any quality to which the heart of man aspires it may attain. would you have virtue in the world, establish it yourself. would you have tenderness, be tender. it is only by acting in the name of that which you deem to be an ideal that its realization is brought to pass.
in the crowded section of the lower east side of new york, where poverty reigns most distressingly, there stands a church which is a true representative of the religion of the poor. it is an humble building, crowded in among the flats and tenements that make the homely neighborhood homelier, and sends a crude and distorted spire soaring significantly toward the sky. there is but little light inside, for that which the crowded flat-buildings about does not shut out is weakened by the dusty stained-glass windows through which it has to pass. an arched and dark-angled ceiling lends a sense of dignity to it and over it all broods the solemn atmosphere of simplicity and faith.
it is in this church (and no doubt others of a similar character elsewhere) that is constantly recurring the miracle of earthly faith. here it is, hour after hour, that one sees entering out of the welter and the din of the streets those humble examples of the poor and ignorant,109 who come here out of the cares of many other states to rest a while and pray.
the realization of an ideal
near the door, between two large, gloomy pillars, there is a huge wooden cross, whereon is hung a life-size figure of the christ. the hands and feet are pierced with the customary large forty-penny weight nails. the side is opened with an appalling gash, the forehead is crowned with the undying crown of thorns, which is driven down until the flesh is made to bleed.
before this figure you may see kneeling, any day, not one but many specimens of those by whom the world has dealt very poorly. their hands are rough, their faces worn and dull; on the gnarled and weary bodies are hung clothes of which you and i would be ashamed. some carry bags, others huge bundles. with hands extended upward, their faces bearing the imprint of unquestioning faith, they look into the soft, pain-exhausted face of the christ, imploring that aid and protection which the ordinary organization of society does not and cannot afford. it is in this church, as it seems to me, that the hour’s great lesson of tenderness is given.
i call the world’s attention to this picture with the assurance that this is the great, the beautiful, and the important lesson. if there be those who do not see in the body-racked figure of christ an honest reiteration of an actual event, who cannot honestly admit that such a thing could have reasonably occurred, there is still a lesson just as impressive and just as binding as though it had. these people whom you see kneeling here and110 lifting up their hands present an actuality of faith which cannot be denied. this christ, if to you and to me a myth, is to them a reality. and in so far as he is real to them he implies an ardent desire on the part of the whole human race for tenderness and mercy which it may be as well not to let go unanswered. for if christ did not suffer, if his whole life-story was a fiction and a delusion, then all the yearning and all the faith of endless millions of men, who have lived believing and who died adoring, only furnishes proof that the race really needs such an ideal—that it must have tenderness and mercy to fly to or it could not exist.
man is a hopeful animal. he lives by the belief that some good must accrue to him or that his life is not worth the living. it is this faith then, that in disaster or hours of all but unendurable misery causes him to turn in supplication to a higher power, and unless these prayers are in some measure answered, that faith can and will be destroyed, and life will and does become a shambles indeed. hence, if one would balance peace against danger and death it becomes necessary for each to act as though the ideals of the world are in some sense real and that he in person is sponsor for them.
these prayers that are put up, and these supplications, if not addressed to the actual christ, are nevertheless sent to that sum of human or eternal wisdom or sympathy as you will of which we are a part. if you believe that hope is beautiful and that mercy is a virtue, if you would have the world more lovely and its inhabitants more kind, if you would have goodness triumph111 and sorrow laid aside, then you must be ready to make good to such supplicants and supplications as fall to you the virtues thus pathetically appealed to. you must act in the name of tenderness. if you cannot or will not, by so much is the realization of human ideals, the possibility of living this life at all decently by any, made less.
