I have wandered far enough in my thought, it would seem, from the lonely
grange in its wide pastures, and the calm expanse of fen; and I should
wish once more to bring my reader back home with me to the sheltered
garden, and the orchard knee-deep in grass, and the embowering elms; for
there is one word more to be said, and that may be best said at home;
though our experience is not limited by time or place. It was on the
lonely ridge, strewn with boulders and swept by night-winds, when the
darkness closed in drearily about him, that Jacob, a homeless exile, in
the hour of his utmost desolation, saw the ladder whose golden head was
set at the very foot of God, thronged with bright messengers of strength
and hope. And again it was in the familiar homestead, with every corner
rich in gentle memories, that the spirit of terror turned the bitter
stream of anguish, as from the vent of some thunderous cloud, upon the
sad head of Job. We may turn a corner in life, and be confronted perhaps
with an uncertain shape of grief and despair, whom we would fain banish
from our shuddering sight, perhaps with some solemn form of heavenly
radiance, whom we may feel reluctant in our unworthiness to entertain.
But in either case, such times as those, when we wrestle all night with
the angel, not knowing if he wishes us well or ill, ignorant of his name
and his mien alike, are better than hours spent in indolent contentment,
in the realisation of our placid and petty designs. For, after all, it
is the quality rather than the quantity of our experience that matters;
it is easy enough to recognise that, when we are working light-heartedly
and eagerly at some brave design, and seeing the seed we plant springing
up all about us in fertile rows in the garden of God. But what of those
days when our lot seems only to endure, when we can neither scheme nor
execute, when the old volubility and vitality desert us, and our one
care is just to make our dreary presence as little of a burden and a
shadow as possible to those whom we love? We must then remind ourselves,
not once or twice, that nothing can separate us from the Father of all,
even though our own wilfulness and perversity may have drawn about us
a cloud of sorrow. We are perhaps most in God's mind when we seem most
withdrawn from Him. He is nearer us when we seek for Him and cannot find
Him, than when we forget Him in laughter and self-pleasing. And we must
remember too that it is neither faithful nor fruitful to abide wilfully
in sadness, to clasp our cares close, to luxuriate in them. There is a
beautiful story of Mrs. Charles Kingsley, who long survived her husband.
Never perhaps had two souls been united by so close a bond of chivalry
and devotion. "Whenever I find myself thinking too much about Charles,"
she said in the days of her grief, "I find and read the most sensational
novel I can. People may think it heartless, but hearts were given us to
love with, not to break." And we must deal with our sorrows as we
deal with any other gift of God, courageously and temperately, not
faint-heartedly or wilfully; not otherwise can they be blest to us. We
must not pettishly reject consolation and distraction. Pain is a
great angel, but we must wrestle with him, until he bless us! and the
blessings he can bring us are first a wholesome shame at our old selfish
ingratitude in the untroubled days, when we took care and pleasure
greedily; and next, if we meet him faithfully, he can make our heart
go out to all our brothers and sisters who suffer in this brief and
troubled life of ours. For we are here to learn something, if we can but
spell it out; and thus it is morbid to indulge regrets and remorse too
much over our failures and mistakes; for it is through them that we
learn. We must be as brave as we can, and dare to grudge no pang that
brings us nearer to the reality of things.
Reality! that is the secret; for we who live in dreams, who pursue
beauty, who are haunted as by a passion for that sweet quality that
thrills alike in the wayside flower and the orange pomp of the setting
sun, that throbs in written word and uttered melody, that calls to
us suddenly and secretly in the glance of an eye and the gesture of a
hand,--we, I say, who discern these gracious motions, tend to live
in them too luxuriously, to idealise life, to make out of our daily
pilgrimage, our goings and comings, a golden untroubled picture; it
need not be a false or a base effort to escape from what is sordid
or distasteful; but for all that we run a sore risk in yielding too
placidly to our visions; and as with the Lady of Shalott, it may be well
for us if our woven web be rent aside, and our magic mirror broken; nay,
even if death comes to us at the close of the mournful song. Thus then
we draw near and look reluctant and dismayed into the bare truth of
things. We see, it may be, our poor pretences tossed aside, and the
embroidered robe in which we have striven to drape our leanness torn
from us; but we must gaze as steadily as we can, and pray that the
vision be not withdrawn till it has wrought its perfect work within us;
and then, with energies renewed, we may set out again on pilgrimage,
happy in this, that we no longer mistake the arbour of refreshment for
the goal of our journey, or the quiet house of welcome, that receives
us in the hour of weariness, for the heavenly city, with all its bright
mansions and radiant palaces.
