Nature is a good guide through life, and the love of simple pleasures next, if not superior, to virtue.
The soul asks honour and not fame; to be upright, not to be successful; to be good, not prosperous; to be essentially, not outwardly, respectable.
Practice is a more intricate and desperate business than the toughest theorising; life is an affair of cavalry, where rapid judgment and prompt action are alone possible and right.
Each man should learn what is within him, that he may strive to mend; he must be taught what is without him, that he may be kind to others. It can never be wrong to tell him the truth; for, in his disputable state, weaving as he goes his theory of life, steering himself, cheering or reproving others, all facts are of the first importance to his conduct; and even if a fact shall discourage or corrupt him, it is still best that he should know it; for it is in this world as it is, and not in a world made easy by educational suppression, that he must win his way to shame or glory.
A generous prayer is never presented in vain; the pet.i.tion may be refused, but the pet.i.tioner is always, I believe, rewarded by some gracious visitation.
EVENSONG
The embers of the day are red Beyond the murky hill.
The kitchen smokes: the bed In the darkling house is spread: The great sky darkens overhead, And the great woods are shrill.
So far have I been led, Lord, by Thy will: So far I have followed, Lord, and wondered still.
The breeze from the enbalmed land Blows sudden toward the sh.o.r.e, And claps my cottage door.
I hear the signal, Lord--I understand.
The night at Thy command Comes. I will eat and sleep and will not question more.
It is not at all a strong thing to put one"s reliance upon logic; and our own logic particularly, for it is generally wrong. We never know where we are to end if once we begin following words or doctors. There is an upright stock in a man"s own heart that is trustier than any syllogism; and the eyes, and the sympathies, and appet.i.tes know a thing or two that have never yet been stated in controversy. Reasons are as plentiful as blackberries; and, like fisticuffs, they serve impartially with all sides. Doctrines do not stand or fall by their proofs, and are only logical in so far as they are cleverly put. An able controversialist no more than an able general demonstrates the justice of his cause.
To any man there may come at times a consciousness that there blows, through all the articulations of his body, the wind of a spirit not wholly his; that his mind rebels; that another girds him and carries him whither he would not.
The child, the seed, the grain of corn, The acorn on the hill, Each for some separate end is born In season fit, and still Each must in strength arise to work the almighty will.
So from the hearth the children flee, By that almighty hand Austerely led; so one by sea Goes forth, and one by land; Nor aught of all man"s sons escapes from that command.
So from the sally each obeys The unseen almighty nod; So till the ending all their ways Blindfolded loth have trod: Nor knew their task at all, but were the tools of G.o.d.
A few restrictions, indeed, remain to influence the followers of individual branches of study. The DIVINITY, for example, must be an avowed believer; and as this, in the present day, is unhappily considered by many as a confession of weakness, he is fain to choose one of two ways of gilding the distasteful orthodox bolus. Some swallow it in a thin jelly of metaphysics; for it is even a credit to believe in G.o.d on the evidence of some crack-jaw philosopher, although it is a decided slur to believe in Him on His own authority. Others again (and this we think the worst method), finding German grammar a somewhat dry morsel, run their own little heresy as a proof of independence; and deny one of the cardinal doctrines that they may hold the others without being laughed at.
In particular, I heard of clergymen who were employing their time in explaining to a delighted audience the physics of the Second Coming. It is not very likely any of us will be asked to help. If we were, it is likely we should receive instructions for the occasion, and that on more reliable authority. And so I can only figure to myself a congregation truly curious in such flights of theological fancy, as one of veteran and accomplished saints, who have fought the good fight to an end and outlived all worldly pa.s.sion, and are to be regarded rather as a part of the Church Triumphant than the poor, imperfect company on earth.
The whole creation groaneth and travaileth together. It is the common and the G.o.d-like law of life. The browsers, the biters, the barkers, the hairy coats of field and forest, the squirrel in the oak, the thousand-footed creeper in the dust, as they share with us the gift of life, share with us the love of an ideal; strive like us--like us are tempted to grow weary of the struggle--to do well; like us receive at times unmerited refreshment, visitings of support, returns of courage; and are condemned like us to be crucified between that double law of the members and the will. Are they like us, I wonder, in the timid hope of some reward, some sugar with the drug? Do they, too, stand aghast at unrewarded virtues, at the sufferings of those whom, in our partiality, we take to be just, and the prosperity of such as in our blindness we call wicked?
But to be a true disciple is to think of the same things as our prophet, and to think of different things in the same order. To be of the same mind with another is to see all things in the same perspective; it is not to agree in a few indifferent matters near at hand and not much debated; it is to follow him in his farthest flights, to see the force of his hyperboles, to stand so exactly in the centre of his vision that whatever he may express, your eyes will light at once on the original, that whatever he may see to declare, your mind will at once accept....
