To his brother Edward in South Africa.
Hotel Belvedere, St. Moritz: January 7, 1902.
I am glad to think that we are now in many respects agreed about the general question of thewar. I suppose in any great historical upheaval there are at the time a number of people who are attempting to make capital for themselves out of the misfortunes of others; there are many who are working for their own hand; and yet, when we look back on the crisis and judge it as a whole in the calm light of history, we see that a large and rational purpose has been worked out. At the time of the English Reformation—as some one was saying to me lately, pointing the parallel which I am working out—there must have been a number of honest and pure souls who held aloof from the whole of what appeared to be political jobbery and fortune-making at the expense of religious sentiment. Yet now most of us feel that the movement could not have had the effects that it had, unless down below all there was a strong upheaval of the national conscience. You will no doubt see many defects in this historical parallel; but the thought is at any rate suggestive, and full of what we require in these latter days—hope. Of course I feel that injustice, dishonesty, cruelty, selfishness are in no way palliated because they take cover and occasion in a real movement of national feeling.
I feel for you much in your work for examinations. It must come very hard with ill health and in a hot climate, with the freshness of youth to some extent passed. But
O well for him whose will is strong,He suffers, but he shall not suffer long;He suffers, but he cannot suffer wrong
It needs more courage than you were required to show on the field of battle. But the reward is sure. I feel strongly that this life is but the prelude to a larger life, when each faculty will have its full exercise.
Ah yet, when all is thought and said,The heart still overrules the head;Still what we hope we must believe,And what is given us receive;Must still believe, for still we hope,That in a world of larger scope,What here is faithfully begunWill be completed, not undone.
These words come from dough—the soul of honesty.
To H. J. B.
Derwent Hill, Ebchester, Durham: April 14, 1902.
It seems to me a truism to say that we ought to look at life in the light of eternity. Only then does the true significance of the meanest action in life appear. Life is redeemed from triviality and vulgarity. So far from worldly possessions losing their value, and ordinary occupations appearing insignificant, their importance is realised as never before. If man does not live for ever, his character and actions seem of comparative unimportance. If he does live for ever, it is rational for him to look at each action in the light of that larger life which he inherits. If something like class distinctions are eternal, it is an inducement so to use your distinctive privileges here in a worthy manner, that hereafter you may use them for nobler ends.
I have expressed myself badly, but you will see what I want to say. My relations to you surely become not less, but more important, when I realise that I am only beginning to know and love you here. The eternal element in them—the knowledge that there is throughout an implicit reference to a Third and Unseen Person in all that I say to you or think of you—fills me with a sense of awe, and makes the relations more real because more spiritual.
To the mother of his godchild, Margaret Forbes.
July 6, 1902.
I cannot tell you what a pleasure it was to see my godchild.… I feel she has a strength of purpose and a desire to know the truth which will fit her for high service in God's kingdom on earth. I pray for her, and I shall do so in the future with fuller understanding and with great hope. What God hath begun He will assuredly bring to perfection. I hope that some day she will learn to pray for Uncle Forbes. I should value her prayers. It is good to feel that in the midst of your weary time of weakness God has given you such a child as a pledge of His affection for you, as an assurance that He believes in you. To give you a little child to train for Himself is a proof that He trusts you very much. I do not know that He could have given a greater proof of His confidence in you. And it is God's implicit trust in us that draws out our trust in turn. We trust and love Him, because He first trusted and loved us. I wonder more and more at the way in which He trusts us. To allow us to suffer withouttelling us the reason, when He knows that we shall be inclined to think harshly of Him—that is, perhaps, the greatest proof that He believes in us. He can try our faith and perfect it by long-continued trial, because He knows that we shall respond, that we shall prove 'worthy to suffer.'
To H. J. B.
Christ's College, Cambridge: August 26, 1902.
The worst of seeing you for some time is that I feel it all the more impossible to live without you. I realise now as never before that you are out and away before me, and better than I am; and yet I feel that you are part and parcel of my life. You mustn't be too hard on me if I can't come up to your ideal.