It is experience that matters, as I have said; not what we do, but how
we do it. The material things that we collect about us in our passage
through life, that we cling to so pathetically, and into which something
of our very selves seems to pass, these things are little else than
snares and hindrances to our progress--like the clay that sticks to the
feet of the traveller, like the burden of useless things that he carries
painfully with him, things which he cannot bring himself to throw away
because they might possibly turn out to be useful, and which meanwhile
clank and clatter fruitlessly about the laden beast, and weigh him down.
What we have rather to do is to disengage ourselves from these things:
from the money which we do not need, but which may help us some day;
from the luxuries we do not enjoy; from the furniture we trail about
with us from home to home. All those things get a hold of us and tie
us to earth, even when the associations with them are dear and tender
enough. The mistake we make is not in loving them--they are or can be
signs to us of the love and care of God--but we must refrain from loving
the possession of them.
Take, for instance, one of the least mundane of things, the knowledge we
painfully acquire, and the possession of which breeds in us such lively
satisfaction. If it is our duty to acquire knowledge and to impart it,
we must acquire it; but it is the faithfulness with which we toil, not
the accumulations we gain that are blessed to us--"knowledge comes but
wisdom lingers," says the poet--and it is the heavenly wisdom of which
we ought to be in search; for what remains to us of our equipment, when
we part from the world and migrate elsewhere, is not the actual stuff
that we have collected, whether it be knowledge or money, but the
patience, the diligence, the care which we have exercised in gaining
these things, the character, as affected by the work we have done;
but our mistake is to feel that we are idle and futile, unless we have
tangible results to show; when perhaps the hours in which we sat idle,
out of misery or mere feebleness, are the most fruitful hours of all for
the growth of the soul.
The great savant dies. What is lost? Not a single fact or a single
truth, but only his apprehension, his collection of certain truths; not
a single law of nature perishes or is altered thereby. We measure worth
by prominence and fame; but the destiny of the simplest and vilest
of the human race is as august, as momentous as the destiny of the
mightiest king or conqueror; it is not our admiration of each other that
weighs with God, but our nearness to, our dependence on Him. Yet, even
so, we must not deceive ourselves in the matter. We must be sure that it
is the peace of God that we indeed desire, and not merely a refined kind
of leisure; that we are in search of simplicity, and not merely afraid
of work. We must not glorify a mild spectatorial pleasure by the name of
philosophy, or excuse our indolence under the name of contemplation.
We must abstain deliberately, not tamely hang back; we must desire the
Kingdom of Heaven for itself, and not for the sake of the things that
are added if we seek it. If the Scribes and Pharisees have their reward
for ambition and self-seeking, the craven soul has its reward too, and
that reward is a sick emptiness of spirit. And then if we have erred
thus, if we have striven to pretend to ourselves that we were careless
of the prize, when in reality we only feared the battle, what can we
do? How can we repair our mistake? There is but one way; we can own
the pitiful fault, and not attempt to glorify it; we can face the
experience, take our petty and shameful wages and cast ourselves afresh,
in our humiliation and weakness, upon God, rejoicing that we can
at least feel the shame, and enduring the chastisement with patient
hopefulness; for that very suffering is a sign that God has not left us
to ourselves, but is giving us perforce the purification which we could
not take to ourselves.
And even thus, life is not all an agony, a battle, an endurance; there
are sweet hours of refreshment and tranquillity between the twilight
and the dawn; hours when we can rest a little in the shadow, and see the
brimming stream of life flowing quietly but surely to its appointed end.
I watched to-day an old shepherd, on a wide field, moving his wattled
hurdles, one by one, in the slow, golden afternoon; and a whole burden
of anxious thoughts fell off me for a while, leaving me full of a quiet
hope for an end which was not yet, but that certainly awaited me; of
a day when I too might perhaps move as unreflectingly, as calmly,
in harmony with the everlasting Will, as the old man moved about his
familiar task. Why that harmony should be so blurred and broken, why we
should leave undone the things that we desire to do, and do the things
that we do not desire, that is still a deep and sad mystery; yet even in
the hour of our utmost wilfulness, we can never wander beyond the range
of the Will that has made us, and bidden us to be what we are. And thus
as I sit in this low-lit hour, there steals upon the heart the message
of hope and healing; the scent of the great syringa bush leaning out
into the twilight, the sound of the fitful breeze laying here and there
a caressing hand upon the leaves, the soft radiance of the evening star
hung in the green spaces of the western sky, each and all blending into
incommunicable dreams.