James Whitcomb Riley

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Practical Religion: Humble Service

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SOURCE: Marsh, Daniel L. “Practical Religion: Humble Service.” In The Faith of the People's Poet, pp. 205-29. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1920.

[In the following essay, Marsh reads Riley's poetry against Biblical stories and aphorisms to suggest that the down-to-earth, everyday qualities of his poems provide a foundation for daily religious practice.]

In his poem entitled “My Philosofy,” Riley declared

No man is grate tel he can see
How less than little he would be
Ef stripped to self, and stark and bare
He hung his sign out anywhare.

In this instance his “Philosophy” squares with that of other great thinkers. Confucius once said: “Humility is the solid foundation of all the virtues.” John Ruskin said: “I believe that the first test of a truly great man is humility.” Whittier felt that

The Lord's best interpreters
Are humble human souls.

Jesus Himself once gave an example of true greatness when He washed the disciples' feet. This footwashing was not in the remotest sense of the word a religious ceremony. It was a custom of the time that when a stranger entered a home his sandals were laid off at the door, and a servant, the most menial servant of the household, was assigned the task of washing the dust and sand off his feet. On this particular occasion, Jesus and His disciples had entered into an “upper room” for supper. There was no servant there to perform this ordinary lowly task. While they were preparing for supper, Jesus heard the ambitious disciples wrangling among themselves as to who should be the greatest. Then, determining to give them an object lesson, He laid aside His outer garments, girded Himself with a towel, filled a basin with water, and stooping down, washed the disciples' feet. When He had finished, He said: “If I, the Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example.” It would be interesting to go through the Gospels and pick out the deeds of lowly service which Jesus performed. And then to note this: that His dignity suffered no abatement in the doing of them. Why? Because He was big enough to do the little task. It takes a big man to do it.

Humility is indeed proof of a man's greatness. True moral greatness is as fragrant as the trailing arbutus, and like it seeks the shade. Humility is not meanness of spirit; not cringing; not a low estimate of one's powers; not an expression worn on the countenance; not inverted pride; not self-depreciating speech. It is a form and spirit of activity. It is willingness to serve. It is the key to the highest service. It brings high thoughts down to intense work in the depths. It gives service its true dignity. It glorifies all service. Humbling ourselves to the cross of burden-bearing for others leads to the greatest usefulness.

Happy will the world be when all professed followers of the Man of Galilee overcome their bickerings and faultfindings and petty rivalries, and get together on the great business of serving mankind. The world will not long misunderstand such a religion as that. And that was the kind for which Mr. Riley longed. One of his very earliest poems he entitled “Job Work,” in which he set “the poet” (himself) the task of writing “a rhyme of the present time.” And so he sang of the Civil War that had been recently ended, and of home, and of monopoly's swift decay, and of temperance, but best of all:

He sang the lay of religion's sway,
          Where a hundred creeds clasp hands
And shout in glee such a symphony
          That the whole world understands.

“The Good, Old-Fashioned People” is a poem written in the child dialect, where the child is speaking of the good old-fashioned people that Uncle Sidney tells about. “Uncle Sidney” is Mr. Riley himself—it was the name which his nephews and nieces were wont to give him. These good old-fashioned people, among other things, were unselfish and loved their neighbors as themselves:

They was God's people, Uncle says,
          An' gloried in His name,
An' worked, without no selfishness,
          An' loved their neighbors same
As they was kin.

