Part 12 (1/2)
”Soul of mine, hadst thou caught and held By the hem of the vesture....
And I caught At the flying robe, and, unrepelled, Was lapped again in its folds full-fraught With warmth and wonder and delight, G.o.d's mercy being infinite.
And scarce had the words escaped my tongue, When, at a pa.s.sionate bound, I sprung Out of the wandering world of rain, Into the little chapel again.”
Had he dreamed? how then could he report of the sermon and the preacher?
of which and of whom he proceeds to give a very external account. But correcting himself--
”Ha! Is G.o.d mocked, as He asks?
Shall I take on me to change his tasks, And dare, despatched to a river-head For a simple draught of the element, Neglect the thing for which He sent, And return with another thing instead!
Saying .... 'Because the water found Welling up from underground, Is mingled with the taints of earth, While Thou, I know, dost laugh at dearth, And couldest, at a word, convulse The world with the leap of its river-pulse,-- Therefore I turned from the oozings muddy, And bring thee a chalice I found, instead.
See the brave veins in the breccia ruddy!
One would suppose that the marble bled.
What matters the water? A hope I have nursed, That the waterless cup will quench my thirst.'
--Better have knelt at the poorest stream That trickles in pain from the straitest rift!
For the less or the more is all G.o.d's gift, Who blocks up or breaks wide the granite seam.
And here, is there water or not, to drink?”
He comes to the conclusion, that the best for him is that mode of wors.h.i.+p which partakes the least of human forms, and brings him nearest to the spiritual; and, while expressing good wishes for the Pope and the professor--
”Meantime, in the still recurring fear Lest myself, at unawares, be found, While attacking the choice of my neighbours round, Without my own made--I choose here!”
He therefore joins heartily in the hymn which is sung by the congregation of the little chapel at the close of their wors.h.i.+p. And this concludes the poem.
What is the central point from which this poem can be regarded? It does not seem to be very hard to find. Novalis has said: ”Die Philosophie ist eigentlich Heimweh, ein Trieb uberall zu Hause zu sein.” (Philosophy is really home-sickness, an impulse to be at home everywhere.) The life of a man here, if life it be, and not the vain image of what might be a life, is a continual attempt to find his place, his centre of recipiency, and active agency. He wants to know where he is, and where he ought to be and can be; for, rightly considered, the position a man ought to occupy is the only one he truly _can_ occupy. It is a climbing and striving to reach that point of vision where the multiplex crossings and apparent intertwistings of the lines of fact and feeling and duty shall manifest themselves as a regular and symmetrical design. A contradiction, or a thing unrelated, is foreign and painful to him, even as the rocky particle in the gelatinous substance of the oyster; and, like the latter, he can only rid himself of it by encasing it in the pearl-like enclosure of faith; believing that hidden there lies the necessity for a higher theory of the universe than has yet been generated in his soul. The quest for this home-centre, in the man who has faith, is calm and ceaseless; in the man whose faith is weak, it is stormy and intermittent. Unhappy is that man, of necessity, whose perceptions are keener than his faith is strong. Everywhere Nature herself is putting strange questions to him; the human world is full of dismay and confusion; his own conscience is bewildered by contradictory appearances; all which may well happen to the man whose eye is not yet single, whose heart is not yet pure. He is not at home; his soul is astray amid people of a strange speech and a stammering tongue. But the faithful man is led onward; in the stillness that his confidence produces arise the bright images of truth; and visions of G.o.d, which are only beheld in solitary places, are granted to his soul.
”O struggling with the darkness all the night, And visited all night by troops of stars!”
What is true of the whole, is true of its parts. In all the relations of life, in all the parts of the great whole of existence, the true man is ever seeking his home. This poem seems to show us such a quest. ”Here I am in the midst of many who belong to the same family. They differ in education, in habits, in forms of thought; but they are called by the same name. What position with regard to them am I to a.s.sume? I am a Christian; how am I to live in relation to Christians?” Such seems to be something like the poet's thought. What central position can he gain, which, while it answers best the necessities of his own soul with regard to G.o.d, will enable him to feel himself connected with the whole Christian world, and to sympathize with all; so that he may not be alone, but one of the whole. Certainly the position necessary for both requirements is one and the same. He that is isolated from his brethren, loses one of the greatest helps to draw near to G.o.d. Now, in this time, which is so peculiarly transitional, this is a question of no little import for all who, while they gladly forsake old, or rather _modern_, theories, for what is to them a more full development of Christianity as well as a return to the fountain-head, yet seek to be saved from the danger of losing sympathy with those who are content with what they are compelled to abandon. Seeing much in the common modes of thought and belief that is inconsistent with Christianity, and even opposed to it, they yet cannot but see likewise in many of them a power of spiritual good; which, though not dependent on the peculiar mode, is yet enveloped, if not embodied, in that mode.
