--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Young Men's Mutual Improvement Associations collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 2 number: 5 published: 1899-03 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: "Young Men's Mutual Improvement Associations, \"Moral Qualities of Milton,\" *Improvement Era* 2, no. 5 (March 1899): 356–362." source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera25unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera25unse start_page: 356 end_page: 362 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1899-03) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera25unse publication_year: 1899 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1899, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Moral Qualities of Milton At Troas, on the return journey, Paul preached his all-night sermon, in the course of which Eutychus fell from a window, in his sleep, and was taken up dead to be restored to life through Paul's administration. Paul's farewell to the disciples in the various cities was very touching and shows the great esteem in which he was held. Going up to Jerusalem he reported his mission to James and the other brethren, and on their advice attempted to gain the favor of the Jews by entering into the temple. But they accused him of taking gentiles into the holy house and polluting it; and so great was the indignation that Paul was thrown out of the temple and would have been killed if he had not been rescued by Roman soldiers. Paul was then permitted to speak in his own defense. The Jews listened in patience until- he spoke of his ministry to the gentiles; then they broke into such a violent uproar and made such threats that the Roman officers determined to scourge him in order to force him to confess his fault. He escaped this torture by appealing to his Roman citizenship. Upon his defending himself before the Sanhedrim, another tumult was created, from which he was rescued and then confined in the castle. A conspiracy of the Jews to kill him was revealed by his sister's son, and he was sent under an escort of Roman soldiers to Csesarea. Here he was kept upwards of two years, being vehemently accused by his enemies, the Jews, and defending himself with great skill and successfully before Felix, Festus and Agrippa. Finding that his imprisonment at Csesarea was likely to be interminable, Paul appealed his case to Caesar in order that he might be carried to Rome; for the Lord had promised that Paul should bear witness of him in the great city. Accordingly he embarked with a guard and in company with other prisoners, sailed from Csesarea. They touched at Crete, and Paul tried to persuade them to pass the winter in port at Fair Havens. Thinking however that they could find a more suitable place they set sail, and encountered a great tempest, which drove them to shipwreck on the island of Melita. Through the coolness and faith of Paul, the lives of all were saved and they remained on the island until spring. Here occurred the healing of one of the chief men of the island, and the incident of the viper biting Paul's hand, the poison being neutralized through the power of God. In the spring they found a ship which was sailing to Italy, and completed their voyage to Rome. Here Paul remained for two years, enjoying a considerable degree of freedom, through the kind consideration of his custodian. Here Luke's account suddenly closes, leaving us in the dark even with reference to the result of his appeal to the emperor. We are equally in doubt regarding his later life. He is supposed to have arrived in Rome about the year 62 or 63 A. D. ; his martyrdom occurred presumably in the year 66 or 67 A. D. Half of this period is accounted for in his two-years' residence "in his own hired house." It is supposed that he afterwards made visits to various regions in Europe, including France, Spain and possibly Britain. Thus a portion of the time from 65 to 67 A. D. may have been spent; and during the latter year Paul is supposed to have returned to his im.prisonment and ultimate martyrdom at Rome, though the date of this event is very uncertain. The tradition of his death recites that he was "slain- with the sword," from which it is inferred that he was beheaded. These are the details of his life as they are related in the Acts and referred to in some of his epistles. Some important incidents spoken of in other epistles have been omitted on account of difficulty in determining their place and date. These incidents are referred to chiefly in portions of first and second Corinthians, and include the suffering of "hunger, thirst, shame, contempt, scourgings, buffetings, fighting with wild beasts in the arena, and the incident of Paul's being saved from death by Aquilla and Priscilla, who " for his life laid down their own necks." We are led to t believe that these events occurred at Ephesus during Paul's two years' residence there. In his personal appearance, Paul was short, somewhat stout, bald in front, with a slightly prominent nose; full of grace, and assuming at times an angelic sweetness of countenance. He had a rather shrill voice, but in his impassioned oratory, it resembled the roaring of a lion. His intellect was very active, and his writings show a tendency toward impetuosity, as well as closeness of reasoning. Considering the scope of the present article it would be impolitic to treat the different elements of Paul's theology as set forth in his discourses and epistles. It is enough to say that the alleged and exaggerated "differences" between his teachings and those of the so-called "Judaists," (James and others) are not fundamental, and are assumed through a lack of understanding of the spirit of these writers. Bagster says of Paul and his epistles: "The style of these letters shows a man of an eager and impetuous temper. * * * The theme is a pressing one, and the writer is too intent to gain his end to study his steps. * * * He has no time to adjust himself to any formula: he must make his way at any expense. All forms are alike to him, and he will use any or use none, if only he can thereby gain his point. In his zeal for the issue, he became a Jew to the Jew, and a Greek to the Greek and 'all things to all men,' if so be he might win some. He appears in these epistles as a man who had a work to do, and who in the doing of it casts aside every weight." MORAL QUALITIES OF MILTON. In these days, when much time is devoted to the consideration of the great characters of past centuries—especially those of them who may be regarded as among the giants who devoted themselves to making way for the liberty of thought and action which is enjoyed in our present century —a few pages may well be devoted to the consideration of the moral qualities and grandeur of the poet Milton. The man who approached his immortal task of writing Paradise Lost with the prayer — " Thou, Spirit, that dost prefer Before all Temples the upright heart and pure. Instruct me, for thou knowest! — * * * * what in me is dark Illumine, what is low raise and support: That to the heighth of this great argument, I may assert Eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to