Truly such folks are “God's people”—who glory in His name, and unselfishly work for others, loving their neighbors as themselves. In such a spirit we find the secret of all human progress; in the upreach to God and the outreach to man. There is not a movement for the dignifying of manhood or the sweeting of human life that has not had its inspiration in religion. It is a strange thing to us of this day, for example, to read that there ever was a time or section of the country when the institution of human slavery was defended by ministers of the Gospel, whose arguments were clinched by quotations from the Holy Word. And the day will come when certain practises of to-day that are warmly defended by otherwise good people will be just as surely outlawed and considered as diametrically opposed to Christian living as is slavery. The church must harness and direct the great social movements of this day; for without the goad, the spur, the push of a great spiritual passion, all of our modern finespun theories of social justice, economic righteousness, and political purity will fall to the ground. Since the devotional, worshiping spirit is the inspiration of the ethical spirit, let the church keep alive the spirit of worship. But if it reaches up toward God in worship, let it not fail to reach out toward man in service. It will not need to hunt long for texts for sermons on every movement of human betterment. Thus in the group of poems called A Child World there is a tale told by “The Noted Traveler,” who tells the struggle of certain slaves escaping from the inferno of slavery, and working weary years and years to ransom their children. And when the parents returned with their oldest boy the happiness spread everywhere until:

                    It even reached
And thrilled the town till the Church was stirred
Into suspecting that wrong was wrong!—
And it stayed awake as the preacher preached
A Real ‘Love’-text that he had not long
To ransack for in the Holy Word.

Riley is right again. It is amazing what a large place love occupies in the Holy Word. The epitome of the Gospel is this: “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life.” “God is love,” we are told, and “Love is of God.” Jesus was love incarnate, and the Cross was the crowning revelation of the love of God. The whole process of redemption is love coming from heaven to earth to create and kindle love, and make it triumph over human hearts and lives. That which avails for salvation, we are taught, is not rites and ceremonies, but “faith working through love.” Love is the presiding queen over all the Christian graces. Love is the prime fruit of the spirit.

No wonder that another of Riley's poems he entitled “The Text,” and wrote the following wholesome exhortation:

The text: Love thou thy fellow man!
          He may have sinned;—One proof indeed,
He is thy fellow, reach thy hand
          And help him in his need!
Love thou thy fellow man. He may
          Have wronged thee—then, the less excuse
Thou hast for wronging him. Obey
          What he has dared refuse!
Love thou thy fellow man—for, be
          His life a light or heavy load,
No less he needs the love of thee
          To help him on his road.

Mere sham or pretense are not tolerated by the Hoosier poet. He believes in prayers, but he believes emphatically that man ought to work as he prays; that a man's life ought to square with his profession. His “As My Uncle Ust to Say” contains these emphatic words, which are as true as gospel:

I've thought a power on men and things—
          As my uncle ust to say,—
And ef folks don't work as they pray, i jings!
          W'y, they ain't no use to pray!

It is astonishing how many of our prayers we can help God to answer, if only we “work as we pray.” Riley's own heart-yearning is poured into “A Mortul Prayer,” the final petition of which is:

Make me to love my feller man—
          Yea, though his bitterness
Doth bite as only adders can—
          Let me the fault confess,
And go to him and clasp his hand
          And love him none the less.
So keep me, Lord, ferever free
          From vain concete er whim;
And he whose pius eyes can see
          My faults, however dim,—
Oh! let him pray the least fer me,
          And me the most fer him!

In “Anselmo” the poet causes Father Anselmo (which is only a characteristic name, not an historical one) to speak of his seeking the Lord's grace, and how hoping to please God he practised the most rigid asceticism; how he performed dread penance; knelt with bleeding knees; put ashes on his head; scourged himself, and yet his prayers were all in vain. And then awakening from a swoon he saw a wretched outcast bathing his brow with many a pitying sigh, and he prayed God's grace to rest on this outcast, and then he heard a gentle voice say:

          ‘Thou shalt not sob in suppliance hereafter;
Take up thy prayers and wring them dry of tears,
          And lift them, white and pure with love and laughter.’
So is it now for all men else I pray;
So is it I am blest and glad alway.

What a different world it would be if every Christian worked as he prayed. And then suppose that his constant prayer would be that Christ's will were his own. This is the teaching of Mr. Riley in the child poem “A Defective Santa Claus.” He says the little child on Christmas eve knelt down by his bed and said the prayer that Uncle Sidney taught him to say (Uncle Sidney was the name that the nephews and nieces gave to the poet). And the prayer is this:

O Father mine, e'en as Thine own,
This child looks up to Thee alone;
Asleep or waking, give him still
His Elder Brother's wish and will.

