FINAL.
A few last words as to sundry life-experiences. Whether we notice it or
not, we are guided and guarded and led on through many changes and
chances to the gates of death in a marvellously predestined manner; if
we pray about everything, we shall see and know that, as Pope says,
"In spite of wrong, in erring reason's spite,
One truth is clear, whatever is, is right;"
and the trustful assurance that the highest wisdom and mercy and power
orders all things will give us comfort under whatever circumstances. I
believe in prayer as the universal panacea, philosophically as well as
devoutly; and that "walking with God" is our highest wisdom as well as
our deepest comfort.
* * * * *
Let no man think that a sick-bed is the best place to repent in. When
the brain is clouded by bodily ailment there is neither capacity nor
even will to mend matters; a man is at the best then tired, lazy, and
dull, but if there is pain too all is worse. Listen to one of my old
sonnets, and take its good advice:--
"Delay not, sinner, till the hour of pain
To seek repentance: pain is absolute,
Exacting all the body, all the brain,
Humanity's stern king from head to foot:
How canst thou pray, while fever'd arrows shoot
Through this torn targe,--while every bone doth ache,
And the soared mind raves up and down her cell
Restless, and begging rest for mercy's sake?
Add not to death the bitter fear of hell;
Take pity on thy future self, poor man,
While yet in strength thy timely wisdom can;
Wrestle to-day with sin; and spare that strife
Of meeting all its terrors in the van
Just at the ebbing agony of life."
I have great faith in first impressions of intuitive liking or
disliking. Second thoughts are by no means best always nor even often.
Charity sometimes tries to induce, one to think better of such a person
or such a situation than a first feeling shrinks from,--but it won't do
for long: the man or the place will continue to be distasteful. My
spirit apprehends instinctively the right and the true; and through life
I have relied on intuitions; which some have called a rashness,
recommending colder cautions; but these latter have seldom paid their
way. A country parson was right in his diagnosis of Iscariot's character
as that of "a low mean fellow;" and he judged reasonably that all the
patient kindliness of One who strove to make such His "own familiar
friend" was so much charity almost thrown away, except indeed as to
spiritual improvement of the charitable.
* * * * *
It is right that in a book of self-revelations, like this genuine
autobiography, some special recognition should be made before its close
of gratitude to the Great Giver of all good, and of the spiritual
longings of His penitent. These feelings I prefer to show after the
author's poetic custom in verse. Let the first be a trilogy of
unpublished sonnets lately written on
_What We Shall Be._
I.
"We--all and each--have faculties and powers
Here undeveloped, lying deep within,
Crush'd by the weight of circumstance and sin;
Latent, as germs conceal their hidden flowers,
Till some new clime, with genial suns and showers
Give them the force consummate life to win:
Even so we, poor prisoners of Time,
Victims of others' evil and our own,
Cannot expand in this tempestuous clime,
But full of excellences in us sown,
Must wait that better life, and there, full blown,
In spiritual perfectness sublime
The prizes of our nature we shall gain,
Which now we struggle for in vain--in vain!"
II.
"Who does not feel within him he could be
Anything, everything, of great and good?
That, give him but the chance, he could and would
Soar on the wings of triumph strong and free?
And think not this is vanity, for he,
If one of Glory's heirs, is of the band
'I said that ye are gods!'--on this we stand
Through the eternal ages infinite,
Growing like Christ in hope and love and light
As grafted into Him: there shall we see,
And know as we are known; no hindrance then
Shall bind our wings, or shut our eyes or ears;
Led upward, onward, through ten million years,
We shall expand in spirit,--but still be Men."
III.
"Each hath his specialty; we see in some
Music or painting, eloquence or skill,
With, or without, an effort of the will,
As by spontaneous inspiration come
Ev'n in this mingled crowd of good and ill,
To make us hail a Wonder:--but Elsewhere
Without or let or hindrance we shall use
Forces neglected here, but nurtured there;
Till all the powers of every classic Muse,
Ninefold, may dwell in each--as each may choose:
Since Heaven for creatures must have creature gifts,
Not only love, religion, gratitude,
But also light, and every force that lifts
Man's spirit to the heights of Great and Good."
For a second take my recent open protest against the pestilential
atheism so rife in our midst:--
I.
"My Father! everpresent, everwise, and everkind,--
The Life that pulses at my heart, the Light within my mind,--
My Maker, Guardian, Guide, and God, my never-failing Friend,
Who hitherto hast blest me, and wilt bless me to the end,--
How should I not acknowledge Thee in all my words and ways,
And bring my doubts to Thee in prayer, the prayer that turns to
praise?
