and one learns to be grateful for the sunny hour; but when one is young, one feels so capable of enjoying it all, so impatient of shadow and rain, that one cannot bear that the sweet wine of life should be diluted.
That is, I believe, the a.n.a.lysis of the charm of such a scene; the possibility of joy, and permanence, tinged with the pathos that it has no continuance, but rises and falls and fades like a ripple in the stream.
The disillusionment of experience is a very different thing from the pathos of youth; for in youth the very sense of pathos is in itself an added luxury of joy, giving it a delicate beauty which, if it were not so evanescent, it could not possess.
But then comes the real trouble, the heavy anxiety, the illness, the loss; and those things, which looked so romantic in the pages of poets and the scenes of story-writers, turn out not to be romantic at all, but frankly and plainly disagreeable and intolerable things. The boy who swept down the shining reaches with long, deft strokes becomes a man--money runs short, his children give him anxiety, his wife becomes ailing and fretful, he has a serious illness; and when after a day of pain he limps out in the afternoon to the shadow of the old plane-tree, he must be a very wise and tranquil and patient man, if he can still feel to the full the sweet influences of the place, and be still absorbed and comforted by them.
And here lies the weakness of the epicurean and artistic att.i.tude, that it a.s.sorts so ill with the harder and grimmer facts of life. Life has a habit of twitching away the artistic chair with all its cushions from under one, with a rude suddenness, so that one has, if one is wise, to learn a mental agility and to avoid the temptation of drowsing in the land where it is always afternoon. The real att.i.tude is to be able to play a robust and manful part in the world, and yet to be able to banish the thought of the bank-book and the ledger from the mind, and to submit oneself to the sweet influences of summer and sun.
"He who of such delights can judge, and spare To interpose them oft is not unwise."
So sang the old Puritan poet; and there is a large wisdom in the word OFT which I have abundantly envied, being myself an anxious-minded man!
The solution is BALANCE--not to think that the repose of art is all, and yet on the other hand not to believe that life is always jogging and hustling one. The way in which one can test one"s progress is by considering whether activities and tiresome engagements are beginning to fret one unduly, for if so one is becoming a hedonist; and on the other hand by being careful to observe whether one becomes incapable of taking a holiday; if one becomes bored and restless and hipped in a cessation of activities, then one is suffering from the disease of Martha in the Gospel story; and of the two sisters we may remember that Martha was the one who incurred a public rebuke.
What one has to try to perceive is that life is designed not wholly for discomfort, or wholly for ease, but that we are here as learners, one and all. Sometimes the lesson comes whispering through the leaves of the plane-tree, with the scent of violets in the air; sometimes it comes in the words and glances of a happy circle full of eager talk, sometimes through the pages of a wise book, and sometimes in grim hours, when one tosses sleepless on one"s bed under the pressure of an intolerable thought--but in each and every case we do best when we receive the lesson as willingly and large-heartedly as we can.
Perhaps, in some of my writings, those who have read them have thought that I have unduly emphasised the brighter, sweeter, more tranquil side of life. I have done so deliberately, because I believe that we should follow innocent joy as far as we can. But it is not because I am unaware of the other side. I do not think that any of the windings of the dark wood of which Dante speaks are unknown to me, and there are few tracts of dreariness that I have not trodden reluctantly. I have had physical health and much seeming prosperity; but to be acutely sensitive to the pleasures of happiness and peace is generally to be morbidly sensitive to the burden of cares. Unhappiness is a subjective thing. As Mrs.
Gummidge so truly said, when she was reminded that other people had their troubles, "I feel them more." And if I have upheld the duty of seeking peace, it has been like a preacher who preaches most urgently against his own bosom-sins. But I am sure of this, that however impatiently one mourns one"s fault and desires to be different, the secret of growth lies in that very sorrow, perhaps in the seeming impotence of that sorrow. What one must desire is to learn the truth, however much one may shudder at it; and the longer that one persists in one"s illusions, the longer is one"s learning-time. Is it not a bitter comfort to know that the truth is there, and that what we believe or do not believe about it makes no difference at all? Yes, I think it is a comfort; at all events upon that foundation alone is it possible to rest.