He closed the poem which he wrote upon the death of Mrs. Benjamin Harrison with the idea that the supreme good is God's will, thus:

          We see her still,
Even as here she stood—
All that was pure and good
And sweet in womanhood—
          God's will her will.

How shall we reach “The Highest Good”? What is “the summum bonum” of life? These are questions that are iterated and reiterated by weary mortals every day in quest of the highest good. What shall we do? If we ask our poet he tells us in simple phrase just to do our honest best:

To attain the highest good
Of true man and womanhood,
Simply do your honest best—
God with joy will do the rest.

That is, character is a by-product of service. In many of the poems of our sweet singer, especially those on persons, this thought is developed. Thus when Surgeon Smith died, he wrote a sonnet which he called “The Noblest Service,” in the center of which stand these two lines:

His steadfast step still found the pathway toward
The noblest service paid Humanity.

It was this same devotion to the service of Humanity that caused Mr. Riley to write as follows concerning John Brown, the famous abolitionist:

Writ in between the lines of his life-deed
          We trace the sacred service of a heart
          Answering the Divine command in every part
Bearing on human weal: His love did feed
The loveless; and his gentle hands did lead
          The blind, and lift the weak, and balm the smart
          Of other wounds than rankled at the dart
In his own breast, that glorified thus to bleed.
He served the lowliest first—nay, then alone—
          The most despisèd that e'er wreaked vain breath
                    In cries of suppliance in the reign whereat
Red Guilt sate squat upon her spattered throne.—
          For these doomed there it was he went to death.
                    God! how the merest man loves one like that!

Certainly “the merest man loves one like that.” Always and always such sacrificial service is the highway to immortal renown. The man who lives for others (and here is another by-product of unselfish service) passes into an earthly immortality as well as a heavenly. Upon the death of James A. Mount, a farmer and an orator, and once governor of the state of Indiana, Mr. Riley wrote “A Good Man,” and in this poem he describes a good man as one

Who live for you and me—
          Lives for the world he tries
To help,—he lives eternally.
          A good man never dies.
Who lives to bravely take
          His share of toil and stress,
And, for his weaker fellows' sake,
          Makes every burden less.

One of Riley's most generally quoted poems is “Our Kind of a Man.” What a magnificent picture it is of the man whose faith works through love; of the man who gives hands and feet to the Gospel. It is the man who smites wrong with a knuckled faith; who lives what he preaches; who is ears to the deaf and eyes to the blind; who helps the widow and the sick; who gives full credit for honest effort however little the results may be; who shares the pain of the doubts that rack heart and brain; who looks on sin with pitying eyes, even as the Lord, who has promised that though our sins should glow as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow:

And, feeling still, with a grief half glad,
That the bad are as good as the good are bad,
He strikes straight out for the Right—and he
Is the kind of a man for you and me!

But the service of Love must begin with our thoughts concerning others. We ought to take kindly views of doubtful actions. We ought to put the best possible construction on another's word or deed. If we think unkindly about others we can not act otherwise in the end; for “thoughts winged with feelings are springs of action.” “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he,” speaks he, does he in the end. Therefore, it is a good thing for those who would serve others to adopt as their own that most typical expression of Riley's creed, that first appeared under the title “The Human Heart,” but finally “As Created”:

There's a space for good to bloom in
Every heart of man or woman,—
And however wild or human,
          Or however brimmed with gall,
Never heart may beat without it;
And the darkest heart to doubt it
Has something good about it
          After all!

Thus does he proclaim a universal sympathy. It is Christian to recognize the Neighborhood and Brotherhood of man. The modern Jericho Road stretches far away. It is filled with a vast polyglot procession from every land under the sun. They are a host of needy creatures. The halt and hurt, the blind and orphan, the wounded and worsted, yea, and those that sin are there. The true Christian knows absolutely nothing of race prejudice, and class hatred, and social distinctions, and denominational bigotry. But he loves folks because they are world neighbors of his, world kinsmen, indeed, brothers of his in mortality and sin, it is true, but brothers also in immortality. This is the sentiment with which Riley closes his poem on “Writin' Back to the Home-Folks”:

And ef we minded God, I guess
          We'd all love one another
Jes' like one famb'ly,—me and Pap
          And Madaline and Mother.

