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    SPARE MINUTE SERIES.

    TRUE MANLINESS,

    _FROM THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS HUGHES._

    SELECTED BY
    E. E. BROWN.


    WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
    JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.


    BOSTON:
    D. LOTHROP AND CO.,
    FRANKLIN STREET, CORNER OF HAWLEY.




    COPYRIGHT BY
    D. LOTHROP & CO.
    1880.




THOMAS HUGHES.


    [PRELIMINARY NOTE.—Having somewhat rashly consented
    to write a short biographical preface to a volume of
    selections to be made in America from the writings
    of my friend, Mr. Hughes, I applied to him directly
    for the needful facts and dates. His answer was an
    autobiographical letter which I found so interesting
    that I resolved to print it, omitting only a few
    intimate allusions natural in such a communication, but
    with which the public has nothing to do. My temptation
    was the greater that the letter was not intended
    for publication, and had, therefore, that charm of
    unpremeditated confidence which is so apt to be wanting
    in more deliberate autobiographies. I cannot consult
    him, (and I confess that I purposely waited till I
    could not) for he is already at sea, on his way to
    America, and I fear that friendship may have tempted
    me to an unwarrantable liberty, but I could not bring
    myself, even at the risk of seeming indiscreet, to
    deny to others what had given me so much pleasure.
    At any rate, the indiscretion is wholly my own and
    in direct violation of the injunction with which Mr.
    Hughes’ letter concludes: “I hate the idea of being
    presented in any guise to any public; so if you can’t
    squelch the plan altogether, give only the driest and
    meagrest facts and dates.” I feel somewhat as if I had
    been reporting a private conversation, and take upon
    myself in advance all the reproach that belongs of
    right to that scourge and desecrator of modern life,
    the “Interviewer.” For the first time, I look forward
    with dread to my next meeting with an old friend,
    after having thus practised the familiar stage device
    of putting the right letter into the wrong cover. As
    the brief record of a well-spent and honorable life,
    devoted to unselfish ends and associated with notable
    friendships, Mr. Hughes’ letter has a higher than
    merely personal interest. Of any critical introduction
    to American readers no one could stand in less need
    than he. The same qualities of manliness, frankness,
    simplicity and sympathy, with whatever is generous and
    humane, that gave and continue to “Tom Brown” a success
    that may be compared with that of “Robinson Crusoe,”
    are not wanting in his other works.—J. R. L.]


“I was born on October 20th, 1822, at Uffington, Berks, of which
village my grandfather was Vicar. He was also a Canon of St. Paul’s,
and spent half the year at his house in Amen Corner, with which my
first memories of London are connected. It was, till this year, the
strangest quiet old nook in the city, behind its big timber gates,
within one hundred yards of Fleet street on one side, and Newgate
Market on the other, but the distant murmur of life only made the
repose more striking in those days. Now they are building some new
minor Canons’ houses on the vacant ground beyond which will be opened
out towards Newgate street, and the corner will be a thoroughfare.
The most remarkable fact of my childhood happened there, as I was in
the house (I believe) with Sir Walter Scott, a great friend of my
grandfather, on his last sad visit to London.

“My grandmother was a very notable woman in many ways, and a great
economist and early riser. She used to take me and my brother out
shopping in the early morning, and our excursions extended as far
as Billingsgate fish-market, then at the height of the career which
has secured for it an unenviable place in our English vocabulary.
It was certainly a strange place for a lady and small boys, and is
connected with the most vivid of my childish memories. Toddling after
my grandmother to the stall where she made her purchases, we came
one morning on the end of a quarrel between a stalwart fish-fag and
her fancy man. She struck him on the head with a pewter pot which
flattened with the blow. He fell like a log, the first blood I had
ever seen, gushing from his temples, and the scene is as fresh as ever
in my memory at the end of half a century. The narrow courts in that
neighborhood are still my favorite haunts in London.

“But my town visits were short. I was a thorough country-bred boy,
and passed eleven months in the year at the foot of the Berkshire
chalk-hills, much in the manner depicted in ‘Tom Brown.’

“I was sent to school at the early age of eight, to accompany my elder
brother. It was a preparatory school for Winchester, and the best
feature about it was the Winchester custom, called ‘standing up,’
which means that we were encouraged to learn a great deal of poetry
by heart, for which we got extra marks at the end of the half year.
We were allowed (within limits) to choose our own poets, and I always
chose Scott from family tradition, and in this way learned the whole
of the ‘Lady of the Lake,’ and most of the ‘Lay of the last Minstrel’
and ‘Marmion,’ by heart, and can repeat much of them to this day.
Milton reckoned highest for marks, but I was prejudiced against him
in this wise: Not far from the school was Addington, a place of the
then Duke of Buckingham, who was also a friend of my grandfather,
who, with my grandmother, paid him a visit at the end of our first
half year. We went over to sleep, and travel back home next day with
the old folk, and in the morning before starting, the Duchess gave us
each a sovereign, neatly wrapped up in white, glossy paper. It was the
first piece of gold I ever had, and I kept it in my hand to look at on
the journey. I was leaning out of the window of the carriage when my
attention was suddenly called to some roadside sight, and I dropped the
precious metal. My shout of anguish and dismay brought the carriage to
a stand-still, and I had to confess. After some trouble my sovereign
was found, and taken charge of by my grandmother, who, in due course,
returned it to me, no longer in current coin of the realm, but in the
shape of a pocket edition of Milton’s poems, with ‘Thomas Hughes from
the Duchess of Buckingham and Chandos’ written on the title page. I
still possess the odious small volume, and have learnt to forgive the
great Puritan,—indeed, I have read Masson’s life of him with real
interest in these latter days. But I never learnt a line of him by
heart as a boy, and regret it to this day.

“Those were evil days in Wessex, the time of the Swing riots and
machine and rick burning. My father was the most active magistrate in
the district, and was constantly in the saddle, keeping the King’s
peace. He was an old fashioned Tory, but with true popular sympathies,
and had played cricket and football all his life with the men and boys
of our village, and it is one of my proudest memories that only one man
from Uffington joined the rioters, and he came back after three weeks
ashamed and penitent. Amongst other good deeds, my father rode off
alone one night and saved the house and chapel of a dissenting minister
in a neighboring village from being sacked and burned. Nevertheless I
can not pretend to say that I was brought up to look upon dissenters as
anything but a stiff-necked and perverse generation.

“At the age of ten, February 1834, I was sent on to Rugby with my
brother, as, happily for us, Arnold had been a college friend of my
father. Here I stayed till I was nearly nineteen, starting from the
bottom and ending in the sixth form, though by no means at the head of
the school.

“It was a very rough, not to say brutal, place when I went there, but
much mended during those years.

“I was a very idle boy so far as the regular lessons were concerned,
and I expect I should have been advised to go elsewhere early in my
career but for a certain fondness for history and literature which
Arnold discovered in me and which (I fancy) covered a multitude of
sins. He first struck it at a monthly examination of the Shell, then
the form intervening between the fourth and fifth. He asked the head
boy why it was the Romans had so specially rejoiced over the terms
of a certain treaty with the Parthians (we were reading Horace, I
think). It came all down to the lowest bench where I was, and I said,
‘because they got back the eagles taken from Crassus,’ and sent a
gleam of pleasure into the Doctor’s face which was getting rather
grim. Up I went to the top of the form, and from that time he often
asked me questions _outside_ the text book and specially by way of
illustration from Scott’s novels, to which he was fond of referring.
I could generally come to the point, having them at my fingers’ ends,
and was proud of my consequent recognition. To this day I remember the
feeling of grief and humiliation which came across me when I failed
him on a critical occasion. It was years after the above event when
I was in the sixth, and some distinguished visitor (Bunsen, I think
it was) was present at the lesson. We were reading the passage in
Aristotle about old age, (is it in the Ethics or Politics? I’m sure
I forget) and he asked the head of the school to illustrate from
Scott’s novels what Aristotle says about the characteristic of old
age, to be absorbed in petty interests and to be careless about great
contemporary events. Down came the question, past some very able and
some very studious boys, since distinguished one way or another—past
John Connington, Matt. Arnold, Sir R. Cross, to me—and then the Doctor
paused for several seconds with a confident look. But no response came
and he passed on, ‘and I was left lamenting.’ No one answered, and he
had to remind us of the old Abbot, pottering away in his garden on the
border, when Mary and her defeated followers ride up before Crossing,
and the old monk leans on his spade and looks after them, saying, ‘I
could pity this poor Queen and these Lords, but what are these things
to a man of four score—and it’s a fine growing morning for the young
kale-wort’—and so goes to his spading again.

“I cannot help to this day wondering at the patience and forbearance
both of him and my tutor, Cotton, afterwards Bishop of Calcutta, over
my frightful copies of verses, and Greek and Latin prose. As I was head
of the eleven at cricket, and of bigside at football, I naturally had
but small leisure to devote to such matters, and consequently my copies
were notorious for the number of _picture frames_ they were certain to
contain,—picture frames being the strong black marks which the Doctor
used to make round bad, false concords

    +--------------------+
    |  munus hospitalis  |
    +--------------------+

or quantities

    +--------------------+
    |   munera stare     |
    +--------------------+

“He used to do it slowly and grimly, his under lip seeming to grow out
as the pen went deliberately round the wretched words, and one did
not feel good during the operation. But as no boy enjoyed the sausage
seller’s buffooneries, or Socrates’ banters more than I, (tho’ I made
sad hashes in construing them) I remained in favor, tho’ incorrigible,
till the end.

“I carried away from Rugby dreadfully bad scholarship, but two
invaluable possessions. First, a strong religious faith in and loyalty
to Christ; and secondly, open mindedness. It was said (and is still
said, I believe,) of Arnold, by way of censure, that to him everything
was an open question every morning of his life. And though he never
made any direct effort to unsettle any of our convictions that I can
remember, we went out into the world the least hampered intellectually
of any school of English boys of that time. To this day I am always
ready to change an old opinion the moment I can get a better one, and
so I think it has been with many of my old school-fellows, though we
believed ourselves to be a thorough _true blue_ school.

“Perhaps I also owe to Rugby my strong democratic bias, but I don’t
think it. I guess I was born so (or _barn-zo_, as Wessex chaw-bacon
pronounced it in the famous story). As a little scrap in petticoats
nothing pleased me so much as playing with the village children, and I
could never understand why they shouldn’t have all the things I had. At
any rate it was at Rugby that I first was able to indulge my radical
propensities. Up to my time, the school-close (or playgrounds) was kept
as sacred ground, no ‘lout’ (as we politely called the neighboring
lieges) being allowed to set foot within the precincts, and I had
often noticed the insolent airs with which casual intruders in fustian
or corduroy had been extruded. So when I became head of the eleven
(and so a sort of constitutional monarch in the close) I asked the
best cricketers amongst the ‘louts’ to come in and practice with me
on summer evenings, and got up matches with their club, to the great
advantage, I still believe, of school as well as town.

“I was dreadfully loath to leave, and when I was obliged, (as nineteen
is the limit of ages) was much averse to going up to Oxford. I knew
that my scholarship was too weak to allow me to take anything like high
honors, and so, as my profession was to be the Bar, I wanted to go up
to London at once and enter at an Inn of Court. My father, however,
after consulting his legal friends, decided that I should go to Oxford,
and accordingly I went up to his old College, Oriel, in February, 1842.
My first year at Oxford was utterly wasted, except that I learned
to pull a good oar, and perfected myself in boxing, which was then
much in vogue, several prize-fighters being generally kept in pay by
the under-graduates. The lectures were perfectly easy to me as I had
read all the books at Rugby, and I employed no private tutor. I knew
I couldn’t take high honors, (or at any rate choose to think so) and
as I happened to fall into an idle, fast set, just did as the rest,
and made a fool of myself in all the usual ways. But I never much
enjoyed that kind of thing and got very sick of it by the time I had
taken my little-go, and towards the end of my second year, just before
I was of age, the most important event of my life happened, for in
the long vacation I became engaged to my wife, then a schoolgirl, the
great friend of my only sister. This pulled me up short. Our parents
very properly said we were silly young people and must not see one
another for years, or correspond, that we might see whether we really
knew our minds. I went back to Oxford quite a new man, knocked off
all not absolutely necessary expense, and lived decently and soberly
for the rest of my time, taking my degree the first moment I could
without coaching, by which I saved money. Consequently, with the help
of a small legacy of £200, which came to me at twenty-one from an old
great-aunt, I came away quite out of debt and with some small balance
towards furnishing chambers in London, which was fairly creditable, as,
there being three of us up at once, my father only allowed us £200 a
year each. This was supposed to be too small for a fellow to live on!!
Alas, it is even worse now, I fear!

“I had the good luck to be under Clough (the poet) and Fraser, now
Bishop of Manchester, who were Oriel tutors at that time, and the
latter of whom is still one of my closest friends. I went up, as I
have said, believing myself still a Tory, but left Oxford a Radical.
Something of the change was owing to the insolence of undergraduate
life at that day, but more to a tour I took with a pupil through the
North in the long vacation of my third year. My pupil was the son of
a neighboring Berkshire squire, and all his father wanted was that I
should keep him out of mischief. If he could be interested or taught
anything, so much the better. We happened to stop at a Commercial hotel
in Lancashire on our way North, and in the bagman’s room I got into
an argument with some of the North county travellers on the subject
of the Corn Laws, then prominently before Parliament. On this first
night I came speedily to the conclusion that I knew very little about
the matter, and before I returned to Oxford for Michaelmas term I had
become a good free-trader.

“I was nearly twenty-two when I went up to London, straight from
Oxford, to begin my legal career. My father kindly suggested that I
should take a run on the Continent before settling down, to get up my
French and German to the point at any rate of tolerably fluent small
talk, and here again I have no doubt but he was right, as the want of
early training of ear and tongue has left me a helpless mortal ever
since. However, I was determined to lose not a month or a week if I
could help it, and soon found myself in small rooms on the third floor
at No. 15 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, from the windows of which, on a fine
day, I could see the Surrey hills. I paid £30 a year for the chambers,
and lived in them for another £70, keeping down my whole expenditure
within £100 a year, a feat I am still rather proud of. I never could
have done it but for a glorious old woman who kept the house, and did
for all the inhabitants, of whom only two lived in their chambers. She
had come up from Devonshire as a girl some fifty years before to that
house where she had been ever since, and in all that time had never
seen the Thames, which is, as you know, not five minutes’ walk from
Lincoln’s Inn Fields; nor St. Paul’s, except the dome, from the top
windows of No. 15. She still spoke with a delightful Devonshire accent,
all her U’s being as soft as if she had left Torquay yesterday, and I
won her heart at once by professing, or I should say acknowledging, a
passion for _junket_, which she prepared in a reverent and enthusiastic
manner on the slightest excuse. As my wife that was to be lived in
Devonshire, the coincidence was peculiarly grateful to me, and the dear
old woman, Roxworthy by name, could not have had my interests more at
heart had I been her own son.

“There I lived for two years and upwards pleasantly enough, for several
old school and college friends had chambers in the neighborhood. My
engagement was a constant stimulus to work and economy, and made me
indifferent as to society. I just visited two or three family friends
on Sundays, and for the rest did very well without it. From my own
experience I would have every youngster get engaged by the time he is
twenty-one, though I am not prepared to maintain that a long engagement
is so good for girls as for boys. Mine at any rate was the making
of me. My democratic instincts grew in strength during these years,
notwithstanding the failure of my first practical endeavors to act
up to them. One of these I will mention. Every house in the Square
was entitled to a key of the five gardens, in which I spent most of
the long summer evenings; and, seeing the number of ragged children
who came round the railings and looked wistfully through at the lawns
and beds within, I extended my privilege to them and used to let them
in by the scores, and watch them tumbling on the grass and gathering
the daisies with entire satisfaction. From the first, this outrageous
proceeding greatly scandalized the Beadle, whose remonstrances I
entirely disregarded, until at last a notice came from the Trustees of
the Square that the key of No. =15= would be called in. This threat so
alarmed poor Mrs. Roxworthy that I was fain to promise amendment, and
so ceased myself to frequent the gardens. At the end of thirty years a
strong effort is being made, as you may see in the papers, to throw the
gardens open; so I live in hopes before long of seeing my revenge on
the ghost of the Beadle of my day.

“I read hard at the law, but it was very much against the grain, and my
endeavors to master the subtleties of contingent remainders, executory
devises, the _scintilla juris_, and all the rest of it, were only
partially successful. I sometimes think I might have taken _con amore_
to common law and to criminal business, but conveyancing and real
property law had no attractions for me, beyond the determination, if I
could, to make a living by them. I read with a very able conveyancer
and kindly old gentleman, who did his best to impart the mysteries to
some six pupils. He soon found where my strength, such as it was, lay,
and employed me in the preparation of deeds—such as appointments of new
Trustees, where the operative part was quite simple common form, but
long statements of fact had to be made in the recitals. These I rather
excelled at, and on the whole, by the time I was of standing to be
called to the Bar, was probably about as fit for that ceremony as the
average of my cotemporaries.

“Three months before it took place I was married, the probation which
my wife’s parents had very properly insisted on, having expired at the
beginning of 1847, and we being found entirely in the same mind after
our three years of separation. Most of our friends thought us mad,
as we started on the vast income of £400 a year. It was confidently
foretold that we should be living on our friends or in the workhouse
before long, which prophesies however were entirely falsified. We
started in tiny lodgings, almost opposite the house we now live in, and
always managed to pay our way in the worst of times. And though I admit
the experiment was a risky one, I have never repented it.

“The year of my call, 1848, was the year of revolutions, and on the
10th of April I paraded, like the rest of respectable society, as a
special constable, though with shrewd misgivings in my own mind that
the Chartists had a great deal to say for themselves. In which belief I
soon found sympathizers. Frederick Maurice had recently been appointed
Chaplain of Lincoln’s Inn, and was gathering round him a number of
young Barristers and Students, whom he was putting to work in their
spare time at a ragged school, and visiting the poor in a miserable
district near Lincoln’s Inn. Contact with our wretched clients soon
made it clear to us that something more radical and systematic was
needed to raise them to anything like independence. They were almost
all in the hands of slop sellers, chamber masters, or other grinders
of the faces of the poor. What could be done to deliver them? In the
autumn, one of our number spent some time in Paris and came back full
of the material and moral effects of association amongst the workmen
there.

“We resolved to try the experiment and accordingly formed ourselves
into a society for promoting Workingmen’s Associations, with Maurice
as president. The idea grew on us apace, and soon called out an amount
of enthusiasm which surprised ourselves. We were all busy men, tied to
offices from ten till five, so we met at six in the morning and eight
at night to settle our rules, and organize our work. We were all poor
men too, but soon scraped together enough money to start our first
Association. This we resolved should be a tailoring establishment,
for which we could ourselves, with the help of our friends, find
sufficient custom in the first instance. We had no difficulty in hiring
good airy workshops, but how to fill them was the rub. We were now in
communication with a number of poor workpeople, especially amongst the
Chartists, and, to cut a long story short, started our Association
with a slop-worker who had been in prison as manager, and some dozen
associates of kindred opinions in the workroom.

“I needn’t trouble you with any details of the Christian Socialist
movement, of which this was a beginning, and which made a great noise
in the press and elsewhere at the time. It has survived any number of
follies and failures, and has gradually spread till there is a union
of Societies all over the kingdom, doing a work for our poorer classes
which one can only wonder at and be thankful for.

“We wrote tracts, and started a small paper, ‘The Christian Socialist,’
and were soon at open strife with nearly the whole of our press, both
the ‘Edinburgh’ and the ‘Quarterly’ condescending to bestow on us
contemptuous, but very angry articles, in which they were joined by
weeklies and dailies innumerable. But we were young, saucy, and so
thoroughly convinced we were right that ‘we cared, shall I say, not a
d—n for their damning.’

“Most of my friends looked very serious, and prophesied that my
prospects at the Bar would be ruined by my crotchets, and indeed I was
dreadfully afraid of this myself. But the state of things in England
was so serious, and I was so thoroughly convinced of the necessity of
work in this direction, that I couldn’t give it up. No doubt I lost
some business by it, but other business came, as I was wonderfully
punctual at Chambers and soon got to be friends with my few clients,
who even got to pardon, with a shrug of the shoulders, the queer folk
they often found there. And queer no doubt they were for a Chancery
barrister’s chambers, as emissaries from the tailors’, shoemakers’,
printers’, and builders’ Associations (we had a dozen of them going by
this time) were often in and out about their rules and accounts and
squabbles. I only remember one instance in which I really suffered.
A dear old gentleman, a family friend of ours, had managed with much
difficulty to persuade his solicitor to give me some business. That
most respectable of men, head of a firm which could have made any
young barrister’s fortune, arrived one afternoon at my chambers with
a brief, and was asked by my clerk to sit down for a moment till I
was disengaged. This he did, graciously enough, though no doubt with
the thought ‘how little I could know my business to keep him waiting
even for a moment,’ when my door opened, and a full-blown black person
(lately from the West Indies in quest of advice and aid for the
freedmen there) walked out. This was too much for my intending client,
who hurried away, saying he would call again, but I never saw his brief
or him.

“So things went on for some years during which I managed to maintain
my growing family without dropping my work for the Associations. We
had migrated to Wimbledon, for health’s sake, where we built a house
side by side with one of the other Promoters, which had one large
room common to both houses, the subject of much chaff and fun to our
visitors and acquaintance. Our garden was also in common, and both
arrangements, I think, answered well.

“About this time Maurice became convinced that if Associations of
working people were to succeed, the men must be better educated in the
highest sense. So he set to work to establish the Workingmen’s College,
of which he was the first and I am the present Principal. It is a very
noteworthy institution, at which, by the way, Emerson and Goldwin
Smith, besides Stanley, Kingsley, Huxley, and other eminent Englishmen,
have delivered opening addresses, at the beginning of the academical
year, in October.

“I found it at first very hard to discover my mission at the college.
I tried lectures on the law of combination and association, but they
did not draw, and all the other classes for which I was competent, were
filled by much better teachers from amongst our number. So, noting how
badly set up the men were with round shoulders, and slouching gait, and
how much they needed some strong exercise to supple them, I started a
boxing class, and had some horizontal and parallel bars put up in the
back-yard. These proved a great success, and at last it became clear to
me, that all my Oxford time spent on such matters had not been thrown
away. In connection with the boxing and gymnastic classes, we started
social gatherings for talk and songs, over a cup of tea, which also
were wonderfully successful. I remember Hawthorne coming to one of
them; brought by his friend, H. Bright, of Liverpool, and quite losing
his shyness and reserve for the evening.

“By this time we had a boy of eight, and, thinking over what I should
like to say to him before he went to school, I took to writing a story
as the easiest way of bringing out what I wanted. It was done mainly in
the long vacation of 1856, but wasn’t published till early in the next
year, and made such a hit that the publishers soon betrayed the secret,
and I became famous!

“Whereupon arose again the professional bugbear, now set at rest for
years. I had managed to get over and live down Christian Socialism, but
who on earth would bring business to a successful author! I considered
whether I shouldn’t throw over Lincoln’s Inn and take to writing, but
decided that the law was best for me, and determined to stop writing.
This good resolution held for two years, when the Berkshire festival
of scouring the White Horse, (an old Danish or Saxon, certainly Pagan
figure, still left on our chalk-hills,) came round, and my old country
friends made such a point of having an account of it from me that I
gave in and wrote my book No. 2.

“By this time my clients had become case-hardened, and finding no
particular ill effects from my previous escapades, I gave in in a
weak moment to a tempting offer of Macmillan’s, and wrote ‘Tom Brown
at Oxford,’ for his magazine. Moreover, I had now made a plunge into
public life, and was one of the leaders of a semi-political party. This
is how it came about: There had been roused in me lively sympathies
with the Abolitionists, and I had followed eagerly the progress of
events through the Fugitive Slave, and Free Soil agitations. There was
no warmer sympathizer with Garrison and John Brown and Levi Coffin,
in England; so when the Lincoln election came, and South Carolina led
off the seceding states with jubilant applause of society in England,
I went at once fiercely into the other camp. You may judge of the
difficulty of getting our public men of note to take active sides with
the North (tho’ many of them didn’t conceal their sympathy, and were
ready to speak in Parliament, and write,) by the fact that I was about
the most prominent speaker at the first great public meeting, which
was held in London. This proved to be such an extraordinary success,
that there was no further effort on the part of the jingoes (that
name hadn’t yet been invented, but it was precisely the same party,)
to demonstrate publicly in the metropolis. In other centres there was
need of such work, and I went to Birmingham and Liverpool to speak
and deliver lectures on the war and its causes and issues. It was
supposed that there was to be a row at the latter place, which was the
stronghold of the Rebels; but all went off quietly.

“It was mainly in consequence of these doings that I was asked by the
working folk in South London to stand for Lambeth in 1865. I did so,
and was brought in triumphantly at the head of the Poll, and almost
all the expense paid by subscription. From that time I gradually gave
up legal business, and in 1868 took silk, as it is called, _i. e._,
became a Queen’s Counsel. In 1869 I wrote ‘Alfred the Great’ for
Macmillan’s Sunday Series. I now made it my chief business to attend
to Social-Political questions in Parliament; sat on two Trades Unions
Commissions; got amendments to the Industrial and Friendly Societies
Acts through the House, but never took to party politics.

“In 1870, as I hope you remember, I paid my delightful visit to America.

“In 1872 I lost my dear eldest brother, and soon after wrote the memoir
of him for my family. Maurice also died, and I became Principal of the
Workingmen’s College.

“Before the next election (1874) the Co-operative question had come
to the front. The success of the Upper Class London Supply Societies
[copies of our working-class Associations in their main principle and
features] had roused the tradesmen throughout the country. I was a
candidate for Marylebone, and was fiercely opposed by the tradesmen,
and supported by the professional and working classes. There were three
Liberal candidates for only two seats, so it was agreed to refer it to
the Attorney General to say who should retire, and he decided that I
had the worst chance of winning the seat (on one-sided and insufficient
evidence, as my supporters maintained, and I think rightly). I
therefore retired, and got no chance of entering that Parliament. For
by this time the Trades Protection Society had been organized, to
fight against neither small nor great, but only against those accursed
revolutionists who had supported the Co-operative movement, and refused
to flinch from it.

“So it happened that I was again thrown out at the election this
year. I had consented, on the unanimous and unsolicited request of
the Liberal party in Salisbury, to stand there, and all went well
till just before the election, when the Trades Protective people
permitted the party organization to throw me over. I doubt if I shall
ever return to the House, as my views on the Church question make me
an almost hopeless candidate in the North of England, and my support
of Co-operation a perfectly hopeless one at present in the South. I
care, however, very little about it, having plenty to do outside in
keeping irons hot, especially that most interesting of all my irons,
the Tennessee settlement, which I hope to keep very hot indeed, and
look upon as about the most hopeful of the many New Jerusalems which
have attracted me during my pilgrimage. I am off to open Chapter II.
of that Romance [Chapter I., the getting the titles clear, buying the
land, &c., having taken some two years.] on the 12th of next month, and
I can’t tell you how much my heart is in it.

“And so end my confessions. The only other points of interest, omitted
above, are the publication of the ‘Old Church,’ in 1877, when the
disestablishment movement began to get serious, and ‘The Manliness
of Christ,’ this Spring, (1880), which latter has been already
republished on your side in four different forms; and lastly, my share
in the Volunteer movement, which I joined at its start in 1859. The
Workingmen’s College raised a corps of two companies at once, of
which, after serving for a few weeks as private, I was made Captain.
It soon swelled into a regiment, the 19th Middlesex, of which I became
Colonel, and served in it twelve years.”




TRUE MANLINESS.




I.


THE conscience of every man recognizes courage as the foundation of
true manliness, and manliness as the perfection of human character, and
if Christianity runs counter to conscience in this matter, or indeed in
any other, Christianity will go to the wall.

But does it? On the contrary, is not perfection of character—“Be ye
perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect,” perfection to be reached
by moral effort in the faithful following of our Lord’s life on
earth—the final aim which the Christian religion sets before individual
men, and constant contact and conflict with evil of all kinds the
necessary condition of that moral effort, and the means adopted by
our Master in the world in which we live, and for which he died? In
that strife, then, the first requisite is courage or manfulness, gained
through conflict with evil—for without such conflict there can be no
perfection of character, the end for which Christ says we were sent
into this world.




II.


“Manliness and manfulness” are synonymous, but they embrace more than
we ordinarily mean by the word “courage;” for instance, tenderness and
thoughtfulness for others. They include that courage which lies at
the root of all manliness, but is, in fact, only its lowest or rudest
form. Indeed, we must admit that it is not exclusively a human quality
at all, but one which we share with other animals, and which some of
them—for instance the bulldog and weasel—exhibit with a certainty and a
thoroughness, which is very rare amongst mankind.

In what, then, does courage, in this ordinary sense of the word,
consist? First, in persistency, or the determination to have one’s own
way, coupled with contempt for safety and ease, and readiness to risk
pain or death in getting one’s own way. This is, let us readily admit,
a valuable, even a noble quality, but an animal quality rather than a
human or manly one. Proficiency in athletic games is not necessarily
a test even of animal courage, but only of muscular power and physical
training. Even in those games which, to some extent, do afford a
test of the persistency, and contempt for discomfort or pain, which
constitute animal courage—such as rowing, boxing, and wrestling—it
is of necessity a most unsatisfactory one. For instance, Nelson—as
courageous an Englishman as ever lived, who attacked a Polar bear with
a handspike when he was a boy of fourteen, and told his captain, when
he was scolded for it, that he did not know Mr. Fear—with his slight
frame and weak constitution, could never have won a boat-race, and in a
match would have been hopelessly astern of any one of the crew of his
own barge; and the highest courage which ever animated a human body
would not enable the owner of it, if he were himself untrained, to
stand for five minutes against a trained wrestler or boxer.

Athleticism is a good thing if kept in its place, but it has come to be
very much over-praised and over-valued amongst us.

True manliness is as likely to be found in a weak as in a strong
body. Other things being equal, we may perhaps admit (though I should
hesitate to do so) that a man with a highly-trained and developed body
will be more courageous than a weak man. But we must take this caution
with us, that a great athlete may be a brute or a coward, while a truly
manly man can be neither.




III.


Let us take a few well-known instances of courageous deeds and examine
them; because, if we can find out any common quality in them we shall
have lighted on something which is of the essence of, or inseparable
from, that manliness which includes courage—that manliness of which we
are in search.

I will take two or three at hazard from a book in which they abound,
and which was a great favorite some years ago, as I hope it is still, I
mean Napier’s _Peninsular War_. At the end of the storming of Badajos,
after speaking of the officers, Napier goes on: “Who shall describe
the springing valor of that Portuguese grenadier who was killed the
foremost man at Santa Maria? or the martial fury of that desperate
rifleman, who, in his resolution to win, thrust himself beneath the
chained sword-blades, and then suffered the enemy to dash his head in
pieces with the end of their muskets.”

Again, at the Coa: “A north-of-Ireland man, named Stewart, but
jocularly called ‘the boy,’ because of his youth, nineteen, and of his
gigantic stature and strength, who had fought bravely and displayed
great intelligence beyond the river, was one of the last men who came
down to the bridge, but he would not pass. Turning round he regarded
the French with a grim look, and spoke aloud as follows, ‘So this is
the end of our brag. This is our first battle, and we retreat! The boy
Stewart will not live to hear that said.’ Then striding forward in his
giant might he fell furiously on the nearest enemies with the bayonet,
refused the quarter they seemed desirous of granting, and died fighting
in the midst of them.”

“Still more touching, more noble, more heroic, was the death of
Sergeant Robert McQuade. During McLeod’s rush, this man, also from the
north of Ireland, saw two men level their muskets on rests against
a high gap in a bank, awaiting the uprise of an enemy. The present
Adjutant-general Brown, then a lad of sixteen, attempted to ascend
at the fatal spot. McQuade, himself only twenty-four years of age,
pulled him back, saying in a calm, decided tone, ‘You are too young,
sir, to be killed,’ and then offering his own person to the fire, fell
dead pierced with both balls.” And, speaking of the British soldier
generally, he says in his preface, “What they were their successors now
are. Witness the wreck of the _Birkenhead_, where four hundred men, at
the call of their heroic officers, Captains Wright and Girardot, calmly
and without a murmur accepted death in a horrible form rather than
endanger the women and children saved in the boats. The records of the
world furnish no parallel to this self-devotion.”

Let us add to these two very recent examples: the poor colliers who
worked day and night at Pont-y-pridd with their lives in their hands,
to rescue their buried comrades; and the gambler in St. Louis who went
straight from the gaming-table into the fire, to the rescue of women
and children, and died of the hurts after his third return from the
flames.

Looking, then, at these several cases, we find in each that resolution
in the actors to have their way, contempt for ease, and readiness to
risk pain or death, which we noted as the special characteristics of
animal courage, which we share with the bulldog and weasel.

So far all of them are alike. Can we get any further? Not much,
if we take the case of the rifleman who thrust his head under the
sword-blades and allowed his brains to be knocked out sooner than draw
it back, or that of “the boy Stewart.” These are intense assertions
of individual will and force—avowals of the rough hard-handed man
that he has that in him which enables him to defy pain and danger and
death—this and little or nothing more; and no doubt a very valuable and
admirable thing as it stands.

But we feel, I think, at once, that there is something more in the act
of Sergeant McQuade, and of the miners in Pont-y-pridd—something higher
and more admirable. And it is not a mere question of degree, of more
or less, in the quality of animal courage. The rifleman and “the boy
Stewart” were each of them persistent to death, and no man can be more.
The acts were, then, equally courageous, so far as persistency and
scorn of danger and death are concerned. We must look elsewhere for
the difference, for that which touches us more deeply in the case of
Sergeant McQuade than in that of “the boy Stewart,” and can only find
it in the motive. At least, it seems to me that the worth of the last
lies mainly in the sublimity of self-assertion, of the other in the
sublimity of self-sacrifice.

And this holds good again in the case of the _Birkenhead_. Captain
Wright gave the word for the men to fall in on deck by companies,
knowing that the sea below them was full of sharks, and that the ship
could not possibly float till the boats came back; and the men fell
in, knowing this also, and stood at attention without uttering a word,
till she heeled over and went down under them. And Napier, with all his
delight in physical force and prowess, and his intense appreciation
of the qualities which shine most brightly in the fiery action of
battle, gives the palm to these when he writes, “The records of the
world furnish no parallel to this self-devotion.” He was no mean judge
in such a case; and, if he is right, as I think he is, do we not get
another side-light on our inquiry, and find that the highest temper of
physical courage is not to be found, or perfected, in action but in
repose. All physical effort relieves the strain and makes it easier to
persist unto death under the stimulus and excitement of the shock of
battle, or of violent exertion of any kind, than when the effort has
to be made with grounded arms. In other words, may we not say that
in the face of danger self-restraint is after all the highest form of
self-assertion, and a characteristic of manliness as distinguished from
courage.




IV.


The courage which is tested in times of terror, on the battle-field, in
the sinking ship, the poisoned mine, the blazing house, presents but
one small side of a great subject. Such testing times come to few, and
to these not often in their lives. But on the other hand, the daily
life of every one of us teems with occasions which will try the temper
of our courage as searchingly, though not as terribly, as battle-field
or fire or wreck. For we are born into a state of war; with falsehood
and disease, and wrong and misery in a thousand forms lying all around
us, and the voice within calling on us to take our stand as men in the
eternal battle against these.

And in this life-long fight, to be waged by every one of us
single-handed against a host of foes, the last requisite for a good
fight, the last proof and test of our courage and manfulness, must be
loyalty to truth—the most rare and difficult of all human qualities.
For such loyalty, as it grows in perfection, asks ever more and more of
us, and sets before us a standard of manliness always rising higher and
higher.

And this is the great lesson which we shall learn from Christ’s life,
the more earnestly and faithfully we study it. “For this end was I
born, and for this cause came I into the world, to bear witness to
the truth.” To bear this witness against avowed and open enemies is
comparatively easy; but, to bear it against those we love; against
those whose judgment and opinions we respect, in defense or furtherance
of that which approves itself as true to our own inmost conscience,
this is the last and abiding test of courage and of manliness.




V.


How natural, nay, how inevitable it is, that we should fall into the
habit of appreciating and judging things mainly by the standards in
common use amongst those we respect and love. But these very standards
are apt to break down with us when we are brought face to face with
some question which takes us ever so little out of ourselves and our
usual moods. At such times we are driven to admit in our hearts that
we, and those we respect and love, have been looking at and judging
things, not truthfully, and therefore not courageously and manfully,
but conventionally. And then comes one of the most searching of all
trials of courage and manliness, when a man or woman is called to stand
by what approves itself to their consciences as true, and to protest
for it through evil report and good report, against all discouragement
and opposition from those they love or respect. The sense of antagonism
instead of rest, of distrust and alienation instead of approval and
sympathy, which such times bring, is a test which tries the very
heart and reins, and it is one which meets us at all ages, and in
all conditions of life. Emerson’s hero is the man who, “taking both
reputation and life in his hand, will with perfect urbanity dare the
gibbet and the mob, by the resolute truth of his speech and rectitude
of his behavior.”




VI.


After all, what would life be without fighting, I should like to know?
From the cradle to the grave, fighting, rightly understood, is the
business, the real, highest, honestest business of every son of man.
Every one who is worth his salt has his enemies, who must be beaten, be
they evil thoughts and habits in himself, or spiritual wickednesses in
high places, or Russians, or border-ruffians.

It is no good for Quakers, or any other body of men to uplift their
voices against fighting. Human nature is too strong for them, and they
don’t follow their own precepts. Every soul of them is doing his own
piece of fighting, somehow and somewhere. The world might be a better
world without fighting, for anything I know, but it wouldn’t be our
world; and therefore I am dead against crying peace, when there is no
peace, and isn’t meant to be. I am as sorry as any man to see folks
fighting the wrong people and the wrong things, but I’d a deal sooner
see them doing that, than that they should have no fight in them.




VII.


You can’t alter society, or hinder people in general from being
helpless and vulgar—from letting themselves fall into slavery to the
things about them if they are rich, or from aping the habits and vices
of the rich if they are poor. But you may live simple, manly lives
yourselves, speaking your own thought, paying your own way, and doing
your own work, whatever that may be. You will remain gentlemen so long
as you follow these rules, if you have to sweep a crossing for your
livelihood. You will not remain gentlemen in anything but the name, if
you depart from them, though you may be set to govern a kingdom.




VIII.


In testing manliness as distinguished from courage, we shall have to
reckon sooner or later with the idea of duty. Nelson’s column stands
in the most conspicuous site in all London, and stands there with all
men’s approval, not because of his daring courage. Lord Peterborough,
in a former generation, Lord Dundonald in the one which succeeded,
were at least as eminent for reckless and successful daring. But it
is because the idea of devotion to duty is inseparably connected with
Nelson’s name in the minds of Englishmen, that he has been lifted high
above all his compeers in England’s capital.




IX.


In the throes of one of the terrible revolutions of the worst days
of imperial Rome—when probably the cruelest mob and most licentious
soldiery of all time were raging round the palace of the Cæsars, and
the chances of an hour would decide whether Galba or Otho should rule
the world, the alternative being a violent death—an officer of the
guard, one Julius Atticus, rushed into Galba’s presence with a bloody
sword, boasting that he had slain his rival, Otho. “My comrade, by
whose order?” was his only greeting from the old Pagan chief. And the
story has come down through eighteen centuries, in the terse, strong
sentences of the great historian, Tacitus.

Comrade, who ordered thee? whose will art thou doing? It is the
question which has to be asked of every fighting man, in whatever part
of the great battlefield he comes to the front, and determines the
manliness of soldier, statesman, parson, of every strong man, and
suffering woman.

    “Three roots bear up Dominion; knowledge, will,
       These two are strong; but stronger still the third,
     Obedience: ’tis the great tap-root, which still
       Knit round the rock of Duty, is not stirred,
     Though storm and tempest spend their utmost skill.”

I think that the more thoroughly we sift and search out this question
the more surely we shall come to this as the conclusion of the whole
matter. Tenacity of will, or wilfulness, lies at the root of all
courage, but courage can only rise into true manliness when the will
is surrendered; and the more absolute the surrender of the will the
more perfect will be the temper of our courage and the strength of our
manliness.

    “Strong Son of God, immortal Love,”

the laureate has pleaded, in the moment of his highest inspiration.

    “Our wills are ours to make them thine.”

And that strong Son of God to whom this cry has gone up in our day, and
in all days, has left us the secret of his strength in the words, “I am
come to do the will of my Father and your Father.”




X.


Haste and distrust are the sure signs of weakness, if not of
cowardice. Just in so far as they prevail in any life, even in the most
heroic, the man fails, and his work will have to be done over again.
In Christ’s life there is not the slightest trace of such weakness or
cowardice. From all that we are told, and from all that we can infer,
he made no haste, and gave way to no doubt, waiting for God’s mind,
and patiently preparing himself for whatever his work might be. And so
his work from the first was perfect, and through his whole public life
he never faltered or wavered, never had to withdraw or modify a word
once spoken. And thus he stands, and will stand to the end of time, the
true model of the courage and manliness of boyhood and youth and early
manhood.




XI.


The man whose yea is yea and his nay nay, is, we all confess, the most
courageous, whether or no he may be the most successful in daily life.
And he who gave the precept has left us the most perfect example of how
to live up to it.




XII.


It is his action when the danger comes, not when he is in solitary
preparation for it, which marks the man of courage.




XIII.


In all the world’s annals there is nothing which approaches, in the
sublimity of its courage, that last conversation between our Saviour
and the Roman procurator, before Pilate led him forth for the last time
and pleaded scornfully with his nation for the life of their king.
There must be no flaw or spot on Christ’s courage, any more than on his
wisdom and tenderness and sympathy. And the more unflinchingly we apply
the test the more clear and sure will the response come back to us.




XIV.


Quit yourself like men; speak up, and strike out if necessary, for
whatsoever is true and manly, and lovely, and of good report; never
try to be popular, but only to do your duty and help others to do
theirs, and, wherever you are placed, you may leave the tone of feeling
higher than you found it, and so be doing good which no living soul can
measure to generations yet unborn.




XV.


We listened to Dr. Arnold, as all boys in their better moods will
listen (aye, and men too for the matter of that,) to a man whom we
felt to be, with all his heart and soul and strength, striving against
whatever was mean and unmanly and unrighteous in our little world. It
was not the cold, clear voice of one giving advice and warning from
serene heights to those who were struggling and sinning below, but
the warm, living voice of one who was fighting for us by our sides,
and calling on us to help him and ourselves and one another. And so,
wearily and little by little, but surely and steadily on the whole,
was brought home to the young boy the meaning of his life; that it was
no fool’s or sluggard’s paradise into which he had wandered by chance,
but a battle-field ordained from of old, where there are no spectators,
but the youngest must take his side, and the stakes are life and death.
And he who roused this consciousness in them, showed them at the same
time, by every word he spoke in the pulpit, and by his whole daily
life, how that battle was to be fought; and stood there before them
their fellow-soldier and the captain of their band. The true sort of
a captain, too, for a boys’ army, one who had no misgivings and gave
no uncertain word of command, and, let who would yield or make truce,
would fight the fight out (so every boy felt) to the last gasp and the
last drop of blood. Other sides of his character might take hold of
and influence boys here and there, but it was this thoroughness and
undaunted courage which more than anything else won his way to the
hearts of the great mass of those on whom he left his mark, and made
them believe first in him, and then in his Master.




XVI.


To stand by what our conscience witnesses for as truth, through evil
and good report, even against all opposition of those we love, and of
those whose judgment we look up to and should ordinarily prefer to
follow; to cut ourselves deliberately off from their love and sympathy
and respect, is surely one of the most severe trials to which we can be
put. A man has need to feel at such times that the Spirit of the Lord
is upon him in some measure, as it was upon Christ when he rose in the
synagogue of Nazareth and, selecting the passage of Isaiah which speaks
most directly of the Messiah, claimed that title for himself, and told
them that to-day this prophecy was fulfilled in him.

