A DREAM.
Invited to ascend, Wingfold followed Rachel to her uncle’s room, and
there, whether guided by her or not, the conversation presently took
such a turn that at length, of his own motion, Polwarth offered to read
his verses. From the drawer of his table he took a scratched and scored
halfsheet, and--not in the most melodious of voices, yet in one whose
harshness and weakness could not cover a certain refinement of spiritual
tenderness--read as follows:
Lord, hear my discontent: All blank I stand,
A mirror polished by thy hand;
Thy sun’s beams flash and flame from me--
I cannot help it: here I stand, there he;
To one of them I cannot say--
Go, and on yonder water play.
Nor one poor ragged daisy can I fashion--
I do not make the words of this my limping passion.
If I should say: Now I will think a thought,
Lo! I must wait, unknowing,
What thought in me is growing,
Until the thing to birth is brought;
Nor know I then what next will come
From out the gulf of silence dumb.
I am the door the thing did find
To pass into the general mind;
I cannot say I think--
I only stand upon the thought-well’s brink;
From darkness to the sun the water bubbles up--
I lift it in my cup.
Thou only thinkest--I am thought;
Me and my thought thou thinkest. Nought
Am I but as a fountain spout
From which thy water welleth out.
Thou art the only One, the All in all.
--Yet when my soul on thee doth call
And thou dost answer out of everywhere,
I in thy allness have my perfect share.
While he read Rachel crept to his knee, knelt down, and laid her head
upon it.
If we are but the creatures of a day, yet surely were the shadow-joys of
this miserable pair not merely nobler in their essence, but finer to the
soul’s palate than the shadow-joys of young Hercules Bascombe--Helen and
horses and all! Poor Helen I cannot use for comparison, for she had no
joy, save indeed the very divine, though at present unblossoming one
of sisterly love. Still, and notwithstanding, if the facts of life are
those of George Bascombe’s endorsing--AND HE CAN PROVE IT--let us by all
means learn and accept them, be they the worst possible. Meantime there
are truths that ought to be facts, and until he has proved that there is
no God, some of us will go feeling after him if haply we may find him,
and in him the truths we long to find true. Some of us perhaps think we
have seen him from afar, but we only know the better that in the mood
wherein such as Bascombe are, they will never find him--which would no
doubt be to them a comfort were it not for a laughter. And if he be such
as their idea of what we think him, they ARE better without him. If, on
the contrary, he be what some of us really think him, their not seeking
him will not perhaps prevent him from finding them.
From likeness of nature, community of feeling, constant intercourse, and
perfect confidence, Rachel understood her uncle’s verses with sufficient
ease to enjoy them at once in part, and, for the rest, to go on thinking
in the direction in which they would carry her; but Wingfold, in whom
honesty of disposition had blossomed at last into honesty of action,
after fitting pause, during which no word was spoken, said:--
“Mr. Polwarth, where verse is concerned, I am simply stupid: when read
I cannot follow it. I did not understand the half of that poem. I never
have been a student of English verse, and indeed that part of my nature
which has to do with poetry, has been a good deal neglected. Will you
let me take those verses home with me?”
“I cannot do that, for they are not legible; but I will copy them out
for you.”
“Will you give me them to-morrow? Shall you be at church?”
“That shall be just as you please: would you rather have me there or
not?”
“A thousand times rather,” answered the curate. “To have one man there
who knows what I mean better than I can say it, is to have a double soul
and double courage.--But I came to-night mainly to tell you that I
have been much puzzled this last week to know how I ought to regard the
Bible--I mean as to its inspiration. What am I to say about it?”
“Those are two distinct things. Why think of saying about it, before you
have anything to say? For yourself, however, let me ask if you have not
already found in the book the highest means of spiritual education and
development you have yet met with? If so, may not that suffice for the
present? It is the man Christ Jesus we have to know, and the Bible we
have to use to that end--not for theory or dogma.--I will tell you a
strange dream I had once, not long ago.”
Rachel’s face brightened. She rose, got a little stool, and setting it
down close by the chair on which her uncle was perched, seated herself
at his feet, with her eyes on the ground, to listen.
“About two years ago,” said Polwarth, “a friend sent me Tauchnitz’s
edition of the English New Testament, which has the different readings
of the three oldest known manuscripts translated at the foot of the
page. The edition was prepared chiefly for the sake of showing the
results of the collation of the Sinaitic manuscript, the oldest of all,
so named because it was found--a few years ago, by Tischendorf--in a
monastery on Mount Sinai--nowhere else than there! I received it with
such exultation as brought on an attack of asthma, and I could scarce
open it for a week, but lay with it under my pillow. When I did come to
look at it, my main wonder was to find the differences from the common
version so few and small. Still there were some such as gave rise to
a feeling far above mere interest--one in particular, the absence of
a word that had troubled me, not seeming like a word of our Lord, or
consonant with his teaching. I am unaware whether the passage has ever
given rise to controversy.”
“May I ask what word it was?” interrupted Wingfold, eagerly.
