AMA, ET FAC QUIDQUID VIS.
“This is the standpoint of Archimedes, from which you may move the
world.”
I look back to the years when my soul was in darkness on account of sin,
the sin, the misery, and the waste which are in the world, the great and
sad problems of life, the prosperity of evil-doers, the innocent
suffering for the guilty, the cruelties, the wrongs inflicted and never
redressed, and the multitudes who seem to be created only to be lost. A
great cloud gathered over me. Anger, fear, dismay filled my heart. I
could see no God, or such as I could see appeared to me an immoral God.
Sin seemed to me the law of the world, and Satan its master. I staggered
on the verge of madness and blasphemy. I asked, “Does not God care? Can
God bear these things? He is silent, the woe deepens, and the question
is still sent up, from generation to generation. Hath God not seen? will
he not help? does he look down from his eternal calm of heaven an
indifferent spectator?” Can it be that the Eternal rests content that
any human beings whom he has created should perish for ever? That men
should destroy themselves in spite of God is a terrible thought, but not
so terrible, not so fatal to hope, to love, and to faith, as the
thought, full of deadly poison, that God cares not—that the heart of him
who redeemed us is cold, when my own is filled with an agony of
compassion. This bitter thought, taking possession of my soul, did not
beget despondency, or lassitude, or indifference, leading me to close my
eyes and fold my hands; but it stirred up the rebel within me. I could
not love God, the God who appeared to my darkened and foolish heart to
consent to so much which seemed to me cruel and unjust, and removable by
an act of his power. I was like one who is leaning over a great gulf,
whence none who fall into it ever return.
“_In my distress I cried unto the Lord, and he heard me._” The pride and
rebellion gave way before deep and heavy sorrow; and then all the sorrow
gathered itself up into one great cry. I asked of the Lord one
thing—that he would take of his own heart and show it to me; that he
would reveal to me his one, his constant attitude towards his lost
world; that as I had shown him my heart, he would show me his heart, so
much of it as a worm of the earth can comprehend and endure, so much of
it as the finite can receive from the Infinite (for to know his love for
the world and his sorrow for the world, as they are, would break any
human heart; I should, in the moment of such a revelation, expire at his
feet; a man cannot so see God and live). Deep calleth unto deep; his own
helpful Spirit, out of the depths of my heart making supplication for me
with groanings unutterable, calling to the deep heart of Christ,
awakened echoes there which called back again to mine. Continuing to
make this one request through day and night, through summer and winter,
with patience and constancy, the God who answers prayer had mercy on me;
he did not deny me my request—that he would show me of his own heart’s
love for sinners, and reveal to me his one, his constant attitude
towards his lost world; and when he makes this revelation, he does more;
he makes the inquiring soul a _partaker_ of his own heart’s love for the
world.
The doubt, the dark misery, growing out of the contemplation of the
sorrows of earth and the apparent waste of souls, are no longer able to
drive me into sullenness and despair; for I have found the door of hope.
I do not say—for I will speak neither more nor less than I have learned
of God—that the perplexity is solved, that the sorrow is gone. Sorrow is
with me still, the enduring companion of my life. I do not pretend to be
able to explain the secrets of God, and the great problems of life, with
any clearness of speech to satisfy another. But I have found the door of
hope. He has the key of all mysteries, and we are then nearest to the
solution of every painful mystery when we have drawn nigh, and heard
from him the secrets of his heart of love.
Now I know, when my heart is strangely stirred by the sight of a vast
multitude in some great city, that my heart’s yearnings over them are
but the faintest shadowings of his heart’s yearnings over them; that my
love, which would embrace them all, is but as a drop of water to the
ocean of his love, which would embrace them all. But in vain! Words are
not found in which to express what it is which Christ may reveal to the
soul which has waited on him in determined love and grief, with this one
request, “Show me thy heart’s love for sinners, and thy one, thy constant
attitude towards thy lost world.” Seek it, friends, and you shall know
how far it solves the sorrowful problems of earth, though you too may
find it to be among the things which it is not possible or lawful for a
man to utter. Where, where in heaven or on earth, if not here, will you
find an answer alike to the great questions of life which vex your
heart, and to the problem of yourself, that single being, so fearfully
and wonderfully made?
“He breathed on them, and said, Receive ye the Holy Ghost.” That Holy
Ghost is the very breath and life of Jesus Christ our Saviour, and when
he breathes it into us, what do we receive? High aspirations towards
God, heavenly thoughts, the power of communion with glorified spirits?