The fierce, hard, Jewish spirit is at once roused to fury. They would
kill him then and there, and so settle his claims once for all. He
passes through them, and away from the quiet home where he had been
brought up—alone, it would seem, so far as man could make him so, and
homeless for the remainder of his life. Yet not alone, for his Father
is with him; nor homeless for he has the only home of which man can be
sure, the home of his own heart shared with the Spirit of God.




XVII.


We have been told recently, by more than one of those who profess to
have weighed and measured Christianity and found it wanting, that
religion must rest on reason, based on phenomena of this visible,
tangible world in which we are living.

Be it so. There is no need for a Christian to object. We can meet
this challenge as well as any other. We need never be careful about
choosing our own battlefield. Looking, then, at that world as we see
it, laboring heavily along in our own time—as we hear of it through
the records of the ages—I must repeat that there is no phenomenon in
it comparable for a moment to that of Christ’s life and work. The more
we canvass and sift and weigh and balance the materials, the more
clearly and grandly does his figure rise before us, as the true Head
of humanity, the perfect Ideal, not only of wisdom and tenderness and
love, but of courage also, because He was and is the simple Truth of
God—the expression, at last, in flesh and blood of what He who created
us means each one of our race to be.




XVIII.


“My father,” said Hardy, “is an old commander in the royal navy. He
was a second cousin of Nelson’s Hardy, and that, I believe, was what
led him into the navy, for he had no interest whatever of his own. It
was a visit which Nelson’s Hardy, then a young lieutenant, paid to his
relative, my grandfather, which decided my father, he has told me;
but he always had a strong bent to sea, though he was a boy of very
studious habits.

“However, those were times when brave men who knew and loved their
profession couldn’t be overlooked, and my dear old father fought his
way up step by step—not very fast, certainly, but still fast enough to
keep him in heart about his chances in life.

“He was made commander towards the end of the war, and got a ship,
in which he sailed with a convoy of merchantmen from Bristol. It was
the last voyage he ever made in active service; but the Admiralty was
so well satisfied with his conduct in it that they kept his ship in
commission two years after peace was declared. And well they might be,
for in the Spanish main he fought an action which lasted, on and off,
for two days, with a French sloop-of-war, and a privateer, either of
which ought to have been a match for him. But he had been with Vincent
in the _Arrow_, and was not likely to think much of such small odds as
that. At any rate, he beat them off, and not a prize could either of
them make out of his convoy, though I believe his ship was never fit
for anything afterwards, and was broken up as soon as she was out of
commission. We have got her compasses, and the old flag which flew
at the peak through the whole voyage, at home now. It was my father’s
own flag, and his fancy to have it always flying. More than half the
men were killed or badly hit—the dear old father among the rest. A
ball took off part of his knee-cap, and he had to fight the last six
hours of the action sitting in a chair on the quarter-deck; but he says
it made the men fight better than when he was among them, seeing him
sitting there sucking oranges.

“Well, he came home with a stiff leg. The Bristol merchants gave him
the freedom of the city in a gold box, and a splendidly-mounted sword
with an inscription on the blade, which hangs over the mantel-piece
at home. When I first left home, I asked him to give me his old
service-sword, which used to hang by the other, and he gave it me at
once, though I was only a lad of seventeen, as he would give me his
right eye, dear old father, which is the only one he has now; the other
he lost from a cutlass-wound in a boarding party. There it hangs, and
those are his epaulettes in the tin case. They used to be under my
pillow before I had a room of my own, and many a cowardly down-hearted
fit have they helped me to pull through; and many a mean act have they
helped to keep me from doing. There they are always; and the sight of
them brings home the dear old man to me as nothing else does, hardly
even his letters. I must be a great scoundrel to go very wrong with
such a father.

“Let’s see—where was I? Oh, yes; I remember. Well, my father got his
box and sword, and some very handsome letters from several great men.
We have them all in a book at home, and I know them by heart. The ones
he values most are from Collinwood, and his old captain, Vincent, and
from his cousin, Nelson’s Hardy, who didn’t come off very well himself
after the war. But my poor old father never got another ship. For some
time he went up every year to London, and was always, he says, very
kindly received by the people in power, and often dined with one and
another Lord of the Admiralty who had been an old mess-mate. But he
was longing for employment, and it used to prey on him while he was in
his prime to feel year after year slipping away and he still without a
ship. But why should I abuse people and think it hard, when he doesn’t?
‘You see, Jack,’ he said to me the last time I spoke to him about it,
‘after all, I was a battered old hulk, lame and half-blind. So was
Nelson, you’ll say; but every man isn’t a Nelson, my boy. And though I
might think I could con or fight a ship as well as ever, I can’t say
other folk who didn’t know me were wrong for not agreeing with me.
Would you, now, Jack, appoint a lame and blind man to command your
ship, if you had one?’ But he left off applying for work soon after
he was fifty (I just remember the time), for he began to doubt then
whether he was quite so fit to command a small vessel as a younger man;
and though he had a much better chance after that of getting a ship
(for William IV. came to the throne, who knew all about him), he never
went near the Admiralty again. ‘God forbid,’ he said, ‘that his Majesty
should take me if there’s a better man to be had.’”




XIX.


The object of wrestling and of all other athletic sports is to
strengthen men’s bodies, and to teach them to use their strength
readily, to keep their tempers, to endure fatigue and pain. These are
all noble ends. God gives us few more valuable gifts than strength of
body, and courage, and endurance—to laboring men they are beyond all
price. We ought to cultivate them in all right ways for they are given
us to protect the weak, to subdue the earth, to fight for our homes and
country if necessary.




XX.


To you young men, I say, as Solomon said, rejoice in your youth;
rejoice in your strength of body, and elasticity of spirits and the
courage which follows from these; but remember, that for these gifts
you will be judged—not condemned, mind, but judged. You will have to
show before a judge who knoweth your inmost hearts, that you have used
these his great gifts well; that you have been pure and manly, and true.




XXI.


At last in my dream, a mist came over the Hill, and all the figures got
fainter and fainter, and seemed to be fading away. But as they faded, I
could see one great figure coming out clearer through the mist, which
I had never noticed before. It was like a grand old man, with white
hair and mighty limbs, who looked as old as the hill itself, but yet
as if he were as young now as he ever had been; and at his feet were a
pickaxe and spade, and at his side a scythe. But great and solemn as it
looked, I felt that the figure was not a man, and I was angry with it.
Why should it come in with its great pitiful eyes and smile? Why were
my brothers and sisters, the men and women, to fade away before it?

“The labor that a man doeth under the sun, it is all vanity. Prince and
peasant, the wise man and the fool they all come to me at last and I
garner them away, and their place knows them no more!” So the figure
seemed to say to itself, and I felt melancholy as I watched it sitting
there at rest, playing with the fading figures.

At last it placed one of the little figures on its knee, half in
mockery, as it seemed to me, and half in sorrow. But then all changed;
and the great figure began to fade, and the small man came out clearer
and clearer. And he took no heed of his great neighbor, but rested
there where he was placed; and his face was quiet, and full of life as
he gazed steadily and earnestly through the mist. And the other figures
came flitting by again and chanted as they passed, “The work of one
true man is greater than all thy work. Thou hast nought but a seeming
power over it, or over him. Every true man is greater than thee. Every
true man shall conquer more than thee; for he shall triumph over death,
and hell, and thee, oh, Time!”




XXII.


The strain and burden of a great message of deliverance to men has
again and again found the weak places in the faith and courage of the
most devoted and heroic of those to whom it has been entrusted. Moses
pleads under its pressure that another may be sent in his place, asking
despairingly, “Why hast thou sent me?” Elijah prays for death. Mohammed
passes years of despondency and hesitation under the sneers of those
who scoff, “There goeth the son of Abdallah, who hath his converse with
God!” Such shrinkings and doubtings enlist our sympathy, make us feel
the tie of a common humanity which binds us to such men. But no one,
I suppose, will maintain that perfect manliness would not suppress, at
any rate, the open expression of any such feelings. The man who has to
lead a great revolution should keep all misgivings to himself, and the
weight of them so kept must often prove the sorest part of his burden.




XXIII.


We have most of us, at one time or another of our lives, passed
through trying ordeals, the memory of which we can by no means dwell
on with pleasure. Times they were of blinding and driving storm, and
howling winds, out of which voices as of evil spirits spoke close in
our ears—tauntingly, temptingly, whispering to the mischievous wild
beast which lurks in the bottom of all our hearts—now, “Rouse up! art
thou a man and darest not do this thing;” now, “Rise, kill and eat—it
is thine, wilt thou not take it? Shall the flimsy scruples of this
teacher, or the sanctified cant of that, bar thy way and balk thee of
thine own? Thou hast strength to have them—to brave all things in earth
or heaven, or hell; put out thy strength, and be a man!”

Then did not the wild beast within us shake itself, and feel its
power, sweeping away all the “Thou shalt nots,” which the Law wrote up
before us in letters of fire, with the “I _will_” of hardy, godless,
self-assertion? And all the while, which alone made the storm really
dreadful to us, was there not the still small voice, never to be
altogether silenced by the roarings of the tempest of passion, by the
evil voices, by our own violent attempts to stifle it;—the still small
voice appealing to the man, the true man, within us, which is made
in the image of God, calling on him to assert his dominion over the
wild beast—to obey, and conquer, and live. Aye! and though we may have
followed other voices, have we not, while following them, confessed in
our hearts that all true strength, and nobleness, and manliness was to
be found in the other path. Do I say that most of us have had to tread
this path and fight this battle? Surely I might have said all of us;
all, at least, who have passed the bright days of their boyhood. The
clear and keen intellect no less than the dull and heavy; the weak, the
cold, the nervous, no less than the strong and passionate of body. The
arms and the field have been divers—can have been the same, I suppose,
to no two men, but the battle must have been the same to all. One here
and there may have had a foretaste of it as a boy; but it is the young
man’s battle, and not the boy’s, thank God for it! That most hateful
and fearful of all relatives, call it by what name we will—self, the
natural man, the old Adam—must have risen up before each of us in early
manhood, if not sooner, challenging the true man within us, to which
the Spirit of God is speaking, to a struggle for life or death.

Gird yourself, then, for the fight, my young brother, and take up the
pledge which was made for you when you were a helpless child. This
world, and all others, time and eternity, for you hang upon the issue.
This enemy must be met and vanquished—not finally, for no man while on
earth, I suppose, can say that he is slain; but, when once known and
recognized, met and vanquished he must be, by God’s help, in this and
that encounter, before you can be truly called a man; before you can
really enjoy any one even of this world’s good things.




XXIV.


In the course of my inquiries on the subject of muscular Christians,
their works and ways, a fact has forced itself on my attention, which,
for the sake of ingenious youth, ought not to be passed over. I find
then, that, side by side with these muscular Christians, and apparently
claiming some sort of connection with them (the same concern, as the
pirates of trade-marks say) have risen up another set of persons,
against whom I desire to caution my readers. I must call the persons
in question “musclemen,” as distinguished from muscular Christians;
the only point in common between the two being that both hold it to be
a good thing to have strong and well-exercised bodies, ready to be
put at the shortest notice to any work of which bodies are capable,
and to do it well. Here all likeness ends; for the “muscleman” seems
to have no belief whatever as to the purposes for which his body has
been given him, except some hazy idea that it is to go up and down the
world with him, belaboring men and captivating women for his benefit
or pleasure, at once the servant and fomenter of those fierce and
brutal passions which he seems to think it a necessity, and rather
a fine thing than otherwise, to indulge and obey. Whereas, so far
as I know, the least of the muscular Christians has hold of the old
chivalrous and Christian belief, that a man’s body is given him to be
trained and brought into subjection, and then used for the protection
of the weak, the advancement of all righteous causes, and the subduing
of the earth which God has given to the children of men. He does not
hold that mere strength or activity are in themselves worthy of any
respect or worship, or that one man is a bit better than another
because he can knock him down, or carry a bigger sack of potatoes than
he. For mere power, whether of body or intellect, he has (I hope and
believe) no reverence whatever, though, _cæteris paribus_, he would
probably himself, as a matter of taste prefer the man who can lift a
hundred-weight round his head with his little finger to the man who can
construct a string of perfect Sorites.




XXV.


As a rule, the more thoroughly disciplined and fit a man may be for any
really great work, the more conscious will he be of his own unfitness
for it, the more distrustful of himself, the more anxious not to thrust
himself forward. It is only the zeal of the half-instructed when the
hour of a great deliverance has come at last—of those who have had a
glimpse of the glory of the goal, but have never known or counted the
perils of the path which leads to it—which is ready with the prompt
response, “Yes—we can drink of the cup, we can be baptized with the
baptism.”




XXVI.


How can we be ever on the watch for the evil which is so near us? We
cannot; but one is with us, is in us, who can and will, if we will let
him.

Men found this out in the old time, and have felt it and known it
ever since. Three thousand years ago this truth dawned upon the old
Psalmist, and struck him with awe. He struggled with it; he tried to
escape from it, but in vain. “Whither shall I go,” he says “from thy
Spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into
heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold thou art
there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost
parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right
hand shall hold me.”

Is any of us stronger or wiser than the Psalmist? Is there any place
for us to flee to, which was not open to him? My brethren, had we
not better make up our minds to accept and acknowledge the truth, to
which our own consciences bear witness, that not only in heaven, and
in hell, and in the uttermost parts of sea and earth, He is present,
but that in the inmost recesses of our own hearts there is no escape
from his Spirit—that He is there also, sustaining us, pleading with us,
punishing us.

We know it by the regret we feel for time wasted and opportunities
neglected; by the loathing coming back to us, time after time, for our
every untrue, or mean thought, word, or deed; by every longing after
truth, and righteousness, and purity, which stirs our sluggish souls.
By all these things, and in a thousand other ways, we feel it, we know
it.

Let us, then, own this and give ourselves up to his guidance. At first
it will be hard work; our will and spirits will be like a lump of ice
in a man’s hand, which yields but slowly to the warm pressure. But do
not despair; throw yourselves on his guidance, and he will guide you,
he will hide you under his wings, you shall be safe under his feathers,
his faithfulness and truth shall be your shield and buckler.

The ice will melt into water, and the water will lie there in the
hollow of the hand, moving at the slightest motion, obeying every
impulse which is given to it.

My brethren, the Spirit of God which is in every one of us—the spirit
of truth and love unchangeable—will take possession of our spirits,
if we will but let him, and turn our whole lives into the lives of
children of God, and joint-heirs of heaven with his Son.




XXVII.


“As the world was plastic and fluid in the hands of God, so it is ever
to so much of his attributes as we bring to it,” may be a startling
saying of Mr. Emerson’s, but is one which commends itself to our
experience and reason, if we only consult them honestly. Let us take
the most obvious examples of this law. Look at the relations of man
to the brute creation. One of us shall have no difficulty in making
friends of beasts and birds, while another excites their dread and
hate, so that even dogs will scarcely come near him. There is no need
to go back to the traditions of the hermits in the Thebaid, or St.
Francis of Assisi, for instances of the former class. We all know the
story of Cowper and his three hares, from his exquisite letters and
poem, and most of you must have read, or heard of the terms on which
Waterton lived with the birds and beasts in his Yorkshire home, and
of Thoreau, unable to get rid of wild squirrels and birds who would
come and live with him, or from a boat, taking fish which lay quietly
in his hand till he chose to put them back again into the stream.
But I suppose there is scarcely one of us who has not himself seen
such instances again and again, persons of whom the old words seemed
literally true, “At destruction and famine thou shalt laugh; neither
shalt thou be afraid of the beasts of the earth. For thou shalt be in
league with the stones of the field, and the beasts of the field shall
be at peace with thee.”

I remember myself several such; a boy who was friends even with rats,
stoats, and snakes, and generally had one or other of them in his
pockets; a groom upon whose shoulders the pigeons used to settle, and
nestle against his cheeks, whenever he went out into the stable-yard or
field. Is there any reasonable way of accounting for this? Only one, I
think, which is, that those who have this power over, and attraction
for, animals, have always felt toward them and treated them as their
Maker intended—have unconsciously, perhaps, but still faithfully,
followed God’s mind in their dealings with his creatures, and so have
stood in true relations to them all, and have found the beasts of the
field at peace with them.

In the same way the stones of the field are in league with the
geologist, the trees and flowers with the botanist, the component parts
of earth and air with the chemist, just in so far as each, consciously
or unconsciously, follows God’s methods with them—each part of his
creation yielding up its secrets and its treasures to the open mind
of the humble and patient, who is also at bottom always the most
courageous learner.




XXVIII.


What is true of each of us beyond all question—what every man who walks
with open eyes and open heart knows to be true of himself—must be true
also of Christ. And so, though we may reject the stories of the clay
birds, which he modeled as a child, taking wing and bursting into song
round him, (as on a par with St. Francis’ address to his sisters,
the swallows, at Alvia, or the flocks in the marshes of Venice, who
thereupon kept silence from their twitterings and songs till his sermon
was finished), we cannot doubt that in proportion as Christ was more
perfectly in sympathy with God’s creation than any mediæval saint, or
modern naturalist, or man of science, he had more power than they with
all created things from his earliest youth. Nor could it be otherwise
with the hearts and wills of men. Over these we know that, from
that time to this, he has exercised a supreme sway, infinitely more
wonderful than that over birds and beasts, because of man’s power of
resistance to the will Christ came to teach and to do, which exists, so
far as we can see, in no other part of creation.

I think, then, it is impossible to resist the conclusion that he must
have had all these powers from his childhood, that they must have
been growing stronger from day to day, and he, at the same time, more
and more conscious of possessing them, not to use on any impulse
of curiosity or self-will, but only as the voice within prompted.
And it seems the most convincing testimony to his perfect sonship,
manifested in perfect obedience, that he should never have tested his
powers during those thirty years as he did at once and with perfect
confidence as soon as the call came. Had he done so his ministry must
have commenced sooner; that is to say, before the method was matured by
which he was to reconstruct, and lift into a new atmosphere and on to
a higher plane, the faith and life of his own nation and of the whole
world. For it is impossible to suppose that the works which he did, and
the words he spoke, at thirty—which at once threw all Galilee and Judea
into a ferment of hope and joy and doubt and anger—should have passed
unnoticed had they been wrought and spoken when he was twenty. Here, as
in all else, he waited for God’s mind: and so, when the time for action
came, worked with the power of God. And this waiting and preparation
must have been the supreme trial of his faith. The holding this
position must have been, in those early years, the holding of the very
centre of the citadel in man’s soul, (as Bunyan so quaintly terms it),
against which the assaults of the tempter must have been delivered
again and again while the garrison was in training for the victorious
march out into the open field of the great world, carrying forth the
standard which shall never go back.

And while it may be readily admitted that Christ wielded a dominion
over all created things, as well as over man, which no other human
being has ever approached, it seems to me to be going quite beyond what
can be proved, or even fairly assumed, to speak of his miracles as
supernatural, in the sense that no man has ever done, or can ever do,
the like. The evidence is surely all the other way, and seems rather
to indicate that if we could only have lived up to the standard which
we acknowledge in our inmost hearts to be the true one—could only have
obeyed every motion and warning of the voice of God speaking in our
hearts from the day when we first became conscious of and could hear
it—if, in other words, our wills had from the first been disciplined,
like the will of Christ, so as to be in perfect accord with the will of
God—I see no reason to doubt that we, too, should have gained the power
and the courage to show signs, or, if you please, to work miracles, as
Christ and his Apostles worked them.




XXIX.


Christ’s whole life on earth was the assertion and example of true
manliness—the setting forth in living act and word what man is meant
to be, and how he should carry himself in this world of God’s—one long
campaign, in which “the temptation” stands out as the first great
battle and victory. The story has depths in it which we can never
fathom, but also clear, sharp lessons which he who runs may read, and
no man can master too thoroughly. We must follow him reverently into
the wilderness, where he flies from the crowds who are pressing to the
Baptist, and who to-morrow will be thronging around him, if he goes
back among them, after what the Baptist has said about him to-day.

Day after day in the wilderness the struggle goes on in his heart. He
is faint from insufficient food in those solitudes, and with bodily
weakness the doubts grow in strength and persistence, and the tempter
is always at his side, soliciting him to end them once for all, by one
act of self-assertion. All those questionings and misgivings as to his
origin and mission which we have pictured to ourselves as haunting
him ever since his first visit to Jerusalem, are now, as it were,
focussed. There are mocking voices whispering again as of old, but more
scornfully and keenly in his ear, “Are you really the Messiah, the Son
of God, so long looked for? What more proof have you to go upon than
you have had for these many years, during which you have been living
as a poor peasant in a Galilean village? The word of this wild man
of the wilderness? He is your own cousin, and a powerful preacher no
doubt, but a wayward, wilful man, clad and fed like a madman, who has
been nursing mad fancies from his boyhood, away from the holy city,
the centre of national life and learning. This sign of a descending
dove, and a voice which no one has heard but yourself? Such signs come
to many—are never wanting when men are ready to deceive themselves—and
each man’s fancy gives them a different meaning. But the words, and the
sign, and the voice, you say, only meet a conviction which has been
growing these thirty years in your own heart and conscience? Well,
then, at least for the sake of others if not for your own sake, put
this conviction to the proof, here, at once, and make sure yourself,
before you go forth and deceive poor men, your brethren, to their ruin.
You are famishing here in the wilderness. This, at least, cannot be
what God intends for his Son, who is to redeem the world. Exercise
some control over the meanest part of your Father’s kingdom. Command
these stones to become bread, and see whether they will obey you.
Cast yourself down from this height. If you are what you think, your
Father’s angels will bear you up. Then, after they have borne you up,
you may go on with some reasonable assurance that your claim is not a
mere delusion, and that you will not be leading these poor men whom you
call your brethren to misery and destruction.”

And when neither long fasting and weakness, or natural doubt, distrust,
impatience, or the most subtle suggestions of the tempter, can
move his simple trust in his Father, or wring from him one act of
self-assertion, the enemy changes front and the assault comes from
another quarter. “You may be right,” the voices seemed now to be
saying; “You may not be deceived, or dreaming, when you claim to be the
Son of God, sent to redeem this fair world, which is now spread out
before you in all its glory. That may be your origin, and that your
work. But, living as you have done till now in a remote corner of a
despised province, you have no experience or knowledge of the methods
or powers which sway men, and establish and maintain these kingdoms
of the world, the glory of which you are beholding. These methods and
powers have been in use in your Father’s world, if it be his, ever
since man has known good from evil. You have only to say the word,
and you may use and control these methods and powers as you please.
By their aid you may possibly ‘see of the travail of your soul and be
satisfied;’ without them you will redeem nothing but perhaps a man
here and there—without them you will postpone instead of hastening
the coming of your Father’s kingdom, to the sorrow and ruin of many
generations, and will die a foiled and lonely man, crushed by the very
forces you have refused to use for your Father’s service. If they were
wholly evil, wholly unfit for the fulfillment of any purpose of his,
would he have left them in command of his world till this day? It is
only through them that the world can be subdued. Your time is short,
and you have already wasted much of it, standing shivering on the
brink, and letting the years slip by in that cottage at Nazareth. The
wisest of your ancestors acknowledged and used them, and spread His
kingdom from the river to the Great Sea. Why should you reject them?”

This, very roughly and inadequately stated, is some shadow of the
utmost part, or skirt as it were, of the trial-crisis, lasting forty
days, through which Christ passed from his private to his public
career. For forty days the struggle lasted before he could finally
realize and accept his mission with all that it implied. At the end of
that time he has fairly mastered and beaten down every doubt as to his
call, every tempting suggestion to assert himself, or to accept or use
any aid in establishing his Father’s kingdom which does not clearly
bear his Father’s stamp and seal on the face of it. In the strength of
this victory he returns from the desert, to take up the burden which
has been laid on him, and to set up God’s kingdom in the world by the
methods which he has learned of God himself—and by no other.




XXX.


The second period of our Lord’s ministry is one, in the main, of
joyful progress and triumph, in which the test of true manliness must
be more subtle than when the surroundings are hostile. It consists,
I think, at such times, in the careful watchfulness not to give wrong
impressions, not to mislead those who are touched by enthusiasm,
conscious of new life, grateful to him who has kindled that life in
them.

It is then that the temptation to be all things to all men in a wrong
sense—to adapt and accommodate teaching and life to a lower standard
in order to maintain a hold upon the masses of average men and women
who have been moved by the words of lips touched by fire from the
altar of God—has generally proved too much for the best and strongest
of the world’s great reformers. It is scarcely necessary to elaborate
this point, which would, I think, be sorrowfully admitted by those who
have studied most lovingly and carefully the lives of such men, for
instance, as Savonarola or Wesley. If you will refer to a valuable work
on the life of a greater than either of these, Mr. Bosworth Smith’s
“Mohammed and Mohammedanism,” you will find there perhaps the best
illustration which I can give you of this sad experience.

When Mohammed returns from Medina, sweeping at last all enemies out of
his path, as the prophet of a new faith, and the leader of an awakened
and repentant people, his biographer pauses to notice the lowering of
the standard, both in his life and teaching. Power, he pleads, brings
with it new temptations and new failures. The more thoroughly a man
is carried away by his inspiration, and convinced of the truth and
goodness of his cause and his message, the more likely is he to forget
the means in the end, and to allow the end to justify whatever means
seem to lead to its triumph. He must maintain as he can, and by any
means, his power over the motley mass of followers that his mission
has gathered round him, and will be apt to aim rather at what will
hold them than at what will satisfy the highest promptings of his own
conscience.

We may allow the plea in such cases, though with sorrow and
humiliation. But the more minutely we examine the life of Christ the
more we shall feel that here there is no place for it. We shall be
impressed with the entire absence of any such bending to expediency, or
forgetting the means in the end. He never for one moment accommodates
his life or teaching to any standard but the highest: never lowers
or relaxes that standard by a shade or a hair’s-breadth, to make the
road easy to rich or powerful questioners, or to uphold the spirit of
his poorer followers when they are startled and uneasy, as they begin
half-blindly to recognize what spirit they are of. This unbending
truthfulness is, then, what we have chiefly to look for in this period
of triumphant progress and success, questioning each act and word in
turn whether there is any swerving in it from the highest ideal.




XXXI.


We may note that our Lord accepts at once the imprisonment of the
Baptist as the final call to himself. Gathering, therefore, a few of
John’s disciples round him, and welcoming the restless inquiring crowds
who had been roused by the voice crying in the wilderness, he stands
forward at once to proclaim and explain the nature of that new kingdom
of God, which has now to be set up in the world. Standing forth alone,
on the open hillside, the young Galilean peasant gives forth the great
proclamation, which by one effort lifted mankind on to that new and
higher ground on which it has been painfully struggling ever since,
but on the whole with sure though slow success, to plant itself and
maintain sure foothold.

In all history there is no parallel to it. It stands there, a miracle
or sign of God’s reign in this world, far more wonderful than any of
Christ’s miracles of healing. Unbelievers have been sneering at and
ridiculing it, and Christian doctors paring and explaining it away
ever since. But there it stands, as strong and fresh as ever, the calm
declaration and witness of what mankind is intended by God to become on
this earth of his.

As a question of courageous utterance, I would only ask you to read
it through once more, bearing in mind who the preacher was—a peasant,
already repudiated by his own neighbors and kinsfolk, and suspected by
the national rulers and teachers; and who were the hearers—a motley
crowd of Jewish peasants and fishermen, Romish legionaries, traders
from Damascus, Tyre, and Sidon, and the distant isles of Greece, with a
large sprinkling of publicans, scribes, Pharisees, and lawyers.

The immediate result of the sermon was to bow the hearts of this crowd
for the time, so that he was able to choose followers from amongst
them, much as he would. He takes fishermen and peasants, selecting only
two at most, from any rank above the lowest, and one of these from a
class more hated and despised by the Jews than the poorest peasant,
the publicans. It is plain that he might at first have called apostles
from amongst the upper classes had he desired it—as a teacher with any
want of courage would surely have done. But the only scribe who offers
himself is rejected.

The calling of the Apostles is followed by a succession of discourses
and miracles, which move the people more and more, until, after that of
the loaves, the popular enthusiasm rises to the point it had so often
reached in the case of other preachers and leaders of this strange
people. They are ready to take him by force and make him a king.

The Apostles apparently encouraged this enthusiasm, for which he
constrains them into a ship, and sends them away before him. After
rejoining them and rebuking their want of understanding and faith, he
returns with them to the multitudes, and at once speaks of himself
as the bread from heaven, in the discourse which offends many of his
disciples, who from this time go back and walk no more with him. The
brief season of triumphant progress is drawing to an end, during which
he could rejoice in spirit in contemplating the human harvest which he
and his disciples seem to be already successfully garnering.




XXXII.


The more carefully we study the long wrestle of Christ with the blind
leaders of a doomed nation, the more we shall recognize the perfect
truthfulness, and therefore the perfect courage, which marks his
conduct of it. From beginning to end there is no word or act which can
mislead friend or foe. The strife, though for life and death, has left
no trace or stain on his nature. Fresh from the last and final conflict
in the temple court, he can pause on the side of Olivet to weep over
the city, the sight of which can still wring from him the pathetic
yearnings of a soul purified from all taint of bitterness.

It is this most tender and sensitive of the sons of men—with fibres
answering to every touch and breath of human sympathy or human hate—who
has borne with absolutely unshaken steadfastness the distrust and anger
of kinsfolk, the ingratitude of converts, the blindness of disciples,
the fitful and purblind worship and hatred, and fear, of the nation
of the Jews. So far, we can estimate to some extent the burden and the
strain, and realize the strength and beauty of the spirit which could
bear it all. Beyond and behind lie depths into which we can but glance.
For in those last hours of his life on earth the question was to be
decided whether we men have in deed and truth a brotherhood, in a Son
of Man, the head of humanity, who has united mankind to their Father,
and can enable them to know him.




XXXIII.


It is around the life of the Son of Man and Son of God that the
fiercest controversies of our time are raging. Is it not also becoming
clearer every day that they will continue to rage more and more
fiercely—that there can be no rest or peace possible for mankind—until
all things are subdued to him, and brought into harmony with his life?

It is to this work that all churches and sects, that all the leading
nations of the world, known collectively as Christendom, are pledged:
and the time for redeeming that pledge is running out rapidly, as the
distress and perplexity, the threatening disruption and anarchy of
Christendom too clearly show. It is to this work too that you and I,
every man and woman of us, are also called; and if we would go about
it with any hope and courage, it can only be by keeping the life
of Christ vividly before us day by day, and turning to it as to a
fountain in the desert, as to the shadow of a great rock in a weary
land.

From behind the shadow the still small voice—more awful than tempest
or earthquake—more sure and persistent than day and night—is always
sounding, full of hope and strength to the weariest of us all, “Be of
good cheer, I have overcome the world.”




XXXIV.


Nicodemus was a leading member of the Sanhedrim, a representative of
that section of the rulers who, like the rest of the nation, were
expecting a deliverer, a king who should prevail against the Cæsar.
They had sent to the Baptist, and had heard of his testimony to the
young Galilean, who had now come to Jerusalem, and was showing signs of
a power which they could not but acknowledge. For, had he not cleansed
the temple, which they had never been able to do, but, notwithstanding
their pretended reverence for it, had allowed to be turned into a
shambles and an exchange? They saw that a part of the people were
ready to gather to him, but that he had refused to commit himself to
them. This, then, the best of them must have felt, was no mere leader
of a low, fierce, popular party or faction. Nicodemus at any rate was
evidently inclined to doubt whether he might not prove to be the king
they were looking for, as the Baptist had declared. The doubt must be
solved, and he would see for himself.

And so he comes to Christ, and hears directly from him, that he has
indeed come to set up a kingdom, but that it is no visible kingdom like
the Cæsars’, but a kingdom over men’s spirits, one in which rulers as
well as peasants must become new men before they can enter—that a light
has come into the world, and “he that doeth truth cometh to that light.”

From beginning to end there is no word to catch this ruler, or those
he represented; no balancing of phrases or playing with plausible
religious shibboleths, with which Nicodemus would be familiar, and
which might please, and perchance reconcile this well-disposed ruler,
and the powerful persons he represented. There is, depend upon it, no
severer test of manliness than our behavior to powerful persons, whose
aid would advance the cause we have at heart. We know from the later
records that the interview of that night, and the strange words he
had heard at it, made a deep impression on this ruler. His manliness,
however, breaks down for the present. He shrinks back and disappears,
leaving the strange young peasant to go on his way.

The same splendid directness and incisiveness characterize his teaching
at Samaria. There, again, He attacks at once the most cherished
local traditions, showing that the place of worship matters nothing,
the object of worship everything. That object is a Father of men’s
spirits, who wills that all men shall know and worship him, but who
can only be worshipped in spirit and in truth. He, the peasant who is
talking to them, is himself the Messiah, who has come from this Father
of them and him, to give them this spirit of truth in their own hearts.

The Jews at Jerusalem had been clamoring round him for signs of
his claim to speak such words, and in the next few days his own
people would be crying out for his blood when they heard them. These
Samaritans make no such demand, but hear and recognize the message and
the messenger. The seed is sown and he passes on, never to return and
garner the harvest; deliberately preferring the hard, priest-ridden
lake-cities of the Jews as the centre of his ministry. He will leave
ripe fields for others to reap. This decision, interpret it as we
will, is that of no soft or timid reformer. Take this test and compare
Christ’s choice of his first field for work with that of any other
great leader of men.




XXXV.


Happy is the man who is able to follow straight on, though often
wearily and painfully, in the tracks of the divine ideal who stood
by his side in his youth, though sadly conscious of weary lengths of
way, of gulfs and chasms, which since those days have come to stretch
between him and his ideal—of the difference between the man God meant
him to be—of the manhood he thought he saw so clearly in those early
days—and the man he and the world together managed to make of him.

I say, happy is that man. I had almost said that no other than he is
happy in any true or noble sense, even in this hard materialistic
nineteenth century, when the faith, that the weak must go to the
wall, that the strong alone are to survive, prevails as it never did
before—which on the surface seems specially to be organized for the
destruction of ideals and the quenching of enthusiasms. I feel deeply
the responsibility of making _any_ assertion on so moot a point;
nevertheless, even in our materialistic age, I must urge you all, as
you would do good work in the world, to take your stand resolutely and
once for all, and all your lives through, on the side of the idealists.




XXXVI.


He who has the clearest and intensest vision of what is at issue in the
great battle of life, and who quits himself in it most manfully, will
be the first to acknowledge that for him there has been no approach to
victory except by the faithful doing day by day of the work which lay
at his own threshold.

On the other hand, the universal experience of mankind—the dreary
confession of those who have merely sought a “low thing,” and “gone on
adding one to one;” making that the aim and object of their lives—unite
in warning us that on these lines no true victory can be had, either
for the man himself or for the cause he was sent into the world to
maintain.

No, there is no victory possible without humility and magnanimity; and
no humility or magnanimity possible without an ideal. Now there is not
one amongst us all who has not heard the call in his own heart to put
aside all evil habits, and to live a brave, simple, truthful life. It
is no modern, no Christian experience, this. The choice of Hercules,
and numberless other Pagan stories, the witness of nearly all histories
and all literatures, attest that it is an experience common to all our
race. It is of it that the poet is thinking in those fine lines of
Emerson which are written up in the Hall of Marlborough College:

    “So close is glory to our dust,
      So near is God to man—
    When duty whispers low, ‘thou must,’
      The youth replies, ‘I can.’”

It is this whisper, this call, which is the ground of what I have,
for want of a better name, been speaking of as idealism. Just in so
far as one listens to and welcomes it he is becoming an idealist—one
who is rising out of himself, and into direct contact and communion
with spiritual influences, which even when he shrinks from them, and
tries to put them aside, he feels and knows to be as real—to be more
real than all influences coming to him from the outside world—one who
is bent on bringing himself and the world into obedience to these
spiritual influences. If he turns to meet the call and answers ever so
feebly and hesitatingly, it becomes clearer and stronger. He will feel
next, that just in so far as he is becoming loyal to it he is becoming
loyal to his brethren: that he must not only build his own life up in
conformity with its teaching, must not only find or cut his own way
straight to what is fair and true and noble, but must help on those who
are around him and will come after him, and make the path easier and
plainer for them also.

I have indicated in outline, in a few sentences, a process which
takes a life-time to work out. You all know too, alas! even those who
have already listened most earnestly to the voice, and followed most
faithfully, how many influences there are about you and within you
which stand across the first steps in the path, and bar your progress;
which are forever dwarfing and distorting the ideal you are painfully
struggling after, and appealing to the cowardice and laziness and
impurity which are in every one of us, to thwart obedience to the call.
But here, as elsewhere, it is the first step which costs, and tells.
He who has once taken that, consciously and resolutely, has gained a
vantage-ground for all his life.




XXXVII.


Our race on both sides of the Atlantic has, for generations, got and
spent money faster than any other, and this spendthrift habit has had a
baleful effect on English life. It has made it more and more feverish
and unsatisfying. The standard of expenditure has been increasing by
leaps and bounds, and demoralizing trade, society, every industry, and
every profession until a false ideal has established itself, and the
aim of life is too commonly to get, not to be, while men are valued
more and more for what they have, not for what they are.

The reaction has, I trust, set in. But the reign of Mammon will be hard
to put down, and all wholesome influences which can be brought to bear
upon that evil stronghold will be sorely needed.

I say, deliberately, that no man can gauge the value, at this present
critical time, of a steady stream of young men, flowing into all
professions and all industries, who have learnt resolutely to speak
in a society such as ours, “I can’t afford;” who have been trained to
have few wants and to serve these themselves, so that they may have
always something to spare of power and of means to help others; who are
“careless of the comfits and cushions of life,” and content to leave
them to the valets of all ranks.

And take my word for it, while such young men will be doing a great
work for their country, and restoring an ideal which has all but faded
out, they will be taking the surest road to all such success as becomes
honest men to achieve, in whatever walk of life they may choose for
themselves.




XXXVIII.


The first aim for your time and your generation should be, to foster,
each in yourselves, a simple and self-denying life—your ideal to be a
true and useful one, must have these two characteristics before all
others. Of course purity, courage, truthfulness are as absolutely
necessary as ever, without them there can be no ideal at all. But as
each age and each country has its own special needs and weaknesses, so
the best mind of its youth should be bent on serving where the need is
sorest, and bringing strength to the weak places. There will be always
crowds ready to fall in with the dapper, pliant ways which lead most
readily to success in every community. Society has been said to be
“always and everywhere in conspiracy against the true manhood of every
one of its members,” and the saying, though bitter, contains a sad
truth. So the faithful idealist will have to learn, without arrogance
and with perfect good temper, to treat society as a child, and never
to allow it to dictate. So treated, society will surely come round to
those who have a high ideal before them, and therefore firm ground
under their feet.

    “Coy Hebe flies from those that woo
     And shuns the hand would seize upon her;
     Live thou thy life, and she will sue,
     To pour for thee the cup of honor.”

Let me say a word or two more on this business of success. Is it
not, after all, the test of true and faithful work? Must it not be
the touchstone of the humble and magnanimous, as well as of the
self-asserting and ambitious? Undoubtedly; but here again we have to
note that what passes with society for success, and is so labeled by
public opinion, may well be, as often as not actually is, a bad kind of
failure.

Public opinion in our day has, for instance, been jubilant over the
success of those who have started in life penniless and have made
large fortunes. Indeed, this particular class of self-made men is the
one which we have been of late invited to honor. Before doing so,
however, we shall have to ask with some care, and bearing in mind
Emerson’s warnings, by what method the fortune has been made. The rapid
accumulation of national wealth in England can scarcely be called a
success by any one who studies the methods by which it has been made,
and its effects on the national character. It may be otherwise with
this or that millionaire, but each case must be judged on its own
merits.




XXXIX.


I remember hearing, years ago, of an old merchant who, on his
death-bed, divided the results of long years of labor, some few
hundreds in all, amongst his sons. “It is little enough, my boys,” were
almost his last words, “but there isn’t a dirty shilling in the whole
of it.” He had been a successful man too, though not in the “self-made”
sense. For his ideal had been, not to make money, but to keep clean
hands. And he had been faithful to it.




XL.


In reading the stories of many persons whom the English nation is
invited to honor, I am generally struck with the predominance of the
personal element. The key-note seems generally some resolve taken in
early youth connected with their own temporal advancement. This one
will be Lord Mayor; this other Prime Minister; a third determines to
own a fine estate near the place of his birth, a fourth to become
head of the business in which he started as an errand-boy. They did
indeed achieve their ends, were faithful to the idea they had set
before themselves as boys; but I doubt if we can put them anywhere
but in the lower school of idealists. For the predominant motive
being self-assertion, their idealism seems never to have got past the
personal stage, which at best is but a poor business as compared with
the true thing.




XLI.


Christ is the great idealist. “Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven
is perfect,” is the ideal he sets before us—the only one which is
permanent and all-sufficing. His own spirit communing with ours is the
call which comes to every human being.




XLII.


Blessed is the man who has the gift of making friends; for it is one of
God’s best gifts. It involves many things, but above all, the power of
going out of one’s self, and seeing and appreciating whatever is noble
and living in another man.

But, even to him who has the gift, it is often a great puzzle to
find out whether a man is really a friend or not. The following is
recommended as a test in the case of any man about whom you are not
quite sure; especially if he should happen to have more of this world’s
goods, either in the shape of talents, rank, money, or what not, than
you:

Fancy the man stripped stark naked of every thing in the world, except
an old pair of trousers and a shirt, for decency’s sake, without
even a name to him, and dropped down in the middle of Holborn or
Piccadilly. Would you go up to him then and there, and lead him out
from among the cabs and omnibuses, and take him to your own home, and
feed him, and clothe him, and stand by him against all the world, to
your last sovereign and your last leg-of-mutton? If you wouldn’t do
this, you have no right to call him by the sacred name of friend. If
you would, the odds are that he would do the same by you, and you may
count yourself a rich man; for, probably, were friendship expressible
by, or convertible into current coin of the realm, one such friend
would be worth to a man at least £100,000. How many millionaires are
there in England? I can’t even guess; but more by a good many, I fear,
than there are men who have ten real friends. But friendship is not
so expressible or convertible. It is more precious than wisdom, and
wisdom “can not be gotten for gold, nor shall rubies be mentioned in
comparison thereof.” Not all the riches that ever came out of earth and
sea are worth the assurance of one such real abiding friendship in your
heart of hearts.

But for the worth of a friendship commonly so called—meaning thereby a
sentiment founded on the good dinners, good stories, opera stalls, and
days’ shooting, you have gotten or hope to get out of a man, the snug
things in his gift, and his powers of procuring enjoyment of one kind
or another to your miserable body or intellect—why, such a friendship
as that is to be appraised easily enough, if you find it worth your
while; but you will have to pay your pound of flesh for it one way
or another—you may take your oath of that. If you follow my advice,
you will take a £10 note down, and retire to your crust of bread and
liberty.




XLIII.


The idea of entertaining, of being hospitable, is a pleasant and
fascinating one to most young men; but the act soon gets to be a
bore to all but a few curiously constituted individuals. With these
hospitality becomes first a passion and then a faith—a faith the
practice of which, in the cases of some of its professors, reminds
one strongly of the hints on such subjects scattered about the New
Testament. Most of us feel, when our friends leave us, a certain sort
of satisfaction, not unlike that of paying a bill; they have been done
for, and can’t expect anything more for a long time. Such thoughts
never occur to your really hospitable man. Long years of narrow means
can not hinder him from keeping open house for whoever wants to come
to him, and setting the best of everything before all comers. He has
no notion of giving you anything but the best he can command. He asks
himself not, “Ought I to invite A or B? do I owe him anything?” but,
“Would A or B like to come here?” Give me these men’s houses for real
enjoyment, though you never get anything very choice there—(how can
a man produce old wine who gives his oldest every day?)—seldom much
elbow-room or orderly arrangement. The high arts of gastronomy and
scientific drinking, so much valued in our highly-civilized community,
are wholly unheeded by him, are altogether above him, are cultivated,
in fact, by quite another set, who have very little of the genuine
spirit of hospitality in them; from whose tables, should one by chance
happen upon them, one rises, certainly with a feeling of satisfaction
and expansion, chiefly physical, but entirely without that expansion
of heart which one gets at the scramble of the hospitable man. So that
we are driven to remark, even in such every-day matters as these, that
it is the invisible, the spiritual, which, after all, gives value and
reality even to dinners; and, with Solomon, to prefer to the most
touching _diner Russe_ the dinner of herbs where love is, though I
trust that neither we nor Solomon should object to well-dressed cutlets
with our salad, if they happen to be going.




