weakness. But along with that discovery comes the realisation of an
inexhaustible fund of strength outside ourselves. We are fighting on
the winning side. God must be stronger than all that opposes. It is
uphill work, especially at first. But just as in learning a language
or learning how to swim, after toiling on with no apparent result,
there comes a day when suddenly we realise that we can do it--how we
know not: so it is in spiritual matters. There is effort still,
sometimes gruesome effort; but it is all different from what it was.
We find the meaning of the paradox, 'Whose service is perfect freedom.'
Love takes the place of law, and, although it is hard at times to serve
God, it is still harder to be the permanent servant of Satan.
Your enthusiasm ought to increase, the more you look life in the face
and see its sin and misery. 'God,' said Moody, 'can do nothing with a
man who has ceased to hope.' Our hope in the possibilities of the
individual and of society ought to grow brighter and saner as time goes
on. . . . Missionary work--I have often wished to do it myself, but
have been 'let hitherto.' . . . It is a tremendous help to me to know
that we are both serving the same Master and that I can trust you to
His love.
{149}
_To an Auckland 'brother' after Bishop Westcott's Death._
Cambridge: August 1901.
My thoughts are with you at this time. I am most thankful that you
have been a year with that man of God, and have gained ideals and
inspiration for work which will haunt you all your life long. In
moments of weakness, at times 'when your light is low,' the memory of
his strenuous, holy life will be a power making for self-discipline and
righteousness. And it is more than a memory. For he taught us by word
and deed that we are all one man, that those who have realised what it
is to belong to the body here will enter more fully into its life
there. 'We feebly struggle, they in glory shine'--yet we are verily
and indeed one. That thought is often a comfort to me. When I feel
the contradictions and perplexities and weaknesses of my own life, I
love to think that I am part of a whole--that I belong to the same body
and share in the same spirit as some other man who is immeasurably my
superior.
When one whom we have known and venerated on earth passes to the
eternal home, it seems more like home than it was before. It is
peopled not only with countless saints of whom I have heard, but with
one whom I have known and seen, and hope to see again. His prayers for
us, his influence upon us there are more effective than they could have
been here.
The great triumph of Christianity is to produce a few saints. They
raise our ideal of humanity. They {150} make us restless and
discontented with our own lives, as long as they are lived on a lower
plane. They speak to us in language more eloquent than words: 'Come up
higher.'
_To F. J. C._
_Belvedere Hotel, St. Moritz: Sunday, December 15, 1901._
I feel more and more thankful that I have not had to wait till the next
world to know God's true nature and character and will. It is passing
strange that He should love us so much, and wish to unveil Himself to
us, 'that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures.' But
that phrase 'stewards of His mysteries' almost appals me. A steward
must be faithful, and must render an account of the way in which he has
used his master's goods. God grant that at the final reckoning we may
not be found unprofitable servants.
How those simple words in the twenty-third Psalm satisfy us more and
more as life advances, and as we realise that He is not our Shepherd
only, but the chief Shepherd of the whole flock, and that He has yet
other sheep whom He is looking for, and whom He will teach to hear His
voice amid the babel tongues of the world. It is a comfort to me to
feel that He has no private blessings for me apart from the rest of the
family--that we are one in Him, and that each blessing unites us not
only to the Head of the family, but to all the brothers within it.
I suppose at first it is hard to realise the unseen world for long
together. But gradually that world {151} dominates our being, and
interprets the world we see, and makes all life intelligible and well
worth the living.
_To H. J. B._
Hotel Belvedere, St. Moritz: December 16, 1901.
I feel a new man now in this fresh mountain air. If I always lived
here I might be good for something. What a parable of life! If we
could live in the higher world and breathe in its air, what strong,
healthy men we should be! I stayed a night once with Westcott, and it
seemed to me that he lived and moved and had his being in a higher
region, to which I now and then came as a stranger, and he could see
habitually, what I sometimes saw, the way of God in human life. I am
sure we are meant to have our home in that higher world, and that we
only see life sanely, steadily, and in its true proportions, when we
view it from that vantage ground. I have always been thankful that I
spent that night with Westcott, and thereby gained, not simply fresh
inspiration, but a radically new revelation of human life and its
possibilities. It gave me an insight into the dignity and the destiny
of our common human nature.
You have never been long absent from my thoughts, and at last I have
had time and strength to begin to pray for you as I could wish. It is
the only way in which I can show my gratitude to you. I don't
understand much about prayer, but I think of that strange, bold parable
of the unrighteous judge and the widow, and I take my stand on that. I
shall {152} not be content until your true self is formed; and I think
that God must be very ready to answer the prayer, however imperfect its
form may be, of one who loves another more than he can understand. I
like St Paul's words: _teknia mou ous odino mechris ou morphothe
Christos en humin_. Only I wish I were not such a worm myself.
However, the thought of you compels me to live a better life. If I
could only make all my thoughts of you into prayers and actions for you
I should be more content.
[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrase in the above paragraph was
transliterated as follows: _teknia_--tau, epsilon, kappa, nu, iota,
alpha; _mou_--mu, omicron, upsilon; _ous_--omicron, upsilon, final
sigma; _odino_--omega, delta, iota, nu, omega; _mechris_--mu, epsilon,
chi, rho, iota, final sigma; _ou_--omicron, upsilon; _morphothe_--mu,
omicron, rho, phi, omega, theta, eta; _Christos_--Chi, rho, iota,
sigma, tau, omicron, final sigma; _en_--epsilon, nu; _humin_--(rough
breathing mark) upsilon, mu, iota, nu]
Don't imitate Uriah Heep with 'Yours most humbly.' I won't stand that
nonsense! and you give yourself away just a few lines above, when you
assert that you are too proud to confer a favour on me, and read Greek
Testament with me. What a funny chap you are! Can't you see, you
idiot, what a pleasure you give me? We shall have to compromise, and
I'll have to make some concession to your pride. Neither ---- nor I
know much about your section, but we could help you in your first part
papers. Of course, he could do it miles better than I can; but, all
the same, you are going to be my pupil. Promise me that you won't make
any arrangement with him until you have talked the matter over with me.
I'll make some compromise for the sake of your miserable pride, you
wretched creature.
Write to me soon again, if it isn't a great bore. I can't recall as
much as I could wish of your conversations with me. In fact, I have
the unpleasant feeling sometimes that I did too much of the talking!
But one or two things that you said to me live in {153} my memory, and
make me wish to be more fit to talk to you.
St. Moritz is much as usual. It is a strange little world in itself.
The comic and the tragic are blended weirdly together, and nature is
unimaginably beautiful. I wish you could see this snow. It has an
attraction for me, and I am sure it would have for you. I think you
understand more about the meaning of beauty than I do. When I see a
magnificent landscape, I want to share the sight with some one else. I
feel quite lonely when I am interpreting it alone. I wonder why that
is?
_To F. J. C._
Hotel Belvedere, St. Moritz: December 21, 1901.
Christmas seems to mean more to me, the longer that I live. I gaze
with bewilderment on that stupendous mystery of love--the very God
entering into and raising our human nature. My whole conception of the
meaning, the possibilities of our common human nature is transformed,
as I see that it can become a perfect reflection and manifestation of
the Divine nature. 'The Word became flesh, and lodged _in us_.' The
manger at Bethlehem reverses all our human conceptions of dignity and
greatness. 'The folly of God is wiser than men.' It is to the
humble--to babes--that God can reveal Himself. In them He can find His
home.
O Father, touch the East and light
The light that shone when Hope was born.
It is in Christmas that Tennyson found the birth of {154} Hope. It is
Christmas that, as life goes on, bids us never despair--of our own or
of human nature around us.
_To a friend at Cambridge._
Hotel Belvedere, St. Moritz: December 30, 1901.
