innutritious fodder, and the world is learning the fact. We read and reverence old books less, and read and regard newspapers a great deal more. The thought which our own age produces is that which we are learning to prize most. We buy beautiful editions of Scott, but we read Dickens and Thackeray and Mrs. Stowe, in weekly and monthly numbers. Milton, in half-calf, stands upon the shelves of our library undisturbed, while we cut the leaves of "Festus;" and Keats and Byron and Shelley are all pushed aside that we may converse with Longfellow and Mrs. Browning. It is not, perhaps, that the later are the greater, but, being informed with the spirit of the age in which we have our life, moving among the facts which concern us, and conscious of our want, they apprehend the true relations of their age to the world of thought around them. They see where the sources of oil are exhausted, and bore for new deposits. It is a comfort to know that they can never bore in vain.
We may be sure that literature will always be as fresh as it has been. It is possible that we may never have greater men than Shakspeare and Milton, and Dante and Goethe; but there is nothing to hinder our having men just as great. Those who are to come will only bore in different directions, and find new deposits. Shakspeare and Milton were great writers, but the fields they occupied were their own. They do not resemble each other in any particular. Dante and Goethe were great writers, but there are no points of resemblance between them. When Scott was issuing his wonderful series of novels, it seemed to his cotemporaries, I suppose, that there was no field left for a successor; yet Dickens, in the next generation, won as many readers and as much admiration as he, in a field whose existence Scott never suspected. Very different is the world of thought from the world of matter, in the fact that its deposits are found in no particular spot. The mind can go out in quest of thought in no direction without reward; and every man receives from his age motive and culture which peculiarly prepare him for the work of supplying its needs. There are some who seem to think that the golden age of literature is past--that nothing modern is worthy of notice, and that it is one of the vices of the age that we discard so much the teachings of the literary fathers. But the world of thought is exhaustless, and we have only to produce a finer civilization than the world has ever seen, to secure, as its consummate flower, a literature of corresponding excellence.
What has been said of the world of matter and the world of thought, may be said, and is implied, of the world of men. We are accustomed to say that great emergencies make great men. But this is not true. Great men are always found to meet great emergencies: but God makes them, and leads them through a course of discipline which prepares them for their work. It is one of the remarkable facts of history, so patent that all have seen and acknowledged it, that to meet every great epoch a man has been prepared. I mean it in no irreverent or theological sense when I say that there has been a series of Christs, whose appearance has denoted the departure of old dispensations and the inauguration of new. Men have arisen who have torn down temples, and demolished idols, and swept away systems, and knocked off fetters, and introduced their age into a freer, better, and larger life; and it will always be so while time shall last. Men will arise equal to the wants of their age wherever men are civilized. The causes which produce emergencies are the agents which educate men to meet them; and nature is prodigal of her material among men, as among the things made for his service.
When, in the history of Christianity, it became necessary to re-assert and emphasize the truth that "the just shall live by faith," Luther was raised up; and nothing is more apparent to the student than that the age which produced him demanded him--that he fitted into his age, supplied its wants, and cut a new channel, through which the richest life of the world has flowed for centuries. He found his country tied up to formalism, scholasticism, and tradition; and by strokes as remarkable for boldness as strength he set it free. He stands at the head of a great historical epoch, which was prepared to receive and crown him. In another field, we have, even in this day, a reformer whom his age has called for, and who will surely do in the world of art what Luther did in religion. No one can read Ruskin, and mark his enthusiasm, his splendid power, his earnestness, his love of truth, his reverence for nature, and above all, his love of God, without feeling that he has a great mission to fulfil in the world. I bow myself in homage before this man, and acknowledge his credentials. He speaks with authority, and not as the common run of scribes, at all. Fearlessly he tears the mask away from conventionalism and pretension, sparing neither age nor nation, and scattering critics right and left
"Like chaff from the threshing-floor."
It seems to me that the sight of this single, unsupported man, plunging boldly into a fight with a whole world full of liars and lies, thrusting right and left, anxious only for the triumph of truth, and everywhere devoutly recognizing God and his glory, and Christ and his honor, as the ultimate end of true art, is one of the most striking and beautiful the world has ever seen. Was there not need of him? Had not art become superstitious and infidel and missionless? Had it not faded to little more than the repetition of old inanities, traditional mannerisms, stereotyped lies? Ruskin came to tell his age that art was doing nothing toward making the world better--that, instead of lifting the heart toward God, and enlarging the field of human sympathy, it was only ministering to the vanity of men--that nature was dishonored that men might win the applause of vulgar crowds by falsehood and trickery. Nobly has he done and nobly is he still doing his work; and the world is reading him. It matters not that critics carp, and scold, and whine--the world is reading, and will regard him. The eternal truth of God and nature is on his side; and we are to see, as I firmly believe, resulting from his noble labors, a beautiful resurrection of art from the grave in which its friends have laid it. It shall come forth, though now bound hand and foot, and be restored to the sisterhood whose happiness it is to serve and sit at the feet of Jesus Christ.
But time and space would fail to give illustrations of the truth that God has always a man ready for an emergency. It is not necessary to speak of Washington. It would not be wise, perhaps, to speak of the first Napoleon, because men differ so widely in their estimate of his work. But of the last Napoleon, it may be said that he furnishes one of the most notable instances the world has ever seen of a man prepared for his age. I suppose that no one believes that there is another man in existence who could have done for France, and would have done for Europe, under the circumstances, what Louis Napoleon has done. Never did the central figure of an elaborate piece of mosaic fit more nicely into its place, than did Louis Napoleon into the complicated affairs of his age. They were made for him, and he for them.
Shall the world of matter never fail--shall the world of thought be exhaustless--shall men be found for all the emergencies of their race, and, yet, shall divine truth be contained in a nut-shell? Must the human soul lack food--fresh food--because a generation long gone has decided that only certain food is fit for the human soul? I believe that the Bible is a revelation of divine truth to men, and, believing this, I believe that its most precious deposits have hardly been touched. I believe that in it, there is special food prepared for all the wide variety of human souls, and that, as generation after generation passes away, new deposits will be struck, so rich in illuminating power that their discoverers will wonder they had never been seen before. I know that just before me, or somewhere before me, there is a generation of men who will think less of being saved, and more of being worth saving, less of dogma, and more of duty, less of law, and more of love; whose worship will be less formal, and more truthful and spiritual, and whose God will be a more tender and considerate father, and less a lawgiver and a judge. For such a generation, there exists a deposit of divine truth almost unknown by Christendom. Only here and there have men gathered it, floating upon the surface. The great deposit waits the touch of another age.
[The end]
Timothy Titcomb's essay: Undeveloped Resources