XLIV.


There are few of us who do not like to see a man living a brave and
righteous life, so long as he keeps clear of us; and still fewer who
_do_ like to be in constant contact with one who, not content with so
living himself, is always coming across them, and laying bare to them
their own faint-heartedness, and sloth, and meanness. The latter, no
doubt, inspires the deeper feeling, and lays hold with a firmer grip
of the men he does lay hold of, but they are few. For men can’t keep
always up to high pressure till they have found firm ground to build
upon, altogether outside of themselves; and it is hard to be thankful
and fair to those who are showing us, time after time, that our
foothold is nothing but shifting sand.




XLV.


Reader! had you not ever a friend a few years older than yourself,
whose good opinion you were anxious to keep? A fellow _teres atque
rotundus_; who could do everything better than you, from Plato and
tennis down to singing a comic song and playing quoits? If you have
had, wasn’t he always in your rooms or company whenever anything
happened to show your little weak points?




XLVI.


To come back home after every stage of life’s journeying with a wider
horizon—more in sympathy with men and nature, knowing ever more of the
righteous and eternal laws which govern them, and of the righteous and
loving will which is above all, and around all, and beneath all, this
must be the end and aim of all of us, or we shall be wandering about
blind-fold, and spending time and labor and journey-money on that which
profiteth nothing.




XLVII.


What man among us all, if he will think the matter over calmly and
fairly, can honestly say that there is any spot on the earth’s surface
in which he has enjoyed so much real, wholesome, happy life as in a
hay field? He may have won on horseback or on foot at the sports and
pastimes in which Englishmen glory; he may have shaken off all rivals,
time after time, across the vales of Aylesbury, or of Berks, or any
other of our famous hunting counties; he may have stalked the oldest
and shyest buck in Scotch forests, and killed the biggest salmon of
the year in the Tweed, and trout in the Thames; he may have made
topping averages in first-rate matches of cricket; or have made long
and perilous marches, dear to memory, over boggy moor, or mountain,
or glacier; he may have successfully attended many breakfast-parties
within drive of Mayfair, on velvet lawns, surrounded by all the
fairy-land of pomp, and beauty, and luxury, which London can pour out;
his voice may have sounded over hushed audiences at St. Stephens or in
the law-courts; or he may have had good times in any other scenes of
pleasure or triumph open to Englishmen; but I much doubt whether, on
putting his recollections fairly and quietly together he would not say
at last that the fresh-mown hay-field is the place where he has spent
the most hours which he would like to live over again, the fewest which
he would wish to forget.

As children, we stumble about the new-mown hay, revelling in the many
colors of the prostrate grass and wild flowers, and in the power of
tumbling where we please without hurting ourselves; as small boys, we
pelt one another, and the village school-girls, and our nurse-maids,
and young lady cousins with the hay, till, hot and weary, we retire to
tea or syllabub beneath the shade of some great oak or elm standing up
like a monarch out of the fair pasture; or, following the mowers, we
rush with eagerness on the treasures disclosed by the scythe stroke—the
nest of the unhappy late-laying titlark, or careless field-mouse; as
big boys, we toil ambitiously with the spare forks and rakes, or climb
into the wagons and receive with open arms the delicious load as it is
pitched up from below, and rises higher and higher as we pass along
the long lines of haycocks: a year or two later we are strolling there
with our first sweethearts, our souls and tongues loaded with sweet
thoughts, and soft speeches; we take a turn with the scythe as the
bronzed mosses lie in the shade for their short rest, and willingly
pay our footing for the feat. Again, we come back with book in pocket,
and our own children tumbling about us as we did before them; now
romping with them, and smothering them with the sweet-smelling load—now
musing and reading and dozing away the delicious summer evenings. And
so shall we not come back to the end, enjoying as grandfathers the
love-making and the rompings of younger generations yet?

Were any of us ever really disappointed or melancholy in a hay-field?
Did we ever lie fairly back on a hay-cock and look up into the blue
sky, and listen to the merry sounds, the whetting of scythes, and the
laughing prattle of women and children, and think evil thoughts of the
world or our brethren? Not we! or, if we have so done, we ought to be
ashamed of ourselves, and deserve never to be out of town again during
hay-harvest.

There is something in the sights and sounds of a hay-field which seems
to touch the same chord in one as Lowell’s lines in the “Lay of Sir
Launfal,” which end:

    “For a cap and a bell our lives we pay,
      We wear out our lives with toiling and tasking;
    It is only Heaven that is given away;
      It is only God may be had for the asking.”

But the philosophy of the hay-field remains to be written. Let us hope
that whoever takes the subject in hand will not dissipate all its
sweetness in the process of the inquiry wherein the charm lies.




XLVIII.


Who among you, dear readers, can appreciate the intense delight of
grassing your first big fish after a nine-months’ fast? All first
sensations have their special pleasure; but none can be named, in a
small way, to beat this of the first fish of the season. The first
clean leg-hit for four in your first match at Lord’s—the grating of
the bows of your racing-boat against the stern of the boat ahead in
your first race—the first half-mile of a burst from the cover-side
in November, when the hounds in the field ahead may be covered in a
tablecloth, and no one but the huntsman and a top sawyer or two lies
between you and them—the first brief after your call to the bar, if it
comes within the year—the sensations produced by these are the same
in kind; but cricket, boating, getting briefs, even hunting, lose
their edge as time goes on. But the first fish comes back as fresh
as ever, or ought to come, if all men had their rights, once in a
season. So, good luck to the gentle craft and its professors, and may
the Fates send us much into their company! The trout-fisher, like the
landscape-painter, haunts the loveliest places of the earth, and haunts
them alone. Solitude, nature, and his own thoughts—he must be on the
best terms with all these; and he who can take kindly the largest
allowance of these is likely to be the kindliest and truest with his
fellow-men.




XLIX.


How many spots in life are there which will bear comparison with the
beginning of a college boy’s second term at Oxford? So far as external
circumstances are concerned, it seems hard to know what a man could
find to ask for at that period of his life, if a fairy godmother were
to alight in his rooms and offer him the usual three wishes. In our
second term we are no longer freshmen, and begin to feel ourselves at
home, while both “smalls” and “greats” are sufficiently distant to
be altogether ignored =if= we are that way inclined, or to be looked
forward to with confidence that the game is in our own hands if we
are reading men. Our financial position—unless we have exercised rare
ingenuity in involving ourselves—is all that heart can desire; we have
ample allowances paid in quarterly to the university bankers without
thought or trouble of ours, and our credit is at its zenith. It is a
part of our recognized duty to repay the hospitality we have received
as freshmen; and all men will be sure to come to our first parties,
to see how we do the thing; it will be our own fault if we do not
keep them in future. We have not had time to injure our characters
to any material extent with the authorities of our own college, or
of the university. Our spirits are never likely to be higher, or our
digestions better. These, and many other comforts and advantages,
environ the fortunate youth returning to Oxford after his first
vacation; thrice fortunate, however, if it is Easter term to which
he is returning; for that Easter term, with the four days’ vacation,
and little Trinity term at the head of it, is surely the cream of the
Oxford year. Then, even in this our stern Northern climate, the sun
is beginning to have power, the days have lengthened out, great-coats
are unnecessary at morning chapel, and the miseries of numbed hands
and shivering skins no longer accompany every pull on the river and
canter on Bullingdon. In Christ-church meadows and the college gardens
the birds are making sweet music in the tall elms. You may almost hear
the thick grass growing, and the buds on tree and shrub are changing
from brown, red, or purple, to emerald green under your eyes; the
glorious old city is putting on her best looks and bursting out into
laughter and song. In a few weeks the races begin, and Cowley marsh
will be alive with white tents and joyous cricketers. A quick ear,
on the towing-path by the Gut, may feast at one time on those three
sweet sounds, the thud, thud of the eight-oar, the crack of the rifles
at the Weirs, and the click of the bat on the Magdalen ground. And
then Commemoration rises in the background, with its clouds of fair
visitors, and visions of excursions to Woodstock and Nuneham in the
summer days—of windows open on to the old quadrangles in the long still
evenings, through which silver laughter and strains of sweet music, not
made by man, steal out and puzzle the old celibate jackdaws, peering
down from the battlements with heads on one side. To crown all, long
vacation, beginning with the run to Henley regatta, or up to town to
see the match with Cambridge at Lord’s, and taste some of the sweets of
the season before starting on some pleasure tour or reading-party, or
dropping back into the quiet pleasures of English country life! Surely
the lot of young Englishmen who frequent our universities is cast in
pleasant places. The country has a right to expect something from those
for whom she finds such a life as this in the years when enjoyment is
keenest.




L.


In all the wide range of accepted British maxims there is none, take
it for all in all, more thoroughly abominable than the one as to the
sowing of wild oats. Look at it on what side you will, and you can make
nothing but a devil’s maxim of it. What a man—be he young, old, or
middle-aged—sows, _that_, and nothing else shall he reap. The one only
thing to do with wild oats is to put them carefully into the hottest
part of the fire, and get them burnt to dust, every seed of them. If
you sow them, no matter in what ground, up they will come, with long,
tough roots like couch-grass, and luxuriant stalks and leaves as sure
as there is a sun in heaven—a crop which it makes one’s heart cold to
think of. The devil, too, whose special crop they are, will see that
they thrive, and you, and nobody else will have to reap them; and no
common reaping will get them out of the soil, which must be dug down
deep again and again. Well for you if, with all your care, you can make
the ground sweet again by your dying day. “Boys will be boys,” is not
much better, but that has a true side to it; but this encouragement to
the sowing of wild oats is simply devilish, for it means that a young
man is to give way to the temptations and follow the lusts of his
age. What are we to do with the wild oats of manhood and old age—with
ambition, over-reaching, the false weights, hardness, suspicion,
avarice—if the wild oats of youth are to be sown and not burnt? What
possible distinction can we draw between them? If we may sow the one,
why not the other?




LI.


Man of all ages is a selfish animal, and unreasonable in his
selfishness. It takes every one of us in turn many a shrewd fall, in
our wrestlings with the world to convince us that we are not to have
everything our own way. We are conscious in our inmost souls that
man is the rightful lord of creation; and, starting from this eternal
principle, and ignoring, each man-child of us in turn, the qualifying
truth that it is to man in general, including women, and not to one man
in particular, that the earth has been given, we set about asserting
our kingships each in his own way, and proclaiming ourselves kings from
our own little ant-hills of thrones. And then come the struggles and
the down-fallings, and some of us learn our lesson, and some learn it
not. But what lesson? That we have been dreaming in the golden hours
when the vision of a kingdom rose before us? That there is in short, no
kingdom at all, or that, if there be, we are no heirs of it?

No—I take it that, while we make nothing better than that out of our
lesson, we shall go on spelling at it and stumbling over it, through
all the days of our life, till we make our last stumble, and take our
final header out of this riddle of a world, which we once dreamed we
were to rule over, exclaiming “_vanitas vanitatum_” to the end. But
man’s spirit will never be satisfied without a kingdom, and was never
intended to be satisfied so; and a wiser than Solomon tells us, day by
day, that our kingdom is about us here, and that we may rise up and
pass in when we will at the shining gates which he holds open, for that
it is His, and we are joint heirs of it with Him.




LII.


The world is clear and bright, and ever becoming clearer and brighter
to the humble, and true, and pure of heart—to every man and woman who
will live in it as the children of the Maker and Lord of it, their
Father. To them, and to them alone, is that world, old and new, given,
and all that is in it, fully and freely to enjoy. All others but these
are occupying where they have no title; “they are sowing much, but
bringing in little; they eat, but have not enough; they drink but are
not filled with drink; they clothe themselves, but there is none warm;
and he of them who earneth wages earneth wages to put them into a bag
with holes.” But these have the world and all things for a rightful and
rich inheritance; for they hold them as dear children of Him in whose
hand it and they are lying, and no power in earth or hell shall pluck
them out of their Father’s hand.




LIII.


The great Danish invasion of England in the ninth century is one of
those facts which meet us at every turn in the life of the world,
raising again and again the deepest of all questions. At first sight it
stands out simply as the triumph of brute force, cruelty, and anarchy,
over civilization and order. It was eminently successful, for the
greater part of the kingdom remained subject to the invaders. In its
progress all such civilization as had taken root in the land was for
the time trodden out; whole districts were depopulated; lands thrown
out of cultivation; churches, abbeys, monasteries, the houses of nobles
and peasants, razed to the ground; libraries (such as then existed) and
works of art ruthlessly burnt and destroyed. It threw back all Alfred’s
reforms for eight years. To the poor East Anglian or West Saxon, churl
or monk, who had been living his quiet life there, honestly, and in
the fear of God, according to his lights—to him hiding away in the
swamps of the forest, amongst the swine, running wild now for lack of
herdsmen, and thinking bitterly of the sack of his home, and murder of
his brethren, or of his wife and children by red-handed Pagans, the
heavens would indeed seem to be shut, and the earth delivered over to
the powers of darkness. Would it not seem so to us if we were in like
case? Have we any faith which would stand such a strain as that?

Who shall say for himself that he has? And yet what Christian does not
know, in his heart of hearts, that there is such a faith for himself
and for the world—the faith which must have carried Alfred through
those fearful years, and strengthened him to build up a new and better
England out of the ruins the Danes left behind them? For, hard as it
must be to keep alive any belief or hope during a time when all around
us is reeling, and the powers of evil seem to be let loose on the
earth, when we look back upon these “days of the Lord” there is no
truth which stands out more clearly on the face of history than this,
that they all and each have been working towards order and life, that
“the messengers of death have been messengers of resurrection.”




LIV.


When the corn and wine and oil, the silver and the gold, have become
the main object of worship—that which men or nations do above all
things desire—sham work of all kinds, and short cuts, by what we call
financing and the like will be the means by which they will attempt to
gain them.

When that state comes, men who love their country will welcome Danish
invasions, civil wars, potato diseases, cotton famines, Fenian
agitations, whatever calamity may be needed to awake the higher life
again, and bid the nation arise and live.

That such visitations do come at such times as a matter of fact
is as clear as that in certain states of the atmosphere we have
thunder-storms. The thunder-storm comes with perfect certainty, and as
a part of a natural and fixed order. We are all agreed upon that now.
We all believe, I suppose, that there is an order—that there are laws
which govern the physical world, asserting themselves as much in storm
and earthquake as in the succession of night and day, of seed-time and
harvest. We who are Christians believe that order and those laws to
proceed from God, to be expressions of His will. Do we not also believe
that men are under a divine order as much as natural things? that there
is a law of righteousness founded on the will of God, as sure and
abiding as the law of gravitation? that this law of righteousness, this
divine order, under which human beings are living on this earth, must
and does assert and vindicate itself through and by the acts and lives
of men, as surely as the divine order in nature asserts itself through
the agency of the invisible power in earth and sea and air?

Surely Christianity, whatever else it teaches, at any rate assures us
of this. And when we have made this faith our own, when we believe it,
and not merely believe that we believe it, we have in our hand the
clue to all human history. Mysteries in abundance will always remain.
We may not be able to trace the workings of the law of righteousness
in the confusions and bewilderments of our own day, or through the
darkness and mist which shrouds so much of the life of other times and
other races. But we know that it is there, and that it has its ground
in a righteous will, which was the same a thousand years ago as it
is to-day, which every man and nation can get to know; and just in
so far as they know and obey which, will they be founding families,
institutions, states, which will abide.

If we want to test this truth in the most practical manner, we have
only to take any question which has troubled, or is troubling,
statesmen and rulers, and nations, in our own day. The slavery question
is among the greatest of these. In the divine order, that institution
was not recognized, there was no place at all set apart for it; on the
contrary, He on whose will that order rests had said that he came to
break every yoke. And so slavery would give our kindred in America no
rest, just as it would give England no rest in the first thirty years
of the century. The nation, desiring to go on living its life, making
money, subduing a continent,

    “Pitching new states as old-world men pitch tents,”

tried every plan for getting rid of the “irrepressible negro”
question, except the only one recognized in the divine order—that of
making him free. The ablest and most moderate men, the Websters and
Clays, thought and spoke and worked to keep it on its legs. Missouri
compromises were agreed to, “Mason and Dixon’s lines” laid down, joint
committees of both houses—at last even a “crisis committee,” as it
was called—invented plan after plan to get it finally out of the way
by any means except the only one which the eternal law, the law of
righteousness, prescribed. But he whose will must be done on earth was
no party to Missouri compromises, and Mason and Dixon’s line was not
laid down on his map of North America. And there never were wanting
men who could recognize His will, and denounce every compromise, every
endeavor to set it aside, or escape from it, as a “covenant with death
and hell.” Despised and persecuted men—Garrisons and John Browns—were
raised up to fight this battle, with tongue and pen and life’s blood,
the weak things of this world to confound the mighty; men who could
look bravely in the face the whole power and strength of their nation
in the faith of the old prophet: “Associate yourselves and ye shall
be broken in pieces; gather yourselves together and ye shall come to
nought, for God is with us.” And at last the thunder-storm broke, and
when it cleared away the law of righteousness had asserted itself once
again, and the nation was delivered.

And so it has been, and is, and will be to the end of time with all
nations. We have all our “irrepressible” questions of one kind or
another, more or less urgent, rising up again and again to torment and
baffle us, refusing to give us any peace until they have been settled
in accordance with the law of righteousness, which is the will of God.
No clever handling of them will put them to rest. Such work will not
last. If we have wisdom and faith enough amongst us to ascertain and do
that will, we may settle them for ourselves in clear skies. If not,
the clouds will gather, the atmosphere grow heavy, and the storm break
in due course, and they will be settled for us in ways which we least
expect or desire, for it is “the Lord’s controversy.”

In due course, perhaps! but what if this due course means lifetimes,
centuries? Alas! this is indeed the cry which has been going up from
the poor earth these thousands of years:

    “The priests and the rulers are swift to wrong,
     And the mills of God are slow to grind.”

How long, O Lord, how long? The precise times and seasons man shall
never know on this earth. These the Lord has kept in his own power.
But courage, my brother! Can we not see, the blindest of us, that the
mills are working swiftly, at least in our day? This is no age in which
shams or untruths, whether old or new, are likely to have a quiet time
or a long life of it. In all departments of human affairs—religious,
political, social—we are travelling fast, in England and elsewhere, and
under the hand and guidance, be sure, of Him who made the world, and is
able and willing to take care of it. Only let us quit ourselves like
men, trusting to Him to put down whatsoever loveth or maketh a lie,
and in his own time to establish the new earth in which shall dwell
righteousness.




LV.


In these days when our wise generation, weighed down with wealth and
its handmaid vices on the one hand, and exhilarated by some tiny
steps it has managed to make on the threshold of physical knowledge
of various kinds on the other, would seem to be bent on ignoring its
Creator and God altogether—or at least of utterly denying that he
has revealed, or is revealing himself, unless it be through the laws
of nature—one of the commonest demurrers to Christianity has been,
that it is no faith for fighters, for the men who have had to do the
roughest and hardest work for the world. I fear that some sections of
Christians have been too ready to allow this demurrer, and fall back
on the Quaker doctrines; admitting thereby that such “Gospel of the
kingdom of heaven” as they can for their part heartily believe in,
and live up to, is after all only a poor cash-gospel, and cannot bear
the dust and dirt, the glare and horror of battle-fields. Those of us
who hold that man was sent into this earth for the express purpose of
fighting—of uncompromising and unending fighting with body, intellect,
spirit, against whomsoever and whatsoever causeth or maketh a lie, and
therefore, alas! too often against his brother-man—would, of course,
have to give up Christianity if this were true; nay, if they did not
believe that precisely the contrary of this is true, that Christ can
call them as plainly in the drum beating to battle, as in the bell
calling to prayer, can and will be as surely with them in the shock of
angry hosts as in the gathering before the altar. But without entering
further into the great controversy here, I would ask readers fairly
and calmly to consider whether all the greatest fighting that has been
done in the world has not been done by men who believed, and showed by
their lives that they believed, they had a direct call from God to do
it, and that He was present with them in their work. And further (as I
cheerfully own that this test would tell as much in favor of Mahommet
as of Cromwell, Gustavus Adolphus, John Brown) whether, on the whole,
Christian nations have not proved stronger in battle than any others?
I would not press the point unfairly, or overlook such facts as the
rooting out of the British by the West Saxons when the latter were
Pagans; all I maintain is, that faith in the constant presence of God
in and around them has been the support of those who have shown the
strongest hearts, the least love of ease and life, the least fear of
death and pain.




LVI.


Supposing the whole Bible, every trace of Christendom to disappear
to-morrow, we should each of us be conscious of a presence, which we
are quite sure is not ourself, in the deepest recesses of our own
heart, communing with us there and calling us to take up our two-fold
birthright as man—the mastery over visible things, and above all the
mastery over our own bodies, actions, thoughts—and the power, always
growing, of a mysterious communion with the invisible.




LVII.


“Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? Even by ruling himself
after Thy word.” The question of questions this, at the most critical
time in his life for every child of Adam who ever grew to manhood on
the face of our planet; and so far as human experience has yet gone,
the answer of answers. Other answers have been, indeed, forthcoming at
all times, and never surely in greater number or stranger guise than
at the present time: “Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?”
Even by ruling himself in the faith “that human life will become more
beautiful and more noble in the future than in the past.” This will
be found enough “to stimulate the forces of the will, and purify the
soul from base passion” urge, with a zeal and ability of which every
Christian must desire to speak with deep respect, more than one school
of our nineteenth century moralists.

“Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?” Even by ruling
himself on the faith “that it is probable that God exists, and that
death is not the end of life;” or again, “that this is the only
world of which we have any knowledge at all.” Either of these creeds,
says the philosopher of the clubs, if held distinctly as a dogma and
consistently acted on, will be found “capable of producing results
on an astonishing scale.” So one would think, but scarcely in the
direction of personal holiness, or energy. Meantime, the answer of
the Hebrew psalmist, three thousand years old, or thereabouts, has
gone straight to the heart of many generations, and I take it will
scarcely care to make way for any solution likely to occur to modern
science or philosophy. Yes, he who has the word of the living God to
rule himself by—who can fall back on the strength of Him who has had
the victory over the world, the flesh and the devil—may even in this
strange disjointed time of ours carry his manhood pure and unsullied
through the death-grips to which he must come with “the lust of the
flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life.” He who will take
the world, the flesh, and the devil by the throat in his own strength,
will find them shrewd wrestlers. Well for him if he escape with the
stain of the falls which he is too sure to get, and can rise up still a
man, though beaten and shamed, to meet the same foes in new shapes in
his later years. New shapes, and ever more vile, as the years run on:
“Three sorts of men my soul hateth,” says the son of Sirach, “a poor
man that is proud, a rich man that is a liar, and an old adulterer that
doateth.”

We may believe the Gospel history to be a fable, but who amongst
us can deny the fact that each son of man has to go forth into the
wilderness—for us “the wilderness of the wide world in an atheistic
century”—and there do battle with the tempter as soon as the whisper
has come in his ear: “Thou too art a man; eat freely. All these things
will I give thee.”




LVIII.


“How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must be in my Father’s
courts, about his business?”

Full of this new question and great wonder, Christ went home to the
village in Galilee with his parents, and was subject to them; and the
curtain falls for us on his boyhood and youth and early manhood. But as
nothing but what is most important, and necessary for understanding all
of his life which we need for our own growth into his likeness, is told
in these simple gospel narratives, it would seem that this vivid light
is thrown on that first visit to Jerusalem because it was the crisis
in our Lord’s early life which bears most directly on his work for our
race. If so, we must, I think, allow that the question, once fairly
presented to the boy’s mind, would never again have left it. Day by day
it would have been coming back with increasing insistency, gathering
power and weight. And as he submitted it day by day to the God whom
prophet and Psalmist had taught every child of the nation to look upon
as “about his path and about his bed, and knowing every thought of his
heart,” the consciousness must have gained strength and power. As the
habit of self-surrender and simple obedience to the voice within grew
more perfect, and more a part of his very being, the call must have
sounded more and more clearly.

And, as he was in all things tempted like as we are, again and again
must his human nature have shrunk back and tried every way of escape
from this task, the call to which was haunting him; while every
succeeding month and year of life must have disclosed to him more and
more of its peril and its hopelessness, as well as of its majesty.

We have, then, to picture to ourselves this struggle and discipline
going on for eighteen years—the call sounding continually in his ears,
and the boy, the youth, the strong man, each in turn solicited by the
special temptations of his age, and rising clear above them through the
strength of perfect obedience, the strength which comes from the daily
fulfilment of daily duties—that “strength in the Lord” which St. Paul
holds up to us as possible for every human being. Think over this long
probation, and satisfy yourselves whether it is easy, whether it is
possible to form any higher ideal of perfect manliness.

And without any morbid curiosity, and I think with profit, we may
follow out the thoughts which this long period of quiet suggests. We
know from the evangelists only this, that he remained in obscurity
in a retired village of Galilee, and subject to his reputed father
and mother. That he also remained in great seclusion while living
the simple peasant life of Nazareth we may infer from the surprise,
not unmixed with anger and alarm, of his own family, when, after his
baptism, he began his public career amongst them. And yet, on that
day, when he rose to speak in the synagogue, it is clear that the act
was one which commended itself in the first instance to his family and
neighbors. The eyes of all present were at once fixed on him as on one
who might be expected to stand in the scribe’s place, from whom they
might learn something, a man who had a right to speak.

Indeed, it is impossible to suppose that he could have lived in their
midst from childhood to full manhood without attracting the attention,
and stirring many questionings in the minds, of all those with whom
he was brought into contact. The stories in the Apocryphal Gospels of
the exercise of miraculous powers by Christ as a child and boy may
be wholly disregarded; but we may be sure that such a life as his,
though lived in the utmost possible seclusion, must have impressed
every one with whom he came in contact, from the scribe who taught the
Scriptures in Nazareth to the children who sat by his side to learn,
or met him by chance in the vineyards or on the hill-sides. That he
was diligent in using such means for study as were within his reach,
if it needed proof, would appear from his perfect familiarity with the
laws and history of his country at the opening of his ministry. And
the mysterious story of the crisis immediately following his baptism,
in which he wrestled, as it were, face to face with the tempter and
betrayer of mankind, indicates to us the nature of the daily battle
which he must have been waging, from his earliest infancy, or at any
rate ever since his first visit to Jerusalem. No one can suppose for a
moment that the trial came on him for the first time after the great
prophet to whom all the nation were flocking had owned him as the
coming Christ. That recognition removed, indeed, the last doubt from
his mind, and gave him the signal for which he had been patiently
waiting, that the time was come and he must set forth from his
retirement. But the assurance that the call would come at some time
must have been growing on him in all those years, and so when he does
come he is perfectly prepared.

In his first public discourse in the synagogue of Nazareth we find him
at once announcing the fulfilment of the hopes which all around him
were cherishing. He proclaims, without any preface or hesitation, with
the most perfect directness and confidence, the full gospel of the
kingdom of heaven: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is
at hand.” He takes for the text of his first discourse the passage in
Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed
me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the
broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captive, the recovery of
sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach
the acceptable year of the Lord,” and proceeds to expound how “this day
is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.” And within the next few days
he delivers his Sermon on the Mount, of which we have the full record,
and in which we find the meaning, and character, and principles of the
kingdom laid down once and for all. Mark, that there is no hesitation,
no ambiguity, no doubt as to who he is, or what message he has to
deliver. “I have not come to destroy but to fulfil the law which my
Father and your Father has given you, and which you have misunderstood.
This which I am now unfolding to you is the meaning of that law, this
is the will of my Father who is in heaven.”

Thus he springs at once, as it were, full-armed into the arena; and
it is this thorough mastery of his own meaning and position from the
first—this thorough insight into what he has to do, and the means by
which it is to be done—upon which we should fix our thoughts if we want
to understand, or to get any notion at all of, what must have been the
training of those eighteen years.

How had this perfect insight and confidence been reached? “This young
peasant, preaching from a boat or on a hill-side, sweeps aside at once
the traditions of our most learned doctors, telling us that this, which
we and our fathers have been taught, is not what the God of Israel
intended in these commandments of his; but that he, this young man, can
tell us what God did really intend. He assumes to speak to us as one
having authority. Who gave him this authority?” These, we know, are the
kind of questionings with which Christ was met at once, and over and
over again. And they are most natural and necessary questionings, and
must have occurred to himself again and again, and been answered by him
to himself, before he could have stood up to proclaim with the tone
of absolute authority his good news to the village congregations in
Galilee, or the crowds on the Mount, or by the lake.

Who gave thee this authority? We can only reverentially, and at a
distance, picture to ourselves the discipline and struggles by which
the answer was reached, which enabled him to go out without the
slightest faltering or misgiving, and deliver his full and astounding
message, the moment the sign came that the time had come, and that it
was indeed he to whom the task was intrusted.

But the lines of that discipline, which in a measure is also the
discipline of every one of us, are clearly enough indicated for us in
the story of the temptation.

In every subtle form this question must have been meeting the maturing
Christ day after day. Art thou indeed the Son of God who is said to
be coming to redeem this enslaved and degraded people, and with and
beside them all the kingdoms of the world? Even if these prophets
have not been dreaming and doting, art not thou at least dreaming and
doting? At any rate if that is your claim put it to some test. Satisfy
yourself, and show us, while satisfying yourself, some proof of your
title, which we, too, can recognize. Here are all these material,
visible things which, if your claim be true, must be subject to you.
Show us your power over some of them—the meanest, if you will, the
common food which keeps men alive. There are spiritual invisible
forces too, which are supposed to be the ministers of God, and should
therefore be under the control of his Son—give us some sign that you
can guide or govern the least of them. Why pause or delay? Is the
burden growing lighter on this people? Is the Roman getting year by
year less insolent, the publican less fraudulent and exacting, the
Pharisees and rulers less godless, the people, your own kin amongst
them, less degraded and less brutal? You are a grown man, with the full
powers of a man at any rate. Why are you idling here when your Father’s
work (if God be your Father) lies broadcast on every side, and no man
standing forth to “the help of the Lord against the mighty,” as our old
seers used to rave?

I hope I may have been able to indicate to you, however imperfectly,
the line of thought which will enable each of you for yourselves to
follow out and realize, more or less, the power and manliness of the
character of Christ implied in this patient waiting in obscurity and
doubt through the years when most men are at full stretch—waiting for
the call which shall convince him that the voice within has not been a
lying voice—and meantime making himself all that God meant him to be,
without haste and without misgiving.




LIX.


In Christ, after the discipline of long-waiting years, there was no
ambition, no self-delusion. He had measured the way, and counted the
cost, of lifting his own people and the world out of bondage to visible
things and false gods, and bringing them to the only Father of their
spirits, into the true kingdom of their God. He must, indeed, have been
well enough aware how infinitely more fit for the task he himself was
than any of his own brethren in the flesh, with whom he was living day
by day, or of the men of Nazareth with whom he had been brought up.
But he knew also that the same voice which had been speaking to him,
the same wisdom which had been training him, must have been speaking
to and training other humble and brave souls, wherever there were open
hearts and ears, in the whole Jewish nation. As the humblest and most
guileless of men, he could not have assumed that no other Israelite
had been able to render that perfect obedience of which he was himself
conscious. And so he may well have hurried to the Jordan in the hope
of finding there, in this prophet of the wilderness, “Him who should
come,” the Messiah, the great deliverer—and of enlisting under his
banner, and rendering him true and loyal service, in the belief that,
after all, he himself might only be intended to aid and hold up the
hands of a greater than himself. For we must remember that Christ could
not have heard before he came to Bethabara that John had disclaimed the
great title. It was not till the very day before his own arrival that
the Baptist had told the questioners from Jerusalem, “I am not he.”

But if any such thought had crossed his mind, or hope filled his heart,
on the way to the Baptist, it was soon dispelled, and he, left again
in his own loneliness, now more clearly than ever before, face to face
with the task, before which even the Son of God, appointed to it before
the world was, might well quail, as it confronted him in his frail
human body. For John recognizes him, singles him out at once, proclaims
to the bystanders, “This is he! Behold the Lamb of God! This is he who
shall baptize with the fire of God’s own Spirit. Here is the deliverer
whom all our prophets have foretold.” And by a mysterious outward sign,
as well as by the witness in his own heart and conscience, Christ is at
once assured of the truth of the Baptist’s words—that it is indeed he
himself and no other, and that his time has surely come.

That he now thoroughly realized the fact for the first time, and
was startled and severely tried by the confirmation of what he must
have felt for years to be probable, is not only what we should look
for from our own experiences, but seems the true inference from the
gospel narratives. For, although as soon as the full truth breaks upon
him he accepts the mission and work to which God is calling him, and
speaks with authority to the Baptist, “Suffer it to be so now,” yet the
immediate effect of the call is to drive him away into the wilderness,
there in the deepest solitude to think over once again, and for the
last time to wrestle with and master the tremendous disclosure.




LX.


In following the life of Christ so far as we have any materials, we
have found one main characteristic to be patience—a resolute waiting
on God’s mind. I have asked you to test, in every way you can,
whether this kind of patience does not constitute the highest ideal
we can form of human conduct, is not in fact the noblest type of true
manliness. Pursue the same method as to the isolated section of that
life, the temptation, which I readily admit has much in it that we
cannot understand. But take the story simply as you find it (which
is the only honest method, unless you pass it by altogether, which
would be cowardly) and see whether you can detect any weakness, any
flaw in the perfect manliness of Christ under the strain of which it
speaks—whether he does not here also realize for us the most perfect
type of manliness in times of solitary and critical trial. Spare no
pains, suppress no doubt, only be honest with the story, and with your
own conscience.

There is scarcely any life of first-rate importance to the world in
which we do not find a crisis corresponding to this, but the nearest
parallel must be sought amongst those men, the greatest of all kind,
who have founded or recast one of the great religions of the world. Of
these (if we except the greatest of all, Moses) Mohammed is the only
one of whose call we know enough to speak. Whatever we may think of him
and the religion he founded, we shall all probably admit that he was
at any rate a man of the rarest courage. In his case too it is only at
the end of long and solitary vigils in the desert that the vision comes
which seals him for his work. The silver roll is unfolded before his
eyes, and he who holds it bids him read therein the decree of God, and
tells him, “Thou art the prophet of God, and I his angel.”

He is unmanned by the vision, and flies trembling to his wife, whose
brave and loving counsel, and those of his friends and first disciples,
scarcely keep him from despair and suicide.

I would not press the parallel further than to remark that Christ came
out of the temptation with no human aid, having trod the wine-press
alone, serene and resolute from that moment for the work to which God
had called him.




LXI.


The strongest and most generous natures are always fondest of those who
lean on them.




LXII.


How utterly inadequate must be any knowledge of a human being which
does not get beneath the surface? How difficult to do so to any good
purpose! For that “inner,” or “eternal,” or “religious” life (call it
which you will, they all mean the same thing) is so entirely a matter
between each human soul and God, is at best so feebly and imperfectly
expressed by the outer life.

There are none of us but must be living two lives—and the sooner we
come to recognize the fact clearly the better for us—the one life in
the outward material world, in contact with the things which we can
see, and taste, and handle, which are always changing and passing
away; the other in the invisible, in contact with the unseen; with
that which does not change or pass away—which is the same yesterday,
to-day, and forever. The former life you must share with others, with
your family, your friends, with everyone you meet in business or
pleasure. The latter you must live alone, in the solitude of your own
inmost being, if you can find no spirit there communing with yours—in
the presence of, and in communion with, the Father of your spirit, if
you are willing to recognize that presence. The one life will no doubt
always be the visible expression of the other; just as the body is
the garment in which the real man is clothed for his sojourn in time.
But the expression is often little more than a shadow, unsatisfying,
misleading. One of our greatest English poets has written:

    “The one remains, the many change and pass,
    Heaven’s light forever shines, earth’s shadows fly.
    Time, like a dome of many-colored glass,
    Stains the bright radiance of eternity,
    Until death tramples it to fragments.”

And so you and I are living now under the dome of many-colored glass,
and shall live as long as we remain in these bodies, a temporal and an
eternal life—“the next world,” which too many of our teachers speak of
as a place which we shall first enter after death, being in fact “next”
only in the truest sense of the word; namely, that it is nearest to
us now. The dome of time can do nothing more (if we even allow it to
do that) than partially to conceal from us the light which is always
there, beneath, around, above us.

“The outer life of the devout man,” it has been well said, “should
be thoroughly attractive to others. He would be simple, honest,
straightforward, unpretending, gentle, kindly;—his conversation
cheerful and sensible; he would be ready to share in all blameless
mirth, indulgent to all save sin.”




LXIII.


In a noisy and confused time like ours, it does seem to me that most
of us have need to be reminded of, and will be the better for bearing
in mind, the reserve of strength and power which lies quietly at the
nation’s call, outside the whirl and din of public and fashionable
life, and entirely ignored in the columns of the daily press. There are
thousands of Englishmen of high culture, high courage, high principle,
who are living their own quiet lives in every corner of the kingdom,
from John o’ Groat’s to the Land’s-End, bringing up their families in
the love of God and their neighbor, and keeping the atmosphere around
them clean, and pure, and strong, by their example—men who would come
to the front, and might be relied on, in any serious national crisis.

One is too apt to fancy, from the photographs of the nation’s life
which one gets day by day, that the old ship has lost the ballast which
has stood her in such good stead for a thousand years, and is rolling
more and more helplessly, in a gale which shows no sign of abating, for
her or any other national vessel, until at last she must roll over and
founder. But it is not so. England is in less stress, and in better
trim, than she has been in many a stiffer gale.

The real fact is, that nations, and the families of which nations
are composed, make no parade or fuss over that part of their affairs
which is going right. National life depends on home life, and foreign
critics are inclined to take the chronicles of our Divorce Court as
a test by which to judge the standard of our home-life, like the old
gentleman who always spelt through the police reports to see “what
people were about.” An acquaintance, however, with any average English
neighborhood, or any dozen English families taken at random, ought to
be sufficient to re-assure the faint-hearted, and to satisfy them that
(to use the good old formula) the Lord has much work yet for the nation
to do, and the national manliness and godliness left to do it all,
notwithstanding superficial appearances.




LXIV.


If the angel Gabriel were to come down from heaven, and head a
successful rise against the most abominable and unrighteous vested
interest which this poor world groans under, he would most certainly
lose his character for many years, probably for centuries, not only
with upholders of said vested interest, but with the respectable mass
of the people whom he had delivered. They wouldn’t ask him to dinner,
or let their names appear with his in the papers; they would be very
careful how they spoke of him in the Palaver, or at their clubs. What
can we expect, then, when we have only poor, gallant, blundering
men like Kossuth, Garibaldi, Mazzini, and righteous causes do not
always triumph in their hands; men who have holes enough in their
armor, God knows, easy to be hit by respectabilities sitting in their
lounging-chairs, and having large balances at their bankers?

But you who only want to have your heads set straight to take the right
side, bear in mind that majorities, especially respectable ones, are
nine times out of ten in the wrong; and that if you see a man or boy
striving earnestly on the weak side, however wrong-headed or blundering
he may be, you are not to go and join the cry against him. If you can’t
join him and help him, and make him wiser, at any rate remember that he
has found something in the world which he will fight and suffer for,
which is just what you have got to do for yourselves; and so think and
speak of him tenderly.




LXV.


If you have not already felt it, you will assuredly feel, that your
lot is cast in a world which longs for nothing so much as to succeed
in shaking off all belief in anything which cannot be tested by the
senses, and gauged and measured by the intellect, as the trappings of
a worn-out superstition. Men have been trying, so runs the new gospel,
to live by faith, and not by sight, ever since there is any record at
all of their lives; and so they have had to manufacture for themselves
the faiths they were to live by. What is called the life of the soul or
spirit, and the life of the understanding, have been in conflict all
this time, and the one has always been gaining on the other. Stronghold
after stronghold has fallen till it is clear almost to demonstration
that there will soon be no place left for that which was once deemed
all-powerful. The spiritual life can no longer be led honestly. Man
has no knowledge of the invisible on which he can build. Let him own
the truth and turn to that upon which he _can_ build safely—the world
of matter, his knowledge of which is always growing; and be content
with the things he can see and taste and handle. Those who are telling
you still in this time that your life can and ought to be lived in
daily communion with the unseen—that so only you can loyally control
the visible—are either wilfully deceiving you or are dreamers and
visionaries.

So the high priests of the new gospel teach, and their teaching echoes
through our literature, and colors the life of the streets and markets
in a thousand ways; and a mammon-ridden generation, longing to be rid
of what they hope are only certain old and clumsy superstitions—which
they _try_ to believe injurious to others, and are quite sure make
them uneasy in their own efforts to eat, drink, and be merry—applauds
as openly as it dare, and hopes soon to see the millennium of the
flesh-pots publicly declared and recognized.

Against which, wherever you may encounter them, that you may be ready
and able to stand fast, is the hope and prayer of many anxious hearts;
in a time, charged on every side with signs of the passing away of old
things, such as have not been seen above the horizon in Christendom
since Luther nailed his protest on the church-door of a German village.




LXVI.


The gospel of work is a true gospel, though not the only one, or the
highest, and has been preached in our day by great teachers. Listen,
for instance, to the ring of it in the rugged and incisive words of one
of our strongest poets:

    “That low man seeks a little thing to do,
        Sees it and does it.
    This high man, with a great thing to pursue,
        Dies ere he knows it.
    That low man goes on adding one to one,
        His hundreds soon hit.
    This high man aiming at a million,
        Misses a unit.”

This sounds like a deliberate attack on the idealist, a direct
preference of low to high aims and standards, of the seen to the
unseen. It is in reality only a wholesome warning against aiming at any
ideal by wrong methods, though the use of the words “low” and “high”
is no doubt likely to mislead. The true idealist has no quarrel with
the lesson of these lines; indeed, he would be glad to see them written
on one of the door-posts of every great school, if only they were
ballasted on the other by George Herbert’s quaint and deeper wisdom:

    “Pitch thy behavior low, thy projects high,
        So shalt thou humble and magnanimous be.
    Sink not in spirit: who aimeth at the sky
        Shoots higher much than he that means a tree.”

Both sayings are true, and worth carrying in your minds as part of
their permanent furniture, and you will find that they will live there
very peaceably side by side.




LXVII.


The consciousness of the darkness in one and around one brings the
longing for light. And then the light dawns; through mist and fog,
perhaps, but enough to pick one’s way by.




LXVIII.


It is a strange, blind sort of world we are in, with lots of blind
alleys, down which we go blundering in the fog after some seedy
gaslight, which we take for the sun till we run against the wall at the
end, and find out that the light is a gaslight, and that there’s no
thoroughfare. But for all that, one does get on. You get to know the
sun’s light better and better, and to keep out of the blind alleys; and
I am surer and surer every day that there’s always sunlight enough for
every honest fellow, and a good sound road under his feet, if he will
only step out on it.




LXIX.


We all have to learn, in one way or another, that neither men nor
boys get _second_ chances in this world. We all get _new_ chances
till the end of our lives, but not second chances in the same set of
circumstances; and the great difference between one person and another
is, how he takes hold of and uses his first chance, and how he takes
his fall if it is scored against him.




LXX.


You will all find, if you haven’t found it out already, that a time
comes in every human friendship when you must go down into the depths
of yourself, and lay bare what is there to your friend, and wait in
fear for his answer. A few moments may do it; and it may be that you
never do it but once. But done it must be, if the friendship is to be
worth the name. You must find out what is there, at the very root and
bottom of one another’s hearts; and if you are at one there, nothing on
earth can, or at least ought, to sunder you.