I shall never forget this last Christmas Day, for your letter came in
the evening. I read it again and again, and wonder at it more each
time I read it. I can't tell you what I feel about it. I knew that
you more or less liked and respected me, but I didn't know that you
loved me. I've got what I wanted. When you merely respected me, I
dreaded the day when you would find that I was different to what you
thought I was. But now I feel I am safe _phobos ouk estin en te
agape_, however imperfect you find me. I know now that I can trust you
not to throw me off. And love is not extreme to mark what is amiss,
_hoti agape kaluptei plethos amartion_. I can't thank you for your
kindness, but I thank God for giving me the most precious gift in the
world, a human soul 'to love and be loved by for ever.' As I look at
your letter I feel a mere worm, and my one wonder is how on earth a man
like you can call me your friend. I can't thank you; but I'll do my
best to live up to the standard you expect of me, and to be a true
friend to you. And my idea of friendship is, as you know, prayer. I
can't, worse luck, do much for you, but I do pray for you, and
'whatever ye ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.' It has been
truly said that the _how_, the _where_, and the _when_ are not told us,
but only the {155} _what_. And I am quite certain that every prayer I
offer for you is heard and answered, when I believe what I say; but the
manner, the place, and the occasion of the answer--of these things I
know nothing. I am sure that God loves to see us happy, and the pure
joy of the knowledge that such a man as you loves me is almost more
than I can bear. It throws a new light on life here, and on that
fuller life to which God is leading us hereafter; like you, thank God,
I cannot complain of lack of friends, but I have never had one who has
written me such a letter, full of an affection for which I crave. The
worst is, I can't repay your kindness. You bring me nearer to God, you
make me realise in the strangest way His affection, you make me feel
the worth and mystery of a human soul. I wish I could return your help
somehow or other. Do show me the way. I wish you did not find it so
difficult to pray for me. I am sure you are right in going back to
such a man as St. Paul for subjects of prayer. The opening chapters of
his letters to the Ephesians and Colossians give the kinds of requests
which it is worth making on behalf of any one. There is surely no harm
in finding that, as you pray for another, your own faith is growing.
There is nothing selfish in that. It is rather the result of the law
_didote kai dothesetai humin_.
[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrases in the above paragraph were
transliterated as follows: _phobos_--phi, omicron, beta, omicron, final
sigma; _ouk_--omicron, upsilon, kappa; _estin_--epsilon, sigma, tau,
iota, nu; _en_--epsilon, nu; _te_--tau, eta; _agape_--alpha, gamma,
alpha, pi, eta; _hoti_--(rough breathing mark) omicron, tau, iota;
_agape_--alpha, gamma, alpha, pi, eta; _kaluptei_--kappa, alpha,
lambda, upsilon, pi, tau, epsilon, iota; _plethos_--pi, lambda, eta,
theta, omicron, final sigma; _amartion_--alpha, mu, alpha, rho, tau,
iota, omega, nu; _didote_--delta, iota, delta, omicron, tau, epsilon;
_kai_--kappa, alpha, iota; _dothesetai_--delta, omicron, theta, eta,
sigma, eta, tai, alpha, iota; _humin_--(rough breathing mark) upsilon,
mu, iota, nu]
Your faith can only grow with exercise, and you exercise it by praying
for others. You would only be selfish if you prayed for some one else
_in order that_ your own soul might be benefited.
But don't think too much of selfishness. Bring {156} all your half
selfish desires to Him who knows us through and through; and in His
presence, almost unconsciously, your motives will gradually be
purified. You will learn to walk in the light as He Himself is in the
light. As I look back on this letter, a large part of it seems
selfish. I expect much is; but, even in the selfish parts, there is
something more besides. I can only just say what I feel, and ask God
gradually to eliminate what is wrong. In His light I shall see light.
Life is large, and I am fearful lest, in attempting a rough and ready
asceticism, I should exclude as wrong some elements which are in
reality God-given. I feel that in the case of our affections and our
longing for beauty. They are implanted in us, and tended and watered
by One who is perfect Love and perfect Beauty. They easily lead us
into sin, but that fact does not imply that they are wrong in
themselves. We have to bring them to their source that He may
interpret them, 'Too late have I sought thee,' said Augustine, 'thou
Beauty, so ancient and so new, too late have I sought thee.' I cannot
understand the mystery of your life, dearest, but I feel that all that
craving for beauty is in some kind of way a craving for God. Only God
demands the first place in your life before He will give you any
satisfying interpretation of that aspect of His life. You must love
Him for what He is--not simply because He is Beauty.
I slept and dreamed that life was Beauty,
I woke and found that life is Duty.
{157}
They are not really contradictory conceptions. Nay, Duty has a
spiritual beauty of her own. But sometimes they seem for a moment
divergent, and then you must at all costs choose the latter, and you
will find that
The topmost crags of Duty scaled,
Are close upon that shining tableland
To which God Himself is shield and sun.
And, if I am not mistaken, that land will be utterly full of an
absolutely satisfying beauty.
But I feel that I scarcely yet understand anything about the meaning of
Beauty. All I can do is to relate it immediately to God. If I see
beautiful scenery, I am usually thinking of God and thanking Him. If I
see human beauty, I feel that I am on holy ground, and I always try to
pray for a face that attracts me. I feel that I have a duty in return
for the revelation that has been given. But, as you see, I can explain
but little. These are merely rules of practical life which we very
imperfectly carry out. I cannot explain the relation of physical and
spiritual beauty in human beings. I feel, of course, that there ought
to be, there very often is, some such relation. But sometimes there is
something utterly wrong, and apparently no such connective. The
connection, I take it, is more perfect in nature; but in man, why,
something has occurred, something anomalous, which mars the whole. Sin
has come in somewhere, I suppose.
I can't express on paper what I feel, or give you any real conception
of what you are to me. You {158} would be startled if you knew. God
bless you, and work out in you, not my miserable ideal of what I think
you ought to be, but His own ideal, which exceeds all our thoughts and
imagination, of what you are to be.
_To G. J. C._
Christ's College: 1901.
. . . I was never so pleased to hear of any engagement as of yours. I
thank God with all my heart. I cannot put my joy into words, but
somehow or other it seems to bring me nearer to the source of all joy.
I feel more than ever that He cares for us and is educating us, and I
feel that He has been so good to you, because He loves you. The older
I grow the more I am impressed by His infinite sympathy and concern for
us. And when He gives us not only love but a return of love, it seems
to me that He is giving us the very best thing that He has--a part, as
it were, of Himself. 'The merciful and gracious Lord hath so done His
marvellous works, that they ought to be had in remembrance.'
I cannot tell you how glad I am. But I thank God in my prayers for
you; and I am sure that if He has been so good to you in the past, He
will not forget you in the future.
_To the same when he had just accepted a mastership at Eton._
Brislington, Bristol: 1901.
. . . . How good of you to write and tell me of your future
work! . . . The responsibility of such a {159} life is to my mind
almost overwhelming. 'Who is sufficient for these things? Our
sufficiency is of God.'
I am thankful that the offer came as it did--unsought by you. You will
feel happier in accepting it. 'Infinite sympathy is needed for the
infinite pathos of human life'--more especially of a boy's life. The
first, second, third, requisite for a master is, in my judgment,
sympathy. As I look back on my own school days, I cannot help feeling
that most of my masters were either lacking in it or else strangely
incapable of manifesting it in a form which I could understand.
Sympathy with the dull, unpromising boy is a divine gift, and I trust
that Holy Orders will confer upon you this grace also. I thank God
that you are taking orders, and finding your work in teaching. Forgive
this lecture from one who has no right to speak, and who is himself
strangely deficient in sympathy.
_To D. B. K._
Eastbourne: September 1901.
I am glad that you have been home. I feel that home is a revelation--a
means whereby the Eternal Father shows us Himself and His purposes, a
strengthening and refreshing of our tired souls. . . . I have prayed
earnestly for you that your faith and love may not fail. I feel
intensely the same difficulty as you, and I am only slowly learning to
overcome it. I do not think we can learn to love people who are
altogether different from us in many respects, all at once. I love
some men with a strange, unsatisfied affection. All my thoughts about
them I am {160} gradually learning to resolve into prayers for them,
and I want to live longer that I may pray for them more.
Well, it seems to me that God gives us this affection that we may learn
to do to others as we would do to these. I cannot pretend to care for
many with whom I come into contact as much as I do for the few. But I
can pray for them, and the feeling will more or less come in time.
Just try to pray for some one person committed to your charge--say for
half an hour or an hour--and you will begin really to love him. As you
lay his life before God, as you think of his needs and hopes, and
failings and possibilities, as you pray earnestly for him as you would
for some one whom you feel intense affection for; at the end of the
time you will feel more interested in him, you will think of him not as
one of a class but as a separate, mysterious person. You will not, it
may be, have time to pray for many in this way, but you will learn
imperceptibly to extend your sympathy--to feel real love for many more.
I advise you to keep a record of these prayers. It is quite worth your
while to take practically a day off sometimes, and to force yourself to
pray. It will be the best day's work you have ever done in your life.
Remember that!
