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.