It is this idea of the familyhood of the race that moves through “My Ruthers,” a “Benj. F. Johnson” poem that purported to have been “Writ durin' State Fair at Indanoplis, whilse visitin' a Son in law then residin’ thare,” a part of which we give herewith:

                    I'd ruther kindo' git the swing
                    O' what was needed, first, I jing!
                    Afore I swet at anything!—
          Ef I only had my ruthers;—
In fact I'd aim to be the same
          With all men as my brothers;
And they'd all be the same with me—
          Ef I only had my ruthers.
The pore 'ud git theyr dues sometimes—
          Ef I only had my ruthers,—
And be paid dollars 'stid o' dimes,
          Fer children, wives and mothers:
                    Theyr boy that slaves; theyr girl that sews—
                    Fer others—not herself, God knows!—
                    The grave's her only change of clothes!
          … Ef I only had my ruthers,
They'd all have ‘stuff’ and time enugh
          To answer one-another's
Appealin' prayer fer ‘lovin' care’—
          Ef I only had my ruthers.
They'd be few folks 'ud ast fer trust,
          Ef I only had my ruthers,
And blame few business men to bu'st
          Theyrselves, er harts of others:
                    Big Guns that come here durin' Fair-
                    Week could put up jest anywhere,
                    And find a full-and-plenty thare,
          Ef I only had my ruthers:
The rich and great 'ud 'sociate
          With all theyr lowly brothers,
Feelin' we done the honorum—
          Ef I only had my ruthers.

Riley always had a deep and tender sympathy with the poor and lowly. He did not attempt to incite them, as did Burns and Shelley, to revolt against their exploiters and despoilers. Nevertheless, he had the profoundest respect for and sympathy with honest toil. Without envying the rich, he loved the poor. He had seen too often the effects of great wealth upon its possessor; hence, one of the greatest lines he ever wrote is:

They's nothin' much patheticker'n jes' a-bein' rich.

Riley was acquainted with the corroding fret of poverty. He had known by experience the fierce and tragic struggle for existence. Though in his later years he became rich from the ever-increasing royalty on his books, yet his simple, unostentatious nature prayed “Ike Walton's Prayer”:

                    I pray not that
                    Men tremble at
          My power of place
                    And lordly sway,
I only pray for simple grace
To look my neighbor in the face
          Full honestly from day to day—
Yield me his horny palm to hold,
                    And I'll not pray
                              For gold;—
The tanned face, garlanded with mirth,
It hath the kingliest smile on earth;
The swart brow, diamonded with sweat,
Hath never need of coronet.

While in such poems as “A Poor Man's Wealth” and “Down to the Capital” he pities those who are rich in purse but poor in spirit; rich in luxuriant raiment and blazing with diamonds and precious stones but poor in intellect; crying out

They's nothin' much patheticker'n jes' a-bein' rich,

yet it was of the common folk whom he knew so well and loved with such intense fidelity and devotion that he usually sang. In “Little Mandy's Christmas-Tree” we have in child style a most pathetic description of a poverty-stricken home: front step down, no door-knob, no window shutters, brown paper pasted where the window glass was broken, no fuel, no carpet, no food, nothing indeed but want and sorrow. And then a committee was sent from the Sunday-School to this home of little Mandy to invite them to participate in the joys of the Christmas-Tree at the Sunday-School; and when little Mandy did not know what a Christmas-Tree was, it was planned to have a little tree hidden behind the larger one to present to her for her very own. But when Christmas Eve came and the church was full of happy children and their teachers and parents, and the little tree was behind the big one, and little Mandy's name was called, little Mandy did not answer, for she was gone to be with Him, whose birthday they were celebrating; and then the resolution was formed that: hereafter the poor neglected children of the town shall receive more consideration at the Christmas season, and the fortunate little children who have abundance would give a tree to those who lacked, and they would call this tree “Little Mandy's Tree”:

Little Mandy, though, she don't
Answer—and Ma says she won't
Never, though each year they'll be
“Little Mandy's Chris-mus-Tree”
‘Fer pore children’—my Ma says—
And Committee say they guess
‘Little Mandy's Tree’ 'ull be
Bigger than the other Tree!

