III.
"Each hath his specialty; we see in some Music or painting, eloquence or skill, With, or without, an effort of the will, As by spontaneous inspiration come Ev"n in this mingled crowd of good and ill, To make us hail a Wonder:--but Elsewhere Without or let or hindrance we shall use Forces neglected here, but nurtured there; Till all the powers of every cla.s.sic Muse, Ninefold, may dwell in each--as each may choose: Since Heaven for creatures must have creature gifts, Not only love, religion, grat.i.tude, But also light, and every force that lifts Man"s spirit to the heights of Great and Good."
For a second take my recent open protest against the pestilential atheism so rife in our midst:--
I.
"My Father! everpresent, everwise, and everkind,-- The Life that pulses at my heart, the Light within my mind,-- My Maker, Guardian, Guide, and G.o.d, my never-failing Friend, Who hitherto hast blest me, and wilt bless me to the end,-- How should I not acknowledge Thee in all my words and ways, And bring my doubts to Thee in prayer, the prayer that turns to praise?
How can I cease to trust Thee, who hast guided me so long, And been from earliest childhood to old age my strength and song?
II.
"My Father! Great Triunity! For Thou art One in Three, The mystery of mysteries, a threefold joy to me,-- What deep delight to dwell upon the philosophic plan Of Thy divine self-sacrifice in G.o.d becoming man, And taking on Thyself in Christ the sins and woes of all Redeemed to higher glory from the ruin of their fall, As humbled and enlightened and enlivened into love, By the Pure Spirit of sweet peace, the-heart-indwelling Dove!
III.
"My Father, Abba, Father! For Thou callest me Thy child, As in Thy holy Jesus and Good Spirit reconciled,-- O Father, in this evil day when atheism is found Dropping its poison seeds about in all our fallow-ground, Shall I keep coward silence, and ungenerously forget The Friend that hitherto hath helped me--and shall help me yet?
Shall unbelief, all unabashed, proclaim that G.o.d is Not,-- Nor faith with honest zeal be quick this hideous lie to blot?
IV.
"Ho! Christian soldier,--to the front! and boldly speak aloud The dear old truths denied by yonder Sadducean crowd,-- That every inch and every instant we are guided well By Him who made, and loved, and loves us more than tongue can tell; That, though there be dread mysteries of cruelty and crime, And marvellous long-suffering patience with these wrongs of time, Still, wait a little longer, and we soon shall know the cause For every seeming error in the Ruler"s righteous laws!
V.
"A little longer, and our faith and hope and works of love Shall reap munificent reward in those blest orbs above, Where He (who being G.o.d of old became our brother here) Shall welcome us and speed us on" from glorious sphere to sphere, Until before His Father"s throne the Spirit with the Son Shall give to every Christian then the crown his Lord hath won; And through the ages in all worlds our wondrous ransomed race Shall bless the Universal King of Providence and Grace!"
For a third, my testimony as to the wonders that surround us: I have called this poem The Infinities.
I.
"Lift up your eyes to yon star-jewelled sky, Gaze on that firmament caverned on high,-- Marvellous universe, infinite s.p.a.ce, Studded with suns in fixt order and place, Each with its system of planets unseen, Meshed in their orbits by comets between, Worlds that are vaster than mind may believe, Whirling more swiftly than thought can conceive, O ye immensities! Who shall declare The glory of G.o.d in His galaxies there?
II.
"Look too on this poor planet of ours, Torn by the storms of mysterious powers, Evil contending with good from its birth, Wrenching in battle the heartstrings of earth,-- Ah! what infinities circle us here, Strangeness and wonderment swathing the sphere!
Providence ruleth with care most minute, Yet is fell cruelty torturing the mute, Infinite marvels of wrong and of right, Blessing and blasting each day and each night.
III.
"All things in mystery; riddles unread; Nothing but dimness of guesses instead; Only beginning, where none see the end, Nor where these infinite energies tend; Saving that chrysalis-creatures are we, Till we grow wings in that aeon-to-be!
Everything infinite: Nature, and Art, The schemes of man"s mind, and the throbs of his heart; Infinite cravings for better, and best, Tempered by infinite longings for rest.
IV.
"Then, as the telescope"s miracle drew Infinite Heaven"s vast worlds into view, So doth the microscope"s marvel display Infinite atomies, wondrous as they!
A mere drop of water, a bubble of air, Teems with perfections of littleness there; Infinite wisdom in exquisite works All but invisible everywhere lurks, While we confess as in great so in small, Infinite skill in the Maker of all.
V.
"And there be grander infinities still, Where, in Emmanuel, good has quench"d ill; Infinite humbleness, highest and first, Choosing the doom of the lowest and worst; Infinite pity, and patience,--how long?
