There is no indecision in nature, though there is some illusion. The very star that rises, pale and serene, above the darkening thicket, is in reality a globe wreathed in fiery vapour, the centre of a throng of whirling planets. What we have to do is to see as deep as we can into the truth of things, not to invent paradises of thought, sheltered gardens, from which grief and suffering shall tear us, naked and protesting; but to gaze into the heart of God, and then to follow as faithfully as we can the imperative voice that speaks within the soul.



XXXVII

Renewal

There sometimes falls upon me a great hunger of heart, a sad desire to build up and renew something—a broken building it may be, a fading flower, a failing institution, a ruinous character. I feel a great and vivid pity for a thing which sets out to be so bright and beautiful, and lapses into shapeless and uncomely neglect. Sometimes, indeed, it must be a desolate grief, a fruitless sorrow: as when a flower that has stood on one's table, and cheered the air with its freshness and fragrance, begins to droop, and to grow stained and sordid. Or I see some dying creature, a wounded animal; or even some well-loved friend under the shadow of death, with the hue of health fading, the dear features sharpening for the last change; and then one can only bow, with such resignation as one can muster, before the dreadful law of death, pray that the passage may not be long or dark, and try to dream of the bright secrets that may be waiting on the other side.

But sometimes it is a more fruitful sadness, when one feels that decay can be arrested, that new life can be infused; that a fresh start may be taken, and a life may be beautifully renewed, and be even the brighter, one dares to hope, for a lapse into the dreary ways of bitterness.

This sadness is most apt to beset those who have anything to do with the work of education. One feels sometimes, with a sudden shiver, as when the shadow of a cloud passes over a sunlit garden, that many elements are at work in a small society; that an evil secret is spreading over lives that were peaceful and contented, that suspicion and disunion and misunderstanding are springing up, like poisonous weeds, in the quiet corner that God has given one to dress and keep. Then perhaps one tries to put one's hand on what is amiss; sometimes one does too much, and in the wrong way; one has not enough faith, one dares not leave enough to God. Or from timidity or diffidence, or from the base desire not to be troubled, from the poor hope that perhaps things will straighten themselves out, one does too little; and that is the worst shadow of all, the shadow of cowardice or sloth.

Sometimes, too, one has the grief of seeing a slow and subtle change passing over the manner and face of one for whom one cares—not the change of languor or physical weakness; that can be pityingly borne; but one sees innocence withering, indifference to things wholesome and fair creeping on, even sometimes a ripe and evil sort of beauty maturing, such as comes of looking at evil unashamed, and seeing its strong seductiveness. One feels instinctively that the door which had been open before between such a soul and one's own spirit is being slowly and firmly closed, or even, if one attempts to open it, pulled to with a swift motion; and then one may hear sounds within, and even see, in that moment, a rush of gliding forms, that makes one sure that a visitant is there, who has brought with him a wicked company; and then one has to wait in sadness, with now and then a timid knocking, even happy, it may be, if the soul sometimes call fretfully within, to say that it is occupied and cannot come forth.

But sometimes, God be praised, it is the other way. A year ago a man came at his own request to see me. I hardly knew him; but I could see at once that he was in the grip of some hard conflict, which withered his natural bloom. I do not know how all came to be revealed; but in a little while he was speaking with simple frankness and naturalness of all his troubles, and they were many. What was the most touching thing of all was that he spoke as if he were quite alone in his experience, isolated and shut off from his kind, in a peculiar horror of darkness and doubt; as if the thoughts and difficulties at which he stumbled had never strewn a human path before. I said but little to him; and, indeed, there was but little to say. It was enough that he should "cleanse the stuff'd bosom of the perilous stuff that weighs upon the heart." I tried to make him feel that he was not alone in the matter, and that other feet had trodden the dark path before him. No advice is possible in such cases; "therein the patient must minister to himself"; the solution lies in the mind of the sufferer. He knows what he ought to do; the difficulty is for him sufficiently to desire to do it; yet even to speak frankly of cares and troubles is very often to melt and disperse the morbid mist that gathers round them, which grows in solitude. To state them makes them plain and simple; and, indeed, it is more than that; for I have often noticed that the mere act of formulating one's difficulties in the hearing of one who sympathises and feels, often brings the solution with it. One finds, like Christian in Doubting Castle, the key which has lain in one's bosom all the time—the key of Promise; and when one has finished the recital, one is lost in bewilderment that one ever was in any doubt at all.

A year has passed since that date, and I have had the happiness of seeing health and contentment stream back into the man's face. He has not overcome, he has not won an easy triumph; but he is in the way now, not wandering on trackless hills.

So, in the mood of which I spoke at first—the mood in which one desires to build up and renew—one must not yield oneself to luxurious and pathetic reveries, or allow oneself to muse and wonder in the half-lit region in which one may beat one's wings in vain—the region, I mean, of sad stupefaction as to why the world is so full of broken dreams, shattered hopes, and unfulfilled possibilities. One must rather look round for some little definite failure that is within the circle of one's vision. And even so, there sometimes comes what is the most evil and subtle temptation of all, which creeps upon the mind in lowly guise, and preaches inaction. What concern have you, says the tempting voice, to meddle with the lives and characters of others—to guide, to direct, to help—when there is so much that is bitterly amiss with your own heart and life? How will you dare to preach what you do not practice? The answer of the brave heart is that, if one is aware of failure, if one has suffered, if one has gathered experience, one must be ready to share it. If I falter and stumble under my own heavy load, which I have borne so querulously, so clumsily, shall not I say a word which can help a fellow-sufferer to bear his load more easily, help him to avoid the mistakes, the falls into which my own perversity has betrayed me? To make another's burden lighter is to lighten one's own burden; and, sinful as it may be to err, it is still more sinful to see another err, and be silent, to withhold the word that might save him. Perhaps no one can help so much as one that has suffered himself, who knows the turns of the sad road, and the trenches which beset the way.