Don't be troubled by comparing yourself with other clergymen. I think
you are like me--not ecclesiastically minded. I don't have the sort of
feelings which a large number of persons have about their work and
their preaching. I can't put the difference into words, yet I feel it.
But I must serve God in my own way, and I am sure that He will use me
to do the work for which I am best fitted. And the {161} same is true
of you. Try to refer all your actions to His standard; and test your
work in His presence; and don't ask what So-and-so thinks of it.
I very much wish you had some gentlemen to associate with besides
parsons. You must keep up as much as possible with your college
friends; and use every opportunity which reasonably presents itself of
seeing some 'society.' God knows what is best for you at present.
God nothing does or suffers to be done
But thou wouldest do thyself, couldest thou but see
The end of all events as well as He.
I am sure that He will not forget you. He knows what is best for your
development. It may be that He takes you away from friends that you
may learn to pray for them more and to see Him more clearly.
I think you will influence many men whom a more ordinary parson would
not touch. . . . I am quite certain that if you have infinite
hope--hope against hope--you will be a tremendous power in the place
where God has put you.
Get as much exercise as you can, and always get a clear day off in the
week, and don't give up any of your old interests. Don't always read
'religious' literature. . . . When the long day is done and we stand
before the judgment seat, I believe that many will rise up and call you
blessed. Only pray for individuals--for a long time together. To
influence, you must love; to love, you must pray.
{162}
_To one about to be ordained._
Eastbourne: September 1901.
I shall indeed remember you on Sunday next. The words of the lesson come
home to me to-day--_kai eireken moi Arkei soi he chariu mou; he gar
dunamis en astheneia teleitai_.
We are poor creatures, but there is Grace--and we can come into contact
with it--and that is all we need. We may have failed in the past, but
Christ offers a new childlike life and endless hope.
I am glad to think that you will be returning to your difficult post at
Cambridge. I am sure that you will return to it with fresh humility and
courage--_en pleromati eulogias Christou_.
[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrases in the above paragraphs were
transliterated as follows: _kai_--kappa, alpha, iota; _eireken_--epsilon,
iota, rho, eta, kappa, epsilon, nu; _moi_--mu, omicron, iota;
_Arkei_--Alpha, rho, kappa, epsilon, iota; _soi_--sigma, omicron, iota;
_he_--(rough breating mark) eta; _chariu_--chi, alpha, rho, iota, final
sigma; _mou_--mu, omicron, upsilon; _he_--(rough breathing mark) eta;
_gar_--gamma, alpha, rho; _dunamis_--delta, upsilon; nu, alpha, mu, iota,
final sigma; _en_--epsilon, nu; _astheneia_--alpha, sigma, theta,
epsilon, nu, epsilon, iota, alpha; _teleitai_--tau, epsilon, lambda,
epsilon, iota, tau, alpha, iota; _en_--_en_--epsilon, nu;
_pleromati_--pi, lambda, eta, rho, omega, mu, alpha, tau, iota;
_eulogias_--epsilon, upsilon, lambda, omicron, gamma, iota alpha, final
sigma; _Christou_--Chi, rho, iota, sigma, tau, omicron, upsilon]
_To W. D. H._
St. Moritz: January 4, 1902.
I hope that you are now less overworked than you were in October. You
must at all costs make quiet time. Give up work, if need be. Your
influence finally depends upon your own first-hand knowledge of the
unseen world, and on your experience of prayer. Love and sympathy and
tact and insight are born of prayer. I am glad you have a Junior Clergy
S. P. G. Association. Try to take an intelligent interest in it, and
mind you read a paper before long.
_To his brother Edward in South Africa._
Hotel Belvedere, St. Moritz: January 7, 1902.
I am glad to think that we are now in many respects agreed about the
general question of the {163} war. I suppose in any great historical
upheaval there are at the time a number of people who are attempting to
make capital for themselves out of the misfortunes of others; there are
many who are working for their own hand; and yet, when we look back on
the crisis and judge it as a whole in the calm light of history, we see
that a large and rational purpose has been worked out. At the time of
the English Reformation--as some one was saying to me lately, pointing
the parallel which I am working out--there must have been a number of
honest and pure souls who held aloof from the whole of what appeared to
be political jobbery and fortune-making at the expense of religious
sentiment. Yet now most of us feel that the movement could not have had
the effects that it had, unless down below all there was a strong
upheaval of the national conscience. You will no doubt see many defects
in this historical parallel; but the thought is at any rate suggestive,
and full of what we require in these latter days--hope. Of course I feel
that injustice, dishonesty, cruelty, selfishness are in no way palliated
because they take cover and occasion in a real movement of national
feeling.
I feel for you much in your work for examinations. It must come very
hard with ill health and in a hot climate, with the freshness of youth to
some extent passed. But
O well for him whose will is strong,
He suffers, but he shall not suffer long;
He suffers, but he cannot suffer wrong
{164} It needs more courage than you were required to show on the field
of battle. But the reward is sure. I feel strongly that this life is
but the prelude to a larger life, when each faculty will have its full
exercise.
Ah yet, when all is thought and said,
The heart still overrules the head;
Still what we hope we must believe,
And what is given us receive;
Must still believe, for still we hope,
That in a world of larger scope,
What here is faithfully begun
Will be completed, not undone.
These words come from dough--the soul of honesty.
_To H. J. B._
Derwent Hill, Ebchester, Durham: April 14, 1902.
It seems to me a truism to say that we ought to look at life in the light
of eternity. Only then does the true significance of the meanest action
in life appear. Life is redeemed from triviality and vulgarity. So far
from worldly possessions losing their value, and ordinary occupations
appearing insignificant, their importance is realised as never before.
If man does not live for ever, his character and actions seem of
comparative unimportance. If he does live for ever, it is rational for
him to look at each action in the light of that larger life which he
inherits. If something like class distinctions are eternal, it is an
inducement so to use your distinctive privileges here in a worthy manner,
that hereafter you may use them for nobler ends.
{165}
I have expressed myself badly, but you will see what I want to say. My
relations to you surely become not less, but more important, when I
realise that I am only beginning to know and love you here. The eternal
element in them--the knowledge that there is throughout an implicit
reference to a Third and Unseen Person in all that I say to you or think
of you--fills me with a sense of awe, and makes the relations more real
because more spiritual.
_To the mother of his godchild, Margaret Forbes._
July 6, 1902.
I cannot tell you what a pleasure it was to see my godchild. . . . I
feel she has a strength of purpose and a desire to know the truth which
will fit her for high service in God's kingdom on earth. I pray for her,
and I shall do so in the future with fuller understanding and with great
hope. What God hath begun He will assuredly bring to perfection. I hope
that some day she will learn to pray for Uncle Forbes. I should value
her prayers. It is good to feel that in the midst of your weary time of
weakness God has given you such a child as a pledge of His affection for
you, as an assurance that He believes in you. To give you a little child
to train for Himself is a proof that He trusts you very much. I do not
know that He could have given a greater proof of His confidence in you.
And it is God's implicit trust in us that draws out our trust in turn.
We trust and love Him, because He first trusted and loved us. I wonder
more and more at the way in which He trusts us. To allow us to suffer
without {166} telling us the reason, when He knows that we shall be
inclined to think harshly of Him--that is, perhaps, the greatest proof
that He believes in us. He can try our faith and perfect it by
long-continued trial, because He knows that we shall respond, that we
shall prove 'worthy to suffer.'
_To H. J. B._
Christ's College, Cambridge: August 26, 1902.
The worst of seeing you for some time is that I feel it all the more
impossible to live without you. I realise now as never before that you
are out and away before me, and better than I am; and yet I feel that you
are part and parcel of my life. You mustn't be too hard on me if I can't
come up to your ideal.
Intellectually the Hebrew and Greek ideals may be irreconcilable. Yet
'life is larger than logic;' and practically we may become heirs of both
ideals. The man who loses the world, who gives up all without any desire
for gain, is often given the whole back again transfigured, glorified by
sacrifice. To get you must forget. If you love God absolutely with all
your being, you inherit the life that is as well as that which is to
come. If all is not given you, yet enough is given for the development
of character. But there must, it seems to me, be an absolute
sacrifice--a surrender of your whole being--whatever the result may be.
There must be no calculation.
High Heaven rejects the lore
Of nicely calculated less and more.