Yes, all these; but yet more abundantly than these, so it appears to me,
do we receive a strong quickening of human sympathies, and such a love
for man as till then we had not conceived of; for the breath which is
breathed into us, the breath of God, is also the breath of Jesus, the
Man of Sorrows, our Brother, our own flesh and blood, the
self-sacrificing, who laid down his life for his friends. “His delights
were with the sons of men,” and it is the same with those to whom he
thus imparts a portion of his own heart, into whom he breathes his own
secret mind and feelings; their delights also are with the sons of men;
their hearts from that moment embrace all men. This is love! the love
which, O my brothers, if you had found, you would not use that sacred
word so lightly and so unworthily. This is the only love, which to
possess is the only salvation for those passionate souls which are the
most easily wrecked and destroyed; for, short of the possession of this
divine passion, such souls are not only not satisfied, but not safe;
without it they are in jeopardy every hour. This is the only passion,
the true, the all-absorbing passion, the Love which is my Lord and King;
not a tyrannical Lord to-day and forsaking me to-morrow, but a Lord who
has bound me His captive for ever. The utmost heights and depths of
human passion, in all its beauty, its power, its sweetness, its
self-abandonment, are to this love as the feeble flicker of a rushlight
compared with the midday sun. Is there a heart on earth so mad for love,
so consumed with the desire of love, so in love with loving, as St
Augustine expresses it, whom this love of loves cannot satisfy, this
love of Christ, in which we become partakers of his own heart’s love for
the whole world,—this love which embraces the universe, deeply tender,
sweetly human, yet divine?
There are souls among us who, living ever in a deep solitude and
isolation in the world, hunger for perfect sympathy and companionship
with some single heart which should beat in harmony with their own,
whose whole being cries out for oneness with the being of another.
This desire of oneness, ofttimes terrible in its distortion, and not
seldom working out its own destruction in the very height of its earthly
consummation, is yet capable of the holiest direction. It is consummated
in the communion of saints, and in the union of the heavenly Bridegroom
and mystic Bride. It forms the keynote of the writings of the Apostle of
Love. Our blessed Lord recognised that deep desire of the heart, born in
man from God: “Holy Father,” he prayed, “keep through thine own name
those whom thou hast given me, ... that they all may be _one_, as thou,
Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be _one_ in us.”
There are other natures which, like complicated musical instruments, are
capable of sending forth alike the sweetest or the most discordant
sounds. Those who are conscious of such a double nature are apt to
consider their own case an exceptional one, as if God had made a mistake
in forming them. They think it easier for all the world to rest in God
and be saved than for them; and perhaps such are somewhat exceptional,
not understood by many. Weak prescriptions are offered to them in good
faith, but which they feel are not sufficient for their cure. That which
is best in them is so closely allied to that which is worst, that the
whole of life must be to them a conflict. The sweet sounds of music, the
loveliness of external nature, the passing by of a beautiful face, are
enough to awaken in them the hunger of soul which indeed is designed to
lead to God, but which, until they have struck the keynote of a new and
deeper life, continually tends to lead them away from God, into
entanglements of earth, and down deeper still, into the intoxication of
sensual delights, which quickly run out the strength, not only of the
immortal soul, but of the finer parts of the earthly nature, and which,
sooner or later, plunge them, if God do not stretch forth his hand to
save, into eternal darkness. To such souls as these I would fain bring
the hope of becoming possessed with the love of which I have spoken,
which, when the heart has once tasted, it cries out to God, “O save me
for ever from the false love, and fill me for ever with the true love!”
Fire which is turned down to earth destroys and is destroyed; but fire
is fire, and may be taught to burn upwards towards its source and
origin. Hope! and do not despair, you fiery-hearted, to whom all life,
if it be not indulgence ending in death, must be pain and conflict, who
must be flung forward from wave to wave upon a stormy sea, and _so_ be
brought to the desired haven. Learn the deeper life of God! Much that is
said to you by men and books must, I know, seem inadequate; but God is
infinite. Is he enough for heaven, and not for _you_? Did he create
hunger and thirst which he is unable to satisfy? Did he make any living
creature whose nature in all its complications he cannot claim and fill?
When he planned the creation and the redemption of man, did he fail to
comprehend in his eternal mind the remotest ages? Was the malady of this
age, or of any age, unforeseen by him, when he provided a remedy which
should reach into eternity? Is he not able to adapt his own infinity to
wants and circumstances which are infinite? Believe that he can save
you, and with such a salvation as shall make you a wonder to men and
angels. Believe that he can use that very fire within you by
subordinating it to holy and powerful uses on earth, and also that it
may be given to such as you to penetrate the deeper secrets of Christ’s
sorrow, and through his baptism of fire to be transformed more
completely into his image.
