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.