How far one drifts in thought away from the sweet scene which grows sweeter every hour. The heat of the day is over now; the breeze curls on the stream, the shadow of the tower falls far across the water. My companion rises and smiles, thinking me lost in indolent content; he hardly guesses how far I have been voyaging
"On strange seas of thought alone."
Does he guess that as I look back over my life, pain has so far preponderated over happiness that I would not, if I could, live it again, and that I would not in truth, if I could choose, have lived it at all? And yet, even so, I recognise that I am glad not to have the choice, for it would be made in an indolent and timid spirit, and I do indeed believe that the end is not yet, and that the hour will a.s.suredly come when I shall rejoice to have lived, and see the meaning even of my fears.
And then we retrace our way, and like the Lady of Shalott step down into the boat, to glide along the darkling water-way in the westering light.
Why cannot I speak to my friend of such dark things as these? It would be better perhaps if I could, and yet no hand can help us to bear our own burden.
But the dusk comes slowly on, merging reed and pasture and gliding stream in one indistinguishable shade; the trees stand out black against the sunset, thickening to an emerald green. A star comes out over the dark hill, the lights begin to peep out in the windows of the cl.u.s.tering town as we draw nearer. As we glide beneath the dark houses, with their gables and chimneys dark against the glowing sky, how everything that is dull and trivial and homely is blotted out by the twilight, leaving nothing but a sense of romantic beauty of mysterious peace! The little town becomes an enchanted city full of heroic folk; the figure that leans silently over the bridge to see us pa.s.s, to what high-hearted business is he vowed, burgher or angel? A spell is woven of shadow and falling light, and of chimes floating over meadow and stream. Yet this sense of something remotely and unutterably beautiful, this transfiguration of life, is as real and vital an experience as the daily, dreary toil, and to be welcomed as such. Nay, more! it is better, because it gives one a deepened sense of value, of significance, of eternal greatness, to which we must cling as firmly as we may, because it is there that the final secret lies; not in the poor struggles, the anxious delays, which are but the incidents of the voyage, and not the serene life of haven and home.
XV. SYMBOLS
The present time is an era when intellectual persons are ashamed of being credulous. It is the perfectly natural and desirable result of the working of the scientific spirit. Everything is relentlessly investigated, the enormous structure of natural law is being discovered to underlie all the most surprising, delicate, and apparently fortuitous processes, and no one can venture to forecast where the systematisation will end. The result is a great inrush of bracing and invigorating candour. It is not that our liberty of reflection and action is increased. It is rather increasingly limited. But at least we are growing to discern where our boundaries are, and it is deeply refreshing to find that the boundaries erected by humanity are much closer and more cramping than the boundaries determined by G.o.d. We are no longer bound by human authority, by subjective theories, by petty tradition. We are no longer required to tremble before thaumaturgy and conjuring and occultism. It is true that science has. .h.i.therto confined itself mainly to the investigation of concrete phenomena; but the same process is sure to be applied to metaphysics, to sociology, to psychology; and the day will a.s.suredly come when the human race will a.n.a.lyse the laws which govern progress, which regulate the exact development of religion and morality.
