acknowledge the wisdom of what follows. It displays an intimate knowledge
both of the constitution and history of man, and there is much in it
suited to our present need:
_I do not hesitate to express my conviction, that the spirit of the
critical philosophy, as seen by its fruits in all the ramifications of
art, literature, and morality, is as much more dangerous than the
spirit of mechanical philosophy_, as it is fairer in appearance, and
more capable of alliance with our natural feelings of enthusiasm and
delight. Its dangerous tendency is this, that it perverts those very
minds, whose office it was to resist the perverse impulses of society,
and to proclaim truth under the dominion of falsehood. However
precipitate may be at any time the current of public opinion, bearing
along the mass of men to the grosser agitations of life, and to such
schemes of belief as make these the prominent objects, _there will
always be in reserve a force of antagonistic opinion, strengthened by
opposition, and attesting the sanctity of those higher principles
which are despised or forgotten by the majority_. These men _are
secured by natural temperament_ and peculiar circumstances from
participating in the common delusion: but if some other and deeper
fallacy be invented; if some more subtle beast of the field should
speak to them in wicked flattery; if a digest of intellectual
aphorisms can be substituted in their minds for a code of living
truths, and the lovely semblances of beauty, truth, affection, can be
made first to obscure the presence, and then to conceal the loss, of
that religious humility, without which, as their central life, all
these are but dreadful shadows; if so fatal a stratagem can be
successfully practised; I see not what hope remains for a people
against whom the gates of hell have so prevailed.
But the number of pure artists is small: few souls are so finely
tempered as to preserve the delicacy of meditative feeling, untainted
by the allurements of accidental suggestion. The voice of the critical
conscience is still and small, like that of the moral: it cannot
entirely be stifled where it has been heard, but it may be disobeyed.
Temptations are never wanting: some immediate and temporary effect can
be produced at less expense of inward exertion than the high and more
ideal effect which art demands: it is much easier to pander to the
ordinary and often recurring wish for excitement, than to promote the
rare and difficult intuition of beauty. _To raise the many to his own
real point of view, the artist must employ his energies, and create
energy in others: to descend to their position is less noble, but
practicable with ease._ If I may be allowed the metaphor, one partakes
of the nature of redemptive power; the other of that self-abased and
degenerate will, which "flung from his splendours" the fairest star in
heaven.
_Revelation is a voluntary approximation of the Infinite Being to the
ways and thoughts of finite humanity._ But until this step has been
taken by Almighty Grace, how should man have a warrant for loving with
all his heart and mind and strength?... Without the gospel, nature
exhibits a want of harmony between our intrinsic constitution and the
system in which it is placed. But Christianity has made up the
difference. It is possible and natural to love the Father, who has
made us His children by the spirit of adoption: it is possible and
natural to love the Elder Brother, who was, in all things, like as we
are, except sin, and can succour those in temptation, having been
himself tempted. _Thus the Christian faith is the necessary complement
of a sound ethical system._
There is something to us very striking in the words "Revelation is a
_voluntary_ approximation of the Infinite Being." This states the case
with an accuracy and a distinctness not at all common among either the
opponents or the apologists of _revealed religion_ in the ordinary sense
of the expression. In one sense God is for ever revealing Himself. His
heavens are for ever telling His glory, and the firmament showing His
handiwork; day unto day is uttering speech, and night unto night is
showing knowledge concerning Him. But in the word of the truth of the
gospel, God draws near to His creatures; He bows His heavens, and comes
down:
That glorious form, that light unsufferable,
And that far-beaming blaze of majesty,
he lays aside. The Word dwelt with men. "Come then, let _us_ reason
together";--"Waiting to be gracious";--"Behold, I stand at the door, and
knock; if any man open to Me, I will come in to him, and sup with him, and