Intellectually the Hebrew and Greek ideals may be irreconcilable. Yet 'life is larger than logic;' and practically we may become heirs of both ideals. The man who loses the world, who gives up all without any desire for gain, is often given the whole back again transfigured, glorified by sacrifice. To get you must forget. If you love God absolutely with all your being, you inherit the life that is as well as that which is to come. If all is not given you, yet enough is given for the development of character. But there must, it seems to me, be an absolute sacrifice—a surrender of your whole being—whatever the result may be. There must be no calculation.
High Heaven rejects the loreOf nicely calculated less and more.
You must love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind: you must trust Him to do the best by you. You say the Hebrew ideal does not appeal to you. But I know better; for you half like me, and I am a Hebrew of the Hebrews! There must be a dash of recklessness about the man who gains the other world. 'All or nothing' is the requirement of the kingdom of Heaven. To gain yourself you must throw yourself away—'lose your soul.' You must have faith. 'He who loves makes his own the grandeur that he loves' is a sentence of Emerson which consoles me when I think of my love for you.
To a friend at Cambridge.
40 Upperton Gardens, Eastbourne: September 8, 1902.
I have been thinking of you. I keep myself from becoming morbid by making most of my thoughts into prayers for you. The glory—wonder—strangeness of being loved by a man from another and a better world fills me with gratitude to God. Sometimes it seems a dream, and I half dread that I shall wake up and find that you have ceased to care for a worthless creature. Butphobos ouk estin en te agape, all he teleia agape exo ballei ton phobon. I need not fear. I know that you will love me, whatever happens.
[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrases in the above paragraph were transliterated as follows:phobos—phi, omicron, beta, omicron, final sigma;ouk—omicron, upsilon, kappa;estin—epsilon, sigma, tau, iota, nu;en—epsilon, nu;te—tau, eta;agape—alpha, gamma, alpha, pi, eta;all—alpha, lambda, lambda;he—(rough breathing mark) eta;teleia—tau, epsilon, lambda, epsilon, iota, alpha;agape—alpha, gamma, alpha, pi, eta;exo—epsilon, xi, omega;ballei—beta, alpha, lambda, lambda, epsilon, iota;ton—tau, omicron, nu;phobon—phi, omicron, beta, omicron, nu]
I want you to be one of the best men that ever lived—to see God and to reveal Him to men. This is the burden of my prayers. My whole being goes out in passionate entreaty to God that He will give me what I ask. I am sure He will, for the requestis after His own heart. I do not pray that you may 'succeed in life' or 'get on' in the world. I seldom even pray that you may love me better, or that I may see you oftener in this or any other world—much as I crave for this. But I ask, I implore, that Christ may be formed in you, that you may be made not in a likeness suggested by my imagination, but in the image of God—that you may realise, not mine, but His ideal, however much that ideal may bewilder me, however little I may fail to recognise it when it is created. I hate the thought that out of love for me you should accept my presentation—my feeble idea—of the Christ. I want God to reveal His Son in you independently of me—to give you a first-hand knowledge of Him whom I am only beginning to see. Sometimes more selfish thoughts will intrude, but this represents the main current of my prayers; and if the ideal is to be won from heaven by importunity, by ceaseless begging, I think I shall get it for you. But it grieves me to think that I can do nothing else for you. To receive so many favours from you, and to be incapable of doing more in return—this is what saddens me. I feel an ungrateful brute. You have brought new joy, hope, power into my life, and I want to show my gratitude. You would be doing me a real kindness if you would tell me how I could show it.