How can I cease to trust Thee, who hast guided me so long,
And been from earliest childhood to old age my strength and song?
II.
"My Father! Great Triunity! For Thou art One in Three,
The mystery of mysteries, a threefold joy to me,--
What deep delight to dwell upon the philosophic plan
Of Thy divine self-sacrifice in God becoming man,
And taking on Thyself in Christ the sins and woes of all
Redeemed to higher glory from the ruin of their fall,
As humbled and enlightened and enlivened into love,
By the Pure Spirit of sweet peace, the-heart-indwelling Dove!
III.
"My Father, Abba, Father! For Thou callest me Thy child,
As in Thy holy Jesus and Good Spirit reconciled,--
O Father, in this evil day when atheism is found
Dropping its poison seeds about in all our fallow-ground,
Shall I keep coward silence, and ungenerously forget
The Friend that hitherto hath helped me--and shall help me yet?
Shall unbelief, all unabashed, proclaim that God is Not,--
Nor faith with honest zeal be quick this hideous lie to blot?
IV.
"Ho! Christian soldier,--to the front! and boldly speak aloud
The dear old truths denied by yonder Sadducean crowd,--
That every inch and every instant we are guided well
By Him who made, and loved, and loves us more than tongue can tell;
That, though there be dread mysteries of cruelty and crime,
And marvellous long-suffering patience with these wrongs of time,
Still, wait a little longer, and we soon shall know the cause
For every seeming error in the Ruler's righteous laws!
V.
"A little longer, and our faith and hope and works of love
Shall reap munificent reward in those blest orbs above,
Where He (who being God of old became our brother here)
Shall welcome us and speed us on' from glorious sphere to sphere,
Until before His Father's throne the Spirit with the Son
Shall give to every Christian then the crown his Lord hath won;
And through the ages in all worlds our wondrous ransomed race
Shall bless the Universal King of Providence and Grace!"
For a third, my testimony as to the wonders that surround us: I have
called this poem The Infinities.
I.
"Lift up your eyes to yon star-jewelled sky,
Gaze on that firmament caverned on high,--
Marvellous universe, infinite space,
Studded with suns in fixt order and place,
Each with its system of planets unseen,
Meshed in their orbits by comets between,
Worlds that are vaster than mind may believe,
Whirling more swiftly than thought can conceive,
O ye immensities! Who shall declare
The glory of God in His galaxies there?
II.
"Look too on this poor planet of ours,
Torn by the storms of mysterious powers,
Evil contending with good from its birth,
Wrenching in battle the heartstrings of earth,--
Ah! what infinities circle us here,
Strangeness and wonderment swathing the sphere!
Providence ruleth with care most minute,
Yet is fell cruelty torturing the mute,
Infinite marvels of wrong and of right,
Blessing and blasting each day and each night.
III.
"All things in mystery; riddles unread;
Nothing but dimness of guesses instead;
Only beginning, where none see the end,
Nor where these infinite energies tend;
Saving that chrysalis-creatures are we,
Till we grow wings in that æon-to-be!
Everything infinite: Nature, and Art,
The schemes of man's mind, and the throbs of his heart;
Infinite cravings for better, and best,
Tempered by infinite longings for rest.
IV.
"Then, as the telescope's miracle drew
Infinite Heaven's vast worlds into view,
So doth the microscope's marvel display
Infinite atomies, wondrous as they!
A mere drop of water, a bubble of air,
Teems with perfections of littleness there;
Infinite wisdom in exquisite works
All but invisible everywhere lurks,
While we confess as in great so in small,
Infinite skill in the Maker of all.
V.
"And there be grander infinities still,
Where, in Emmanuel, good has quench'd ill;
Infinite humbleness, highest and first,
Choosing the doom of the lowest and worst;
Infinite pity, and patience,--how long?
Infinite justice, avenging all wrong,
Infinite purity, wisdom, and skill,
Bettering good through each effort of ill,
Infinite beauty and infinite love,
Shining around and beneath and above!"
And let this simple hymn be the old man's last prayer, bridging over the
long interval of well-nigh fourscore years between cradle and grave with
a child's first piety:--
_Love and Life._
"'My son, give Me thine heart;'
Yes, Abba, Father, yes!
Perfect in goodness as Thou art,
I will not give Thee less.
"But I am dark and dead,
And need Thy grace to live;
Father, on me Thy Spirit shed,
To me that sunshine give!
"Thus only can I say
When Thou dost ask my love,
I will return in earth's poor way
Thy gift from heaven above.
"There is no good in me
But droppeth from on high,
Then quicken me with life from Thee,
That I may never die.