”Ask, else, these ruins of humanity, This flesh worn out to rags and tatters, This soul at struggle with insanity, Who thence take comfort, can I doubt, Which an empire gained, were a loss without.”
The love of G.o.d is the soul of Christianity. Christ is the body of that truth. The love of G.o.d is the creating and redeeming, the forming and satisfying power of the universe. The love of G.o.d is that which kills evil and glorifies goodness. It is the safety of the great whole. It is the home-atmosphere of all life. Well does the poet of the ”Christmas Eve” say:--
”The loving worm within its clod, Were diviner than a loveless G.o.d Amid his worlds, I will dare to say.”
Surely then, inasmuch as man is made in the image of G.o.d nothing less than a love in the image of G.o.d's love, all-embracing, quietly excusing, heartily commending, can const.i.tute the blessedness of man; a love not insensible to that which is foreign to it, but overcoming it with good.
Where man loves in his kind, even as G.o.d loves in His kind, then man is saved, then he has reached the unseen and eternal. But if, besides the necessity to love that lies in a man, there be likewise in the man whom he ought to love something in common with him, then the law of love has increased force. If that point of sympathy lies at the centre of the being of each, and if these centres are brought into contact, then the circles of their being will be, if not coincident, yet concentric. We must wait patiently for the completion of G.o.d's great harmony, and meantime love everywhere and as we can.
But the great lesson which this poem teaches, and which is taught more directly in the ”Easter Day” (forming part of the same volume), is that the business of a man's life is to be a Christian. A man has to do with G.o.d first; in Him only can he find the unity and harmony he seeks. To be one with Him is to be at the centre of things. If one acknowledges that G.o.d has revealed himself in Christ; that G.o.d has recognized man as his family, by appearing among them in their form; surely that very acknowledgment carries with it the admission that man's chief concern is with this revelation. What does G.o.d say and mean, teach and manifest, herein? If this world is G.o.d's making, and he is present in all nature; if he rules all things and is present in all history; if the soul of man is in his image, with all its circles of thought and multiplicity of forms; and if for man it be not enough to be rooted in G.o.d, but he must likewise lay hold on G.o.d; then surely no question, in whatever direction, can be truly answered, save by him who stands at the side of Christ. The doings of G.o.d cannot be understood, save by him who has the mind of Christ, which is the mind of G.o.d. All things must be strange to one who sympathizes not with the thought of the Maker, who understands not the design of the Artist. Where is he to begin? What light has he by which to cla.s.sify? How will he bring order out of this apparent confusion, when the order is higher than his thought; when the confusion to him is _caused_ by the order's being greater than he can comprehend?
Because he stands outside and not within, he sees an entangled maze of forces, where there is in truth an intertwining dance of harmony. There is for no one any solution of the world's mystery, or of any part of its mystery, except he be able to say with our poet:--
”I have looked to Thee from the beginning, Straight up to Thee through all the world, Which, like an idle scroll, lay furled To nothingness on either side: And since the time Thou wast descried, Spite of the weak heart, so have I Lived ever, and so fain would die, Living and dying, Thee before!”
Christianity is not the ornament, or even complement, of life; it is its necessity; it is life itself glorified into G.o.d's ideal.
Dr. Chalmers, from considering the minuteness of the directions given to Moses for the making of the tabernacle, was led to think that he himself was wrong in attending too little to the ”_pet.i.te morale_” of dress.
Will this be excuse enough for occupying a few sentences with the rhyming of this poem? Certainly the rhymes of a poem form no small part of its artistic existence. Probably there is a deeper meaning in this part of the poetic art than has yet been made clear to poet's mind. In this poem the rhymes have their share in its humorous charm. The writer's power of using double and triple rhymes is remarkable, and the effect is often pleasing, even where they are used in the more solemn parts of the poem. Take the lines:--