The demolition of credulity is, as I have said, a wholly desirable and beneficial thing. Most intelligent people have found some happiness in learning that the dealings of G.o.d--that is, the creative and originative power behind the universe--are at all events not whimsical, however unintelligible they may be. No one at all events is now required to reconcile with his religious faith a detailed belief in the Mosaic cosmogony, or to accept the fact that a Hebrew prophet was enabled to summon bears from a wood to tear to pieces some unhappy boys who found food for mirth in his personal appearance. That is a pure gain. But side by side with this entirely wholesome process, there are a good many people who have thrown overboard, together with their credulity, a quality of a far higher and n.o.bler kind, which may be called faith. Men who have seen many mysteries explained, and many dark riddles solved in nature, have fallen into what is called materialism, from the mistaken idea that the explanation of material phenomena will hold good for the discernment of abstract phenomena. Yet any one who approaches the results of scientific investigation in a philosophical and a poetical spirit, sees clearly enough that nothing has been attempted but a.n.a.lysis, and that the mystery which surrounds us is only thrust a little further off, while the darkness is as impenetrable and profound as ever. All that we have learnt is how natural law works; we have not come near to learning why it works as it does. All we have really acquired is a knowledge that the audacious and unsatisfactory theories, such, for instance, as the old-fashioned scheme of redemption, by which men have attempted with a pathetic hopefulness to justify the ways of G.o.d to man, are, and are bound to be, despairingly incomplete. The danger of the scientific spirit is not that it is too agnostic, but that it is not agnostic enough: it professes to account for everything when it only has a very few of the data in its grasp. The materialistic philosophy tends to be a tyranny which menaces liberty of thought. Every one has a right to deduce what theory he can from his own experience.
The one thing that we have no sort of right to do is to enforce that theory upon people whose experience does not confirm it. We may invite them to act upon our a.s.sumptions, but we must not blame them if they end by considering them to be baseless. I was talking the other day to an ardent Roman Catholic, who described by a parable the light in which he viewed the authority of the Church. He said that it was as if he were half-way up a hill, prevented from looking over into a hidden valley by the slope of the ground. On the hill-top, he said, might be supposed to stand people in whose good faith and accuracy of vision he had complete confidence. If they described to him what they saw in the valley beyond, he would not dream of mistrusting them. But the a.n.a.logy breaks down at every point, because the essence of it is that every one who reached the hill-top would inevitably see the same scene. Yet in the case of religion, the hill-top is crowded by people, whose good faith is equally incontestable, but whose descriptions of what lies beyond are at hopeless variance. Moreover all alike confess that the impressions they derive are outside the possibility of scientific or intellectual tests, and that it is all a matter of inference depending upon a subjective consent in the mind of the discerner to accept what is incapable of proof. The strength of the scientific position is that the scientific observer is in the presence of phenomena confirmed by innumerable investigations, and that, up to a certain point, the operation of a law has been ascertained, which no reasonable man has any excuse for doubting. Whenever that law conflicts with religious a.s.sumptions, which in any case cannot be proved to be more than subjective a.s.sumptions, the unverifiable theory must go down before the verifiable. Religion may a.s.sume, for instance, that life is an educative process; but that theory cannot be considered proved in the presence of the fact that many human beings close their eyes upon the world before they are capable of exercising any moral or intellectual choice whatever.
It may prove, upon investigation, that all religious theories and all creeds are nothing more than the desperate and pathetic attempts of humanity, conscious of an instinctive horror of suffering, and of an inalienable sense of their right to happiness, to provide a solution for the appalling fact that many human beings seem created only to suffer and to be unhappy. The mystery is a very dark one; and philosophy is still not within reach of explaining how it is that a sense of justice should be implanted in man by the Power that appears so often to violate that conception of justice.
The fact is that the progress of science has created an immense demand for the quality of faith and hopefulness, by revealing so much that is pessimistic in the operation of natural law. If we are to live with any measure of contentment or tranquillity, we must acquire a confidence that G.o.d has not, as science tends to indicate, made all men for nought.
