A REVIEW.
The curate walked hurriedly home, and seated himself at his table, where
yet lay his Greek Testament open at the passage he had been pondering
for his sermon. Alas! all he had then been thinking with such fervour
had vanished. He knew his inspiring text, but the rest was gone. Worst
of all, feeling was gone with thought, and was, for the time at least,
beyond recall. Righteous as his anger was, it had ruffled the mirror
of his soul till it could no longer reflect heavenly things. He rose,
caught up his New Testament, and went to the church-yard. It was a still
place, and since the pains of a new birth had come upon him, he had
often sought the shelter of its calm. A few yards from the wall of the
rectory garden stood an old yew-tree, and a little nearer on one side
was a small thicket of cypress; between these and the wall was an
ancient stone upon which he generally seated himself. It had already
begun to be called the curate’s chair. Most imagined him drawn thither
by a clerical love of gloom, but in that case he could scarcely have had
such delight in seeing the sky through the dark foliage of the yew:
he thought the parts so seen looked more divinely blue than any of the
rest. He would have admitted, however, that he found quiet, for the soul
as well as the body, upon this edge of the world, this brink of the gulf
that swallowed the ever-pouring ever-vanishing Niagara of human life. On
the stone he now seated himself and fell a-musing.
What a change had come upon him--slow, indeed, yet how vast, since the
night when he sat in the same churchyard indignant and uneasy with the
words of Bascombe like hot coals in his heart! He had been made ashamed
of himself who had never thought much of himself, but the more he had
lost of worthiness in his own eyes the more he had gained in worth. And
the more his poor satisfaction with himself had died out, the more the
world had awaked around him. For it must be remembered that a little
conceit is no more to be endured than a great one, but must be swept
utterly away. Sky and wind and water and birds and trees said to him,
“Forget thyself and we will think of thee. Sing no more to thyself thy
foolish songs of decay, and we will all sing to thee of love and hope
and faith and resurrection.” Earth and air had grown full of hints and
sparkles and vital motions, as if between them and his soul an abiding
community of fundamental existence had manifested itself. He had never
in the old days that were so near and yet seemed so far behind him,
consciously cared for the sunlight: now even the shadows were marvellous
in his eyes, and the glitter the golden weather-cock on the tower was
like a cry of the prophet Isaiah. High and alone in the clear blue air
it swung, an endless warning to him that veers with the wind of the
world, the words of men, the summer breezes of their praise, or the
bitter blasts of their wintry blame; it was no longer to him a cock of
the winds, but a cock of the truth--a Peter-cock, that crew aloud in
golden shine its rebuke of cowardice and lying. Never before had he
sought acquaintance with the flowers that came dreaming up out of the
earth in the woods and the lanes like a mist of loveliness, but the
spring-time came in his own soul, and then he knew the children of the
spring. And as the joy of the reviving world found its way into the
throats of the birds, so did the spring in his reviving soul find its
way into the channels of thought and speech, and issue in utterance both
rhythmic and melodious.--But not in any, neither in all of these
things lay the chief sign and embodiment of the change he recognised in
himself. It was this: that, whereas in former times the name Christ had
been to him little more than a dull theological symbol, the thought of
him and of his thoughts was now constantly with him; ever and anon
some fresh light would break from the cloudy halo that enwrapped his
grandeur; ever was he growing more the Son of Man to his loving heart,
ever more the Son of God to his aspiring spirit. Testimony had merged
almost in vision: he saw into, and partly understood the perfection
it presented: he looked upon the face of God and lived. Oftener and
oftener, as the days passed, did it seem as if the man were by his side,
and at times, in the stillness of the summer-eve, when he walked alone,
it seemed almost, as thoughts of revealing arose in his heart, that the
Master himself was teaching him in spoken words. What need now to
rack his soul in following the dim-seen, ever evanishing paths of
metaphysics! he had but to obey the prophet of life, the man whose
being and doing and teaching were blended in one three-fold harmony, or
rather, were the three-fold analysis of one white essence--he had but
to obey him, haunt his footsteps, and hearken after the sound of his
spirit, and all truth would in healthy process be unfolded in himself.
What philosophy could carry him where Jesus would carry his obedient
friends--into his own peace, namely, far above all fear and all hate,
where his soul should breathe such a high atmosphere of strength at once
and repose, that he should love even his enemies, and that with no
such love as condescendingly overlooks, but with the real, hearty, and
self-involved affection that would die to give them the true life! Alas!
how far was he from such perfection now--from such a martyrdom, lovely
as endless, in the consuming fire of God! And at the thought, he fell
from the heights of his contemplation--but was caught in the thicket of
prayer.
By the time he reached his lodging, the glow had vanished, but the
mood remained. He sat down and wrote the first sketch of the following
verses, then found that his sermon had again drawn nigh, and was within
the reach of his spiritual tentacles.
Father, I cry to thee for bread,
With hungered longing, eager prayer;
Thou hear’st, and givest me instead
More hunger and a half-despair.
O Lord, how long? My days decline;
My youth is lapped in memories old;
I need not bread alone, but wine--
See, cup and hand to thee I hold.
And yet thou givest: thanks, O Lord,
That still my heart with hunger faints!
The day will come when at thy board
I sit forgetting all my plaints.
If rain must come and winds must blow,
And I pore long o’er dim-seen chart,
Yet, Lord, let not the hunger go,
And keep the faintness at my heart.