and Christ-like men have held up such an ideal to humanity; and the
sorrow of it is that, the moment that such thoughts have won for
themselves the incredible and instant power that they do win among
mortals, men of impure motive, who have desired the power more than the
service, have seized upon the source, have fenced it off, have
systematized its distribution, have enriched themselves by withholding
and denying it to all but those who can pay a price, if not of wealth,
at all events of submission and obedience and recognition.
A man who desires the true priesthood may perhaps find it readiest to
his hand in some ecclesiastical organization; yet there he is
surrounded by danger; his impulses are repressed; he must sacrifice
them for the sake of the caste to which he belongs; he is told to be
cautious and prudent; he is praised and rewarded for being
conventional. But a man may also take such a consecration for himself,
as a king takes a crown from the altar and crowns himself with might;
he need not require it at the hands of another. If a man resolves not
to live for himself or his own ambitions, but to walk up and down in
the earth, praising simplicity and virtue and the love of God wherever
he sees it, protesting against tyranny and selfishness, bearing others'
burdens as far as he can, he may exercise the priesthood of God. Such
men are to be found in every Church, and even holding the highest
places in them; but such a priesthood is found, though perhaps few
suspect it, by thousands among women where it is found by tens among
men. Perhaps it may be said that if a man adds the tenderness of a
woman to the serene strength of a man, he is best fitted for the task;
but the truth lies in the fact that the qualities for the exercise of
such an influence are to be found far more commonly among women than
among men, though accompanied as a rule by less consciousness of it,
and little desire to exercise it officially; indeed it is the very
absence of egotism among women, the absence of the personal claim, that
makes them less effective than they otherwise might be, because they do
not hold an object or an aim dear enough. They desire to achieve,
rather than to be known to have achieved; and yet in this unperceptive
world, human beings are apt to choose for their guides and counsellors
people whom they know by reputation, rather than those whom they know
familiarly. And thus mere recognition often brings with it a power of
wider influence, because people are apt to trust the judgment of others
rather than their own. In seeking for an adviser, men are apt to
consider who has the greatest reputation for wisdom, rather than whom
they themselves have found wisest; and thus the man who seeks for
influence often attains it, because he has a wider circle of those who
recommend him. It is this absence of independent judgment that gives
strength to the self-seeking priest; while the natural priesthood of
women is less recognized because it is attended with no advertisement.
The natural priest is one whom one can instinctively and utterly trust,
in whom one can deposit secrets as one deposits them in the custody of
a bank, without any fear that they will be used for other purposes. In
the true priest one finds a tender compassion, a deep and patient love;
it is not worth while to wear disguises before him, because his keen,
weary, and amused eye sees through the mask. It is not worth while to
keep back, as Ananias did, part of the price of the land, to leave
sordid temptations untold, because the true priest loves the sinner
even more than he hates the sin; it is best to be utterly sincere with
him, because he loves sincerity even more than unstained virtue; and
one can confess to him one's desires for good with as little false
shame as one can confess one's hankering after evil. Perhaps in one
respect the man is more fitted to be a confessor than a woman, because
he has a deeper experience of the ardour and the pleasure of
temptation; and yet the deeper tenderness of the woman gives her a
sympathy for the tempted, which is not even communicated by a wider
experience of sin.
Perhaps there is nothing that reflects our anthropomorphic ideas of God
more strongly than the fact that no revelation of prophets has ever
conceived of the Supreme Deity as other than masculine; and no doubt
the Mariolatry of the Church of Rome is the reflection of the growing
influence in the world of the feminine element; and yet the conception
of God as masculine is in itself a limitation of His infinite
perfection. That we should carry our conception of sex into the
infinite is perhaps a mere failure of imagination, and if we could
divest ourselves of a thought which possibly has no reality in it, we
should perhaps grow to feel that the true priesthood of life could be
exercised as well by women as by men, or even better. The true
principle is that all those who are set free by a natural grace, a
divine instinct, from grosser temptations, and whose freedom leads them
not to a cold self-sufficiency, to a contempt for what is weaker, but
to an ardent desire to save, to renew, to upraise, are the natural
priests or priestesses of the world; for the only way in which the
priest can stand between man and God is, when smaller and more hampered
natures realize that he has a divine freedom and compassion conferred
upon him, which sets him above themselves; when they can feel that in
religion it is better to agree with the saints than to differ from
them; when they can see that there are certain people whose religious
intuitions can be trusted, because they are wider and deeper than the
narrower intuitions of more elementary natures.