LXXI.


It is only through our mysterious human relationships—through the love
and tenderness and purity of mothers and sisters and wives—through
the strength and courage and wisdom of fathers and brothers and
teachers—that we can come to the knowledge of Him in whom alone the
love, and the tenderness, and the purity, and the strength, and the
courage, and the wisdom of all these dwell for ever and ever in perfect
fulness.




LXXII.


Almost nightly, for years, Tom and Arthur, and by degrees East
occasionally, and sometimes one, sometimes another of their friends,
read a chapter of the Bible together, and talked it over afterwards.
Tom was at first utterly astonished, and almost shocked, at the sort
of way in which Arthur read the book and talked about the men and women
whose lives are there told. The first night they happened to fall
on the chapters about the famine in Egypt, and Arthur began talking
about Joseph as if he were a living statesman; just as he might have
talked about Lord Grey and the Reform Bill; only that they were much
more living realities to him. The book was to him, Tom saw, the most
vivid and delightful history of real people, who might do right or
wrong, just like any one who was walking about Rugby—the doctor, or
the masters, or the sixth-form boys. But the atmosphere soon passed
off, the scales seemed to drop from his eyes, and the book became at
once and forever to him the great human and divine book, and the men
and women, whom he had looked upon as something quite different from
himself, became his friends and counsellors.

Arthur, Tom, and East were together one night, and read the story of
Naaman coming to Elisha to be cured of his leprosy. When the chapter
was finished, Tom shut his Bible with a slap.

“I can’t stand that fellow Naaman,” said he, “after what he’d seen and
felt, going back again and bowing himself down in the house of Rimmon,
because his effeminate scoundrel of a master did it. I wonder Elisha
took the trouble to heal him. How he must have despised him.”

“Yes, there you go off as usual, with a shell on your head,” struck
in East, who always took the opposite side to Tom: half from love of
argument, half from conviction. “How do you know he didn’t think better
of it? how do you know his master was a scoundrel? His letter don’t
look like it, and the book don’t say so.”

“I don’t care,” rejoined Tom; “why did Naaman talk about bowing down,
then, if he didn’t mean to do it? He wasn’t likely to get more in
earnest when he got back to Court, and away from the Prophet.”

“Well, but, Tom,” said Arthur, “look what Elisha says to him, ‘Go in
peace.’ He wouldn’t have said that if Naaman had been in the wrong.”

“I don’t see that that means more than saying, ‘You’re not the man I
took you for.’”

“No, no, that won’t do at all,” said East; “read the words fairly, and
take men as you find them. I like Naaman, and think he was a very fine
fellow.”

“I don’t,” said Tom, positively.

“Well, I think East is right,” said Arthur; “I can’t see but what it’s
right to do the best you can, though it mayn’t be the best absolutely.
Every man isn’t born to be a martyr.”

“Of course, of course,” said East; “but he’s on one of his pet hobbies.
How often have I told you, Tom, that you must drive a nail where it’ll
go?”

“And how often have I told you,” rejoined Tom, “that it’ll always go
where you want, if you only stick to it and hit hard enough? I hate
half-measures and compromises.”

“Yes, he’s a whole-hog man, is Tom. Must have the whole animal, hair
and teeth, claws and tail,” laughed East. “Sooner have no bread any day
than half a loaf.”

“I don’t know,” said Arthur, “it’s rather puzzling; but ain’t most
right things got by proper compromises, I mean where the principle
isn’t given up?”

“That’s not the point,” said Tom; “I don’t object to a compromise,
where you don’t give up your principle.”

“Not you,” said East laughingly. “I know him of old, Arthur, and
you’ll find him out some day. There isn’t such a reasonable fellow in
the world to hear him talk. He never wants anything but what’s right
and fair; only when you come to settle what’s right and fair, it’s
everything that he wants, and nothing that you want. Give me the Brown
compromise when I’m on his side.”

“Now, Harry,” said Tom, “no more chaff—I’m serious. Look here—this is
what makes my blood tingle;” and he turned over the pages of his Bible
and read: “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the
king, ‘O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this
matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from
the burning, fiery furnace, and He will deliver us out of thine hand,
O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not
serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.’”
He read the last verse twice, emphasizing the nots, and dwelling on
them as if they gave him actual pleasure and were hard to part with.

They were silent a minute, and then Arthur said, “Yes, that’s a
glorious story, but it don’t prove your point, Tom, I think. There are
times when there is only one way, and that the highest, and then the
men are found to stand in the breach.”

“There’s always a highest way, and it’s always the right one,” said
Tom. “How many times has the Doctor told us that in his sermons in the
last year I should like to know!”

“Well, you ain’t going to convince us—is he Arthur? No Brown compromise
to-night,” said East, looking at his watch. “But it’s past eight, and
we must go to first lesson.”

So they took down their books and fell to work; but Arthur didn’t
forget, and thought long and often over the conversation.




LXXIII.


“Tom,” said Arthur, “I’ve had such strange thoughts about death lately.
I’ve never told a soul of them, not even my mother. Sometimes, I think
they’re wrong, but, do you know I don’t think in my heart I could be
sorry at the death of any of my friends.”

Tom was taken quite aback.

“What in the world is the young un after now?” thought he; “I’ve
swallowed a good many of his crotchets, but this altogether beats me.
He can’t be quite right in his head.”

He didn’t want to say a word, and shifted about uneasily in the dark;
however, Arthur seemed to be waiting for an answer, so at last he said,
“I don’t think I quite see what you mean, Geordie. One’s told so often
to think about death, that I’ve tried it on sometimes, especially this
last week. But we won’t talk of it now. I’d better go—you’re getting
tired, and I shall do you harm.”

“No, no, indeed—I ain’t Tom; you must stop till nine, there’s only
twenty minutes. I’ve settled you must stop till nine. And oh! do let me
talk to you—I must talk to you. I see it’s just as I feared. You think
I’m half-mad—don’t you now?”

“Well, I did think it odd what you said, Geordie, as you ask me.”

Arthur paused a moment, and then said quickly, “I’ll tell you how it
all happened. At first, when I was sent to the sick-room, and found I
had really got the fever, I was terribly frightened. I thought I should
die, and I could not face it for a moment. I don’t think it was sheer
cowardice at first, but I thought how hard it was to be taken away
from my mother and sisters, and you all, just as I was beginning to see
my way to many things, and to feel that I might be a man and do a man’s
work. To die without having fought and worked, and given one’s life
away, was too hard to bear. I got terribly impatient, and accused God
of injustice, and strove to justify myself; and the harder I strove,
the deeper I sank. Then the image of my dear father often came across
me, but I turned from it. Whenever it came, a heavy numbing throb
seemed to take hold of my heart, and say ‘Dead—dead, dead.’ And I cried
out, ‘The living, the living shall praise thee O God; the dead cannot
praise Thee. There is no work in the grave; in the night no man can
work. But I can work. I can do great things. I _will_ do great things.
Why wilt Thou slay me.’ And so I struggled and plunged, deeper and
deeper, and went down into a living black tomb. I was alone there, with
no power to stir or think; along with myself; beyond the reach of all
human fellowship; beyond Christ’s reach, I thought, in my nightmare.
You who are brave and bright and strong, can have no idea of that
agony. Pray to God you never may. Pray as for your life.”

Arthur stopped—from exhaustion, Tom thought; but what between his fear
lest Arthur should hurt himself, his awe, and longing for him to go on,
he couldn’t ask, or stir to help him. Presently he went on, but quite
calm and slow:

“I don’t know how long I was in that state. For more than a day, I
know; for I was quite conscious, and lived my outer life all the time,
and took my medicines, and spoke to my mother, and heard what they
said. But I didn’t take much note of time; I thought time was over
for me, and that that tomb was what was beyond. Well, on last Sunday
morning, as I seemed to lie in that tomb, alone, as I thought, for
ever and ever, the black, dead wall was cleft in two, and I was caught
up and borne through into the light by some great power, some living,
mighty spirit. Tom, do you remember the living creatures and the wheels
in Ezekiel? It was just like that: ‘when they went I heard the noise
of their wings, like the noise of great waters, as the voice of the
Almighty, the voice of speech, as the noise of an host; when they stood
they let down their wings’—‘and they went every one straight forward;
whither the spirit was to go they went, and they turned not when they
went.’ And we rushed through the bright air, which was full of myriads
of living creatures, and paused on the brink of a great river. And the
power held me up, and I knew that great river was the grave, and death
dwelt there; but not the death I had met in the black tomb—that I felt
was gone forever. For on the other bank of the great river I saw men
and women and children rising up pure and bright, and the tears were
wiped from their eyes, and they put on glory and strength, and all
weariness and pain fell away. And beyond were a multitude which no man
could number, and they worked at some great work; and they who rose
from the river went on and joined them in the work. They all worked,
and each worked in a different way, but all at the same work. And I saw
there my father, and the men in the old town whom I knew when I was
a child; many a hard, stern man, who never came to church, and whom
they called atheist and infidel. There they were, side by side with my
father, whom I had seen toil and die for them, and women and little
children, and the seal was on the foreheads of all. And I longed to see
what the work was, and could not; so I tried to plunge in the river,
for I thought I would join them, but I could not. Then I looked about
to see how they got into the river. And this I could not see, but I
saw myriads on this side, and they too worked, and I knew that it was
the same work; and the same seal was on their foreheads. And though
I saw there was toil and anguish in the work of these, and that most
that were working were blind and feeble, yet I longed no more to plunge
into the river, but more and more to know what the work was. And as I
looked I saw my mother and my sisters, and I saw the Doctor, and you,
Tom, and hundreds more whom I knew; and at last I saw myself, too, and
I was toiling and doing ever so little a piece of the great work. Then
it all melted away, and the power left me, and as it left me I thought
I heard a voice say, ‘The vision is for an appointed time; though it
tarry, wait for it, for in the end it shall speak and not lie, it shall
surely come, it shall not tarry.’ It was early morning I know, then, it
was so quiet and cool, and my mother was fast asleep in the chair by my
bedside; but it wasn’t only a dream of mine. I know it wasn’t a dream.
Then I fell into a deep sleep, and only woke after afternoon chapel;
and the Doctor came and gave me the sacrament. I told him and my mother
I should get well—I knew I should; but I couldn’t tell them why. Tom,”
said Arthur, gently, after another minute, “do you see why I could not
grieve now to see my dearest friend die? It can’t be—it isn’t, all
fever or illness. God would never have let me see it so clear if it
wasn’t true. I don’t understand it all yet—it will take me my life and
longer to do that—to find out what the work is.”




LXXIV.


“Hullo, Brown! here’s something for you,” called out the reading man.
“Why, your old master, Arnold of Rugby, is dead.”

Tom’s hand stopped half-way in his cast, and his line and flies went
all tangling round and round his fishing-rod; you might have knocked
him over with a feather.

Neither of his companions took any notice of him, luckily; and with a
violent effort he set to work mechanically to disentangle his line. He
felt completely carried off his moral and intellectual legs, as if he
had lost his standing-point in the invisible world. Besides which, the
deep loving loyalty he felt for his old leader made the shock intensely
painful. It was the first great wrench of his life, the first gap which
the angel Death had made in his circle, and he felt numbed, and beaten
down, and spiritless. Well, well! I believe it was good for him and for
many others in like case; who had to learn by that loss, that the soul
of man cannot stand or lean upon any human prop, however strong, and
wise, and good; but that He upon whom alone it can stand and lean will
knock away all such props in His own wise and merciful way, until there
is no ground or stay left but Himself, the Rock of Ages, upon whom
alone a sure foundation for every soul of man is laid.




LXXV.


At the school-gates Tom made a dead pause; there was not a soul in the
quadrangle—all was lonely, and silent, and sad. So with another effort
he strode through the quadrangle, and into the school-house offices.

He found the little matron in her room in deep mourning; shook her
hand, tried to talk, and moved nervously about; she was evidently
thinking of the same subject as he, but he couldn’t begin talking.

“Where shall I find Thomas?” said he at last, getting desperate.

“In the servants’ hall, I think, sir. But won’t you take anything?”
said the matron looking rather disappointed.

“No, thank you,” said he, and strode off again to find the old verger,
who was sitting in his little den as of old puzzling over hieroglyphics.

He looked up through his spectacles, as Tom seized his hand and wrung
it.

“Ah! you’ve heard all about it, sir, I see,” said he.

Tom nodded, and then sat down on the shoe-board, while the old man told
his tale, and wiped his spectacles, and fairly flowed over with quaint,
homely, honest sorrow.

By the time he had done, Tom felt much better.

“Where is he buried, Thomas?” said he at last.

“Under the altar in the chapel, sir,” answered Thomas. “You’d like to
have the key, I dare say.”

“Thank you, Thomas. Yes, I should very much.” And the old man fumbled
among his bunch, and then got up as though he would go with him; but
after a few steps stopped short and said, “Perhaps you’d like to go by
yourself, sir?”

Tom nodded, and the bunch of keys were handed to him with an injunction
to be sure and lock the door after him, and bring them back before
eight o’clock.

We walked quickly through the quadrangle and out into the close. The
longing which had been upon him and driven him thus far, like the
gad-fly in the Greek legends, giving him no rest in mind or body,
seemed all of a sudden not to be satisfied, but to shrivel up, and
pall. “Why should I go on? It is no use,” he thought, and threw himself
at full length on the turf, and looked vaguely and listlessly at all
the well-known objects. There were a few of the town-boys playing
cricket, their wicket pitched on the best piece in the middle of the
big-side ground, a sin about equal to sacrilege in the eyes of a
captain of the eleven. He was very nearly getting up to go and send
them off. “Pshaw! they won’t remember me. They’ve more right there than
I,” he muttered. And the thought that his sceptre had departed, and his
mark was wearing out, came home to him for the first time, and bitterly
enough. He was lying on the very spot where the fights came off;
where he himself had fought six years ago his first and last battle.
He conjured up the scene till he could almost hear the shouts of the
ring, and East’s whisper in his ear; and looking across the close to
the Doctor’s private door, half-expected to see it open, and the tall
figure in cap and gown come striding under the elm-trees towards him.

No, no! that sight could never be seen again. There was no flag flying
on the round tower; the school-house windows were all shuttered up; and
when the flag went up again, and the shutters came down, it would be
to welcome a stranger. All that was left on earth of him whom he had
honored, was lying cold and still under the chapel-floor. He would go
in and see the place once more, and then leave it once for all. New men
and new methods might do for other people; let those who would, worship
the rising star; he at least would be faithful to the sun which had
set. And so he got up, and walked to the chapel-door and unlocked it,
fancying himself the only mourner in all the broad land, and feeding on
his own selfish sorrow.

He passed through the vestibule, and then paused for a moment to glance
over the empty benches. His heart was still proud and high, and he
walked up to the seat which he had last occupied as a sixth-form boy,
and sat himself down there to collect his thoughts.

And, truth to tell, they needed collecting and setting in order not a
little. The memories of eight years were all dancing through his brain,
and carrying him about whither they would; while, beneath them all,
his heart was throbbing with the dull sense of a loss that could never
be made up to him. The rays of the evening sun came solemnly through
the painted windows above his head, and fell in gorgeous colors on the
opposite wall, and the perfect stillness soothed his spirit by little
and little. And he turned to the pulpit, and looked at it, and then,
leaning forward with his head on his hands, groaned aloud:

“If he could only have seen the Doctor again for one five minutes—have
told him all that was in his heart, what he owed to him, how he loved
and reverenced him, and would by God’s help follow his steps in life
and death—he could have borne it all without a murmur. But that he
should have gone away for ever without knowing it all, was too much
to bear.”—“But am I sure he does not know it all?”—the thought made
him start—“May he not even now be near me, in this very chapel? If he
be, am I sorrowing as he would have me sorrow—as I should wish to have
sorrowed when I shall meet him again?”

He raised himself up and looked around; and after a minute rose and
walked humbly down to the lowest bench, and sat down on the very seat
which he had occupied on his first Sunday at Rugby. And then the old
memories rushed back again, but softened and subdued, and soothing
him as he let himself be carried away by them. And he looked up at
the great painted window above the altar, and remembered how when a
little boy he used to try not to look through it at the elm-trees and
the rocks, before the painted glass came—and the subscription for the
painted glass, and the letter he wrote home for money to give to it.
And there, down below, was the very name of the boy who sat on his
right hand on that first day, scratched rudely in the oak paneling.

And then came the thought of all his own school-fellows; and form after
form of boys nobler, and braver, and purer than he, rose up and seemed
to rebuke him. Could he not think of them, and what they had felt and
were feeling, they who had honored and loved from the first, the man
whom he had taken years to know and love? Could he not think of those
yet dearer to him who was gone, who bore his name and shared his blood,
and were now without a husband or a father? Then the grief which he
began to share with others became gentle and holy, and he rose up once
more, and walked up the steps to the altar; and while the tears flowed
freely down his cheeks, knelt down humbly and hopefully, to lay down
there his share of a burden which had proved itself too heavy for him
to bear in his own strength.




LXXVI.


“It will be forty years ago next month,” said the old Captain, “since
the ship I was then in came home from the West Indies station, and was
paid off. I had nowhere in particular to go just then, and so was very
glad to get a letter, the morning after I went ashore at Portsmouth,
asking me to go down to Plymouth for a week or so. It came from an old
sailor, a friend of my family, who had been Commodore of the fleet.
He lived at Plymouth; he was a thorough old sailor—what you young men
would call ‘an old salt’—and couldn’t live out of sight of the blue sea
and the shipping. It is a disease that a good many of us take who have
spent our best years on the sea. I have it myself—a sort of feeling
that we must be under another kind of Providence, when we look out and
see a hill on this side and a hill on that. It’s wonderful to see the
trees come out and the corn grow, but then it doesn’t come so home to
an old sailor. I know that we’re all just as much under the Lord’s
hand on shore as at sea; but you can’t read in a book you haven’t been
used to, and they that go down to the sea in ships, they see the works
of the Lord and His wonders in the deep. It isn’t their fault if they
don’t see His wonders on the land so easily as other people.

“But, for all that, there’s no man enjoys a cruise in the country more
than a sailor. It’s forty years ago since I started for Plymouth,
but I haven’t forgotten the road a bit, or how beautiful it was; all
through the New Forest, and over Salisbury Plain, and then on by the
mail to Exeter, and through Devonshire. It took me three days to get to
Plymouth, for we didn’t get about so quick in those days.

“The Commodore was very kind to me when I got there, and I went about
with him to the ships in the bay, and through the dock-yard, and picked
up a good deal that was of use to me afterwards. I was a lieutenant in
those days, and had seen a good deal of service, and I found the old
Commodore had a great nephew whom he had adopted, and had set his whole
heart upon. He was an old bachelor himself, but the boy had come to
live with him, and was to go to sea; so he wanted to put him under some
one who would give an eye to him for the first year or two. He was a
light slip of a boy then, fourteen years old, with deep set blue eyes
and long eyelashes, and cheeks like a girl’s, but as brave as a lion
and as merry as a lark. The old gentleman was very pleased to see that
we took to one another. We used to bathe and boat together; and he was
never tired of hearing my stories about the great admirals, and the
fleet, and the stations I had been on.

“Well, it was agreed that I should apply for a ship again directly,
and go up to London with a letter to the Admiralty from the Commodore
to help things on. After a month or two I was appointed to a brig,
lying at Spithead; and so I wrote off to the Commodore, and he got
his boy a midshipman’s berth on board, and brought him to Portsmouth
himself a day or two before we sailed for the Mediterranean. The old
gentleman came on board to see his boy’s hammock slung, and went below
into the cockpit to make sure that all was right. He only left us by
the pilot-boat when we were well out in the Channel. He was very low at
parting from his boy, but bore up as well as he could; and we promised
to write to him from Gibraltar, and as often afterwards as we had a
chance.

“I was soon as proud and fond of little Tom Holdsworth as if he had
been my own younger brother, and, for that matter, so were all the
crew, from our captain to the cook’s boy. He was such a gallant
youngster, and yet so gentle. In one cutting-out business we had, he
climbed over the boatswain’s shoulders, and was almost first on deck;
how he came out of it without a scratch I can’t think to this day. But
he hadn’t a bit of bluster in him, and was as kind as a woman to any
one who was wounded or down with sickness.

“After we had been out about a year we were sent to cruise off Malta,
on the look-out for the French fleet. It was a long business, and the
post wasn’t so good then as it is now. We were sometimes for months
without getting a letter, and knew nothing of what was happening at
home, or anywhere else. We had a sick time too on board, and at last he
got a fever. He bore up against it like a man, and wouldn’t knock off
duty for a long time. He was midshipman of my watch; so I used to make
him turn in early, and tried to ease things to him as much as I could;
but he didn’t pick up, and I began to get very anxious about him. I
talked to the doctor, and turned matters over in my own mind, and at
last I came to think he wouldn’t get any better unless he could sleep
out of the cockpit. So one night, the 20th of October it was—I remember
it well enough, better than I remember any day since; it was a dirty
night, blowing half a gale of wind from the southward, and we were
under close-reefed topsails—I had the first watch, and at nine o’clock
I sent him down to my cabin to sleep there, where he would be fresher
and quieter, and I was to turn into his hammock when my watch was over.

“I was on deck three hours or so after he went down, and the weather
got dirtier and dirtier, and the scud drove by, and the wind sang and
hummed through the rigging—it made me melancholy to listen to it. I
could think of nothing but the youngster down below, and what I should
say to his poor old uncle if anything happened. Well, soon after
midnight I went down and turned into his hammock. I didn’t go to sleep
at once, for I remember very well listening to the creaking of the
ship’s timbers as she rose to the swell, and watching the lamp, which
was slung from the ceiling, and gave light enough to make out the other
hammocks swinging slowly all together. At last, however, I dropped off,
and I reckon I must have been asleep about an hour, when I woke with
a start. For the first moment I didn’t see anything but the swinging
hammocks and the lamp; but then suddenly I became aware that some one
was standing by my hammock, and I saw the figure as plainly as I see
any of you now, for the foot of the hammock was close to the lamp, and
the light struck full across on the head and shoulders, which was all
that I could see of him. There he was, the old Commodore; his grizzled
hair coming out from under a red woollen night cap, and his shoulders
wrapped in an old thread-bare blue dressing-gown which I had often
seen him in. His face looked pale and drawn, and there was a wistful,
disappointed look about the eyes. I was so taken aback I could not
speak, but lay watching him. He looked full at my face once or twice,
but didn’t seem to recognize me; and, just as I was getting back my
tongue and going to speak, he said slowly: ‘Where’s Tom? this is his
hammock. I can’t see Tom;’ and then he looked vaguely about and passed
away somehow, but how I couldn’t see. In a moment or two I jumped out
and hurried to my cabin, but young Holdsworth was fast asleep. I sat
down, and wrote down just what I had seen, making a note of the exact
time, twenty minutes to two. I didn’t turn in again, but sat watching
the youngster. When he woke I asked him if he had heard anything of his
great uncle by the last mail. Yes, he had heard; the old gentleman was
rather feeble, but nothing particular the matter. I kept my own counsel
and never told a soul in the ship; and, when the mail came to hand a
few days afterwards with a letter from the Commodore to his nephew,
dated late in September, saying that he was well, I thought the figure
by my hammock must have been all my own fancy.

“However, by the next mail came the news of the old Commodore’s death.
‘It had been a very sudden break-up,’ his executor said. He had left
all his property, which was not much, to his great nephew, who was to
get leave to come home as soon as he could.

“The first time we touched at Malta, Tom Holdsworth left us and went
home. We followed about two years afterwards, and the first thing I
did after landing was to find out the Commodore’s executor. He was a
quiet, dry little Plymouth lawyer, and very civilly answered all my
questions about the last days of my old friend. At last I asked him to
tell me as near as he could the time of his death; and he put on his
spectacles, and got his diary, and turned over the leaves. I was quite
nervous till he looked up and said, ‘Twenty-five minutes to two, sir,
A.M., on the morning of October 21st; or it might be a few minutes
later.’

“‘How do you mean, sir?’ I asked.

“‘Well,’ he said, ‘it is an odd story. The doctor was sitting with me,
watching the old man, and, as I tell you, at twenty-five minutes to
two, he got up and said it was all over. We stood together, talking in
whispers for, it might be, four or five minutes, when the body seemed
to move. He was an odd old man, you know, the Commodore, and we never
could get him properly to bed, but he lay in his red nightcap and old
dressing-gown, with a blanket over him. It was not a pleasant sight,
I can tell you, sir. I don’t think one of you gentlemen, who are bred
to face all manner of dangers, would have liked it. As I was saying,
the body first moved, and then sat up, propping itself behind with its
hands. The eyes were wide open, and he looked at us for a moment, and
said slowly, “I’ve been to the Mediterranean, but I didn’t see Tom.”
Then the body sank back again, and this time the old Commodore was
really dead. But it was not a pleasant thing to happen to one, sir. I
do not remember anything like it in my forty years’ practise.’”

There was a silence of a few seconds after the captain had finished his
story, all the men sitting with eyes fixed on him, and not a little
surprised at the results of their call. Drysdale was the first to break
the silence, which he did with a long respiration; but, as he did not
seem prepared with any further remark, Tom took up the running.

“What a strange story,” he said; “and that really happened to you,
Captain Hardy?”

“To me, sir, in the Mediterranean, more than forty years ago.”

“The strangest thing about it is that the old Commodore should have
managed to get all the way to the ship, and then not have known where
his nephew was,” said Blake.

“He only knew his nephew’s berth, you see, sir,” said the Captain.

“But he might have beat about through the ship till he had found him.”

“You must remember that he was at his last breath, sir,” said the
Captain; “you can’t expect a man to have his head clear at such a
moment.”

“Not a man, perhaps; but I should a ghost,” said Blake.

“Time was everything to him,” went on the Captain, without regarding
the interruption, “space nothing. But the strangest part of it is that
I should have seen the figure at all. It’s true I had been thinking of
the old uncle, because of the boy’s illness; but I can’t suppose he was
thinking of me, and, as I say, he never recognized me. I have taken
a great deal of interest in such matters since that time, but I have
never met with just such a case as this.”

“No, that is the puzzle. One can fancy his appearing to his nephew well
enough,” said Tom.

“We can’t account for these things, or for a good many other things
which ought to be quite as startling, only we see them every day.”




LXXVII.


Christianity is in no more real danger now than it was a hundred and
fifty years ago, when Dean Swift, and many other greater wits than we
have amongst us nowadays, thought and said that it was doomed. We hold
in perfect good faith, that the good news our Lord brought is the best
the world will ever hear; that there has been a revelation in the man
Jesus Christ, of God the Creator of the world as our Father, so that
the humblest and poorest man can know God for all purposes for which
men need to know him in this life, and can have his help in becoming
like him, the business for which they were sent into it: and that there
will be no other revelation, though this one will be, through all time,
unfolding to men more and more of its unspeakable depth, and glory,
and beauty, in external nature, in human society, in individual men.
That, I believe to be a fair statement of the positive religious belief
of average Englishmen, if they had to think it out and to put it in
words; and all who hold it must of course look upon Christ’s gospel
as the great purifying, reforming, redeeming power in the world, and
desire that it shall be free to work in their own country on the most
favorable conditions which can be found for it.




LXXVIII.


We should remember that truth is many-sided; that all truth comes from
one source. There is only one sun in the heavens, yet, as you know,
there are many beautiful colors, all of which come from the one sun.
You cannot say that the red is better and truer than the blue, or that
the blue is better and truer than the yellow. You may prefer one to the
other; you may see that one color is more universal, more applicable
for different purposes than another, but there is truth in each. In the
same way there is only one earth, but there are a great many different
trees which grow out of it, and which derive their nourishment from
it; and although the oak may be very much better suited to England and
the fir to Norway, yet we admit that there is truth in each; that one
is just as good and true a tree as the other. Therefore, let us who are
apt to think in the church and other religious communities that we have
got all the truth ourselves, remember that truth is wider than can be
apprehended by any body of human beings, and let us be tolerant to one
another, not forgetting that those who are not in the same community
with us hold their side of the truth as strongly as we do ours.

Each religious community has witnessed, and is witnessing, to some side
of the truth. Religious communities are not perfect in themselves like
trees or flowers, but for that very reason it is all the more necessary
that the members of them should be tolerant, and should make the
greatest effort to understand those of other religious beliefs.




LXXIX.


I can take little interest in the questions which divide Christian
churches and sects, can see no reason why they should not now be
working side by side to redeem our waste places, and to make the
kingdoms of this world the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ.

St. Ambrose was a holy man, and exceeding zealous, even to slaying
for the one true creed. One day as he was walking in deep meditation
as to how to bring all men to his own mind, he was aware of a stream,
and a youth seated beside it. He had never seen so beautiful a
countenance, and sat down by him to speak of those things on which
his mind continually dwelt. To his horror he found that the beautiful
face covered a most heretical mind, and he spoke in sorrowful anger to
the youth of his danger. Whereupon the young stranger produced six or
seven vases, all of different shapes and colors, and, as he filled them
from the brook, said to the saint (as the legend is versified by Mr.
Lowell):—

    “Now Ambrose, thou maker of creeds, look here—
     As into these vases this water I pour;
     One shall hold less, another more,
     But the water the same in every case,
     Shall take the figure of the vase.
     O thou who wouldst unity reach through strife,
     Canst thou fit this sign to the Waters of Life.”

When Ambrose looked up, the youth, the vases, and the stream were gone;
but he knew he had talked with an angel, and his heart was changed.
I wish that angel would come and do a great deal of preaching to our
English Ambroses.




LXXX.


“There is no doubt,” as Lord Russell says, “that concession gives rise
to demands for fresh concession, and it is right that it should be so.
The true limit is, that all it is just to concede should be conceded;
all that it is true to affirm should be affirmed; but that which is
false should be denied.” Besides this power of concession, which she
has in a much greater degree than any other religious body, the English
Church, if she be a Catholic Church, as she pretends to be, has also
greater power of assimilation. Let her not be afraid of those sides
of the truth which have been most prominently put forward by other
religious communities. She can assimilate them if she pleases, and it
is her duty to assimilate whatever is true in them. Her mission in this
world is not to hold her own in the sense of resisting all reform,
of resisting all concession, but her duty and her mission is to go
to the lost people of our country, and of every country where she is
established or where she exists, and to draw those together into her
fold who cannot get into that of other religious bodies, which have
such limits as I have been speaking of to bar the gates of admission.
Her great mission is to seek and save those which are lost in every
community. The highest title of her ministers is _Servi servorum Dei_
(the servants of the servants of God), and, if she remembers this
high mission, if she endeavors by her life to exemplify her Master’s
spirit and to illustrate His life, she never need be afraid of
disestablishment or disendowment. What did the greatest of churchmen
who ever lived say on the point of people carrying on those miserable
squabbles that are dividing us in this day? They were saying, “We are
of Paul,” “We are of Apollos,” “We are of Peter?” and he said, “Who is
Paul? Who is Apollos? Who is Peter?” If you only understand to what an
inheritance you are called to, “all things are yours, whether Paul, or
Apollos, or Peter, or the world, or life, or death, or things present,
or things to come, all are yours, for ye are Christ’s, and Christ is
God’s.”




LXXXI.


It is said by some, as I think, unwise defenders of the faith, that a
colorless Christianity is no Christianity at all, that you can have no
church without a definite creed. To the first I would reply that, after
all, the bright white light is, in its purity, better than all color.
To the second, I admit that every church must have a definite creed,
but the more simple and broad that creed is the better. It is only
the simplest creed which can give us the unity, or the tolerance in
diversity, for which all good men are longing.




LXXXII.


Meekness, liberality, tolerance of other confessions! These are great
virtues, but hard, very hard to practise in such hurrying, driving,
democratic, competitive times as ours, when respect for authority
seems to have almost died out. Nevertheless, they must be practised,
if the church is ever to fulfil her great mission, and to become in a
larger and truer sense than she has ever yet been, “The Church of the
People.”




LXXXIII.


Poor conscience! to what pitiful uses is that sacred name turned! The
stolid Essex peasant, one of the Peculiar People, lets his child die
because he will not allow it to take medicine, and believes himself
to be suffering for conscience’s sake because he is summoned before
a magistrate to answer for its life. And he has far more reason on
his side than the Ritualist martyrs. I desire neither to speak nor
think scornfully or bitterly of them, but this at least I must say,
that men who can make matters of conscience of such trivialities as
the shape and color of vestments, the burning of candles and incense,
the position of tables, and the like, and in defence of these things
are prepared to defy authority, and break what they know to be the
law of their country, are not fit to be trusted with the spiritual
guidance of any portion of our people. England has a great work still
to do in the world, for which she needs children with quite other kind
of consciences than these—consciences which shall be simple, manly,
obedient, qualities which must disappear under such examples and
teaching as these men are giving.




LXXXIV.


Let us look to the One life as our model, and turn to Him who lived it
on our earth, as to the guide, and friend, and helper, who alone can
strengthen the feeble knees, and lift up the fainting heart. Just in so
far as we cleave to that teaching and follow that life, shall we live
our own faithfully.




LXXXV.


In certain crises in one’s life nothing is so useful or healthy for
one, as coming into direct and constant contact with an intellect
stronger than one’s own, which looks at the same subjects from a widely
different standpoint.




LXXXVI.


Ah! light words of those whom we love and honor, what a power ye are,
and how carelessly wielded by those who can use you! Surely for these
things also God will ask an account.




LXXXVII.


On went the talk and laughter. Two or three of the little boys in the
long dormitory were already in bed, sitting up with their chins on
their knees. The light burned clear, the noise went on. It was a trying
moment for Arthur, the poor little lonely boy; however, this time he
didn’t ask Tom what he might or might not do, but dropped on his knees
by his bedside, as he had done every day from his childhood, to open
his heart to Him who heareth the cry and beareth the sorrows of the
tender child, and the strong man in agony....

There were many boys in the room by whom that little scene was taken to
heart before they slept. But sleep seemed to have deserted the pillow
of poor Tom. For some time his excitement, and the flood of memories
which chased one another through his brain kept him from thinking or
resolving. His head throbbed, his heart leapt, and he could hardly keep
himself from springing out of bed and rushing about the room. Then the
thought of his own mother came across him, and the promise he had made
at her knee, years ago, never to forget to kneel by his bedside, and
give himself up to his Father, before he laid his head on the pillow,
from which it might never rise; and he lay down gently and cried as if
his heart would break. He was only fourteen years old.

It was no light act of courage in those days for a little fellow to say
his prayers publicly, even at Rugby. A few years later, when Arnold’s
manly piety had begun to leaven the school, the tables turned; before
he died, in the school-house, at least, and I believe in the other
houses, the rule was the other way. But poor Tom had come to school in
other times. The first few nights after he came he did not kneel down
because of the noise, but sat up in bed till the candle was out, and
then stole out and said his prayers, in fear lest some one should find
him out. So did many another poor little fellow. Then he began to think
that he might just as well say his prayers in bed, and then it didn’t
matter whether he was kneeling, or sitting, or lying down. And so it
had come to pass with Tom, as with all who will not confess their Lord
before men; and for the last year he had probably not said his prayers
in earnest a dozen times.

Poor Tom! the first and bitterest feeling which was likely to break his
heart was the sense of his own cowardice. The vice of all others which
he loathed was brought in and burned in on his own soul. He had lied to
his mother, to his conscience, to his God. How could he bear it? And
then the poor little weak boy, whom he had pitied and almost scorned
for his weakness, had done that which he, braggart as he was, dared not
do. The first dawn of comfort came to him in swearing to himself that
he would stand by that boy through thick and thin, and cheer him, and
help him, and bear his burdens, for the good deed done that night. Then
he resolved to write home next day and tell his mother all, and what
a coward her son had been. And then peace came to him, as he resolved
lastly, to bear his testimony next morning. The morning would be harder
than the night to begin with, but he felt that he could not afford to
let one chance slip. Several times he faltered, for the devil showed
him first all his old friends calling him “Saint” and “Square-toes,”
and a dozen hard names, and whispered to him that his motives would be
misunderstood, and he would only be misunderstood, and he would only be
left alone with the new boy; whereas it was his duty to keep all means
of influence, that he might do good to the largest number. And then
came the more subtle temptation, “Shall I not be showing myself braver
than others by doing this? Have I any right to begin it now? Ought I
not rather to pray in my own study, letting other boys know that I do
so, and trying to lead them to it, while in public at least I should go
on as I have done?” However, his good angel was too strong that night,
and he turned on his side and slept, tired of trying to reason, but
resolved to follow the impulse which had been so strong, and in which
he had found peace.

Next morning he was up and washed and dressed, all but his jacket and
waistcoat, just as the ten minutes’ bell began to ring, and then in
the face of the whole room knelt down to pray. Not five words could
he say—the bell mocked him; he was listening for every whisper in
the room—what were they all thinking of him? He was ashamed to go on
kneeling, ashamed to rise from his knees. At last, as it were from his
inmost heart, a still small voice seemed to breathe forth the words of
the publican, “God be merciful to me a sinner!” He repeated them over
and over, clinging to them as for his life, and rose from his knees
comforted and humbled, and ready to face the whole world. It was not
needed: two other boys besides Arthur had already followed his example,
and he went down to the great school with a glimmering of another
lesson in his heart—the lesson that he who has conquered his own coward
spirit has conquered the whole outward world; and that other one which
the old prophet learned in the cave in Mount Horeb, when he hid his
face, and the still small voice asked, “What doest thou here, Elijah,”
that however we may fancy ourselves alone on the side of good, the King
and Lord of men is nowhere without his witnesses; for in every society,
however seemingly corrupt and godless, there are those who have not
bowed the knee to Baal.




LXXXVIII.


“It is about the toughest part of a man’s life, I do believe,” said
Hardy, “the time he has to spend at college. My university life
has been so different altogether from what yours will be, that my
experience isn’t likely to benefit you.”

“I wish you would try me, though,” said Tom; “you don’t know what a
teachable sort of fellow I am, if anybody will take me the right way.
You taught me to scull, you know; or at least put me in the way to
learn. But sculling, and rowing, and cricket, and all the rest of it,
with such reading as I am likely to do, won’t be enough. I feel sure of
that already.”

“I don’t think it will,” said Hardy. “No amount of physical or mental
work will fill the vacuum you were talking of just now. It is the empty
house swept and garnished, which the boy might have had glimpses of,
but the man finds yawning within him, and which must be filled somehow.
It’s a pretty good three-years’ work to learn how to keep the devils
out of it, more or less, by the time you take your degree. At least I
have found it so.”

Hardy rose and took a turn or two up and down his room. He was
astonished at finding himself talking so unreservedly to one of whom
he knew so little, and half-wished the words recalled. He lived much
alone, and thought himself morbid and too self-conscious; why should he
be filling a youngster’s head with puzzles? How did he know that they
were thinking of the same thing?

But the spoken word cannot be recalled; it must go on its way for
good or evil; and this one set the hearer staring into the ashes, and
putting many things together in his head.

It was some minutes before he broke silence, but at last he gathered
up his thoughts, and said, “Well, I hope I sha’n’t shirk when the time
comes. You don’t think a fellow need shut himself up, though? I’m sure
I shouldn’t be any the better for that.”

“No, I don’t think you would,” said Hardy.

“Because, you see,” Tom went on, waxing bolder and more confidential,
“if I were to take to moping by myself, I shouldn’t read as you or any
sensible fellow would do; I know that well enough. I should just begin,
sitting with my legs up on the mantle-piece, and looking into my own
inside. I see you are laughing, but you know what I mean, don’t you,
now?”

“Yes; staring into the vacuum you were talking of just now; it all
comes back to that,” said Hardy.

“Well, perhaps it does,” said Tom; “and I don’t believe it does a
fellow a bit of good to be thinking about himself and his own doings.”

“Only he can’t help himself,” said Hardy. “Let him throw himself as he
will into all that is going on up here, after all he must be alone for
a great part of his time—all night at any rate—and when he gets his oak
sported, it’s all up with him. He must be looking more or less into
his own inside as you call it.”

“Then I hope he won’t find it as ugly a business as I do. If he does,
I’m sure he can’t be worse employed.”

“I don’t know that,” said Hardy; “he can’t learn anything worth
learning in any other way.”

“Oh, I like that!” said Tom; “it’s worth learning how to play tennis,
and how to speak the truth. You can’t learn either by thinking about
yourself ever so much.”

“You must know the truth before you can speak it,” said Hardy.

“So you always do in plenty of time.”

“How?” said Hardy.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Tom; “by a sort of instinct, I suppose. I
never in my life felt any doubt about what I _ought_ to say or do; did
you?”

“Well, yours is a good, comfortable, working belief, at any rate,” said
Hardy, smiling; “and I should advise you to hold on to it as long as
you can.”

“But you don’t think I can for very long, eh?”

“No; but men are very different. There’s no saying. If you were going
to get out of the self-dissecting business altogether though, why
should you have brought the subject up at all to-night? It looks
awkward for you, doesn’t it?”

Tom began to feel rather forlorn at this suggestion, and probably
betrayed it in his face, for Hardy changed the subject suddenly.




LXXXIX.


“You don’t mean to say,” said Tom, “that it makes any real difference
to a man in society here in Oxford, whether he is poor or rich; I mean,
of course, if he is a gentleman and a good fellow?”

“Yes, it does—the very greatest possible. But don’t take my word
for it. Keep your eyes open and judge for yourself; I daresay I’m
prejudiced on the subject.”

“Well, I sha’n’t believe it if I can help it,” said Tom; “you know you
said just now that you never called on any one. Perhaps you don’t give
men a fair chance. They might be glad to know you if you would let
them, and may think it’s your fault that they don’t.”

“Very possibly,” said Hardy; “I tell you not to take my word for it.”

“It upsets all one’s ideas so,” went on Tom, “why, Oxford ought to be
_the_ place in England where money should count for nothing. Surely,
now, such a man as Jervis, our captain, has more influence than all the
rich men in the college put together, and is more looked up to?”

“He’s one of a thousand,” said Hardy; “handsome, strong, good-tempered,
clever, and up to everything. Besides, he isn’t a poor man; and mind,
I don’t say that if he were he wouldn’t be where he is. I am speaking
of the rule, and not of the exceptions.”

Here Hardy’s scout came in to say that the Dean wanted to speak to him.
So he put on his cap and gown, and Tom rose also.

“Well, I’m sorry to turn you out,” said Hardy, “and I’m afraid I’ve
been very surly and made you very uncomfortable. You won’t come back
again in a hurry.”

“Indeed I will though, if you will let me,” said Tom; “I have enjoyed
my evening immensely.”

“Then come whenever you like,” said Hardy.

“But I am afraid of interfering with your reading,” said Tom.

“Oh, you needn’t mind that; I have plenty of time on my hands; besides,
one can’t read all night, and from eight till ten you’ll find me
generally idle.”

“Then you’ll see me often enough. But promise, now, to turn me out
whenever I am in the way.”

“Very well,” said Hardy, laughing; and so they parted for the time.

Some twenty minutes afterwards Hardy returned to his room after his
interview with the Dean, who merely wanted to speak to him about some
matter of college business. He flung his cap and gown on to the sofa,
and began to walk up and down his room, at first hurriedly, but soon
with his usual regular tramp. However expressive a man’s face may be,
and however well you may know it, it is simply nonsense to say that
you can tell what he is thinking about by looking at it, as many of
us are apt to boast. Still more absurd would it be to expect readers
to know what Hardy is thinking about, when they have never had the
advantage of seeing his face even in a photograph. Wherefore, it would
seem that the author is bound on such occasions to put his readers on
equal vantage-ground with himself, and not only to tell them what a man
does, but, so far as may be, what he is thinking about also.