For thus comes most truly the joy of repentance; it is joy to feel that one's own lesson is learnt, and that the feeble feet are a little stronger; but if one may also feel that another has taken heed, has been saved the fall that must have come if he had not been warned, one does not grudge one's own pain, that has brought a blessing with it, that is outside of one's own blessing; one hardly even grudges the sin.



XXXVIII

The Secret

I have been away from my books lately, in a land of downs and valleys; I have walked much alone, or with a silent companion—that greatest of all luxuries. And, as is always the case when I get out of the reach of books, I feel that I read a great deal too much, and do not meditate enough. It sounds indolent advice to say that one ought to meditate; but I cannot help feeling that reading is often a still more indolent affair. When I am alone, or at leisure among my books, I take a volume down; and the result is that another man does my thinking for me. It is like putting oneself in a comfortable railway carriage; one runs smoothly along the iron track, one stops at specified stations, one sees a certain range of country, and an abundance of pretty things in flashes—too many, indeed, for the mind to digest; and that is the reason, I think, why a modern journey, even with all the luxuries that surround it, is so tiring a thing. But to meditate is to take one's own path among the hills; one turns off the track to examine anything that attracts the attention; one makes the most of the few things that one sees.

Reading is often a mere saving of trouble, a soporific for a restless brain. This last week, as I say, I have had very few books with me. One of the few has been Milton's Paradise Lost, and I have read it from end to end. I want to say a few words about the book first, and then to diverge, to a larger question. I have read the poem with a certain admiration; it is a large, strong, rugged, violent thing. I have, however, read it without emotion, except that a few of the similes in it, which lie like shells on a beach of sand, have pleased me. Yet it is not true to say that I have read it without emotion, because I have read it with anger and indignation. I have come to the conclusion that the book has done a great deal of harm. It is responsible, I think, for a great many of the harsh, business-like, dismal views of religion that prevail among us. Milton treated God, the Saviour, and the angels, from the point of view of a scholar who had read the Iliad. I declare that I think that the passages where God the Father speaks, discusses the situation of affairs, and arranges matters with the Saviour, are some of the most profane and vicious passages in English literature. I do not want to be profane myself, because it is a disgusting fault; but the passage where the scheme of Redemption is arranged, where God enquires whether any of the angels will undergo death in order to satisfy his sense of injured justice, is a passage of what I can only call stupid brutality, disguised, alas, in the solemn and majestic robe of sonorous language. The angels timidly decline, and the Saviour volunteers, which saves the shameful situation. The character of God, as displayed by Milton, is that of a commercial, complacent, irritable Puritan. There is no largeness or graciousness about it, no wistful love. He keeps his purposes to himself, and when his arrangements break down, as indeed they deserve to do, some one has got to be punished. If the guilty ones cannot, so much the worse; an innocent victim will do, but a victim there must be. It is a wicked, an abominable passage, and I would no more allow an intelligent child to read it than I would allow him to read an obscene book.

Then, again, the passage where the rebel angels cast cannon, make gunpowder, and mow the good angels down in rows, is incredibly puerile and ridiculous. The hateful materialism of the whole thing is patent. I wish that the English Church could have an Index, and put Paradise Lost upon it, and allow no one to read it until he had reached years of discretion, and then only with a certificate, and for purely literary purposes.

It is a terrible instance how strong a thing Art is; the grim old author, master of every form of ugly vituperation, had drifted miserably away from his beautiful youth, when he wrote the sweet poems and sonnets that make the pedestal for his fame; and on that delicate pedestal stands this hideous iron figure, with its angry gestures, its sickening strength.

I could pile up indignant instances of the further harm the book has done. Who but Milton is responsible for the hard and shameful view of the position of women? He represents her as a clinging, soft, compliant creature, whose only ideal is to be to make things comfortable for her husband, and to submit to his embraces. Milton spoilt the lives of all the women he had to do with, by making them into slaves, with the same consciousness of rectitude with which he whipped his nephews, the sound of whose cries made his poor girl-wife so miserable. But I do not want to go further into the question of Milton himself. I want to follow out a wider thought which came to me among the downs to-day.

There seems to me to be in art, to take the metaphor of the temple at Jerusalem, three gradations or regions, which may be typified by the Court, the Holy Place, and the Holy of Holies. Into the Court many have admittance, both writers and readers; it is just shut off from the world, but admittance is easy and common. All who are moved and stirred by ideas and images can enter here. Then there is the Holy Place, dark and glorious, where the candlestick glimmers and the altar gleams. And to this place the priests of art have access. Here are to be found all delicate and strenuous craftsmen, all who understand that there are secrets and mysteries in art. They can please and thrill the mind and ear; they can offer up a fragrant incense; but the full mystery is not revealed to them. Here are to be found many graceful and soulless poets, many writers of moving tales, and discriminating critics, who are satisfied, but cannot satisfy. Those who frequent this place are generally of opinion that they know all that is to be known; they talk much of form and colour, of values and order. They can make the most of their materials; and indeed their skill outruns their emotion.

But there is the inmost shrine of all within, where the darkness broods, lit at intervals by the shining of a divine light, that glimmers on the ark and touches the taper wings of the adoring angels. The contents indeed of the sacred chest are of the simplest; a withered branch, a pot of food, two slabs of grey stone, obscurely engraved. Nothing rich or rare. But those who have access to the inner shrine are face to face with the mystery. Some have the skill to hint it, none to describe it. And there are some, too, who have no skill to express themselves, but who have visited the place, and bring back some touch of radiance gushing from their brows.