Don't think by what I have said that I simply care—as an 'Evangelical' would say—for your 'soul.' Every part of your being—everything you do or say—all that you are—has a strange fascination for me. Only I feel that the whole of it is a revelation ofGod; and I want that revelation to be clearer, truer, simpler. I am sure God does not only care for our souls. It is every part of our complicated being—all sides of our manifold life—that attracts Him. He loves our home life, our affection for the dear old Mother Earth which He made, our interest in the men and women whom He formed in His own image. He longs that all those interests should be developed—that we should live genuine, sane human lives. But true development here or elsewhere—the law of existence in heaven or on earth—is life through death. 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit.' You must give up all. As I think of you, those words keep ringing in my ears: 'If any one cometh to Me, and hateth not his own father and mother, yea, and his own self also, he cannot be My disciple.'
I cannot tell you what they mean. You must find them out for yourself.
If I were a true disciple of Christ, you could see what they mean by looking at me. But I am not. You must learn their meaning for yourself. Your mother's life will speak louder than words of mine. Only I know they are true. Christ will recreate the world, recreate the home, human beings, dear Mother Earth; but He cannot do so until you have been willing to give up all—until He has caused you to be 'born again.' When the ruler asked how these things could be, Christ could only repeat His words. The man must work it out for himself.
But I am sure that he that willeth to do the willshall know whether the teaching be true. There are no doubt some mere intellectual obscurities in the ideal which I might make simpler if I were not such a duffer. But finally a paradox would be left—a paradox which can only be solved by living the ideal out, and finding it work. It is the pathos of our love, of God's love for us, that each man, however much he is loved, must work out the ideal for himself. No man can save his brother's soul.
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 identity, 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 God that you exist, and that you let me love you.
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 yououghtto 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 assuredly '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 ourown 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 God 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 God 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 doubtyou 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 God 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 God 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 whomwe can best describe as personal. His will, it seems to me, must be given to him by God. He has identified it with a hitherto unrealised potentiality for disobedience. In plain language, his will is free, and therefore capable of resisting God. I should like to have a talk with you some day about it. But, as you see, the problem is beyond me.…
It is a strength to me to feel that you are fighting the devil in yourself and others up in ——, and that I am 'one man' with you.
To D. B. K.
St. Moritz: January 1903.
It is getting on for your birthday, isn't it? Congratulations. I wish I knew the exact day. I think more and more that a birthday is a subject not—as poor Job thought—for anathemas, but for congratulations. To be a reasonable human being—with capacity for seeing something of God's purposes for the race—with power to forward them—with opportunities for love and sacrifice and prayer—oh! I am so glad that I was not a mere animal. And to be born at the end of the nineteenth century—I prefer that period even to Apostolic times. We can know more of God's purposes, enter more deeply into His mind and even His heart, than primitive Christians.
I have been reading to-day Temple's essay on 'The Education of the World' in 'Essays and Reviews.' Get hold of an old copy of that book, and read it. It is strong and manly, and rings true. Ilove that old man with his tenderness, simplicity, thoughtfulness, and will of steel. I thank God for him. There is something about utter goodness which makes me worship, and fills me with the challenge, 'Go and do thou likewise.' Goodness is as infectious as any disease.
I have been thinking lately of the self-sacrifice of God's life. I suppose that is the reason why He can enter into our lives—see them from the inside.
Thou canst conceive our highest and our lowest,Pulses of nobleness and aches of shame.
It must have been the wealth of His self-sacrifice which made Him give us selves—wills—of our own. Then He makes them His own by more self-sacrifice. We are made in His image—made to go out of self, and find our self by losing it. Other men at first seem to limit our freedom, but later we find that the apparent limitations are only just scope for realising our true self. Each time we go out of self, and enter into another 'ego,' we return the richer for our sacrifice. We take up other lives into our own, and are richer than a millionaire.
I think that when the other 'ego' is most unlike our own—when at first sight the man is repulsive, and (worse still) uninteresting to us—when the sacrifice is great, if we would see life through his eyes, share his ambitions, fears, longings, and mental outlook, then is the time when we are peculiarly rewarded for our pains. Our consciousness is larger, more human, more divine than before.