The priest, then, that I would recognize is not the celebrator of
lonely and forlorn mysteries, the proprietor of divine blessings, the
posturer in solemn ceremonies, but the man or woman of candid gaze, of
fearless heart, of deep compassion, of infinite concern. It is these
qualities which, if they are there, lend to rite and solemnity a
holiness and a significance which they cannot win from antiquity or
tradition. Such priests as these are the interpreters of the Divine
will, the channels of Divine grace; and the hope of the race lies in
the fact that such men and women are sent into the world, and go in and
out among us, more than in all the stately organizations, the
mysterious secrets, the splendid shrines, devised by the art of man to
make fences about the healing spring; shrines where, though sound and
colour may lavish their rich hues, their moving tones, yet the raiment
of the priest may hide a proud and greedy heart, and the very altar may
be cold.
XIII
AMBITION
I am afraid that Milton's great line about ambition,
"That last infirmity of noble minds,"
is responsible for a good deal of harm, because it induces high-minded
persons of inexact ideas to think ambition a noble infirmity, or at
least to believe that they need not try to get rid of their personal
ambitions until they have conquered all their other evil dispositions.
I suppose that what Milton meant was that it was the hardest of all
faults to get rid of; and the reason why it is so difficult to eject
it, is because it is so subtle and ingenious a spirit, and masquerades
under such splendid disguises, arrayed in robes of light. A man who
desires to fill a high position in the world is so apt to disguise his
craving to himself by thinking, or trying to think, that he desires a
great place because of the beneficent influence he can exert, and all
the good that he will be able to do, which shall stream from him as
light from the sun. Of course to a high-minded man that is naturally
one of the honest pleasures of an important post; but he ought to be
quite sure that his motive is that the good should be done, and not
that he should have the credit of doing it. I have burnt my own fingers
not once nor twice at the fire of ambition, and the subject has been
often in my mind. But my experiences were so wholly unlike anything
that I had anticipated, though I suppose they are in reality normal
enough, that I will venture to set them down here. The first curious
experience was how, on a nearer survey of the prospect of obtaining an
important post, all the incidental advantages and conveniences of the
position sank into nothingness. This was a quite unexpected
development; I had imagined that a prospect of dignity and importance
would have had something vaguely sustaining about it. A brilliant
satirist once said that a curate did not as a rule desire to be a
bishop that he might exercise a wide and useful influence, but
primarily that he might be called "my lord." I myself was brought, as a
child, in contact with one who was somewhat unexpectedly called to a
high office. I was much with him in the days when his honours first
invested him, and I confess with a certain shame that it did
undoubtedly seem to me that the dignity of the office, the sense of
power, the obvious respect paid to him by people of position, were
things that must pleasantly sweeten a mortal cup. The other day I was
in the company of an eminent prelate; there were three curates present:
they hovered round the great man like bees round a flower; they gazed
with innocent rapture upon his shapely legs, somewhat strangely
swathed, as Carlyle said, his bright, grotesque hat; and I could not
help feeling that they thought how well such raiment would become
themselves. It is of course a childish view; but then how long our
childish views survive, though hidden under grave pretences! To see a
great personage move with dignity to his appointed place in a great
ceremony, attended by all the circumstances of pomp, a congregation
gazing, with an organ above thundering out rich and solemn music, how
impressive it all appears! How hard to think that the central actor in
such a scene does not feel his heart swell with a complacent joy! And
yet I suppose that any sensible man under such conditions is far more
likely to be oppressed with a sense of weakness and anxious
responsibility; how soon such surroundings ought to, nay, do find their
true value in a wise man's mind! The triumph rather is if, in the midst
of all this glitter and glory, when a silence is made, the worshipful
man speaks simple and strong words out of a pure and noble heart; and
then one can feel that the pomp is nothing but the due homage of
mankind for real greatness, and that it has followed him rather than
been followed by him.
It was a relief to find, as I say, that, on a nearer prospect, all the
circumstance of greatness vanished into shadow--indeed more than
that--it became one of the distinct disadvantages of the position. I
felt that time and money and thought would have to be spent on the
useless and fatiguing mise-en-scene, and that it would all entail a
quantity of futile worry, of tiresome publicity, of intolerable
functions, that meant nothing but weariness of spirit. I think that men
of high official position are most to be pitied because of the time
that they have to spend, not in their work, but in the ornamental
appearances entailed on them by their duties. These things have a
certain value, I suppose, in stimulating the imagination of gazers; but
surely it is a poor value after all. A secretary of state in his study,
working out the hard and tiresome details of a plan that will benefit
perhaps a whole nation in humble ways, is a more admirable figure than
the same man, in ribbon and star, bowing and smiling at an evening
party. And yet the dignified trappings of the post are what ordinary
men desire.
The next step in my own progress when confronted, as I say, with the
prospect of the possibility that I might feel bound to accept an
important position, was the consciousness of the anxious and wearing
responsibilities that it involved. I felt that a millstone was to be
bound round my neck, and that I must bid farewell to what is after all
the best gift of heaven, my liberty; a liberty won by anxious years of
hard toil.