His first thought, then, was one of pleasure at having been sought out
by one who seemed to be just the sort of friend he would like to have.
He contrasted our hero with the few men with whom he generally lived,
and for some of whom he had a high esteem—whose only idea of exercise
was a two hours’ constitutional walk in the afternoons, and whose life
was chiefly spent over books and behind sported oaks—and felt that this
was more of a man after his own heart. Then came doubts whether his
new friend would draw back when he had been up a little longer, and
knew more of the place. At any rate he had said and done nothing to
tempt him; “if he pushes the acquaintance—and I think he will—it will
be because he likes me for myself. And I can do him good too, I feel
sure,” he went on, as he ran over rapidly his own life for the last
three years. “Perhaps he won’t flounder into all the sloughs that I
have had to drag through; he will get too much of the healthy, active
life up here for that, which I never had; but some of them he must get
into. All the companionship of boating and cricketing, and wine-parties
and supper-parties, and all the reading in the world won’t keep him
from many a long hour of mawkishness, and discontent, and emptiness
of heart; he feels that already himself. Am I sure of that, though? I
may be only reading myself into him. At any rate, why should I have
helped to trouble him before the time? Was that a friend’s part? Well,
he _must_ face it, and the sooner the better perhaps. At any rate it
is done. But what a blessed thing if one can only help a youngster
like this to fight his way through the cold clammy atmosphere which is
always hanging over him, and ready to settle down on him—can help to
keep some living faith in him, that the world, Oxford and all, isn’t a
respectable piece of machinery set going some centuries back! Ah! it’s
an awful business, that temptation to believe, or think you believe,
in a dead God. It has nearly broken my back a score of times. What are
all the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil to this? It
includes them all. Well, I believe I can help him, and, please God, I
will, if he will only let me; and the very sight of him does me good;
so I won’t believe we went down the lasher together for nothing.”




XC.


Don’t let reformers of any sort think that they are going really to lay
hold of the working boys and young men of England by any educational
grapnel whatever, which hasn’t some _bona fide_ equivalent for the
games of the old country “veast” in it; something to put in the place
of the back-swording and wrestling and racing; something to try the
muscles of men’s bodies, and the endurance of their hearts, and to make
them rejoice in their strength. In all the new-fangled comprehensive
plans which I see, this is all left out: and the consequence is, that
your great Mechanics’ Institutes end in intellectual priggism, and your
Christian Young Men’s Societies in religious Pharisaism.

Well, well, we must bide our time. Life isn’t all beer and skittles—but
beer and skittles, or something better of the same sort, must form
a good part of every Englishman’s education. If I could only drive
this into the heads of you rising Parliamentary Lords, and young
swells who “have your ways made for you,” as the saying is—you, who
frequent palaver houses and West-end Clubs, waiting always to strap
yourselves on to the back of poor dear old John Bull, as soon as the
present used-up lot (your fathers and uncles), who sit there on the
great Parliamentary-majorities’ pack-saddle, and make believe they’re
grinding him with their red-tape bridle, tumble, or have to be lifted
off!

I don’t think much of you yet—I wish I could; though you do go talking
and lecturing up and down the country to crowded audiences, and are
busy with all sorts of philanthropic intellectualism, and circulating
libraries and museums, and heaven only knows what besides, and try to
make us think, through newspaper reports, that you are, even as we,
of the working classes. But, bless your hearts, we ain’t so “green,”
though lots of us of all sorts toady you enough certainly, and try to
make you think so.

I’ll tell you what to do now: instead of all this trumpeting and fuss,
which is only the old Parliamentary-majority dodge over again—just you
go, each of you (you’ve plenty of time for it, if you’ll only give up
the other line), and quietly make three or four friends, real friends,
among us. You’ll find a little trouble in getting at the right sort,
because such birds don’t come lightly to your lure—but found they may
be. Take, say, two out of the professions, lawyer, parson, doctor—which
you will; one out of trade, and three or four out of the working
classes, tailors, engineers, carpenters, engravers—there’s plenty of
choice. Let them be men of your own ages, mind, and ask them to your
homes; introduce them to your wives and sisters, and get introduced to
theirs; give them good dinners, and talk to them about what is really
at the bottom of your hearts, and box, and run, and row with them, when
you have a chance. Do all this honestly as man to man, and by the time
you come to ride old John, you’ll be able to do something more than sit
on his back, and may feel his mouth with some stronger bridle than a
red-tape one.

Ah, if you only would! But you have got too far out of the right rut,
I fear. Too much over-civilization, and the deceitfulness of riches.
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. More’s the
pity. I never came across but two of you who could value a man wholly
and solely for what was in him; who thought themselves verily and
indeed of the same flesh and blood as John Jones, the attorney’s clerk,
and Bill Smith, the costermonger, and could act as if they thought so.




XCI.


The change in Tom’s opinions and objects of interest brought him now
into more intimate relations with a set of whom he had as yet seen
little. For want of a better name, we may call them “the party of
progress.” At their parties, instead of practical jokes, and boisterous
mirth, and talk of boats, and bats, and guns, and horses, the highest
and deepest questions of morals, and politics, and metaphysics, were
discussed, and discussed with a freshness and enthusiasm which is apt
to wear off when doing has to take the place of talking, but has a
strange charm of its own while it lasts, and is looked back to with
loving regret by those for whom it is no longer a possibility.

With this set Tom soon fraternized, and drank in many new ideas, and
took to himself also many new crotchets besides those with which he
was really weighted. Almost all his new acquaintances were Liberal in
politics, but a few only were ready to go all lengths with him. They
were all Union men, and Tom, of course, followed the fashion, and soon
propounded theories in that institution which gained him the name of
Chartist Brown.

There was a strong mixture of self-conceit in it all. He had a kind
of idea that he had discovered something which it was creditable to
have discovered, and that it was a very fine thing to have all these
feelings for, and sympathies with, “the masses,” and to believe in
democracy, and “glorious humanity,” and “a good time coming,” and I
know not what other big matters. And, although it startled and pained
him at first to hear himself called ugly names, which he had hated
and despised from his youth up, and to know that many of his old
acquaintances looked upon him, not simply as a madman, but as a madman
with snobbish proclivities; yet, when the first plunge was over, there
was a good deal on the other hand which tickled his vanity, and was far
from being unpleasant.

To do him justice, however, the disagreeables were such that, had
there not been some genuine belief at the bottom, he would certainly
have been headed back very speedily into the fold of political and
social orthodoxy. As it was, amidst the cloud of sophisms, and
platitudes, and big one-sided ideas half-mastered, which filled his
thoughts and overflowed in his talk, there was growing in him and
taking firmer hold on him daily a true and broad sympathy for men as
men, and especially for poor men as poor men, and a righteous and
burning hatred against all laws, customs, or notions, which, according
to his light, either were or seemed to be setting aside, or putting
anything else in the place of, or above the man. It was with him the
natural outgrowth of the child’s and boy’s training (though his father
would have been much astonished to be told so), and the instincts of
those early days were now getting rapidly set into habits and faiths,
and becoming a part of himself.

In this stage of his life, as in so many former ones, Tom got great
help from his intercourse with Hardy, now the rising tutor of the
college. Hardy was travelling much the same road himself as our hero,
but was somewhat further on, and had come into it from a different
country, and through quite other obstacles. Their early lives had
been so different; and, both by nature and from long and severe
self-restraint and discipline, Hardy was much the less impetuous and
demonstrative of the two. He did not rush out, therefore (as Tom was
too much inclined to do), the moment he had seized hold of the end of
a new idea which he felt to be good for _him_ and what _he_ wanted,
and brandish it in the face of all comers, and think himself a traitor
to the truth if he wasn’t trying to make everybody he met with eat it.
Hardy, on the contrary, would test his new idea, and turn it over, and
prove it as far as he could, and try to get hold of the whole of it,
and ruthlessly strip off any tinsel or rose-pink sentiment with which
it might happen to be mixed up.

Often and often did Tom suffer under this severe method, and rebel
against it, and accuse his friend, both to his face and in his own
secret thought, of coldness, and want of faith, and all manner of other
sins of omission and commission. In the end, however, he generally came
round, with more or less of rebellion, according to the severity of
the treatment, and acknowledged that, when Hardy brought him down from
riding the high horse, it was not without good reason, and that the
dust in which he was rolled was always most wholesome dust.

For instance, there was no phrase more frequently in the mouths of the
party of progress than “the good cause.” It was a fine big-sounding
phrase, which could be used with great effect in perorations of
speeches at the Union, and was sufficiently indefinite to be easily
defended from ordinary attacks, while it saved him who used it the
trouble of ascertaining accurately for himself or settling for his
hearers what it really did mean. But, however satisfactory it might
be before promiscuous audiences, and so long as vehement assertion or
declaration was all that was required to uphold it, this same “good
cause” was liable to come to much grief when it had to get itself
defined. Hardy was particularly given to persecution on this subject,
when he could get Tom, and, perhaps, one or two others, in a quiet
room by themselves. While professing the utmost sympathy for “the good
cause,” and a hope as strong as theirs that all its enemies might find
themselves suspended to lamp-posts as soon as possible, he would pursue
it into corners from which escape was most difficult, asking it and its
supporters what it exactly was, and driving them from one cloud-land to
another, and from “the good cause” to the “people’s cause,” “the cause
of labor,” and other like troublesome definitions, until the great
idea seemed to have no shape or existence any longer even in their own
brains.

But Hardy’s persecution, provoking as it was for the time, never went
to the undermining of any real conviction in the minds of his juniors,
or the shaking of anything which did not need shaking, but only helped
them to clear their ideas and brains as to what they were talking and
thinking about, and gave them glimpses—soon clouded over again, but
most useful, nevertheless—of the truth, that there were a good many
knotty questions to be solved before a man could be quite sure that he
had found out the way to set the world thoroughly to rights, and heal
all the ills that flesh is heir to.

Hardy treated another of his friend’s most favorite notions even
with less respect than this one of “the good cause.” Democracy, that
“universal democracy,” which their favorite author had recently
declared to be “an inevitable fact of the days in which we live,” was,
perhaps, on the whole the pet idea of the small section of liberal
young Oxford, with whom Tom was now hand and glove. They lost no
opportunity of worshipping it, and doing battle for it; and, indeed,
did most of them very truly believe that that state of the world which
this universal democracy was to bring about and which was coming no man
could say how soon, was to be in fact that age of peace and good-will
which men had dreamt of in all times, when the lion should lie down
with the kid, and nation should not vex nation any more.

After hearing something to this effect from Tom on several occasions,
Hardy cunningly lured him to his rooms on the pretence of talking over
the prospects of the boat club, and then, having seated him by the
fire, which he himself proceeded to assault gently with the poker,
propounded suddenly to him the question:

“Brown, I should like to know what you mean by ‘democracy?’”

Tom at once saw the trap into which he had fallen, and made several
efforts to break away, but unsuccessfully; and, being seated to a cup
of tea, and allowed to smoke, was then and there grievously oppressed,
and mangled, and sat upon, by his oldest and best friend. He took his
ground carefully, and propounded only what he felt sure that Hardy
himself would at once accept—what no man of any worth could possibly
take exception to. “He meant much more,” he said, “than this; but for
the present purpose it would be enough for him to say that, whatever
else it might mean, democracy in his mouth always meant that every man
should have a share in the government of his country.”

Hardy, seeming to acquiesce, and making a sudden change in the subject
of their talk, decoyed his innocent guest away from the thought
of democracy for a few minutes, by holding up to him the flag of
hero-worship, in which worship Tom was, of course, a sedulous believer.
Then, having involved him in most difficult country, his persecutor
opened fire upon him from masked batteries of the most deadly kind, the
guns being all from the armory of his own prophets.

“You long for the rule of the ablest man, everywhere, at all times?
To find your ablest man, and then give him power, and obey him—that
you hold to be about the highest act of wisdom which a nation can be
capable of?”

“Yes; and you know you believe that too, Hardy, just as firmly as I do.”

“I hope so. But then, how about our universal democracy, and every man
having a share in the government of his country?”

Tom felt that his flank was turned; in fact, the contrast of his two
beliefs had never struck him vividly before, and he was consequently
much confused. But Hardy went on tapping a big coal gently with the
poker, and gave him time to recover himself and collect his thoughts.

“I don’t mean, of course, that every man is to have an actual share in
the government,” he said at last.

“But every man is somehow to have a share; and, if not an actual one, I
can’t see what the proposition comes to.”

“I call it having a share in the government when a man has share in
saying who shall govern him.”

“Well, you’ll own that’s a very different thing. But, let’s see; will
that find our wisest governor for us—letting all the foolishest men in
the nation have a say as to who he is to be?”

“Come now, Hardy, I’ve heard you say that you are for manhood suffrage.”

“That’s another question; you let in another idea there. At present we
are considering whether the _vox populi_ is the best test for finding
your best man. I’m afraid all history is against you.”

“That’s a good joke. Now, there I defy you, Hardy.”

“Begin at the beginning, then, and let us see.”

“I suppose you’ll say, then, that the Egyptian and Babylonian empires
were better than the little Jewish republic.”

“Republic! well, let that pass. But I never heard that the Jews elected
Moses, or any of the judges.”

“Well, never mind the Jews; they’re an exceptional case: you can’t
argue from them.”

“I don’t admit that. I believe just the contrary. But go on.”

“Well, then, what do you say to the glorious Greek republics, with
Athens at the head of them?”

“I say that no nation ever treated their best men so badly. I see I
must put on a lecture in Aristophanes for your special benefit. Vain,
irritable, shallow, suspicious old Demus, with his two oboli in his
cheek, and doubting only between Cleon and the sausage-seller, which he
shall choose for his wisest man—not to govern, but to serve his whims
and caprices. You must call another witness, I think.”

“But that’s a caricature.”

“Take the picture, then, out of Thucydides, Plato, Xenophon, how you
will—you won’t mend the matter much. You shouldn’t go so fast, Brown;
you won’t mind my saying so, I know. You don’t get clear in your own
mind before you pitch into every one who comes across you, and so do
your own side (which I admit is mostly the right one) more harm than
good.”

Tom couldn’t stand being put down so summarily, and fought over the
ground from one country to another, from Rome to the United States,
with all the arguments he could muster, but with little success. That
unfortunate first admission of his, he felt it throughout, like a
mill-stone round his neck, and could not help admitting to himself,
when he left, that there was a good deal in Hardy’s concluding remark:
“You’ll find it rather a tough business to get your ‘universal
democracy,’ and ‘government by the wisest,’ to pull together in one
coach.”

Notwithstanding all such occasional reverses and cold baths, however,
Tom went on strengthening himself in his new opinions, and maintaining
them with all the zeal of a convert. The shelves of his bookcase, and
the walls of his room, soon began to show signs of the change which
was taking place in his ways of looking at men and things. Hitherto a
framed engraving of George III. had hung over his mantel-piece; but
early in this, his third year, the frame had disappeared for a few
days, and when it reappeared, the solemn face of John Milton looked
out from it, while the honest monarch had retired into a portfolio.
A facsimile of Magna Charta soon displaced a large colored print of
“A Day with the Pycheley;” and soon afterwards the death-warrant of
Charles I., with its grim and resolute rows of signatures and seals,
appeared on the wall in a place of honor, in the neighborhood of
Milton.




XCII.


“I can’t for the life of me fancy, I confess,” wrote Tom, “what you
think will come of speculating about necessity and free will. I only
know that I can hold out my hand before me, and can move it to the
right or left, despite of all powers in heaven or earth. As I sit here
writing to you I can let into my heart, and give the reins to, all
sorts of devils’ passions, or to the Spirit of God. Well, that’s enough
for me. I _know_ it of myself, and I believe you know it of yourself,
and everybody knows it of themselves or himself; and why you can’t be
satisfied with that, passes my comprehension. As if one hasn’t got
puzzles enough, and bothers enough, under one’s nose, without going
afield after a lot of metaphysical quibbles. No, I’m wrong—not going
afield—anything one has to go afield for is all right. What a fellow
meets outside himself he isn’t responsible for, and must do the best
he can with. But to go on forever looking inside of one’s self, and
groping about amongst one’s own sensations, and ideas, and whimsies of
one kind and another, I can’t conceive a poorer line of business than
that. Don’t you get into it now, that’s a dear boy.

“Very likely you’ll tell me you can’t help it; that every one has his
own difficulties, and must fight them out, and that mine are one sort,
and yours another. Well, perhaps you may be right. I hope I’m getting
to know that my plummet isn’t to measure all the world. But it does
seem a pity that men shouldn’t be thinking about how to cure some of
the wrongs which poor dear old England is pretty near dying of, instead
of taking the edge off their brains, and spending all their steam in
speculating about all kinds of things, which wouldn’t make any poor man
in the world—or rich one either, for that matter—a bit better off, if
they were all found out, and settled to-morrow.”




XCIII.


William Cobbett was born in 1762 at Farnham, the third son of a small
farmer, honest, industrious, and frugal, from whom, as his famous son
writes, “if he derived no honor, he derived no shame,” and who used to
boast that he had four boys, the eldest but fifteen, who did as much
work as any three men in the parish of Farnham. “When I first trudged
afield,” William writes, “with my wooden bottle and satchel slung over
my shoulder, I was hardly able to climb the gates and stiles.” From
driving the small birds from the turnip-seed and rooks from the peas,
he rose to weeding wheat, hoeing peas, and so up to driving the plough
for 2_d._ a day, which paid for the evening school where he learned
to read and write, getting in this rough way the rudiments of an
education over which he rejoices as he contrasts it triumphantly with
that of the “frivolous idiots that are turned out from Winchester and
Westminster Schools, or from those dens of dunces called Colleges and
Universities,” as having given him the ability to become “one of the
greatest terrors to one of the greatest and most powerful bodies of
knaves and fools that were ever permitted to afflict this or any other
country.”

At eleven he was employed in clipping the boxedgings in the gardens
of Farnham Castle, and, hearing from one of the gardeners of the
glories of Kew, he started for that place with 1_s._ 1½_d._ in his
pocket, 3_d._ of which sum he spent in buying “Swift’s Tale of a Tub.”
The book produced a “birth of intellect” in the little rustic. He
carried it with him wherever he went, and at twenty-four lost it in a
box which fell overboard in the Bay of Fundy, a “loss which gave me
greater pain than I have ever felt at losing thousands of pounds.”
He returned home, and continued to work for his father till 1782,
attending fairs and hearing Washington’s health proposed by his father
at farmers’ ordinaries. In that year he went on a visit to Portsmouth,
saw the sea for the first time, and was with difficulty hindered
from taking service at once on board a man-of-war. He returned home
“spoilt for a farmer,” and next year started for London. He served in
a solicitor’s office in Gray’s Inn for eight months (where he worked
hard at grammar), then enlisted in the 54th regiment, and after a few
weeks’ drill at Chatham embarked for Nova Scotia, where the corps were
serving. Here his temperate habits, strict performance of duty, and
masterly ability and intelligence, raised him in little more than a
year to the post of sergeant-major over the heads of fifty comrades
his seniors in service. His few spare hours were spent in hard study,
especially in acquiring a thorough mastery of grammar. He had bought
Lowth’s Grammar, which he wrote out two or three times, got it by
heart, and imposed on himself the task of saying it over to himself
every time he was posted sentinel. When he had thoroughly mastered
it, and could write with ease and correctness, he turned to logic,
rhetoric, geometry, French, to Vauban’s fortification, and books on
military exercise and evolutions. In this way, by the year 1791, when
the 54th was recalled, he had become the most trusted man in the
regiment. The colonel used him as a sort of second adjutant; all the
paymaster’s accounts were prepared by him; he coached the officers,
and used to make out cards with the words of command for many of them,
who, on parade, as he scornfully writes, “were commanding me to move
my hands and feet in words I had taught them, and were in everything
except mere authority my inferiors, and ought to have been commanded by
me.” Notwithstanding the masterfulness already showing itself, Cobbett
was a strictly obedient soldier, and left the army with the offer of a
commission, and the highest character for ability and zeal.

No sooner, however, was his discharge accomplished, than he set
himself to work to expose and bring to justice several of the officers
of his regiment, who had systematically mulcted the soldiers in
their companies of their wretched pay. His thorough knowledge of the
regimental accounts made him a formidable accuser; and, after looking
into the matter, the then Judge-Advocate-General agreed to prosecute,
and a court-martial was summoned at Woolwich for the purpose in 1792.
But Cobbett did not appear. He found that it would be necessary to call
his clerks, still serving in the regiment, and the consequences to
them in those days were likely to be so serious, that he preferred to
abandon his attempt. Accordingly, he did not appear, and the fact was
bitterly used against him in later days by his political opponents. The
whole story is worth reading, and is very fairly given by Mr. Smith. He
had now made a happy marriage with the girl to whom he had entrusted
all his savings years before, and started with her to Paris; but,
hearing on the way of the king’s dethronement, and the Bastile riots,
he turned aside and embarked for America.

He arrived in Philadelphia in October 1792, enthusiastic for the land
of liberty, and an ardent student of Paine’s works, and set to work to
gain his living by teaching English to the French emigrants there, and
by such literary work as he could get. In both he was very successful,
but soon found himself in fierce antagonism with the American press,
and, after publishing several pamphlets, “A Kick for a Bite,” “A
Bone to Gnaw for the Democrats,” &c., established his first famous
periodical, “Peter Porcupine,” which soon gained him the reputation
in England as well as America of a staunch and able loyalist, and
severe critic of Republican institutions. The only serious mistake
in his American career was his attack on Dr. Priestly, then also an
emigrant in Philadelphia. The States had become an undesirable place of
residence for him before 1798, when an intimation reached him through
the British Embassy that the English Government were sensible of the
obligations they owed him, and were prepared to advance his interests.
These overtures he steadily refused; but, finding a Royalist’s life
was becoming too hot, and having been beaten in a libel suit, which
nearly ruined him (though his expenses were nominally defrayed by the
subscriptions of his American admirers), he closed the brilliant career
of “Peter Porcupine’s Gazette,” and returned to England, having at
last, to use his own phrase, “got the better of all diffidence in my
own capacity.”

He reached home in 1800, and found himself at once courted and famous.
He was entertained by Ministers of State and publishers, but after
looking round him in his own sturdy fashion, and finding the condition
of the political and literary world by no means to his mind, while
that of the great body of the people was becoming worse every day, he
resisted all temptations and started on the career which he followed
faithfully till his death. In 1802 appeared the first number of
“Cobbett’s Political Register,” which (with the break of two months
in 1817, when he fled from the new Gagging Act to America) continued
to appear weekly till June 1835, and remains a wonderful witness to
the strength and the weaknesses of the Sussex ploughboy. During those
long years, and all the fierce controversies which marked them, he was
grandly faithful, according to his lights, to the cause of the poor:—“I
for my part should not be at all surprised,” he wrote in 1806, “if
some one were to propose selling the poor, or mortgaging them to the
fund-holders. Ah! you may wince; you may cry Jacobin or leveller as
long as you please. I wish to see the poor men of England what the poor
men of England were when I was born; and from endeavoring to accomplish
this wish nothing but the want of means shall make me desist.” And
loyally he maintained the fight against sinecures, place-hunting, and
corruption of all kinds until his death, full of years, the member
for Oldham, and the popular leader of the widest influence among the
Liberal party of the first Reform period. For the incidents of the
long struggle—how the government press turned savagely on the man whom
they had hailed on his return from America as one “whom no corruption
can seduce nor any personal danger intimidate from the performance of
his duty;” how Attorney-Generals watched him and prosecuted; how he
insisted on conducting his own causes, and so spent two years in jail,
and was mulcted again and again in heavy damages; how he fought through
it all, and tended his farm and fruit-trees, and wrote his “Rural
Rides” and “Cottage Economy,” and was a tender and loving man in his
own home, and retained the warm regard of such men as Wyndham and Lord
Radnor, while he was the best hated and abused man in England—we must
refer all (and we hope there are many) who care to know about them to
the second volume of Edward Smith’s life of Cobbett.

There are few lives that we know of better worth careful study in these
times. We have no space here to do more than quote the best estimate of
the man’s work which has ever come from one of those classes who for
thirty-five years looked on him as their most dangerous enemy:—

    “I know him well, on every side
       Walled round with wilful prejudice;
     A self-taught peasant rough in speech,
     Self-taught, and confident to teach,
       In blame not overwise.

     What matter, if an honest thought
       Sometimes a homely phrase require?
     Let those who fear the bracing air
     Look for a milder sky elsewhere,
       Or stay beside the fire.

     There are worse things in this bad world
       Than bitter speech and bearing free—
     I hail thee, genuine English born—
     Not yet the lineage is outworn
       That owns a man like thee.”




XCIV.


The state of Europe thirty years ago was far more dead and hopeless
than now. There were no wars, certainly, and no expectations of wars.
But there was a dull, beaten-down, pent-up feeling abroad, as if the
lid were screwed down on the nations, and the thing which had been,
however cruel and heavy and mean, was that which was to remain to the
end. England was better off than her neighbors, but yet in bad case.
In the south and west particularly, several causes had combined to
spread a very bitter feeling abroad amongst the agricultural poor.
First among these stood the new poor law, the provisions of which were
rigorously carried out in most districts. The poor had as yet felt the
harshness only of the new system. Then the land was in many places in
the hands of men on their last legs, the old sporting farmers, who had
begun business as young men while the great war was going on, had made
money hand over hand for a few years out of the war prices, and had
tried to go on living with grayhounds and yeomanry uniforms—“horse to
ride and weapon to wear”—through the hard years which had followed.
These were bad masters in every way, unthrifty, profligate, needy,
and narrow-minded. The younger men who were supplanting them were
introducing machinery, threshing machines and winnowing machines, to
take the little bread which a poor man was still able to earn out of
the mouths of his wife and children—so at least the poor thought and
muttered to one another; and the mutterings broke out every now and
then in the long nights of the winter months in blazing ricks and
broken machines. Game preserving was on the increase. Australia and
America had not yet become familiar words in every English village, and
the labor market was everywhere overstocked; and last, but not least,
the corn laws were still in force, and the bitter and exasperating
strife in which they went out was at its height. And while Swing and
his myrmidons were abroad in the counties, and could scarcely be kept
down by yeomanry and poor-law guardians, the great towns were in almost
worse case. Here too emigration had not yet set in to thin the labor
market; wages were falling, and prices rising; the corn-law struggle
was better understood and far keener than in the country; and Chartism
was gaining force every day, and rising into a huge threatening giant,
waiting to put forth his strength, and eager for the occasion which
seemed at hand.

You generation of young men, who were too young then to be troubled
with such matters, and have grown into manhood since, you little
know—may you never know!—what it is to be living the citizens of a
divided and distracted nation. For the time that danger is past. In
a happy hour, and so far as man can judge, in time, and only just in
time, came the repeal of the corn laws, and the great cause of strife
and the sense of injustice passed away out of men’s minds. The nation
was roused by the Irish famine, and the fearful distress in other
parts of the country, to begin looking steadily and seriously at some
of the sores which were festering in its body, and undermining health
and life. And so the tide had turned, and England had already passed
the critical point, when 1848 came upon Christendom, and the whole of
Europe leapt up into a wild blaze of revolution.

Is any one still inclined to make light of the danger that threatened
England in that year, to sneer at the 10th of April, and the monster
petition, and the monster meetings on Kennington and other commons?
Well, if there be such persons amongst my readers, I can only say that
they can have known nothing of what was going on around them and below
them, at that time, and I earnestly hope that their vision has become
clearer since then, and that they are not looking with the same eyes
that see nothing, at the signs of to-day. For that there are questions
still to be solved by us in England, in this current half-century,
quite as likely to tear the nation in pieces as the corn laws, no man
with half an eye in his head can doubt. They may seem little clouds
like a man’s hand on the horizon just now, but they will darken the
whole heaven before long, unless we can find wisdom enough amongst us
to take the little clouds in hand in time, and make them descend in
soft rain.




XCV.


The years 1848-9 had been years of revolution, and, as always happens
at such times, the minds of men had been greatly stirred on many
questions, and especially on the problem of the social condition of
the great mass of the poor in all European countries. In Paris, the
revolution had been the signal for a great effort on the part of the
workmen; and some remarkable experiments had been made, both by the
Provisional Government of 1848 and by certain employers of labor, and
bodies of skilled mechanics, with a view to place the conditions of
labor upon a more equitable and satisfactory footing, or, to use the
common phrase of the day, to reconcile the interests of capital and
labor. The government experiment of “national workshops” had failed
disastrously, but a number of the private associations were brilliantly
successful. The history of some of these associations—of the sacrifices
which had been joyfully made by the associates in order to collect the
small funds necessary to start them—of the ability and industry with
which they were conducted, and of their marvellous effect on the habits
of all those engaged in the work, had deeply interested many persons
in England. It was resolved to try an experiment of the same kind in
England, but the conditions were very different. The seed there had
already taken root amongst the industrial classes, and the movement had
come from them. In England the workpeople, as a rule, had no belief
in association, except for defensive purposes. It was chiefly amongst
young professional men that the idea was working, and it was necessary
to preach it to those whom it most concerned. Accordingly a society was
formed, chiefly of young barristers, under the presidency of the late
Mr. Maurice, who was then Chaplain of Lincoln’s Inn, for the purpose of
establishing associations similar to those in Paris. It was called the
Society for Promoting Working Men’s Associations, and I happened to be
one of the original members, and on the Council. We were all full of
enthusiasm and hope in our work, and of propagandist zeal: anxious to
bring in all the recruits we could. I cannot even now think of my own
state of mind at the time without wonder and amusement. I certainly
thought (and for that matter have never altered my opinion to this day)
that here we had found the solution of the great labor question; but I
was also convinced that we had nothing to do but just to announce it,
and found an association or two, in order to convert all England, and
usher in the millennium at once, so plain did the whole thing seem
to me. I will not undertake to answer for the rest of the Council,
but I doubt whether I was at all more sanguine than the majority.
Consequently we went at it with a will: held meetings at six o’clock in
the morning (so as not to interfere with our regular work) for settling
the rules of our central society, and its off-shoots, and late in the
evening, for gathering tailors, shoemakers, and other handicraftsmen,
whom we might set to work; started a small publishing office, presided
over by a diminutive one-eyed costermonger, a rough-and-ready speaker
and poet (who had been in prison as a Chartist leader), from which we
issued tracts and pamphlets, and ultimately a small newspaper; and,
as the essential condition of any satisfactory progress, commenced a
vigorous agitation for such an amendment in the law as would enable
our infant associations to carry on their business in safety, and
without hindrance. We very soon had our hands full. Our denunciations
of unlimited competition brought on us attacks in newspapers and
magazines, which we answered, nothing loth. Our opponents called
us Utopians and Socialists, and we retorted that at any rate we
were Christians; that our trade principles were on all-fours with
Christianity, while theirs were utterly opposed to it. So we got, or
adopted, the name of Christian Socialists, and gave it to our tracts,
and our paper. We were ready to fight our battle wherever we found
an opening, and got support from the most unexpected quarters. I
remember myself being asked to meet Archbishop Whately, and several
eminent political economists, and explain what we were about. After a
couple of hours of hard discussion, in which I have no doubt I talked
much nonsense, I retired, beaten, but quite unconvinced. Next day, the
late Lord Ashburton, who had been present, came to my chambers and
gave me a cheque for £50 to help our experiment; and a few days later
I found another nobleman, sitting on the counter of our shoemakers’
association, arguing with the manager, and giving an order for boots.

It was just in the midst of all this that my brother came to live with
us. I had already converted him, as I thought. He was a subscribing
member of our Society, and dealt with our Associations; and I had no
doubt would now join the Council, and work actively in the new crusade.
I knew how sound his judgment was, and that he never went back from a
resolution once taken, and therefore was all the more eager to make
sure of him, and, as a step in this direction, had already placed his
name on committees, and promised his attendance. But I was doomed to
disappointment. He attended one or two of our meetings, but I could not
induce him to take any active part with us. At a distance of more than
twenty years it is of course difficult to recall very accurately what
passed between us, but I can remember his reasons well enough to give
the substance of them. And first, as he had formerly objected to the
violent language of the leaders of the Anti-Corn-Law agitation, so he
now objected to what he looked upon as our extravagance.

“You don’t want to divide other people’s property?”

“No,” I answered.

“Then why call yourselves Socialists?”

“But we couldn’t help ourselves: other people called us so first.”

“Yes; but you needn’t have accepted the name. Why acknowledge that the
cap fitted?”

“Well, it would have been cowardly to back out. We borrow the ideas of
these Frenchmen, of association as opposed to competition as the true
law of industry; and of organizing labor—of securing the laborer’s
position by organizing production and consumption—and it would be
cowardly to shirk the name. It is only fools who know nothing about the
matter, or people interested in the competitive system of trade, who
believe, or say, that a desire to divide other people’s property is of
the essence of Socialism.”

“That may be very true: but nine-tenths of mankind, or at any rate, of
Englishmen, come under one or the other of those categories. If you are
called Socialists, you will never persuade the British public that this
is not your object. There was no need to take the name. You have weight
enough to carry already, without putting that on your shoulders.”

This was his first objection, and he proved to be right. At any rate,
after some time we dropped the name, and the “Christian Socialist” was
changed into the “Journal of Association.” English Socialists generally
have instinctively avoided it ever since, and called themselves
“co-operators,” thereby escaping much abuse in the intervening years.
And when I look back, I confess I do not wonder that we repelled rather
than attracted men who, like my brother, were inclined theoretically to
agree with us. For I am bound to admit that a strong vein of fanaticism
and eccentricity ran through our ranks, which the marvellous patience,
gentleness, and wisdom of our beloved president were not enough to
counteract or control. Several of our most active and devoted members
were also strong vegetarians, and phonetists. In a generation when
beards and wide-awakes were looked upon as insults to decent society,
some of us wore both, with a most heroic indifference to public
opinion. In the same way, there was often a trenchant, and almost
truculent, tone about us, which was well calculated to keep men of my
brother’s temperament at a distance. I rather enjoyed it myself, but
learnt its unwisdom when I saw its effects on him, and others, who were
inclined to join us, and would have proved towers of strength. It was
right and necessary to denounce the evils of unlimited competition, and
the falsehood of the economic doctrine of “every man for himself;” but
quite unnecessary, and therefore unwise, to speak of the whole system
of trade as “the disgusting vice of shop-keeping,” as was the habit of
several of our foremost and ablest members.




XCVI.


Hardy had a way of throwing life into what he was talking about, and,
like many men with strong opinions, and passionate natures, either
carried his hearers off their legs and away with him altogether,
or roused every spark of combativeness in them. The latter was the
effect which his lecture on the Punic Wars had on Tom. He made several
protests as Hardy went on; but Grey’s anxious looks kept him from going
fairly into action, till Hardy stuck the black pin, which represented
Scipio, triumphantly in the middle of Carthage, and, turning round
said, “And now for some tea, Grey, before you have to turn out.”

Tom opened fire while the tea was brewing.

“You couldn’t say anything bad enough about aristocracies this morning,
Hardy, and now to-night you are crowing over the success of the
heaviest and cruelest oligarchy that ever lived, and praising them up
to the skies.”

“Hullo! here’s a breeze!” said Hardy, smiling; “but I rejoice, O Brown,
in that they thrashed the Carthaginians, and not, as you seem to think,
in that they, being aristocrats, thrashed the Carthaginians; for
oligarchs they were not at this time.”

“At any rate they answer to the Spartans in the struggle, and the
Carthaginians to the Athenians; and yet all your sympathies are with
the Romans to-night in the Punic Wars, though they were with the
Athenians before dinner.”

“I deny your position. The Carthaginians were nothing but a great
trading aristocracy—with a glorious family or two I grant you, like
that of Hannibal; but, on the whole, a dirty, bargain-driving,
buy-cheap-and-sell-dear aristocracy—of whom the world was well rid.
They like the Athenians indeed! Why, just look what the two people have
left behind them——”

“Yes,” interrupted Tom; “but we only know the Carthaginians through the
reports of their destroyers. Your heroes trampled them out with hoofs
of iron.”

“Do you think the Roman hoof could have trampled out their Homer if
they ever had one?” said Hardy. “The Romans conquered Greece too,
remember.”

“But Greece was never so near beating them.”

“True. But I hold to my point. Carthage was the mother of all
hucksters, compassing sea and land to sell her wares.”

“And no bad line of life for a nation. At least Englishmen ought to
think so.”

“No, they ought not; at least if ‘Punica fides’ is to be the rule of
trade. Selling any amount of Brummagem wares never did nation or man
much good, and never will. Eh, Grey?”

Grey winced at being appealed to, but remarked that he hoped the Church
would yet be able to save England from the fate of Tyre and Carthage,
the great trading nations of the old world: and then, swallowing his
tea, and looking as if he had been caught robbing a hen-roost, he made
a sudden exit, and hurried away out of college to the night-school.

“What a pity he is so odd and shy,” said Tom; “I should so like to know
more of him.”

“It _is_ a pity. He is much better when he is alone with me. I think he
has heard from some of the set that you are a furious Protestant, and
sees an immense amount of stiff-neckedness in you.”

“But about England and Carthage,” said Tom, shirking the subject of his
own peculiarities; “you don’t really think us like them? It gave me a
turn to hear you translating ‘Punica fides’ into Brummagem wares just
now.”

“I think that successful trade is our rock ahead. The devil who holds
new markets and twenty per cent. profits in his gift is the devil that
England has most to fear from. ‘Because of unrighteous dealings, and
riches gotten by deceit, the kingdom is translated from one people to
another,’ said the wise man. Grey falls back on the Church, you see,
to save the nation; but the Church he dreams of will never do it. Is
there any that can? There _must_ be surely, or we have believed a lie.
But this work of making trade righteous, of Christianizing trade,
looks like the very hardest the Gospel has ever had to take in hand—in
England at any rate.”

Hardy spoke slowly and doubtfully, and paused as if asking for Tom’s
opinion.

“I never heard it put in that way. I know very little of politics or
the state of England. But come, now; the putting down the slave-trade
and compensating our planters, _that_ shows that we are not sold to the
trade-devil yet, surely.”

“I don’t think we are. No, thank God, there are plenty of signs that we
are likely to make a good fight of it yet.”




XCVII.


The newest school of philosophy preaches an “organized religion,” an
hierarchy of the best and ablest. In an inarticulate way the confession
rises from the masses that they feel on every side of them the need of
wise and strong government—of a will to which their will may loyally
submit—before all other needs; have been groping blindly after it this
long while; begin to know that their daily life is in daily peril
for want of it, in a country of limited land, air, and water, and
practically unlimited wealth. But Democracy—how about Democracy? We had
thought a cry for it, and not for kings, God made or of any other kind,
was the characteristic of our time. Certainly kings, such as we have
seen them, have not gained or deserved much reverence of late years,
are not likely to be called for with any great earnestness by those
who feel most need of guidance and deliverance, in the midst of the
bewildering conditions and surroundings of our time and our life.

Thirty years ago the framework of society went all to pieces over the
greater part of Christendom, and the kings just ran away or abdicated,
and the people, left pretty much to themselves, in some places made
blind work of it. Solvent and well-regulated society caught a glimpse
of that same “big black democracy,”—the monster, the Frankenstein, as
they hold him, at any rate the great undeniable fact of our time—a
glimpse of him moving his huge limbs about, uneasily and blindly. Then,
mainly by the help of broken pledges and bayonets, the so-called kings
managed to get the gyves put on him again, and to shut him down in
his underground prison. That was the sum of their work in the great
European crisis; not a thankworthy one from the people’s point of view.
However, society was supposed to be saved, and the “party of order,”
so called, breathed freely. No; for the 1848 kind of king there is
surely no audible demand anywhere. In England in that year we had our
10th of April, and muster of half a million special constables of
the comfortable classes, with much jubilation over such muster, and
mutual congratulations that we were not as other men, or even as these
Frenchmen, Germans, and the like. Taken for what it was worth, let us
admit that the jubilations did not lack some sort of justification.
The 10th of April muster may be perhaps accepted as a sign that the
reverence for the constable’s staff has not quite died out amongst
us. But let no one think that for this reason democracy is one whit
less inevitable in England than on the Continent, or that its sure and
steady advance, and the longing for its coming, which all thoughtful
men recognize, however little they may sympathize, with them, in the
least incompatible with the equally manifest longing for what our
people intend by this much-worshipped and much-hated name.

For what does democracy mean to Englishmen? Simply an equal chance for
all; a fair field for the best men, let them start from where they
will, to get to the front; a clearance out of sham governors, and of
unjust privilege, in every department of human affairs. It cannot be
too often repeated, that they who suppose the bulk of our people want
less government, or fear the man who “can rule and dare not lie,” know
little of them. Ask any representative of a popular constituency, or
other man with the means of judging, what the people are ready for in
this direction. He will tell you that, in spite perhaps of all he can
say or do, they _will_ go for compulsory education, the organization
of labor (including therein the sharp extinction of able-bodied
pauperism), the utilization of public lands, and other reforms of
an equally decided character. That for these purposes they desire
more government, not less; will support with enthusiasm measures, the
very thought of which takes away the breath and loosens the knees of
ordinary politicians; will rally with loyalty and trustfulness to men
who will undertake these things with courage and singleness of purpose.




XCVIII.


The corners of Hardy’s room were covered with sheets of paper of
different sizes, pasted against the wall in groups. In the line of
sight, from about the height of four to six feet, there was scarcely
an inch of the original paper visible, and round each centre group
there were outlying patches and streamers, stretching towards floor or
ceiling, or away nearly to the bookcases or fireplace.

“Well, don’t you think it a great improvement on the old paper?” said
Hardy. “I shall be out of rooms next term, and it will be a hint to the
College that the rooms want papering. You’re no judge of such matters,
or I should ask you whether you don’t see great artistic taste in the
arrangement.”

“Why, they’re nothing but maps, and lists of names and dates,” said
Tom, who had got up to examine the decorations. “And what in the world
are all these queer pins for?” he went on, pulling a strong pin with a
large red sealing-wax head out of the map nearest to him.

“Hullo! take care there; what are you about?” shouted Hardy, getting up
and hastening to the corner. “Why, you irreverent beggar, those pins
are the famous statesmen and warriors of Greece and Rome.”

“Oh, I beg your pardon; I didn’t know I was in such august company;”
saying which, Tom proceeded to stick the red-headed pin back into the
wall.

“Now, just look at that,” said Hardy, taking the pin out from the
place where Tom had stuck it. “Pretty doings there would be amongst
them with your management. This pin is Brasidas; you’ve taken him away
from Naupactus, where he was watching the eleven Athenian galleys
anchored under the temple of Apollo, and stuck him down right in the
middle of the Pnyx, where he will be instantly torn in pieces by a
ruthless and reckless mob. You call yourself a Tory indeed! However,
’twas always the same with you Tories; calculating, cruel, and jealous.
Use your leaders up, and throw them over—that’s the golden rule of
aristocracies.”

“Hang Brasidas,” said Tom, laughing; “stick him back at Naupactus
again. Here, which is Cleon? The scoundrel! give me hold of him, and
I’ll put him in a hot berth.”

“That’s he, with the yellow head. Let him alone, I tell you, or all
will be hopeless confusion when Grey comes for his lecture. We’re only
in the third year of the war.”

“I like your chaff about Tories sacrificing their great men,” said Tom,
putting his hands in his pockets to avoid temptation. “How about your
precious democracy, old fellow? Which is Socrates?”

“Here, the dear old boy!—this pin with the great gray head, in the
middle of Athens, you see. I pride myself on my Athens. Here’s the
Piræus and the long walls, and the hill of Mars. Isn’t it as good as a
picture?”

“Well, it _is_ better than most maps, I think,” said Tom; “but you’re
not going to slip out so easily. I want to know whether your pet
democracy did or did not murder Socrates.”

“I’m not bound to defend democracies. But look at my pins. It may be
the natural fondness of a parent, but I declare they seem to me to have
a great deal of character, considering the material. You’ll guess them
at once, I’m sure, if you mark the color and shape of the wax. This one
now, for instance, who is he?”

“Alcibiades,” answered Tom, doubtfully.

“Alcibiades!” shouted Hardy; “you fresh from Rugby, and not know
your Thucydides better than that. There’s Alcibiades, that little
purple-headed, foppish pin, by Socrates. This rusty colored one is that
respectable old stick-in-the-mud, Nicias.”

