Part 5 (1/2)
It has its birth on the great lone moor, cradled in a wonderful peat-smelling bog, with a many-hued coverlet of soft mosses-pale gold, orange, emerald, tawny, olive and white, with the red stain of sun-dew and tufted cotton-gra.s.s. Under the old grey rocks which watch it rise, yellow-eyed tormantil stars the turf, and bids ”G.o.dspeed” to the little child of earth and sky. Thus the journey begins; and with ever-increasing strength the stream carves a way through the dear brown peat, wears a fresh wrinkle on the patient stones, and patters merrily under a clapper bridge which spanned its breadth when the mistletoe reigned and Bottor, the grim rock idol, exacted the toll of human life that made him great. On and on goes the stream, for it may not stay; leaving of its freshness with the great osmunda that stretches eager roots towards the running water; flowing awhile with a brother stream, to part again east and west as each takes up his separate burden of service-my friend to cherish the lower meadows in their flowery joyance-and so by the great sea-gate back to sky and earth again.
The river of G.o.d is full of water. The streets of the City are pure gold. Verily, here also having nothing we possess all things.
The air was keen and still as I walked back in the early evening, and a daffodil light was in the sky as if Heaven mirrored back earth's radiance. Near the station some children flitted past, like little white miller moths homing through the dusk. As I climbed the hill the moon rode high in a golden field-it was daffodils to the last.
CHAPTER V
THE seagulls from the upper reaches pa.s.s down the river in sober steady flight seeking the open sea. I shall miss the swoop and circle of silver wings in the sunlight and the plaintive call which sounds so strangely away from rock and sh.o.r.e, but it is good to know that they have gone from mudbank and murky town back to the free airs of their inheritance, to the shadow of sun-swept cliffs and the curling crest of the wind-beaten waves, to brood again over the great ocean of a world's tears.
My little tree is gemmed with buds, shy, immature, but full of promise.
The sparrows busied with nest-building in the neighbouring pipes and gutters use it for a vantage ground, and crowd there in numbers, each little beak sealed with long golden straw or downy feather.
The river is heavy with hay barges, the last fruits of winter's storehouse; the lengthening days slowly and steadily oust the dark; the air is loud with a growing clamour of life: spring is not only proclaimed, but on this Feast she is crowned, and despite the warring wind the days bring their meed of suns.h.i.+ne. We stand for a moment at the meeting of the ways, the handclasp of Winter and Spring, of Sleep and Wakening, of Life and Death; and there is between them not even the thin line which Rabbi Jochanan on his death-bed beheld as all that divided h.e.l.l from heaven.
”_Sphaera cujus centrum ubique_, _circ.u.mferentia nullibus_,” was said of Mercury, that messenger of the G.o.ds who marshalled reluctant spirits to the Underworld; and for Mercury we may write Life with Death as its great sacrament of brotherhood and release, to be dreaded only as we dread to partake unworthily of great benefits. Like all sacraments it has its rightful time and due solemnities; the horror and sin of suicide lie in the presumption of free will, the forestalling of a gift,-the sin of Eve in Paradise, who took that which might only be given at the hand of the Lord. It has too its physical pains, but they are those of a woman in travail, and we remember them no more for joy that a child-man is born into the world naked and not ashamed: beholding ourselves as we are we shall see also the leaves of the Tree of Life set for the healing of the nations.
We are slowly, very slowly, abandoning our belief in sudden and violent transitions for a surer and fuller acceptance of the doctrine of evolution; but most of us still draw a sharp line of demarcation between this world and the next, and expect a radical change in ourselves and our surroundings, a break in the chain of continuity entirely contrary to the teaching of nature and experience. In the same way we cling to the specious untruth that we can begin over and over again in this world, forgetting that while our sorrow and repentance bring sacramental gifts of grace and strength, G.o.d Himself cannot, by His own limitation, rewrite the Past. We are in our sorrow that which we have made ourselves in our sin; our temptations are there as well as the way of escape. We are in the image of G.o.d. We create our world, our undying selves, our heaven, or our h.e.l.l. ”_Qui creavit te sine te non salvabit te sine te_.” It is stupendous, magnificent, and most appalling. A man does not change as he crosses the threshold of the larger room. His personality remains the same, although the expression of it may be altered. Here we have material bodies in a material world-there, perhaps, ether bodies in an ether world. There is no indecency in reasonable speculation and curiosity about the life to come. One end of the thread is between our fingers, but we are haunted for the most part by the snap of Atropos'
shears.
Socrates faced death with the magnificent calm bred of dignified familiarity. He had built for himself a desired heaven of colour, light, and precious stones-the philosophic formula of those who set the spiritual above the material, and wors.h.i.+p truth in the beauty of holiness. He is not troubled by doubts or regrets, for the path of the just lies plain before his face. He forbids mourning and lamentations as out of place, obeys minutely and cheerily the directions of his executioner, and pa.s.ses with unaffected dignity to the apprehension of that larger truth for which he had constantly prepared himself. His friends may bury him provided they will remember they are not burying Socrates; and that all things may be done decently and in order, a c.o.c.k must go to aesculapius.