Milton, in his youth, had looked within the shrine, but he forgot, in the clamorous and sordid world, what he had seen. Only those who have visited the Holiest place know those others who have set foot there, and they cannot err. I cannot define exactly what it is that makes the difference. It cannot be seen in performance; for here I will humbly and sincerely make the avowal that I have been within the veil myself, though I know not when or how. I learnt there no perfection of skill, no methods of expression. But ever since, I have looked out for the signs that tell me whether another has set foot there or no. I sometimes see the sign in a book, or a picture; sometimes it comes out in talk; and sometimes I discern it in the glance of an eye, for all the silence of the lips. It is not knowledge, it is not pride that the access confers. Indeed it is often a sweet humility of soul. It is nothing definite; but it is a certain attitude of mind, a certain quality of thought. Some of those who have been within are very sinful persons, very unhappy, very unsatisfactory, as the world would say. But they are never perverse or wilful natures; they are never cold or mean. Those in whom coldness and meanness are found are of necessity excluded from the Presence. But though the power to step behind the veil seldom brings serenity, or strength, or confidence, yet it is the best thing that can happen to a man in the world.

Some perhaps of those who read these words will think that it is all a vain shadow, and that I am but wrapping up an empty thought in veils of words. But though I cannot explain, though I cannot say what the secret is, I can claim to be able to say almost without hesitation whether a human spirit has passed within; and more than that. As I write these words, I know that if any who have set foot in the secret shrine reads them, they will understand, and recognise that I am speaking a simple truth.

Some, indeed, find their way thither through religion; but none whose religion is like Milton's. Indeed, part of the wonder of the secret is the infinite number of paths that lead there; they are all lonely; the moment is unexpected; indeed, as was the case with myself, it is possible to set foot within, and yet not to know it at the time.

It is this secret which constitutes the innermost brotherhood of the world. The innermost, I say, because neither creed, nor nationality, nor occupation, nor age, nor sex affects the matter. It is difficult, or shall I say unusual, for the old to enter; and most find the way there in youth, before habit and convention have become tyrannous, and have fenced the path of life with hedges and walls.

Again it is the most secret brotherhood of the world; no one can dare to make public proclamation of it, no one can gather the saints together, for the essence of the brotherhood is its isolation. One may indeed recognise a brother or a sister, and that is a blessed moment; but one must not speak of it in words; and indeed there is no need of words, where all that matters is known. It may be asked what are the benefits which this secret brings. It does not bring laughter, or prosperity, or success, or even cheerfulness; but it brings a high, though fitful, joy—a joy that can be captured, practised, retained. No one can, I think, of set purpose, capture the secret. No one can find the way by desiring it. And yet the desire to do so is the seed of hope. And if it be asked, why I write and print these veiled words about so deep and intimate a mystery, I would reply that it is because not all who have found the way, know that they have found it; and my hope is that these words of mine may show some restless hearts that they have found it. For one may find the shrine in youth, and for want of knowing that one has found it, may forget it in middle age; and that is what I sorrowfully think that not a few of my brothers do. And the sign of such a loss is that such persons speak contemptuously and disdainfully of their visions, and try to laugh and deride the young and gracious out of such hopes; which is a sin that is hateful to God, a kind of murder of souls.

And now I have travelled a long way from where I began, but the path was none of my own making. It was Milton, that fierce and childish poet, that held open the door, and within I saw the ladder, at the fiery head of which is God Himself. And like Jacob (who was indeed of our company) I made a pillow for my head of the stones of the place, that I might dream more abundantly.

And so, as I walked to-day among the green places of the down, I made a prayer in my heart to God, the matter of which I will now set down; and it was that all of us who have visited that most Holy Place may be true to the vision; and that God may reveal us to each other, as we go on pilgrimage; and that as the world goes forward, he may lead more and more souls to visit it, that bare and secret place, which yet holds more beauty than the richest palace of the world. For palaces but hold the outer beauty, in types and glimpses and similitudes. While in the secret shrine we visit the central fountainhead, from which the water of life, clear as crystal, breaks in innumerable channels, and flows out from beneath the temple door, as Ezekiel saw it flow, lingering and delaying, but surely coming to gladden the earth. I could indeed go further, and speak many things out of a full heart about the matter. I could quote the names of many poets and artists, great and small; and I could say which of them belongs to the inner company, and which of them is outside. But I will not do this, because it would but set inquisitive people puzzling and wondering, and trying to guess the secret; and that I have no desire to do; because these words are not written to make those who do not understand to be curious; but they are written to those who know, and, most of all, to those who know, but have forgotten. No one may traffic in these things; and indeed there is no opportunity to do so. I could learn in a moment, from a sentence or a smile, if one had the secret; and I could spend a long summer day trying to explain it to a learned and intelligent person, and yet give no hint of what I meant. For the thing is not an intelligible process, a matter of reasoning and logic; it is an intuition. And therefore it is that those who cannot believe in anything that they do not understand, will think these words of mine to be folly and vanity. The only case where I have found a difficulty in deciding, is when I talk to one who has lived much with those who had the secret, and has caught, by a kind of natural imitation, some of the accent and cadence of the truth. An old friend of mine, a pious woman, used in her last days to have prayers and hymns read much in her room; there was a parrot that sat there in his cage, very silent and attentive; and not long after, when the parrot was ill, he used to mutter prayers and hymns aloud, with a devotion that would have deceived the very elect. And it is even so with the people of whom I have spoken. Not long ago I had a long conversation with one, a clever woman, who had lived much in the house of a man who had seen the truth; and I was for a little deceived, and thought that she also knew the truth. But suddenly she made a hard judgment of her own, and I knew in a moment that she had never seen the shrine.

And now I have said enough, and must make an end. I remember that long ago, when I was a boy, I painted a picture on a panel, and set it in my room. It was the figure of a kneeling youth on a hillock, looking upwards; and beyond the hillock came a burst of rays from a hidden sun. Underneath it, for no reason that I can well explain, I painted the words phos etheasamen kai emphobos en—I beheld a light and was afraid. I was then very far indeed from the sight of the truth; but I know now that I was prophesying of what should be; for the secret sign of the mystery is a fear, not a timid and shrinking fear, but a holy and transfiguring awe. I little guessed what would some day befall me; but now that I have seen, I can only say with all my heart that it is better to remember and be sad, than to forget and smile.