“Well, but you’ve made Alcibiades nearly the smallest of the whole
lot,” said Tom.

“So he was, to my mind,” said Hardy; “just the sort of insolent young
ruffian whom I should have liked to buy at my price, and sell at his
own. He must have been very like some of our gentlemen-commoners, with
the addition of brains.”

“I should really think, though,” said Tom, “it must be a capital plan
for making you remember the history.”

“It is, I flatter myself. I’ve long had the idea, but I should never
have worked it out and found the value of it but for Grey. I invented
it to coach him in his history. You see we are in the Grecian corner.
Over there is the Roman. You’ll find Livy and Tacitus worked out there,
just as Herodotus and Thucydides are here; and the pins are stuck for
the Second Punic War, where we are just now. I shouldn’t wonder if Grey
got his first, after all, he’s picking up so quick in my corners; and
says he never forgets any set of events when he has pricked them out
with the pins.”




XCIX.


The Reformation had to do its work in due course, in temporal as well
as in spiritual things, in the visible as in the invisible world;
for the Stuart princes asserted in temporal matters the powers which
the Pope had claimed in spiritual. They, too, would acknowledge the
sanctity of no law above the will of princes—would vindicate, even
with the sword and scaffold, their own powers to dispense with laws.
So the second great revolt of the English nation came, against all
visible earthly sovereignty in things temporal. Puritanism arose,
and Charles went to the block, and the proclamation went forth that
henceforth the nation would have no king but Christ; that he was the
only possible king for the English nation from that time forth, in
temporal as well as spiritual things, and that his kingdom had actually
come. The national conscience was not with the Puritans as it had been
with Henry at the time of the Reformation, but the deepest part of
their protest has held its own, and gained strength ever since, from
their day to ours. The religious source and origin of it was, no doubt,
thrust aside at the Revolution, but the sagacious statesmen of 1688
were as clear as the soldiers of Ireton and Ludlow in their resolve,
that no human will should override the laws and customs of the realm.
So they, too, required of their sovereigns that they should “solemnly
promise and swear to govern the people of this kingdom of England,
and the dominions thereto belonging, according to the statutes in
Parliament agreed on, and the laws and customs of the same; ... that
they will to the utmost of their power maintain the laws of God, the
true profession of the Gospel, and the Protestant reformed religion
established by law.” The same protest in a far different form came
forth again at the great crisis at the end of the eighteenth century,
when the revolutionary literature of France had set Europe in a blaze,
and the idea of the rights of man had shrunk back, and merged in the
will of the mob. Against this assertion of this form of self-will again
the English nation took resolute ground. They had striven for a law
which was above popes and kings, to which these must conform on pain of
suppression. They strove for it now against mob-law, against popular
will, openly avowing its own omnipotence, and making the tyrant’s
claim to do what was right in its own eyes. And so through our whole
history the same thread has run. The nation, often confusedly and with
stammering accents, but still on the whole consistently, has borne the
same witness as the Church, that as God is living and reigning there
must be a law, the expression of his will, at the foundation of all
human society, which priests, kings, rulers, people must discover,
acknowledge, obey.




C.


Christians may acknowledge that, as a rule, and in the long run, the
decision of a country, fairly taken, is likely to be right, and that
the will of the people is likely to be more just and patient than that
of any person or class. No one can honestly look at the history of our
race in the last quarter of a century, to go no farther back, and not
gladly admit the weight of evidence in favor of this view. There is
no great question of principle which has arisen in politics here, in
which the great mass of the nation has not been from the first on that
which has been at last acknowledged as the right side. In America,
to take one great example, the attitude of the Northern people from
first to last, in the great civil war, will make proud the hearts of
English-speaking men as long as their language lasts.




CI.


The real public opinion of a nation, expressing its deepest conviction
(as distinguished from what is ordinarily called public opinion, the
first cry of professional politicians and journalists, which usually
goes wrong,) is undoubtedly entitled to very great respect. But after
making all fair allowances, no honest man, however warm a democrat he
may be, can shut his eyes to the facts which stare him in the face at
home, in our colonies, in the United States, and refuse to acknowledge
that the will of the majority in a nation, ascertained by the best
processes yet known to us, is not always or altogether just, or
consistent, or stable; that the deliberate decisions of the people are
not unfrequently tainted by ignorance, or passion, or prejudice.

Are we, then, to rest contented with this ultimate regal power, to
resign ourselves to the inevitable, and admit that for us, here at
last in this nineteenth century, there is nothing higher or better to
look for; and if we are to have a king at all, it must be king people
or king mob, according to the mood in which our section of collective
humanity happens to be? Surely we are not prepared for this any more
than the Pope is. Many of us feel that Tudors, and Stuarts, and Oliver
Cromwell, and cliques of Whig or Tory aristocrats, may have been bad
enough; but that any tyranny under which England has groaned in the
past has been light by the side of what we may come to, if we are to
carry out the new political gospel to its logical conclusion, and
surrender ourselves to government by the counting of heads, pure and
simple.

But if we will not do this is there any alternative, since we repudiate
personal government, but to fall back on the old Hebrew and Christian
faith, that the nations are ruled by a living, present, invisible King,
whose will is perfectly righteous and loving, the same yesterday,
to-day, and forever? It is beside the question to urge that such a
faith throws us back on an invisible power, and that we must have
visible rulers. Of course we must have visible rulers, even after
the advent of the “confederate social republic of Europe.” When the
whole people is king it must have viceroys like other monarchs. But is
public opinion visible? Can we see “collective humanity?” Is it easier
for princes or statesmen—for any man or men upon whose shoulders the
government rests—to ascertain the will of the people than the will of
God? Another consideration meets us at once, and that is, that this
belief is assumed in our present practice. Not to insist upon the
daily usage in all Christian places of worship and families throughout
the land, the Parliament of the country opens its daily sittings with
the most direct confession of this faith which words can express,
and prays—addressing God, and not public opinion, or collective
humanity—“Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done.” Surely it were better to
get rid of this solemn usage as a piece of cant, which must demoralize
the representatives of the nation, if we mean nothing particular by it,
and either recast our form of prayer, substituting “the people,” or
what else we please, for “God,” or let the whole business alone, as one
which passes man’s understanding. If we really believe that a nation
has no means of finding out God’s will, it is hypocritical and cowardly
to go on praying that it may be done.

But it will be said, assuming all that is asked, what practical
difference can it possibly make in the government of nations? Admit
as pointedly as you can, by profession and by worship, and honestly
believe, that a Divine will is ruling in the world, and in each nation,
what will it effect? Will it alter the course of events one iota, or
the acts of any government or governor. Would not a Neapolitan Bourbon
be just as ready to make it his watchword as any English Alfred!
Might not a committee of public safety placard the scaffold with a
declaration of this faith? It is a contention for a shadow.

Is it so? Does not every man recognize in his own life, and in his
own observation of the world around him, the enormous and radical
difference between the two principles of action and the results which
they bring about? What man do we reckon worthy of honor, and delight to
obey and follow—him who asks, when he has to act, what will A, B, and
C say to this? or him who asks, is this right, true, just, in harmony
with the will of God. Don’t we despise ourselves when we give way to
the former tendency, or in other words, when we admit the sovereignty
of public opinion? Don’t we feel that we are in the right and manly
path when we follow the latter? And if this be true of private men, it
must hold in the case of those who are in authority.

Those rulers, whatever name they may go by, who turn to what
constituents, leagues, the press are saying or doing, to guide them as
to the course they are to follow, in the faith that the will of the
majority is the ultimate and only possible arbiter, will never deliver
or strengthen a nation however skilful they may be in occupying its
best places.




CII.


All the signs of our time tell us that the day of earthly kings has
gone by, and the advent to power of the great body of the people, those
who live by manual labor, is at hand. Already a considerable percentage
of them are as intelligent and provident as the classes above them,
and as capable of conducting affairs, and administering large
interests successfully. In England, the co-operative movement and the
organization of the trade societies should be enough to prove this, to
any one who has eyes, and is open to conviction. In another generation
that number will have increased tenfold, and the sovereignty of the
country will virtually pass into their hands. Upon their patriotism
and good sense the fortunes of the kingdom will depend as directly
and absolutely as they have ever depended on the will of earthly king
or statesman. It is vain to blink the fact that democracy is upon us,
that “new order of society which is to be founded by labor for labor,”
and the only thing for wise men to do is to look it in the face, and
see how the short intervening years may be used to the best advantage.
Happily for us, the task has been already begun in earnest. Our
soundest and wisest political thinkers are all engaged upon the great
and inevitable change, whether they dread, or exult in the prospect.
Thus far, too, they all agree that the great danger of the future lies
in that very readiness of the people to act in great masses, and
to get rid of personal and individual responsibility, which is the
characteristic of the organizations by which they have gained, and
secured, their present position. Nor is there any danger as to how this
danger is to be met. Our first aim must be to develop to the utmost the
sense of personal and individual responsibility.

But how is this to be done? To whom are men wielding great powers to be
taught that they are responsible? If they can learn that there is still
a King ruling in England through them, whom if they will fear they need
fear no other power in earth or heaven, whom if they can love and trust
they will want no other guide or helper, all will be well, and we may
look for a reign of justice in England such as she has never seen yet,
whatever form our government may take. But, in any case, those who hold
the old faith will still be sure that the order of God’s kingdom will
not change. If the kings of the earth are passing away, because they
have never acknowledged the order which was established for them, the
conditions on which they were set in high places, those who succeed
them will have to come under the same order, and the same conditions.
When the great body of those who have done the hard work of the world,
and got little enough of its wages hitherto—the real stuff of which
every nation is composed—have entered on their inheritance, they may
sweep away many things, and make short work with thrones and kings.
But there is one throne which they cannot pull down—the throne of
righteousness, which is over all the nations; and one King whose rule
they cannot throw off—the Son of God and Son of Man, who will judge
them as he has judged all kings and all governments before them.




CIII.


Kings, priests, judges, whatever men succeed to, or usurp, or are
thrust into power, come immediately under that eternal government which
the God of the nation has established, and the order of which cannot
be violated with impunity. Every ruler who ignores or defies it saps
the national life and prosperity, and brings trouble on his country,
sometimes swiftly, but always surely. There is the perpetual presence
of a King, with whom rulers and people must come to a reckoning in
every national crisis and convulsion, and who is no less present when
the course of affairs is quiet and prosperous. The greatest and wisest
men of the nation are those in whom this faith burns most strongly.
Elijah’s solemn opening, “As the Lord liveth, before whom I stand;”
David’s pleading, “Whither shall I go from thy Spirit, or whither shall
I flee from thy presence?”—his confession that in heaven or hell,
or the uttermost parts of the sea, “there also shall thy hand lead,
and thy right hand shall guide me”—are only well-known instances of
a universal consciousness which never wholly leaves men or nations,
however much they may struggle to get rid of it.




CIV.


“Who is that who has just come in, in beaver?” said Tom, touching the
next man to him.

“Oh, don’t you know? That’s Blake; he’s the most wonderful fellow in
Oxford,” answered his neighbor.

“How do you mean?” said Tom.

“Why, he can do everything better than almost anybody, and without
any trouble at all. Miller was obliged to have him in the boat last
year though he never trained a bit. Then he’s in the eleven, and is a
wonderful rider, and tennis-player, and shot.”

“Aye, and he’s so awfully clever with it all,” joined in the man on the
other side. “He’ll be a safe first, though I don’t believe he reads
more than you or I. He can write songs, too, as fast as you can talk
nearly, and sings them wonderfully.”

“Is he of our College, then?”

“Yes, of course, or he couldn’t have been in our boat last year.”

“But I don’t think I ever saw him in chapel or hall.”

“No, I dare say not. He hardly ever goes to either, and yet he manages
never to get hauled up much, no one knows how. He never gets up now
till the afternoon, and sits up nearly all night playing cards with the
fastest fellows, or going round singing glees at three or four in the
morning.”

Tom looked with great interest at the admirable Crichton of St.
Ambrose’s; and, after watching him a few minutes, said in a low tone to
his neighbor:

“How wretched he looks! I never saw a sadder face.”

Poor Blake! one can’t help calling him “poor,” although he himself
would have winced at it more than at any other name you could have
called him. You might have admired, feared, or wondered at him, and
he would have been pleased; the object of his life was to raise such
feelings in his neighbors; but pity was the last which he would have
liked to excite.

He was indeed a wonderfully gifted fellow, full of all sorts of energy
and talent, and power and tenderness; and yet, as his face told only
too truly to any one who watched him when he was exerting himself in
society, one of the most wretched men in the College. He had a passion
for success—for beating everybody else in whatever he took in hand,
and that, too, without seeming to make any great effort himself. The
doing a thing well and thoroughly gave him no satisfaction unless he
could feel that he was doing it better and more easily than A, B, or C,
and that they felt and acknowledged this. He had had his full swing of
success for two years, and now the Nemesis was coming.

For, although not an extravagant man, many of the pursuits in which he
had eclipsed all rivals were far beyond the means of any but a rich
one, and Blake was not rich. He had a fair allowance, but by the end
of his first year was considerably in debt, and, at the time we are
speaking of, the whole pack of Oxford tradesmen, into whose books he
had got (having smelt out the leanness of his expectations), were upon
him, besieging him for payment. This miserable and constant annoyance
was wearing his soul out. This was the reason why his oak was sported,
and he was never seen till the afternoons, and turned night into day.
He was too proud to come to an understanding with his persecutors, even
had it been possible; and now, at his sorest need, his whole scheme
of life was failing him; his love of success was turning into ashes
in his mouth; he felt much more disgust than pleasure at his triumphs
over other men, and yet the habit of striving for such successes,
notwithstanding its irksomeness, was too strong to be resisted.

Poor Blake! he was living on from hand to mouth, flashing out with all
his old brilliancy and power, and forcing himself to take the lead in
whatever company he might be; but utterly lonely and depressed when by
himself—reading feverishly in secret, in a desperate effort to retrieve
all by high honors and a fellowship. As Tom said to his neighbors,
there was no sadder face than his to be seen in Oxford.




CV.


One of the moralists whom we sat under in my youth—was it the great
Richard Swiveller, or Mr. Stiggins?—says: “We are born in a vale,
and must take the consequences of being found in such a situation.”
These consequences, I for one am ready to encounter. I pity people who
weren’t found in a vale. I don’t mean a flat country, but a vale; that
is a flat country bounded by hills. The having your hill _always_ in
view if you choose to turn towards him, that’s the essence of a vale.
There he is for ever in the distance, your friend and companion; you
never lose him as you do in hilly districts.




CVI.


All dwellers in and about London are, alas, too well acquainted with
that never-to-be-enough-hated change which we have to undergo once, at
least, in every spring. As each succeeding winter wears away, the same
thing happens to us.

For some time we do not trust the fair lengthening days, and cannot
believe that the dirty pair of sparrows who live opposite our window
are really making love and going to build, notwithstanding all their
twittering. But morning after morning rises fresh and gentle; there is
no longer any vice in the air; we drop our overcoats; we rejoice in the
green shoots which the privet-hedge is making in the square garden, and
hail the returning tender-pointed leaves of the plane-trees as friends;
we go out of our way to walk through Covent Garden Market to see the
ever-brightening show of flowers from the happy country.

This state of things goes on sometimes for a few days only, sometimes
for weeks, till we make sure that we are safe for this spring at any
rate. Don’t we wish we may get it! Sooner or later, but sure—sure as
Christmas bills, or the income-tax, or anything, if there be anything
surer than these—comes the morning when we are suddenly conscious as
soon as we rise that there is something the matter. We do not feel
comfortable in our clothes; nothing tastes quite as it should at
breakfast; though the day looks bright enough, there is a fierce dusty
taint about it as we look out through windows, which no instinct now
prompts us to throw open, as it has done every day for the last month.

But it is only when we open our doors and issue into the street, that
the hateful reality comes right home to us. All moisture, and softness,
and pleasantness has gone clean out of the air since last night; we
seem to inhale yards of horsehair instead of satin; our skins dry up;
our eyes, and hair, and whiskers, and clothes are soon filled with
loathsome dust, and our nostrils with the reek of the great city. We
glance at the weathercock on the nearest steeple, and see that it
points N.E. And so long as the change lasts, we carry about with us
a feeling of anger and impatience as though we personally were being
ill-treated. We could have borne with it well enough in November;
it would have been natural, and all in the day’s work in March; but
now, when Rotten-row is beginning to be crowded, when long lines of
pleasure-vans are leaving town on Monday mornings for Hampton Court or
the poor remains of dear Epping Forrest, when the exhibitions are open
or about to open, when the religious public is up, or on its way up,
for May meetings, when the Thames is already sending up faint warnings
of what we may expect as soon as his dirty old life’s blood shall have
been thoroughly warmed up, and the Ship, and Trafalgar, and Star and
Garter are in full swing at the antagonist poles of the cockney system,
we do feel that this blight which has come over us and everything is
an insult, and that while it lasts, as there is nobody who can be made
particularly responsible for it, we are justified in going about in
general disgust, and ready to quarrel with anybody we may meet on the
smallest pretext.

This sort of east-windy state is perhaps the best physical analogy for
certain mental ones through which most of us pass. The real crisis
over, we drift into the skirts of the storm, and lay rolling under
bare poles, comparatively safe, but without any power as yet to get the
ship well in hand, and make her obey her helm. The storm may break over
us again at any minute, and find us almost as helpless as ever.




CVII.


Amongst other distractions which Tom tried at one crisis of his life,
was reading. For three or four days running, he really worked hard—very
hard, if we were to reckon by the number of hours he spent in his
own rooms over his books with his oak sported—hard, even though we
should only reckon by results. For, though scarcely an hour passed
that he was not balancing on the hind legs of his chair with a vacant
look in his eyes, and thinking of anything but Greek roots or Latin
constructions, yet on the whole he managed to get through a good deal,
and one evening, for the first time since his quarrel with Hardy, felt
a sensation of real comfort—it hardly amounted to pleasure—as he closed
his Sophocles some hour or so after hall, having just finished the last
of the Greek plays which he meant to take in for his first examination.
He leaned back in his chair and sat for a few minutes, letting his
thoughts follow their own bent. They soon took to going wrong, and
he jumped up in fear lest he should be drifting back into the black
stormy sea, in the trough of which he had been laboring so lately, and
which he felt he was by no means clear of yet. At first he caught up
his cap and gown as though he were going out. There was a wine party
at one of his acquaintance’s rooms; or, he could go and smoke a cigar
in the pool-room, or at any one of the dozen other places. On second
thoughts, however, he threw his academicals back on to the sofa, and
went to his bookcase. The reading had paid so well that evening that he
resolved to go on with it. He had no particular object in selecting one
book more than another, and so took down carelessly the first that came
to hand.

It happened to be a volume of Plato, and opened of its own accord in
the “Apology.” He glanced at a few lines. What a flood of memories
they called up! This was almost the last book he had read at school;
and teacher, and friends, and lofty oak-shelved library stood out
before him at once. Then the blunders that he himself and others had
made rushed through his mind, and he almost burst into a laugh as he
wheeled his chair round to the window, and began reading where he had
opened, encouraging every thought of the old times when he first read
that marvellous defence, and throwing himself back into them with all
his might. And still, as he read, forgotten words of wise comment, and
strange thoughts of wonder and longing, came back to him. The great
truth which he had been led to the brink of in those early days rose
in all its awe and all its attractiveness before him. He leant back in
his chair, and gave himself up to his thought; and how strangely that
thought bore on the struggle which had been raging in him of late; how
an answer seemed to be trembling to come out of it to all the cries,
now defiant, now plaintive, which had gone out of his heart in this
time of trouble! For his thought was of that spirit, distinct from
himself, and yet communing with his inmost soul, always dwelling in
him, knowing him better than he knew himself, never misleading him,
always leading him to light and truth, of which the old philosopher
spoke. “The old heathen, Socrates, did actually believe that—there can
be no question about it;” he thought, “Has not the testimony of the
best men through these two thousand years borne witness that he was
right—that he did not believe a lie! That was what we were told. Surely
I don’t mistake! Were we not told, too, or did I dream it, that what
was true for him is true for every man—for me? That there is a spirit
dwelling in me, striving with me, ready to lead me into all truth if I
will submit to his guidance?

“Ah! submit, submit, there’s the rub! Give yourself up to his guidance!
Throw up the reins, and say you’ve made a mess of it. Well, why not?
Haven’t I made a mess of it? Am I fit to hold the reins?

“Not I,”—he got up and began walking about his rooms—“I give it up.”

“Give it up!” he went on presently; “yes, but to whom? Not to the
dæmon, spirit, whatever it was, who took up his abode in the old
Athenian—at least, so he said, and so I believe. No, no! Two thousand
years and all that they have seen have not passed over the world to
leave us just where he was left. We want no dæmons or spirits. And yet
the old heathen was guided right, and what can a man want more? and who
ever wanted guidance more than I now—here—in this room—at this minute?
I give up the reins; who will take them?” And so there came on him one
of those seasons when a man’s thoughts cannot be followed in words. A
sense of awe came upon him, and over him, and wrapped him round; awe at
a presence of which he was becoming suddenly conscious, into which he
seemed to have wandered, and yet which he felt must have been there,
around him, in his own heart and soul, though he knew it not. There was
hope and longing in his heart mingling with the fear of that presence,
but withal the old reckless and daring feeling which he knew so well,
still bubbling up untamed, untamable it seemed to him.




CVIII.


Men and women occupied with the common work of life—who are earning
their bread in the sweat of their brows, and marrying, and bringing up
children, and struggling, and sinning, and repenting—feel that certain
questions which school-men are discussing are somehow their questions.
Not indeed in form, for not one in a thousand of the persons whose
minds are thus disturbed care to make themselves acquainted with the
forms and modes of theological controversies. If they try to do so,
they soon throw them aside with impatience. They feel, “No, it is not
this. We care not what may be said about ideology, or multitudinism,
or evidential views, or cogenogonies. At the bottom of all this we
suspect—nay, we know—there is a deeper strife, a strife about the very
foundations of faith and human life. We want to know from you learned
persons, whether (as we have been told from our infancy) there is a
faith for mankind, for us as well as for you, for the millions of our
own countrymen, and in all Christian and heathen lands, who find living
their lives a sore business, and have need of all the light they can
get to help them.”

It cannot be denied. The sooner we face the fact, the better. This is
the question, and it has to be answered now, by us living Englishmen
and Englishwomen; the deepest question which man has to do with, and
yet—or rather, therefore—one which every toiling man must grapple with,
for the sake of his own honesty, of his own life.




CIX.


For many years I have been thrown very much into the society of young
men of all ranks. I spend a great part of my time with them, I like
being with them, and I think they like being with me. I know well,
therefore, how rare anything like a living faith—a faith in and by
which you can live, and for which you would die—is amongst them. I know
that it is becoming rarer every day. I find it every day more difficult
to get them to speak on the subject: they will not do so unless you
drive them to it.

I feel deeply that for the sake of England they must be driven to it,
and therefore that it is the bounden duty of every man who has any
faith himself, and who has a chance of being listened to by them, to
speak out manfully what he has to say, concealing nothing, disguising
nothing, and leaving the issue to God.




CX.


That which has been called the “negative theology,” has been spreading
rapidly these last few years, though for the most part silently. In
the first instance it may have been simply “a recoil from some of the
doctrines which are to be heard at church and chapel; a distrust of
the old arguments for, or proofs of, a miraculous revelation; and
a misgiving as to the authority, or extent of the authority of the
Scriptures.” But as was sure to be the case, the “negative theology”
could not stop, and has not stopped here. Men who have come across
these recoils, distrusts, misgivings, will soon find, if they are
honest and resolute with themselves, that there is another doubt
underlying all these, a doubt which they may turn from in horror when
it is first whispered in their hearts, but which will come back again
and again. That doubt is whether there is a God at all, or rather,
whether a living, personal God, thinking, acting, and ruling in this
world in which we are, has ever revealed Himself to man.

This is the one question of our time, and of all times; upon the answer
which nations or men can give to it hang life and death.... One cannot
stand upon a simple negation. The world is going on turning as it used
to do, night succeeding day and generation generation; nations are
waking into life, or falling into bondage; there is a deal of wonderful
work of one sort or another going on in it, and you and I in our little
corner have our own share of work to get done as well as we can. If you
put out my old light, some light or other I must have, and you would
wish me to have. What is it to be?

You will answer, probably, that I have touched the heart of the matter
in putting my question. Night follows day, and generation, generation.
All things are founded on a “permanent order,” “self-sustaining
and self-evolving powers pervade all nature.” Of this order and
these powers we are getting to know more every day; when we know
them perfectly, man, the colossal man, will have reached the highest
development of which he is capable. We need not trouble ourselves
about breaking them, or submitting to them; some of you would add,
for we cannot either break them or submit to them. They will fulfil
themselves. It is they, these great generalizations, which are alone
acting in, and ruling the world. We, however eccentric our actions may
be, however we may pride ourselves on willing and working, are only
simple links in the chain. A general _law of average_ orders the unruly
wills and affections of sinful men.

But here I must ask, on what is this permanent order, on what are these
laws which you tell me of, founded? I acknowledge a permanent order,
physical laws, as fully as you can, but believe them to be expressions
of a living and a righteous will; I believe a holy and true God to be
behind them, therefore I can sit down humbly, and try to understand
them, and when I understand, to obey. Are the permanent order, the laws
you speak of, founded on a will? If so, on whose will? If on the will
of _a_ God, of what God? Of a God who has revealed His character, His
purpose, Himself, to you? If so, where, how, when?

But if you tell me that these laws, this order, are not founded on
any living will, or that you do not know that they are, then I say you
are holding out to me “an iron rule which guides to nothing and ends
in nothing—which may be possible to the logical understanding, but
is not possible to the spirit of man”—and you are telling me, since
worship is a necessity of my being, to worship that. In the name and
in the strength of a man, and a man’s will I utterly reject and defy
your dead laws, for dead they must be. They may grind me to powder,
but I have that in me which is above them, which will own no obedience
to them. Dead laws are, so far as I can see, just what you and I and
all mankind have been put into this world to fight against. Call them
laws of nature if you will, I do not care. Take the commonest, the most
universal; is it or is it not by the law of nature that the ground
brings forth briers and all sorts of noxious and useless weeds if you
let it alone? If it is by the law of nature, am I to obey the law, or
to dig my garden and root out the weeds? Doubtless I shall get too old
to dig, and shall die, and the law will remain, and the weeds grow over
my garden and over my grave, but for all that I decline to obey the law.

I see a law of death working all around me; I feel it in my own
members. Is this one of your laws, a part of the “permanent order,”
which is to serve me instead of the God of my fathers? If it be I mean
to resist it to the last gasp. I utterly hate it. No noble or true
work is done in this world except in direct defiance of it. What is to
become of the physician’s work, of every effort at sanitary reform, of
every attempt at civilizing and raising the poor and the degraded, if
we are to sit down and submit ourselves to this law?

Am I never to build a house, out of respect to the law of gravitation?
Sooner or later the law will assert itself, and my house will tumble
down. Nevertheless I will conquer the law for such space as I can.
In short, I will own no dead law as my master. Dead laws I will hate
always, and in all places, with all my heart, with all my soul, with
all my mind, and with all my strength.




CXI.


We ought to welcome with all our hearts the searching scrutiny, which
students and philosophers of all Christian nations, and of all shades
of belief, whether Christian or not, are engaged upon, as to the facts
on which our faith rests. The more thorough that scrutiny is the better
should we be pleased. We may not wholly agree with the last position
which the ablest investigators have laid down, that unless the truth
of the history of our Lord—the facts of his life, death, resurrection,
and ascension—can be proved by ordinary historical evidence, applied
according to the most approved and latest methods, Christianity must be
given up as not true. We know that our own certainty as to these facts
does not rest on a critical historical investigation, while we rejoice
that such an investigation should be made by those who have leisure,
and who are competent for it. At the same time, as we also know that
the methods and principles of historical investigation are constantly
improving and being better understood, and that the critics of the
next generation will work, in all human likelihood, at as great an
advantage in this inquiry over those who are now engaged in it, as our
astronomers and natural philosophers enjoy over Newton and Franklin—and
as new evidence may turn up any day which may greatly modify their
conclusions—we cannot suppose that there is the least chance of their
settling the controversy in our time. Nor, even if we thought them
likely to arrive at definite conclusions, can we consent to wait the
results of their investigations, important and interesting as these
will be. Granting then cheerfully, that if these facts on the study
of which they are engaged are not facts—if Christ was not crucified,
and did not rise from the dead, and ascend to God his father—there has
been no revelation, and Christianity will infallibly go the way of all
lies, either under their assaults or those of their successors—they
must pardon us if even at the cost of being thought and called fools
for our pains, we deliberately elect to live our lives on the contrary
assumption. It is useless to tell us that we know nothing of these
things, that we can know nothing until their critical examination is
over; we can only say: “Examine away; but we _do_ know something of
this matter, whatever you may assert to the contrary, and, mean to live
on the knowledge.”

But while we cannot suspend our judgment on the question until we know
how the critics and scholars have settled it, we must do justice,
before passing on, to the single-mindedness, the reverence, the
resolute desire for the truth before all things, wherever the search
for it may land them which characterizes many of those who are no
longer of our faith, and are engaged in this inquiry, or have set it
aside as hopeless, and are working at other tasks. The great advance
of natural science within the last few years, and the devotion with
which many of our ablest and best men are throwing themselves into
this study, are clearing the air in all the higher branches of human
thought and making possible a nation, and in the end a world, of
truthful men—that blessedest result of all the strange conflicts and
problems of the age, which the wisest men have foreseen in their most
hopeful moods. In this grand movement even those who are nominally, and
believe themselves to be really, against us, are for us: all at least
who are truthful and patient workers. For them, too, the spirit of all
truth, and patience, and wisdom is leading; and their strivings and
victories—aye, and their backslidings and reverses—are making clearer
day by day that revelation of the kingdom of God in nature, through
which it would seem that our generation, and those which are to follow
us, will be led back again to that higher revelation of the kingdom of
God in man.

       *       *       *       *       *

The ideal American, as he has been painted for us of late, is a man
who has shaken off the yoke of definite creeds, while retaining their
moral essence, and finds the highest sanctions needed for the conduct
of human life in experience tempered by common sense. Franklin,
for instance, is generally supposed to have reached this ideal by
anticipation, and there is a half-truth in the supposition. But whoever
will study this great master of practical life will acknowledge that
it is only superficially true, and that if he never lifts us above
the earth or beyond the dominion of experience and common sense, he
retained himself a strong hold on the invisible which underlies it, and
would have been the first to acknowledge that it was this which enabled
him to control the accidents of birth, education, and position, and to
earn the eternal gratitude and reverence of the great nation over whose
birth he watched so wisely, and whose character he did so much to form.




CXII.


“From one thing to another,” said Tom, “they got to cathedrals, and one
of them called St. Paul’s ‘a disgrace to a Christian city.’ I couldn’t
stand that, you know. I was always bred to respect St. Paul’s; weren’t
you?”

“My education in that line was neglected,” said Hardy, gravely. “And so
you took up the cudgels for St. Paul’s?”

“Yes, I plumped out that St. Paul’s was the finest cathedral in
England. You’d have thought I had said that lying was one of the
cardinal virtues—one or two just treated me to a sort of pitying sneer,
but my neighbors were down upon me with a vengeance. I stuck to my
text though, and they drove me into saying I liked the Ratcliffe more
than any building in Oxford; which I don’t believe I do, now I come
to think of it. So when they couldn’t get me to budge for their talk,
they took to telling me that everybody who knew anything about church
architecture was against me—of course meaning that I knew nothing about
it—for the matter of that, I don’t mean to say that I do.” Tom paused;
it had suddenly occurred to him that there might be some reason in the
rough handling he had got.

“But what did you say to the authorities?” said Hardy, who was greatly
amused.

“Said I didn’t care a straw for them,” said Tom; “there was no right
or wrong in the matter, and I had as good a right to my opinion as
Pugin—or whatever his name is—and the rest.”

“What heresy!” said Hardy, laughing; “you caught it for that, I
suppose?”

“Didn’t I! They made such a noise over it, that the men at the other
end of the table stopped talking (they were all freshmen at our end),
and when they found what was up, one of the older ones took me in
hand, and I got a lecture about the middle ages, and the monks. I
said I thought England was well rid of the monks; and then we got on
to Protestantism, and fasting, and apostolic succession, and passive
obedience, and I don’t know what all! I only know I was tired enough of
it before coffee came; but I couldn’t go, you know, with all of them on
me at once, could I?”

“Of course not; you were like the six thousand unconquerable British
infantry at Albuera. You held your position by sheer fighting,
suffering fearful loss.”

“Well,” said Tom, laughing, for he had talked himself into good humor
again. “I dare say I talked a deal of nonsense; and, when I come to
think it over, a good deal of what some of them said had something
in it. I should like to hear it again quietly; but there were others
sneering and giving themselves airs, and that puts a fellow’s back up.”

“Yes,” said Hardy, “a good many of the weakest and vainest men who come
up take to this sort of thing now. They can do nothing themselves, and
get a sort of platform by going in for the High Church business from
which to look down on their neighbors.”

“That’s just what I thought,” said Tom; “they tried to push mother
Church, mother Church, down my throat at every turn. I’m as fond of the
Church as any of them, but I don’t want to be jumping up on her back
every minute, like a sickly chicken getting on the old hen’s back to
warm its feet whenever the ground is cold, and fancying himself taller
than all the rest of the brood.”




CXIII.


I have spoken of that which I cannot believe; let me speak to you now
of that which I do believe, of that which I hold to be a faith, the
faith, the only faith for mankind. Do not turn from it because it seems
to be egotistic. I can only speak for myself, for what I know in my own
heart and conscience. While I keep to this, I can speak positively, and
I wish above all things to speak positively.

I was bred as a child and as a boy to look upon Christ as the true
and rightful King and Head of our race, the Son of God and the Son of
man. When I came to think for myself I found the want, the longing
for a perfectly righteous king and head, the deepest of which I was
conscious—for a being in whom I could rest, who was in perfect sympathy
with me and all men. “Like as the hart panteth after the water-brooks,
so longeth my soul after thee, O God. My soul is athirst for God, yea,
even for the living God,”—these, and the like sayings of the Psalmist,
began to have a meaning for me.

Then the teaching which had sunk into me unconsciously rose up and
seemed to meet this longing. If that teaching were true, here was He
for whom I was in search. I turned to the records of His life and
death. I read and considered as well as I could, the character of
Christ, what he said of himself and his work; his teachings, his acts,
his sufferings. Then I found that this was indeed He. Here was the
Head, the King, for whom I had longed. The more I read and thought the
more absolutely sure I became of it. This is He. I wanted no other
then, I have never wanted another since. Him I can look up to and
acknowledge with the most perfect loyalty. He satisfies me wholly.
There is no recorded thought, word or deed of his that I would wish to
change—that I do not recognize and rejoice in as those of my rightful
and righteous King and Head. He has claimed for me, for you, for every
man, all that we can ask for or dream of, for He has claimed every one
of us for his soldiers and brethren, the acknowledged children of his
and our Father and God.

But this loyalty I could never have rendered, no man can ever render,
I believe, except to a Son of man. He must be perfect man as well as
perfect God to satisfy us—must have dwelt in a body like ours, have
felt our sorrows, pains, temptations, weaknesses. He was incarnate
by the Spirit of God of the Virgin. In this way I can see how he was
indeed perfect God and perfect Man. I can conceive of no other in which
he could have been so. The Incarnation is for me the support of all
personal holiness, and the key to human history.

What was Christ’s work on earth? He came to make manifest, to make
clear to us, the will and nature of this Father, our God. He made that
will and nature clear to us as the perfectly loving and long-suffering
and righteous will and nature. He came to lead us men, his brethren,
back into perfect understanding of and submission to that will—to
make us at one with it; and this he did triumphantly by his own
perfect obedience to that will, by sacrificing himself even to death
for us, because it was the will of his and our Father that he should
give himself up wholly and unreservedly; thus, by his one sacrifice,
redeeming us and leaving us an example that we too should sacrifice
ourselves to Him for our brethren. Thus I believe in the Atonement.




CXIV.


Christ was not only revealed to those who saw him here. He did not only
go about doing his Father’s will here on earth for thirty-three years,
eighteen hundred years ago, and then leave us. Had this been so, he
would certainly in one sense have been revealed, in the only sense in
which some orthodox writers seem to teach that he has been revealed.
He would have been revealed to certain men, at a certain time, in
history, and to us in the accounts which we have of him in the Gospels,
through which accounts only we should have had to gain our knowledge
of him, judging of such accounts by our own fallible understandings.
But He said, “I will be with you always, even to the end of the world.”
“I will send my Spirit into your hearts to testify of me;” and He
has fulfilled his promise. He is revealed, not in the Bible, not in
history, not in or to some men at a certain time, or to a man here and
there, but in the heart of you, and of me, and of every man and woman
who is now, or ever has been, on this earth. His Spirit is in each of
us, striving with us, cheering us, guiding us, strengthening us. At
any moment in the lives of any one of us we may prove the fact for
ourselves; we may give ourselves up to his guidance, and He will accept
the trust, and guide us into the knowledge of God, and of all truth.
From this knowledge, (more certain to me than any other, of which I am
ten thousand times more sure than I am that Queen Victoria is reigning
in England, that I am writing with this pen at this table,) if I could
see no other manifestation of Christ in creation, I believe in the
Trinity in Unity, the name on which all things in heaven and earth
stand, which meets and satisfies the deepest needs and longings of my
soul.

The knowledge of this name, of these truths, has come to me, and to all
men, in one sense, specially and directly through the Scriptures. I
believe that God has given us these Scriptures, this Bible, to instruct
us in these the highest of all truths. Therefore I reverence this Bible
as I reverence no other book; but I reverence it because it speaks of
him, and his dealings with us. The Bible has no charm or power of its
own. It may become a chain round men’s necks, an idol in the throne
of God, to men who will worship the book, and not Him of whom the
book speaks. There are many signs that this is, or is fast becoming,
the case with us; but it is our fault, and not the Bible’s fault. We
persist in reading our own narrowness and idolatry into it, instead of
hearing what it really is saying to us.




CXV.


I believe that the writers of Holy Scripture were directly inspired
by God, in a manner, and to an extent, in and to which no other men
whose words have come down to us have been inspired. I cannot draw the
line between their inspiration and that of other great teachers of
mankind. I believe that the words of these, too, just in so far as they
have proved themselves true words, were inspired by God. But though
I cannot, and man cannot, draw the line, God himself has done so; for
these books have been filtered out, as it were, under his guidance,
from many others, which, in ages gone by, claimed a place beside them,
and are now forgotten, while these have stood for thousands of years,
and are not likely to be set aside now. For they speak if men will read
them, to needs and hopes set deep in our human nature, which no other
books have ever spoken to, or ever can speak to, in the same way—they
set forth his government of the world as no other books ever have set
it forth, or ever can set it forth.

But though I do not believe that the difference between the inspiration
of Isaiah and Shakespeare is expressible by words, the difference
between the inspiration of the Holy Scripture—the Bible as a whole—and
any other possible or conceivable collection of the utterances of men
seems to me clear enough. The Bible has come to us from the Jewish
nation, which was chosen by God as the one best fitted to receive for
all mankind, and to give forth to all mankind, the revelation of Him—to
teach them His name and character—that is, to enable them to know Him
and in knowing Him, to feel how they and the world need redemption, and
to understand how they and the world have been redeemed. This Bible,
this Book of the chosen people, taken as a whole, has done this, is in
short the written revelation of God. This being so, there can be no
other inspired book in the same sense in which the Bible is inspired,
unless we, or some other world, are not redeemed, require another
redemption and another Christ. But as we and all worlds are redeemed,
and Christ is come, and God has revealed his name and his character
in Christ so that we can know Him, the Bible is and must remain _the_
inspired Book, the Book of the Church for all time, to which nothing
can be added, from which nothing can be taken, as they will find who
try to take from it or add to it. There may be another Homer, Plato,
Shakespeare; there can be no other Bible.




CXVI.


The longing for a Deliverer and Redeemer of himself and his race was
the strongest and deepest feeling in the heart of every Jewish patriot.
His whole life was grounded and centred on the promise and hope of such
an one. Just therefore when his utterances would be most human and
noble, most in sympathy with the cries and groanings of his own nation
and the universe, they would all point to and centre in that Deliverer
and Redeemer—just in so far as they were truly noble, human, and
Godlike, they would shadow forth His true character, the words He would
speak, the acts He would do. Doubtless the prophet would have before
his mind any notable deliverance, and noble sufferer, or deliverer of
his own time; his words would refer to these. But from these he would
be inevitably drawn up to the great promised Deliverer and Redeemer of
his nation and his race, because he would see after all how incomplete
the deliverance wrought by these must be, and his faith in the promise
made to his fathers and to his nation—the covenant of God in which he
felt himself to be included—would and could be satisfied with nothing
less than a full and perfect deliverance, a Redeemer who should be the
Head of men, the Son of man, and the Son of God.

Men may have insisted, may still insist, on seeing all sorts of
fanciful references to some special acts of his in certain words of
the Bible. But I must again insist that men’s fancies about the Bible
and Christ are not the question, but what the Bible itself says, what
Christ is. The whole book is full of Him, there is no need to read Him
into any part of it as to which there can be any possible doubt.

Holding this faith as to the Scriptures, I am not anxious to defend
them. I rejoice that they should be minutely examined and criticised.
They will defend themselves, one and all, I believe. Men may satisfy
themselves—perhaps, if I have time to give to the study, they may
satisfy me—that the Pentateuch was the work of twenty men; that Baruch
wrote a part of Isaiah; that David did not write the Psalms, or the
Evangelists the Gospels; that there are interpolations here and there
in the originals; that there are numerous and serious errors in our
translation. What is all this to me? What do I care who wrote them,
what is the date of them, what this or that passage ought to be? They
have told me what I wanted to know. Burn every copy in the world
to-morrow, you don’t and can’t take that knowledge from me, or any man.
I find them _all_ good for me; so, as long as a copy is left, and I can
get it, I mean to go on reading them all, and believing them all to be
inspired.




CXVII.


Our Lord came proclaiming a kingdom of God, a kingdom ordained by God
on this earth, the order and beauty of which the unruly and sinful
wills of men had deformed, so that disease, and death, and all miseries
and disorder, had grown up and destroyed the order of it, and thwarting
the perfectly loving will of God.

In asserting this kingdom and this order, our Lord claimed (as he must
have claimed if indeed he were the Son of God) dominion over disease
and death. This dominion was lower than that over the human heart and
will, but he claimed it as positively. He proved his claim to be good
in other ways, but specially for our present purpose by healing the
sick, and raising the dead. Were these works orderly or disorderly?
Every one of them seems to me to be the restoring of an order which
had been disturbed. They were witnesses for the law of life, faithful
and true manifestations of the will of a loving Father to his children.

Yes, you may say, but he did other miracles besides those of healing.
He turned water into wine, stilled the waves, multiplied loaves and
fishes. These at any rate were capricious suspensions of natural laws.
You say you believe in natural laws which have their ground in God’s
will. Such laws he suspended or set aside in these cases. Now were
these suspensions orderly?

I think they were. The natural laws which Christ suspended, such as the
law of increase, are laws of God. Being his laws, they are living and
not dead laws, but they are not the highest law; there must be a law
of God, a law of his mind, above them, or they would be dead tyrannous
rules. Christ seems to me to have been asserting the freedom of that
law of God by suspending these natural laws, and to have been claiming
here again, as part of his and our birthright, dominion over natural
laws.

All the other miracles, I believe, stand on the same ground. None have
been performed except by men who felt that they were witnessing for
God, with glimpses of his order, full of zeal for the triumph of that
order in the world, and working as Christ worked, in his spirit, and in
the name of his Father, or of him. If there are any miracles which do
not on a fair examination fulfil these conditions—which are such as a
loving Father educating sons who had strayed from or rebelled against
him would not have done—I am quite ready to give them up.




CXVIII.


