Volume II Part 7 (1/2)
'I am myself most happy in my lonely Sundays, and do not feel the need of any social wors.h.i.+p, as I have not for several years, which I have pa.s.sed in the same way. Sunday is to me priceless as a day of peace and solitary reflection. To all who will, it may be true, that, as Herbert says:--
”Sundays the pillars are On which Heaven's palace arched lies; The other days fill up the s.p.a.ce And hollow room with vanities;”
and yet in no wise ”vanities,” when filtered by the Sunday crucible. After much troubling of the waters of my life, a radiant thought of the meaning and beauty of earthly existence will descend like a healing angel. The stillness permits me to hear a pure tone from the One in All. But often I am not alone. The many now, whose hearts, panting for truth and love, have been made known to me, whose lives flow in the same direction as mine, and are enlightened by the same star, are with me. I am in church, the church invisible, undefiled by inadequate expression. Our communion is perfect; it is that of a common aspiration; and where two or three are gathered together in one region, whether in the flesh or the spirit, He will grant their request. Other communion would be a happiness,--to break together the bread of mutual thought, to drink the wine of loving life,--but it is not necessary.
'Yet I cannot but feel that the crowd of men whose pursuits are not intellectual, who are not brought by their daily walk into converse with sages and poets, who win their bread from an earth whose mysteries are not open to them, whose worldly intercourse is more likely to stifle than to encourage the sparks of love and faith in their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, need on that day quickening more than repose. The church is now rather a lecture-room than a place of wors.h.i.+p; it should be a school for mutual instruction. I must rejoice when any one, who lays spiritual things to heart, feels the call rather to mingle with men, than to retire and seek by himself.
'You speak of men going up to wors.h.i.+p by ”households,” &c.
Were the actual family the intellectual family, this might be; but as social life now is, how can it? Do we not constantly see the child, born in the flesh to one father, choose in the spirit another? No doubt this is wrong, since the sign does not stand for the thing signified, but it is one feature of the time. How will it end? Can families wors.h.i.+p together till it does end?
'I have let myself be cheated out of my Sunday, by going to hear Mr. ----. As he began by reading the first chapter of Isaiah, and the fourth of John's Epistle, I made mental comments with pure delight. ”Bring no more vain oblations.”
”Every one that loveth is born of G.o.d, and knoweth G.o.d.” ”We know that we dwell in Him, and He in us, because he hath given us of the Spirit.” Then pealed the organ, full of solemn a.s.surance. But straightway uprose the preacher to deny mysteries, to deny the second birth, to deny influx, and to renounce the sovereign gift of insight, for the sake of what he deemed a ”_rational_” exercise of will. As he spoke I could not choose but deny him all through, and could scarce refrain from rising to expound, in the light of my own faith, the words of those wiser Jews which had been read. Was it not a sin to exchange friendly greeting as we parted, and yet tell him no word of what was in my mind?
'Still I saw why he looked at things as he did. The old religionists did talk about ”grace, conversion,” and the like, technically, without striving to enter into the idea, till they quite lost sight of it. Undervaluing the intellect, they became slaves of a sect, instead of organs of the Spirit. This Unitarianism has had its place. There was a time for a.s.serting ”the dignity of human nature,” and for explaining total depravity into temporary inadequacy,--a time to say that the truths of _essence_, if simplified at all in statement from their infinite variety of existence, should be spoken of as One, rather than Three, though that number, if they would only let it reproduce itself simply, is of highest significance.
Yet the time seems now to have come for reinterpreting the old dogmas. For one I would now preach the Holy Ghost as zealously as they have been preaching Man, and faith instead of the understanding, and mysticism instead &c. But why go on? It certainly is by no means useless to preach. In my experience of the divine gifts of solitude, I had forgotten what might be done in this other way. That crowd of upturned faces, with their look of unintelligent complacency! Give tears and groans, rather, if there be a mixture of physical excitement and bigotry. Mr. ---- is heard because, though he has not entered into the secret of piety, he wishes to be heard, and with a good purpose,--can make a forcible statement, and kindle himself with his own thoughts. How many persons must there be who cannot wors.h.i.+p alone, since they are content with so little! Can none wake the spark that will melt them, till they take beautiful forms? Were one to come now, who could purge us with fire, how would these ma.s.ses glow and be clarified!
