THE LUMINOUS NIGHT.
That night Cosmo could not sleep. It was a warm summer night,
though not yet summer--a soft dewy night, full of genial magic and
growth--as if some fire-bergs of summer had drifted away out into
the spring, and got melted up in it. He dressed himself, and went
out. It was cool, deliciously cool, and damp, but with no shiver.
The stars were bright-eyed as if they had been weeping, and were so
joyously consoled that they forgot to wipe away their tears. They
were bright but not clear--large and shimmering, as if reflected
from some invisible sea, not immediately present to his eyes. The
gulfs in which they floated were black blue with profundity. There
was no moon, but the night was yet so far from dark, that it seemed
conscious throughout of some distant light that illumined it
without shine. And his heart felt like the night, as if it held a
deeper life than he could ever know. He wandered on till he came to
the field where he had so lately been with his father. He was not
thinking; any effort would break the world-mirror in which he
moved! For the moment he would be but a human plant, gathering
comfort from the soft coolness and the dew, when the sun had ceased
his demands. The coolness and the dew sank into him, and made his
soul long for the thing that waits the asking. He came to the spot
where his father and he had prayed together, and there kneeling
lifted up his face to the stars. Oh mighty, only church! whose roof
is a vaulted infinitude! whose lights come burning from the heart
of the Maker! church of all churches--where the Son of Man prayed!
In the narrow temple of Herod he taught the people, and from it
drove the dishonest traders; but here, under the starry roof, was
his house of prayer! church where not a mark is to be seen of human
hand! church that is all church, and nothing but church, built
without hands, despised and desecrated through unbelief! church of
God’s building! thou alone in thy grandeur art fitting type of a
yet greater, a yet holier church, whose stars are the burning eyes
of unutterable, self-forgetting love, whose worship is a ceaseless
ministration of self-forgetting deeds--the one real ideal church,
the body of the living Christ, built of the hearts and souls of men
and women out of every nation and every creed, through all time and
over all the world, redeemed alike from Judaism, paganism, and all
the false Christianities that darken and dishonor the true.
Cosmo, I say, knelt, and looked up. Then will awoke, and he lifted
up his heart, sending aloft his soul on every holy sail it could
spread, on all the wings it could put forth, as if, through the
visible, he would force his way to the invisible.
Softly through the blue night came a gentle call:
“Cosmo.”
He started, not with fear, looked round, but saw no one.
“Cosmo!” came the call again.
The sky was shining with the stars, and that other light that might
be its own; other than the stars and the sky he saw nothing. He
looked all round his narrow horizon, the edge of the hollow between
him and the sky, where the heaven and the earth met among the stars
and the grass, and the stars shimmered like glow-worms among the
thin stalks: nothing was there; its edge was unbroken by other
shape than grass, daisies, ox-eyes, and stars. A soft dreamy wind
came over the edge, and breathed once on his cheek. The voice came
again--
“Cosmo!”
It seemed to come from far away, so soft and gentle was it,
and yet it seemed near.
“It has called me three times!” said Cosmo, and rose to his feet.
There was the head of Simon Peter, as some called him, rising like
a dark sun over the top of the hollow! In the faint light Cosmo
knew him at once, gave a cry of pleasure, and ran to meet him.
“You called so softly,” said Cosmo, “I did not know your voice.”
“And you are disappointed! You thought it was a voice from some
region beyond this world! I am sorry. I called softly, because I
wanted to let you know I was coming, and was afraid of startling
you.”
[Illustration: A VAULTED INFINITUDE.]
“I confess,” replied Cosmo, “a little hope was beginning to
flutter, that perhaps I was called from somewhere in the
unseen--like Samuel, you know; but I was too glad to see you to be
much disappointed. I do sometimes wonder though, that, if there is
such a world beyond as we sometime talk about, there should be so
little communication between it and us. When I am out in the still
time of this world, and there is nothing to interfere,--when I am
not even thinking, so as to close my doors, why should never
anything come? Never in my life have I had one whisper from that
world.”
“You are saying a great deal more than you can possibly know,
Cosmo,” answered Mr. Simon. “You have had no communication
recognized by you as such, I grant. And I, who am so much older
than you, must say the same. If there be any special fitness in the
night, in its absorbing dimness, and isolating silence, for such
communication--and who can well doubt it?--I have put myself in the
heart of it a thousand times, when, longing after an open vision, I
should have counted but the glimpse of a ghostly garment the
mightiest boon, but never therefrom has the shadow of a feather
fallen upon me. Yet here I am, hoping no less, and believing no
less! The air around me may be full of ghosts--I do not know; I
delight to think they may somehow be with us, for all they are so
unseen; but so long as I am able to believe and hope in the one
great ghost, the Holy Ghost that fills all, it would trouble me
little to learn that betwixt me and the visible centre was nothing
but what the senses of men may take account of. If there be a God,
he is all in all, and filleth all things, and all is well. What
matter where the region of the dead may be? Nowhere but here are
they called the dead. When, of all paths, that to God is alone
always open, and alone can lead the wayfarer to the end of his
journey, why should I stop to peer through the fence either side of
that path? If he does not care to reveal, is it well I should make
haste to know? I shall know one day, why should I be eager to know
now?”