Until that image is perfected in us, this love of which I speak sends us
back again to earth. The raging demoniac, when the love of Christ took
possession of his breast, dislodging the legion, desired that he might
be with him wherever he went. This is often the cry of the heart when
first deeply pierced with the seraph’s spear. But Christ’s answer was,
“Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath
done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee.” Such an answer I have
always found—“Go home to thy friends.” My friends!—they are not yet the
angels, nor glorified saints, but they are men and women, not only those
who love the Lord, brethren in Christ, but the indifferent, the
hardened, the vile, the reckless, and the profligate. My home!—it is not
yet in the heavens; this accursed, this beloved earth is my home, until
the day when the voice of the Saviour shall be heard above the sound of
earthly weeping, and it shall be said, “The Master is come, and calleth
for thee.”
Think not that in order to become holy lovers of Christ you need to put
away a particle of your humanity; for all that is human in the best
sense will thereby become intensified. Your delights will be with the
sons of men, in a deeper and wider sense than you before knew of; for
love breaks down every barrier, and while it draws a line of peculiar
sanctity around our chosen, private friendships, it dissolves all our
secret antipathies, our sensitive fears, and our antagonism, inspiring
us with the desire to bring to every living soul the sound of this glad
evangel, without exception, and without prejudice. Christ reveals to us
the secrets of his heart, and then it is, and not till then, that he
sends us, with his own seal and commission, back to the world for which
he died, that we also may die for it. It is from the heart of Christ
alone that I venture to speak these words to you. I know nothing except
what I have learned upon my knees before him, and I will speak nothing
except that which I have so learned.
I pray that this message may be, not mine, but God’s message to you.
What though the messenger be but the weakest among you, but a bruised
reed, yet I have thought that perhaps the great Musician, dropping his
mouth to this poor reed, and breathing into it his divine breath, might
be able to send forth from it some tender strain, which, like a melody
learned in infancy, should bring back to the hearts of some weary
stragglers through this wilderness memories of a forgotten love and a
forsaken home.
Take, oh take, my message! It is from God; for it is not in vain that I
have knelt long before him, entreating him to give me somewhat that I
may give to you. God does not mock me. He is faithful and tender. When
his child asks of him bread, he does not give a stone. I know that when
I ask of him to whisper to me a message which I may give to my friends
who sin, or suffer, or wait for the day, he does not send me a strong
delusion that I should believe a lie; but he gives me the thing I ask.
“Every good and every perfect gift cometh down from above, from the
Father of Lights, in whom is no variableness, nor shadow of turning.”
And what gift is so good, so perfect, as this of love?
The love which is bestowed on you is in proportion, not to the
worthiness of the person loved, but to the power of loving and necessity
for loving of the lover. There is a void in the eternal heart of God
until he has found you, and you him. It is not your heart alone which is
unsatisfied, and your happiness which is incomplete, until you have
found Christ. The Saviour’s travail of soul is not yet fully rewarded,
nor his bliss consummated, nor his infinite heart at rest, until he has
found you; and therefore, for the disciple who has drunk deeply of his
cup, and been made a partaker of his heart’s love for his lost world,
though he should be filled with “joy unspeakable and full of glory,”
yea, with “all the fulness of God,” yet for that disciple there is no
rest—no rest on earth, except the rest of unceasing travail of soul for
those who are Christ’s but not Christ’s, beloved but not loving,
redeemed but not gathered in.
The love which I offer you is indeed the love of God. I have a
commission from him, through long waiting upon him, to tell you of his
love for you—you, whomsoever you are, whose eyes shall meet these words.
To you I speak singly, face to face, as it were, calling you by your
name, “O man greatly beloved!” Yes! you are greatly beloved. If still
wandering far from God, you are yet so greatly beloved of him, that he
leaves his saved ones, and goes forth afar seeking his strayed sheep,
desiring with great desire the time when he shall lay you on his
shoulders rejoicing. If you are turning towards the light, however
feebly—
“An infant crying in the night,
An infant crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry,”
you are of him greatly, tenderly beloved. Gaze on through the darkness!
Hope against hope! Believe against despair! Turn neither to the right
hand nor to the left! Patiently hold on, with bleeding feet, over the
sharp stones, accepting every cross, your back to the darkness, your
face to the sunrise! You are not alone. His hand is upon you. His right
hand embraces you. He will never leave you nor forsake you, but will
guide and cherish you, “until the day break, and the shadows flee away!”