The kindly poet would have Christians manifest that form of sympathy known as philanthropy, and he would have them do it in the name of the beneficent Christ. In the poem “The Curse of the Wandering Foot” he makes a tramp use these words:

Give me to sup of your pity—
          Feast me on prayers!—O ye,
Met I your Christ in the city,
          He would fare forth with me.

Such unselfish service, done in the name of Christ, is the best credential for religion. We have not forgotten how, when in perplexity John the Baptist sent his disciples to Jesus inquiring if He really were the Coming One, or whether they should look for another, Jesus simply told them to go back and tell John what they saw, how “the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleaned, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good tidings preached to them.” That was enough. Any religion that carries out such a practical program of the ministry of sympathy as that will not have to argue long for its claim to Divinity. In “His Vigil” our beloved poet causes one who has been comforted and helped by another to beg that other to remain by him—

Just as God were sitting here.

Nothing finer was ever said about a person than that: to remind one's fellows of God! That is an ambition big enough for the best of us; so to serve as to make others think of God.

But not only does such a spirit recommend God to others, it also is well-pleasing to God Himself. Once when Riley was in reminiscent mood he wrote a poem which describes the lore of the shoe-shop at Greenfield, his boyhood home. The subject of the poem is a journeyman shoemaker by the name of “Jim.” He was a patient, honest, jovial man, with a quick and serving sympathy for all who stood in need of help, and just because he responded to every appeal to help the needy, Mr. Riley concludes:

When God made Jim, I bet you He didn't
Do anything else that day, but jes' set around and feel good.

We sometimes talk about right for right's sake and duty for duty's sake, and we say that a man ought to do right just because it is right, and not because some one has told him to do right. Nevertheless, it is impossible to get the race of mankind away from the idea of rewards and punishments, and the surest way to correct evils and to restrain individuals from doing that which is wrong, is to have implanted within every one an unquestioning old-fashioned faith in the universal presence of God. If we can get people to understand that “Thou God seest me” is a sentiment just as fit to be used to-day as it was in Hagar's time; if we can make the business man understand that God notes every transaction of his; if we can make the young man know that God sees him in the darkness as in the daylight, abroad as at home; and that God not only sees but that He cares; then we have gone a long way not only in bringing up a race of people who are masterpieces of restraint, but we have also done much to develop characters that are absolutely God-like in their positive good. Now, that God does see and is pleased when His children make heavy hearts light, is most clearly expressed by Mr. Riley in “The Book of Joyous Children,” where he says:

Front the Father's smiling face—
          Smiling, that you smile the brighter
          For the heavy hearts made lighter,
Since you smile with Him.

Still another by-product of unselfish service is happiness. The quest of happiness is the universal quest of mankind. Making this quest men will work for gold until they become as hard as the metal they seek. They will follow learning until they become as lifeless as the pages they scan; they will give themselves to sensual pleasures until they become reeking masses of corruption; but our kind poet has the unfailing prescription for happiness. In the “Rubáiyát of Doc Sifers,” when some one asked him for a prescription “fer bein' happy by,” Doc wrote on a piece of paper these words:

Go he'p the sick, and putt your heart in it.

Riley wrote that this Doc Sifers did not need to claim any creed, and that he did not raise loud, vainglorious prayers in crowded marts or public ways to be heard of men, but that his prayers rose from way deep down in his heart, when he was out alone at night facing the storm on his way to assuage human suffering, when all the rest of the town was comfortably at rest. He was always ready to answer any calls at any time of night or day and whether folks were rich or poor. He could be found at the bedside of anguish and when the patient was past all human power, Doc would try to make it easier for the patient to sing the triumphant words of Saint Paul: “O death, where is thy sting! O grave, where is thy victory!”