"For if I am a son--
O grace beyond compare!--
A child of God, with Jesus one,
In Him I stand an heir;
"In Him I live and move,
And only so can give
An immortality of love,
To Thee by whom I live.
"Then melt this heart of stone,
And grant the heart of flesh,
That all I am may be Thine own,
Renewed to love afresh."
About the much-vexed question of Eschatology and the final state of the
dead, I have long since grown to the happy doctrine of Eternal
Hope--ultimately for all; perhaps even siding with Burns, who (as the
only logical way of eliminating evil) gives a chance to the "puir Deil:"
albeit the path for some must be through the terrible Gehenna of fire to
purify, and with few stripes or many to satisfy conscience and evoke
character. As for that text in Ecclesiastes about the "tree lying where
it fell," commonly supposed to prove an unchanging state for ever,--it
is obvious to answer that when a tree _is_ cut down, its final course of
usefulness only then _begins_, by being sawn up and converted into
furniture; much as when a human being's work here is finished, he is
taken hence to be utilised elsewhere. Everlasting progress is the law of
our existence, whether here or elsewhere,--no stopping, far less
annihilation. And then the character of our Maker is Love, this Love
having satisfied Justice by self-sacrifice, and nothing is more
reiterated in the Psalms than that "His mercy endureth for ever;" which
cannot be true if bodies and spirits--even of the wicked--are to be
condemned by Him to endless torment. Adequate punishment, and that for
the wretched creature's own improvement, is only in accordance with the
voice of reason, and the voice of inspired wisdom too; for though our
Lord Christ warns against a fearful retribution (involved in the phrase
of "the undying worm and the unquenchable fire," as He was looking over
the wall of Jerusalem into Tophet and the valley of Hinnom where the
offal from the thousands of sacrifices was perpetually rotting and being
burned, so taking his parable from an incident, as usual)--He yet "went
and preached after death to the spirits in prison," probably to those
who were then enduring some such purgatorial punishment. After all, this
sentence of King Solomon as to a fallen tree, so often misapplied, is
not one of the higher forms of inspiration; even St. Paul qualifies his
own sometimes; and there are several disputable texts in Proverbs: and,
if taken literally for exposition, we all must admit that the felling,
of a tree is the immediate precursor to its further life of usefulness.
Let us, then, rationally hope that the dead in Christ will be improved
from good to better and best; and that even those who have failed to
live for Him in this world may by some purifying education in the next
come finally to the happy far-off end of being saved by Him at last.
The words everlasting and forever are continually used in Scripture to
indicate a long time,--not necessarily an eternity (see Cruden for many
proofs). Moreover, if all hope of improvement ends with this life (a
doctrine in which such extremes as Atheism and Calvinism strangely
agree), what becomes of all the commonest forms of humanity, its
intermediate failures, too bad for a heaven and too good for a hell; to
say less of insane, idiotic, and other helpless creatures; and the
millions of the untaught in Christendom, who never have had a chance,
and billions of the Heathen brutalised through the ages by birth and
evil custom? Yes; for all there must be in the near hereafter continuous
new chances of improvement and hopes of better life.
There is one poem in the volume superadded to my Dramatics which I will
introduce here, as it is quite a _tour de force_ in its way of double
rhyming throughout, and has, moreover, excellent moral uses: so I wish
it read more widely.
_Behind the Veil._
"Mysteries! crowding around us,
How ye perplex and confound us,--
Each our ignorance screening
Hidden in words without meaning!
"Who knoweth aught that is certain
Veil'd behind mystery's curtain?
Seeing the wisest of guesses
Foolishness only expresses.
"Ancestry? ruthlessly moulding
Bodies and souls in unfolding;
How such a mixture confuses
Judgment's indulgent excuses,--
"While the derivative nature,
Still a responsible creature,
Yields individual merits,
Biassed by what it inherits.
"Circumstance? mighty to fashion
Instant occasion for passion,
Gripping with clutch of a bandit
Weakness too weak to withstand it,--
"What? shall it mar me or make me?
Neither, till faith shall forsake me--
For, with good courage to nerve me,
Circumstance only can serve me!
"Destiny? doth it then seem so?
Or can the will we esteem so,
Change the decree at a bidding,
Us of that destiny ridding,--
"If with no fatalist weakness,
Battling in boldness and meekness,
We are determined to master
Every defeat and disaster?
"Providence? ordering all things,
Both of the great and the small things,
Equally each of us guiding,
Guarding, destroying, providing,--
"Fixt, beyond human forecasting,
Both as to blessing and blasting,--
Yet, though we darkly discern Him,
Quick'ning the prayer that may turn Him!
"Evil?--O direst enigma,
Whispered and terrible stigma
By fools to the Good One imputed,
As if everlastingly rooted!
