YET MORE ESCAPES.
But there are many other sorts of peril in human life to which I may
briefly advert, as we all have had some experiences of the same. Who
does not know of his special financial temptation, some sanguine and
unscrupulous speculator urging him from rock to rock across the rapids
of ruin, till he is engulfed as by Niagara? Or of the manifestly
disinterested and generous capitalist, who gives to some young legatee a
junior partner's free arm-chair, only that he may utilise his money and
keep the house solvent for yet a year or two, utterly unheeding that ere
long the grateful beneficiaire must be dragged down with his chief to
poverty? Or, which of us has not had experience of some unjust will,
stealing our rights by evil influence? Or of the seemingly luckless
accident killing off our intending benefactor just before that promised
codicil? Or of the ruinous investment? Or of the bankrupt Life
Assurance? Or of the unhappy fact of your autograph, "a mere matter of
form," on the back of some dishonoured bill of one's defaulting friend?
Yet all these are providences too,--lessons of life, and parts of our
schools and schoolmasters.
And there are many like social evils besides. Let me delicately touch
one of them. I desire as an Ancient, now nearing the close of my
career, at least in this the caterpillar and soon to be chrysalis
condition of my being, to give my testimony seriously and practically to
the fact (disputed by too many from their own worse experience) that it
is quite possible to live from youth to age in many scenes and under
many circumstantial difficulties, preserving still through them all the
innocent purity of childhood. True, the crown of greater knowledge is
added to the Man; but although it be a knowledge both of evil and of
good, theoretically,--it need not practically be a guilty knowledge. If
one of any age, from the youngest to the oldest, has not the power of
self-control perpetually in exercise, and the good mental help of prayer
habitually at hand to be relied on, he is in danger, and may fall into
sin or even crime, at any hour, unless the Highest Power intervene. But,
if the senses are trained to resist the first inclinations to
unchastity, by the eye that will not look and the ear that will not
listen, then the doors of the mind are kept closed against the enemy,
and even "hot youth" is safe.
We live in a co-operative cycle of society; and amongst other
co-operations are all manner of guilds to encourage, by example,
companionship and the like, divers great virtues, and some less
important fads and fancies of the day: let me not be thought to
disparage any gatherings for prayer, or temperance, or purity; though
individual strong men may not need such congregated help as the weaker
brethren yearn for. Many a veteran now, changed to good morals from a
looser life in the past, may well hope to serve both God and man by
preaching purity to the young men around, by vowing them to a white
ribbon guild, and giving them the decoration of an ivory cross. But he
is apt to forget what young blood is, his own having cooled down apace;
anon he will find that Nature is not so easily driven back--_usque
recurrit_--and he will soon have to acknowledge that if the higher and
deeper influences of personal religion, earnest prayer, honest
watchfulness, and sincere--though it be but incipient--love of God and
desire to imitate Christ, are not chief motives towards the purification
of human passion, this brotherhood of a guild may tend to little except
self-righteousness, and it will be well if hypocrisy and secret sin does
not accompany that open boastfulness of a White Cross Order. After all
said and done, a man--or woman--or precocious child--must simply take
the rules of Christ and Paul, and Solomon, as his guide and guard, by
"Resisting," "Fleeing," "Cutting off--metaphorically--the right hand,
and putting out the right eye;" so letting "discretion preserve him and
understanding keep him;" but there is nothing like flight; it is easy
and speedy, and more a courage than a cowardice. Take a simple instance.
Some forty years ago, an author, well-known in both hemispheres, then
living in London, received by post a pink and scented note from "an
American Lady, a great admirer of his books, &c. &c.: would he favour
her by a call" at such an hotel, in such a square? Much flattered he
went, and was very gushingly received; but when the lady, probably not
an American (though comely enough to be one), after a profusion of
compliments went on to complain of a husband having deserted her, and to
throw herself not without tears on the kindness of her favourite author,
that individual thought it would be prudent to depart, and so promptly
remembering another engagement he took up his hat and--fled. He had
afterwards reason to be thankful for this escape, as for others. _I,
fac simile_; as no doubt you have done, and you will do, for there are
many Potipheras; ay, and there exist some Josephs too.
Other forms of evil in the way of heterodoxy and heresy have assailed
your confessor, as is the common case with most other people, whether
authors or not. The rashest Atheism or more cowardly Agnosticism are
rampant monsters, but have only affected my own spirit into forcing me
to think out and to publish my Essay on Probabilities, whereof I shall
speak further when my books come under review. But beyond these open
foes to one's faith, who has not met with zealous enthusiasts who urge
upon his acceptance under penalty of the worst for all eternity if
refused, any amount of strange isms,--Plymouth, Southcote, Swedenborg,
Irving, Mormon,--and of the other 272 sects which affect (perhaps more
truly infect) religion in this free land? I have had many of these
attacking me by word or letter on the excuse of my books. Who, if he
once weakly gives way to their urgent advice to "search and see for
himself," will not soon be addled and muddled by all sorts of
sophistical and controversial botherations, if even he is not tempted to
accept--for lucre if not godliness--the office of bishop, or apostle, or
prophet, or anything else too freely offered by zealots to new converts,
if of notoriety enough to exalt or enrich a sect; such sect in every
case proclaiming itself the one only true Church, all other sects being
nothing but impostors? We have all encountered such spiritual
perils,--and happy may we feel that with whatever faults and failings,
there is an orthodox and established form of religion amongst us in the
land. For my own part, I go freely to any house of prayer, national or
nonconformist, where the Gospel is preached and the preacher is capable:
all I want is a good man for the good word and work--and if he has the
true Spirit in him, I care next to nothing for his orders: though to
many less independent minds human authorisation may be a necessity. From
cradle hymns to the more serious prayings of senility, my own religion
in two words is crystallised as "Abba, Father;" my only priest being my
Divine Brother; and my Friend and Guide through this life and beyond it
the Holy Spirit, who unites all the family of God. May I die, as I have
lived, in this simple faith of childhood.
My "Probabilities" has, amongst others apposite, this sentence about the
origin of evil, and the usefulness of temptation: "To our understanding,
at least, there was no possible method of illustrating the amiabilities
of Goodness and the contrivances of Wisdom but by the infused permission
of some physical and moral evils; mercy, benevolence, design would in a
universe of Best have nothing to do; that universe itself would grow
stagnant, as incapable of progress; and the principal record of God's
excellences, the book of redemption, would have been unwritten. Is not
then the existence of evil justified in reason's calculation? and was
not such existence an antecedent probability?"