{167}
You must love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind:
you must trust Him to do the best by you. You say the Hebrew ideal does
not appeal to you. But I know better; for you half like me, and I am a
Hebrew of the Hebrews! There must be a dash of recklessness about the
man who gains the other world. 'All or nothing' is the requirement of
the kingdom of Heaven. To gain yourself you must throw yourself
away--'lose your soul.' You must have faith. 'He who loves makes his
own the grandeur that he loves' is a sentence of Emerson which consoles
me when I think of my love for you.
_To a friend at Cambridge._
40 Upperton Gardens, Eastbourne: September 8, 1902.
I have been thinking of you. I keep myself from becoming morbid by
making most of my thoughts into prayers for you. The
glory--wonder--strangeness of being loved by a man from another and a
better world fills me with gratitude to God. Sometimes it seems a dream,
and I half dread that I shall wake up and find that you have ceased to
care for a worthless creature. But _phobos ouk estin en te agape, all he
teleia agape exo ballei ton phobon_. I need not fear. I know that you
will love me, whatever happens.
[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrases in the above paragraph were
transliterated as follows: _phobos_--phi, omicron, beta, omicron, final
sigma; _ouk_--omicron, upsilon, kappa; _estin_--epsilon, sigma, tau,
iota, nu; _en_--epsilon, nu; _te_--tau, eta; _agape_--alpha, gamma,
alpha, pi, eta; _all_--alpha, lambda, lambda; _he_--(rough breathing
mark) eta; _teleia_--tau, epsilon, lambda, epsilon, iota, alpha;
_agape_--alpha, gamma, alpha, pi, eta; _exo_--epsilon, xi, omega;
_ballei_--beta, alpha, lambda, lambda, epsilon, iota; _ton_--tau,
omicron, nu; _phobon_--phi, omicron, beta, omicron, nu]
I want you to be one of the best men that ever lived--to see God and to
reveal Him to men. This is the burden of my prayers. My whole being
goes out in passionate entreaty to God that He will give me what I ask.
I am sure He will, for the request {168} is after His own heart. I do
not pray that you may 'succeed in life' or 'get on' in the world. I
seldom even pray that you may love me better, or that I may see you
oftener in this or any other world--much as I crave for this. But I ask,
I implore, that Christ may be formed in you, that you may be made not in
a likeness suggested by my imagination, but in the image of God--that you
may realise, not mine, but His ideal, however much that ideal may
bewilder me, however little I may fail to recognise it when it is
created. I hate the thought that out of love for me you should accept my
presentation--my feeble idea--of the Christ. I want God to reveal His
Son in you independently of me--to give you a first-hand knowledge of Him
whom I am only beginning to see. Sometimes more selfish thoughts will
intrude, but this represents the main current of my prayers; and if the
ideal is to be won from heaven by importunity, by ceaseless begging, I
think I shall get it for you. But it grieves me to think that I can do
nothing else for you. To receive so many favours from you, and to be
incapable of doing more in return--this is what saddens me. I feel an
ungrateful brute. You have brought new joy, hope, power into my life,
and I want to show my gratitude. You would be doing me a real kindness
if you would tell me how I could show it.
Don't think by what I have said that I simply care--as an 'Evangelical'
would say--for your 'soul.' Every part of your being--everything you do
or say--all that you are--has a strange fascination for me. Only I feel
that the whole of it is a revelation of {169} God; and I want that
revelation to be clearer, truer, simpler. I am sure God does not only
care for our souls. It is every part of our complicated being--all sides
of our manifold life--that attracts Him. He loves our home life, our
affection for the dear old Mother Earth which He made, our interest in
the men and women whom He formed in His own image. He longs that all
those interests should be developed--that we should live genuine, sane
human lives. But true development here or elsewhere--the law of
existence in heaven or on earth--is life through death. 'Verily, verily,
I say unto you, Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it
abideth by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit.' You must
give up all. As I think of you, those words keep ringing in my ears: 'If
any one cometh to Me, and hateth not his own father and mother, yea, and
his own self also, he cannot be My disciple.'
I cannot tell you what they mean. You must find them out for yourself.
If I were a true disciple of Christ, you could see what they mean by
looking at me. But I am not. You must learn their meaning for yourself.
Your mother's life will speak louder than words of mine. Only I know
they are true. Christ will recreate the world, recreate the home, human
beings, dear Mother Earth; but He cannot do so until you have been
willing to give up all--until He has caused you to be 'born again.' When
the ruler asked how these things could be, Christ could only repeat His
words. The man must work it out for himself.
But I am sure that he that willeth to do the will {170} shall know
whether the teaching be true. There are no doubt some mere intellectual
obscurities in the ideal which I might make simpler if I were not such a
duffer. But finally a paradox would be left--a paradox which can only be
solved by living the ideal out, and finding it work. It is the pathos of
our love, of God's love for us, that each man, however much he is loved,
must work out the ideal for himself. No man can save his brother's soul.
I do not like to weaken the paradoxes of the Gospel. I think there is
more in Christ's words concerning 'loving one's life' or 'self' than you
suggest. You say it means 'self-denial.' Yes, that is true, but what a
tremendous meaning 'deny one's self' has! To disown your identity, that
is not much easier when you come to think of it than to lose your life.
I know you will find out what it all means, and that human love, beauty,
home, social service, will be more real than ever before, because you
will see the eternal reality underneath. You will be a 'new creation.'
Now I must stop without satisfactorily answering your question, without
entering into any casuistical questions concerning conformity such as you
suggest. I should like you to think out that problem in casuistry more
for yourself, before I attempt to answer it. Forgive me for talking so
much about myself. When all is said and done, words fail me. I can only
thank God that you exist, and that you let me love you.
{171}
_To H. P., a Clifton College master who had given up school work in order
to devote himself to the School Mission in Bristol._
40 Upperton Gardens, Eastbourne: September 30, 1902.
. . . I am glad that you feel you have done right in giving up your
school work. I am sorry that you left Clifton, but you thought you
_ought_ to go, and that is an end of the matter. I can only hope that
you are in some measure a connecting-link between the school and its
mission. . . . Don't forget me in my very different work--and yet work
for the same Master--at college. I have need of your prayers. It is so
easy to blunder, and to drive a man further from the kingdom by lack of
sympathy and love. I feel more than I used to my weakness, and my
absolute need of prayer.
_To his brother Edward in South Africa._
40 Upperton Gardens, Eastbourne: October 1, 1902.
The October term has an interest of its own, bringing, as it does, a
batch of freshmen. I try more and more not simply to impose my ideals
upon them, but to find out their ideals and to quicken them with all my
power. But assuredly 'infinite sympathy is needed for the infinite
pathos of human life;' and my sympathies are as yet imperfectly developed.
Still, as years go by, I think I can sympathise more with those who have
been trained up in other schools of thought and experience. I was
reading in a book lately that we are largely responsible for our {172}
own experiences, that we have a duty to get them of the right kind. The
book was by an American lady on social questions. I think there is truth
in her words.
_To D. B. K., head of a Public School Mission._
Eastbourne: October 1902.
I delight to know men better, because I find so much more in them than I
had expected. They differ from me, and I try to get out of the habit of
making them in my own image, and try to find the image in which God is
making them. I have been praying for you. I want a spirit of sanity and
sacrifice to possess you, that you may be able to see the good works
which God has prepared beforehand that you should walk in them. . . .
I am struck by the sacrifice which Christ demands. Unless the man hates
father, mother, family, friends, yea, and himself also, he 'cannot be'
His disciple, Christ gives them all back again--only 'with persecutions.'
We find more in the world, when we are 'crucified to it,' than ever
before; but there is a something added. We have a deeper joy in home
ties, in human love, in social life, in the changing seasons, in the dear
old earth. Only the joy has a note of sorrow, a pathos, which Christ
calls 'persecutions.' We see more in life, and yet we are in a measure
out of sympathy with our surroundings. We have heard and we can never
forget the sorrows of those who are 'one man' with us. There is more in
that word 'persecutions' than this, as no doubt {173} you have found.
But this, I think, is part of its signification, isn't it? . . .
I believe in your 'mission' even more than you do. It is men like you,
who through great tribulations strive to enter the Kingdom, that God
uses. The fact that you are two men, and that the true man--the
Christ--is painfully yet surely being 'formed' in you, means that you
will be able to appeal to others who are painfully conscious of their
double consciousness and are often the slaves of the lower, inhuman self.
Your wealth of affection will make you feel as St. Paul did--_teknia mou,
ous palin mechris ou morphothe Christos en humin_.