XXXIX

The Message

I was awakened this morning, at the old house where I am staying, by low and sweet singing. The soft murmur of an organ was audible, on which some clear trebles seemed to swim and float—one voice of great richness and force seeming to utter the words, and to draw into itself the other voices, appropriating their tone but lending them personality. These were the words I heard—

"The High Priest once a year Went in the Holy Place With garments white and clear; It was the day of Grace.

Without the people stood While unseen and alone With incense and with blood He did for them atone.

"So we without abide A few short passing years, While Christ who for us died Before our God appears.

"Before His Father there His Sacrifice He pleads, And with unceasing prayer For us He intercedes."

The sweet sounds ceased; the organ lingered for an instant in a low chord of infinite sweetness, and then a voice was heard in prayer. That there was a chapel in the house I knew, and that a brief morning prayer was read there. But I could not help wondering at the remarkable distinctness with which I heard the words—they seemed close to my ear in the air beside me. I got up, and drawing my curtains found that it was day; and then I saw that a tiny window in the corner of my room, that gave on the gallery of the chapel, had been left open, by accident or design, and that thus I had been an auditor of the service.

I found myself pondering over the words of the hymn, which was familiar to me, though strangely enough is to be found in but few collections. It is a perfect lyric, both in its grave language and its beautiful balance; and it is too, so far as such a composition can be, or ought to be, intensely dramatic. The thought is just touched, and stated with exquisite brevity and restraint; there is not a word too much or too little; the image is swiftly presented, the inner meaning flashed upon the mind. It seemed to me, too, a beautiful and desirable thing to begin the day thus, with a delicate hallowing of the hours; to put one gentle thought into the heart, perfumed by the sweet music. But then my reflections took a further drift; beautiful as the little ceremony was, noble and refined as the thought of the tender hymn was, I began to wonder whether we do well to confine our religious life to so restricted a range of ideas. It seemed almost ungrateful to entertain the thought, but I felt a certain bewilderment as to whether this remote image, drawn from the ancient sacrificial ceremony, was not even too definite a thought to feed the heart upon. For strip the idea of its fair accessories, its delicate art, and what have we but the sad belief, drawn from the dark ages of the world, that the wrathful Creator of men, full of gloomy indignation at their perverseness and wilfulness, needs the constant intercession of the Eternal Son, who is too, in a sense, Himself, to appease the anger with which he regards the sheep of his hand. I cannot really in the depths of my heart echo that dark belief. I do not indeed know why God permits such blindness and sinfulness among men, and why he allows suffering to cloud and darken the world. But it would cause me to despair of God and man alike, if I felt that he had flung our pitiful race into the world, surrounded by temptation both within and without, and then abandoned himself to anger at their miserable dalliance with evil. I rather believe that we are rising and struggling to the light, and that his heart is with us, not against us in the battle. It may of course be said that all that kind of Calvinism has disappeared; that no rational Christians believe it, but hold a larger and a wider faith. I think that this is true of a few intelligent Christians, as far as the dropping of Calvinism goes, though it seems to me that they find it somewhat difficult to define their faith; but as to Calvinism having died out in England, I do not think that there is any reason to suppose that it has done so; I believe that a large majority of English Christians would believe the above-quoted hymn to be absolutely justified in its statements both by Scripture and reason, and that a considerable minority would hardly consider it definite enough.

But then came a larger and a wider thought. We talk and think so carelessly of the divine revelation; we, who have had a religious bringing up, who have been nurtured upon Israelite chronicles and prophecies, are inclined, or at least predisposed, to think that the knowledge of God is written larger and more directly in these records, the words of anxious and troubled persons, than in the world which we see about us. Yet surely in field and wood, in sea and sky, we have a far nearer and more instant revelation of God. In these ancient records we have the thoughts of men, intent upon their own schemes and struggles, and looking for the message of God, with a fixed belief that the history of one family of the human race was his special and particular prepossession. Yet all the while his immediate Will was round them, written in a thousand forms, in bird and beast, in flower and tree. He permits and tolerates life. He deals out joy and sorrow, life and death. Science has at least revealed a far more vast and inscrutable force at work in the world, than the men of ancient days ever dreamed of.

Do we do well to confine our religious life to these ancient conceptions? They have no doubt a certain shadow of truth in them; but while I know for certain that the huge Will of God is indeed at work around me, in every field and wood, in every stream and pool, do I really know, do I honestly believe that any such process as the hymn indicates, is going on in some distant region of heaven? The hymn practically presupposes that our little planet is the only one in which the work of God is going forward. Science hints to me that probably every star that hangs in the sky has its own ring of planets, and that in every one of these some strange drama of life and death is proceeding. It is a dizzy thought! But if it be true, is it not better to face it? The mind shudders, appalled at the immensity of the prospect. But do not such thoughts as these give us a truer picture of ourselves, and of our own humble place in the vast complexity of things, than the excessive dwelling upon the wistful dreams of ancient law-givers and prophets? Or is it better to delude ourselves? Deliberately to limit our view to the history of a single race, to a few centuries of records? Perhaps that may be a more practical, a more effective view; but when once the larger thought has flashed into the mind, it is useless to try and drown it.

Everything around me seems to cry aloud the warning, not to aim at a conceit of knowledge about these deep secrets, but to wait, to leave the windows of the soul open for any glimpse of truth from without.

To beguile the time I took up a volume near me, the work of a much decried poet, Walt Whitman. Apart from the exquisite power of expression that he possesses, he always seems to me to enter, more than most poets, into the largeness of the world, to keep his heart fixed on the vast wonder and joy of life. I read that poem full of tender pathos and suggestiveness, A Word out of the Sea, where the child, with the wind in his hair, listens to the lament of the bird that has lost his mate, and tries to guide her wandering wings back to the deserted nest. While the bird sings, with ever fainter hope, its little heart aching with the pain of loss, the child hears the sea, with its "liquid rims and wet sands" breathing out the low and delicious word death.

