[Illustration]
I call February the Threshold of the Year. In January we were indoors,
beside the fire, and there seemed little of new and various to tempt
us out. But February comes, and with it the first dream of change, the
first scarce-heard whisper of the Spring. The faint possibility of a
snowdrop, hinting its yet undrooping white through a peaked green film;
the distant hope of a primrose bud, peeping--with yellow point, for all
the world just like that of a coloured crayon--out of the young, crisp,
green leaves that are crowning the limp, ragged ones of last year; the
wild dream of a find of those sweet buds--little geologists’ hammers,
with white or violet noses--among their round seeds and drilled leaves,
in some warmer corner; such, summonings as these woo the steps to the
threshold on a strayed mild day late in February. The black, soaked
trees have, we find, taken a warm hue of life; the dull willow bushes
have the gleam of golden hair; the first soft air of the year comes to
our hearts with a gush of promises; flowers and leaves seem possible to
the heart waking from its winter stagnation; trees and men alike feel
a new life, a fresh impulse. Even though we have become hard wood and
wrinkled rind, our sap is, nevertheless, stirred:
“And even in our inmost ring
A pleasure is discerned,
From those blind motions of the Spring,
That show the year is turned.”
And, perhaps, we are content to pause on the threshold, and lean
against the lintel, and survey the smile close at hand, and the gleam
far away; and, while the robin draws near in a cheerful, not to say
jovial, sympathy with our humour, and the faint branchy shadows move
tenderly on the glistening lawn, to muse on the year’s threshold,
concerning the programme that the wind is whispering among the bushes,
and the promises that the warm air is wafting into the heart.
* * * * *
Musings on the Threshold. Such musings might take many an obvious high
road, or quaint turn, we must feel, as we stand on the threshold of our
house, and of the year, looking out upon the herald-gleam, and fanned
by what seems a Spring air; an air that summons sweet thoughts of
March, April, May--scarce June yet; certainly not October or November.
On the threshold of the Spring; this we would rather say, and forget
that it is really the threshold of the year,--that thing composed of
smiles and tears, of gleams and showers, of full green boughs and
bare sticks, of promises and disappointments, of growth and life, and
decay and death. For instance, with regard to these threshold musings,
how often, ere we shall have passed on so far in life’s journey, that
we stand on the threshold of the next state,--how often do we pause
for awhile upon some threshold, and lean back against the door and
muse. On the threshold of joy, or on the threshold of misery; on the
threshold of hope, or on the threshold of despair; on the threshold of
school, or of the holidays; on the threshold of wearing tail-coats;
of being flogged or expelled; of gaining the three head prizes of
the school,--these gave musings to some in early days. Later, on the
threshold of a pluck, or of a double first-class; on the threshold of
first love; and--oh, the dim, delicious look-out, and long, ecstatic
musings!--on the threshold of being married; of parting with some
beloved one,--and ah, how a stern hand seems to drag you forth from
your contemplation here, when your musings were scarce begun! On the
threshold of the first fall from purity or honour,--and, alas, the
dismal journey that shall follow upon the threshold left, and the
first step taken! On the threshold of repentance; and angel-eyes watch
eagerly, and angel-hands poise above their golden harps; and at the
first step forward a ringing rapture peals up into the trembling roof
of Heaven. “Musings on the Threshold”:--are there not then, highways
and by-paths which such musings might well take? But it is time for us
to choose our present road; and, to do so, we will even go back to the
beginning of a certain well-trodden way, upon which every one of us is
found, some far back, some near the middle, some tottering on close to
the goal.
_On the threshold of Life._ Yes, once upon a time we stood there: and
the Spring air was rife with half-shaped songs and indistinct delicious
whispers; and we knew that the hedges and copses were full of all sweet
promise-buds; and there were songs in the distance, and an interminable
thronging of inexhaustible flowers; and life seemed too sweet, when the
first blossom that was our own was grasped in our hand, and the stir of
life growing conscious and intelligent first made the heart glow and
kindle, as we paused musing upon the Threshold, and looked out upon the
sweet, strange opening year of Life.