'By feeblest agents doth our God fulfil Hisrighteous will' is the thought suggested by some of our brother-clergy. God does not choose the agents we should choose. Or perhaps the latter do not respond to His choice. Yet I feel that I am one of them, and that it is my faults writ large which I detest in them. I feel that, with all the riches of the revelation which I possess, I have that same self-satisfaction and lack of sympathy which I loathe in others. It is my life which is the stumbling-block to my message. They have often far less light than I have, but walk in it more simply than I do. The rafter in my own eye troubles me even more than the speck in theirs. But it is hard, God knows, sometimes to feel His presence in their presence. But the forces of good must be united ('Keep, ah! keep them combined. Else …'), and if by any effort we can enter into their lives, and transcend the barriers between us, we are not only enriching our own life, but we are doing our best to show a combined front against the almost overwhelming forces of evil.
Even the Apostles must have found it hard to work together. We know they did. Look at Peter and Paul. Yet the spirit of unity was stronger than all that opposed Him, and the One Body was in some measure realised. What was difficult in the childhood of the Body is still more difficult in its manhood. And Englishmen, with their strong sense of individuality, find it a terrible lesson to learn.
But pray. You enter then into another man's 'ego.' You see him in God. You see him as an end in himself. Remember Kant's maxim—a wonderful maxim from one who would not, I suppose, betechnically called a Christian—'Treat humanity, whether in thyself or in another, always as an end, not simply as a means.' Put aside a certain amount of time, and pray for one man. If your thoughts wander, do not be disturbed, do not try to find when they began or how they began to wander; do not despair, go back to the subject in hand. And God will have mercy. Your influence, your life, your all, depends on prayer.
We must faint sometimes. But let your saddest times, your deepest struggles be known to God. Gain there the strength and quietness which you need for life. But don't let men see the agony—let them see the peace which comes from wrestling alone with God—wrestling for them.
You are not one man, but two or three. Thank God for that. It means that you will have a hard life—an awful struggle with self or selves: but it also means more influence, more power to enter into man's life. So many of the finest men owe their attractiveness to their diverse, many-sided nature. You will be able to feel for such, and perhaps to help them. You are half a Greek with your yearning for beauty and knowledge, half a Hebrew with your loathing for sin and love of God. The Greek in you must not be annihilated, but it must be subordinated to the Hebrew. Conscience must be absolute master. You must sacrifice the 'Greek' to Christ; but He will give you back what is best in the Greek ideal, all the better for the mark of the Cross on it. He will give it you back partly in this world, partly in the next, when you have learnt to renounce it—if needwere, for ever—for His sake. But you must give up all for Him without thought of reward. He can give no reward to the man who is looking for it. The thought of your life helps me. Go on, for the night cometh when no man can work. Thank God it is yet day.
To his brother Edward in South Africa.
Mühlen, Switzerland: January 11, 1903.
I found walking a pleasant change after reading philosophy, which I have been doing during my holidays. I seem to have been getting my ideas a little clearer, and am no longer as content as I was with the Kantian doctrine, that our knowledge in speculative matters never gets beyond 'appearances.' I feel that at every turn we do get to that whichis—to an underlying reality. I cannot feel that Kant's hard and fast division between 'speculative' and 'moral' reason holds good. The external world, because it is intelligible, must be akin to us; there must be an intelligence in it, otherwise it would never become an object of knowledge to our intelligence. It is not only in our ethical life that we come across the absolute consciousness. I feel now more than ever how we cannot divide up ourselves into water-tight compartments, and think of reason, will, and feeling as separate things, lying side by side. They can be separated—abstracted—in thought, but in actual life you never find one without the other. We cannot think without some degree of attention, and attention involves an exercise of will, and will cannotbe exercised without desire, and desire involves feeling.
I think faith also cannot be regarded as a separate faculty. Reason, will, and feeling are all involved even in the faith of a poor cottager; much more does reason enter into the faith of a thoughtful man.