The poet seems to think of death as the loving answer to the yearning of all hearts, the sleep that closes the weary eyes. But I cannot rise to this thought, tender and gentle as it is.

If indeed there be another life beyond death, I can well believe that death is in truth an easier and simpler thing than one fears; only a cloud on the hill, a little darkness upon Nature. But God has put it into my heart to dread it; and he hides from me the knowledge of whether indeed there be another side to it. And while I do not even know that, I can but love life, and be fain of the good days. All the religion in the world depends upon the belief that, set free from the bonds of the flesh, the spirit will rest and recollect. But is that more than a hope? Is it more than the passionate instinct of the heart that cannot bear the thought that it may cease to be?

I seem to have travelled far away from the hymn that sounded so sweetly in my ears; but I return to the thought; is not, I will ask, the poet's reverie—the child with his wet hair floating in the sea-breeze, the wailing of the deserted bird, the waves that murmur that death is beautiful—is not this all more truly and deeply religious than the hymn which speaks of things, that not only I cannot affirm to be true, but which, if true, would plunge me into a deeper and darker hopelessness even than that in which my ignorance condemns me to live? Ought we not, in fact, to try and make our religion a much wider, quieter thing? Are we not exchanging the melodies of the free birds that sing in the forest glade, for the melancholy chirping of the caged linnet? It seems to me often as though we had captured our religion from a multitude of fair hovering presences, that would speak to us of the things of God, caged it in a tiny prison, and closed our ears to the larger and wider voices?

I walked to-day in sheltered wooded valleys; and at one point, in a very lonely and secluded lane, leant long upon a gate that led into a little forest clearing, to watch the busy and intent life of the wood. There were the trees extending their fresh leaves to the rain; the birds slipped from tree to tree; a mouse frisked about the grassy road; a hundred flowers raised their bright heads. None of these little lives have, I suppose, any conception of the extent of life that lies about them; each of them knows the secrets and instincts of its own tiny brain, and guesses perhaps at the thoughts of the little lives akin to it. Yet every tiniest, shortest, most insignificant life has its place in the mind of God. It seemed to me then such an amazing, such an arrogant thing to define, to describe, to limit the awful mystery of the Creator and his purpose. Even to think of him, as he is spoken of in the Old Testament, with fierce and vindictive schemes, with flagrant partialities, seemed to me nothing but a dreadful profanation. And yet these old writings do, in a degree, from old association, colour my thoughts about him.

And then all these anxious visions left me; and I felt for awhile like a tiny spray of sea-weed floating on an infinite sea, with the brightness of the morning overhead. I felt that I was indeed set where I found myself to be, and that if now my little heart and brain are too small to hold the truth, yet I thanked God for making even the conception of the mystery, the width, the depth, possible to me; and I prayed to him that he would give me as much of the truth as I could bear. And I do not doubt that he gave me that; for I felt for an instant that whatever befell me, I was indeed a part of Himself; not a thing outside and separate; not even his son and his child: but Himself.



XL

After Death

I had so strange a dream or vision the other night, that I cannot refrain from setting it down; because the strangeness and the wonder of it seem to make it impossible for me to have conceived of it myself; it was suggested by nothing, originated by nothing that I can trace; it merely came to me out of the void.

After confused and troubled dreams of terror and bewilderment, enacted in blind passages and stifling glooms, with crowds of unknown figures passing rapidly to and fro, I seemed to grow suddenly light-hearted and joyful. I next appeared to myself to be sitting or reclining on the grassy top of a cliff, in bright sunlight. The ground fell precipitously in front of me, and I saw to left and right the sharp crags and horns of the rock-face below me; behind me was a wide space of grassy down, with a fresh wind racing over it. The sky was cloudless. Far below I could see yellow sands, on which a blue sea broke in crisp waves. To the left a river flowed through a little hamlet, clustered round a church; I looked down on the roofs of the small houses, and saw people passing to and fro, like ants. The river spread itself out in shallow shining channels over the sand, to join the sea. Further to the left rose shadowy headland after headland, and to the right lay a broad well-watered plain, full of trees and villages, bounded by a range of blue hills. On the sea moved ships, the wind filling their sails, and the sun shining on them with a peculiar brightness. The only sound in my ears was that of the whisper of the wind in the grass and stone crags.

But I soon became aware with a shock of pleasant surprise that my perception of the whole scene was of a different quality to any perception I had before experienced. I have spoken of seeing and hearing: but I became aware that I was doing neither; the perceptions, so to speak, both of seeing and hearing were not distinct, but the same. I was aware, for instance, at the same moment, of the whole scene, both of what was behind me and what was in front of me. I have described what I saw successively, because there is no other way of describing it; but it was all present at once in my mind, and I had no need to turn my attention to one point or another, but everything was there before me, in a unity at which I cannot even hint in words. I then became aware too, that, though I have spoken of myself as seated or reclined, I had no body, but was merely, as it were, a sentient point. In a moment I became aware that to transfer that sentience to another point was merely an act of will. I was able to test this; in an instant I was close above the village, which a moment before was far below me, and I perceived the houses, the very faces of the people close at hand; at another moment I was buried deep in the cliff, and felt the rock with its fissures all about me; at another moment, following my wish, I was beneath the sea, and saw the untrodden sands about me, with the blue sunlit water over my head. I saw the fish dart and poise above me, the ribbons of sea-weed floating up, just swayed by the currents, shells crawling like great snails on the ooze, crabs hurrying about among piles of boulders. But something drew me back to my first station, I know not why; and there I poised, as a bird might have poised, and lost myself in a blissful dream. Then it darted into my mind that I was what I had been accustomed to call dead. So this was what lay on the other side of the dark passage, this lightness, this perfect freedom, this undreamed-of peace! I had not a single care or anxiety. It seemed as if nothing could trouble my repose and happiness. I could only think with a deep compassion of those who were still pent in uneasy bodies, under strait and sad conditions, anxious, sad, troubled, and blind, not knowing that the shadow of death which encompassed them was but the cloud which veiled the gate of perfect and unutterable happiness.