man." The man, we repeat, who approached his immortal task with such a prayer may well be possessed of moral qualities profitable to consider. Hence the following from Dr. Channing: The moral character of Milton was as strongly marked as his intellectual, and it may be expressed in one word, magnanimity. It was in harmony with his poetry. He had a passionate love of the higher, more commanding, and majestic virtues, and fed his youthful mind with meditations on the perfection of a human being. In a letter written to an Italian friend before his thirtieth year, and translated by Hayley, we have this vivid picture of his aspirations after virtue: "As to the other points, what God may have determined for me, I know not; but this I know, that if he ever instilled an intense love of moral beauty into the breast of any man, he instilled it into mine. Ceres, in the fable, pursued not her daughter with a greater keenness of inquiry, than I day and night the idea of perfection. Hence, wherever I find a man despising the false estimates of the vulgar, and daring to aspire in sentiment, language, and conduct, to what the highest wisdom, through every age, has taught us as most excellent, to him I unite myself by a sort of necessary attachment; and if I am so influenced by nature or destiny, that by no exertion or labors of my own I may exalt myself to this summit of worth and honor, yet no powers of heaven or earth will hinder me from looking with reverence and affection upon those who have thoroughly attained this glory, or appeared engaged in the successful pursuit of it." His Comus was written in his twenty-sixth year, and on reading this exquisite work, our admiration is awakened, not so much by observing how the whole spirit of poetry had descended on him at that early age, as by witnessing, how his whole youthful soul was penetrated, awed, and lifted up by the austere charms, "the radiant light," the invincible power, the celestial peace of saintly virtue. He reverenced moral purity and elevation, not only for its own sake, but as the inspirer of intellect, and especially of the higher eflPorts of poetry. In his usual noble style, he says, "I was confirmed in this opinion, that he who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem; that is, a composition and pattern of the best and honorablest things, not presuming to sing of higher praises of heroic men, or famous cities, unless he have in himself the experience and the practice of all that which is praiseworthy." We learn from his works, that he used his multifarious reading, to build up within himself this reverence for virtue. Ancient history, the sublime musings of Plato, and the heroic self-abandonment of chivalry, joined their influences with prophets and apostles, in binding him "everlastingly in willing homage" to the great, the honorable, and the lovely in character. A remarkable passage to this eflfect, we quote from his account of his youth: "I betook me among those lofty fables and romances, which recount in solemn cantos, the deeds of knighthood founded by our victorious kings, and from hence had in renown over all Christendom. There I read it in the oath of every knight, that he should defend to the expense of his best blood, or of his life, if it so befell him, the honor and chastity of virgin or matron; from whence even then I learned what a noble virtue chastity sure must be, to the defense of which so many worthies, by such a dear adventure of themselves, had sworn." * * * "g^ ^j^g^^ gygj^ these books, which to many others have been the fuel of wantonness and loose living, I cannot think how, unless by divine indulgence, proved to me so many incitements, as you have heard to the love and steadfast observation of virtue." All Milton's habits were expressive of a refined and self-denying character. When charged by his unprincipled slanderers with licentious habits, he thus gives an account of his morning hours: "Those morning haunts are where they should be, at home; not sleeping or concocting the surfeits of an irregular feast, but up and stirring, in winter often ere the sound of any bell awake men to labor, or to devotion, in summer as oft with the bird that first rouses, or not much tardier, to read good authors, or cause them to be read, till the attention be weary, or memory have its full fraught: then with usual and generous labors preserving the body's health and hardiness to render lightsome, clear, and not lumpish obedience to the mind, to the cause of religion, and our country's liberty, when it shall require firm hearts in sound bodies to stand and cover their stations, rather than to see the ruin of our protestation, and the enforcement of a slavish life." We have enlarged on the strictness and loftiness of Milton's virtue, not only from our interest in the subject, but that we may put to shame and silence those men who make genius an apology for vice, and take the sacred fire, kindled by God within them, to inflame men's passions, and to minister to a vile sensuality. We see Milton's greatness of mind, in his fervent and constant attachment to liberty. Freedom in all its forms and branches was dear to him, but especially freedom of thought and speech, of conscience and worship, freedom to seek, profess, and propagate truth. The liberty of ordinary politicians, which protects men's outward rights, and removes restraints to the pursuit of property and outward good, fell very short of that for which Milton lived and was ready to die. The tyranny which he hated most, was that which broke the intellectual and moral power of the community. The worst feature of the institutions which he assailed, was, that they fettered the mind. He felt within himself, that the human mind had a principle of perpetual growth, that it was essentially diffusive and made for progress, and he wished every claim broken, that it might run the race of truth and virtue with increasing ardor and success. This attachment to a spiritual and refined freedom, which never forsook him in the hottest controversies, contributed greatly to protect his genius, imagination, taste, and sensibility, from the withering and polluting influences of public station, and of the rage of parties. It threw a hue of poetry over politics, and gave a sublime reference to his service of the commonwealth. The fact that Milton, in that stormy day, and amidst the trials of public office, kept his high faculties undepraved, was a proof of no common greatness. Politics, however they make the intellect active, sagacious, and inventive, within a certain sphere, generally extinguish its thirst for universal truth, paralyse sentiment and imagination, corrupt the simplicity of the mind, destroy that confidence in human virtue, which lies at the foundation of philanthropy and generous sacrifices, and end in cold and prudent selfishness. Milton passed through a revolution, which in its last stages and issue, was peculiarly fitted to damp enthusiasm, to scatter the visions of hope, and to infuse doubts of the reality of virtuous principles; and yet the ardor, and moral feeling, and enthusiasm of his youth came forth unhurt, and even exalted from the trial.