“But why might not something show itself once--just for once, if
only to give one a start in the right direction?” said Cosmo.
“I will tell you one reason,” returned Mr. Simon, “--the same why
everything is as it is, and neither this nor that other
way--namely, that it is best for us it should be as it is. But I
think I can see a little way into it. Suppose you saw something
strange--a sign or a wonder--one of two things, it seems to me
likely, would follow:--you would either doubt it the moment it had
vanished, or it would grow to you as one of the common things of
your daily life--which are indeed in themselves equally wonderful.
Evidently, if visions would make us sure, God does not care about
the kind of sureness they can give, or for our being made sure in
that way. A thing that gained in one way might be of less than no
value to us, gained in another, might, as a vital part of the
process, be invaluable. God will have us sure of a thing by knowing
the heart whence it comes; that is the only worthy assurance. To
know, he will have us go in at the great door of obedient faith;
and if anybody thinks he has found a backstair, he will find it
land him at a doorless wall. It is the assurance that comes of
inmost beholding of himself, of seeing what he is, that God cares
to produce in us. Nor would he have us think we know him before we
do, for thereby thousands walk in a vain show. At the same time I
am free to imagine if I imagine holily--that is, as his child. And
I imagine space full of life invisible; imagine that the young man
needed but the opening of his eyes to see the horses and chariots
of fire around his master, an inner circle to the horses and
chariots that encompassed the city to take him. As I came now
through the fields, I lost myself for a time in the feeling that I
was walking in the midst of lovely people I have known, some in
person, some by their books. Perhaps they were with me--are with
me--are speaking to me now. For if all our thoughts, from whatever
source, whether immediately from God, or through ourselves, seem to
enter the chamber of our consciousness by the same door, why may it
not be so with some that come to us from other beings? Why may not
the dead speak to me, and I be unable to distinguish their words
from my thoughts? The moment a thought is given me, my own thought
rushes to mingle with it, and I can no more part them. Some stray
hints from the world beyond may mingle even with the folly and
stupidity of my dreams.”
“But if you cannot distinguish, where is the good?” Cosmo ventured
to ask.
“Nowhere for deductive certainty. For, if the things themselves are
not worth remembering, or worthy of influencing us, is there any
good in enquiring concerning them? Shall I mind a thing that is not
worth minding, because it came to me in a dream, or was told me by
a ghost? It is the quality of a thing, not how it arrived, that is
the point. But true things are often mingled with things grotesque.
For aught I know, at one and the same time, a spirit may be taking
advantage of the door set ajar by sleep, to whisper a message of
love or repentance, and the troubled brain or heart or stomach may
be sending forth fumes that cloud the vision, and cause evil echoes
to mingle with the hearing. When you look at any bright thing for a
time, and then close your eyes, you still see the shape of it, but
in different colours. This figure has come to you from the outside
world, but the brain has altered it. Even the shape itself is
reproduced with but partial accuracy: some imperfection in the
recipient sense, or in the receptacle, sends imperfection into the
presentation. In a way something similar may our contact with the
dwellers beyond fare in our dreams. My unknown mother may be
talking to me in my sleep, and up rises some responsive but stupid
dream-cloud of my own, and mingles with and ruins the descended
grace. But it is well to remind you again that the things around us
are just as full of marvel as those into which you are so anxious
to look. Our people in the other world, although they have proved
these earthly things before, probably now feel them strange, and
full of a marvel the things about them have lost.”
“All is well. The only thing worth a man’s care is the will of God,
and that will is the same whether in this world or in the next.
That will has made this world ours, not the next; for nothing can
be ours until God has given it to us. Curiosity is but the
contemptible human shadow of the holy thing wonder. No, my son, let
us make the best we can of this life, that we may become able to
make the best of the next also.”
“And how make the best of this?” asked Cosmo.
“Simply by falling in with God’s design in the making of you. That
design must be worked out--cannot be worked out without you. You
must walk in the front of things with the will of God--not be
dragged in the sweep of his garment that makes the storm behind
him! To walk with God is to go hand in hand with him, like a boy
with his father. Then, as to the other world, or any world, as to
the past sorrow, the vanished joy, the coming fear, all is well;
for the design of the making, the loving, the pitiful, the
beautiful God, is marching on towards divine completion, that is, a
never ending one. Yea, if it please my sire that his infinite be
awful to me, yet will I face it, for it is his. Let your prayer, my
son, be like this: ‘O Maker of me, go on making me, and let me help
thee. Come, O Father! here I am; let us go on. I know that my words
are those of a child, but it is thy child who prays to thee. It is
thy dark I walk in; it is thy hand I hold.’”
The words of his teacher sank into the heart of Cosmo, for his
spirit was already in the lofty condition of capacity for receiving
wisdom direct from another.
It is a lofty condition, and they who scorn it but show they have
not reached it--nor are likely to reach it soon. Such as will not
be taught through eye or ear, must be taught through the skin, and
that is generally a long as well as a painful process. All Cosmo’s
superiority came of his having faith in those who were higher than
he. True, he had not yet been tried; but the trials of a pure,
honest, teachable youth, must, however severe, be very different
from those of one unteachable. The former are for growth, the
latter for change.