The Clergyman's Wife and Other Sketches/Perils of Prosperity
PERILS OF PROSPERITY.
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erils of prosperity! "Oh, all very fine! but I should like to experience those perils a little," cries an incredulous young friend, quoting from that precocious juvenile who made the same answer to his mother, when she told him that he must abstain from certain amusements which she accounted full of sin and peril.
We all want to experience alluring perils for ourselves, especially those of prosperity. Seemingly, they must be very pleasant to encounter. Who denies that they are? But even the sense of long-protracted pleasure palls and wearies. Uninterrupted prosperity tries the spirit more severely than continuous adversity. You shake your curly head, youthful doubter. You cannot believe that those fair-seeming apples which you hunger to taste, may, like those gathered on the Dead Sea shore, leave only ashes upon your eager lips. Yet we give you high authority for our assertion. Listen to what Jeremy Taylor said: "No man is more miserable than he that hath no adversity; that man is not tried whether he be good or bad; and God never crowns those virtues which are only faculties and dispositions."
It is indisputable that those individuals who have been permitted a long period of unshadowed prosperity, seldom prize their own rich store—are seldom conscious of its opulence—are often as poor in real enjoyment, (we might say poorer) than those who have known great reverses. Shakspeare tells us "they are as sick that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing;" and, in truth, they lose the appetite, and the power of tasting, which gives to the hungry man's simplest food its keen relish.
Let the sun always shine and the tired eye will soon be dazzled by its ceaseless glare, and be blinded to objects rendered beautiful by its radiance. "The rays of happiness, like the light, are colorless when unbroken," writes Longfellow. Untempered sunshine withers the fruits of the intellect, as of the orchard. Clouds, and cooling shadows, and refreshing rain, are as needful for mental as for natural growth. Without them the soil is parched and hardened, and its fairest products wither. Ambition is dwarfed by prosperity, which leaves nothing to seek, nothing to desire. The energies droop like wilted leaves. The soul grows lethargic and feeble, and is in peril of being stricken with what has forcibly been styled a "moral coup de soleil." That cornucopia which Hercules tore from the brow of Achelous, when he attacked him in the shape of an ox, and which the Goddess of Plenty carries, filled with fruits and flowers, grows a very tiresome symbol to the satiated minions of fortune. They would gladly restore the horn to the ox's brow, if it would only toss up some enlivening and exciting incident, to break through the dreary monotony of their existence.
We are half inclined to believe that none of us enjoy any happiness fully, intensely, until we have been deprived of it for a season; or, at least, until we have learned its value by threatened loss.
There is a saying, (a French one, if we do not mistake,) that, "it is very easy to be amiable when one is happy." A state of unwonted happiness may temporarily expand the heart, and give birth to that merely external, smiling, social complaisance which passes for amiability; but habitual prosperity is not calculated to foster the sympathetic tenderness which deserves the name of amiability. Prosperity is apt to render us selfish, and unaware of, and uncareful for, the ills and privations of others. This is partly because we do not comprehend; we are not impressed by the contemplation of evils we have not ourselves endured. We see them only as in a picture—a very sad picture, perhaps, but one that quickly fades out of our memory, because no painful reality has been imparted to it through our own remembered experiences.
Observe how seldom those who have enjoyed unvarying prosperity are considerate or compassionate. Note a wayside beggar, seated on the cold stones, starvation written upon his pallid face, his skeleton-like hand mutely extended for alms. Mark, how the pampered child of Fortune will rustle her rich silks, and sweep her soft velvets carelessly by him, with an abstracted look, or possibly with a slight shudder. But see how the weary, wan, poorly-clad seamstress stops and gives from her narrow store a mite, which will deprive her of some comfort she can ill forego. She knows the meaning of that look of misery, and spontaneously answers the voiceless appeal. Her humble gift may be injudicious, probably it is so, since it is given without due inquiry, but it was not on this ground that her opulent sister withheld a donation which would not have curtailed her least valued luxury. It was because she had not felt the gnawing fangs of want; because sorrow had not breathed upon and melted the ice in her soul; because prosperity had fossilized her heart. Well might the monitor-dramatist cry out:
Could we still hope for, still seek for, still pray for this unclouded prosperity, if we believed that it threatened mental paralysis, which must deprive us of all consciousness of our abundant blessings? if we were certain that it would render us callous to the sufferings of others, if our eyes were once fully opened to half its spiritual perils? Has not adversity better and sweeter uses? Have not the dormant energies of many a mind, which grew weak and sluggish in the Dead Sea calm of prosperity, been electrified into action by the awakening shock of misfortune, the stimulus of sorrow? Has not many a helpless child of luxury risen up transformed by the imperative necessity for exertion, until she marvelled at the unimagined greatness of her own powers? Shall we then deem that perilous amount of prosperity which would stunt our intellects or harden our hearts, a desirable boon? Shall we not rather welcome even adversity, if it open our spirits to all softening and holy influences; if it develop our faculties to their fullest, broadest, highest capacity!
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