We must, if we can, acquire some sort of hope that it is not in mere wantonness and indifference that He confronts us with the necessity for bearing the things that He has made us most to dread. It may be easy enough for robust, vigorous, contented persons to believe that G.o.d means us well; but the only solution that is worth anything is a solution that shall give us courage, patience, and even joy, at times when everything about us seems to speak of cruelty and terror and injustice. One of the things that has ministered comfort in large measure to souls so afflicted is the power of tracing a certain beauty and graciousness in the phenomena that surround us. Who is there who in moments of bewildered sorrow has not read a hint of some vast lovingness, moving dimly in the background of things, in the touch of familiar hands or in the glances of dear eyes? Surely, they have said to themselves, if love is the deepest, strongest, and most lasting force in the world, the same quality must be hidden deepest in the Heart of G.o.d. This is the unique strength of the Christian revelation, the thought of the Fatherhood of G.o.d, and His tender care for all that he has made. Again, who is there who in depression and anxiety has not had his load somewhat lightened by the sight of the fresh green of spring foliage against a blue sky, by the colour and scent of flowers, by the sweet melody of musical chords?
The aching spirit has said, "They are there--beauty, and peace, and joy--if I could but find the way to them." Who has not had his fear of death alleviated by the happy end of some beloved life, when the dear one has made, as it were, solemn haste to be gone, falling gently into slumber? Who is there, who, speeding homewards in the sunset, has seen the dusky orange veil of flying light drawn softly westward over misty fields, where the old house stands up darkling among the glimmering pastures, and has not felt the presence of some sweet secret waiting for him beyond the gates of life and death? All these things are symbols, because the emotions they arouse are veritably there, as indisputable a phenomenon as any fact which science has a.n.a.lysed. The miserable mistake that many intellectual people make is to disregard what they would call vague emotions in the presence of scientific truth. Yet such emotions have a far more intimate concern for us than the dim sociology of bees, or the concentric forces of the stars. Our emotions are far more true and vivid experiences for us than indisputable laws of nature which never cut the line of our life at all. We may wish, perhaps, that the laws of such emotions were a.n.a.lysed and systematised too, for it is a very timid and faltering spirit that thinks that definiteness is the same as profanation. We may depend upon it that the deeper we can probe into such secrets, the richer will our conceptions of life and G.o.d become.
The mistake that is so often made by religious organisations, which depend so largely upon symbolism, is the terrible limiting of this symbolism to traditional ceremonies and venerable ritual. It has been said that religion is the only form of poetry accessible to the poor; and it is true in the sense that anything which hallows and quickens the most normal and simple experiences of lives divorced from intellectual and artistic influences is a very real and true kind of symbolism. It may be well to give people such symbolism as they can understand, and the best symbols of all are those that deal with the commonest emotions.
But it is a lean wisdom that emphasises a limited range of emotions at the expense of a larger range; and the spirit which limits the sacred influences of religion to particular buildings and particular rites is very far removed from the spirit of Him who said that neither at Gerizim nor in Jerusalem was the Father to be worshipped, but in spirit and in truth. At the same time the natural impatience of one who discerns a symbolism all about him, in tree and flower, in sunshine and rain, and who hates to see the range restricted, is a feeling that a wise and tolerant man ought to resist. It is ill to break the pitcher because the well is at hand! One does not make a narrow soul broader by breaking down its boundaries, but by revealing the beauty of the further horizon.
Even the false feeling of compa.s.sion must be resisted. A child is more encouraged by listening patiently to its tale of tiny exploits, than by casting ridicule upon them.
But on the other hand it is a wholly false timidity for one who has been brought up to love and reverence the narrower range of symbols, to choke and stifle the desires that stir in his heart for the wider range, out of deference to authority and custom. One must not discard a cramping garment until one has a freer one to take its place; but to continue in the confining robe with the larger lying ready to one"s hand, from a sense of false pathos and unreasonable loyalty, is a piece of foolishness.