When the “windows of heaven” are opened, then will the “fountains of the
great deep” be broken up. When our God shall pour upon the waiting earth
the abundance of his promised Spirit from on high, then will the
“nations of the earth mourn before him;” then will the great deep of the
heart of man tremble and awake, as when “the Spirit of God moved upon
the face of the waters,” and chaos gave place to light. The gifts of
repentance and of a fruitful sorrow will be showered from on high; the
fountains of holy tears will be unlocked for those who have never yet
wept, and the “spirit of grace and of supplications” will possess those
who have never yet prayed.
Even now the spirit of prophecy is abroad among us. There are
unconscious prophets, who, in uttering their own experience, are but
telling out the whole world’s needs, and whose hope of a better future
is but the heart’s echo of that which God hath promised. A deep disgust
and weariness of the wickedness of the world begins to be felt. In many
a soul, which as yet is a stranger to true contrition, there is at least
an anxiety for a better and holier condition. There exists ofttimes,
even under experience of private and personal injury, a sentiment which
is something more than mere resentment; it is a sense of injustice, and
connected with it, as the mind becomes calmed and the thoughts more
diffused, a melancholy impression of the lost moral balance of the whole
world, and a corresponding yearning for abodes where righteousness shall
be a principle of universal action. From many a heart is arising the
cry, “Who will show us any good? Lord, lift thou up the light of thy
countenance upon us!”
And there are also among us prophets whose quickened faith is already
the very “substance of things hoped for.” Already there are anointed
eyes which see from afar the Redeemer’s kingdom advancing; already there
are opened ears which are able to catch some strains of the last great
harvest-hymn, and the sounds of the joyful tread of home-going feet.
Long and cold have been the hours of sowing in tears; but through the
bitter cold of the hour before the dawn a million eyes are gazing
forward, and a million tongues are asking, “Watchman, what of the
night?” and the answer will not long delay—“The morning cometh;” “The
night is far spent, the day is at hand.”
The holy rebellion proclaimed aloud in our day, the revolted cry of
womanhood against her enslavement to the licentiousness of man, and
against the falsehoods by which the greatest of social evils is
maintained, has more than anything in our memory, more perhaps than any
event in the history of Christendom, awakened echoes from all parts of
the earth, shaken the ancient strongholds of privileged licentiousness,
and called out of its guilty slumber the conscience of the Churches.
That revolted cry is the herald of a sifting season. The fan is in the
hand of the winnower, and he will throughly purge his floor. Throughout
Europe there is a sound of the restless shaking of long-worn chains. The
heart and mind of the nations are never stirred, as now, to their
foundations, without manifold good fruits. “Whatever happens in the
world has its sign which precedes it. When the sun is about to rise, the
horizon assumes an infinite gradation of colours, and the east seems on
fire. When the tempest is coming, a hollow sound is heard on the shore,
and the waves heave as if stirred by some strange impulse. The
innumerable and diversified thoughts which conflict and mingle on the
horizon of the spiritual world, are the sign announcing the rising of
the Sun of Righteousness. The confused murmur and the internal commotion
of peoples aroused are the heralding sign of the tempest destined soon
to pass over the trembling nations. Hold yourselves ready, for the time
approaches.”[12] Yes, a time of tempest approaches; for the dawn will
not be ushered in calmly, shedding a sweet, unbroken light over a placid
ocean and a peaceful earth. There is every sign around us of a
preparation for a stern and bitter conflict. There will be an increasing
opposition of antagonistic principles, an accelerated movement of the
forces both of good and of evil. The bright rays of the Sun of Justice
will draw out from the darkness of human nature its most poisonous and
fetid exhalations—lust, pride, cruelty, revenge, and hate. Can one, it
may be asked, who believes in the all-puissance of Love, anticipate and
prophesy the increase of implacable cruelty and hate? Yes! You shudder
at such a prophecy, perhaps; but experience will witness to its truth;
for there is an influence whose operation in man is somewhat analogous
in its _power_ to the influence of divine grace. The hatred of some men
for that which opposes them in their cruelty, greed, and lust, is
something beyond mere human passion. As the saints through divine help
are raised to heroic degrees of love, and are enabled to perform actions
which in the course of nature would be above their strength, so the
haters of purity appear to imbibe an energy and bitterness of soul over
and above the capacities of their own base and hardened nature, and in
their opposition to holiness seem to have a power working within them,
“tempering all their passions to a far more perfect state of hatred than
could be effected by the most sublimated rankness of mere flesh and
blood. The nearer the hater approaches to the altar, the more intense is
his hatred. The nearer he comes to infinite purity, goodness, nobleness,
love, the more does his base and craven nature boil and seethe in its
presence.” This is not a hatred engendered by reason or intelligence,
but is the bitterness of human passion, acted upon and endowed with a
supernatural power and activity, by the inward possession and impulsion
of the great spiritual enemy of God and man, the power of darkness, the
“Accuser” and “Destroyer.” Deeper and deeper instincts of cruelty are
created; horrors hitherto unimaginable are perpetrated. Man becomes
himself the maddened agent of a relentless cruelty against which the
collective conscience of mankind nevertheless continually protests and
revolts. We see even now the beginning of this abnormal development of
the most hideous instincts and propensities in man; we see it in the now
revealed horrors of the scientific laboratory, and in the unnameable
atrocities practised by man on his fellow-creatures, embittering and
deepening the groaning and travailing in pain alike of the animal
creation and of the whole human family. We see the beginning only, not
the end, or nearly the end, of the horrors which are yet to be revealed.