I felt rising in my mind a sense of all that lay before me, of all the mysteries that I would penetrate, all the unvisited places that I would see. But at present I was too full of peace and quiet happiness to do anything but stay in an infinite content where I was. All sense of ennui or restlessness had left me. I was utterly free, utterly blest. I did, indeed, once send my thought to the home which I loved, and saw a darkened house, and my dear ones moving about with grief written legibly on their faces. I saw my mother sitting looking at some letters which I perceived to be my own, and was aware that she wept. But I could not even bring myself to grieve at that, because I knew that the same peace and joy that filled me was also surely awaiting them, and the darkest passage, the sharpest human suffering, seemed so utterly little and trifling in the light of my new knowledge; and I was soon back on my cliff-top again, content to wait, to rest, to luxuriate in a happiness which seemed to have nothing selfish about it, because the satisfaction was so perfectly pure and natural.

While I thus waited I became aware, with the same sort of sudden perception, of a presence beside me. It had no outward form; but I knew that it was a spirit full of love and kindness: it seemed to me to be old; it was not divine, for it brought no awe with it; and yet it was not quite human; it was a spirit that seemed to me to have been human, but to have risen into a higher sphere of perception. I simply felt a sense of deep and pure companionship. And presently I became aware that some communication was passing between my consciousness and the consciousness of the newly-arrived spirit. It did not take place in words, but in thought; though only by words can I now represent it.

"Yes," said the other, "you do well to rest and to be happy: is it not a wonderful experience? and yet you have been through it many times already, and will pass through it many times again."

I suppose that I did not wholly understand this, for I said: "I do not grasp that thought, though I am certain it is true: have I then died before?"

"Yes," said the other, "many times. It is a long progress; you will remember soon, when you have had time to reflect, and when the sweet novelty of the change has become more customary. You have but returned to us again for a little; one needs that, you know, at first; one needs some refreshment and repose after each one of our lives, to be renewed, to be strengthened for what comes after."

All at once I understood. I knew that my last life had been one of many lives lived at all sorts of times and dates, and under various conditions; that at the end of each I had returned to this joyful freedom.

It was the first cloud that passed over my thought. "Must I return again to life?" I said.

"Oh yes," said the other; "you see that; you will soon return again—but never mind that now; you are here to drink your fill of the beautiful things which you will only remember by glimpses and visions when you are back in the little life again."

And then I had a sudden intuition. I seemed to be suddenly in a small and ugly street of a dark town. I saw slatternly women run in and out of the houses; I saw smoke-stained grimy children playing in the gutter. Above the poor, ill-kept houses a factory poured its black smoke into the air, and hummed behind its shuttered windows. I knew in a sad flash of thought that I was to be born there, to be brought up as a wailing child, under sad and sordid conditions, to struggle into a life of hard and hopeless labour, in the midst of vice, and poverty, and drunkenness, and hard usage. It filled me for a moment with a sort of nauseous dread, remembering the free and liberal conditions of my last life, the wealth and comfort I had enjoyed.

"No," said the other; for in a moment I was back again, "that is an unworthy thought—it is but for a moment; and you will return to this peace again."

But the sad thought came down upon me like a cloud. "Is there no escape?" I said; and at that, in a moment, the other spirit seemed to chide me, not angrily, but patiently and compassionately. "One suffers," he said, "but one gains experience; one rises," adding more gently: "We do not know why it must be, of course—but it is the Will; and however much one may doubt and suffer in the dark world there, one does not doubt of the wisdom or the love of it here." And I knew in a moment that I did not doubt, but that I would go willingly wherever I should be sent.

And then my thought became concerned with the spirit that spoke with me, and I said, "And what is your place and work? for I think you are like me and yet unlike." And he said: "Yes, it is true; I have to return thither no more; that is finished for me, and I grudge no single step of the dark road: I cannot explain to you what my work or place is; but I am old, and have seen many things; each of us has to return and return, not indeed till we are made perfect, but till we have finished that part of our course; but the blessedness of this peace grows and grows, while it becomes easier to bear what happens in that other place, for we grow strong and simple and sincere, and then the world can hurt us but little. We learn that we must not judge men; but we know that when we see them cruel and vicious and selfish, they are then but children learning their first lessons; and on each of our visits to this place we see that the evil matters less and less, and the hope becomes brighter and brighter; till at last we see." And I then seemed to turn to him in thought, for he said with a grave joy: "Yes, I have seen." And presently I was left alone to my happiness.

How long it lasted I cannot tell; but presently I seemed less free, less light of heart; and soon I knew that I was bound; and after a space I woke into the world again, and took up my burden of cares.

But for all that I have a sense of hopefulness left which I think will not quite desert me. From what dim cell of the brain my vision rose, I know not, but though it came to me in so precise and clear a form, yet I cannot help feeling that something deep and true has been revealed to me, some glimpse of pure heaven and bright air, that lies outside our little fretted lives.



XLI

The Eternal Will

I have spoken above, I know well, of things in which I have no skill to speak; I know no philosophy or metaphysics; to look into a philosophical book is to me like looking into a room piled up with bricks, the pure materials of thought; they have no meaning for me, until the beautiful mind of some literary architect has built them into a house of life; but just as a shallow pool can reflect the dark and infinite spaces of night, pierced with stars, so in my own shallow mind these perennial difficulties, which lie behind all that we do and say, can be for a moment mirrored.