Infinite justice, avenging all wrong, Infinite purity, wisdom, and skill, Bettering good through each effort of ill, Infinite beauty and infinite love, Shining around and beneath and above!"
And let this simple hymn be the old man"s last prayer, bridging over the long interval of well-nigh fourscore years between cradle and grave with a child"s first piety:--
_Love and Life._
""My son, give Me thine heart;"
Yes, Abba, Father, yes!
Perfect in goodness as Thou art, I will not give Thee less.
"But I am dark and dead, And need Thy grace to live; Father, on me Thy Spirit shed, To me that sunshine give!
"Thus only can I say When Thou dost ask my love, I will return in earth"s poor way Thy gift from heaven above.
"There is no good in me But droppeth from on high, Then quicken me with life from Thee, That I may never die.
"For if I am a son-- O grace beyond compare!-- A child of G.o.d, with Jesus one, In Him I stand an heir;
"In Him I live and move, And only so can give An immortality of love, To Thee by whom I live.
"Then melt this heart of stone, And grant the heart of flesh, That all I am may be Thine own, Renewed to love afresh."
About the much-vexed question of Eschatology and the final state of the dead, I have long since grown to the happy doctrine of Eternal Hope--ultimately for all; perhaps even siding with Burns, who (as the only logical way of eliminating evil) gives a chance to the "puir Deil:"
albeit the path for some must be through the terrible Gehenna of fire to purify, and with few stripes or many to satisfy conscience and evoke character. As for that text in Ecclesiastes about the "tree lying where it fell," commonly supposed to prove an unchanging state for ever,--it is obvious to answer that when a tree _is_ cut down, its final course of usefulness only then _begins_, by being sawn up and converted into furniture; much as when a human being"s work here is finished, he is taken hence to be utilised elsewhere. Everlasting progress is the law of our existence, whether here or elsewhere,--no stopping, far less annihilation. And then the character of our Maker is Love, this Love having satisfied Justice by self-sacrifice, and nothing is more reiterated in the Psalms than that "His mercy endureth for ever;" which cannot be true if bodies and spirits--even of the wicked--are to be condemned by Him to endless torment. Adequate punishment, and that for the wretched creature"s own improvement, is only in accordance with the voice of reason, and the voice of inspired wisdom too; for though our Lord Christ warns against a fearful retribution (involved in the phrase of "the undying worm and the unquenchable fire," as He was looking over the wall of Jerusalem into Tophet and the valley of Hinnom where the offal from the thousands of sacrifices was perpetually rotting and being burned, so taking his parable from an incident, as usual)--He yet "went and preached after death to the spirits in prison," probably to those who were then enduring some such purgatorial punishment. After all, this sentence of King Solomon as to a fallen tree, so often misapplied, is not one of the higher forms of inspiration; even St. Paul qualifies his own sometimes; and there are several disputable texts in Proverbs: and, if taken literally for exposition, we all must admit that the felling, of a tree is the immediate precursor to its further life of usefulness.
Let us, then, rationally hope that the dead in Christ will be improved from good to better and best; and that even those who have failed to live for Him in this world may by some purifying education in the next come finally to the happy far-off end of being saved by Him at last.
The words everlasting and forever are continually used in Scripture to indicate a long time,--not necessarily an eternity (see Cruden for many proofs). Moreover, if all hope of improvement ends with this life (a doctrine in which such extremes as Atheism and Calvinism strangely agree), what becomes of all the commonest forms of humanity, its intermediate failures, too bad for a heaven and too good for a h.e.l.l; to say less of insane, idiotic, and other helpless creatures; and the millions of the untaught in Christendom, who never have had a chance, and billions of the Heathen brutalised through the ages by birth and evil custom? Yes; for all there must be in the near hereafter continuous new chances of improvement and hopes of better life.
There is one poem in the volume superadded to my Dramatics which I will introduce here, as it is quite a _tour de force_ in its way of double rhyming throughout, and has, moreover, excellent moral uses: so I wish it read more widely.
_Behind the Veil._
"Mysteries! crowding around us, How ye perplex and confound us,-- Each our ignorance screening Hidden in words without meaning!
"Who knoweth aught that is certain Veil"d behind mystery"s curtain?
Seeing the wisest of guesses Foolishness only expresses.
"Ancestry? ruthlessly moulding Bodies and souls in unfolding; How such a mixture confuses Judgment"s indulgent excuses,--
"While the derivative nature, Still a responsible creature, Yields individual merits, Bia.s.sed by what it inherits.
"Circ.u.mstance? mighty to fashion Instant occasion for pa.s.sion, Gripping with clutch of a bandit Weakness too weak to withstand it,--
"What? shall it mar me or make me?
Neither, till faith shall forsake me-- For, with good courage to nerve me, Circ.u.mstance only can serve me!
"Destiny? doth it then seem so?