Part 2 (1/2)
I hope that the memory of this story, which, thinking it myself an extremely pretty one, I have given you, not only for a type of sincerity and simplicity, but for an ill.u.s.tration of obedience, may at all events quit you, for good and all, of the notion that the believers and witnesses of miracle were poetical persons. Saying no more on the head of that allegation, I proceed to the Dean's second one, which I cannot but interpret as also intended to be injurious,--that they were artless and childish ones; and that because of this rudeness and puerility, their motives and opinions would not be shared by any statesmen of the present day.
It is perfectly true that Edward the Confessor was himself in many respects of really childish temperament; not therefore, perhaps, as I before suggested to you, less venerable. But the age of which we are examining the progress, was by no means represented or governed by men of similar disposition. It was eminently productive of--it was altogether governed, guided, and instructed by--men of the widest and most brilliant faculties, whether constructive or speculative, that the world till then had seen; men whose acts became the romance, whose thoughts the wisdom, and whose arts the treasure, of a thousand years of futurity.
I warned you at the close of last lecture against the too agreeable vanity of supposing that the Evangelization of the world began at St.
Martin's, Canterbury. Again and again you will indeed find the stream of the Gospel contracting itself into narrow channels, and appearing, after long-concealed filtration, through veins of unmeasured rock, with the bright resilience of a mountain spring. But you will find it the only candid, and therefore the only wise, way of research, to look in each era of Christendom for the minds of culminating power in all its brotherhood of nations; and, careless of local impulse, momentary zeal, picturesque incident, or vaunted miracle, to fasten your attention upon the force of character in the men, whom, over each newly-converted race, Heaven visibly sets for its shepherds and kings, to bring forth judgment unto victory. Of these I will name to you, as messengers of G.o.d and masters of men, five monks and five kings; in whose arms during the range of swiftly gainful centuries which we are following, the life of the world lay as a nursling babe. Remember, in their successive order,--of monks, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, St.
Martin, St. Benedict, and St. Gregory; of kings,--and your national vanity may be surely enough appeased in recognizing two of them for Saxon,--Theodoric, Charlemagne, Alfred, Canute, and the Confessor. I will read three pa.s.sages to you, out of the literal words of three of these ten men, without saying whose they are, that you may compare them with the best and most exalted you have read expressing the philosophy, the religion, and the policy of to-day,--from which I admit, with Dean Stanley, but with a far different meaning from his, that they are indeed separate for evermore. I give you first, for an example of Philosophy, a single sentence, containing all--so far as I can myself discern--that it is possible for us to know, or well for us to believe, respecting the world and its laws.
”OF G.o.d'S UNIVERSAL PROVIDENCE, RULING ALL, AND COMPRISING ALL.
”Wherefore the great and mighty G.o.d; He that made man a reasonable creature of soul and body, and He that did neither let him pa.s.s unpunished for his sin, nor yet excluded him from mercy; He that gave, both unto good and bad, essence with the stones, power of production with the trees, senses with the beasts of the field, and understanding with the angels; He from whom is all being, beauty, form, and number, weight, and measure; He from whom all nature, mean and excellent, all seeds of form, all forms of seed, all motion, both of forms and seeds, derive and have being; He that gave flesh the original beauty, strength, propagation, form and shape, health and symmetry; He that gave the unreasonable soul, sense, memory, and appet.i.te; the reasonable, besides these, fantasy, understanding, and will; He, I say, having left neither heaven, nor earth, nor angel, nor man, no, nor the most base and contemptible creature, neither the bird's feather, nor the herb's flower, nor the tree's leaf, without the true harmony of their parts, and peaceful concord of composition:--It is in no way credible that He would leave the kingdoms of men and their bondages and freedom loose and uncomprised in the laws of His eternal providence.”[5]
[Footnote 5: From St. Augustine's 'Citie of G.o.d,' Book V., ch. xi.
(English trans., printed by George Eld, 1610.)]
This for the philosophy.[6] Next, I take for example of the Religion of our ancestors, a prayer, personally and pa.s.sionately offered to the Deity conceived as you have this moment heard.
[Footnote 6: Here one of the ”Stones of Westminster” was shown and commented on.]