'Mr. ---- made a good suggestion:--”Such things could not be said in the open air.” Let men preach for the open air, and speak now thunder and lightning, now dew and rustling leaves.
Yet must the preacher have the thought of his day before he can be its voice. None have it yet; but some of our friends, perhaps, are nearer than the religious world at large, because neither ready to dogmatize, as if they had got it, nor content to stop short with mere impressions and presumptuous hopes. I feel that a great truth is coming. Sometimes it seems as if we should have it among us in a day. Many steps of the Temple have been ascended, steps of purest alabaster, and of s.h.i.+ning jasper, also of rough-brick, and slippery moss-grown stone. We shall reach what we long for, since we trust and do not fear, for our G.o.d knows not fear, only reverence, and his plan is All in All.'
'Who can expect to utter an absolutely pure and clear tone on these high subjects? Our earthly atmosphere is too gross to permit it. Yet, a severe statement has rather an undue charm for me, as I have a nature of great emotion, which loves free abandonment. I am ready to welcome a descending Moses, come to turn all men from idolatries. For my priests have been very generally of the Pagan greatness, revering nature and seeking excellence, but in the path of progress, not of renunciation.
The lyric inspirations of the poet come very differently on the ear from the ”still, small voice.” They are, in fact, all one revelation; but one must be at the centre to interpret it.
To that centre I have again and again been drawn, but my large natural life has been, as yet, but partially transfused with spiritual consciousness. I shun a premature narrowness, and bide my time. But I am drawn to look at natures who take a different way, because they seem to complete my being for me.
They, too, tolerate me in my many phases for the same reason, probably. It pleased me to see, in one of the figures by which the Gnostics ill.u.s.trated the progress of man, that Severity corresponded to Magnificence.'
'In my quiet retreat, I read Xenophon, and became more acquainted with his Socrates. I had before known only the Socrates of Plato, one much more to my mind. Socrates conformed to the Greek Church, and it is evident with a sincere reverence, because it was the growth of the _national_ mind. He thought best to stand on its platform, and to ill.u.s.trate, though with keen truth, by received forms. This was his right way, as his influence was naturally private, for individuals who could in some degree respond to the teachings of his daemon; he knew the mult.i.tude would not understand him.
But it was the other way that Jesus took, preaching in the fields, and plucking ears of corn on the Sabbath.'
'Is it my defect of spiritual experience, that while that weight of sagacity, which is the iron to the dart of genius, is needful to satisfy me, the undertone of another and a deeper knowledge does not please, does not command me? Even in Handel's Messiah, I am half incredulous, half impatient, when the sadness of the second part comes to check, before it interprets, the promise of the first; and the strain, ”Was ever sorrow like to his sorrow,” is not for me, as I have been, as I am. Yet Handel was worthy to speak of Christ. The great chorus, ”Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead; for as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive,” if understood in the large sense of every man his own Saviour, and Jesus only representative of the way all must walk to accomplish our destiny, is indeed a worthy gospel.'
'Ever since ---- told me how his feelings had changed towards Jesus, I have wished much to write some sort of a Credo, out of my present state, but have had no time till last night. I have not satisfied myself in the least, and have written very hastily, yet, though not full enough to be true, this statement is nowhere false to me.
* * * 'Whatever has been permitted by the law of being, must be for good, and only in time not good. We trust, and are led forward by experience. Light gives experience of outward life, faith of inward life, and then we discern, however faintly, the necessary harmony of the two. The moment we have broken through an obstruction, not accidentally, but by the aid of faith, we begin to interpret the Universe, and to apprehend why evil is permitted. Evil is obstruction; Good is accomplishment.
'It would seem that the Divine Being designs through man to express distinctly what the other forms of nature only intimate, and that wherever man remains imbedded in nature, whether from sensuality, or because he is not yet awakened to consciousness, the purpose of the whole remains unfulfilled.
Hence our displeasure when Man is not in a sense above Nature. Yet, when he is not so closely bound with all other manifestations, as duly to express their Spirit, we are also displeased. He must be at once the highest form of Nature, and conscious of the meaning she has been striving successively to unfold through those below him. Centuries pa.s.s; whole races of men are expended in the effort to produce one that shall realize this Ideal, and publish Spirit in the human form. Here and there is a degree of success. Life enough is lived through a man, to justify the great difficulties attendant on the existence of mankind. And then throughout all realms of thought vibrates the affirmation, ”This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”