he with Me." It is the father seeing his son while yet a great way off,
and having compassion, and running to him and falling on his neck and
kissing him; for "it was meet for us to rejoice, for this my son was dead
and is alive again, he was lost and is found." Let no man confound the
voice of God in His Works with the voice of God in His Word; they are
utterances of the same infinite heart and will; they are in absolute
harmony; together they make up "that undisturbèd song of pure concent";
one "perfect diapason"; but they are distinct; they are meant to be so. A
poor traveller, "weary and waysore," is stumbling in unknown places
through the darkness of a night of fear, with no light near him, the
everlasting stars twinkling far off in their depths, and yet unrisen sun,
or the waning moon, sending up their pale beams into the upper heavens,
but all this is distant and bewildering for his feet, doubtless better
much than outer darkness, beautiful and full of God, if he could have the
heart to look up, and the eyes to make use of its vague light; but he is
miserable, and afraid, his next step is what he is thinking of; a lamp
secured against all winds of doctrine is put into his hands, it may in
some respects widen the circle of darkness, but it will cheer his feet, it
will tell them what to do next. What a silly fool he would be to throw
away that lantern, or draw down the shutters, and make it dark to him,
while it sits "i' the centre and enjoys bright day," and all upon the
philosophical ground that its light was of the same kind as the stars',
and that it was beneath the dignity of human nature to do anything but
struggle on and be lost in the attempt to get through the wilderness and
the night by the guidance of those "natural" lights, which, though they
are from heaven, have so often led the wanderer astray. The dignity of
human nature indeed! Let him keep his lantern till the glad sun is up,
with healing under his wings. Let him take good heed to the "sure" [Greek:
logon] while in this [Greek: auchmêrô topô]--this dark, damp, unwholesome
place, "till the day dawn and [Greek: phôsphoros]--the day-star--arise."
Nature and the Bible, the Works and the Word of God, are two distinct
things. In the mind of their Supreme Author they dwell in perfect peace,
in that unspeakable unity which is of His essence; and to us His children,
every day their harmony, their mutual relations, are discovering
themselves; but let us beware of saying all nature is a revelation as the
Bible is, and all the Bible is natural as nature is: there is a perilous
juggle here.
The following passage develops Arthur Hallam's views on religious feeling;
this was the master idea of his mind, and it would not be easy to overrate
its importance.
"My son, give me thine heart";--"Thou shalt _love_ the Lord thy
God";--"The fool hath said in his _heart_, There is no God."
He expresses the same general idea in these words, remarkable in
themselves, still more so as being the thought of one so young.
The work of intellect is posterior to the work of feeling. _The latter
lies at the foundation of the man_; it is his proper self--the
peculiar thing that characterizes him as an individual. No two men are
alike in feeling; but conceptions of the understanding, when distinct
are precisely similar in all--the ascertained relations of truths are
the common property of the race.
Tennyson, we have no doubt, had this thought of his friend in his mind, in
the following lines; it is an answer to the question, Can man by searching
find out God?--
I found Him not in world or sun,
Or eagle's wing, or insect's eye;
Nor thro' the questions men may try,
The petty cobwebs we have spun:
If e'er when faith had fallen asleep,
I heard a voice "believe no more,"
And heard an ever-breaking shore
That tumbled in the godless deep;
_A warmth within the breast would melt_
The freezing reason's colder part,
_And like a man in wrath, the heart
Stood up and answered, "I have felt."_
No, like a child in doubt and fear:
But that blind clamour made me wise;
Then was I as a child that cries,
But, crying, knows his father near;
And what I seem beheld again
What is, and no man understands:
And out of darkness came the hands
That reach thro' nature, moulding men.
This is a subject of the deepest personal as well as speculative interest.
In the works of Augustine, of Baxter, Howe, and Jonathan Edwards, and of
Alexander Knox, our readers will find how large a place the religious
affections held in their view of Divine truth as well as of human duty.