Now, every now and then, and indeed surprisingly often, Christ finds a word that transcends all commonplace morality; every now and then He quits the beaten track to pioneer the unexpressed, and throws out a pregnant and magnanimous hyperbole; for it is only by some bold poetry of thought that men can be strung up above the level of everyday conceptions to take a broader look upon experience or accept some higher principle of conduct. To a man who is of the same mind that was in Christ, who stand at some centre not too far from His, and looks at the world and conduct from some not dissimilar or, at least, not opposing att.i.tude--or, shortly, to a man who is of Christ"s philosophy--every such saying should come home with a thrill of joy and corroboration; he should feel each one below his feet as another sure foundation in the flux of time and chance; each should be another proof that in the torrent of the years and generations, where doctrines and great armaments and empires are swept away and swallowed, he stands immovable, holding by the eternal stars.
Those who play by rule will never be more than tolerable players; and you and I would like to play our game in life to the n.o.blest and the most divine advantage....For no definite precept can be more than an ill.u.s.tration, though its truth were resplendent like the sun, and it was announced from heaven by the voice of G.o.d. And life is so intricate and changing, that perhaps not twenty times, or perhaps not twice in the ages, shall we find that nice consent of circ.u.mstances to which alone it can apply....
It is to keep a man awake, to keep him alive to his own soul and its fixed design of righteousness, that the better part of moral and religious education is directed; not only that of words and doctors, but the sharp ferule of calamity under which we are all G.o.d"s scholars till we die. If, as teachers, we are to say anything to the purpose, we must say what will remind the pupil of his soul; we must speak that soul"s dialect; we must talk of life and conduct as his soul would have him think of them. If, from some conformity between us and the pupil, or perhaps among all men, we do in truth speak in such a dialect and express such views, beyond question we shall touch in him a spring; beyond question he will recognise the dialect as one that he himself has spoken in his better hours; beyond question he will cry, "I had forgotten, but now I remember; I too have eyes, and I had forgot to use them! I too have a soul of my own, arrogantly upright, and to that I will listen and conform." In short, say to him anything that he has once thought, or been upon the point of thinking, or show him any view of life that he has once clearly seen, or been on the point of clearly seeing; and you have done your part and may leave him to complete the education for himself.
G.o.d, if there be any G.o.d, speaks daily in a new language, by the tongues of men; the thoughts and habits of each fresh generation and each new-coined spirit throw another light upon the universe, and contain another commentary on the printed Bibles; every scruple, every true dissent, every glimpse of something new, is a letter of G.o.d"s alphabet; and though there is a grave responsibility for all who speak, is there none for those who unrighteously keep silent and conform? Is not that also to conceal and cloak G.o.d"s counsel?
Mankind is not only the whole in general, but every one in particular.
Every man or woman is one of mankind"s dear possessions; to his or her just brain, and kind heart, and active hands, mankind intrusts some of its hopes for the future; he or she is a possible wellspring of good acts and source of blessings to the race.
Morals are a personal affair; in the war of righteousness every man fights for his own hand; all the six hundred precepts of the Mishna cannot shake my private judgment; my magistracy of myself is an indefeasible charge, and my decisions absolute for the time and case.
The moralist is not a judge of appeal, but an advocate who pleads at my tribunal. He has to show not the law, but that the law applies. Can he convince me? then he gains the cause. And thus you find Christ giving various counsels to varying people, and often jealously careful to avoid definite precept. Is He asked, for example, to divide a heritage? He refuses; and the best advice that He will offer is but a paraphrase of the tenth commandment which figures so strangely among the rest. Take heed, and beware of covetousness. If you complain that this is vague, I have failed to carry you along with me in my argument. For no definite precept can be more than an ill.u.s.tration, though its truth were resplendent like the sun, and it was announced from heaven by the voice of G.o.d. And life is so intricate and changing, that perhaps not twenty times, or perhaps not twice in the ages, shall we find that nice consent of circ.u.mstances to which alone it can apply.
But if it is righteousness thus to fuse together our divisive impulses and march with one mind through life, there is plainly one thing more unrighteous than all others, and one declension which is irretrievable and draws on the rest. And this is to lose consciousness of oneself. In the best of times, it is but by flashes, when our whole nature is clear, strong, and conscious, and events conspire to leave us free, that we enjoy communion with our soul. At the worst we are so fallen and pa.s.sive that we may say shortly we have none. An arctic torpor seizes upon men.
Although built of nerves, and set adrift in a stimulating world, they develop a tendency to go bodily to sleep; consciousness becomes engrossed among the reflex and mechanical parts of life; and soon loses both the will and power to look higher considerations in the face. This is ruin; this is the last failure in life; this is temporal d.a.m.nation, d.a.m.nation on the spot and without the form of judgment: "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and LOSE HIMSELF?"
To ask to see some fruit of our endeavour is but a transcendental way of serving for reward; and what we take to be contempt of self is only greed of hire.
We are are all such as He was--the inheritors of sin; we must all bear and expiate a past which was not ours; there is in all of us--ay, even in me--a sparkle of the divine. Like Him, we must endure for a little while, until morning returns, bringing peace.