And here I have no doubt, though I tried hard not to let it affect me,
that my desire not to sacrifice my liberty did make me exaggerate the
difficulties that lay before me; difficulties which I should probably
have unconsciously minimized if I had desired the position which was in
prospect. It was a happy moment when I found myself relieved from the
responsibility of undertaking an impossible task. I felt, too, that I
was further disqualified by my reluctance to attempt the task; a
reluctance which a near prospect of the position had poignantly
revealed to me. A great task ought to be taken up with a certain
buoyancy and eagerness of spirit, not in heaviness and sadness. A
certain tremor of nerves, a stage fright, is natural to all sensitive
performers. But this is merely a kind of anteroom through which one
must needs pass to a part which one desires to play; but if one does
not sincerely desire to play the part, it is clear that to attempt it
merely from a sense of duty is an ill omen for success. And so I felt
sincerely and humbly that I ought not to feel compelled to attempt it.
The conviction came in a flash like a divine intuition, and was
followed by a peace of mind which showed me that I was acting rightly.
I seemed too to perceive that the best work in the world was not the
work of administration and organization, but humble and individual
ministries performed in a corner without tangible rewards. For such
work I was both equipped and prepared, and I turned back to the
fallentis semita vitae, which is the true path for the sincere spirit,
aware that I had been truly and tenderly saved from committing a grave
mistake.
Perhaps if one could have looked at the whole question in a simpler and
larger-minded way, the result might have been different. But here
temperament comes in, and the very complexities and intricacies that
clouded the matter were of themselves evidence that after all it was
the temperament that was at fault. Cecil Rhodes, it is recorded, once
asked Lord Acton why Mr. Bent, the explorer, did not pronounce certain
ruins to be of Phoenician origin. Lord Acton replied with a smile that
it was probably because he was not sure. "Ah!" said Cecil Rhodes, "that
is not the way that Empires are made." A true, interesting, and
characteristic comment; but it also contains a lesson that people who
are not sure should not attempt to make empires, or undertake tasks
that involve the welfare of many.
And so there remains the duty to me, after my piece of experience, to
gather up the fragments that remain, to interpret. Dante assigns the
lowest place in the lower world to those who refuse a great
opportunity, but he is speaking of those who perversely reject a great
task, which is plainly in their power, for some false and low motive.
But the case is different for those who have a great temptation put
before them, and who, desiring to do what is right, have it brought
home to them in a convincing way that it is not their opportunity. No
one ought to assume great responsibilities if he is not equal to them.
One of the saddest things ever said on a human deathbed was what was
said by a great ecclesiastic, who had disappointed the hopes that had
been formed of him. In his last moments he turned to one who stood near
him and murmured, "I have held a great post, and I have not been equal
to it." The misery was that no one could sincerely contradict him. It
is not a piece of noble self-sacrifice to have assumed confidently a
great responsibility to which one is not equal. It is a mere mistake,
and a mistake which is even more reprehensible than the mistake of
being over-persuaded into attempting a task for which one is not
fitted. One is given reason and common sense and prudence that one may
use them, and to act contrary to their dictates because those who do
not know you so well as you know yourself advise you cheerfully that it
will probably be all right, is an act of criminal folly. Heavy
responsibilities are lightly assumed nowadays, because the temptations
of power and publicity are very strong, and because too high a value is
set upon worldly success. It is a plainer and simpler duty for those
who wish to act rightly, and who have formed a deliberate idea of own
limitations, to refuse great positions humbly and seriously, if they
know that they will be unequal to them.
Of course I knew that I should be reproached with indolence and even
cowardice. I knew that I should be supposed to be one of those
consistently impracticable people who insist on going off at a tangent
when the straight course lies before them. That I should be relegated
to the class of persons who have failed in life through some
deep-seated defect of will. The worst of a serious decision of the kind
is that, whichever step one takes, one is sure to be blamed. I saw all
this with painful clearness, but it is better to be arraigned before
the tribunal of other men's consciences than to be condemned before
one's own. It is better to refuse and be disappointed, than to accept
and be disappointed. Failure in the course marked out, in the event of
acceptance, would have been disastrous, not only to myself but to the
institution I was to be set to rule and guide. Far better that the task
should be entrusted to one who had no diffidence, no hesitation, but a
sincere confidence in his power of dealing with the difficulties of the
situation, and an ardent desire to grapple with them.