There are, I believe, hundreds of men and women now alive, who have outgrown their traditional faith, through no fault of their own; but who out of terror at the vague menaces of interested and Pharisaical persons do not dare to break away. One must of course weigh carefully whether one values comfort or liberty most. But what I would say is that it is of the essence of a faith to be elastic, to be capable of development, to be able to embrace the forward movement of thought. Now so far am I from wishing to suggest that we have outgrown Christianity, that I would a.s.sert that we have not yet mastered its simplest principles. I believe with all my soul that it is still able to embrace the most daring scientific speculations, for the simple reason that it is hardly concerned with them at all. Where religious faith conflicts with science is in the tenacity with which it holds to the literal truth of the miraculous occurrences related in the Scriptures. Some of these present no difficulty, some appear to be scientifically incredible. Yet these latter seem to me to be but the perfectly natural contemporary setting of the faith, and not to be of the essence of Christianity at all.
Miracles, whether they are true or not, are at all events unverifiable, and no creed that claims to depend upon the acceptance of unverifiable events can have any vitality. But the personality, the force, the perception of Christ Himself emerges with absolute distinctness from the surrounding details. We may not be in a position to check exactly what He said and what He did not say, but just as no reasonable man can hold that He was merely an imaginative conception invented by people who obviously did not understand Him, so the general drift of His teaching is absolutely clear and convincing.
What I would have those do who can profess themselves sincerely convinced Christians, in spite of the uncertainty of many of the recorded details, is to adopt a simple compromise; to claim their part in the inheritance of Christ, and the symbols of His mysteries, but not to feel themselves bound by any ecclesiastical tradition. No one can forbid, by peevish regulations, direct access to the spirit of Christ and to the love of G.o.d. Christ"s teaching was a purely individualistic teaching, based upon conduct and emotion, and half the difficulties of the position lie in His sanction and guidance having been claimed for what is only a human attempt to organise a society with a due deference for the secular spirit, its aims and ambitions. The sincere Christian should, I believe, gratefully receive the simple and sweet symbols of unity and forgiveness; but he should make his own a far higher and wider range of symbols, the symbols of natural beauty and art and literature--all the pa.s.sionate dreams of peace and emotion that have thrilled the yearning hearts of men. Wherever those emotions have led men along selfish, cruel, sensual paths, they must be distrusted, just as we must distrust the religious emotions which have sanctioned such divergences from the spirit of Christ. We must believe that the essence of religion is to make us alive to the love of G.o.d, in whatever writing of light and air, of form and fragrance it is revealed; and we must further believe that religion is meant to guide and quicken the tender, compa.s.sionate, brotherly emotions, by which we lean to each other in this world where so much is dark. But to denounce the narrower forms of religion, or to abstain from them, is utterly alien to the spirit of Christ. He obeyed and reverenced the law, though He knew that the expanding spirit of His own teaching would break it in pieces. Of course, since liberty is the spirit of the Gospel, a liberty conditioned by the sense of equality, there may be occasions when a man is bound to resist what appears to him to be a moral or an intellectual tyranny. But short of that, the only thing of which one must beware is a conscious insincerity; and the limits of that a man must determine for himself.
There are occasions when consideration for the feelings of others seems to conflict with one"s own sense of sincerity; but I think that one is seldom wrong in preferring consideration for others to the personal indulgence of one"s own apparent sincerity.
Peace and gentleness always prevail in the end over vehemence and violence, and a peaceful revolution brings about happier results for a country, as we have good reason to know, than a revolution of force.
Even now the narrower religious systems prevail more in virtue of the gentleness and goodwill and persuasion of their ministers than through the spiritual terrors that they wield--the thunders are divorced from the lightning.
Thus may the victories of faith be won, not by noise and strife, but by the silent motion of a resistless tide. Even now it creeps softly over the sand and brims the stagnant pools with the freshening and invigorating brine.