Long before, in the days of the Captivity, there lived in G.o.dless, blood-shedding Nineveh an exiled Jew whose father had fallen from the faith. He was a simple man, child-like and direct; living the careful, kindly life of an orthodox Jew, suffering many persecutions for conscience' sake, and in constant danger of death. He narrates the story of his life and of the blindness which fell on him, with gentle placidity, and checks the exuberance of his more emotional wife with the a.s.surance of untroubled faith. Finally, when his pious expectations are fulfilled, his sight restored, and his son prosperously established beside him, he breaks into a prayer of rejoicing which reveals the secret of his confident content. He made use of two great faculties: the sense of proportion, which enabled him to apprise life and its accidents justly, and the gift of in-seeing, which led Socrates after him, and Blessed John in lonely exile on Patmos, to look through the things temporal to the hidden meanings of eternity.
”Let my soul bless G.o.d the great King,” he cries; and looks away past the present distress; past the Restoration which was to end in fresh scattering and confusion; past the dream of gold, and porphyry, and marble defaced by the eagles and emblems of the conqueror; until his eyes are held by the Jerusalem of G.o.d, ”built up with sapphires, and emeralds, and precious stones,” with battlements of pure gold, and the cry of 'Alleluia' in her streets.
Many years later, when he was very aged, he called his son to him and gave him as heritage his own simple rule of life, adding but one request: ”Keep thou the law and the commandments, and shew thyself merciful and just, that it may go well with thee. . . . Consider what alms doeth, and how righteousness doth deliver. . . . And bury me decently, and thy mother with me.” Having so said, he went his way quietly and contentedly to the Jerusalem of his heart.
It is the simple note of familiarity that is wanting in us; that by which we link world with world. Once, years ago, I sat by the bedside of a dying man in a wretched garret in the East End. He was entirely ignorant, entirely quiescent, and entirely uninterested. The minister of a neighbouring chapel came to see him and spoke to him at some length of the need for repentance and the joys of heaven. After he had gone my friend lay staring restlessly at the ma.s.s of decrepit broken chimney pots which made his horizon. At last he spoke, and there was a new note in his voice:-
”Ee said as 'ow there were golding streets in them parts. I ain't no ways particler wot they're made of, but it'll feel natral like if there's chimleys too.”
The sun stretched a sudden finger and painted the chimney pots red and gold against the smoke-dimmed sky, and with his face alight with surprised relief my friend died.
We are one with the earth, one in sin, one in redemption. It is the fringe of the garment of G.o.d. ”If I may but touch the hem,” said a certain woman.
On the great Death-day which shadows the early spring with a shadow of which it may be said _Umbra Dei est Lux_, the earth brought gifts of grief, the fruit of the curse, barren thorns, hollow reed, and the wood of the cross; the sea made offering of Tyrian purple; the sky veiled her face in great darkness, while the nation of priests crucified for the last time their Paschal lamb. ”I will hear, saith the Lord; I will hear the heavens, and they shall hear the earth, and the earth shall hear the corn and wine and oil, and they shall hear Jezreel, and I will sow her unto me in the earth; and I will have mercy upon her that had not obtained mercy, and I will say unto them which were not my people, 'Thou art my people,' and they shall say 'Thou art my G.o.d.'”
The second Adam stood in the garden with quickening feet, and all the earth pulsed and sang for joy of the new hope and the new life quickening within her, to be hers through the pains of travail, the pangs of dissolution. The Tree of Life bears Bread and Wine-food of the wayfaring man. The day of divisions is past, the day of unity has dawned. One has risen from the dead, and in the Valley of Achor stands wide the Door of Hope-the Sacrament of Death.
Scio Domine, et vere scio . . . quia non sum dignus accedere ad tantum mysterium propter nimia peccata mea et infinitas negligentias meas. Sed scio . . . quia tu potes me facere dignum.
CHAPTER VI
”ANYTUS and Meletus can kill me, but they cannot hurt me,” said Socrates; and Governor Sancho, with all the itch of newly-acquired authority, could not make the young weaver of steel-heads for lances sleep in prison. In the Vision of Er the souls pa.s.sed straight forward under the throne of necessity, and out into the plains of forgetfulness, where they must severally drink of the river of unmindfulness whose waters cannot be held in any vessel. The throne, the plain, and the river are still here, but in the distance rise the great lone heavenward hills, and the wise among us no longer ask of the G.o.ds Lethe, but rather remembrance. Necessity can set me helpless on my back, but she cannot keep me there; nor can four walls limit my vision. I pa.s.s out from under her throne into the garden of G.o.d a free man, to my ultimate beat.i.tude or my exceeding shame.