UPTON,
Oct. 19, 1904.
DEAR HERBERT,--I am at present continuously liturgical, owing to my
Committee; but you must have the benefit of it.
I have often wondered which of the compilers of the Prayer-book fixed
upon the Venite as the first Canticle for our Morning Service;
wondered, I say, in the purposeless way that one does wonder, without
ever taking the trouble to find out. I dare say there are abundant
ecclesiological precedents for it, if one took the trouble to discover
them. But the important thing is that it was done; and it is a stroke
of genius to have done it. (N.B.--I find it is in the Breviary
appointed for Matins.)
The thing is so perfect in itself, and in a way so unexpected, that I
feel in the selection of it the work of a deep and poetical heart. Many
an ingenious ecclesiastical mind would be afraid of putting a psalm in
such a place which changed its mood so completely as the Venite does.
To end with a burst of noble and consuming anger, of vehement and
merciless indignation--that is the magnificent thing.
Just consider it; I will write down the verses, just for the simple
pleasure of shaping the great simple phrases:--
"Oh come let us sing unto the Lord; let us heartily rejoice in the
strength of our salvation."
What a vigorous and enlivening verse, like the invitation of old
song-writers, "Begone, dull care." For once let us trust ourselves to
the full tide of exaltation and triumph, let there be no heavy
overshadowings of thought.
"Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving: and show ourselves
glad in him with psalms.
"For the Lord is a great God: and a great King above all Gods.
"In his hand are all the corners of the earth; and the strength of the
hills is his also.
"The sea is his and he made it; and his hands prepared the dry land.
"Oh come, let us worship, and fall down: and kneel before the Lord our
Maker.
"For he is the Lord our God; and we are the people of his pasture and
the sheep of his hand."
What a splendid burst of joy; the joy of earth, when the sun is bright
in a cloudless heaven, and the fresh wind blows cheerfully across the
plain. There is no question of duty here, of a task to be performed in
heaviness, but a simple tide of joyfulness such as filled the heart of
the poet who wrote:--
"God's in His Heaven;
All's right with the world."
I take it that these verses draw into themselves, as the sea draws the
streams, all the rivers of joy and beauty that flow, whether laden with
ships out of the heart of great cities, or dropping and leaping from
high unvisited moorlands. All the sweet joys that life holds for us
find their calm end and haven here; all the delights of life, of
action, of tranquil thought, of perception, of love, of beauty, of
friendship, of talk, of reflection, are all drawn into one great flood
of gratitude and thankfulness; the thankfulness that comes from the
thought that after all it is He that made us, and not we ourselves;
that we are indeed led and pastured by green meadows and waters of
comfort; in such a mood all uneasy anxieties, all dull questionings,
die and are merged, and we are glad to be.
Then suddenly falls a different mood, a touch of pathos, in the thought
that there are some who from wilfulness, and vain desire, and troubled
scheming, shut themselves out from the great inheritance; to them comes
the pleading call, the sorrowful invitation:--
"To-day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts; as in the
provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness.
"When your fathers tempted me: proved me, and saw my works."
And then rises the gathering wrath; the doom of all perverse and
stubborn natures, who will not yield, or be guided, or led; who live in
a wilful sadness, a petty obstinacy:--
"Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said: It is a
people that do err in their hearts for they have not known my ways."
And then the passion of the mood, the fierce indignation, rises and
breaks, as it were, in a dreadful thunderclap:--
"Unto whom I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest."
But even so the very horror of the denunciation holds within it a
thought of beauty, like an oasis in a burning desert. "My REST"--that
sweet haven which does truly await all those who will but follow and
wait upon God.
I declare that the effect of this amazing lyric grows upon me every
time that I hear it. Some Psalms, like the delicate and tender cxix.,
steal into the heart after long and quiet use. How dull I used to find
it as a child; how I love it now! But this is not the case with the
Venite; its noble simplicity and directness has no touch of intentional
subtlety about it. Rather the subtlety was in the true insight, which
saw that, if ever there was a Psalm which should at once give the reins
to joy, and at the same time pierce the careless heart with a sharp
arrow of thought, this was the Psalm.
I feel as if I had been trying in this letter to do as Mr. Interpreter
did--to have you into a room full of besoms and spiders, and to draw a
pretty moral out of it all. But I am sure that the beauty of this
particular Psalm, and of its position, is one of those things that is
only spoilt for us by familiarity; and that it is a duty in life to try
and break through the crust of familiarity which tends to be deposited
round well-known things, and to see how bright and joyful a jewel shows
its heart of fire beneath.
I have been hoping for a letter; but no doubt it is all right. I am
before my time, I see.--Ever yours,