No one can read Mrs. Stowe's writings as a whole without perceiving
how constant is the appeal to the religious sensibilities. Her
greatest book, which took captive the humblest reader and such
a genius in literature as George Sand, was in a marked degree a
religious book; and again and again, even in playful scenes, there
is a quick passage to the religious nature. The explanation is in
the simple fact that Mrs. Stowe herself from early girlhood to her
latest years was governed by religion, and it is not surprising,
therefore, that an entire volume should be gathered from her
writings exclusively given over to direct expression of religious
feeling and thought.
She would gladly, especially in her later life, have confined
herself to writing of this sort, for the realities of faith,
especially the presence of the Divine Master, came to have a
commanding power over her mind and heart, and to make her almost
impatient of much concern about adventures of the ordinary sort.
Even the reminiscence of the racy life of the New England of her
childhood could not absorb her. "I would much rather," she writes
in 1876 to her son Charles, "have written another such a book as
_Footsteps of the Master_, but all, even the religious papers,
are gone mad on serials." The book which she was then writing was
_Poganuc People_, and the reader knows what a thread of religious
experience runs through that lively narrative.
_Footsteps of the Master_ was published in 1877. In its original
form, each section contained interludes of verse, sometimes her own,
more frequently hymns and poems from well-known sources. There were
also scriptural passages illustrative of the great divisions, and
the book was set forth thus as a devotional companion. In reissuing
it in this volume, the poems by the author have been preserved
in the section given to her Religious Poems; the others and the
illustrative scriptural passages have been omitted and Mrs. Stowe's
Meditations preserved in their continuous form. The word "To the
Reader," prefixed to the volume, is as follows:--
When a city is closely besieged and many of its outworks
destroyed, the defenders retreat to the citadel. In our day
there is warm fighting about the outworks of Christianity. Many
things are battered down that used to be thought indispensable
to its defense. It is time to retreat to the citadel; and that
citadel is CHRIST.
The old mediæval symbol shown above[1] is still more than ever
good for our day. Jesus Christ of Nazareth is still our King,
our Light, our Law, our Leader. These names comprise all that a
human being needs in this transitory, perplexing and dangerous
pilgrimage of life.
[1] The familiar combination of Rex. Lux, Lex, Dux.
We are born to suffer. The very conditions of our mortal
existence here imply suffering of the most terrible kind as a
possibility, a probability, or a certainty. We have affections
absorbing our whole being which are hourly menaced by danger and
by death--at any moment our sweetest joys may become sources
only of bitterest remembrance.
We are born to perplexity. We stand amid the jar and conflict
of a thousand natural laws, to us inexplicable, and which every
hour threaten us in ourselves or those dearer than ourselves. We
stand often in no less perplexity of moral law in ways where the
path of duty and right is darkened and beset.
We are born to die. At the end of every possible road of life
lies the dark River--the unknown future. If we cling to life,
it is only to see it wither gradually in our hands, to see
friends dropping from our side, places vacant at our fireside,
infirmities and pains gathering about us, and a new generation
with their impetuous energies rising around us to say, Why do
you wait here? Why are you not gone?
And the Hereafter? What is it? Who will go with us into that
future where no friend, however dear, can accompany the soul?
What hand of power and love will take ours in the last darkness,
when we have let go all others?
The dear old book which we call the Bible gives our answer to
all this. It tells us of a Being so one with the great Author
of nature and Source of all power that whoso hath seen him hath
seen the Creator. It tells us that all things that we behold in
our material world were made by him and for him: that it pleased
the Father that in him should all fullness dwell, and that to
him all things in heaven and on earth are made subject. It shows
him to us from the beginning of time as constantly absorbed in
the care and education of this world of ours. He has been the
Desire of all nations--predicted, waited for, come at last!
And when he came and lived a mortal life what did he show the
divine nature to be? It may all be told in one word:--LOVE.
Love, unconquered, unconquerable by human sin and waywardness.
Love, sympathetic with the inevitable sorrows of human
existence. Love, expressed in every form by which a God could
express love. His touch was healing; the very hem of his garment
had restoring virtue. He lived and loved as we live and love,
only on a higher ideal,--he gave to every human affection a more
complete interpretation, a more perfect fullness. And finally,
as the highest revelation of Love, he died for us, and in
anguish and blood and dying pains still loved, still prayed for
us, the ungrateful race of man. He passed through the night of
death that he might learn not to fear it, and came forth radiant
and immortal to tell us that we shall never die.
By a refinement of infinite mercy, the law of our lives is
written not in hard statutes but in the life of this tender
and sympathetic friend. Christ is our law. We learn courage,
patience, fortitude, forgiving love from him. The lesson
impossible in statute is made easy by sympathy. But lest the
very brightness of the ideal fill us with despair we have his
promise, "Lo, _I_ am with you alway to the end of the world!
I will not leave you comfortless. I will come to you." Jesus,
as an inseparable soul-friend--a consoler, a teacher, an
enlightener--dwells on earth now in a higher sense than when he
walked the hills of Palestine.
"Forever more beside us on our way,
The unseen Christ doth move,
That we may lean upon his arm and say,
'Dost thou, dear Lord, approve?'"
To that great multitude whom no man can number, who are living
the hidden life of faith, these studies into the life of our
Master are dedicated. They have been arranged in the order of
the seasons of the Christian year, with the hope of aiding the
efforts of those who wish at these sacred seasons to bring our
Lord more clearly to mind.
We hear much of modern skepticism. There is, perhaps, no more
in the world now than there has always been, only its forms are
changed. Its answer lies not in argument, but in the lives of
Christ's followers. It was Christians who lived like Christ that
won the first battle for Christianity, and it must be Christians
who live like Christ that shall win the last. The life of faith
in the Son of God, when fully lived out, always has been and
always will be a victorious argument.
But to live this our faith must be firm. We cannot meet a
skeptical world with weak faith. If we would draw our friend
out of a swift-rushing current, our own feet must not stand on
slippery places. We must seek faith in looking to Him who has
the giving of it. We must keep Him before our minds, and come so
near Him in daily prayer that we can say: "That which we have
seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and our hands have
handled, of the Word of Life, declare we unto you."
And even to those who have no conscious belief in Christ, his
name can never be a matter of indifference. Whether they believe
it or not, Christ stands to them in a peculiar relation that no
other being holds. He is their best Friend, the Shepherd that
is seeking them, the generous Saviour and Giver that is longing
to save them from all that they fear and to give exceeding
abundantly beyond all they can ask or think.
The other _Studies_ and the _Religious Sketches_ which follow are
drawn from the early _Mayflower_ and intimate how instinctively in
the beginning of her career as a writer Mrs. Stowe turned her mind
in this direction. Her poems appeared at irregular intervals and
were gathered into a volume by themselves in 1867. The collection
then issued is here slightly enlarged by the inclusion of one or two
estrays.