[Illustration: Preface]
These papers, written in the intervals of parish work, have appeared
in the pages of the _Leisure Hour_ and the _Sunday at Home_. Their
publication in a collected form having been decided upon by others, it
only remained for me, by careful revision and excision, to render them
as little unworthy as might be of starting for themselves in the wide
world.
I shall not say that I am sorry that they are thus sent forth on
their humble mission. Indeed, I am glad. “Brief life is here our
portion”:--and surely the wish is one natural to all earnest hearts,
that our work for our Master in this sad and sinful world should not
have its term together with the quick ending of our short day’s labour
here:--and a book has the possibility of a longer life than that of a
man. The Night cometh, when none can work; how sweet, if it might be,
that when the day is ended, when the warfare, for us, is over, we may
have left some strong watchwords, or some comfortable and cheering
utterances, still ringing in the ears of those who stepped into our
place in the unbroken ranks.
Yes, the evening soon falls on the field; the day is brief, nor fully
employed; inanimate things seem to have an advantage over us; streams
flow on, and mountains stand;
“While we, the brave, the mighty, and the wise,
We men, who, in our morn of youth, defied
The elements, must vanish:--be it so!
Enough, if something from our hands have power
To live, and act, and serve the future hour.”
And I may be permitted to hope that possibly these meditations may have
such power and perform such, service in their modest way. They have but
the ambition of a flower that looks up to cheer, or a bird’s note that
tranquilly, amid storms, continues a simple melody from the heart of
its tree. They will, like these, be easily passed by, but, like these,
may have a message for hearts that will look and listen.
There is certainly, in the present age, a want of writing that
shall rest and brace the mind; of meditative writing of a tendency
merely holy and practical, rather shunning than plunging into
controversy:--not the cry of the angry or startled bird, but its
evening and morning orisons rather. A contemplative strain; one linked
with things of earth, and hallowing them--one heard beside “the common
path that common men pursue”:--one rising from the common work-a-day
experiences, joys, and pains--rising from these and carrying them up
with it heavenward, until even earth’s exhalations catch the light of
an unearthly glory. We want more of this spiritual rest; more of this
standing apart from the perturbations of the day; more of retirement
and retired thought--thought that shall leave the throng, with its
absorbed purpose and pushing and jostling, always eager, often angry;
and having secured a lonely standing-point apart from it all, become
better able to judge of the real truth and importance, also of the just
relation of things.
I cannot claim to have done more than make a slight attempt towards
the supply of this want. Nay, I would rather lay claim not to have
_attempted_. This is the age of effort and strain; it were well that
thought were sometimes permitted to be natural, spontaneous, and simply
expressive of that which the heart’s meditations have laid by in store.
A stream thus welling up will want the precision and the single aim of
the artificial jet, but it will have its modest use and value to cheer
and to refresh lowly grasses, and perhaps to water the roots of loftier
growths in its vagaries and meanderings.
In these times men will be held nothing if not controversial; and
rival parties will skim the book for shibboleths before they read or
throw it by. Assuredly fixed principles and definite teaching are
(if ever at one time more than another) of special importance in the
present day; and I am not one who think it well to blow both hot and
cold at pleasure. Only I would ask, is there absolute need that we be
_always blowing_ either? may we not sometimes be permitted simply to
breathe? There are occasions on which I find myself compelled to blow
one or the other, but I grudge the good breath spent in the exertion,
and prefer to return to the normal state of even respiration. A story,
told of Archbishop Leighton’s youth, is to the point:--“In a synod
he was publicly reprimanded for not ‘preaching up the times.’ ‘Who,’
he asked, ‘does preach up the times?’ It was answered that all the
brethren did it. ‘Then,’ he rejoined, ‘if all of you preach up the
times, you may surely allow one poor brother to preach up Christ Jesus
and eternity.’”
No doubt, we must be militant here on earth, militant against every
form of error--old error undisguised, and old error in a new dress; but
the more need that we should secure breathing times when we may sheathe
the biting sword and lay the heavy armour by. Perhaps many with whom
we war, or from whom we stand aloof in suspicion, would be found, when
the vizors were raised, to be brothers, and henceforth warriors by our
side.
One word as to the title of this book. “The Harvest of a Quiet Eye.”
This has always been a favourite line with me, and now I take it to
describe my unpretentious volume, though this be rather a handful
gleaned than a harvest got in. With some people this gleaning by the
way would be contemned, in their single-eyed advance upon some goal;
with some it is a thing continual and habitual, this instinctive
gathering and half-unconscious storing of hints and touches of wayside
beauty--a process so well described in Wordsworth’s verses. To have
an eye for the wide pictures and slight studies of Nature; to gather
them up, in solitary walks which thus are not lonely; to lay them
by, together with the heart’s deeper thoughts, its associations,
meditations, and reminiscences;--this is to fashion common things into
a beauty which, to the fashioner at least, may be a joy for ever.
“To see the heath-flower withered on the hill,
To listen to the woods’ expiring lay,
To note the red leaf shivering on the spray,
To mark the last bright tints the mountain stain,
On the waste fields to trace the gleaner’s way,
And moralise on mortal joy and pain,”
--this has been with me the secondary occupation of many a walk,
solitary or in company. A rosy sunbeam slanting down a bank, and
catching the stems of the ferns and the tops of the grasses; a coral
twist of briony berries; a daisy in December;--the eye would be
caught, and the train of grave or anxious musing intermitted without
being broken off, by the ever-allowed claim of Nature’s silent poetry.
And often the deeper meaning of such poetry would run parallel with the
mind’s thought--sometimes suggest for it a new path.
“Few ears of scattered grain.” Though this be all my harvest, yet if
that be grain at all which has been collected, it may have its use. He
who with a very little fed a great multitude, has a ministry for even
our humble handfuls. At His feet be this laid: may He accept and bless
it, and deign to refresh and hearten by its means some few at least of
those who, faint and weary, are following Him in the wilderness of this
world!
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