It would appear as if the powers of evil were about to combine, at the
hour before the dawn, for one last gigantic effort to turn God’s dear
earth into hell; and there are men who, making common cause with the
powers of darkness, will, with the rays of the approaching Sun of
Righteousness flashing full in their faces, choose the darkness, and
proclaiming aloud, “Evil, be thou my good!” will form their own dark and
miserable destiny in the full glare of that dawning day.
It is no proclamation of peace, then, that heralds the dawning of the
new day, but rather a proclamation of a consecrated rebellion against
the rule of materialism and sensuality—that materialism which, creeping
into the intelligences of men, has smouldered, scorching and charring
the last remains of faith, until sensuality has set on fire that which
has been so fully prepared for bursting into flame, resulting in a
conflagration more desolating and destructive to the nations of the
earth than the fire and sword of material extirpation. We are in times
of battle. Apathy or indifference in such a conflict as this means
destruction; to be remiss is to be wounded; to stay the fight is to die.
In war waged by flesh and blood mercy may intervene, and life be spared;
but principles know not the name of mercy. We are rebels for God’s Law.
“Let us go forward then, even though we do it at the risk of being torn
in pieces by the very men through whose changed hearts our purpose will
one day be accomplished.”[13] For God can change hearts. We will
evermore remember this; and while love will be the enduring bond of all
who shall now combine with resistless force to labour for the new day,
we shall not depart from charity even towards our adversaries, even
towards those of whose bitterest hatred we have spoken. Our warfare is
not against men, but against all which has deceived, misled, and cursed
society; lying dogmas, dark principles, and wicked institutions. The
utmost force of love shall be tried when all other forces have been
exhausted; and then, by God’s grace, shall we not hope to see multitudes
of repentant ones deserting the lines of the enemy and coming over to
us, declaring, “We will go _with you_, for the Lord is with you?” Shall
we not see the hostile cohorts melting away like mist before the full
light of the glad morning, and recognise our foemen of the night to be
our “brothers at the break of day?” “Then shall the mountains bring
peace to the people, and the little hills righteousness.” The groaning
and travailing earth shall be released from her bondage, and the rod of
the oppressor shall be broken! Fetters shall no longer be wrought out of
the intelligence and civilisation of one zone to entrap the unwary
simplicity and enslave the generations of another. The light of day will
fall upon all the dark places of the earth, now full of the habitations
of cruelty, and there shall come forth, at the call of the Deliverer,
the thousands and tens of thousands of the daughters of men now enslaved
in all lands to cruelty and lust. There will be then no more hollow
virtues, no more specious and splendid crimes. None shall ever again
rejoice at another’s expense, or hold advantages bought by the blood and
tears of his fellow; but “rising in inherent majesty, the Redeemer’s
kingdom will strengthen and extend, wide as the limits of nature’s
boundary, far as sin has diffused its poison;” and in the plenitude of
his power, when all nations shall serve him, the highest achievement of
the blessed Saviour, the Desire of all nations, will be, that “he
delivereth the needy when he crieth, the poor also, and him that hath no
helper.”
VENI, DOMINE JESU!
ENDNOTES
Footnote 1:
Manning.
Footnote 2:
St Catherine of Genoa.
Footnote 3:
Archbishop Leighton.
Footnote 4:
M. Aimé Humbert.
Footnote 5:
Sir James Mackintosh.
Footnote 6:
Francis Newman.
Footnote 7:
Extract from the first Manifesto of the “Social Purity Alliance,”
1873.
Footnote 8:
The Gaol Cradle.
Footnote 9:
The facts were verified.
Footnote 10:
These words, “Tu mangerai col lavoro delle tue mani,” Rosa caused to
be engraved over the portal of every house of industry which she
founded.
Footnote 11:
From the original Manifesto of the “Social Purity Alliance,” 1873.
Footnote 12:
Lamennais, Paroles d’un Croyant.
Footnote 13:
John Stuart Mill.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
● Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
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chapter.
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