[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrases in the above paragraph were
transliterated as follows: _teknia_--tau, epsilon, kappa, nu, iota,
alpha; _mou_--mu, omicron, upsilon; _ous_--omicron, upsilon, final sigma;
_palin_--pi, alpha, lambda, iota, nu; _mechris_--mu, epsilon, ch, rho,
iota, final sigma; _ou_--omicron, upsilon; _morphothe_--mu, omicron, rho,
phi, omega, theta, eta; _Christos_--Chi, rho, iota, sigma, tau, omicron,
final sigma; _en_--epsilon, nu; _humin_--(rough breathing mark) upsilon,
mu, iota, nu]
These words sum up for me, better than any others, my deepest wish for my
friends. I fall back with desperate energy upon prayer, as the one power
by which my wish can be realised.
You seem to look ahead almost more than is necessary. I delight in the
feeling that I am in eternity, that I can serve God now fully and
effectively, that the next piece of the road will come in sight when I am
ready to walk on it 'I do not ask to see the distant scene.' I hate the
unsettled feeling that I have not yet begun my main work.
Don't measure work by human standards of greatness. Your present
occupation might well be the envy of angels--if they could envy.
But now I am lecturing. So it is time to shut up. . . .
I fear that the origin of evil is more of a mystery to me now than when I
wrote that essay! But I still think that we are fighting a real being,
one whom {174} we can best describe as personal. His will, it seems to
me, must be given to him by God. He has identified it with a hitherto
unrealised potentiality for disobedience. In plain language, his will is
free, and therefore capable of resisting God. I should like to have a
talk with you some day about it. But, as you see, the problem is beyond
me. . . .
It is a strength to me to feel that you are fighting the devil in
yourself and others up in ----, and that I am 'one man' with you.
_To D. B. K._
St. Moritz: January 1903.
It is getting on for your birthday, isn't it? Congratulations. I wish I
knew the exact day. I think more and more that a birthday is a subject
not--as poor Job thought--for anathemas, but for congratulations. To be
a reasonable human being--with capacity for seeing something of God's
purposes for the race--with power to forward them--with opportunities for
love and sacrifice and prayer--oh! I am so glad that I was not a mere
animal. And to be born at the end of the nineteenth century--I prefer
that period even to Apostolic times. We can know more of God's purposes,
enter more deeply into His mind and even His heart, than primitive
Christians.
I have been reading to-day Temple's essay on 'The Education of the World'
in 'Essays and Reviews.' Get hold of an old copy of that book, and read
it. It is strong and manly, and rings true. I {175} love that old man
with his tenderness, simplicity, thoughtfulness, and will of steel. I
thank God for him. There is something about utter goodness which makes
me worship, and fills me with the challenge, 'Go and do thou likewise.'
Goodness is as infectious as any disease.
I have been thinking lately of the self-sacrifice of God's life. I
suppose that is the reason why He can enter into our lives--see them from
the inside.
Thou canst conceive our highest and our lowest,
Pulses of nobleness and aches of shame.
It must have been the wealth of His self-sacrifice which made Him give us
selves--wills--of our own. Then He makes them His own by more
self-sacrifice. We are made in His image--made to go out of self, and
find our self by losing it. Other men at first seem to limit our
freedom, but later we find that the apparent limitations are only just
scope for realising our true self. Each time we go out of self, and
enter into another 'ego,' we return the richer for our sacrifice. We
take up other lives into our own, and are richer than a millionaire.
I think that when the other 'ego' is most unlike our own--when at first
sight the man is repulsive, and (worse still) uninteresting to us--when
the sacrifice is great, if we would see life through his eyes, share his
ambitions, fears, longings, and mental outlook, then is the time when we
are peculiarly rewarded for our pains. Our consciousness is larger, more
human, more divine than before.
'By feeblest agents doth our God fulfil His {176} righteous will' is the
thought suggested by some of our brother-clergy. God does not choose the
agents we should choose. Or perhaps the latter do not respond to His
choice. Yet I feel that I am one of them, and that it is my faults writ
large which I detest in them. I feel that, with all the riches of the
revelation which I possess, I have that same self-satisfaction and lack
of sympathy which I loathe in others. It is my life which is the
stumbling-block to my message. They have often far less light than I
have, but walk in it more simply than I do. The rafter in my own eye
troubles me even more than the speck in theirs. But it is hard, God
knows, sometimes to feel His presence in their presence. But the forces
of good must be united ('Keep, ah! keep them combined. Else . . .'), and
if by any effort we can enter into their lives, and transcend the
barriers between us, we are not only enriching our own life, but we are
doing our best to show a combined front against the almost overwhelming
forces of evil.
Even the Apostles must have found it hard to work together. We know they
did. Look at Peter and Paul. Yet the spirit of unity was stronger than
all that opposed Him, and the One Body was in some measure realised.
What was difficult in the childhood of the Body is still more difficult
in its manhood. And Englishmen, with their strong sense of
individuality, find it a terrible lesson to learn.
But pray. You enter then into another man's 'ego.' You see him in God.
You see him as an end in himself. Remember Kant's maxim--a wonderful
maxim from one who would not, I suppose, be {177} technically called a
Christian--'Treat humanity, whether in thyself or in another, always as
an end, not simply as a means.' Put aside a certain amount of time, and
pray for one man. If your thoughts wander, do not be disturbed, do not
try to find when they began or how they began to wander; do not despair,
go back to the subject in hand. And God will have mercy. Your
influence, your life, your all, depends on prayer.
We must faint sometimes. But let your saddest times, your deepest
struggles be known to God. Gain there the strength and quietness which
you need for life. But don't let men see the agony--let them see the
peace which comes from wrestling alone with God--wrestling for them.
You are not one man, but two or three. Thank God for that. It means
that you will have a hard life--an awful struggle with self or selves:
but it also means more influence, more power to enter into man's life.
So many of the finest men owe their attractiveness to their diverse,
many-sided nature. You will be able to feel for such, and perhaps to
help them. You are half a Greek with your yearning for beauty and
knowledge, half a Hebrew with your loathing for sin and love of God. The
Greek in you must not be annihilated, but it must be subordinated to the
Hebrew. Conscience must be absolute master. You must sacrifice the
'Greek' to Christ; but He will give you back what is best in the Greek
ideal, all the better for the mark of the Cross on it. He will give it
you back partly in this world, partly in the next, when you have learnt
to renounce it--if need {178} were, for ever--for His sake. But you must
give up all for Him without thought of reward. He can give no reward to
the man who is looking for it. The thought of your life helps me. Go
on, for the night cometh when no man can work. Thank God it is yet day.
_To his brother Edward in South Africa._
Mühlen, Switzerland: January 11, 1903.
I found walking a pleasant change after reading philosophy, which I have
been doing during my holidays. I seem to have been getting my ideas a
little clearer, and am no longer as content as I was with the Kantian
doctrine, that our knowledge in speculative matters never gets beyond
'appearances.' I feel that at every turn we do get to that which
_is_--to an underlying reality. I cannot feel that Kant's hard and fast
division between 'speculative' and 'moral' reason holds good. The
external world, because it is intelligible, must be akin to us; there
must be an intelligence in it, otherwise it would never become an object
of knowledge to our intelligence. It is not only in our ethical life
that we come across the absolute consciousness. I feel now more than
ever how we cannot divide up ourselves into water-tight compartments, and
think of reason, will, and feeling as separate things, lying side by
side. They can be separated--abstracted--in thought, but in actual life
you never find one without the other. We cannot think without some
degree of attention, and attention involves an exercise of will, and will
cannot {179} be exercised without desire, and desire involves feeling.
I think faith also cannot be regarded as a separate faculty. Reason,
will, and feeling are all involved even in the faith of a poor cottager;
much more does reason enter into the faith of a thoughtful man.
I have been reading Butler, and hope when I go back to study Hume. What
a wealth of light the conception of 'Development' has shed upon the
problems which exercised the eighteenth century! I have read half
through Leslie Stephen's 'Thought in the Eighteenth Century,' and I have
been struck again and again at the new aspect that the old questions take
when looked at from the standpoint of Evolution.
I feel also that we need to study more the evolution of _thought_--the
necessary phases that reason (like man's physical life) must pass through
before perfection. . . .
I think you are right, that education must now include instruction in
imperial ideas--in our relations with that larger social life which is
dawning upon us--a step towards a still larger social life to be realised
in the brotherhood of nations.
_To F. J. C._
Christ's College, Cambridge: February 1, 1903.