I have been reading Butler, and hope when I go back to study Hume. What a wealth of light the conception of 'Development' has shed upon the problems which exercised the eighteenth century! I have read half through Leslie Stephen's 'Thought in the Eighteenth Century,' and I have been struck again and again at the new aspect that the old questions take when looked at from the standpoint of Evolution.
I feel also that we need to study more the evolution ofthought—the necessary phases that reason (like man's physical life) must pass through before perfection.…
I think you are right, that education must now include instruction in imperial ideas—in our relations with that larger social life which is dawning upon us—a step towards a still larger social life to be realised in the brotherhood of nations.
To F. J. C.
Christ's College, Cambridge: February 1, 1903.
I am slow to suggest to another man that what seems bad luck is in reality the voice of God making itself felt in his busy life, calling him to fuller sacrifice. But I am sure that we are right when we interpret itthus for ourselves. I share your wish for 'some really strong man' to come as a prophet and read the writing on the wall, and tell us 'what it all means.' Yet the absence of human help is not accidental. It must be designed, in order that we may learn to fall back on the everlasting arms—to find by experience that the unseen is more real than the seen.
There is an arm that never tiresWhen human strength gives way.
I like that phrase, 'worthy to suffer.' It is to those whom God loves best and most that He gives—as He gave to His Son—the chance of suffering. Sympathy, strength, reality—these are some of its fruits for those who allow them to grow. 'He cannot be My disciple.' I can't help sometimes thinking of these words. Unless the man is prepared to make sacrifice the basis of his life, hecannotbe Christ's disciple. I don't think we always realise the 'trans-valuation of values' found in Christ's teaching. 'Blessed are the poor—the hungry. He that would save his life shall lose it. He that loseth, saveth. He that would be greatest shall be least. It is more blessed to give than to receive.' As I think over such statements as these, I find that I have again and again to revise, as it were, my moral arithmetic—to change my standards, to revise my ideas of great and little, happiness and misery, importance and insignificance.
I am sure that nothing but the highest will satisfy you. God has given you singular powers of influence and of attracting others. He will demand an accountof those powers. You know Matthew Arnold's lines on his father. I believe the day will come when men will say like words of you.
But thou would'st notaloneBe saved, my father! aloneConquer and come to thy goal,Leaving the rest in the wild…Therefore to thee it was givenMany to save with thyself.
That is what I want you to be—a tower of strength—strength perfected, it may be, in weakness—weakness forcing you to despair of self, and find the Rock of Ages. You have been so much to me, and helped me so often, that I feel you must be born to help others as well. And this quiet time, it may be that God is using it to call you closer to Himself, to teach you to revise your 'values,' to show you a new fund of strength.
Our wills are ours, we know not how,Our wills are ours, to make them Thine.
You must—literally must—let His will overpower your will. Nothing but complete sacrifice will satisfy you or Him, and I believe in you profoundly. I am sure that, whatever be the ghastly struggle, you will go through with it, and find your strength in Him. I pray for you.
To his mother.
Cambridge; March 15, 1903.
The term is almost over … I am enjoying a quiet Sunday. What a blessing these Sundays areto us—a foretaste of a fuller life of service and worship hereafter! I have been thinking lately with comfort of the quiet perpetual work of the Holy Spirit, silently but surely leading us on to higher things—comforting, correcting, guiding. It gives ground for hope in dealing with men, this knowledge that there is One who perfects what we feebly struggle to begin, who watches over men with a love that will not let them go. We are not alone in our work; we have omnipotence and illimitable wisdom on our side, forwarding our efforts. When I consider what the Spirit has accomplished in my own life, I have large hope for others. The argument from personal experience is singularly convincing. 'The fellowship of the Holy Ghost'—it is He who unites men and interprets them one to the other. It is He who gives spirit and life to our words.
To H. J. B.
Bexley House, Cromer: March 31, 1903.