The last-mentioned writer expresses himself thus:
Our sentimental faculties are far stronger than our cogitative; and
the best impressions on the latter will be but the moonshine of the
mind, if they are alone. Feeling will be best excited by sympathy;
rather, it cannot be excited in any other way. Heart must act upon
heart--the idea of a living person being essential to all intercourse
of heart. You cannot by any possibility _cordialize_ with a mere _ens
rationis_. "The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us," otherwise we
could not have "beheld His glory," much less "received of His
fulness."[114]
Our young author thus goes on:
This opens upon us an ampler view in which the subject deserves to be
considered, and a relation still more direct and close between the
Christian religion and the passion of love. What is the distinguishing
character of Hebrew literature, which separates it by so broad a line
of demarcation from that of every ancient people? Undoubtedly the
sentiment of _erotic devotion_ which pervades it. Their poets never
represent the Deity as an impassive principle, a mere organizing
intellect, removed at infinite distance from human hopes and fears. He
is for them a being of like passions with themselves, _requiring heart
for heart, and capable of inspiring affection, because capable of
feeling and returning it_. Awful indeed are the thunders of His
utterance and the clouds that surround His dwelling-place; very
terrible is the vengeance He executes on the nations that forget Him:
but to His chosen people, and especially to the men "after His own
heart," whom He anoints from the midst of them, His "still, small
voice" speaks in sympathy and loving-kindness. Every Hebrew, while his
breast glowed with patriotic enthusiasm at those promises, which he
shared as one of the favoured race, had a yet deeper source of
emotion, from which gushed perpetually the aspirations of prayer and
thanksgiving. He might consider himself alone in the presence of his
God; the single being to whom a great revelation had been made, and
over whose head an "exceeding weight of glory" was suspended. For him
the rocks of Horeb had trembled, and the waters of the Red Sea were
parted in their course. The word given on Sinai with such solemn pomp
of ministration was given to his own individual soul, and brought him
into immediate communion with his Creator. That awful Being could
never be put away from him. He was about his path, and about his bed,
and knew all his thoughts long before. _Yet this tremendous, enclosing
presence was a presence of love. It was a manifold, everlasting
manifestation of one deep feeling--a desire for human affection._ Such
a belief, while it enlisted even pride and self-interest on the side
of piety, had a direct tendency to excite the best passions of our
nature. Love is not long asked in vain from generous dispositions. A
Being, never absent, but standing beside the life of each man with
ever-watchful tenderness, and recognized, though invisible, in every
blessing that befel them from youth to age, became naturally the
object of their warmest affections. Their belief in Him could not
exist without producing, as a necessary effect, that profound
impression _of passionate individual attachment_ which in the Hebrew
authors always mingles with and vivifies their faith in the Invisible.
All the books of the Old Testament are breathed upon by this breath of
life. Especially is it to be found in that beautiful collection,
entitled the Psalms of David, which remains, after some thousand
years, perhaps the most perfect form in which the religious sentiment
of man has been embodied.
But what is true of Judaism is yet more true of Christianity: "_matre
pulchrâ filia pulchrior_." In addition to all the characters of Hebrew
Monotheism, _there exists in the doctrine of the Cross a peculiar and
inexhaustible treasure for the affectionate feelings_. The idea of the
[Greek: Theanthrôpos], the God whose goings forth have been from
everlasting, yet visible to men for their redemption as an earthly,
temporal creature, living, acting, and suffering among themselves,
then (which is yet more important) transferring to the unseen place of
His spiritual agency the same humanity He wore on earth, so that the
lapse of generations can in no way affect the conception of His
identity; this is the most powerful thought that ever addressed
itself to a human imagination. It is the [Greek: pou stô], which alone
was wanted to move the world. Here was solved at once the great
problem which so long had distressed the teachers of mankind, how to
make _virtue the object of passion_, and to secure at once the warmest
enthusiasm in the heart with the clearest perception of right and
wrong in the understanding. The character of the blessed Founder of
our faith became an abstract of morality to determine the judgment,
_while at the same time it remained personal, and liable to love_. The
written word and established church prevented a degeneration into
ungoverned mysticism, but the predominant principle of vital religion
always remained that of self-sacrifice to the Saviour. Not only the
higher divisions of moral duties, but the simple, primary impulses of
benevolence, were subordinated to this new absorbing passion. The
world was loved "in Christ alone." The brethren were members of His
mystical body. All the other bonds that had fastened down the spirit
of the universe to our narrow round of earth were as nothing in
comparison to this golden chain of suffering and self-sacrifice, which
at once riveted the heart of man to one who, like himself, was
acquainted with grief. _Pain is the deepest thing we have_ in our
nature, and union through pain has always seemed more real and more
holy than any other.[115]
There is a sad pleasure--_non ingrata amaritudo_--and a sort of meditative
tenderness in contemplating the little life of this "dear youth," and in
letting the mind rest upon these his earnest thoughts; to watch his keen
and fearless, but childlike spirit, moving itself aright--going straight
onward along "the lines of limitless desires"--throwing himself into the
very deepest of the ways of God, and striking out as a strong swimmer
striketh out his hands to swim; to see him "mewing his mighty youth, and
kindling his undazzled eye at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance":
Light intellectual, and full of love,
Love of true beauty, therefore full of joy,
Joy, every other sweetness far above.