You have another charge against Christianity. You say it is after all a
selfish faith, in which, however beautiful and noble the moral teaching
may be, the ultimate appeal has always been to the hope of reward
and fear of punishment. You will tell me that in ninety-nine of our
churches out of a hundred I shall hear this doctrine, and shall find it
in ninety-nine out of every hundred of theological or religious works.

If it be so I am sorry for it. But I am speaking of Christ’s Gospel,
and I say that you will not find the doctrine you protest against
there. I cannot go through our Lord’s teaching and his disciples’ to
prove this. I ask you to read for yourselves, bringing honest and clear
heads to the study, and not heads full of what you have thought, or
this and the other man has preached or written, and I say that then you
will give up this charge.

But as I have tried to do in all other cases, so here, I will tell you
exactly what my own faith on this matter is.

Christ has told me that the only reward I shall ever get will be “life
eternal,” and that life eternal is to know God and Him. That is all
the reward I care about. The only punishment I can ever bring on myself
will be, to banish myself from his presence and the presence of all who
know him, to dwell apart from him and my brethren, shut up in myself.
That is the only punishment I dread.

But this reward he has given us already, here. He has given us to know
God, and knowing God involves entering his kingdom, and dwelling in it.
That kingdom Christ has opened to you, and to me, here. We, you and I
may enter in any hour we please. If we don’t enter in now, and here,
I can’t see how we are ever likely to enter in in another world. Why
should not we enter in? It is worth trying. There are no conditions. It
is given for the asking.

I think you will find it all you are in search of and are longing for.
Above all, you will find in it and nowhere else, rest, peace—“not a
peace which depends upon compacts and bargains among men, but which
belongs to the very nature and character and being of God. Not a
peace which is produced by the stifling and suppression of activities
and energies, but the peace in which all activities and energies are
perfected and harmonized. Not a peace which comes from the toleration
of what is base or false, but which demands its destruction. Not a
peace which begins from without, but a peace which is first wrought in
the inner man, and thence comes forth to subdue the world. Not a peace
which a man gets for himself by standing aloof from the sorrows and
confusions of the world in which he is born, of the men whose nature
he shares, choosing a calm retreat and quiet scenery and a regulated
atmosphere; but a peace which has never thriven except in those who
have suffered with their suffering kind, who have been ready to give
up selfish enjoyments, sensual or spiritual, for their sakes, who have
abjured all devices of escape from ordained toils and temptations;
the peace which was His who bore the sorrows and sins and infirmities
of man, who gave up himself that he might become actually one with
them, who thus won for them a participation in the Divine nature, and
inheritance in that peace of God which passeth all understanding.”

This kingdom of God is good enough for me at any rate. I can trust him
who has brought me into it to add what he will, to open my eyes, and
strengthen my powers, that I may see and enjoy ever more and more of
it, in this world, or in any other in which he may put me hereafter.
Where that may be is no care of mine; it will be in his kingdom still,
that I know; no power in Heaven or Hell, or Earth can cast me out of
that, except I myself. While I remain in it I can freely use and enjoy
every blessing and good gift of his glorious earth, the inheritance
which he has given to us, his father’s children, his brethren. When it
shall be his good pleasure to take me out of it he will not take me
out of but bring me into more perfect communion with him and with my
brethren. He nourisheth my heart with good things on this earth, he
will not cease to do this anywhere else. He reveals himself to me here,
though as a man I cannot take in his full and perfect revelation, but
when I awake up after his likeness I shall be satisfied—and not till
then.




CXIX.


One stumbling block in your way is, you say, that you are revolted
and kept at arm’s-length by the separatist and exclusive habits and
maxims of those who profess to have the faith you want. Many of them
are kind, exemplary men, but just because they are Christians, and in
so far forth as they are Christians, they are calling to you to come
out from amongst the people of the world—to separate yourselves from an
adulterous generation.

Against this call something which you know to be true and noble in you
rises up. You have felt that what your age is crying out for, is union.
You acknowledge the power of that cry in your own hearts. You want to
feel with all men, and for all men. If you need a faith at all, it is
one which shall meet that cry, which shall teach you how all men are
bound together; not how some may be separated from the rest. You will
not be false to your age. You will have no faith at all, or a faith for
all mankind.

Keep to that; take nothing less than that; only look again and see
whether that is not just what Christ offers you. Again I urge you not
to look at his followers, real or professing—look at him, look at his
life.

Was He exclusive? Did ever man or woman come near him and he turn
away? Did he not go amongst all ranks, into every society? Did he not
go to the houses of great men and rulers; of Pharisees, of poor men,
of publicans? Did he not frequent the temple, the marketplace, the
synagogue, the sea-shore, the hillside, the haunts of outcasts and
harlots? Was he not to be found at feasts and at funerals? Wherever men
and women were to be found, there was his place and his work; and there
is ours. He who believes in him must go into every society where he
has any call whatever. Who are we that we should pick and choose? The
greatest ruffian, the most abandoned woman, that ever walked the face
of this earth, were good enough for our Lord to die for. If he sends
us amongst them, he will take care of us, and has something for us to
do or speak, for or to them. The greatest king, the holiest saint on
earth, is not too high company for one for whom Christ died, as he did
for you and me. So, if he sends us amongst great or holy people, let us
go, and learn what he means us to learn there.

I know how deeply many of you feel and mourn over the miseries and
disorder of England and the world—how you long to do something towards
lightening ever so small a part of those miseries, rescuing ever
so small a corner of the earth from that disorder. I know well how
earnestly many of you are working in one way or another for your
country and your brethren. I know what high hopes many of you have
for the future of the world and the destiny of man. I say, mourn on,
work on; abate not one jot of any hope you have ever had for the world
or for man. Your hopes, be they what they may, have never been high
enough—your work never earnest enough. But I ask you whether your
hopes and your work have not been marred again and again, whether
you have not been thrown back again and again into listlessness and
hopelessness, by failures of one kind or another, whether you have not
felt that those failures have been caused more or less by your own
uncertainty, by your having had to work and fight without a leader,
with comrades to whom you were bound only by chance, to journey without
any clear knowledge of the road you were going, or where it led to?

At such times have you not longed for light and guidance? What would
you have not given for a well of light and hope and strength, springing
up within you and renewing your powers and energies? What would you not
have given for the inward certainty that the road you were travelling
was the right one, however you might stumble on it; that the line
of battle in which you stood was the line for all true men, and was
marching break at the point which had been given you to hold, whatever
might become of you? Well, be sure that light and guidance, that
renewal of strength and hope, that certainty as to your side and your
road, you are meant to have; they have been prepared, and are ready,
for every man of you, whenever you will take them. The longings for
them are whispered in your hearts by the Leader, whose cross, never
turned back, ever triumphing more and more over all principalities and
powers of evil, blazes far ahead in the van of our battles. He has
been called the Captain of our Salvation, the Lion of the tribe of
Judah, the Lamb who was slain for the world; He has told us his name,
the Son of God and the Son of Man; He has claimed to be the redeemer,
deliverer, leader of mankind.




CXX.


My younger brothers, I am not speaking to you the words of enthusiasm
or excitement, but the words of sober every-day knowledge and
certainty. I tell you that all the miseries of England and of other
lands consist simply in this and in nothing else, that we men, made in
the image of God, made to know him, to be one with him in his Son, will
not confess that Son our Lord and Brother, to be the Son of God and
Son of man, the living Head of our race and of each one of us. I tell
you that if we would confess him and lay hold of him and let him enter
into and rule and guide us and the world, instead of trying to rule and
guide ourselves and the world without him, we should see and know that
the kingdom of God is just as much about us now as it will ever be.
I tell you that we should see all sorrow and misery melting away and
drawn up from this fair world of God’s like mountain mist before the
July sun.




CXXI.


I do not ask you to adopt any faith of mine. But as you would do good
work in your generation, I ask of you to give yourselves no peace till
you have answered these questions, each one for himself, in the very
secret recesses of his heart, “Do I, does my race, want a head? Can we
be satisfied with any less than a Son of man and a Son of God? Is this
Christ, who has been so long worshipped in England, He?”

If you can answer, though with faltering lips, “Yes, this is He,” I
care very little what else you accept, all else that is necessary or
good for you will come in due time, if once he has the guidance of you.




CXXII.


My faith has been no holiday or Sunday faith, but one for every-day
use; a faith to live and die in, not to argue or talk about. It has
had to stand the wear and tear of life; it was not got in prosperity.
It has had to carry me through years of anxious toil and small means,
through the long sicknesses of those dearer to me than my own life,
through deaths amongst them both sudden and lingering. Few men of my
age have had more failures of all kinds; no man has deserved them more,
by the commission of all kinds of blunders and errors, by evil tempers,
and want of faith, hope, and love.

Through all this it has carried me, and has risen up in me after every
failure and every sorrow, fresher, clearer, stronger. Why do I say
“_it_?” I mean He. He has carried me through it all; He who is your
Head and the Head of every man, woman, child, on this earth, or who
has ever been on it, just as much as he is my Head. And he will carry
us all through every temptation, trial, sorrow, we can ever have to
encounter, in this world or any other, if we will only turn to him, lay
hold of him, and cast them all upon him, as he has bidden us.

My younger brothers, you on whom the future of your country, under God,
at this moment depends, will you not try him? Is he not worth a trial?




CXXIII.


Precious as his love was to him, and deeply as it affected his whole
life, Tom felt that there must be something beyond it—that its full
satisfaction would not be enough for him. The bed was too narrow for a
man to stretch himself on. What he was in search of must underlie and
embrace his human love, and support it. Beyond and above all private
and personal desires and hopes and longings, he was conscious of a
restless craving and feeling about after something which he could
not grasp, and yet which was not avoiding him, which seemed to be
mysteriously laying hold of him and surrounding him.

The routine of chapels, and lectures, and reading for degree, boating,
cricketing, Union-debating—all well enough in their way—left this
vacuum unfilled. There was a great outer visible world, the problems
and puzzles of which were rising before him and haunting him more and
more; and a great inner and invisible world opening round him in awful
depth. He seemed to be standing on the brink of each—now, shivering
and helpless, feeling like an atom about to be whirled into the great
flood and carried he knew not where—now, ready to plunge in and take
his part, full of hope and belief that he was meant to buffet in the
strength of a man with the seen and the unseen, and to be subdued by
neither.




CXXIV.


Far on in the quiet night he laid the whole before the Lord and slept!
Yes, my brother, even so: the old, old story; but start not at the
phrase, though you may never have found its meaning.—He laid the whole
before the Lord, in prayer, for his friend, for himself, for the whole
world.

And you, too, if ever you are tried—as every man must be in one way or
another—must learn to do the like with every burthen on your soul, if
you would not have it hanging round you heavily, and ever more heavily,
and dragging you down lower and lower till your dying day.




CXXV.


The English prejudice against Franklin on religious grounds is quite
unreasonable. He was suspected of being a Freethinker, and was
professedly a philosopher and man of science; he was a friend of
Tom Paine and other dreadful persons; he had actually published “An
Abridgment of the Church Prayer-Book,” dedicated “to the serious and
discerning,” by the use of which he had the audacity to suppose that
religion would be furthered, unanimity increased, and a more frequent
attendance on the worship of God secured. Any one of these charges
was sufficient to ruin a man’s religious reputation in respectable
England of the last generation, but it is high time that amends were
made in these days. Let us glance at the real facts. As a boy, Franklin
had the disease which all thoughtful boys have to pass through, and
puzzled himself with speculations as to the attributes of God and the
existence of evil, which landed him in the conclusion that nothing
could possibly be wrong in the world, and that vice and virtue were
empty distinctions. These views he published at the mature age of
nineteen, but became disgusted with them almost immediately, and
abandoned metaphysics for other more satisfactory studies. Living in
the eighteenth century, when happiness was held to be “our being’s end
and aim,” he seems to have now conformed to that popular belief; but as
he came also to the conclusion that “the felicity of life” was to be
attained through “truth, sincerity, and integrity in dealings between
man and man,” and acted up to this conclusion, no great objection from
a moral or religious standpoint can be taken to this stage of his
development. At the age of twenty-two he composed a little liturgy for
his own use, which he fell back on when the sermons of the minister
of the only Presbyterian church in Philadelphia had driven him from
attendance at chapel. He did not, however, long remain unattached, and
after his marriage joined the Church of England, in which he remained
till the end of his life. What his sentiments were in middle life may
be gathered from his advice to his daughter on the eve of his third
departure for England: “Go constantly to church, whoever preaches. The
act of devotion in the Common Prayer-Book is your principle business
there, and if properly attended to will do more toward amending the
heart than sermons.... I do not mean you should despise sermons,
even of the preachers you dislike, for the discourse is often much
better than the man, as sweet and clear waters come through very dirty
earth. I am the more particular on this head as you seem to express
some inclination to leave our church, which I would not have you do.”
As an old man of eighty, he reminded his colleagues of the National
Convention (in moving unsuccessfully that there should be daily prayers
before business) how in the beginnings of the contest with Britain
“we had daily prayers in this room.... Do we imagine we no longer
need assistance? I have lived now a long time, and the longer I live
the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God rules in the
affairs of men.” Later yet, in answer to President Yates, of Yale
College, who had pressed him on the subject, he writes, at the age of
eighty-four: “Here is my creed: I believe in one God, the Creator of
the universe; that he governs it by his providence; that he ought to
be worshipped; that the most acceptable service we render to him is
doing good to his other children; that the soul of man is immortal, and
will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct
in this.” These are his “fundamentals,” beyond which he believes that
Christ’s system of morals and religion is the best the world is ever
likely to see, though it has been much corrupted. To another friend he
speaks with cheerful courage of death, which “I shall submit to with
less regret as, having seen during a long life a good deal of this
world, I feel a growing curiosity to be acquainted with some other;
and can cheerfully, with filial confidence, resign my spirit to the
conduct of that great and good Parent of mankind who has so graciously
protected and prospered me from my birth to the present hour.” One more
quotation we cannot resist; it is his farewell letter to his old friend
David Hartley: “I cannot quit the coasts of Europe without taking leave
of my old friend. We were long fellow-laborers in the best of all
works, the work of peace. I leave you still in the field, but, having
finished my day’s task, I am going home to bed. Wish me a good night’s
rest, as I do you a pleasant evening. Adieu, and believe me ever yours
most affectionately,—B. FRANKLIN.”

As to his relations with Paine, they should have reassured instead
of frightened the orthodox, for he did his best to keep the author
of “The Rights of Man” from publishing his speculations. Franklin
advises him that he will do himself mischief and no benefit to others.
“He who spits against the wind, spits in his own face.” Paine is
probably indebted to religion “for the habits of virtue on which you
so justly value yourself. You might easily display your excellent
talents of reasoning upon a less hazardous subject, and thereby obtain
a rank amongst our most distinguished authors. For among us it is not
necessary, as among the Hottentots, that a youth, to be raised into the
company of men, should prove his manhood by beating his mother.”




CXXVI.


Of course, it is more satisfactory to one’s own self-love, to make
every one who comes to one to learn, feel that he is a fool, and we
wise men; but, if our object is to teach well and usefully what we know
ourselves there cannot be a worse method. No man, however, is likely to
adopt it, so long as he is conscious that he has anything himself to
learn from his pupils; and as soon as he has arrived at the conviction
that they can teach him nothing—that it is henceforth to be all give
and no take—the sooner he throws up his office of teacher the better
it will be for himself, his pupils, and his country, whose sons he is
misguiding.




CXXVII.


“When one thinks what a great centre of learning and faith like
Oxford ought to be—that its highest educational work should just be
the deliverance of us all from flunkeyism and money-worship—and then
looks at matters here without rose-colored spectacles, it gives one
sometimes a sort of chilly, leaden despondency, which is very hard to
struggle against.”

“I am sorry to hear you talk like that, Jack, for one can’t help loving
the place after all.”

“So I do, God knows. If I didn’t, I shouldn’t care for its
shortcomings.”

“Well, the flunkeyism and money-worship were bad enough, but I don’t
think they were the worst things—at least not in my day. Our neglects
were almost worse than our worships.”

“You mean the want of all reverence for parents? Well, perhaps that
lies at the root of the false worships. They spring up on the vacant
soil.”

“And the want of reverence for women, Jack. The worst of all, to my
mind!”

“Perhaps you are right. But we are not at the bottom yet.”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean that we must worship God before we can reverence parents or
women, or root out flunkeyism and money-worship.”

“Yes. But after all can we fairly lay that sin on Oxford? Surely,
whatever may be growing up side by side with it, there’s more
Christianity here than almost anywhere else.”

“Plenty of common-room Christianity—belief in a dead God. There, I have
never said it to any one but you, but that is the slough we have got to
get out of. Don’t think that I despair for us. We shall do it yet; but
it will be sore work, stripping off the comfortable wine-party religion
in which we are wrapped up—work for our strongest and our wisest.”




CXXVIII.


Everybody, I suppose, knows the dreamy delicious state in which one
lies, half asleep, half awake, while consciousness begins to return
after a sound night’s rest in a new place which we are glad to be in,
following upon a day of unwonted excitement and exertion. There are
few pleasanter pieces of life. The worst of it is that they last such
a short time; for nurse them as you will, by lying perfectly passive
in mind and body, you can’t make more than five minutes or so of them.
After which time the stupid, obstrusive, wakeful entity which we call
“I,” as impatient as he is stiff-necked, spite of our teeth will force
himself back again, and take possession of us down to our very toes.




CXXIX.


The sun was going down behind the copse, through which his beams came
aslant, chequered and mellow. The stream ran dimpling down, sleepily
swaying the masses of weed, under the surface and on the surface; and
the trout rose under the banks, as some moth or gnat or gleaming
beetle fell into the stream; here and there one more frolicsome than
his brethren would throw himself joyously into the air. The swifts
rushed close by, in companies of five or six, and wheeled, and
screamed, and dashed away again, skimming along the water, baffling the
eye as one tried to follow their flight. Two kingfishers shot suddenly
up on to their supper station, on a stunted willow stump, some twenty
yards below him, and sat there in the glory of their blue backs and
cloudy red waistcoats, watching with long sagacious beaks pointed to
the water beneath, and every now and then dropping like flashes of
light into the stream, and rising again, with what seemed one motion,
to their perches. A heron or two were fishing about the meadows;
and Tom watched them stalking about in their sober quaker coats, or
rising on slow heavy wing, and lumbering away home with a weird cry.
He heard the strong pinions of the wood pigeon in the air, and then
from the trees above his head came the soft call, “Take-two-cow-Taffy,
take-two-cow-Taffy,” with which that fair and false bird is said to
have beguiled the hapless Welchman to the gallows. Presently, as he
lay motionless, the timid and graceful little water-hens peered out
from their doors in the rushes opposite, and, seeing no cause for
fear, stepped daintily into the water, and were suddenly surrounded by
little bundles of black soft down, which went paddling about in and
out of the weeds, encouraged by the occasional sharp, clear, parental
“keck—keck,” and merry little dabchicks popped up in mid-stream, and
looked round, and nodded at him, pert and voiceless, and dived again;
even old cunning water-rats sat up on the bank with round black noses
and gleaming eyes, or took solemn swims out, and turned up their tails
and disappeared for his amusement. A comfortable low came at intervals
from the cattle, revelling in the abundant herbage. All living things
seemed to be disporting themselves, and enjoying, after their kind, the
last gleams of the sunset, which were making the whole vault of heaven
glow and shimmer; and, as he watched them, Tom blessed his stars as
he contrasted the river-side with the glare of lamps and the click of
balls in the noisy pool-room.

And then the summer twilight came on, and the birds disappeared, and
the hush of night settled down on river, and copse, and meadow—cool and
gentle summer twilight, after the hot bright day. He welcomed it too,
as it folded up the landscape, and the trees lost their outline, and
settled into soft black masses rising here and there out of the white
mist, which seemed to have crept up to within a few yards all round him
unawares. There was no sound now but the gentle murmur of the water,
and an occasional rustle of reeds, or of the leaves over his head, as
a stray wandering puff of air passed through them on its way home to
bed. Nothing to listen to, and nothing to look at; for the moon had not
risen, and the light mist hid everything except a star or two right up
above him. So, the outside world having left him for the present, he
was turned inwards on himself.




CXXX.


The nights are pleasant in May, short and pleasant for travel. We will
leave the city asleep, and do our flight in the night to save time.
Trust yourselves, then, to the story-teller’s aërial machine. It is but
a rough affair, I own, rough and humble, unfitted for high or great
flights, with no gilded panels, or dainty cushions, or C-springs—not
that we shall care about springs, by the way, until we alight on
terra-firma again—still, there is much to be learned in a third-class
carriage if we will only not look while in it for cushions, and fine
panels, and forty miles an hour travelling, and will not be shocked
at our fellow-passengers for being weak in their h’s and smelling of
fustian. Mount in it, then, you who will, after this warning; the fares
are holiday fares, the tickets return tickets. Take with you nothing
but the poet’s luggage,

    “A smile for Hope, a tear for Pain,
     A breath to swell the voice of Prayer,”

and may you have a pleasant journey, for it is time that the stoker
should be looking to his going gear!

So now we rise slowly in the moonlight from St. Ambrose’s quadrangle,
and, when we are clear of the clock-tower, steer away southwards, over
Oxford city and all its sleeping wisdom and folly, over street and past
spire, over Christ Church and the canons’ houses, and the fountain in
Tom quad; over St. Aldate’s and the river, along which the moonbeams
lie in a pathway of twinkling silver, over the railway sheds—no,
there was then no railway, but only the quiet fields and foot-paths
of Hincksey hamlet. Well, no matter; at any rate, the hills beyond,
and Bagley Wood, were there then as now: and over hills and wood we
rise, catching the purr of the night-jar, the trill of the nightingale,
and the first crow of the earliest cock-pheasant, as he stretches his
jewelled wings, conscious of his strength and his beauty, heedless of
the fellows of St. John’s, who slumber within sight of his perch, on
whose hospitable board he shall one day lie, prone on his back, with
fair larded breast turned upwards for the carving knife, having crowed
his last crow. He knows it not; what matters it to him? If he knew it,
could a Bagley Wood cock-pheasant desire a better ending?

We pass over the vale beyond; hall and hamlet, church, and meadow,
and copse, folded in mist and shadow below us, each hamlet holding in
its bosom the materials of three-volumed novels by the dozen, if we
could only pull off the roofs of the houses and look steadily into
the interiors; but our destination is farther yet. The faint white
streak behind the distant Chilterns reminds us that we have no time
for gossip by the way; May nights are short, and the sun will be up
by four. No matter; our journey will now be soon over, for the broad
vale is crossed, and the chalk hills and downs beyond. Larks quiver
up by us, “higher, ever higher,” hastening up to get a first glimpse
of the coming monarch, careless of food, flooding the fresh air with
song. Steady plodding rooks labor along below us, and lively starlings
rush by on the look-out for the early worm; lark and swallow, rook and
starling, each on his appointed round. The sun arises, and they get
them to it; he is up now, and these breezy uplands over which we hang
are swimming in the light of horizontal rays, though the shadows and
mists still lie on the wooded dells which slope away southwards.

This is no chalk, this high knoll which rises above—one may almost say
hangs over—the village, crowned with Scotch firs, its sides tufted
with gorse and heather. It is the Hawk’s Lynch, the favorite resort
of Englebourn folk, who come up for the view, for the air, because
their fathers and mothers came up before them, because they came up
themselves as children—from an instinct which moves them all in leisure
hours and Sunday evenings, when the sun shines and the birds sing,
whether they care for view or air or not. Something guides all their
feet hitherward; the children, to play hide-and-seek and look for
nests in the gorse-bushes; young men and maidens, to saunter and look
and talk, as they will till the world’s end—or as long, at any rate,
as the Hawk’s Lynch and Englebourn last—and to cut their initials,
inclosed in a true lover’s knot, on the short rabbit’s turf; steady
married couples, to plod along together consulting on hard times and
growing families; even old tottering men, who love to sit at the feet
of the firs, with chins leaning on their sticks, prattling of days long
past, to any one who will listen, or looking silently with dim eyes
into the summer air, feeling perhaps in their spirits after a wider and
more peaceful view which will soon open for them. A common knoll, open
to all, up in the silent air, well away from every-day Englebourn life,
with the Hampshire range and the distant Beacon Hill lying soft on the
horizon, and nothing higher between you and the southern sea, what a
blessing the Hawk’s Lynch is to the village folk, one and all! May
Heaven and a thankless soil long preserve it and them from an inclosure
under the Act!




CXXXI.


In January, 878, King Alfred disappears from the eyes of Saxon and
Northmen, and we follow him, by such light as tradition throws upon
these months, into the thickets and marshes of Selwood. It is at this
point, as is natural enough, that romance has been most busy, and it
has become impossible to disentangle the actual facts from monkish
legend and Saxon ballad. In happier times Alfred was in the habit
himself of talking over the events of his wandering life pleasantly
with his courtiers, and there is no reason to doubt that the foundation
of most of the stories still current rests on those conversations of
the truth-loving king, noted down by Bishop Asser and others.

The best known of these is, of course, the story of the cakes. In the
depths of the Saxon forests there were always a few neat-herds and
swine-herds, scattered up and down, living in rough huts enough we
may be sure, and occupied with the care of the cattle and herds of
their masters. Amongst these in Selwood was a neat-herd of the king, a
faithful man, to whom the secret of Alfred’s disguise was intrusted,
and who kept it even from his wife. To this man’s hut the king came
one day alone, and, sitting himself down by the burning logs on the
hearth, began mending his bows and arrows. The neat-herd’s wife had
just finished her baking, and, having other household matters to attend
to, confided her loaves to the king, a poor, tired looking body, who
might be glad of the warmth, and could make himself useful by turning
the batch, and so earn his share while she got on with other business.
But Alfred worked away at his weapons, thinking of anything but the
good housewife’s batch of loaves, which in due course were not only
done, but rapidly burning to a cinder. At this moment the neat-herd’s
wife comes back, and flying to the hearth to rescue the bread, cries
out, “D’rat the man! never to turn the loaves when you see them
burning. I’ze warrant you ready enough to eat them when they’re done.”
But beside the king’s faithful neat-herd, whose name is not preserved,
there are other churls in the forest, who must be Alfred’s comrades
just now if he will have any. And even here he has an eye for a good
man, and will lose no opportunity to help one to the best of his power.
Such a one he finds in a certain swine-herd called Denewulf, whom he
gets to know, a thoughtful Saxon man, minding his charge there in the
oak woods. The rough churl, or thrall, we know not which, has great
capacity, as Alfred soon finds out, and desire to learn. So the king
goes to work upon Denewulf under the oak trees, when the swine will let
him, and is well satisfied with the results of his teachings and the
progress of his pupil.

But in those miserable days the commonest necessaries of life were hard
enough to come by for the king and his few companions, and for his wife
and family, who soon joined him in the forest, even if they were not
with him from the first. The poor foresters cannot maintain them, nor
are this band of exiles the men to live on the poor. So Alfred and his
comrades are soon foraging on the borders of the forest, and getting
what subsistence they can from the Pagan, or from the Christians who
had submitted to their yoke. So we may imagine them dragging on life
till near Easter when a gleam of good news comes up from the west, to
gladden the hearts and strengthen the arms of these poor men in the
depths of Selwood.

Soon after Guthrum and the main body of the Pagans moved from Gloster,
southwards, the Viking Hubba, as had been agreed, sailed with thirty
ships of war from his winter quarters on the South Welsh coast, and
landed in Devon. The news of the catastrophe at Chippenham, and of the
disappearance of the king, was no doubt already known in the west; and
in the face of it Odda the alderman cannot gather strength to meet the
Pagans in the open field. But he is a brave and true man, and will
make no term with the spoilers; so, with other faithful thegns of
King Alfred and their followers, he throws himself into a castle or
fort called Cynwith, or Cynnit, there to abide whatever issue of this
business God will send them. Hubba, with the war-flag Raven, and a host
laden with the spoil of rich Devon vales, appear in due course before
the place. It is not strong naturally, and has only “walls in our own
fashion,” meaning probably rough earth-works. But there are resolute
men behind them, and on the whole Hubba declines the assault, and sits
down before the place. There is no spring of water, he hears, within
the Saxon lines, and they are otherwise wholly unprepared for a siege.
A few days will no doubt settle the matter, and the sword or slavery
will be the portion of Odda and the rest of Alfred’s men; meantime
there is spoil enough in the camp from Devonshire homesteads, which
brave men can revel in round the war-flag Raven, while they watch the
Saxon ramparts. Odda, however, has quite other views than death from
thirst, or surrender. Before any stress comes, early one morning, he
and his whole force sally out over their earth-works, and from the
first “cut down the Pagans in great numbers;” eight hundred and forty
warriors (some say one thousand two hundred), with Hubba himself, are
slain before Cynnit fort; the rest, few in number, escape to their
ships. The war-flag Raven is left in the hands of Odda and the men of
Devon.

This is the news which comes to Alfred, Ethelnoth the alderman of
Somerset, Denewulf the swine-herd, and the rest of the Selwood Forest
group, some time before Easter. These men of Devonshire, it seems,
are still staunch, and ready to peril their lives against the Pagans.
No doubt up and down Wessex, thrashed and trodden out as the nation
is by this time, there are other good men and true, who will neither
cross the sea or the Welsh marches, nor make terms with the Pagan; some
sprinkling of men who will yet set life at stake, for faith in Christ
and love of England. If these can only be rallied, who can say what
may follow? So, in the lengthening days of spring, council is held in
Selwood and there will have been Easter services in some chapel, or
hermitage, in the forest, or, at any rate in some quiet glade. The “day
of days” will surely have had its voice of hope for this poor remnant.
Christ is risen and reigns; and it is not in these heathen Danes, or
in all the Northmen who ever sailed across the sea, to put back his
kingdom, or enslave those whom he has freed.

The result is, that, far away from the eastern boundary of the
forest, on a rising ground—hill it can scarcely be called—surrounded
by dangerous marshes formed by the little rivers Thone and Parret,
fordable only in summer, and even then dangerous to all who have not
the secret, a small fortified camp is thrown up under Alfred’s eye, by
Ethelnoth and the Somersetshire men, where he can once again raise his
standard. The spot has been chosen by the king with the utmost care,
for it is his last throw. He names it the Etheling’s eig or island,
“Athelney.” Probably his young son, the Etheling of England, is there
amongst the first, with his mother and his grand-mother Eadburgha, the
widow of Ethelred Mucil, the venerable lady whom Asser saw in later
years, and who has now no country but her daughter’s. There are, as
has been reckoned, some two acres of hard ground on the island, and
around vast brakes of alder-bush, full of deer and other game. Here the
Somersetshire men can keep up constant communication with him, and a
small army grows together. They are soon strong enough to make forays
into the open country, and in many skirmishes they cut off parties of
the Pagans, and supplies. “For, even when overthrown and cast down,”
says Malmesbury, “Alfred had always to be fought with; so then, when
one would esteem him altogether worn down and broken, like a snake
slipping from the hand of him who would grasp it, he would suddenly
flash out again from his hiding-places, rising up to smite his foes in
the height of their insolent confidence, and never more hard to beat
than after a flight.”

But it was still a trying life at Athelney. Followers came in slowly,
and provender and supplies of all kinds are hard to wring from the
Pagan, and harder still to take from Christian men. One day, while it
was yet so cold that the water was still frozen, the king’s people had
gone out “to get them fish or fowl, or some such purveyance as they
sustained themselves withal.” No one was left in the royal hut for the
moment but himself and his mother-in-law, Eadburgha. The king (after
his constant wont whensoever he had opportunity) was reading from the
Psalms of David, out of the Manual which he carried always in his
bosom. At this moment a poor man appeared at the door and begged for a
morsel of bread “for Christ his sake.” Whereupon the king, receiving
the stranger as a brother, called to his mother-in-law to give him to
eat. Eadburgha replied that there was but one loaf in their store, and
a little wine in a pitcher, a provision wholly insufficient for his
own family and people. But the king bade her, nevertheless, to give
the stranger part of the last loaf, which she accordingly did. But
when he had been served, the stranger was no more seen, and the loaf
remained whole, and the pitcher full to the brim. Alfred, meantime,
had turned to his reading, over which he fell asleep and dreamed that
St. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne stood by him, and told him it was he who
had been his guest, and that God had seen his afflictions and those of
his people, which were now about to end, in token whereof his people
would return that day from their expedition with a great take of fish.
The king awaking, and being much impressed with his dream, called to
his mother-in-law and recounted it to her, who thereupon assured him
that she too had been overcome with sleep, and had had the same dream.
And while they yet talked together on what had happened so strangely
to them, their servants came in, bringing fish enough, as it seemed to
them, to have fed an army.

The monkish legend goes on to tell that on the next morning the king
crossed to the mainland in a boat, and wound his horn thrice, which
drew to him before noon five hundred men. What we may think of the
story and the dream, as Sir John Spelman says, “is not here very much
material,” seeing that whether we deem it natural or supernatural,
“the one as well as the other serves at God’s appointment, by raising
or dejecting of the mind with hopes or fears, to lead man to the
resolution of those things whereof he has before ordained the event.”




CXXXII.


“Mrs. Winburn is ill, isn’t she?” asked Tom, after looking his guide
over.

“Ees, her be—terrible bad,” said the constable.

“What is the matter with her, do you know?”

“Zummat o’ fits, I hears. Her’ve had ’em this six year, on and off.”

“I suppose it’s dangerous. I mean she isn’t likely to get well?”

“’Tis in the Lord’s hands,” replied the constable, “but her’s that bad
wi’ pain, at times, ’twould be a mussy if ’twoud plaase He to tak’ her
out on’t.”

“Perhaps she mightn’t think so,” said Tom, superciliously; he was not
in the mind to agree with any one. The constable looked at him solemnly
for a moment and then said:

“Her’s been a God-fearin’ woman from her youth up, and her’s had a deal
o’ trouble. Thaay as the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and ’tisn’t such as
thaay as is afeard to go afore Him.”

“Well, I never found that having trouble made people a bit more anxious
to get ‘out on’t,’ as you call it,” said Tom.

“It don’t seem to me as you can ’a had much o’ trouble to judge by,”
said the constable, who was beginning to be nettled by Tom’s manner.

“How can you tell that?”

“Leastways ’twould be whoam-made, then,” persisted the constable; “and
ther’s a sight o’ odds atween whoam-made troubles and thaay as the Lord
sends.”

“So there may; but I may have seen both sorts for anything you can
tell.”

“Nay, nay; the Lord’s troubles leave His marks.”




CXXXIII.


“And I be to write to you, sir, then, if Harry gets into trouble?”

“Yes; but we must keep him out of trouble, even home-made ones, which
don’t leave good marks, you know,” said Tom.

“And thaay be nine out o’ ten o’ aal as comes to a man, sir,” said
David, “as I’ve a told Harry scores o’ times.”

“That seems to be your text, David,” said Tom, laughing.

“Ah, and ’tis a good un too, sir. ’Tis a sight better to have the
Lord’s troubles while you be about it, for thaay as hasn’t makes wus
for theirselves out o’ nothin’.”




CXXXIV.


Grey, who had never given up hopes of bringing Tom round to his own
views, had not neglected the opportunities which his residence in town
offered, and had enlisted Tom’s services on more than one occasion. He
had found him specially useful in instructing the big boys, whom he
was trying to bring together and civilize in a “Young Men’s Club,” in
the rudiments of cricket on Saturday evenings. But on the morning in
question an altogether different work was on hand.

A lady living some eight or nine miles to the northwest of London,
who took great interest in Grey’s doings, had asked him to bring the
children of his night-school down to spend a day in her grounds, and
this was the happy occasion. It was before the days of cheap excursions
by rail, so that vans had to be found for the party; and Grey had
discovered a benevolent remover of furniture in Paddington, who was
ready to take them at a reasonable figure. The two vans, with awnings
and curtains in the height of the fashion, and horses with tasselled
ear-caps, and everything handsome about them, were already drawn up in
the midst of a group of excited children, and scarcely less excited
mothers, when Tom arrived. Grey was arranging his forces, and laboring
to reduce the Irish children, who formed almost half of his ragged
little flock, into something like order before starting. By degrees
this was managed, and Tom was placed in command of the rear van, while
Grey reserved the leading one to himself. The children were divided,
and warned not to lean over the sides and tumble out—a somewhat
superfluous caution, as most of them, though unused to riding in any
legitimate manner, were pretty well used to balancing themselves behind
any vehicle which offered as much as a spike to sit on, out of sight
of the driver. Then came the rush into the vans. Grey and Tom took up
their places next the doors as conductors, and the procession lumbered
off with great success, and much shouting from treble voices.

Tom soon found that he had plenty of work on his hands to keep the
peace amongst his flock. The Irish element was in a state of wild
effervescence, and he had to draft them down to his own end, leaving
the foremost part of the van to the sober English children. He was
much struck by the contrast of the whole set to the Englebourn school
children, whom he had lately seen under somewhat similar circumstances.
The difficulty with them had been to draw them out, and put anything
like life into them; here, all he had to do was to repress the
superabundant life. However, the vans held on their way, and got
safely into the suburbs, and so at last to an occasional hedge, and a
suspicion of trees, and green fields beyond.

It became more and more difficult now to keep the boys in; and when
they came to a hill, where the horses had to walk, he yielded to their
entreaties, and, opening the door, let them out, insisting only that
the girls should remain seated. They scattered over the sides of the
roads, and up the banks; now chasing pigs and fowls up to the very
doors of their owners; now gathering the commonest road-side weeds,
and running up to show them to him, and ask their names, as if they
were rare treasures. The ignorance of most of the children as to the
commonest country matters astonished him. One small boy particularly
came back time after time to ask him, with solemn face, “Please,
sir, is this the country?” and when at last he allowed that it was,
rejoined, “Then, please, where are the nuts?”

The clothing of most of the Irish boys began to tumble to pieces in
an alarming manner. Grey had insisted on their being made tidy for
the occasion, but the tidiness was of a superficial kind. The hasty
stitching soon began to give way, and they were rushing about with
wild locks; the strips of what might have once been nether garments
hanging about their legs; their feet and heads bare, the shoes which
their mothers had borrowed for the state occasion having been deposited
under the seat of the van, so when the procession arrived at the trim
lodge-gates of their hostess, and his charge descended and fell in on
the beautifully clipped turf at the side of the drive, Tom felt some
of the sensations of Falstaff when he had to lead his ragged regiment
through Coventry streets.

He was soon at his ease again, and enjoyed the day thoroughly, and the
drive home; but, as they drew near town again, a sense of discomfort
and shyness came over him, and he wished the journey to Westminster
well over, and hoped that the carman would have the sense to go
through the quiet parts of the town.

He was much disconcerted, consequently, when the vans came to a sudden
stop, opposite one of the Park entrances, in the Bayswater road. “What
in the world is Grey about?” he thought, as he saw him get out, and all
the children after him. So he got out himself, and went forward to get
an explanation.

“Oh, I have told the man that he need not drive us round to
Westminster. He is close at home here, and his horses have had a hard
day; so we can just get out and walk home.”

“What, across the Park?” asked Tom.

“Yes, it will amuse the children, you know.”

“But they’re tired,” persisted Tom; “come now, it’s all nonsense
letting the fellow off; he’s bound to take us back.”

“I’m afraid I have promised him,” said Grey; “besides, the children all
think it a treat. Don’t you all want to walk across the Park?” he went
on, turning to them, and a general affirmative chorus was the answer.
So Tom had nothing for it but to shrug his shoulders, empty his own
van, and follow into the Park with his convoy, not in the best humor
with Grey for having arranged this ending to their excursion.

They might have got over a third of the distance between the Bayswater
Road and the Serpentine, when he was aware of a small thin voice
addressing him.

“Oh, please won’t you carry me a bit? I’m so tired,” said the voice.
He turned in some trepidation to look for the speaker, and found her
to be a sickly undergrown little girl, of ten or thereabouts, with
large pleading gray eyes, very shabbily dressed, and a little lame.
He had remarked her several times in the course of the day, not for
any beauty or grace about her, for the poor child had none, but for
her transparent confidence and trustfulness. After dinner, as they had
been all sitting on the grass under the shade of a great elm to hear
Grey read a story, and Tom had been sitting a little apart from the
rest with his back against the trunk, she had come up and sat quietly
down by him, leaning on his knee. Then he had seen her go up and take
the hand of the lady who had entertained them, and walk along by her,
talking without the least shyness. Soon afterwards she had squeezed
into the swing by the side of the beautifully-dressed little daughter
of the same lady, who, after looking for a minute at her shabby little
sister with large round eyes, had jumped out and run off to her mother,
evidently in a state of childish bewilderment as to whether it was not
wicked for a child to wear such dirty old clothes.

Tom had chuckled to himself as he saw Cinderella settling herself
comfortably in the swing in the place of the ousted princess, and had
taken a fancy to the child, speculating to himself as to how she could
have been brought up, to be so utterly unconscious of differences of
rank and dress. “She seems really to treat her fellow-creatures as if
she had been studying the _Sartor Resartus_,” he thought. “She has cut
down through all clothes-philosophy without knowing it. I wonder, if
she had a chance, whether she would go and sit down in the Queen’s lap?”

He did not at that time anticipate that she would put his own
clothes-philosophy to so severe a test before the day was over. The
child had been as merry and active as any of the rest during the
earlier part of day; but now, as he looked down in answer to her
reiterated plea, “Won’t you carry me a bit? I’m so tired!” he saw that
she could scarcely drag one foot after another.

What was to be done? He was already keenly alive to the discomfort
of walking across Hyde Park in a procession of ragged children, with
such a figure of fun as Grey at their head, looking, in his long
rusty, straight-cut black coat, as if he had come fresh out of Noah’s
ark. He didn’t care about it so much while they were on the turf
in the out-of-the-way parts, and would meet nobody but guards, and
nurse-maids, and trades-people, and mechanics out for an evening’s
stroll. But the Drive and Rotten-row lay before them, and must be
crossed. It was just the most crowded time of the day. He had almost
made up his mind once or twice to stop Grey and the procession, and
propose to sit down for half an hour or so and let the children play,
by which time the world would be going home to dinner. But there was
no play left in the children; and he had resisted the temptation,
meaning, when they came to the most crowded part, to look unconscious,
as if it were by chance that he got into such company, and had in fact
nothing to do with them. But now, if he listened to the child’s plea,
and carried her, all hope of concealment was over. If he did not, he
felt that there would be no greater flunkey in the Park that evening
than Thomas Brown, the enlightened radical and philosopher, amongst the
young gentlemen riders in Rotten-row, or the powdered footmen lounging
behind the great glaring carriages in the drive.

So he looked down at the child once or twice in a state of puzzle. A
third time she looked up with her great eyes, and said, “Oh, please
carry me a bit!” and her piteous, tired face turned the scale. “If she
were Lady Mary or Lady Blanche,” thought he, “I should pick her up at
once, and be proud of the burden. Here goes!” And he took her up in his
arms, and walked on, desperate and reckless.

Notwithstanding all his philosophy, he felt his ears tingling and his
face getting red, as they approached the Drive. It was crowded. They
were kept standing a minute or two at the crossing. He made a desperate
effort to abstract himself wholly from the visible world, and retire
into a state of serene contemplation. But it would not do, and he was
painfully conscious of the stare of lack-lustre eyes of well-dressed
men leaning over the rails, and the amused look of delicate ladies,
lounging in open carriages, and surveying him and Grey and their ragged
rout through glasses.

At last they scrambled across, and he breathed freely for a minute, as
they struggled along the comparatively quiet path leading to Albert
Gate, and stopped to drink at the fountain. Then came Rotten-row, and
another pause amongst the loungers, and a plunge into the Ride, where
he was nearly run down by two men whom he had known at Oxford. They
shouted to him to get out of the way; and he felt the hot defiant blood
rushing through his veins as he strode across without heeding. They
passed on, one of them having to pull his horse out of his stride to
avoid him. Did they recognize him? He felt a strange mixture of utter
indifference, and longing to strangle them.

