Part 13 (2/2)

To genius have been granted from time to time glimpses of the spiritual world, made plain in moments of insight, yet not too plain. A world which, during his sojourn on earth, is intended not for man's permanent habitation. A world he must ”traverse, not remain a guest in.” Once capable of continuing a denizen of the spiritual world, the uses of earth as a training-ground would be for that man at an end. He who should so live would become a Lazarus, as the Arabian physician presents him to us; in Dr. Westcott's phrase, ”not a man, but a sign.” Brief visions of heaven are vouchsafed, that he who has once seen may ”come back and tell the world,” himself ”stung with hunger” for the fuller light. As in Nature, as in Art, so, too, here in a more purely intellectual sphere, the pledge is not the plenitude, the symbol not the reality.

Since highest truth, man e'er supplied, Was ever fable on outside. (ll. 925-926.)

This, too, left unrealized; hence failure also here.

(_d_) The search for sensuous and for intellectual satisfaction having alike failed, is there no refuge for him whose lot is earth in its fulness? Yes, there is _Love_, Love which we saw the soliloquist of _Christmas Eve_ recognizing as the ”sole good of life on earth.” So now the wearied soul recalls to mind, in the past,

How love repaired all ill, Cured wrong, soothed grief, made earth amends With parents, brothers, children, friends. (ll. 938-940.)

Hence the appeal for ”leave to love only,” made in full confidence of the divine approval. In place of approval, however, falls the reproof of Section x.x.x: the warning that all now left to the pet.i.tioner is ”the show of love,” since love itself has pa.s.sed with the judgment. The ”semblance of a woman,” ”departed love,” ”old memories,” now alone survive of that which might have been all in all to the soul during its life's struggle.

And here we find the man who has failed through a too exclusive devotion to things temporal taught, by this vision of the final judgment, the truth, at first accepted in _Christmas Eve_ by the man who had looked through Nature to the G.o.d of Nature, and refused to wors.h.i.+p in the ”narrow shrines” of the temples made with hands. That love

Shall arise, made perfect, from death's repose of it.

And I shall behold thee, face to face, O G.o.d, and in thy light retrace How in all I loved here, still wast thou![68]

Thus the voice of judgment before the Easter dawn--

All thou dost enumerate Of power and beauty in the world, The mightiness of love was curled Inextricably round about.

Love lay within it and without, To clasp thee. (ll. 960-965.)

But we saw the soliloquist of _Christmas Eve_ ultimately rejecting this universal recognition of love in favour of the narrow shrine of Zion Chapel: acting, as he believed, with the divine approval. Again proof of the dramatic character of the poems. The lesson of life is variously interpreted by its different students.

Yet even here, where love is at length sought as the supreme good, the Voice of _Easter Day_ proclaims once more--failure--and its cause, the inability to recognize the divine Love: the object of search is even now but human love.

Some semblance of a woman yet, With eyes to help me to forget, Shall look on me. (ll. 941-943.)

The love of ”parents, brothers, children, friends”: the seeker has stopped short of Pippa's final decision,[69] ”Best love of all is G.o.d's.” Why has he failed to realize this until Time has pa.s.sed? Why, but because, with Cleon, he deemed it ”a doctrine to be held by no sane man,” that divine Love should prove commensurate with divine Power; that He ”who made the whole,” should love the whole, should

Undergo death in thy stead In flesh like thine. (ll. 974-975.)

But this scepticism, based upon the ground that in the Gospel story is found ”too much love,” is illogical, since it suggests by implication the belief of man that his fellow mortals, in whom he daily discerns abundant capacity for ill-will, have been yet capable of inventing a scheme of perfect love such as that involved in the history of the Incarnation. The doctrine that this was the divine work is a.s.suredly less difficult of credence than that which a.s.signs it to the invention of the human imagination? Disbelief on this the ground of ”too much love,” revealed in the Gospel story, is dealt with also by the Evangelist in _A Death in the Desert_. There, too, is presented a position similar to that occupied by the soliloquist of Easter Day. Through satiety, man

Has turned round on himself and stands,[70]

Which in the course of nature is, to die.

When man demanded proof of the existence of a G.o.d, the representative of Power and Will, evidence of all was granted--

And when man questioned, ”What if there be love Behind the will and might, as real as they?”-- He needed satisfaction G.o.d could give, And did give, as ye have the written word.

But when the written word no longer sufficed, when (following the argument of this thirtieth Section of _Easter Day_) man believed himself to be the originator of love, when

Beholding that love everywhere, He reasons, ”Since such love is everywhere, And since ourselves can love and would be loved, We ourselves make the love, and Christ was not.”

Then, asks the Evangelist,

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