The only difficulty, if one believes very strongly, as I do, in a great
and wise Providence that guides our path, is to interpret why the
possibility of a great task is indicated to one if it is not intended
that one should perform it. But the essence of a true belief in the
call of Providence seems to me to lie not in the rash acceptance of any
invitation that happens to come in one's way, but a stern and austere
judgment of one's own faculties and powers. I have not the smallest
doubt that Providence intended that this great task should be refused
by me; my only difficulty is to see what to make of it, and why it was
even suggested. One lesson is that one must beware of personal vanity,
another that one should not indulge in the temptation to desire
important posts for any reason except the best: the humble hope to do
work that is useful and valuable. If I had sternly repressed these
tendencies at an earlier stage of life, this temptation would not have
been necessary, nor the humiliation which inevitably succeeds it.
But
that is down need fear no fall,
He that is low no pride.
And there can be now no more chance of these bitter and self-revealing
incidents, which show one, as in a clear mirror, the secret weaknesses
of the heart.
But in setting aside the desire for the crowns and thrones of ambition,
we must be very careful that we are not merely yielding to temptations
of indolence, of fastidiousness, of cowardice, and calling a personal
motive unworldliness for the sake of the associations. No man need set
himself to seek great positions, but a man who is diffident, and
possibly indolent, will do well to pin himself down in a position of
responsibility and influence, if it comes naturally in his way. There
are a good many men with high natural gifts of an instinctive kind who
are yet averse to using them diligently, who, indeed, from the very
facility with which they exercise them, hardly know their value. Such
men as these--and I have known several--undertake a great
responsibility if they refuse to take advantage of obvious
opportunities to use their gifts. Men of this kind have often a certain
vague, poetical, and dreamy quality of mind; a contemplative gift. They
see and exaggerate the difficulties and perils of posts of high
responsibility. If they yield to temptations of temperament, they often
become ineffective, dilettante, half-hearted natures, playing with life
and speculating over it, instead of setting to work on a corner of the
tangle. They hang spiritless upon the verge of the battle instead of
mingling with the fray. The curse of such temperaments is that they
seem destined to be unhappy whichever way they decide. If they accept
positions of responsibility, they are fretted and strained by
difficulties and obstacles; they live uneasily and anxiously; they lose
the buoyancy with which great work should be done; if, on the other
hand, they refuse to come forward, they are tortured with regrets for
having abstained; they become conscious of ineffectiveness and
indecision; they are haunted by the spectres of what might have been.
The only course for such natures is to endeavour to see where their
true life lies, and to follow the dictates of reason and conscience as
far as possible. They must resolve not to be tempted by the glamour of
possible success, but to take the true measure of their powers. They
must not yield to the temptation to trust to the flattering judgment
that others may form of their capacities, nor light-heartedly to
shoulder a burden which they may be able to lift but not to carry. Such
natures will sometimes attempt a great task with a certain glow and
enthusiasm; but they must ask themselves humbly how they will continue
to discharge it when the novelty has worn off, and when the prospect
that lies before them is one of patient and unpraised labour. It leads
to worse disasters to over-estimate one's powers than to under-estimate
them. A man who over-estimates his capacities is apt to grow impatient,
and even tyrannical, in the presence of difficulties.
And after all it may be said that humility is a rarer virtue than
confidence; and though it is not so popular, though it does not appeal
so much to the imagination, it is a quality that may well be exercised,
if it is done without self-consciousness, in these busy days and in
these active western climes. The best work of the world is done, as I
have said, not by those who organize on a large scale, but by those who
work faithfully on individual lines, in corners and byways. Indeed, the
success of those who organize and rule is due in part no doubt to the
power that they may possess of inspiring silent effort, but is still
more largely due to the faithful workers whose labours are unnoted, who
carry out great designs in a simple and quiet spirit. There is strong
warrant in the teaching of Christ for the work of those who are
faithful in a few things. There is no warrant for the action of those
who stride into the front, and clamour to be entrusted with the
destinies of others. There can be no question that Christ does not
admit the value of ambition in any form as a motive for character. The
lives that He praises are the lives of quiet, affectionate persons,
more concerned with the things of the spirit than with the things of
the intellect. The Christian must concern himself, not with grasping at
influence, not even with setting his mark upon the world, but with the
quality of his decisions, his work, his words, his thoughts. The only
thing possible for him is to go forward step by step, trusting more to
the guidance of God than to his own designs, to what are called
intuitions more than to reasoned conclusions. In that spirit, if he can
attain to it, he begins to be able to estimate things at their true
value. Instead of being dazzled with the bright glare which the world
throws upon the objects of his desire, he sees all things in a pale,
clear light of dawn, and true aims begin to glow with an inner
radiance. He may tremble and hesitate before a decision, but once taken
there is no looking back; he knows that he has been guided, and that
God has told him, by silent and eloquent motions of the spirit, what it
is that He would have him to do; he has but to interpret and to trust.