“I will not say,” returned Polwarth. “Not having troubled you, you would
probably only wonder why it should have troubled me. For my purpose
in mentioning the matter, it is enough to say that I had turned with
eagerness to the passage wherein it occurs, as given in two of the
gospels in our version. Judge my delight in discovering that in the one
gospel the whole passage was omitted by the two oldest manuscripts, and
in the other just the one word that had troubled me, by the same two. I
would not have you suppose me foolish enough to imagine that the oldest
manuscript must be the most correct; but you will at once understand the
sense of room and air which the discovery gave me notwithstanding, and
I mention it because it goes both to account for the dream that followed
and to enforce its truth. Pray do not however imagine me a believer in
dreams more than in any other source of mental impressions. If a dream
reveal a principle, that principle is a revelation, and the dream is
neither more NOR LESS valuable than a waking thought that does the same.
The truth conveyed is the revelation. I do not deny that facts have been
learned in dreams, but I would never call the communication of a mere
fact a revelation. Truth alone, beheld as such by the soul, is worthy
of the name. Facts, however, may themselves be the instruments of such
revelation.
“The dream I am now going to tell you was clearly enough led up to by my
waking thoughts. For I had been saying to myself ere I fell asleep: ‘On
the very Mount Sinai, that once burned with heavenly fire, and resounded
with the thunder of a visible Presence, now old and cold, and swathed in
the mists of legend and doubt, was discovered the most reverend,
because most ancient record of the new dispensation which dethroned
that mountain, and silenced the thunders of the pedagogue law! Is it not
possible that yet, in some ancient convent, insignificant to the eye
of the traveller as modern Nazareth would be but for its ancient story,
some one of the original gospel-manuscripts may lie, truthful and
unblotted from the hand of the very evangelist?--Oh lovely parchment!’
I thought--‘if eye of man might but see thee! if lips of man might kiss
thee!’ and my heart swelled like the heart of a lover at the thought of
such a boon.--Now, as you know, I live in a sort of live coffin
here,” continued the little man, striking his pigeon-breast, “with a
barrel-organ of discords in it, constantly out of order in one way or
another; and hence it comes that my sleep is so imperfect, and my dreams
run more than is usual, as I believe, on in the direction of my last
waking thoughts. Well, that night, I dreamed thus: I was in a desert. It
was neither day nor night to me. I saw neither sun, moon, nor stars. A
heavy, yet half-luminous cloud hung over the visible earth. My heart was
beating fast and high, for I was journeying towards a certain Armenian
convent, where I had good ground for hoping I should find the original
manuscript of the fourth gospel, the very handwriting of the apostle
John. That the old man did not write it himself, I never thought of that
in my dream.
“After I had walked on for a long, anything but weary time, I saw the
level horizon line before me broken by a rock, as it seemed, rising from
the plain of the desert. I knew it was the monastery. It was many miles
away, and as I journeyed on it grew and grew, until it swelled huge as
a hill against the sky. At length I came up to the door, iron-clamped,
deep-set in a low thick wall. It stood wide open. I entered, crossed
a court, reached the door of the monastery itself, and again entered.
Every door to which I came stood open, but priest nor guide came to meet
me, and I saw no man, and at length looked for none, but used my best
judgment to get deeper and deeper into the building, for I scarce
doubted that in its inmost penetralia I should find the treasure I
sought. At last I stood before a door hung with a curtain of rich
workmanship, torn in the middle from top to bottom. Through the rent I
passed into a stone cell. In the cell stood a table. On the table was
a closed book. Oh how my heart beat! Never but then have I known the
feeling of utter preciousness in a thing possessed. What doubts and
fears would not this one lovely, oh unutterably beloved volume, lay at
rest for ever! How my eyes would dwell upon every stroke of every letter
the hand of the dearest disciple had formed! Nearly eighteen hundred
years--and there it lay!--and there WAS a man who DID hear the Master
say the words, and did set them down! I stood motionless, and my soul
seemed to wind itself among the leaves, while my body stood like a
pillar of salt, lost in its own gaze. At last, with sudden daring, I
made a step towards the table, and, bending with awe, stretched out my
hand to lay it upon the book. But ere my hand reached it, another
hand, from the opposite side of the table, appeared upon it--an old,
blue-veined, but powerful hand. I looked up. There stood the beloved
disciple! His countenance was as a mirror which shone back the face of
the Master. Slowly he lifted the book, and turned away. Then first I saw
behind him as it were an altar whereon a fire of wood was burning, and a
pang of dismay shot to my heart, for I knew what he was about to do. He
laid the book on the burning wood, and regarded it with a smile as it
shrunk and shrivelled and smouldered to ashes. Then he turned to me and
said, while a perfect heaven of peace shone in his eyes: ‘Son of man,
the Word of God liveth and abideth for ever, not in the volume of
the book, but in the heart of the man that in love obeyeth him. And
therewith I awoke weeping, but with the lesson of my dream.”
A deep silence fell on the little company. Then said Wingfold,
“I trust I have the lesson too.”
He rose, shook hands with them, and, without another word, went home.