I am slow to suggest to another man that what seems bad luck is in
reality the voice of God making itself felt in his busy life, calling him
to fuller sacrifice. But I am sure that we are right when we interpret
it {180} thus for ourselves. I share your wish for 'some really strong
man' to come as a prophet and read the writing on the wall, and tell us
'what it all means.' Yet the absence of human help is not accidental.
It must be designed, in order that we may learn to fall back on the
everlasting arms--to find by experience that the unseen is more real than
the seen.
There is an arm that never tires
When human strength gives way.
I like that phrase, 'worthy to suffer.' It is to those whom God loves
best and most that He gives--as He gave to His Son--the chance of
suffering. Sympathy, strength, reality--these are some of its fruits for
those who allow them to grow. 'He cannot be My disciple.' I can't help
sometimes thinking of these words. Unless the man is prepared to make
sacrifice the basis of his life, he _cannot_ be Christ's disciple. I
don't think we always realise the 'trans-valuation of values' found in
Christ's teaching. 'Blessed are the poor--the hungry. He that would
save his life shall lose it. He that loseth, saveth. He that would be
greatest shall be least. It is more blessed to give than to receive.'
As I think over such statements as these, I find that I have again and
again to revise, as it were, my moral arithmetic--to change my standards,
to revise my ideas of great and little, happiness and misery, importance
and insignificance.
I am sure that nothing but the highest will satisfy you. God has given
you singular powers of influence and of attracting others. He will
demand an account {181} of those powers. You know Matthew Arnold's lines
on his father. I believe the day will come when men will say like words
of you.
But thou would'st not _alone_
Be saved, my father! alone
Conquer and come to thy goal,
Leaving the rest in the wild. . . .
Therefore to thee it was given
Many to save with thyself.
That is what I want you to be--a tower of strength--strength perfected,
it may be, in weakness--weakness forcing you to despair of self, and find
the Rock of Ages. You have been so much to me, and helped me so often,
that I feel you must be born to help others as well. And this quiet
time, it may be that God is using it to call you closer to Himself, to
teach you to revise your 'values,' to show you a new fund of strength.
Our wills are ours, we know not how,
Our wills are ours, to make them Thine.
You must--literally must--let His will overpower your will. Nothing but
complete sacrifice will satisfy you or Him, and I believe in you
profoundly. I am sure that, whatever be the ghastly struggle, you will
go through with it, and find your strength in Him. I pray for you.
_To his mother._
Cambridge; March 15, 1903.
The term is almost over . . . I am enjoying a quiet Sunday. What a
blessing these Sundays are {182} to us--a foretaste of a fuller life of
service and worship hereafter! I have been thinking lately with comfort
of the quiet perpetual work of the Holy Spirit, silently but surely
leading us on to higher things--comforting, correcting, guiding. It
gives ground for hope in dealing with men, this knowledge that there is
One who perfects what we feebly struggle to begin, who watches over men
with a love that will not let them go. We are not alone in our work; we
have omnipotence and illimitable wisdom on our side, forwarding our
efforts. When I consider what the Spirit has accomplished in my own
life, I have large hope for others. The argument from personal
experience is singularly convincing. 'The fellowship of the Holy
Ghost'--it is He who unites men and interprets them one to the other. It
is He who gives spirit and life to our words.
_To H. J. B._
Bexley House, Cromer: March 31, 1903.
It was good of you to send me that card from Florence. You don't know
how glad it made me. To know that you were thinking of me was a strength
to me. Your love for me comes as a perpetual surprise and inspiration.
I feel a brute compared with you, but the knowledge that you care for me
more than you do for most men makes me feel that I must try to be good.
'In Italy of the fifteenth century renaissance we see in strange
confusion all that we love in art, and all that we loathe in man!' Greek
history was short compared {183} with the Hebrew: I suppose because
intellectual and artistic ideals are more easily realised than ethical
and religious. It takes time to make a saint. It is part of the
discipline of life to find the two sets of ideas apparently antagonistic.
There is a higher unity in which they are blended--in God Himself. It
must be right to follow the dictates of conscience when it bids us lose
our soul if we would gain it. We cannot trust God too much. If we
forget our self, He will see that our truest self is ultimately realised.
I can't express myself well, for I have just finished a spell of hard
work. I have sent away my tripos papers to-night. I am going up to
Edinburgh on Friday or Saturday. I fear I shall not see you until April
21. Will you tell Armitage that I will, if convenient to him, sleep at
Westminster that night instead of going straight to Cambridge? The
hopelessness of ever showing my gratitude to you or of ever making you
realise how much I love you oppresses me. I don't know what I should do
if I had not One Higher than I am to confide in--if I could not leave you
in His hands--if I could not gain strength and life for you by appealing
to Him.
O brother, if my faith is vain,
If hopes like these betray,
Pray for me, that I too may gain
The sure and safer way.
And Thou, O God, by whom are seen
Thy creatures as they be,
Forgive me if too close I lean
My human heart on Thee!
{184} I lean closer and closer as life goes on. I feel that our hope
lies in despair--despair of self. The vessels which contain the treasure
are, as to-night's lesson says, earthen, 'that the excess of the power
may be God's and not from us.' And there is a power, there is a life
working in us. It is the quiet, sane, constant work of the Spirit in and
upon our spirit, that never hastes and never tires: which gives me
comfort for you, for myself, for all of us. The same life that is at
work in the hedge across the road is in us, only in us it attains full
self-consciousness and freedom. We can deliberately use it or refuse it.
Forgive the length of the letter. But I felt so tired that I thought it
would do me good to write to you, selfish brute that I am.
I expect you enjoyed your time in Italy immensely. I should have liked
to be with you. I wonder if ever we shall be there together? Some day
we shall be in a world where the barriers of space are broken down:
'There shall be no more sea.' Yet it seems to me that we have not
altogether to wait for that other world. They are half broken down
already; and if we had faith as a grain of mustard seed, we should
realise the meaning of a unity deeper than any special or temporal bond.
If we fail to realise its meaning now, shall we realise it then? Is not
life here a training for life hereafter? If we learn nothing in this
school, we shall not be able to take our places in that school of
'broader love.' The best part in me does not complain. I thank God for
His thoughtful goodness in bringing you near to me. I thank Him for the
mystery of life, which enables me to realise that {185} Power 'which
lives not in the light alone, But in the darkness and the light.' I
become more and more inclined to thank Him as I see Him more clearly.
_To F. S. H. on his accepting the post of chaplain at the Royal Naval
College, Osborne._
Cambridge: April 30, 1903.
I am satisfied with your decision. I thought over the matter, but I
could not see my way quite clearly to say anything more definite, so I
did not write again. Don't think that my silence was due to slackness.
I did what I thought was better than writing. I spent an hour in praying
over the matter. Now that the matter is settled I can tell you what a
keen pleasure it is to me to have my dear old ---- near me in England,[1]
and doing a piece of work which is full of hope and joy. I would not say
this before, because I did not wish to influence your decision by private
considerations. Get some quiet time for prayer before September 1, that
when you go to Osborne you may go _en pleromati eulogias Christou_
('filled full with the blessing of Christ'). I feel increasingly the
need of such times to learn to walk by faith without stumbling, and to
accustom myself to the atmosphere of faith, to see things as they appear
to a man who has faith 'as a grain of mustard seed.'
[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrases in the above paragraph were
transliterated as follows: _en_--epsilon, nu; _pleromati_--pi, lambda,
eta, rho, omega, mu, alpha, tau, iota; _eulogias_--epsilon, upsilon,
lambda, omicron, gamma, iota, alpha, final sigma; _Christou_--Chi, rho,
iota, sigma, tau, omicron, upsilon]
Westcott records a visit (see 'Life,' i. 249) to his old schoolmaster,
Bishop Prince Lee. '"People quote various words of the Lord," said the
Bishop, "as containing the sum of the Gospel--the Lord's Prayer, {186}
the Sermon on the Mount, and the like; to me the essence of the Gospel is
in simpler and shorter terms: _me phobou, monon pisteue_.[2] Ah!
Westcott, mark that _monon_," and his eyes were filled with tears as he
spoke.' Ah! S----, mark that _monon_! . . . God bless you in your new
work and make you a blessing to others as you have been to me.
[1] He had been offered work in South Africa.
[2] 'Be not afraid, only believe.'