It was good of you to send me that card from Florence. You don't know how glad it made me. To know that you were thinking of me was a strength to me. Your love for me comes as a perpetual surprise and inspiration. I feel a brute compared with you, but the knowledge that you care for me more than you do for most men makes me feel that I must try to be good. 'In Italy of the fifteenth century renaissance we see in strange confusion all that we love in art, and all that we loathe in man!' Greek history was short comparedwith the Hebrew: I suppose because intellectual and artistic ideals are more easily realised than ethical and religious. It takes time to make a saint. It is part of the discipline of life to find the two sets of ideas apparently antagonistic. There is a higher unity in which they are blended—in God Himself. It must be right to follow the dictates of conscience when it bids us lose our soul if we would gain it. We cannot trust God too much. If we forget our self, He will see that our truest self is ultimately realised.
I can't express myself well, for I have just finished a spell of hard work. I have sent away my tripos papers to-night. I am going up to Edinburgh on Friday or Saturday. I fear I shall not see you until April 21. Will you tell Armitage that I will, if convenient to him, sleep at Westminster that night instead of going straight to Cambridge? The hopelessness of ever showing my gratitude to you or of ever making you realise how much I love you oppresses me. I don't know what I should do if I had not One Higher than I am to confide in—if I could not leave you in His hands—if I could not gain strength and life for you by appealing to Him.
O brother, if my faith is vain,If hopes like these betray,Pray for me, that I too may gainThe sure and safer way.
And Thou, O God, by whom are seenThy creatures as they be,Forgive me if too close I leanMy human heart on Thee!
I lean closer and closer as life goes on. I feel that our hope lies in despair—despair of self. The vessels which contain the treasure are, as to-night's lesson says, earthen, 'that the excess of the power may be God's and not from us.' And there is a power, there is a life working in us. It is the quiet, sane, constant work of the Spirit in and upon our spirit, that never hastes and never tires: which gives me comfort for you, for myself, for all of us. The same life that is at work in the hedge across the road is in us, only in us it attains full self-consciousness and freedom. We can deliberately use it or refuse it. Forgive the length of the letter. But I felt so tired that I thought it would do me good to write to you, selfish brute that I am.
I expect you enjoyed your time in Italy immensely. I should have liked to be with you. I wonder if ever we shall be there together? Some day we shall be in a world where the barriers of space are broken down: 'There shall be no more sea.' Yet it seems to me that we have not altogether to wait for that other world. They are half broken down already; and if we had faith as a grain of mustard seed, we should realise the meaning of a unity deeper than any special or temporal bond. If we fail to realise its meaning now, shall we realise it then? Is not life here a training for life hereafter? If we learn nothing in this school, we shall not be able to take our places in that school of 'broader love.' The best part in me does not complain. I thank God for His thoughtful goodness in bringing you near to me. I thank Him for the mystery of life, which enables me to realise thatPower 'which lives not in the light alone, But in the darkness and the light.' I become more and more inclined to thank Him as I see Him more clearly.
To F. S. H. on his accepting the post of chaplain at the Royal Naval College, Osborne.
Cambridge: April 30, 1903.
I am satisfied with your decision. I thought over the matter, but I could not see my way quite clearly to say anything more definite, so I did not write again. Don't think that my silence was due to slackness. I did what I thought was better than writing. I spent an hour in praying over the matter. Now that the matter is settled I can tell you what a keen pleasure it is to me to have my dear old —— near me in England,[1] and doing a piece of work which is full of hope and joy. I would not say this before, because I did not wish to influence your decision by private considerations. Get some quiet time for prayer before September 1, that when you go to Osborne you may goen pleromati eulogias Christou('filled full with the blessing of Christ'). I feel increasingly the need of such times to learn to walk by faith without stumbling, and to accustom myself to the atmosphere of faith, to see things as they appear to a man who has faith 'as a grain of mustard seed.'