But in the worship of the symbol there is one deep danger; and that is that if one rests upon it, if one makes one"s home in the palace of beauty or philosophy or religion, one has failed in the quest. It is the pursuit not of the unattained but of the unattainable to which we are vowed. Nothing but the unattainable can draw us onward. It is rest that is forbidden. We are pilgrims yet; and if, intoxicated and bemused by beauty or emotion or religion, we make our dwelling there, it is as though we slept in the enchanted ground. Enough is given us, and no more, to keep us moving forwards. To be satisfied is to slumber. The melancholy that follows hard in the footsteps of art, the sadness haunting the bravest music, the aching, troubled longing that creeps into the mind at the sight of the fairest scene, is but the warning presence of the guide that travels with us and fears that we may linger.
Who has not seen across a rising ground the gables of the old house, the church tower, dark among the bare boughs of the rookery in a smiling sunset, and half lost himself at the thought of the impossibly beautiful life that might be lived there? To-day, just when the western sun began to tinge the floating clouds with purple and gold, I saw by the roadside an old labourer, fork on back, plodding heavily across a ploughland all stippled with lines of growing wheat. Hard by a windmill whirled its clattering arms. How I longed for something that would render permanent the scene, sight, and sound alike. It told me somehow that the end was not yet. What did it stand for? I hardly know; for life, slow and haggard with toil, hard-won sustenance, all overhung with the crimson glories of waning light, the wet road itself catching the golden hues of heaven. A little later, pa.s.sing by the great pauper asylum that stands up so naked among the bare fields, I looked over a hedge, and there, behind the engine-house with its heaps of scoriae and rubbish, lay a little trim ugly burial-ground, with a dismal mortuary, upon which some pathetic and tawdry taste had been spent. There in rows lay the mouldering bones of the failures of life and old sin; not even a headstone over each with a word of hope, nothing but a number on a tin tablet. Nothing more incredibly sordid could be devised. One thought of the sad rite, the melancholy priest, the handful of relatives glad at heart that the poor broken life was over and the wretched a.s.sociations at an end. Yet even that sight too warned one not to linger, and that the end was not yet. Presently, in the gathering twilight, I was making my way through the streets of the city. The dusk had obliterated all that was mean and dreary. Nothing but the irregular housefronts stood up against the still sky, the lighted windows giving the sense of home and ease. A quiet bell rang for vespers in a church tower, and as I pa.s.sed I heard an organ roll within. It all seemed a sweetly framed message to the soul, a symbol of joy and peace.
But then I reflected that the danger was of selecting, out of the symbols that crowded around one on every side, merely those that ministered to one"s own satisfaction and contentment. The sad horror of that other place, the little bare place of desolate graves--that must be a symbol as well, that must stand as a witness of some part of the awful mind of G.o.d, of the strange flaw or rent that seems to run through His world. It may be more comfortable, more luxurious to detach the symbol that testifies to the satisfaction of our needs; but not thus do we draw near to truth and G.o.d. And then I thought that perhaps it was best, when we are secure and careless and joyful, to look at times steadily into the dark abyss of the world, not in the spirit of morbidity, not with the sense of the macabre--the skeleton behind the rich robe, death at the monarch"s shoulder; but to remind ourselves, faithfully and wisely, that for us too the shadow waits; and then that in our moments of dreariness and heaviness we should do well to seek for symbols of our peace, not thrusting them peevishly aside as only serving to remind us of what we have lost and forfeited, but dwelling on them patiently and hopefully, with a tender onlooking to the gracious horizon with all its golden lights and purple shadows. And thus not in a mercantile mood trafficking for our delight in the mysteries of life--for not by prudence can we draw near to G.o.d--but in a childlike mood, valuing the kindly word, the smile that lights up the narrow room and enriches the austere fare, and paying no heed at all to the jealousies and the covetous ingathering that turns the temple of the Father into a house of merchandise.