[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrases in the above paragraph were
transliterated as follows: _me_--mu, eta; _phobou_--phi, omicron, beta,
omicron, upsilon; _monon_--mu, omicron, nu, omicron, nu; _pisteue_--pi,
iota, sigma, tau, epsilon, upsilon, epsilon]
_To J. K._
_St. Thomas's Home, St. Thomas's Hospital: August 28, 1903._
. . . I am most grateful for your kind words, though I know full well
how little it is that I have done for you. We clergymen so often seem to
be working in the dark. There are no clear results to show, as _e.g._ a
doctor can comfort himself with, when he has visibly cured a patient.
And I for one am too easily inclined to despair, and to wonder whether
the work is not in vain. But 'trust is truer than our fears.' Yet it
does me good when I feel I have done anything, however tiny, for a man.
After all, results are best left in God's hand. He gives us enough to
help us the next step onward, but not enough to exalt us, and to make us
think we can do anything without His assistance. Work 'in the Lord'
cannot be in vain.
I am glad you have been reading Bishop Westcott's life. He was a man of
God, and his life is an inspiration, and a prophecy of what our life
may--nay, some day--will be. . . . I like that passage {187} when he
goes to see his old schoolmaster, Bishop Prince Lee, who tells him with
tears in his eyes that to his mind the whole Gospel message is summed up
in the words '_me phobou, monon pisteue_.'
[Transcriber's note: see the previous letter for transliteration notes on
the above Greek phrase.]
_To a friend who had been an international athlete._
St. Thomas's Home: September 5, 1903.
We had a fairly good 'Long' in spite of the miserable weather.
Congratulate me. I won my first athletic distinction last 'Long'--a
ten-shilling prize. I am thinking of chucking work and becoming a
professional. It was a second prize in a tennis tournament. I had (I
must own) the best player in College as my partner. I want to get a very
conspicuous object as prize. What do you suggest?
_To C. T. W._
St. Thomas's Hospital: September 1903.
I am getting on first-rate, and I hope to be up early next week. I
believe you are right. We should do well if we had more regularity and
self-discipline in our life at Cambridge, and we should have more power
over others. Pray for me. . . .
You needn't pity me. I am having a very good time. It is jolly to do
nothing, and not even to have to dress and undress--both exhausting and
monotonous occupations. It has been a glorious day, and although it is
almost 7 P.M., I am still out on the balcony enjoying the cool breezes.
{188}
_To W. O._
Alassio; December 1903.
Death has come near to my family lately. I told you that my sister--the
Deaconess--had passed away from us.[1] It is not all sorrow, when we
know that the life has been spent in walking with God, when we know that
this corruptible puts on incorruption, and that what is sown in intense
bodily weakness is raised in strength--eternal strength.
I am so glad that God has given to you His highest blessing. I long to
meet your future wife. It makes me very happy to think of the happiness
in store for you--to know that you are in the best of all schools. I
thank God. Love will bring you both nearer to the source of Love. . . .
This new blessing, as you say, is 'the gathering up of the best that God
gives.' I can't express my thoughts as I would, but I am very, very
glad. . . .
Illness teaches one many lessons. I trust I have learned some. I have
been amazed at the goodness of my friends!
[1] His sister, Deaconess Cecilia, 'passed away' at the Deanery,
Westminster, on September 8.
_To W. P., an officer in the Army._
Hotel Salisbury, Alassio, Italy: December 21, 1903.
I don't think things happen by chance. Indeed I am sure they do not. I
have never felt so humbled to the earth. One sees one's life as a whole,
when one is helpless and can do nothing, and the whole looks very poor
and mean. It is like the {189} judgment-day--only with this grand
exception, that life is not yet over, that the night has not yet come in
which 'no man can work,' that you have still a chance to make the future
better, more honest, more noble than the past. Then, again, I learnt the
utter and wonderful kindness of my friends. I felt so selfish and so
surprised at the goodness they showed me. Again, I saw something of the
mystery of pain. My own was so trivial compared with that which some
others had to bear. Yet I had enough to startle me that such a fact
should be permitted on earth at all. I don't suppose we can understand
its meaning; but my consolation was that it is not necessarily a sign of
God's displeasure--that the highest life was a life of suffering, that
the Son of Man was a 'Man of Sorrows.' Everything seems to me to depend
upon the way in which one takes the pain--if one voluntarily says, 'Thy
kingdom come, Thy will be done,' then one is entering into the highest
life, and the pain becomes a new method of serving and knowing God. But
physical pain, if prolonged, is a terrible thing; and there is no time on
a bed of sickness for praying or thinking much of God unless one is
accustomed to do so in health. The needs of the poor body press in upon
one. Death-bed repentances are realities, but I am inclined to think
that they are very rare. It is terribly dangerous to defer being good
until we are ill. Illness does not necessarily make us good.
I am afraid I was but a poor coward, and yet my faith did not utterly
fail. God is the one hope for a man who is ill, and He is true to His
word. He {190} hides His face behind the clouds; but even when I
couldn't see Him at all, I felt that He was there. Pray for me; at
present I feel too weak to pray much for myself. I want--I do want--to
be a better man, to help others nearer the kingdom. I want, when life is
over, to have a better record to look back upon than I had in hospital.
_To F. S. H._
Alassio, Italy; January 2, 1904.
Your letter came to me at a time when I was rather low. I had to have a
second operation. However, after fifteen weeks of Nursing Homes I
escaped, and, as soon as I could, made my way to St. Moritz. For once
the place didn't seem to suit me very well. So, after little more than a
week, I came down into Italy. I am so far recovered now that I quite
hope to be able to go back to college at the beginning of this term.
Illness and pain have taught me some lessons--at least I hope so. I feel
solemnised, startled, when I think of how life looked when I could do
nothing for the time. Pray for me that I may be more real. I learnt,
too, how futile it is to put off repentance till sickness. It is hard at
such a time to think of aught save self and physical pain. And my own
pain was so trivial compared with that of others. O God! it is a
terrible thing. Some day shall we be able to understand, if not with the
head, with the heart, part of its meaning? Meanwhile the individual can
say, however feebly, 'Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done.'
{191}
_To his brother, a doctor in South Africa._
Alassio, Italy: January 7, 1904.
At last I am beginning to get tired of doing nothing. I hope that
eventually I shall be stronger than I have been for some years past. At
any rate I hope a little first-hand experience of pain will make me more
sympathetic. Pain seems to me now a greater mystery than ever before.
But I comforted myself with the thought that in the highest Life ever
seen on earth, there was a full measure of spiritual, mental, and
physical pain. Also it was a comfort to feel that when one accepted, not
simply with resignation but with faith, certain suffering, one was in
sympathy with the will of the universe, 'working together with God' in
some mysterious way. What a strange place a hospital is! How wonderful
the Gospels are, with their hope and comfort on every page--hope for the
physical as well as the mental side of man's life! I like more than ever
now to read how Jesus went about healing all manner of diseases and all
manner of sickness and bringing life and strength wherever He came,
showing us that Heaven is on our side in our wrestle with all that
deforms and degrades human nature.
I certainly don't regret my illness. Besides showing me the marvellous
kindness of friends, it has, I hope, taught me much.
{193}
APPENDIX
The following letter addressed to the Editor of this volume was
received from the Rev. H. Bisseker, chaplain at the Leys School,
Cambridge, too late for insertion in an earlier portion of the book:
'Your brother's friendship, as you must have heard so often during the
past few months, was valued in Cambridge beyond that of most men, and I
am probably only one of many who still look to that friendship as among
the prominent facts of their time up here. Though personally I did not
learn to know Mr. Robinson when I first came up, his brotherliness so
deeply impressed me during the four years for which our friendship
lasted, that I still find it difficult to believe that he is no longer
to be found in the familiar rooms at Christ's, and has ceased to be a
part of our Cambridge life. And yet, in another sense, he has not
ceased to be a part of that life; for one feels that during his
residence up here he managed, if one may so express it, to put a bit of
himself into more than one man, and that in this way he will continue
to live among us long after he himself has been removed.
{194} 'I have often thought about him and his quiet, strong influence
since we heard that we had lost him, and almost invariably the same
three of his characteristics assume the uppermost place in my thought.
Different sides of his nature would appeal to different men: I can best
serve your purpose by mentioning those which made the deepest
impression on my own mind.