It is good for every one to look upon such a sight, and as we look, to
love. We should all be the better for it; and should desire to be thankful
for, and to use aright a gift so good and perfect, coming down as it does
from above, from the Father of lights, in whom alone there is no
variableness, neither shadow of turning.
Thus it is, that to each one of us the death of Arthur Hallam--his
thoughts and affections--his views of God, of our relations to Him, of
duty, of the meaning and worth of this world and the next--where he now
is--have an individual significance. He is bound up in our bundle of life;
we must be the better or the worse of having known what manner of man he
was; and in a sense less peculiar, but not less true, each of us may say:
----The tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.
----O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!
God gives us love! Something to love
He lends us; but when love is grown
To ripeness, that on which it throve
Falls off, and love is left alone:
This is the curse of time. Alas!
In grief we are not all unlearned;
Once, through our own doors Death did pass;
One went who never hath returned.
This star
Rose with us, through a little arc
Of heaven, nor having wandered far,
Shot on the sudden into dark.
Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace;
Sleep, holy spirit, blessed soul,
While the stars burn, the moons increase,
And the great ages onward roll.
Sleep till the end, true soul and sweet,
Nothing comes to thee new or strange,
Sleep, full of rest from head to feet;
Lie still, dry dust, secure of change.
_Vattene in pace, alma beata e bella._--Go in peace, soul beautiful
and blessed.
"O man greatly beloved, go thou thy way till the end, for thou shalt
rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days."--DANIEL.
APPENDICES
APPENDIX A
THE COMMENTS OF TENNYSON ON ONE OF HIS LATER ETHICAL POEMS[116]
By WILFRID WARD
He had often said he would go through the "De Profundis" with me line by
line, and he did so late in January or early in February 1889, when I was
staying at Farringford. He was still very ill, having had rheumatic fever
in the previous year; and neither he nor his friends expected that he
would recover after his many relapses. He could scarcely move his limbs,
and his fingers were tied with bandages. We moved him from bed to sofa,
but he could not sit up. His mind, however, was quite clear. He read
through the "De Profundis," and gave the substance of the explanation I
have written down. He began languidly, but soon got deeply interested.
When he reached the prayer at the end, he said: "A B" (naming a well-known
Positivist thinker) "exclaimed, when I read it to him, 'Do leave that
prayer out; I like all the rest of it.'"