For here, deepest of all, lies the worth of the symbol; that this life of ours is not a little fretful s.p.a.ce of days, rounded with a sleep, but an integral part of an inconceivably vast design, flooding through and behind the star-strewn heavens; that there is no sequence of events as we conceive, that acts are not done or words said, once and for all, and then laid away in the darkness; but that it is all an ever-living thing, in which the things that we call old are as much present in the mind of G.o.d as the things that shall be millions of centuries hence. There is no uncertainty with Him, no doubt as to what shall be hereafter; and if we once come near to that truth, we can draw from it, in our darkest hours, a refreshment that cannot fail; for the saddest thought in the mind of man is the thought that these things could have been, could be other than they are; and if we once can bring home to ourselves the knowledge that G.o.d is unchanged and unchangeable, our faithless doubts, our melancholy regrets melt in the light of truth, as the h.o.a.r-frost fades upon the gra.s.s in the rising sun, when every globed dewdrop flashes like a jewel in the radiance of the fiery dawn.
XVI. OPTIMISM
We Anglo-Saxons are mostly optimists at heart; we love to have things comfortable, and to pretend that they are comfortable when they obviously are not. The brisk Anglo-Saxon, if he cannot reach the grapes, does not say that the grapes are sour, but protests that he does not really care about grapes. A story is told of a great English proconsul who desired to get a loan from the Treasury of the Government over which he practically, though not nominally, presided. He went to the Financial Secretary and said: "Look here, T----, you must get me a loan for a business I have very much at heart." The secretary whistled, and then said: "Well, I will try; but it is not the least use." "Oh, you will manage it somehow," said the proconsul, "and I may tell you confidentially it is absolutely essential." The following morning the secretary came to report: "I told you it was no use, sir, and it wasn"t; the Board would not hear of it." "d.a.m.nation!" said the proconsul, and went on writing. A week after he met the secretary, who felt a little shy. "By the way, T----," said the great man, "I have been thinking over that matter of the loan, and it was a mercy you were not successful; it would have been a hopeless precedent, and we are much better without it."
That is the true Anglo-Saxon spirit of optimism. The most truly British person I know is a man who will move heaven and earth to secure a post or to compa.s.s an end; but when he fails, as he does not often fail, he says genially that he is more thankful than he can say; it would have been ruin to him if he had been successful. The same quality runs through our philosophy and our religion. Who but an Anglo-Saxon would have invented the robust theory, to account for the fact that prayers are often not granted, that prayers are always directly answered whether you attain your desire or not? The Greeks prayed that the G.o.ds would grant them what was good even if they did not desire it, and withhold what was evil even if they did desire it. The shrewd Roman said: "The G.o.ds will give us what is most appropriate; man is dearer to them than to himself." But the faithful Anglo-Saxon maintains that his prayer is none the less answered even if it be denied, and that it is made up to him in some roundabout way. It is inconceivable to the Anglo-Saxon that there may be a strain of sadness and melancholy in the very mind of G.o.d; he cannot understand that there can be any beauty in sorrow. To the Celt, sorrow itself is dear and beautiful, and the mournful wailing of winds, the tears of the lowering cloud, afford him sweet and even luxurious sensations. The memory of grief is one of the good things that remains to him, as life draws to its close; for love is to him the sister of grief rather than the mother of joy. But this is to the Anglo-Saxon mind a morbid thing. The hours in which sorrow has overclouded him are wasted, desolated hours, to be forgotten and obliterated as soon as possible. There is nothing sacred about them; they are sad and stony tracts over which he has made haste to cross, and the only use of them is to heighten the sense of security and joy. And thus the sort of sayings that satisfy and sustain the Anglo-Saxon mind are such irrepressible outbursts of poets as "G.o.d"s in His heaven; all"s right with the world"--the latter part of which is flagrantly contradicted by experience; and, as for the former part, if it be true, it lends no comfort to the man who tries to find his G.o.d in the world.
Again, when Browning says that the world "means intensely and means good," he is but pouring oil upon the darting flame of optimism, because there are many people to whom the world has no particular meaning, and few who can re-echo the statement that it means good. That some rich surprise, in spite of palpable and hourly experience to the contrary, may possibly await us, is the most that some of us dare to hope.