[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrases in the above paragraph were transliterated as follows:en—epsilon, nu;pleromati—pi, lambda, eta, rho, omega, mu, alpha, tau, iota;eulogias—epsilon, upsilon, lambda, omicron, gamma, iota, alpha, final sigma;Christou—Chi, rho, iota, sigma, tau, omicron, upsilon]
Westcott records a visit (see 'Life,' i. 249) to his old schoolmaster, Bishop Prince Lee. '"People quote various words of the Lord," said the Bishop, "as containing the sum of the Gospel—the Lord's Prayer,the Sermon on the Mount, and the like; to me the essence of the Gospel is in simpler and shorter terms:me phobou, monon pisteue.[2] Ah! Westcott, mark thatmonon," and his eyes were filled with tears as he spoke.' Ah! S——, mark thatmonon!… God bless you in your new work and make you a blessing to others as you have been to me.
[1] He had been offered work in South Africa.
[2] 'Be not afraid, only believe.'
[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrases in the above paragraph were transliterated as follows:me—mu, eta;phobou—phi, omicron, beta, omicron, upsilon;monon—mu, omicron, nu, omicron, nu;pisteue—pi, iota, sigma, tau, epsilon, upsilon, epsilon]
To J. K.
St. Thomas's Home, St. Thomas's Hospital: August 28, 1903.
… I am most grateful for your kind words, though I know full well how little it is that I have done for you. We clergymen so often seem to be working in the dark. There are no clear results to show, ase.g.a doctor can comfort himself with, when he has visibly cured a patient. And I for one am too easily inclined to despair, and to wonder whether the work is not in vain. But 'trust is truer than our fears.' Yet it does me good when I feel I have done anything, however tiny, for a man. After all, results are best left in God's hand. He gives us enough to help us the next step onward, but not enough to exalt us, and to make us think we can do anything without His assistance. Work 'in the Lord' cannot be in vain.
I am glad you have been reading Bishop Westcott's life. He was a man of God, and his life is an inspiration, and a prophecy of what our life may—nay, some day—will be.… I like that passagewhen he goes to see his old schoolmaster, Bishop Prince Lee, who tells him with tears in his eyes that to his mind the whole Gospel message is summed up in the words 'me phobou, monon pisteue.'
[Transcriber's note: see the previous letter for transliteration notes on the above Greek phrase.]
To a friend who had been an international athlete.
St. Thomas's Home: September 5, 1903.
We had a fairly good 'Long' in spite of the miserable weather. Congratulate me. I won my first athletic distinction last 'Long'—a ten-shilling prize. I am thinking of chucking work and becoming a professional. It was a second prize in a tennis tournament. I had (I must own) the best player in College as my partner. I want to get a very conspicuous object as prize. What do you suggest?
To C. T. W.
St. Thomas's Hospital: September 1903.
I am getting on first-rate, and I hope to be up early next week. I believe you are right. We should do well if we had more regularity and self-discipline in our life at Cambridge, and we should have more power over others. Pray for me.…
You needn't pity me. I am having a very good time. It is jolly to do nothing, and not even to have to dress and undress—both exhausting and monotonous occupations. It has been a glorious day, and although it is almost 7 P.M., I am still out on the balcony enjoying the cool breezes.
To W. O.
Alassio; December 1903.
Death has come near to my family lately. I told you that my sister—the Deaconess—had passed away from us.[1] It is not all sorrow, when we know that the life has been spent in walking with God, when we know that this corruptible puts on incorruption, and that what is sown in intense bodily weakness is raised in strength—eternal strength.
I am so glad that God has given to you His highest blessing. I long to meet your future wife. It makes me very happy to think of the happiness in store for you—to know that you are in the best of all schools. I thank God. Love will bring you both nearer to the source of Love.… This new blessing, as you say, is 'the gathering up of the best that God gives.' I can't express my thoughts as I would, but I am very, very glad.…
Illness teaches one many lessons. I trust I have learned some. I have been amazed at the goodness of my friends!
[1] His sister, Deaconess Cecilia, 'passed away' at the Deanery, Westminster, on September 8.