Part 13 (2/2)
”Contemplate all this work of Time, The giant laboring in his youth; Nor dream of human love and truth, As dying Nature's earth and lime;
”But trust that those we call the dead Are breathers of an ampler day For ever n.o.bler ends. They say, The solid earth whereon we tread
”In tracts of fluent heat began, And grew to seeming-random forms, The seeming prey of cyclic storms, Till at the last arose the man;
”Who throve and branched from clime to clime, The herald of a higher race, And of himself in higher place, If so he type this work of time
”Within himself, from more to more; Or, crowned with attributes of woe Like glories, move his course, and show That life is not as idle ore,
”But iron dug from central gloom, And heated hot with burning fears, And dipt in baths of hissing tears, And battered with the shocks of doom
”To shape and use. Arise and fly The reeling Faun, the sensual feast; Move upward, working out the beast, And let the ape and tiger die.”
Thus do the moral purpose and the immortal hope define themselves in the terms of the new philosophy. How are they related to the terms of the old religion? The poet's att.i.tude toward the historic Christ is wholly reverent. Incidents of the gospel story are vivified by a creative imagination. But Christ is no longer an isolated historic fact; he is the symbol of all divine influence and celestial presence,--”the Christ that is to be.” The resurrection story is reverently touched, but it is not upon this as a proof or argument that the poet dwells in regaining his lost friend under a higher relation. That experience is to him personal, at first hand. His comfort is not solely that in some future heaven he shall rejoin his Arthur. The beloved one comes to him now in moments of highest consciousness; a.s.sociated profoundly, mysteriously, vitally, with the fairest aspects of nature, with the loftiest purposes of the will, with the most sympathetic regard of all fellow creatures.
In the experience which is supremely voiced in ”In Memoriam,” but which is also recorded in many an utterance which the attentive ear may discern, we recognize this: that the sense of the risen Christ which inspired his disciples and founded the church was in truth an instance--clad in imaginative, pictorial form--of what proves to be an abiding law of human nature--the vivid realization of the continued and higher existence of a n.o.ble and beloved life.
We may believe that in the progress of the race this faculty is being developed. In its first emergence it was confused by crude misinterpretations. A single instance of it was for two thousand years construed as a unique event, the reversal of ordinary procedure, and the basis of a supernatural religion. Now at last we correlate it with other experiences, and interpret it as a part of the universal order.
Tennyson expresses that present heaven which is sometimes revealed to the soul:--
”Strange friend, past, present, and to be; Loved deeplier, darklier understood; Behold, I dream a dream of good, And mingle all the world with thee.
”Thy voice is on the rolling air; I hear thee where the waters run; Thou standest in the rising sun, And in the setting thou art fair.
”What art thou, then? I cannot guess; But though I seem in star and flower To feel thee some diffusive power, I do not therefore love thee less:
”My love involves the love before; My love is vaster pa.s.sion now; Though mixed with G.o.d and Nature thou, I seem to love thee more and more.
”Far off thou art, but ever nigh; I have thee still, and I rejoice; I prosper, circled with thy voice; I shall not lose thee though I die.”
Two men beyond all others in America have interpreted the higher life.
Emerson revealed it through the medium of thought, beauty, and joy.
Lincoln showed it in action, sympathy, and suffering.
Lincoln had the deepest cravings of love, of ambition, and of religion.
His love brought him first to bereavement which shook his reason, then to the daily tragedy of an unhappy marriage. His ambition--he said when he entered his contest with Douglas--had proved ”a failure, a flat failure.”
In his crude youth he exulted in the rejection of Christianity; then he felt the pressure of life's problems, and was powerless before them. He could believe only what was proved,--all beyond was a sad mystery. He bore himself for many years with honesty, kindness, humor, sadness, and infinite patience. He did not for a while rise to the perception of the highest truth in politics, but he was faithful to what he did see. He lived in closest contact with ordinary men and knew them thoroughly. His training was as a lawyer and a politician. This brought him in touch with the every-day actuality and all its hard and mean facts. He was disciplined in that attempt to reach justice under a code of laws which is the practical administration of society, distinct from the idealist's vision of perfection.
The time came when in the new birth of politics he rose to the perception of a great moral principle,--the nation's duty toward slavery. At the same time, his ambition again saw its opportunity. He had a strong man's love of power, but he deliberately subordinated his personal success to his convictions when he risked and lost the fight with Douglas for the senators.h.i.+p by the ”house-divided-against-itself” speech.
In the anxious interval between his election and inauguration, he went through, as he said long afterward, ”a process of crystallization,”--a religious consecration. He made no talk about it, but all his words and acts thenceforth show a selfless, devoted temper.
He bore incalculable burdens and perplexities for the sake of the people.
He met the vast complication of forces which mix in politics and war--the selfishness, hatred, meanness, triviality, along with the higher elements--with the rarest union of shrewdness, flexibility, and steadfastness. His humor saved him from being crushed. The atmosphere he lived in permitted no illusions. ”Politics,” said he, ”is the art of combining individual meannesses for the general good.”
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