To Rev. Henry W. Bellows, D.D.
ST. DAVID'S, Nov. 24, 1874.
DEAR FRIEND,--I have read and read again what you have written upon the
Great Theme. What a subject for a letter! And yet the most we can say
seems to avail no more than the least we can say. Some one, or more,
of the old Asiatics--I forget who--says he "would have no word used
to describe the Infinite Cause." I suppose no word can be found that
is not subject to exceptions. The final words that I fall back upon
are righteousness and love. Even the word intelligence is perhaps more
questionable. If it implies anything like attention to one person and
thing or another, anything like imagination, comparison, reasoning,
we must pause upon the use of it. To say knowledge would perhaps be
better, for there must be something that knows its own works and
creatures. To suppose the cause of all things to be ignorant of all
things seems like a contradiction in terms. It would be, in fact, to
deny a cause; to say that the universe is what it is without any cause.
Even that awful supposition, the only alternative to theism, comes over
the mind sometimes; but if I were to accept it, "the very stones would
cry out" against me.
Oh, my friend, I lie down in my bed every night thinking of God; and
I say sometimes, is it not a false idea of greatness, to suppose the
Infinite Greatness cannot [327] regard me? Worldly great men shrink
from little things, from little people. But it is not so with the most
truly great. They come down in art, in poetry, in eloquence, in true
learning, to instruct and lift up the lowly and ignorant.
And again I say, when trying to reckon up the account with myself
before I sink into unconsciousness, thinking of this bodily frame, with
its million harmonious agencies, and the mind more wonderful still; or
when I sit down in my daily walk, and sink into the bosom of nature,
with light and life and beauty all around me,--surely the author of
all this is good. It would be monstrous fatuity to question it, utter
blindness not to see it.
And yet again, I say, there are relations between the finite and the
Infinite, between my mind and the Infinite mind, between my weakness
and the Infinite power. And why should conscious Omnipresence in our
conception localize it? Presence is not limited to contact. I am
present here in my room; I am present in the field where I sit down.
Why, with the whole universe, should not the Infinite Being thus be
present?
What a wonderful chapter is the twenty-third of Job! There are many
things in that book which touch upon our modern experience. "Oh! that I
knew where I might find him, that I might come near even to his seat.
I go forward, but he is not there, and backward, but I cannot perceive
him; on the left hand where he cloth work, but I cannot behold him;
for he hideth himself on the right hand that I cannot see him." But I
come with undoubting faith to Job's conclusion: "But he knoweth the way
that I take; when he hath tried me I shall come forth as gold." There
are deep trials, at times, in the approach to God, in lifting the weak
thoughts of our minds to the [328] Infinite One; there are struggles
and tears which none may ever witness; but still I say, "0 God, thou
art my God, early will I seek thee,"--ever will I seek thee. Let him
who will, or must, walk out from this fair, bright, glowing world,
thrilling all the world in us with joy, upon the cold and dreary waste
of atheism; I will not. I should turn rebel to all the great instincts
within me, and all the great behests of nature and life around me, if I
did. Ah! the confounding, ever-troubling difficulty is not to believe,
but to feel the great Presence all the day long. This is what I think
of, and long have, with questioning and pain. What beings should we
become--what to one another--under that living and loving sense of the
all-good, the all-beautiful and divine within us and around us! And,
for ourselves, what a perfect joy it is to feel that, in this seemingly
disturbed universe, all is order, all is right, all is well, all is the
best possible!
Yours ever,