My own experience, the older I grow, and the more I see of life, is that I feel it to be a much more bewildering and even terrifying thing than I used to think it. To use a metaphor, instead of its being a patient educational process, which I would give all that I possessed to be able sincerely to believe it to be, it seems to me arranged far more upon the principle of a game of cricket--which I have always held to be, in theory, the most unjust and fortuitous of games. You step to the wicket, you have only a single chance; the boldest and most patient man may make one mistake at the outset, and his innings is over; the timid tremulous player may by undeserved good luck contrive to keep his wicket up, till his heart has got into the right place, and his eye has wriggled straight, and he is set.
That is the first horrible fact about life--that carelessness is often not penalised at all, whereas sometimes it is instantly and fiercely penalised. One boy at school may break every law, human and divine, and go out into the world unblemished. Another timid and good-natured child may make a false step, and be sent off into life with a permanent cloud over him. School life often emphasises the injustice of the world instead of trying to counteract it. Schoolmasters tend to hustle the weak rather than to curb the strong.
And then we pa.s.s into the larger world, and what do we see? A sad confusion everywhere. We see an innocent and beautiful girl struck down by a long and painful disease--a punishment perhaps appropriate to some robust and h.o.a.ry sinner, who has gathered forbidden fruit with both his hands, and the juices of which go down to the skirts of his clothing; or a brave and virtuous man, with a wife and children dependent on him, needed if ever man was, kind, beneficent, strong, is struck down out of life in a moment. On the other hand, we see a mean and cautious sinner, with no touch of unselfishness and affection, guarded and secured in material contentment. Let any one run over in his mind the memories of his own circle, fill up the gaps, and ask himself bravely and frankly whether he can trace a wise and honest and beneficent design all through. He may try to console himself by saying that the disasters of good people, after all, are the exceptions, and that, as a rule, courage and purity of heart are rewarded, while cowardice and filthiness are punished. But what room is there for exceptions in a world governed by G.o.d Whom we must believe to be all-powerful, all-just, and all-loving?
It is the wilful sin of man, says the moralist, that has brought these hard things upon him. But that is no answer, for the dark shadow lies as sombrely over irresponsible nature, which groans over undeserved suffering. And then, to make the shadow darker still, we have all the same love of life, the same inalienable sense of our right to happiness, the same inheritance of love. If we could but see that in the end pain and loss would be blest, there is nothing that we would not gladly bear.
Yet that sight, too, is denied us.
And yet we live and laugh and hope, and forget. We take our fill of tranquil days and pleasant companies, though for some of us the thought that it is all pa.s.sing, pa.s.sing, even while we lean towards it smiling, touches the very sunlight with pain. "How morbid, how self-tormenting!"
says the prudent friend, if such thoughts escape us. "Why not enjoy the delight and bear the pain? That is life; we cannot alter it." But not on such terms, can I, for one, live. To know, to have some a.s.surance--that is the one and only thing that matters at all. For if I once believed that G.o.d were careless, or indifferent, or impotent, I would fly from life as an accursed thing; whereas I would give all the peace, and joy, and contentment, that may yet await me upon earth, and take up cheerfully the heaviest burden that could be devised of darkness and pain, if I could be sure of an after-life that will give us all the unclouded serenity, and strength, and love, for which we crave every moment. Sometimes, in a time of strength and calm weather, when the sun is bright and the friend I love is with me, and the scent of the hyacinths blows from the wood, I have no doubt of the love and tenderness of G.o.d; and, again, when I wake in the dreadful dawn to the sharp horror of the thought that one I love is suffering and crying out in pain and drifting on to death, the beauty of the world, the familiar scene, is full of a hateful and atrocious insolence of grace and sweetness; and then I feel that we are all perhaps in the grip of some relentless and inscrutable law that has no care for our happiness or peace at all, and works blindly and furiously in the darkness, bespattering some with woe and others with joy. Those are the blackest and most horrible moments of life; and yet even so we live on.