”O Thou who art the Father of that Son which has awakened us, and yet urgeth us out of the sleep of our sins, and exhorteth us that we become Thine;” (note you that, for apprehension of what Redemption means, against your base and cowardly modern notion of 'scaping whipping. Not to take away the Punishment of Sin, but by His Resurrection to raise us out of the sleep of sin itself! Compare the legend at the feet of the Lion of the Tribe of Judah in the golden Gospel of Charles le Chauve[7]:--
”HIC LEO SURGENDO PORTAS CONFREGIT AVERNI QUI NUNQUAM DORMIT, NUSQUAM DORMITAT IN aeVUM;”)
”to Thee, Lord, I pray, who art the supreme truth; for all the truth that is, is truth from Thee. Thee I implore, O Lord, who art the highest wisdom. Through Thee are wise all those that are so. Thou art the true life, and through Thee are living all those that are so. Thou art the supreme felicity, and from Thee all have become happy that are so. Thou art the highest good, and from Thee all beauty springs.
Thou art the intellectual light, and from Thee man derives his understanding.
[Footnote 7: At Munich: the leaf has been exquisitely drawn and legend communicated to me by Professor Westwood. It is written in gold on purple.]
”To Thee, O G.o.d, I call and speak. Hear, O hear me, Lord! for Thou art my G.o.d and my Lord; my Father and my Creator; my ruler and my hope; my wealth and my honour my house, my country, my salvation, and my life!
Hear, hear me, O Lord! Few of Thy servants comprehend Thee. But Thee alone I _love_,[8] indeed, above all other things. Thee I seek: Thee I will follow: Thee I am ready to serve. Under Thy power I desire to abide, for Thou alone art the Sovereign of all. I pray Thee to command me as Thou wilt.”
[Footnote 8: Meaning--not that he is of those few, but that, without comprehending, at least, as a dog, he can love.]
You see this prayer is simply the expansion of that clause of the Lord's Prayer which most men eagerly omit from it,--_Fiat voluntas tua_. In being so, it sums the Christian prayer of all ages. See now, in the third place, how far this king's letter I am going to read to you sums also Christian Policy.
”Wherefore I render high thanks to Almighty G.o.d, for the happy accomplishment of all the desires which I have set before me, and for the satisfying of my every wish.
”Now therefore, be it known to you all, that to Almighty G.o.d Himself I have, on my knees, devoted my life, to the end that in all things I may do justice, and with justice and rightness rule the kingdoms and peoples under me; throughout everything preserving an impartial judgment. If, heretofore, I have, through being, as young men are, impulsive or careless, done anything unjust, I mean, with G.o.d's help, to lose no time in remedying my fault. To which end I call to witness my counsellors, to whom I have entrusted the counsels of the kingdom, and I charge them that by no means, be it through fear of me, or the favour of any other powerful personage, to consent to any injustice, or to suffer any to shoot out in any part of my kingdom. I charge all my viscounts and those set over my whole kingdom, as they wish to keep my friends.h.i.+p or their own safety, to use no unjust force to any man, rich or poor; let all men, n.o.ble and not n.o.ble, rich and poor alike, be able to obtain their rights under the law's justice; and from that law let there be no deviation, either to favour the king or any powerful person, nor to raise money for me. I have no need of money raised by what is unfair. I also would have you know that I go now to make peace and firm treaty by the counsels of all my subjects, with those nations and people who wished, had it been possible for them to do so, which it was not, to deprive us alike of kingdom and of life. G.o.d brought down their strength to nought: and may He of His benign love preserve us on our throne and in honour. Lastly, when I have made peace with the neighbouring nations, and settled and pacified all my dominions in the East, so that we may nowhere have any war or enmity to fear, I mean to come to England this summer, as soon as I can fit out vessels to sail. My reason, however, in sending this letter first is to let all the people of my kingdom share in the joy of my welfare: for as you yourselves know, I have never spared myself or my labour; nor will I ever do so, where my people are really in want of some good that I can do them.”
What think you now, in candour and honour, you youth of the latter days,--what think you of these types of the thought, devotion, and government, which not in words, but pregnant and perpetual fact, animated these which you have been accustomed to call the Dark Ages?
The Philosophy is Augustine's; the Prayer Alfred's; and the Letter Canute's.
And, whatever you may feel respecting the beauty or wisdom of these sayings, be a.s.sured of one thing above all, that they are sincere; and of another, less often observed, that they are joyful.
Be a.s.sured, in the first place, that they are sincere, The ideas of diplomacy and priestcraft are of recent times. No false knight or lying priest ever prospered, I believe, in any age, but certainly not in the dark ones. Men prospered then, only in following openly-declared purposes, and preaching candidly beloved and trusted creeds.