The only value that such thoughts can have in life is that they should teach us to live in a frank and sincere mood, waiting patiently for the Lord, as the old Psalmist said. My own philosophy is a very simple one, and, if I could only be truer to it, it would bring me the strength which I lack. It is this; that being what we are, such frail, mysterious, inexplicable beings, we should wait humbly and hopefully upon God, not attempting, nor even wishing, to make up our minds upon these deep secrets, only determined that we will be true to the inner light, and that we will not accept any solution which depends for its success upon neglecting or overlooking any of the phenomena with which we are confronted. We find ourselves placed in the world, in definite relations with certain people, endowed with certain qualities, with faults and fears, with hopes and joys, with likes and dislikes. Evil haunts us like a shadow, and though it menaces our happiness, we fall again and again under its dominion; in the depths of our spirit a voice speaks, which assures us again and again that truth and purity and love are the best and dearest things that we can desire; and that voice, however imperfectly, I try to obey, because it seems the strongest and clearest of all the voices that call to me. I try to regard all experience, whether sweet or bitter, fair or foul, as sent me by the great and awful power that put me where I am. The strongest and best things in the world seem to me to be peace and tranquillity, and the same hidden power seems to be leading me thither; and to lead me all the faster whenever I try not to fret, not to grieve, not to despair. "Casting all your care upon him, for he careth for you," says the Divine Word; and the more that I follow intuition rather than reason, the nearer I seem to come to the truth. I have lately wasted much fruitless thought over an anxious decision, weighing motives, forecasting possibilities. I knew at the time how useless it all was, and that my course would be made clear at the right moment; and I will tell the story of how it was made clear, as testimony to the perfect guidance of the divine hand. I was taking a journey, and the weary process was going on in my mind; every possible argument for and against the step was being reviewed and tested; I could not read, I could not even look abroad upon the world. The train drew up at a dull suburban station, where our tickets were collected. The signal was given, and we started. It was at this moment that the conviction came, and I saw how I must act, with a certainty which I could not gainsay or resist. My reason had anticipated the opposite decision, but I had no longer any doubt or hesitation. The only question was how and when to announce the result; but when I returned home the same evening there was the letter waiting for me which gave the very opportunity I desired; and I have since learnt without surprise that the letter was being penned at the very moment when the conviction came to me.

I have told this experience in detail, because it seems to me to be a very perfect example of the suddenness with which conviction comes. But neither do I grudge the anxious reveries which for many days had preceded that conviction, because through them I learnt something of the inner weakness of my nature. But the true secret of it all is that we ought to live as far as we can in the day, the hour, the minute; to waste no time in anxious forecasting and miserable regrets, but just do what lies before us as faithfully as possible. Gradually, too, one learns that the restricting of what is called religion to certain times of prayer and definite solemnities is the most pitiful of all mistakes; life lived with the intuition that I have indicated is all religion. The most trivial incident has to be interpreted; every word and deed and thought becomes full of a deep significance. One has no longer any anxious sense of duty; one desires no longer either to impress or influence; one aims only at guarding the quality of all one does or says—or rather the very word "aims" is a wrong one; there is no longer any aim or effort, except the effort to feel which way the gentle guiding hand would have us to go; the only sorrow that is possible is when we rather perversely follow our own will and pleasure.

The reason why I desire this book to say its few words to my brothers and sisters of this life, without any intrusion of personality, is that I am so sure of the truth of what I say, that I would not have any one distracted from the principles I have tried to put into words, by being able to compare it with my own weak practice. I am so far from having attained; I have, I know, so many weary leagues to traverse yet, that I would not have my faithless and perverse wanderings known. But the secret waits for all who can throw aside convention and insincerity, who can make the sacrifice with a humble heart, and throw themselves utterly and fearlessly into the hands of God. Societies, organisations, ceremonies, forms, authority, dogma—they are all outside; silently and secretly, in the solitude of one's heart, must the lonely path be found; but the slender track once beneath our feet, all the complicated relations of the world become clear and simple. We have no need to change our path in life, to seek for any human guide, to desire new conditions, because we have the one Guide close to us, closer than friend or brother or lover, and we know that we are set where he would have us to be. Such a belief destroys in a flash all our embarrassment in dealing with others, all our anxieties in dealing with ourselves. In dealing with ourselves we shall only desire to be faithful, fearless and sincere; in dealing with others we shall try to be patient, tender, appreciative, and hopeful. If we have to blame, we shall blame without bitterness, without the outraged sense of personal vanity that brings anger with it. If we can praise, we shall praise with generous prodigality; we shall not think of ourselves as a centre of influence, as radiating example and precept; but we shall know our own failures and difficulties, and shall realise as strongly that others are led likewise, and that each is the Father's peculiar care, as we realise it about ourselves. There will be no thrusting of ourselves to the front, nor an uneasy lingering upon the outskirts of the crowd, because we shall know that our place and our course are defined. We may crave for happiness, but we shall not resent sorrow. The dreariest and saddest day becomes the inevitable, the true setting for our soul; we must drink the draught, and not fear to taste its bitterest savour; it is the Father's cup. That a Christian, in such a mood, can concern himself with what is called the historical basis of the Gospels, is a thought which can only be met by a smile; for there stands the record of perhaps the only life ever lived upon earth that conformed itself, at every moment, in the darkest experiences that life could bring, entirely and utterly to the Divine Will. One who walks in the light that I have spoken of is as inevitably a Christian as he is a human being, and is as true to the spirit of Christ as he is indifferent to the human accretions that have gathered round the august message.

The possession of such a secret involves no retirement from the world, no breaking of ties, no ecclesiastical exercises, no endeavour to penetrate obscure ideas. It is as simple as the sunlight and the air. It involves no protest, no phrase, no renunciation. Its protest will be an unconcerned example, its phrase will be a perfect sincerity of speech, its renunciation will be what it does, not what it abstains from doing. It will go or stay as the inner voice bids it. It will not attempt the impossible nor the novel. Very clearly, from hour to hour, the path will be made plain, the weakness fortified, the sin purged away. It will judge no other life, it will seek no goal; it will sometimes strive and cry, it will sometimes rest; it will move as gently and simply in unison with the one supreme will, as the tide moves beneath the moon, piled in the central deep with all its noises, flooding the mud-stained waterway, where the ships ride together, or creeping softly upon the pale sands of some sequestered bay.