'One of the chief causes of your brother's influence was unquestionably
_his sense of the value of the individual_. He used to take men one by
one and make a separate study of each. The consequence was that he
_knew_ his men. On any given visit the acquaintance did not, as it
were, have to be begun over again. On the contrary, the acquaintance
once formed, some common ground already existed; for so great was your
brother's power of sympathy that, where at the first no such common
ground appeared to exist, he soon learnt to find a standing-place
himself on that assumed by the man he was seeking to know. And not
only did Mr. Robinson possess this power of valuing the individual, but
he also was able to inspire the objects of his influence with the
knowledge of his particular interest in them. Thus they soon dropped
the idea of acquaintanceship, and began to think of him as friend, and
there you have in a word the secret of his wide influence. He was
interested in _men_, but what he loved was a _man_.
'Mr. Robinson was no less marked off from the majority of men by the
stress which he laid upon the reality and power of prayer. We used
from time to time to have long talks together on this subject, so {195}
that I can speak with some little knowledge of the place which he
assigned it in his life. With characteristic modesty he not
infrequently distrusted himself in his active contact with men. His
very anxiety to help others towards the ideals by which his own life
was dominated led him to see the risk of placing hindrances in their
way by an injudicious intrusion into the secret places of their hearts.
Drawn in different directions, therefore, by his passionate desire to
win men for Christ and his cautious fear lest untimely words of his
should hinder rather than help, he found refuge in giving himself up to
earnest prayer on their behalf. And prayer to him meant more than a
light repetition of words. He used often, I believe, to spend as long
as half an hour at a time in seeking blessing for a single man. We
cannot doubt that, in the strong influence which he himself exerted
upon so many of those who knew him, such persistent prayer received at
least a part of its own answer.
'The last element in your brother's individuality which always
impressed me was his restrained, but genuine, mysticism. In the few
accounts of his life that I have read I do not remember any allusion to
this characteristic. That he possessed it, however, and this to no
usual degree, seems to my mind quite patent; in fact, it was this
suggestion of mysticism that first attracted me to him. The mysticism
one sees around one is often so unregulated and so ignorant that it was
refreshing to find a mystic who was also an enlightened scholar and
thinker. It confirmed the feeling, instinctive in one's heart, that,
despite the abuse of caricature, a deep, intelligent {196} apprehension
of unseen realities is of the essence of the fulness of religion. Mr.
Forbes Robinson appeared to possess an unusually certain cognisance of
the unseen world. How well I remember the way in which, again and
again, tea over and our pipes lighted, he would curl himself up in one
of his or my own big chairs and discuss questions of interest to us
both with a far-away look in his eyes altogether suggestive of a
genuine otherworldliness! And this familiarity with unseen verities
seemed to run through all those parts of his life with which I was
acquainted, and indeed to be to him the most real fact of all
existence. To use the simple language of olden days, I believe that
"he walked with God": and that explains his life.
'These, then, were the three characteristics of your brother which more
than any others have impressed themselves upon my mind. I do not think
that they were three separate sides of his personality: I should say,
rather, that they were three different expressions of one fundamental
attribute. It was because he walked so closely with God that he so
loved the individual sons of God. It was because he so loved the Great
Father and each child of His that he had so strong a faith in the power
of prayer and such unwearying patience to persist in it.
'A life like your brother's, if I may say one thing more, forms, I
sometimes think, one of the strongest pledges of human immortality. In
one sense, it is true, he seems to have done so much; and yet, in
another sense, those of us who knew the faculties which he had
cultivated, his knowledge and patient {197} scholarship, his sympathy
and insight, his tact and passion for men, and, most precious of all,
his power with God, were looking for even greater things in years to
come. Such fitness for influence as he possessed is not acquired in a
day, and just when its worth was being proved he was taken from us.
Surely these gifts and graces are not now as if they had never been, or
as if, once granted, they had been idly wasted! Can that earnest,
patient cultivation really have been gratuitous, and the unselfish
instinct that inspired it mistaken? Were it so, the whole universe
looks out of joint. The more I consider such lives as that of your
brother--lives, I mean, which, bearing promise of so rich a harvest,
are yet cut off before the full harvest can possibly have been
realised--the more my conviction grows that the passing of such men as
he is not death, but only "the birth which we call death."'
{199}
INDEX
Anthropomorphism in the O.T., 135
Average man, the, 43
Beauty, natural, 153, 156 _sq._
Beauty, origin of personal, 78-81
Boers, religion of the, 110 _sq._
Boer war, the, 162 _sq._
Christmas, meaning of, 153
Christ's College Magazine, extract from, 10
Clough, quotation from, 164
Communion of saints, 69
Continuity of work, 106 _sq._
Cornwall, open-air preaching in, 25
Criticism of O.T., 54, 136 _sq._
Daily service, repetition of, 59
Eternity, life in the light of, 164
Faith, function of, 120
Fitzpatrick, Rev. T. C., sketch by, 36-42
Friendship, permanent character of, 84
Friendship, the, of Christ, 89 _sq._
Future life, the, 69, 117 _sq._, 125, 149, 150 _sq._
Gordon, General, in S. Africa, 116 _sq._
Hebrew and Greek ideals, 166 _sq._, 183
Holy Spirit, work of the, 182, 184
Home life, significance of, 60, 77 _sq._, 84, 110, 118, 159
Humour, sense of, 47 _sq._
Incarnation, results of his belief in, 45
Influence upon others, 75
James, Dr., sketch by, 7 _sqq._
Kant, philosophy of, 176, 178
Kittermaster, Rev. D. B., sketch by, 42-53
Kruger, interview with, 112
Law as revealed to the Jews, 63 _sqq._
Letter-writer, St. Paul a, 82
_Letters_--
H. J. B., 151, 164, 166, 182
W. A. B., 60, 74, 77, 86, 113
F. J. C., 129, 131, 134, 153, 179
G. J. C., 122, 123, 158
J. L. D., 91, 93, 95, 109
G. F., 104
A. W. G., 69
F. S. H., 102, 103, 105, 106, 119, 132, 136, 139, 185, 187, 190
J. C. H., 117
W. D. H., 127, 162
D. B. K., 148, 159, 172, 174
J. K., 108, 186
E. N. L., 58, 68
T. H. M., 55, 56, 57, 76, 100
W. O., 143, 188
H. P., 145, 171
W. P., 188
A. V. R., 54
D. D. R., 63, 88, 98
C. N. W., 120
C. T. W., 107, 111, 126, 127, 187
Anonymous, 114, 125, 146, 149, 162
To a friend at Cambridge, 154, 167
To his brother Edward in S. Africa, 137, 156, 171, 178
To his brother, a doctor in S. Africa, 128, 135, 191
To his mother, 116, 181
To the mother of his godchild, M. F., 110, 118, 165
Life, _zoe_ as used in St. John, 55
Life, the Divine, manifested, 101 _sq._
Love, his, for his friends, 45 _sq._, 50, 154, 182
Love, meaning and scope of, 73, 76, 113 _sq._, 124, 142
Love, the action of the Divine, 142
Motto, family, 1.
National life, significance of, 66
Natural beauty, eternal, 105
Naval officers, life of, 139 _sq._
Ordination, letters to candidates for, 58, 127 _sq._, 146, 162
Pain, mystery of, 189, 191
Parties in the Church, 109
Person, God revealed as a, 71 _sq._, 75
Prayer, his habit of intercessory, 29, 40, 51, 123, 138, 151,
154, 167 _sq._, 173, 185
Prayer, need of, 95, 97, 129-132, 160 _sq._, 162, 177
Providence revealed in life of individuals, 121
Sacraments, the, their significance, 76 _sq._, 80
Saints, called to be, 96, 149 _sq._
Schoolmaster, the work of a, 86 _sq._, 145 _sq._, 158
Selfishness, tendency of, 92 _sq._
Self-sacrifice, 166, 170
Self-sacrifice of God, 175
Simplicity of the Divine nature, 57
Suffering, a proof of the Divine love, 165 _sq._, 180
Sunday evening 'at homes,' 39 _sq._
Sympathy, meaning and need of, 91 _sq._, 106, 140, 171, 175-7
Sympathy, silent, 23 _sq._
Tancock, Dr., impressions of F. R., 3 _sq._
Temptations of Christ, 144
Thackeray's novels, 103 _sq._
Think, attempts to teach men to, 12
Toft, work at, 25 _sq._
Toleration, 26 _sq._
Trinity, significance of doctrine of, 71, 75
Unity of all men in God, 70
Walk from London to Cambridge, 19 _sq._
Worship, public, 122
End of Project Gutenberg's Letters to His Friends, by Forbes Robinson