I proceed to set down the account of the poem written (in substance)
immediately after his explanation of it. The mystery of life as a whole
which so constantly exercised him is here most fully dealt with. He
supposes a child just born, and considers the problems of human existence
as presented by the thought of the child's birth, and the child's future
life with all its possibilities. The poem takes the form of two greetings
to the new-born child. In the first greeting life is viewed as we see it
in the world, and as we know it by physical science, as a phenomenon; as
the materialist might view it; not indeed coarsely, but as an outcome of
all the physical forces of the universe, which have ever contained in
themselves the potentiality of all that was to come--"all that was to be
in all that was." These vast and wondrous forces have now issued in this
newly given life--this child born into the world. There is the sense of
mystery in our greeting to it; but it is of the mysteries of the physical
Universe and nothing beyond; the sense of awe fitting to finite man at the
thought of infinite Time, of the countless years before human life was at
all, during which the fixed laws of Nature were ruling and framing the
earth as we know it, of the countless years earlier still, during which,
on the nebular hypothesis, Nature's laws were working before our planet
was separated off from the mass of the sun's light, and before the similar
differentiation took place in the rest of the "vast waste dawn of
multitudinous eddying light." Again, there is awe in contemplating the
vastness of space; in the thoughts which in ascending scale rise from the
new-born infant to the great globe of which he is so small a part, from
that to the whole solar system, from that again to the myriad similar
systems "glimmering up the heights beyond" us which we partly see in the
Milky Way; from that to those others which human sight can never descry.
Forces in Time and Space as nearly infinite as our imagination can
conceive, have been leading up to this one birth, with the short life of a
single man before it. May that life be happy and noble! Viewing it still
as the course determined by Nature's laws--a course unknown to us and yet
unalterably fixed--we sigh forth the hope that our child may pass
unscathed through youth, may have a full and prosperous time on earth,
blessed by man for good done to man, and may pass peacefully at last to
rest. Such is the first greeting--full of the poetry of life, of its
wondrous causes, of the overwhelming greatness of the Universe of which
this new-given baby is the child, cared for, preserved hitherto unscathed
amid these awful powers, all in all to its parents, inspiring the hope
which new-given joy makes sanguine, that fortune may be kind to it, that
happiness may be as great, sorrow and pain as little, as the chances of
the world allow.
After his explanation, he read the first greeting to the child:
Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep,
Where all that was to be, in all that was,
Whirl'd for a million æons through the vast
Waste dawn of multitudinous eddying light--
Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep,
Thro' all this changing world of changeless law,
And every phase of ever-heightening life,
And nine long months of antenatal gloom,
With this last moon, this crescent--her dark orb
Touch'd with earth's light--thou comest, darling boy;
Our own; a babe in lineament and limb
Perfect, and prophet of the perfect man;
Whose face and form are hers and mine in one,
Indissolubly married like our love;
Live and be happy in thyself, and serve
This mortal race thy kin so well, that men
May bless thee as we bless thee, O young life,
Breaking with laughter from the dark; and may
The fated channel where thy motion lives
Be prosperously shaped, and sway thy course
Along the years of haste and random youth
Unshatter'd; then full-current thro' full man;
And last, in kindly curves, with gentlest fall,
By quiet fields, a slowly-dying power
To that last deep where we and thou art still.
And then comes the second greeting. A deeper chord is struck. The
listener, who has, perhaps, felt as if the first greeting contained
all--all the mystery of birth, of life, of death--hears a sound unknown,
unimagined before. A new range of ideas is opened to us. The starry
firmament disappears for the moment. The "deep" of infinite time and space
is forgotten. A fresh sense is awakened, a deeper depth disclosed. We
leave this wondrous world of appearances. We gaze into that other
deep--the world of spirit, the world of realities; we see the new-born
babe coming to us from that _true_ world, with all the "abysmal depths of
personality," no longer a mere link in the chain of causes, with a fated
course through the events of life, but a moral being, with the awful power
of making or marring its own destiny and that of others. The proportions
are abruptly reversed. The child is no longer the minute outcome of
natural forces so much greater than itself. It is the "spirit," the moral
being, a reality which impinges on the world of appearances. Never can I
forget the change of voice, the change of manner, as Lord Tennyson passed
from the first greeting, with its purely human thoughts, to the second, so
full of awe at the conception of the world behind the veil and the moral
nature of man; an awe which seemed to culminate when he paused before the
word "Spirit" in the seventh line and then gave it in deeper and more
piercing tones: "Out of the deep--_Spirit_,--out of the deep." This second
greeting is in two parts:
I