MR. BACON'S PARSONAGE. CHRISTIAN RESIGNATION. TIME AND CHANGE. WILKIE
AND THE MONK IN THE ESCURIAL.
The idea of her life shall sweetly creep
Into his study of imagination;
And every lovely organ of her life
Shall come apparell'd in more precious habit,
More moving delicate, and full of life,
Into the eye and prospect of his soul,
Than when she lived indeed.
SHAKESPEARE.
In a Scotch village the Manse is sometimes the only good house, and
generally it is the best; almost, indeed, what in old times the
Mansion used to be in an English one. In Mr. Bacon's parish, the
vicarage, though humble as the benefice itself, was the neatest. The
cottage in which he and Margaret passed their childhood had been
remarkable for that comfort which is the result and the reward of
order and neatness: and when the reunion which blessed them both,
rendered the remembrance of those years delightful, they returned in
this respect to the way in which they had been trained up, practised
the economy which they had learnt there, and loved to think how
entirely their course of life, in all its circumstances, would be
after the heart of that person, if she could behold it, whose memory
they both with equal affection cherished. After his bereavement it was
one of the widower's pensive pleasures to keep every thing in the same
state as when Margaret was living. Nothing was neglected that she used
to do, or that she would have done. The flowers were tended as
carefully as if she were still to enjoy their fragrance and their
beauty; and the birds who came in winter for their crumbs, were fed as
duly for her sake, as they had formerly been by her hands.
There was no superstition in this, nor weakness. Immoderate grief, if
it does not exhaust itself by indulgence, easily assumes the one
character, or the other, or takes a type of insanity. But he had
looked for consolation, where, when sincerely sought, it is always to
be found; and he had experienced that religion effects in a true
believer all that philosophy professes, and more than all that mere
philosophy can perform. The wounds which stoicism would cauterize,
religion heals.
There is a resignation with which, it may be feared, most of us
deceive ourselves. To bear what must be borne, and submit to what
cannot be resisted, is no more than what the unregenerate heart is
taught by the instinct of animal nature. But to acquiesce in the
afflictive dispensations of Providence,—to make one's own will conform
in all things to that of our Heavenly Father,—to say to Him in the
sincerity of faith, when we drink of the bitter cup, “Thy will be
done!”—to bless the name of the Lord as much from the heart when He
takes away, as when He gives, and with a depth of feeling of which
perhaps none but the afflicted heart is capable,—this is the
resignation which religion teaches, this the sacrifice which it
requires. This sacrifice Leonard had made, and he felt that it was
accepted.
Severe, therefore, as his loss had been, and lasting as its effects
were, it produced in him nothing like a settled sorrow, nor even that
melancholy which sorrow leaves behind. Gibbon has said of himself,
that as a mere philosopher he could not agree with the Greeks, in
thinking that those who die in their youth are favored by the Gods: ὅν
ὅι θεοι φιλοῦσιν ἀποθνησκε νεός. It was because he was “a mere
philosopher,” that he failed to perceive a truth which the religious
heathen acknowledged, and which is so trivial, and of such practical
value, that it may now be seen inscribed upon village tombstones. The
Christian knows that “blessed are the dead which die in the Lord; even
so saith the Spirit.” And the heart of the Christian mourner, in its
deepest distress, hath the witness of the Spirit to that consolatory
assurance.
In this faith Leonard regarded his bereavement. His loss, he knew, had
been Margaret's gain. What if she had been summoned in the flower of
her years, and from a state of connubial happiness which there had
been nothing to disturb or to alloy? How soon might that flower have
been blighted,—how surely must it have faded! how easily might that
happiness have been interrupted by some of those evils which flesh is
heir to! And as the separation was to take place, how mercifully had
it been appointed that he, who was the stronger vessel, should be the
survivor! Even for their child this was best, greatly as she needed,
and would need, a mother's care. His paternal solicitude would supply
that care, as far as it was possible to supply it; but had he been
removed, mother and child must have been left to the mercy of
Providence, without any earthly protector, or any means of support.
For her to die was gain; in him, therefore, it were sinful as well as
selfish to repine, and of such selfishness and sin his heart acquitted
him. If a wish could have recalled her to life, no such wish would
ever have by him been uttered, nor ever have by him been felt; certain
he was that he loved her too well to bring her again into this world
of instability and trial. Upon earth there can be no safe happiness.
_Ah! male FORTUNÆ devota est ara MANENTI!
Fallit, et hæc nullas accipit ara preces._[1]
[Footnote 1: WALLIUS.]
All things here are subject to Time and Mutability:
_Quod tibi largâ dedit Hora dextrâ,
Hora furaci rapiet sinistrâ._[2]
[Footnote 2: CASIMIR.]
We must be in Eternity before we can be secure against change. “The
world,” says Cowper, “upon which we close our eyes at night, is never
the same with that on which we open them in the morning.”
It was to the perfect Order he should find in that state upon which he
was about to enter, that the judicious Hooker looked forward at his
death with placid and profound contentment. Because he had been
employed in contending against a spirit of insubordination and schism
which soon proved fatal to his country; and because his life had been
passed under the perpetual discomfort of domestic discord, the
happiness of Heaven seemed, in his estimation, to consist primarily in
Order, as indeed in all human societies this is the first thing
needful. The discipline which Mr. Bacon had undergone was very
different in kind: what he delighted to think, was, that the souls of
those whom death and redemption have made perfect, are in a world
where there is no change, nor parting, where nothing fades, nothing
passes away and is no more seen, but the good and the beautiful are
permanent.
_Miser, chi speme in cosa mortal pone;
Ma, chi non ve la pone?_[3]
[Footnote 3: PETRARCH.]
When Wilkie was in the Escurial, looking at Titian's famous picture of
the Last Supper, in the Refectory there, an old Jeronimite said to
him, “I have sate daily in sight of that picture for now nearly
three-score years; during that time my companions have dropt off, one
after another,—all who were my seniors, all who were my
contemporaries, and many, or most of those who were younger than
myself; more than one generation has passed away, and there the
figures in the picture have remained unchanged! I look at them till I
sometimes think that they are the realities, and we but shadows!”
I wish I could record the name of the Monk by whom that natural
feeling was so feelingly and strikingly expressed.
“The shows of things are better than themselves,”
says the author of the Tragedy of Nero, whose name also, I could wish
had been forthcoming; and the classical reader will remember the lines
of Sophocles:—
Ὁρῶ γὰρ ἡμᾶς οὐδὲν ὄντας ἄλλο, πλἡν
Ἔιδωλ᾽, ὅσοιπερ ζῶμεν, ἤ κούφην σκιάν.[4]
[Footnote 4: SOPHOCLES.]
These are reflections which should make us think
Of that same time when no more change shall be,
But stedfast rest of all things, firmly stayd
Upon the pillars of Eternity,
That is contraire to mutability;
For all that moveth doth in change delight:
But thenceforth all shall rest eternally
With Him that is the God of Sabaoth hight,
O that great Sabaoth God grant me that sabbath's sight![5]
[Footnote 5: SPENCER.]