Ah well, the step soon has to be taken, that marks the beginning of
separation from those lovely, unreal dreams. There is Solomon’s way of
leaving them--much labour, and little profit, and a bitter heart at
the end. And there is that other way of leaving them--the hearing once
and again, and gradually heeding, an oft-repeated solemn call, “Follow
Me.” Out of the sunshine into the shadow; away from dreamy threshold
musings, into the rough and stony highway; drop the flowers and clasp
the cross: for how run the instructions given long ago, and given to
all; given by precept, and given by example? “Whosoever will come after
Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.”
How true of those who--at last, and after long hesitation--take the
first step, and leave the threshold of this world’s young dreams, and
begin to follow Him; how true that “little did they know to what they
pledged themselves, when, in that first season of awe, they arose and
followed His voice. But now they cannot go back, for they are too nigh
to the unseen One, and His words have sunk deeply within them. Day
by day they are giving up their old waking dreams; things they have
pictured out and acted over in their imaginations and their hopes,
one by one they let them go, with saddened but willing hearts. They
feel as if they had fallen under some irresistible attraction, which
is hurrying them into the world unseen; and so in truth it is. He is
fulfilling to them His promise: ‘And I, if I be lifted up from the
earth, will draw all men unto Me.’ Their turn is come at last, that is
all. Before, they had only heard of the mystery; now, they feel it. He
has fastened on them His look of love, even as on Peter and on Mary;
and they cannot choose but follow, and in following Him, altogether
forget both themselves and all their visions of life.”
How strange it is, verily, after we have for many years now, followed
that Voice,--followed it, no doubt, with many a declension, many a
wavering, many a wayward swerving, and almost turning back; yet, on
the whole, followed it, and that with less of timidity, and more of
implicitness, as experience justified hope;--how strange, about midway
in the journey, to look back at life’s threshold! The January of
infancy had past; the February of awakening, conscious life had come,
and we came out from our dormant state, and paused upon the threshold,
and looked forth upon the world. And now we look back, and with a
strange, wondering interest, contemplate that single lonely figure
that was ourself, leaning in wrapt musing; the small home behind it;
and before, the siren murmurs, and warm, flattering airs of the fairy,
enticing Future. The magic dreams, the mirage-reveries, the profuse
promises, the unshaped hopes, the just-caught notes of some divine,
distant melody: all the flowers to blossom; and all the birds to come.
Ah, what sweet, wild musings were those! Far away we seemed to catch a
gleam of that
“Light that never was on sea or land,
The consecration, and the poet’s dream.”
And even tears had their sparkle, and melancholy its charm, and death
its unreal beauty.
“To think of passing bells, of death and dying--
’Twere good, methought, in early youth to die,
So loved, lamented: in such sweet sleep lying,
The white shroud all with flowers and rosemary
Stuck o’er by loving hands.”
Thus, we remember, once stood that figure, solitary in its own
individuality, upon the threshold, and looking out upon life. And,
contemplating our present self, we feel that it is “the same, yet not
the same.” How changed all has become! It is not only nor chiefly that
flowers are less valued than fruit-germs, or sparkling glass than
rough, hereafter-to-be-cut diamonds; it is not only, nor so much, that
the world’s promises and life’s young dreams have failed us, as that we
have turned away from them. That our taste has altered; that the things
that then were all, are now nearly nothing; that what once rose before
us a golden mirage, seems now as but bare sand; that what seemed gain,
would be now held as loss; that what seemed too rare, and delicious,
and high, and exquisite, and sublime, for more than trembling hope, has
now become as refuse in our thought.
[Illustration]
Time was, when other thoughts and purposes than these which now
possess us, held sway in our hearts. Time was, when we stood on the
threshold, dazzled, and wondering, in a delicious dream, which of all
the sublime or lovely paths that opened before us we should pursue.
Time was, when at last we began to heed a kind, but still small Voice,
that had from the first been speaking to us; when a grave Eye that
had from the first watched us, at last fixed our attention. Time was,
when we were compelled as it were, at first with hesitating, reluctant
step, to follow that Voice and that Look--away from those bright gay
paths, or grand aspiring ways, down a lowly, narrow way, strewn with
thorns and stones, and sloping into a mist-hid valley. Time was--if
we followed still--that the disturbing, distracting sounds and sights
above being left behind and hushed,--the mist lifted, and, lo! the
valley was a pleasant valley, an abode of “peace that the world cannot
give”: and if the way were still rough sometimes, there were undying
flowers of unearthly beauty here and there; and if the lark was away,
the nightingale was singing; and it was answered to us, yea, our heart
returned answer to itself, that, albeit narrow and strait at first, the
name of that way was, in very truth, the Way of Pleasantness and the
Path of Peace.