XLII

Until the Evening

I stop sometimes on a landing in an old house, where I often stay, to look at a dusky, faded water-colour that hangs upon the wall. I do not think its technical merit is great, but it somehow has the poetical quality. It represents, or seems to represent, a piece of high open ground, down-land or heath, with a few low bushes growing there, sprawling and wind-brushed; a road crosses the fore-ground, and dips over to the plain beyond, a forest tract full of dark woodland, dappled by open spaces. There is a long faint distant line of hills on the horizon. The time appears to be just after sunset, when the sky is still full of a pale liquid light, before objects have lost their colour, but are just beginning to be tinged with dusk. In the road stands the figure of a man, with his back turned, his hand shading his eyes as he gazes out across the plain. He appears to be a wayfarer, and to be weary but not dispirited. There is a look of serene and sober content about him, how communicated I know not. He would seem to have far to go, but yet to be certainly drawing nearer to his home, which indeed he seems to discern afar off. The picture bears the simple legend, Until the evening.

This design seems always to be charged for me with a beautiful and grave meaning. Just so would I draw near to the end of my pilgrimage, wearied but tranquil, assured of rest and welcome. The freshness and blithe eagerness of the morning are over, the solid hours of sturdy progress are gone, the heat of the day is past, and only the gentle descent among the shadows remains, with cool airs blowing from darkling thickets, laden with woodland scents, and the rich fragrance of rushy dingles. Ere the night falls the wayfarer will push the familiar gate open, and see the lamplit windows of home, with the dark chimneys and gables outlined against the green sky. Those that love him are awaiting him, listening for the footfall to draw near.

Is it not possible to attain this? And yet how often does it seem to be the fate of a human soul to stumble, like one chased and hunted, with dazed and terrified air, and hurried piteous phrase, down the darkening track. Yet one should rather approach God, bearing in careful hands the priceless and precious gift of life, ready to restore it if it be his will. God grant us so to live, in courage and trust, that, when he calls us, we may pass willingly and with a quiet confidence to the gate that opens into tracts unknown!



CONCLUSION

And now I will try if I can in a few words to sum up what the purpose of this little volume has been, these pages torn from my book of life, though I hope that some of my readers may, before now, have discerned it for themselves. The Thread of Gold has two chief qualities. It is bright, and it is strong; it gleams with a still and precious light in the darkness, glowing with the reflected radiance of the little lamp that we carry to guide our feet, and adding to the ray some rich tinge from its own goodly heart; and it is strong too; it cannot easily be broken; it leads a man faithfully through the dim passages of the cave in which he wanders, with the dark earth piled above his head.

The two qualities that we should keep with us in our journey through a world where it seems that so much must be dark, are a certain rich fiery essence, a glowing ardour of spirit, a mind of lofty temper, athirst for all that is noble and beautiful. That first; and to that we must add a certain soberness and sedateness of mood, a smiling tranquillity, a true directness of aim, that should lead us not to form our ideas and opinions too swiftly and too firmly; for then we suffer from an anxious vexation when experience contradicts hope, when things turn out different from what we had desired and supposed. We should deal with life in a generous and high-hearted mood, giving men credit for lofty aims and noble imaginings, and not be cast down if we do not see these purposes blazing and glowing on the surface of things; we should believe that such great motives are there even if we cannot see them; and then we should sustain our lively expectations with a deep and faithful confidence, assured that we are being tenderly and wisely led, and that the things which the Father shows us by the way, if they bewilder, and disappoint, and even terrify us, have yet some great and wonderful meaning, if we can but interpret them rightly. Nay, that the very delaying of these secrets to draw near to our souls, holds within it a strong and temperate virtue for our spirits.

Neither of these great qualities, ardour and tranquillity, can stand alone; if we aim merely at enthusiasm, the fire grows cold, the world grows dreary, and we lapse into a cynical mood of bitterness, as the mortal flame turns low.

Nor must we aim at mere tranquillity; for so we may fall into a mere placid acquiescence, a selfish inaction; our peace must be heartened by eagerness, our zest calmed by serenity. If we follow the fire alone, we become restless and dissatisfied; if we seek only for peace, we become like the patient beasts of the field.

I would wish, though I grow old and grey-haired, a hundred times a day to ask why things are as they are, and to desire that they were otherwise; and again a hundred times a day I would thank God that they are as they are, and praise him for showing me his will rather than my own. For the secret lies in this; that we must not follow our own impulses, and thus grow pettish and self-willed: neither must we float feebly upon the will of God, like a branch that spins in an eddy; rather we must try to put our utmost energy in line with the will of God, hasten with all our might where he calls us, and turn our back as resolutely as we can when he bids us go no further; as an eager dog will intently await his master's choice, as to which of two paths he may desire to take; but the way once indicated, he springs forward, elate and glad, rejoicing with all his might.

He leads me. He leads me; but He has also given me this wild and restless heart, these untamed desires: not that I may follow them and obey them, but that I may patiently discern His will, and do it to the uttermost.

Father, be patient with me, for I yield myself to Thee; Thou hast given me a desirous heart, and I have a thousand times gone astray after vain shadows, and found no abiding joy. I have been weary many times, and sad often; and I have been light of heart and very glad; but my sadness and my weariness, my lightness and my joy have only blessed me, whenever I have shared them with Thee. I have shut myself up in a perverse loneliness, I have closed the door of my heart, miserable that I am, even upon Thee. And Thou hast waited smiling, till I knew that I had no joy apart from Thee. Only uphold me, only enfold me in Thy arms, and I shall be safe; for I know that nothing can divide us, except my own wilful heart; we forget and are forgotten, but Thou alone rememberest; and if I forget Thee, at least I know that Thou forgettest not me.

THE END