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.