Ah, yes, if once we, with purpose of heart, set ourselves to follow
His guiding, how God draws us on! We clutch at this, and would rest at
that; and surely this is the Chief good, and the Ideal beauty? But
no; the early flowers depart, and the late, and we leave the threshold
and wander on; and February goes, and March goes, and even June, and
August; and sorrowfully and wonderingly we look up at God, following
Him on through life, even into the grave September, and the hushed
October, and the tearful November; and so into the winter of alienation
from the world, which death’s snow comes to seal.
But ere this we have found out His meaning in life, and the flowers of
earth are no more regretted; and there is no point at which we would
choose to have rested, now that we look back upon the past experiences
and events of the journey; and both our hands are laid in His, and we
look up with unutterable trust and ineffable love. It was not so once:
“I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou
Wouldst lead me on;
I loved to see and choose my path, but now
Lead Thou me on.”
And then He has led you, little by little, with gentle steps, hiding
the full length of the way that you must tread, lest you should start
aside in fear, and faint for weariness. And as it has been, so it must
be; onward you must go; He will not leave you here; there is yet in
store for you more contrition, more devotion, more delight in Him. A
few years hence, and you will see how true these words are. If by that
time you have not forsaken Him, you will be nigher still, walking in
strange, it may be solitary paths, in ways that are “called desert”;
but knowing Him, as now you know Him not, with a fulness of knowledge,
and a bowing of heart, and a holy self-renouncement, and a joy that
you are altogether His. What now seems too much, shall then seem all
too little; what too nigh, not nigh enough to His awful cross. Oh, how
our thoughts change! A few years ago, and you would have thought your
present state excessive and severe; you would have shrunk from it then,
as at this time you shrink from the hereafter. But now you look back,
and know that all was well. In all your past life you would not have
one grief the less, or one joy the more. It is all well.
And so it is, then, that we are led on from our February threshold, on
through the maturing, decaying months, until the silent Winter comes.
And what then? Is it to be the same over again--the same promises and
disappointments, the same dreams and awakenings, the same unreal glory
at the threshold, and the same gradual weaning from it on the journey?
Not so. To us the years are not repeated, nor is the “second life, only
the first renewed.”
“I know not, oh, I know not
What joys await us there;
What radiancy of glory,
What bliss beyond compare.”
But I love to wander, nevertheless, in my musings far beyond the
journey to the Land whither the journey is tending. Beyond this state
of probation to that of fruition; beyond striving, to attainment;
beyond discipline, to perfection; beyond warfare, to victory;
beyond labour, to rest; beyond constant slips and shortcomings, and
half-heartedness at best, to stedfast holiness; beyond the cross, to
the crown. We are yet within doors: oh, what will open before us on the
threshold of that next year!--when the first wonder of its January has
passed, and the amazed and almost dizzied soul has straightened and
uncrumpled its wings, and collected its powers, and can calmly begin to
understand its change, and to muse on its future, and to grasp the idea
of the possession upon which it has come: to anticipate the endless
succession of amaranthine flowers, ever increasing in glory throughout
the months of Eternity, and the songs that shall ever throng more and
more abundant and ecstatic, and never migrate nor pass away!
On the Threshold. Those in Paradise are now musing on the threshold,
waiting for their full consummation and bliss both in body and soul,
waiting for that coming of the Lord with regard to which they are still
crying out, “How long?” and are bid to “rest yet for a little season.”
And so then they rest, and wait upon the threshold, and contemplate the
mighty and magnificent panorama outspread before them as their Future.
The Voice is still there, and the Look; and they wait its summons, to
leave the threshold, and to follow once again. But how different that
following then! How far other than of old that summons! Not to paths
of humiliation and discipline, and hills of difficulty, and valleys
of shadow, but to realms of brightness and beauty unspeakable, and to
heights to which earth’s ambitions never soared. From the threshold
of blessedness into the domain of glory; from Abraham’s bosom to the
throne of the Lamb; from a star to the Sun in His strength.