The worst was now over; besides, he was getting used to the situation,
and his good sense was beginning to rally. So he marched through Albert
Gate, carrying his ragged little charge, who prattled away to him
without a pause, and surrounded by the rest of the children, scarcely
caring who might see him.

They went safely through the omnibuses and carriages on the Kensington
Road, and so into Belgravia. At last he was quite at his ease again,
and began listening to what the child was saying to him, and was
strolling carelessly along, when once more, at one of the crossings, he
was startled by a shout from some riders. There was straw laid down in
the street, so that he had not heard them as they cantered round the
corner, hurrying home to dress for dinner; and they were all but upon
him, and had to rein up their horses sharply.

The party consisted of a lady and two gentlemen, one old, the other
young; the latter dressed in the height of fashion, and with the
supercilious air which Tom hated from his soul. The shout came from the
young man, and drew Tom’s attention to him first. All the devil rushed
up as he recognized St. Cloud. The lady’s horse swerved against his,
and began to rear. He put his hand on its bridle, as if he had a right
to protect her. Another glance told Tom that the lady was Mary, and the
old gentleman, fussing up on his stout cob on the other side of her,
Mr. Porter.

They all knew him in another moment. He stared from one to the other,
was conscious that she turned her horse’s head sharply, so as to
disengage the bridle from St. Cloud’s hand, and of his insolent stare,
and of the embarrassment of Mr. Porter; and then, setting his face
straight before him, he passed on in a bewildered dream, never looking
back till they were out of sight. The dream gave way to bitter and
wild thoughts, upon which it will do none of us any good to dwell. He
put down the little girl outside the school, turning abruptly from the
mother, a poor widow in scant, well-preserved black clothes, who was
waiting for the child, and began thanking him for his care of her;
refused Grey’s pressing invitation to tea, and set his face eastward.
Bitterer and more wild and more scornful grew his thoughts as he strode
along past the Abbey, and up Whitehall, and away down the Strand,
holding on over the crossings without paying the slightest heed to
vehicle, or horse, or man. Incensed coachmen had to pull up with a jerk
to avoid running over him, and more than one sturdy walker turned round
in indignation at a collision which they felt had been intended, or at
least which there had been no effort to avoid.

As he passed under the window of the Banqueting Hall, and by the place
in Charing-cross where the pillory used to stand, he growled to himself
what a pity it was that the times for cutting off heads and cropping
ears had gone by. The whole of the dense population from either side
of the Strand seemed to have crowded out into that thoroughfare to
impede his march and aggravate him. The further eastward he got the
thicker got the crowd; and the vans, the omnibuses, the cabs, seemed
to multiply and get noisier. Not an altogether pleasant sight to a man
in the most Christian frame of mind is the crowd that a fine summer
evening fetches out into the roaring Strand, as the sun fetches out
flies on the window of a village grocery. To him just then it was at
once depressing and provoking, and he went shouldering his way towards
Temple Bar as thoroughly out of tune as he had been for many a long day.

As he passed from the narrowest part of the Strand into the space
round St. Clement Danes’ church, he was startled, in a momentary lull
of the uproar, by the sound of chiming bells. He slackened his pace to
listen; but a huge van lumbered by, shaking the houses on both sides,
and drowning all sounds but its own rattle; and then he found himself
suddenly immersed in a crowd, vociferating and gesticulating round a
policeman, who was conveying a woman towards the station-house. He
shouldered through it—another lull came, and with it the same slow,
gentle, calm cadence of chiming bells. Again and again he caught it as
he passed on to Temple Bar; whenever the roar subsided the notes of the
old hymn-tune came dropping down on him like balm from the air. If the
ancient benefactor who caused the bells of St. Clement Danes’ church to
be arranged to play that chime so many times a day is allowed to hover
round the steeple at such times, to watch the effect of his benefaction
on posterity, he must have been well satisfied on that evening. Tom
passed under the Bar, and turned into the Temple another man, softened
again, and in his right mind.

“There’s always a voice saying the right thing to you somewhere, if
you’ll only listen for it,” he thought.




CXXXV.


“It was because you were out of sorts with the world, smarting with
the wrongs you saw on every side, struggling after something better
and higher, and siding and sympathizing with the poor and weak, that
I loved you. We should never have been here, dear, if you had been a
young gentleman satisfied with himself and the world, and likely to get
on well in society.”

“Ah, Mary, it’s all very well for a man. It’s a man’s business. But why
is a woman’s life to be made wretched? Why should you be dragged into
all my perplexities, and doubts, and dreams, and struggles?”

“And why should I not?”

“Life should be all bright and beautiful to a woman. It is every man’s
duty to shield her from all that can vex, or pain, or soil.”

“But have women different souls from men?”

“God forbid!”

“Then are we not fit to share your highest hopes?”

“To share our highest hopes! Yes, when we have any. But the mire and
clay where one sticks fast over and over again, with no high hopes or
high anything else in sight—a man must be a selfish brute to bring one
he pretends to love into all that.”

“Now, Tom,” she said almost solemnly, “you are not true to yourself.
Would you, part with your own deepest convictions? Would you if you
could, go back to the time when you cared for and thought about none of
these things?”

“He thought a minute, and then, pressing her hand, said:

“No, dearest, I would not. The consciousness of the darkness in one
and around one brings the longing for light. And then the light dawns;
through mist and fog, perhaps, but enough to pick one’s way by.” He
stopped a moment, and then added, “and shines ever brighter unto
the-perfect day. Yes, I begin to know it.”

“Then, why not put me on your own level? Why not let me pick my way
by your side? Cannot a woman feel the wrongs that are going on in the
world? Cannot she long to see them set right, and pray that they may
be set right? We are not meant to sit in fine silks, and look pretty,
and spend money, any more than you are meant to make it, and cry peace
where there is no peace. If a woman cannot do much herself, she can
honor and love a man who can.”

He turned to her, and bent over her, and kissed her forehead, and
kissed her lips. She looked up with sparkling eyes and said:

“Am I not right, dear?”

“Yes, you are right, and I have been false to my creed. You have taken
a load off my heart, dearest. Henceforth there shall be but one mind
and one soul between us. You have made me feel what it is that a man
wants, what is the help that is meet for him.”

He looked into her eyes, and kissed her again; and then rose up,
for there was something within him like a moving of new life, which
lifted him, and set him on his feet. And he stood with kindling brow,
gazing into the autumn air, as his heart went sorrowing, but hopefully
“sorrowing, back through all the faultful past.” And she sat on at
first, and watched his face; and neither spoke nor moved for some
minutes. Then she rose too, and stood by his side:

    And on her lover’s arm she leant,
      And round her waist she felt it fold;
    And so across the hills they went,
      In that new world which is the old.




CXXXVI.


There is no recorded end of a life that I know of more entirely brave
and manly than the one of Captain John Brown, of which we know every
minutest detail, as it happened in the full glare of our modern life
not twenty years ago. About that I think there would scarcely be
disagreement anywhere. The very men who allowed him to lie in his
bloody clothes till the day of his execution, and then hanged him,
recognized this. “You are a game man, Captain Brown,” the Southern
sheriff said in the wagon. “Yes,” he answered, “I was so brought up. It
was one of my mother’s lessons. From infancy I have not suffered from
physical fear. I have suffered a thousand times more from bashfulness;”
and then he kissed a negro child in its mother’s arms, and walked
cheerfully on to the scaffold, thankful that he was “allowed to die
for a cause, and not merely to pay the debt of nature, as all must.”

There is no simpler or nobler record in the “Book of Martyrs,” and
in passing I would only remind you, that he at least was ready to
acknowledge from whence came his strength. “Christ, the great Captain
of liberty as well as of salvation,” he wrote just before his death,
“saw fit to take from me the sword of steel after I had carried it for
a time. But he has put another in my hand, the sword of the Spirit,
and I pray God to make me a faithful soldier wherever he may send me.”
And to a friend who left him with the words, “If you can be true to
yourself to the end how glad we shall be,” he answered, “I cannot say,
but I do not think I shall deny my Lord and Master, Jesus Christ.”




CXXXVII.


Patience, humility, and utter forgetfulness of self are the true royal
qualities.




CXXXVIII.

    “By the light of burning martyr fires Christ’s bleeding feet I track,
     Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the cross that turns not back.”


All chance of the speedy triumph of the kingdom of God, humanly
speaking, in the lake country of Galilee—the battle-field chosen by
himself, where his mightiest works had been done and his mightiest
words spoken—the district from which his chosen companions came, and
in which clamorous crowds had been ready to declare him king—is now
over. The conviction that this is so, that he is a baffled leader, in
hourly danger of his life, has forced itself on Christ. Before entering
that battle-field, face to face with the tempter in the wilderness, he
had deliberately rejected all aid from the powers and kingdoms of this
world, and now, for the moment, the powers of this world have proved
too strong for him.

The rulers of that people—Pharisee, Sadducee, and Herodian, scribe
and lawyer—were now marshalled against him in one compact phalanx,
throughout all the coasts of Galilee, as well as in Judea.

His disciples, rough, most of them peasants, full of patriotism, but
with small power of insight or self-control, were melting away from
a leader who, while he refused them active service under a patriot
chief at open war with Cæsar and his legions, bewildered them by
assuming titles and talking to them in language which they could not
understand. They were longing for one who would rally them against the
Roman oppressor, and give them a chance, at any rate, of winning their
own land again, purged of the heathen and free from tribute. Such an
one would be worth following to the death. But what could they make of
this “Son of Man,” who would prove his title to that name by giving
his body and pouring out his blood for the life of man—of this “Son
of God,” who spoke of redeeming mankind and exalting mankind to God’s
right hand, instead of exalting the Jew to the head of mankind?

In the face of such a state of things, to remain in Capernaum, or the
neighboring towns and villages, would have been to court death, there,
and at once. The truly courageous man, you may remind me, is not turned
from his path by the fear of death, which is the supreme test and
touchstone of his courage. True; nor was Christ so turned, even for a
moment.

Whatever may have been his hopes in the earlier part of his career, by
this time he had no longer a thought that mankind could be redeemed
without his own perfect and absolute sacrifice and humiliation. The
cup would indeed have to be drunk to the dregs, but not here, nor now.
This must be done at Jerusalem, the centre of the national life and
the seat of the Roman government. It must be done during the Passover,
the national commemoration of sacrifice and deliverance. And so he
withdraws, with a handful of disciples, and even they still wayward,
half-hearted, doubting, from the constant stress of a battle which
has turned against him. From this time he keeps away from the great
centres of population, except when, on two occasions—at the Feast of
Tabernacles and the Feast of the Dedication—he flashes for a day on
Jerusalem, and then disappears again into some haunt of outlaws, or
of wild beasts. This portion of his life comprises something less
than the last twelve months, from the summer of the second year of his
ministry till the eve of the last Passover, at Easter, in the third
year.

In glancing at the main facts of this period, as we have done in the
former ones, we have to note chiefly his intercourse with the twelve
apostles, and his preparation of them for the end of his own career
and the beginning of theirs; his conduct at Jerusalem during those two
autumnal and winter feasts, and the occasions when he again comes into
collision with the rulers and Pharisees, both at these feasts, and in
the intervals between them.

The keynote of it, in spite of certain short and beautiful interludes,
appears to me to be a sense of loneliness and oppression, caused by
the feeling that he has work to do, and words to speak, which those
for whom they are to be done and spoken, and whom they are, first of
all men, to bless, will either misunderstand or abhor. Here is all
the visible result of his labor and of his travail, and the enemy is
gathering strength every day.

This becomes clear, I think, at once, when, in the first days after his
quitting the lake shores, he asks his disciples the question, “Whom
do the world, and whom do ye, say that I am?” He is answered by Peter
in the well-known burst of enthusiasm, that, though the people only
look on him as a prophet, such as Elijah or Jeremiah, his own chosen
followers see in him “the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

It is this particular moment which he selects for telling them
distinctly, that Christ will _not_ triumph as they regard triumphing;
that he will fall into the power of his enemies, and be humbled and
slain by them. At once the proof comes of how little even the best of
his own most intimate friends had caught the spirit of his teaching or
of his kingdom. The announcement of his humiliation and death, which
none but the most truthful and courageous of men would have made at
such a moment, leaves them almost as much bewildered as the crowds in
the lake cities had been a few days before.

Their hearts are faithful and simple, and upon them, as Peter has
testified, the truth has flashed once for all, and there can be no
other Saviour of men than this man with whom they are living. Still, by
what means and to what end the salvation shall come, they are scarcely
less ignorant than the people who had been in vain seeking from him a
sign such as they desired. His own elect “understood not his saying,
and it was hid from them, that they perceived it not.” Rather, indeed,
they go straight from that teaching to dispute amongst themselves who
of them shall be the greatest in that kingdom which they understand so
little. And so their Master has to begin again at the beginning of his
teaching, and, placing a little child amongst them, to declare that not
of such men as they deem themselves, but of such as this child, is the
kingdom of heaven.

The episode of the Transfiguration follows; and immediately after it,
as though purposely to warn even the three chosen friends who had been
present against new delusions, he repeats again the teaching as to his
death and humiliation. And he reiterates it whenever any exhibition
of power or wisdom seems likely to encourage the frame of mind in the
twelve generally which had lately brought the great rebuke on Peter.
How slowly it did its work, even with the foremost disciples, there are
but too many proofs.

Amongst his kinsfolk and the people generally, his mission, thanks
to the cabals of the rulers and elders, had come by this time to be
looked upon with deep distrust and impatience. “How long dost thou make
us to doubt? Go up to this coming feast, and there prove your title
before those who know how to judge in such matters,” is the querulous
cry of the former as the Feast of Tabernacles approaches. He does not
go up publicly with the caravan, which would have been at this time
needlessly to incur danger, but, when the feast is half over, suddenly
appears in the temple. There he again openly affronts the rulers by
justifying his former acts, and teaching and proclaiming that he who
has sent him is true, and is their God.

It is evidently on account of this new proof of daring that the people
now again begin to rally around him. “Behold, he speaketh boldly. Do
our rulers know that this is Christ?” is the talk which fills the air,
and induces the scribes and Pharisees, for the first time, to attempt
his arrest by their officers.

The officers return without him, and their masters are, for the moment,
powerless before the simple word of him who, as their own servants
testify, “speaks as never man spake.” But if they cannot arrest and
execute, they may entangle him further, and prepare for their day,
which is surely and swiftly coming. So they bring to him the woman
taken in adultery, and draw from him the discourse in which he tells
them that the truth will make them free—the truth which he has come
to tell them, but which they will not hear, because they are of their
father the devil. He ends with asserting his claim to the name which
every Jew held sacred, “before Abraham was, I am.” The narrative of
the seventh and eighth chapters of St. John, which record these scenes
at the Feast of Tabernacles, have, I believe, done more to make men
courageous and truly manly than all the stirring accounts of bold deeds
which ever were written elsewhere.




CXXXIX.


All that was best and worst in the Jewish character and history
combined to render the Roman yoke intolerably galling to the nation.
The peculiar position of Jerusalem—a sort of Mecca to the tribes
acknowledging the Mosaic law—made Syria the most dangerous of all the
Roman provinces. To that city enormous crowds of pilgrims of the most
stiff-necked and fanatical of all races flocked, three times at least
in every year, bringing with them offerings and tribute for the temple
and its guardians, on a scale which must have made the hierarchy at
Jerusalem formidable even to the world’s master, by their mere command
of wealth.

But this would be the least of the causes of anxiety to the Roman
governor, as he spent year after year face to face with these terrible
leaders of a terrible people.

These high priests and rulers of the Jews were indeed quite another
kind of adversaries from the leaders, secular or religious, of any of
those conquered countries which the Romans were wont to treat with
contemptuous toleration. They still represented living traditions of
the glory and sanctity of their nation, and of Jerusalem, and exercised
still a power over that nation which the most resolute and ruthless of
Roman procurators did not care wantonly to brave.

At the same time the yoke of high priest and scribe and Pharisee was
even heavier on the necks of their own people than that of the Roman.
They had built up a huge superstructure of traditions and ceremonies
round the law of Moses, which they held up to the people as more sacred
and binding than the law itself. This superstructure was their special
charge. This was, according to them, the great national inheritance,
the most valuable portion of the covenant which God had made with
their fathers. To them, as leaders of their nation—a select, priestly,
and learned caste—this precious inheritance had been committed. Outside
that caste, the dim multitude, “the people which knoweth not the law,”
were despised while they obeyed, accursed as soon as they showed any
sign of disobedience. Such being the state of Judea, it would not be
easy to name in all history a less hopeful place for the reforming
mission of a young carpenter, a stranger from a despised province, one
entirely outside the ruling caste, though of the royal race, and who
had no position whatever in any rabbinical school.

In Galilee the surroundings were slightly different, but scarcely
more promising. Herod Antipas, the weakest of that tyrant family, the
seducer of his brother’s wife, the fawner on Cæsar, the spendthrift
oppressor of the people of his tetrarchy, still ruled in name over the
country, but with Roman garrisons in the cities and strongholds. Face
to face with him, and exercising an _imperium in imperio_ throughout
Galilee were the same priestly caste, though far less formidable to
the civil power and to the people, than in the southern province.
Along the western coast of the Sea of Galilee, the chief scene of our
Lord’s northern ministry, lay a net-work of towns densely inhabited,
and containing a large admixture of Gentile traders. This infusion of
foreign blood, the want of any such religious centre as Jerusalem, and
the contempt with which the southern Jews regarded their provincial
brethren of Galilee, had no doubt loosened to some extent the yoke of
the priests and scribes and lawyers in that province. But even here
their traditionary power over the masses of the people was very great,
and the consequences of defying their authority as penal, though the
penalty might be neither so swift or so certain, as in Jerusalem
itself. Such was the society into which Christ came.

It is not easy to find a parallel case in the modern world, but perhaps
the nearest exists in a portion of our own empire. The condition of
parts of India in our day resembles in some respects that of Palestine
in the year A. D. 30. In the Mahratta country, princes, not of the
native dynasty, but the descendants of foreign courtiers (like the
Idumean Herods), are reigning. British residents at their courts,
hated and feared, but practically all-powerful as Roman procurators,
answer to the officers and garrisons of Rome in Palestine. The people
are in bondage to a priestly caste scarcely less heavy than that which
weighed on the Judean and Galilean peasantry. If the Mahrattas were
Mohammedans, and Mecca were situate in the territory of Scindia or
Holkar; if the influence of twelve centuries of Christian training
could be wiped out of the English character, and the stubborn and
fierce nature of the Jew substituted for that of the Mahratta; a
village reformer amongst them, whose preaching outraged the Brahmins,
threatened the dynasties, and disturbed the English residents, would
start under somewhat similar conditions to those which surrounded
Christ when he commenced his ministry.

In one respect, and one only, the time seemed propitious. The mind and
heart of the nation was full of the expectation of a coming Messiah—a
King who should break every yoke from off the necks of his people,
and should rule over the nations, sitting on the throne of David. The
intensity of this expectation had, in the opening days of his ministry,
drawn crowds into the wilderness beyond Jordan from all parts of Judea
and Galilee, at the summons of a preacher who had caught up the last
cadence of the song of their last great prophet, and was proclaiming
that both the deliverance and the kingdom which they were looking for
were at hand. In those crowds who flocked to hear John the Baptist
there were doubtless some even amongst the priests and scribes, and
many amongst the poor Jewish and Galilean peasantry, who felt that
there was a heavier yoke upon them than that of Rome or of Herod
Antipas. But the record of the next three years shows too clearly that
even these were wholly unprepared for any other than a kingdom of this
world, and a temporal throne to be set up in the holy city.

And so, from the first, Christ had to contend not only against the
whole of the established powers of Palestine, but against the highest
aspirations of the best of his countrymen. These very Messianic hopes,
in fact, proved the greatest stumbling-block in his path. Those who
entertained them most vividly had the greatest difficulty in accepting
the carpenter’s son as the promised Deliverer. A few days only before
the end he had sorrowfully to warn the most intimate and loving of his
companions and disciples, “Ye know not what spirit ye are of.”




CXL.


The Jews were always thinking of their exclusive religious privileges,
of the sacredness of the Temple and of the law, and of the questionable
and dangerous position of those who were outside the covenant. Now
this habit of mind, undoubtedly religious as it was, is not held
up to our admiration in the New Testament, but the contrary. It is
denounced as being the opposite of a true spirituality. It is shown
to us as associated with intolerance, bigotry, hardness, cruelty, as
most offensive to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and fruitful
of mischief in the world. St. Paul had to undergo the reproach of
being disloyal to the religion of his fathers, because he contended
against this ecclesiastical spirit. But the reproach was as unjust as
it was painful to him. He loved the holy city and the temple and the
ordinances of the law and his kindred according to the flesh; but he
knew that the proper aim of a devout man was not to hedge round an
organization, but to glorify and bear witness to the Divine Spirit.




CXLI.


Not St. Paul only, but all the Apostles and Evangelists, were
continually contemplating the heavenly glory of a brotherhood of men
in full harmony with each other because all joined to Christ, of men
walking in humility and meekness and love, endeavoring to keep the
unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is nothing in such an
ideal less suited to us to-day than to the Christians of the first age.
For ourselves, and for our neighbors and fellow-men, this hope should
be in our hearts, this Divine ideal before our eyes. Let us believe
that it is the Divine purpose, and that we are called to the fulfilment
of it.




CXLII.


Is it not an express principle in the teaching of our Lord himself and
of his Apostles, that means and instruments and agencies are not to
be worshipped in themselves but to be estimated with reference to the
end they are to promote? Think, for example, what is implied in that
pregnant sentence, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the
Sabbath.” Means and instruments are not dishonored by this principle.
If the end they serve is high and precious, they also will deserve
to be valued. If the spiritual freedom of man is important, then the
ordinance of a Day of Rest, which ministers to it, may well be sacred.
But it is often appointed in the Providence of God that an apparent
dishonor should be cast on means, that the minds of men may be forced
away from resting upon them. And means may be varied, according to
circumstances, whilst the same permanent end is to be sought.




CXLIII.


Wherever there is good, in whatever Samaritan or heathen we may see
kindness and the fear of God, there we are to welcome it and rejoice in
it in our Father’s name.

There is no respect of persons with God, no acceptance of any man on
account of his religion or his profession; under whatever religious
garb, he that loveth is born of God, he that doeth righteousness is
born of God. There is no danger in being ready to appreciate simple
goodness and to refer it to the working of the Divine Spirit wherever
we may find it; there is the greatest danger in failing to appreciate
it. This is doctrine of unquestionable Divine authority, which we may
often have opportunities of putting into practice. Let us remember to
cherish it in all our dealings with those who do not belong to our
own church. Let us be afraid lest nature and the flesh should make us
intolerant and unsympathetic; let us be sure that Christ and the Spirit
would win us to modesty and reverence and sympathy.




CXLIV.


“There is one body and one spirit, even as ye were called in one hope
of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father
of all, who is above all and through all and in all.” With this unity,
there are distinctions of function; and each member, St. Paul holds,
has his own gift of endowment to enable him to fill his own place.
Christ is the great Giver, and besides these gifts to the several
members of the body, he gave to the body as a whole the apostles,
prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, by whose various
ministries sinful and self-willed men were to be moulded into true
members, and ultimate perfecting of the body to be accomplished. St.
Paul looked forward in hope to the time when the Body of Christ might
be not only ideally perfect, but actually perfect also, in its adult
growth and in the harmonious co-operation of all its parts.




CXLV.


There may be every sort of defect and irregularity in the men and
women whom Christ has called to be his members. The unity is not made
by them, and does not depend upon them. Their business is to _keep_
the unity, to conform themselves to it. The supernatural body of
Christ is the _ideal_ one, and it is realized with various degrees of
imperfection wherever men acknowledge Christ as their head.




CXLVI.


As I understand the word “politician,” it means a man who, whatever his
other engagements in life may be, and however he may earn his daily
bread, feels above all things deeply interested, feels that he is bound
to be deeply interested, and to take as active a part as he can, in the
public affairs of his country. I believe that every Englishman, if he
is worth anything at all, is bound to be a politician, and can’t for
the life of him help taking a deep interest in the public affairs of
his country. The object of politics is the well-being of the nation, or
in other words to make “a wise and understanding people.” Now, what are
the means by which a wise and an understanding people is to be made?
Well, of course, the chief means of making a wise and understanding
people is by training them up in wisdom and understanding. The State
wants men who are brave, truthful, generous; the State wants women who
are pure, simple, gentle. By what means is the State to get citizens of
that kind?

Such a politician looking around him and seeing how the national
conscience is to be touched—for unless the national conscience be
touched you can never raise citizens of that kind—finds that the great
power which alone can do it, is that which goes by the name of religion.




CXLVII.


The true work of the Liberal Party in a Liberal age is, with singleness
of purpose and all its might, to lift the people to a fair and full
share of all the best things of this life,—its highest culture,
hopes, aspirations, burdens—as well as its loaves and fishes—and,
setting before them a truly noble ideal of citizenship, to help them
to attain it. Whatever goes beyond that, or beside that, savors of
Jacobinism, for then comes in that jealousy which is the bane of true
democracy. The true democrat has no old scores to pay, covets no
man’s good things, wants nothing for himself which is not open to his
neighbors, will destroy nothing which others value merely because he
doesn’t value it himself, unless it is palpably and incurably unjust
and unrighteous. I need not go on to contrast the Jacobin with him,
beyond saying that the one is before all things constructive, the other
destructive.




CXLVIII.


A liberal politician is a man who looks to the future and not to the
past; he looks for progress; he desires to see the whole nation raised;
he desires to go on from better things to better things, and he is not
afraid of new things; he holds that every institution must be tried by
its worth and its value to the nation;—he holds above all things that
there should be equality before the law for every institution, for
every society, and for every individual citizen.




CXLIX.


Alfred the Great had his problems of anarchy, widespread lawlessness,
terrorism, to meet. After the best thought he could give to the
business, he met them and prevailed. Like diseases call for like cures;
and we may assume without fear that a remedy which has been very
successful in one age is at least worth looking at in another.

We too, like Alfred, have our own troubles—our land-questions,
labor-questions, steady increase of pauperism, and others. In our
struggle for life we fight with different weapons, and have our
advantages of one kind or another over our ancestors; but when all is
said and done there is scarcely more coherence in the English nation
of to-day than in that of 1079. Individualism, no doubt, has its noble
side; and “every man for himself” is a law which works wonders; but we
cannot shut our eyes to the fact that under their action English life
has become more and more disjointed, threatening in some directions
altogether to fall to pieces. What we specially want is something
which shall bind us more closely together. Every nation of Christendom
is feeling after the same thing. The need of getting done in some
form that which frank-pledge did for Alfred’s people expresses itself
in Germany in mutual-credit banks, open to every honest citizen; in
France, in the productive associations of all kinds; at home, in our
co-operative movements and trades-union.

No mere machinery, nothing that governments or legislatures can do in
our day, will be of much help, but they may be great hindrances. The
study of the modern statesman must be how to give such movements full
scope and a fair chance, so that the people may be able without let
or hindrance to work out in their own way the principle which Alfred
brought practically home to his England, that in human society men
cannot divest themselves of responsibility for their neighbors, and
ought not to be allowed to attempt it.




CL.


The more attentively we study Alfred’s life, the more clearly does
the practical wisdom of his methods of government justify itself by
results. Of strong princes, with minds “rectified and prepared” on the
Machiavellian model, the world has had more than enough, who have won
kingdoms for themselves, and used them for themselves, and so left
a bitter inheritance to their children and their people. It is well
that, here and there in history, we can point to a king whose reign has
proved that the highest success in government is not only compatible
with, but dependent upon, the highest Christian morality.




CLI.


Think well over your important steps in life, and having made up your
minds, never look behind.




CLII.


A gentleman should shrink from the possibility of having to come on
others, even on his own father, for the fulfilment of his obligations,
as he would from a lie. I would sooner see a son of mine in his grave
than crawling on through life a slave to wants and habits which he must
gratify at other people’s expense.




CLIII.


No two men take a thing just alike, and very few can sit down quietly
when they have lost a fall in life’s wrestle, and say, “Well, here I
am, beaten no doubt this time. By my own fault too. Now, take a good
look at me, my good friends, as I know you all want to do, and say your
say out, for I mean getting up again directly and having another turn
at it.”




CLIV.


No man who is worth his salt can leave a place where he has gone
through hard and searching discipline, and been tried in the very
depths of his heart, without regret, however much he may have winced
under the discipline. It is no light thing to fold up and lay by for
ever a portion of one’s life, even when it can be laid by with honor
and in thankfulness.




INDEX.


                                            PAGE.
    AMBITION                 civ-cv          203
    BELIEF, RELIGIOUS     lxxvii-lxxxiv      136
    BIGOTRY               cxxxix-            286
    COURAGE                    i-xviii        13
    CHRISTIANITY             cxi-cxxv        218
    DEATH                 lxxiii-lxxvi       117
    DISCIPLINE            cxxxii-cxxxiv      264
    DOUBT                    cvi-cx          206
    EDUCATION              cxxvi-cxxvii      248
    ENJOYMENT               xlvi-lii          72
    FAITH                   liii-lvi          82
    FRIENDSHIP              xlii-xlv          68
    GOVERNMENT            xcviii-ciii        190
    HEROISM               cxxxvi-cxxxviii    279
    HUMAN NATURE             lxi-lxxii       104
    HUMILITY                 xxv-xxvi         41
    INFLUENCE, PERSONAL    lxxxv-lxxxix      143
    PATIENCE               lviii-lx           93
    PROVIDENCE             cxxxi-            256
    POLITICIAN, THE        cxlvi-cliv        295
    POWER                  xxvii-xxxiv        43
    PURITY                  lvii-             91
    REFORMS                   xc-xcvii       155
    REST                 cxxviii-cxxx        250
    RIGHTS, WOMAN’S        cxxxv-            276
    STRENGTH                 xix-xxiv         34
    SUCCESS                 xxxv-xli          60
    TOLERATION               cxl-cxlv        291




FROM DIFFERENT STANDPOINTS.


By _Pansy_ and _Faye Huntington_. 12mo. Price $1.50, Boston: D. Lothrop
& Co.,

If there is any better writer of Sunday School books than “Pansy,” we
should like to make her acquaintance, she has a rare tact in story
telling, and knows quite as well what to omit as what to say. Even the
sternest critics, of S. S. Literature surrender to Pansy, in spite of
themselves, and confess that her books are worth reading.

“From Different Standpoints” is not quite so broad in its range as some
of her previous works, but is more intense. The story is so full of
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of human nature, and the religious element is of so high a type, and
yet withal so natural, that the most careless reader is fascinated,
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valuable addition to any S. S. libraries, and will supplement the best
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As to the double authorship of the book, Faye Huntington is so nearly
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and to carry the spirit of the Bible into every-day life, that the
story of their struggles, disheartening failures relieved by partial
successes, is very human and full of genuine pathos. It is good
summer reading, for beguiling away hours, and inspiring with generous
purposes.”

“Pansy’s last book, ‘The Chautauqua Girls at Home,’ is as fresh and
inspiring as a fine morning in June. The four friends, Marion, Ruth,
Flossy and Eurie, are of genuine flesh and blood, with the petty
weaknesses that flesh is heir to, and the noble aspirations that come
at times to every high-minded girl. Their unlikeness to each other in
character and social position, and their mutual helpfulness in all
sorts of difficulties, make a delightful story; instructive as well as
fascinating. One finds it hard to lay down the book after beginning
the first chapter. It will find many readers who will welcome its
stimulating power to high aims in life, and to patience and hope in
fighting hard battles.”


_Boston: D. LOTHROP & CO., Publishers._




_Two new Books just ready. The most popular Children’s Books of the
Season._


1st.

SUNSHINE FOR BABY-LAND.

BY LAURIE LORING.

Large print. Charming stories. Quarto. More than 100 large
illustrations, heavier, on better paper, and more elegantly printed
than any book ever before issued at =$1.25=.


2d.

WIDE AWAKE PLEASURE BOOK.

BY THE BEST AMERICAN AUTHORS.

On the finest paper. Numerous full-page illustrations. Page a little
larger than “Chatterbox.” About 400 pages, choicely printed at the
University Press. Elegantly black and gold back die, chromo side.
Price, =$1.50=.


_Six new and beautiful large Print Picture Books._

Just Ready. In Beautiful Bindings.

    Illustrated Primer.
    Easy Reading.
    Birds and Fishes.
    Book of Animals.
    Book of Birds.
    Book of Natural History.

Price, =40 cts.= each.


_Six handsome new Story Books for the Little Folks._

    My Pet.
    The Plot.
    Falsely Accused.
    Robie Grey.
    A Brave Boy.
    Little Gretchen.

Only =25 cts.= each.


_Four very elegant large Print Picture Books._

Large Page, with colored Frontispiece.

    The Christmas Visit.
    A Queer Carriage.
    Somebody’s Darlings.
    Our Bertie.

=75 cts.= each.


_Two elegant and very choice Picture Books._

_Eighty-eight_ Full-page Illustrations in each Book.

    The Holiday Album for Boys.
    The Holiday Album for Girls.

Price, =$1.00= each.


CHILDREN’S PICTURE-BOOK,

Price, =$1.50=,

A NEW EDITION of this book is now ready. The demand was so great for it
during the Holidays last season, that orders for thousands of copies
could not be filled.




    BOOKS FOR YOUNG HEROES AND BRAVE WORKERS.


    VIRGINIA. By _W. H. G. Kingston_. 16mo. Illustrated           $1 25

    A stirring story of adventure upon sea and land.

    AFRICAN ADVENTURE AND ADVENTURERS. By _Rev. G. T. Day, D. D._
      16 mo. Illustrated                                            1 50

    The stories of Speke, Grant, Baker, Livingstone and
    Stanley are put into simple shape for the entertainment
    of young readers.

    NOBLE WORKERS. Edited by _S. F. Smith, D. D._ 16mo.             1 50

    STORIES OF SUCCESS. Edited by _S. F. Smith, D. D._ 16mo         1 50

    Inspiring biographies and records which leave a most
    wholesome and enduring effect upon the reader.

    MYTHS AND HEROES. 16 mo. Illustrated. Edited by _S. F. Smith,
      D. D._                                                        1 50

    KNIGHTS AND SEA KINGS. Edited by _S. F. Smith, D. D._ 12mo.
      Illustrated                                                   1 50

    Two entertaining books, which will fasten forever the
    historical and geographical lessons of the school-room
    firmly in the student’s mind.

    CHAPLIN’S LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 16mo. Illustrated          1 50

    LIFE OF AMOS LAWRENCE. 12mo. Ill.                               1 50

    Two biographies of perennial value. No worthier books
    were ever offered as holiday presents for our American
    young men.

    WALTER NEAL’S EXAMPLE. By _Rev. Theron Brown_. 16 mo.
      Illustrated                                                   1 25

    Walter Neal’s Example is by Rev. Theron Brown, the
    editor of that very successful paper, _The Youth’s
    Companion_. The story is a touching one, and is in
    parts so vivid as to seem drawn from the life.—_N. Y.
    Independent._

    TWO FORTUNE-SEEKERS. Stories by _Rossiter Johnson_, _Louise
      Chandler Moulton_, _E. Stuart Phelps_, _Ella Farman_, _etc._
      Fully illustrated                                             1 50





MISS JULIA A. EASTMAN is one of the most popular of our modern writers.

    YOUNG RICK. By _Julia A. Eastman_. Large 16mo. Twelve
      illustrations by Sol Eytinge                                 $1 50

    A bright, fascinating story of a little boy who was
    both a blessing and a bother.—_Boston Journal._

    The most delightful book on the list for the children
    of the family, being full of adventures and gay home
    scenes and merry play-times. “Paty” would have done
    credit to Dickens in his palmiest days. The strange
    glows and shadows of her character are put in lovingly
    and lingeringly, with the pencil of a master. Miss
    Margaret’s character of light is admirably drawn,
    while Aunt Lesbia, Deacon Harkaway, Tom Dorrance, and
    the master and mistress of Graythorpe poor-house are
    genuine “charcoal sketches.”

    STRIKING FOR THE RIGHT. By _Julia A. Eastman_. Large 16mo.
      Illustrated                                                   1 75

    While this story holds the reader breathless with
    expectancy and excitement, its civilizing influence in
    the family is hardly to be estimated. In all quarters
    it has met with the warmest praise.

    THE ROMNEYS OF RIDGEMONT. By  _Julia A. Eastman_. 16mo.
      Illustrated                                                   1 50

    BEULAH ROMNEY. By _Julia A. Eastman_. 16 mo. Illustrated        1 50

    Two stories wondrously alive, flashing with fun,
    sparkling with tears, throbbing with emotion. The next
    best thing to attending Mrs. Hale’s big boarding-school
    is to read Beulah’s experience there.

    SHORT-COMINGS AND LONG-GOINGS. By _Julia A. Eastman_. 16 mo.
      Illustrated                                                   1 25

    A remarkable book, crowded with remarkable characters.
    It is a picture gallery of human nature.

    KITTY KENT’S TROUBLES. _By Julia A. Eastman_. 16 mo.
      Illustrated                                                   1 50

    “A delicious April-day style of book, sunshiny with
    smiles on one page while the next is misty with tender
    tears. Almost every type of American school-girl is
    here represented—the vain Helen Dart, the beauty, Amy
    Searle, the ambitious, high bred, conservative Anna
    Matson; but next to Kitty herself sunny little Pauline
    Sedgewick will prove the general favorite. It is a
    story fully calculated to win both girls and boys
    toward noble, royal ways of doing little as well as
    great things. All teachers should feel an interest in
    placing it in the hands of their pupils.”




“MISS FARMAN has the very desirable knack of imparting valuable ideas
under the guise of a pleasing story.”—_The New Century._


    MRS. HURD’S NIECE. By _Ella Farman_. Ill.                      $1 50

    A thrilling story for the girls, especially for those
    who think they have a “mission,” to whom we commend
    sturdy English Hannah, with her small means, and her
    grand success. Saidee Hurd is one of the sweetest girls
    ever embalmed in story, and Lois Gladstone one of the
    noblest.

    THE COOKING CLUB OF TU-WHIT HOLLOW. By _Ella Farman_. 16 mo.
      Eight full-page illustrations                                 1 25

    Worth reading by all who delight in domestic
    romance.—_Fall River Daily News._

    The practical instructions in housewifery, which are
    abundant, are set in the midst of a bright, wholesome
    story, and the little housewives who figure in it are
    good specimens of very human, but at the same time very
    lovable, little American girls. It ought to be the
    most successful little girls’ book of the season.—_The
    Advance._

    A LITTLE WOMAN. By _Ella Farman_. 16mo.                         1 00

    The daintiest of all juvenile books. From its merry
    pages, winsome Kinnie Crosby has stretched out her warm
    little hand to help thousands of young girls.

    A WHITE HAND. By _Ella Farman_. 12mo. Ill.                      1 50

    A genuine painting of American society. Millicent and
    Jack are drawn by a bold, firm hand. No one can lay
    this story down until the last leaf is turned.




_WIDE AWAKE._

AN ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE

For the Young Folks.

$2.00 PER ANNUM. POSTAGE PREPAID.

Edited by ELLA FARMAN.

Published by D. LOTHROP & CO., Boston, Mass.

    It always contains a feast of fat things for the little
    folks, and folks who are no longer little find there
    lost childhood in its pages. We are not saying too much
    when we say that its versatile editor—Ella Farman, is
    more fully at home in the child’s wonder-land than any
    other living American writer. She is thoroughly _en
    rapport_ with her readers, gives them now a sugar plum
    of poesy, now a dainty jelly-cake of imagination, and
    cunningly intermixes all the solid bread of thought
    that the child’s mind can digest and assimilate.—_York
    True Democrat._




PANSY’S PAGE.


    FOUR GIRLS AT CHAUTAUQUA. By _Pansy_. 12 mo. Illustrated       $1 50

    The most fascinating “watering-place” story ever
    published. Four friends, each a brilliant girl in her
    way, tired of Saratoga and Newport, try a fortnight
    at the new summer resort on Chautauqua Lake, choosing
    the time when the National Sunday-school Assembly is
    in camp. Rev. Drs. Vincent, Deems, Cuyler, Edward
    Eggleston, Mrs. Emily Huntington Miller, move
    prominently through the story.

    HOUSEHOLD PUZZLES. By _Pansy_. 12mo. Illustrated                1 50

    How to make one dollar do the work of five. A family of
    beautiful girls seek to solve this “puzzle.” Piquant,
    humorous, but written with an intense purpose.

    THE RANDOLPHS. By _Pansy_. 12 mo. Illustrated                   1 50

    A sequel to Household Puzzles, in which the Puzzles are
    agreeably disposed of.

    GRANDPA’S DARLINGS. By _Pansy_. 16 mo. Illustrated              1 25

    A big book, full of “good times” for the little people
    of the family.

      ESTER RIED              By _Pansy_.  1 50
      JULIA RIED                  “      1 50
      THREE PEOPLE                “      1 50
      THE KING’S DAUGHTER         “      1 50
      WISE AND OTHERWISE          “      1 50
      CUNNING WORKMEN             “      1 25
      JESSIE WELLS                “        75
      DOCIA’S JOURNAL             “        75
      BERNIE’S WHITE CHICKEN      “        75
      HELEN LESTER                “        75
      A CHRISTMAS TIME            “        15




The $1000 Prize Series

_Pronounced by the Examining Committee, Rev. Drs. Lincoln, Rankin and
Day, superior to any similar series._


    STRIKING FOR THE RIGHT,            $1.75
    SILENT TOM,                         1.75
    EVENING REST,                       1.50
    THE OLD STONE HOUSE,                1.50
    INTO THE LIGHT,                     1.50
    WALTER MCDONALD,                    1.50
    STORY OF THE BLOUNT FAMILY,         1.50
    MARGARET WORTHINGTON,               1.50
    THE WADSWORTH BOYS,                 1.50
    GRACE AVERY’S INFLUENCE,            1.50
    GLIMPSES THROUGH,                   1.50
    RALPH’S POSSESSION,                 1.50
    LUCK OF ALDEN FARM,                 1.50
    CHRONICLES OF SUNSET MOUNTAIN,      1.50
    THE MARBLE PREACHER,                1.50
    GOLDEN LINES,                       1.50

_Sold by Booksellers generally, and sent by Mail, postpaid, on receipt
of price._


    _BOSTON:
    D. LOTHROP & CO., PUBLISHERS._

       *       *       *       *       *

Transcriber’s Notes:

Obvious punctuation errors repaired. Text occasionally uses the archaic
“an one” where the more modern “a one” would be used currently. This
was retained as printed.

Page 11, “corderoy” changed to “corduroy” (fustian or corduroy)

Page 31, “of” changed to “off” (them off, and)

Page 34, “neccessary” changed to “necessary” (country if necessary)

Page 52, “Bosworth’s” changed to “Bosworth” (these, Mr. Bosworth
Smith’s)

Page 152, “interveiw” changed to “interview” (interview with the Dean)

Page 170, “aud” changed to “and” (for ability and zeal)

Page 187, “hierachy” changed to “hierarchy” (hierarchy of the best)

Page 201, “in” changed to “is” (there is still a King)

Page 237, “cryung” changed to “crying” (is crying out for)

Page 244, “beford” changed to “before” (laid the whole before)

Page 274, “schools” changed to “school” (outside the school)

Page 281, “migthiest” changed to “mightiest” (and his mightiest words)

Page 282, “diciples” changed to “disciples” (handful of disciples)

Page 283, “diciples” changed to “disciples” (he asks his disciples)

Page 290, “whieh” changed to “which” (those which surrounded)

Page 299, “Mechiavellian” changed to “Machiavellian” (on the
Machiavellian)

Page cciv, “Musieal” changed to “Musical” (Musical Instruments of)

Page cccvii, “Acused” changed to “Accused” (Falsely Accused)

Page cccix, “remarkabls” changed to “remarkable” (A remarkable book,
crowded)

Page cccx, “16m” and “12m” changed to “16mo” and “12mo” for (A LITTLE
WOMAN) and (A WHITE HAND) respectively.