But how shall Man ever attain to understand and find his proper
place in this Universe, this great sweeping harmonious circle of
which nevertheless he feels himself to be the diminutive focus?
His senses are absurdly imperfect. His ear cannot catch any music
the spheres make; and moreover there are probably neither spheres
nor music. His eye is so dull an instrument that (as Blanco
White's famous sonnet reminds us) he can neither see this world
in the dark, nor glimpse any of the scores of others until it
falls dark:
If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life?
Yet the Universal Harmony is meaningless and nothing to man save
in so far as _he_ apprehends it: and lacking him (so far as he
knows) it utterly lacks the compliment of an audience. Is all the
great orchestra designed for nothing but to please its Conductor?
Yes, if you choose: but no, as I think. And here my other
quotation:
That all spirit is mutually attractive, as all matter is
mutually attractive, is an ultimate fact.... Spirit to spirit--
as in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man.
Yes and, all spirit being mutually attractive, far more than
this! I preach to you that, through help of eyes that are dim, of
ears that are dull, by instinct of something yet undefined--call
it soul--it wants no less a name--Man has a native impulse and
attraction and yearning to merge himself in that harmony and be
one with it: a spirit of adoption (as St Paul says) whereby we
cry _Abba, Father!_
And because ye are Sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of
His Son into your hearts, crying _Abba, Father._
That is to say, we know we have something within us correspondent
to the harmony, and (I make bold to say) unless we have deadened
it with low desires, worthy to join in it. Even in his common
daily life Man is for ever seeking after harmony, in avoidance of
chaos: he cultivates habits by the clock, he forms committees,
governments, hierarchies, laws, constitutions, by which (as he
hopes) a system of society will work in tune. But these are
childish imitations, underplay on the great motive:
The Kingdom of God is within you.
Quid aliud est anima quam Deus in corpore humano hospitans?
V
Gentlemen, you may be thinking that I have brought you a long way
round, that the hour is wearing late, and that we are yet far
from the prey we first hunted on the line of common-sense. But be
patient for a minute or two, for almost we have our hand on the
animal.
If the Kingdom of God, or anything correspondent to it, be within
us, even in such specks of dust as we separately are, why that,
and that only, can be the light by which you or I may hope to
read the Universal: that, and that only, deserves the name of
'_What Is_.' Nay, I can convince you in a moment. Let me recall a
passage of Emerson quoted by me on the morning I first had the
honour to address an audience in Cambridge:
It is remarkable (says he) that involuntarily we always read
as superior beings. Universal history, the poets, the
romancers, do not in their stateliest pictures ... anywhere
make us feel that we intrude, that this is for better men; but
rather is it true that in their grandest strokes we feel most
at home. All that Shakespeare says of the king, yonder slip of
a boy that reads in the corner feels to be true of himself.
It is remarkable, as Emerson says; and yet, as we now
see, quite simple. A learned man may patronise a less learned
one: but the Kingdom of God cannot patronise the Kingdom
of God, the larger the smaller. There _are_ large and small.
Between these two mysteries of a harmonious universe and
the inward soul are granted to live among us certain men
whose minds and souls throw out filaments more delicate
than ours, vibrating to far messages which they bring home,
to report them to us; and these men we call prophets, poets,
masters, great artists, and when they write it, we call their
report literature. But it is by the spark in us that we read it:
and not all the fire of God that was in Shakespeare can dare
to patronise the little spark in me. If it did, I can see--with
Blake--the angelic host
throw down their spears
And water heaven with their tears.