Part 15 (1/2)

I do not like to weaken the paradoxes of the Gospel. I think there is more in Christ's words concerning 'loving one's life' or 'self' than you suggest. You say it means 'self-denial.' Yes, that is true, but what a tremendous meaning 'deny one's self' has! To disown your ident.i.ty, that is not much easier when you come to think of it than to lose your life.

I know you will find out what it all means, and that human love, beauty, home, social service, will be more real than ever before, because you will see the eternal reality underneath. You will be a 'new creation.'

Now I must stop without satisfactorily answering your question, without entering into any casuistical questions concerning conformity such as you suggest. I should like you to think out that problem in casuistry more for yourself, before I attempt to answer it. Forgive me for talking so much about myself. When all is said and done, words fail me. I can only thank G.o.d that you exist, and that you let me love you.

{171}

_To H. P., a Clifton College master who had given up school work in order to devote himself to the School Mission in Bristol._

40 Upperton Gardens, Eastbourne: September 30, 1902.

. . . I am glad that you feel you have done right in giving up your school work. I am sorry that you left Clifton, but you thought you _ought_ to go, and that is an end of the matter. I can only hope that you are in some measure a connecting-link between the school and its mission. . . . Don't forget me in my very different work--and yet work for the same Master--at college. I have need of your prayers. It is so easy to blunder, and to drive a man further from the kingdom by lack of sympathy and love. I feel more than I used to my weakness, and my absolute need of prayer.

_To his brother Edward in South Africa._

40 Upperton Gardens, Eastbourne: October 1, 1902.

The October term has an interest of its own, bringing, as it does, a batch of freshmen. I try more and more not simply to impose my ideals upon them, but to find out their ideals and to quicken them with all my power. But a.s.suredly 'infinite sympathy is needed for the infinite pathos of human life;' and my sympathies are as yet imperfectly developed.

Still, as years go by, I think I can sympathise more with those who have been trained up in other schools of thought and experience. I was reading in a book lately that we are largely responsible for our {172} own experiences, that we have a duty to get them of the right kind. The book was by an American lady on social questions. I think there is truth in her words.

_To D. B. K., head of a Public School Mission._

Eastbourne: October 1902.

I delight to know men better, because I find so much more in them than I had expected. They differ from me, and I try to get out of the habit of making them in my own image, and try to find the image in which G.o.d is making them. I have been praying for you. I want a spirit of sanity and sacrifice to possess you, that you may be able to see the good works which G.o.d has prepared beforehand that you should walk in them. . . .

I am struck by the sacrifice which Christ demands. Unless the man hates father, mother, family, friends, yea, and himself also, he 'cannot be'

His disciple, Christ gives them all back again--only 'with persecutions.'

We find more in the world, when we are 'crucified to it,' than ever before; but there is a something added. We have a deeper joy in home ties, in human love, in social life, in the changing seasons, in the dear old earth. Only the joy has a note of sorrow, a pathos, which Christ calls 'persecutions.' We see more in life, and yet we are in a measure out of sympathy with our surroundings. We have heard and we can never forget the sorrows of those who are 'one man' with us. There is more in that word 'persecutions' than this, as no doubt {173} you have found.

But this, I think, is part of its signification, isn't it? . . .

I believe in your 'mission' even more than you do. It is men like you, who through great tribulations strive to enter the Kingdom, that G.o.d uses. The fact that you are two men, and that the true man--the Christ--is painfully yet surely being 'formed' in you, means that you will be able to appeal to others who are painfully conscious of their double consciousness and are often the slaves of the lower, inhuman self.

Your wealth of affection will make you feel as St. Paul did--_teknia mou, ous palin mechris ou morphothe Christos en humin_.

[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrases in the above paragraph were transliterated as follows: _teknia_--tau, epsilon, kappa, nu, iota, alpha; _mou_--mu, omicron, upsilon; _ous_--omicron, upsilon, final sigma; _palin_--pi, alpha, lambda, iota, nu; _mechris_--mu, epsilon, ch, rho, iota, final sigma; _ou_--omicron, upsilon; _morphothe_--mu, omicron, rho, phi, omega, theta, eta; _Christos_--Chi, rho, iota, sigma, tau, omicron, final sigma; _en_--epsilon, nu; _humin_--(rough breathing mark) upsilon, mu, iota, nu]

These words sum up for me, better than any others, my deepest wish for my friends. I fall back with desperate energy upon prayer, as the one power by which my wish can be realised.

You seem to look ahead almost more than is necessary. I delight in the feeling that I am in eternity, that I can serve G.o.d now fully and effectively, that the next piece of the road will come in sight when I am ready to walk on it 'I do not ask to see the distant scene.' I hate the unsettled feeling that I have not yet begun my main work.

Don't measure work by human standards of greatness. Your present occupation might well be the envy of angels--if they could envy.

But now I am lecturing. So it is time to shut up. . . .

I fear that the origin of evil is more of a mystery to me now than when I wrote that essay! But I still think that we are fighting a real being, one whom {174} we can best describe as personal. His will, it seems to me, must be given to him by G.o.d. He has identified it with a hitherto unrealised potentiality for disobedience. In plain language, his will is free, and therefore capable of resisting G.o.d. I should like to have a talk with you some day about it. But, as you see, the problem is beyond me. . . .