"How so? shall wrong to no ending
Still with the Right be contending?
Must not the bitterest leaven
Melt in the mercy of Heaven?
"Or can old Baal, the sun-god,
Boast there are two gods, not one god,
Satan, the rebel infernal,
Regent with Christ the Supernal?
"Come, blessed end, through the ages,
When no more wickedness rages,
When no iniquity hinders,
But sin is burnt down to its cinders!--
"Cruelties?--somehow permitted,--
With its mute victims unpitied,
Tortured in nature's defiance
On the false pretext of science,--
"Shall not some æon of gladness,
Balance the throes of pain-madness,--
Must not the crime of the cruel
Burn into souls as its fuel?
"Never can wisdom's creation
Be stultified annihilation,
But every poor unit that liveth
Shall live in the life that He giveth,--
"Yea, for that æon of glory,
Revealed in millennial story,
When earth with beatified features,
Shines the new Heaven of creatures.
"Death? Is it all things, or nothing?
Either the Spirit unclothing
Unto new living for ever,--
Or the dread penalty--never!
"Death,--if thou art but the portal,
Leading to glories immortal,
Why should we tremble to near thee,
How be the cowards to fear thee,
"Since the worlds blazing above us,
Peopled by angels who love us,
Stand our fatherly mansions,
Fitted for spirits' expansions?
"Where are the dead? and what doing?
Still their old trifles pursuing?
Or in the trance of a slumber,
Crowded by dreams without number?--
"Dreams of unspeakable sadness,
Breams of ineffable gladness,--
As the quick conscience remembers
Evil and good in their embers,--
"As it lives over in quiet,
Time and its orgies of riot,
Or the good gifts and good graces,
Bright'ning its happier phases,--
"As it sees photograph'd clearly,
Crystalised sharply and nearly,
Life and its million transactions,
Fancies and feelings and factions,--
"Every prayer ever uttered,
Every curse ever muttered,
All the man's lowest and highest,--
These are thyself, when thou diest!
"Filling thee, after thy measure,
From the full river of pleasure,
Or, as the fruit of thy sowing,
Pangs of remorse ever growing,--
"In thee all Heaven upspringing,
Or its dread opposite flinging
Blackness and darkness about thee,--
Both are within, not without thee!
"Yet,--in that darkness, we grope for
Somewhat far off, yet to hope for,
That through some future repentance,
Justice may soften its sentence.
"Ere from the dead He had risen,
'He preached to the spirits in prison,'--
Is this a text that His aid is
Still to be hoped for in Hades?
"'Wrath may endure for a season,'
Both in religion and reason,--
But if its end must be never,
Where is His mercy for ever'?
"Ay,--after long retribution,
Mercy may drag from pollution
Souls that have suffered for ages,
Working out sin's bitter wages,--
"So that the end shall be glorious,
Good over evil victorious,
And this black sin-night of sorrow,
Blaze into gladness to-morrow!"
And so I make an end of this autobiography, with the humble prayer that
I may have grace given to finish my course in this life usefully and
with honour, at peace with God and man; mindful of that caution of
Tellus, the Athenian, as recorded by Herodotus, "not to judge any man
happy until he is dead;"--the Christian adds, "and is alive again!"
Let me conclude with some noble lines of Ovid in his Epilogue to the
Metamorphoses, which I have Englished below:--
"Jamque opus exegi: quod nec Jovis ira, nec ignes,
Nec poterit ferrum, nec edax abolere vetustas.
Cum volet illa dies, quæ nil nisi corporis hujus
Jus habet, incerti spatium mihi finiat ævi,--
Parte tamen meliore mei super alta perennis
Astra ferar: nomenque erit indelebile nostrum.
Quaque patet domitis Romana potentia terris,
Ore legar populi; perque omnia sæcula famâ
Si quid habent veri vatum præsagia VIVAM."
"Now have I done my work: which not Jove's ire
Can make undone, nor sword nor time nor fire.
Whene'er that day, whose only powers extend
Against this body, my brief life shall end,
Still in my better portion evermore
Above the stars undying shall I soar.
My name shall never die; but through all time
Whenever Rome shall reach a conquer'd clime,
There, in that people's tongue, shall this my page
Be read and glorified from age to age:--
Yea, if the bodings of my spirit give
True note of inspiration, I shall live!"
THE END.
Transcriber's Notes
Page 44: added closing parenthesis after "contempt]!"
Page 296: added closing parenthesis after "patriotic but peculiar"
Page 297: removed opening parenthesis after "Rifledom--were once to a
comma"
End of Project Gutenberg's My Life as an Author, by Martin Farquhar Tupper