[Illustration]
And so may we think of our dead that fell asleep in Jesus, as waiting
upon that blessed threshold, contemplating that ravishing prospect,
which is theirs, and may be ours. Nor do we enough thus think of and
realise the state of the departed. The poisonous fungi of error have
made us shy of the mushroom of truth. “The superstition of ages past
has recoiled into the sadduceeism of to-day.” And so we, the dying,
compassionate those who have begun to live, and who stand upon the
threshold of the yet higher and more perfect life of the resurrection.
Let us think of them more nobly, more worthily, more truly. Let us
not heap their burial with gloom; let not our souls dwell with their
bodies under the sodden clay. They are changed, but they are not lost;
they are “still the same, and yet are not what they were; they have
passed from the humiliation of the body to the majesty of the spirit.
The weakness, and the littleness, and the abasement of life are gone;
they are now excellent in strength, full of heavenly light, ardent
with love, above fallen humanity, akin to angels.” “Blessed and happy
dead!--great and mighty dead! In them the work of the new creation is
well-nigh accomplished; what feebly stirs in us, in them is well-nigh
full. They have passed within the vail, and there remaineth only one
more change for them,--a change full of a foreseen, foretasted bliss.
How calm, how pure, how sainted are they now! A few short years ago,
and they were almost as weak and poor as we; burdened with the dying
body we now bear about; harassed by temptations, often overcome,
weeping in bitterness of soul, struggling with faithful, though fearful
hearts, towards that dark shadow from which they shrank, as we shrink
now.”
We on our threshold and they on theirs; then let us think of them and
of ourselves so. We have left the threshold of life, and are nearing
the threshold of Death, or rather of the beginning of Life indeed.
They behold the prospect at which we guess, and which we burn to see.
But because it may be ours one day, we are already sharers with them,
and our higher union is rather cemented than interrupted. “The unity
of the saints on earth with the Church unseen is the straitest bond of
all. Hell has no power over it, sin cannot blight it, schism cannot
rend it, death itself can but knit it more strongly. Nothing is changed
but the relations of sight: like as when the head of a far-stretching
procession, winding through a broken, hollow land, hides itself in
some bending vale, it is still all one; all advancing together; they
that are farthest onward in the way are conscious of their lengthened
following; they that linger with the last are drawn forward as it were
by the attraction of the advancing multitude.” Or, in another figure,
beautifully has it been said, that when the Sun of Righteousness passed
out of sight, the splendour of His hidden shining is reflected by His
saints, “till the night starts out full of silver stars.” “In stedfast
and silent course” they pass on, some disappearing below the horizon,
some resplendent in mid-heaven, some just emerging from the other
boundaries. And when the last has arisen, and some are yet sparkling
in the blue vault, the Sun shall arise with sudden glory, and they
all shall render to Him their light. But until that time, which no
man knoweth, neither the angels of heaven, it is awaiting upon the
threshold, in mighty musing upon the glory yet to be revealed; and,
“until all is fulfilled,” the desire of the Church unseen is stayed
with the “white robes” and the sound of the “Bridegroom’s voice.” Let
us comfort one another with these words and these thoughts.
And now thus have we mused upon the Threshold, beginning first with
the threshold of the life that is expecting death, and then soaring
boldly to the threshold of the life that is expecting the Resurrection.
We need reminding in this age that there are two sides to _this_
expectation. There is “a certain fearful looking for of judgment and
of fiery indignation,” as well as an ardent, and eager, and rapturous
anticipation and longing for His coming who cometh quickly, though He
seem to tarry. And it is well to ask, when death ends our journey here,
upon which threshold shall we prefer to wait, and which musing shall
be our choice: the dreadful looking-for of judgment, or the ecstatic
longing to hear that Voice which once said, “Follow Me,” speak again
to us, even to us, the incredible words--“Well done, thou good and
faithful servant: enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.” Choose we, my
friends, carefully, prayerfully, deliberately, finally, and at once;
for “Behold, _now_ is the accepted time; behold, _now_ is the day of
salvation.”
[Illustration]