How many tragedies of evil temper there are in the world, and the sad thing about it is that those who have a touchy disposition, or a quick, or sullen, or revengeful temper are rather proud of the fact. Riley has the right idea when he insists that a man ought to show his temper who is boss; and that the finest manhood is developed by overcoming the temptations of a quick or sullen temper. He says that that is what man's temper is for, to hold back out of view, and to teach it never to get ahead of one. Thus in the “Rubáiyát of Doc Sifers” he says:

Doc's got a temper; but, he says, he's learnt it which is boss,
Yit has to watch it, more er less. … I never seen him cross
But onc't, enough to make him swear;—milch-cow stepped on his toe,
And Doc ripped out ‘I doggies!’—There's the only case I know.
Doc says that's what your temper's fer—to hold back out o' view,
And learn it never to occur on out ahead o' you.—
‘You lead the way,’ says Sifers—‘git your temper back in line—
And furdest back the best, ef it's as mean a one as mine!’

And Doc hates contentions. He can't abide wrangles or disputes of any kind. He will leave a crowd and slip up some back alley as soon as a fight begins or abusive terms are used. He says the side that he generally takes is the one he never hears.

But practical religion does not exhaust itself in doing; it expresses itself also in our speech. Here, also, we have instruction from our bard in his poem entitled “Let Something Good Be Said”:

When over the fair fame of friend or foe
          The Shadows of disgrace shall fall, instead
Of words of blame, or proof of thus and so,
          Let something good be said.
Forget not that no fellow-being yet
          May fall so low but love may lift his head:
Even the cheek of shame with tears is wet,
          If something good be said.
No generous heart may vainly turn aside
          In ways of sympathy; no soul so dead
But may awaken strong and glorified,
          If something good be said.
And so I charge ye, by the thorny crown,
          And by the cross on which the Saviour bled,
And by your own soul's hope of fair renown,
          Let something good be said!

Read those words over again—and then again. Most of us need the advice contained in them. How prone we are to hint a fault in another's character; to give our inferences as actual fact; to repeat our suspicions for truth; to impute a false motive for another's word or deed; to tell a half-truth, which is worse than a whole lie; to maintain a malignant silence when another's character is traduced or vilified. Shame on us! Let us read over again—and live—“Let Something Good Be Said.”

Christ said, “Forgive your enemies. Bless them that curse you. Pray for them that despitefully use you.” That is a mighty hard doctrine to live up to always, but Mr. Riley was speaking in “My Foe” to one who so named himself. Mr. Riley said that he refused to designate his opponent by a term so dark. He said that to him he was most kind and true and that he was as grateful for him as the dusk is for the dews. He urges that his “Foe” shall not vex himself for any lack of moan or cry of his; he says that he is not afraid of any harm or bruise reaching his soul through any stroke of his enemy's. He would rather call the man who describes himself as “foe” a helpless friend, thus:

So, blessing you, with pitying countenance,
          I wave a hand to you, my helpless friend.

So we have had our message of practical religion. Thank you, dear Riley, for it. We can not close this meditation in any better way than by quoting “A Simple Recipe” which our poet wrote to a young friend, “Showing How to Make the Right Kind of a Man Out of the Right Kind of a Boy.” The “Recipe” is not so hard to read (be honest, keep clean, do your level best), but it is harder to take:

Be honest—both in word and act,
          Be strictly truthful through and through:
Fact can not fail.—You stick to fact,
          And fact will stick to you.
Be clean—outside and in, and sweep
          Both hearth and heart and hold them bright;
Wear snowy linen—aye, and keep
          Your conscience snowy-white.
Do right, your utmost—good must come
          To you who do your level best—
Your very hopes will help you some,
          And work will do the rest.

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