Outwardly I do not think there was anything remarkable in his habits, exceptan irregularity with regard to times and places of study, which may seem surprising in one whose progress in so manydirections was so eminently great and rapid.He was commonly to be found in some friend’s room, reading or canvassing.I daresay he lost something by this irregularity,but less than perhaps one would at first imagine. I never saw him idle. He might seem to be lounging, or only amusing himself, but his mind was always active, and active for good. In fact, his energy and quickness of apprehension did not stand in need of outward aid.
Outwardly I do not think there was anything remarkable in his habits, exceptan irregularity with regard to times and places of study, which may seem surprising in one whose progress in so manydirections was so eminently great and rapid.He was commonly to be found in some friend’s room, reading or canvassing.I daresay he lost something by this irregularity,but less than perhaps one would at first imagine. I never saw him idle. He might seem to be lounging, or only amusing himself, but his mind was always active, and active for good. In fact, his energy and quickness of apprehension did not stand in need of outward aid.
There is much in this worthy of more extended notice. Such minds as his probably grow best in this way, are best left to themselves, to glide on at their own sweet wills; the stream was too deep and clear, and perhaps too entirely bent on its own errand, to be dealt with or regulated by any art or device. The same friend sums up his character thus:
I have met with no man his superior in metaphysical subtlety; no man his equal as a philosophical critic on works of taste; no man whose views on all subjects connected with the duties and dignities of humanity were more large and generous, and enlightened.
I have met with no man his superior in metaphysical subtlety; no man his equal as a philosophical critic on works of taste; no man whose views on all subjects connected with the duties and dignities of humanity were more large and generous, and enlightened.
And all this said of a youth of twenty—heu nimium brevis aevi decus et desiderium!
We have given little of his verse; and what we do give is taken at random. We agree entirely in his father’s estimate of his poetical gift and art, but his mind was too serious, too thoughtful, too intensely dedicated to truth and the God of truth, to linger long in the pursuit of beauty; he was on his way to God, and could rest in nothing short of Him, otherwise he might have been a poet of genuine excellence.
Dark, dark, yea, “irrecoverably dark,”Is the soul’s eye; yet how it strives and battlesThrough th’ impenetrable gloom to fixThat master light, the secret truth of things,Which is the body of the infinite God!·······Sure, we are leaves of one harmonious bower,Fed by a sap that never will be scant,All-permeating, all-producing mind;And in our several parcellings of doomWe but fulfil the beauty of the whole.Oh, madness! if a leaf should dare complainOf its dark verdure, and aspire to beThe gayer, brighter thing that wantons near.·······Oh, blessing and delight of my young heart,Maiden, who wast so lovely, and so pure,I know not in what region now thou art,Or whom thy gentle eyes in joy assure.Not the old hills on which we gazed together,Not the old faces which we both did love,Not the old books, whence knowledge we did gather,Not these, but others now thy fancies move.I would I knew thy present hopes and fears,All thy companions with their pleasant talk,And the clear aspect which thy dwelling wears:So, though in body absent, I might walkWith thee in thought and feeling, till thy moodDid sanctify mine own to peerless good.·······Alfred, I would that you beheld me now,Sitting beneath a mossy ivied wallOn a quaint bench, which to that structure oldWinds an accordant curve. Above my headDilates immeasurable a wild of leaves,Seeming received into the blue expanseThat vaults this summer noon.·······Still here—thou hast not faded from my sight,Nor all the music round thee from mine ear:Still grace flows from thee to the brightening year,And all the birds laugh out in wealthier light.Still am I free to close my happy eyes,And paint upon the gloom thy mimic form,That soft white neck, that cheek in beauty warm,And brow half hidden where yon ringlet lies:With, oh! the blissful knowledge all the whileThat I can lift at will each curvèd lid,And my fair dream most highly realize.The time will come, ’tis ushered by my sighs,When I may shape the dark, but vainly bidTrue light restore that form, those looks, that smile.·······The garden treesare busy with the showerThat fell ere sunset: now methinks they talk,Lowly and sweetly as befits the hour,One to another down the grassy walk.Hark the laburnum from his opening flower,This cheery creeper greets in whisper light,While the grim fir, rejoicing in the night,Hoarse mutters to the murmuring sycamore.[113]What shall I deem their converse? would they hailThe wild grey light that fronts yon massive cloud,Or the half bow, rising like pillar’d fire?Or are they fighting faintly for desireThat with May dawn their leaves may be o’erflowed,And dews about their feet may never fail?
In the Essay, entitledTheodicaea Novissima, from which the following passages are taken, to the great injury in its general effect, he sets himself to the task of doing his utmost to clear up the mystery of the existence of such things as sin and suffering, in the universe of a being like God. He does it fearlessly, but like a child. It is in the spirit of his friend’s words:
An infant crying in the night,An infant crying for the light,And with no language but a cry.Then was I as a child that cries,But, crying, knows his father near.
It is not a mere exercitation of the intellect, it is an endeavour to get nearer God—to assert His eternal Providence, and vindicate His ways to men. We know no performance more wonderful for such a boy. Pascal might have written it. As was to be expected, the tremendous subject remains where he found it—his glowing love and genius cast a gleam here and there across its gloom; but it is brief as the lightning in the collied night—the jaws of darkness do devour it up—this secret belongs to God. Across its deep and dazzling darkness, and from out its abyss of thick cloud, “all dark, dark, irrecoverably dark,” no steady ray has ever, or will ever, come—over its face its own darkness must brood, till He to whom alone the darkness and the light are both alike, to whom the night shineth as the day, says, “Let there be light!” There is, we all know, a certain awful attraction, a nameless charm for all thoughtful spirits, in this mystery, “the greatest in the universe,” as Mr. Hallam truly says; and it is well for us at times, so that we have pure eyes and a clean heart, to turn aside and look into its gloom; but it is not good to busy ourselves in clever speculations about it, or briskly to criticize the speculations of others—it is a wise and pious saying of Augustine,Verius cogitatur Deus quam dicitur; et verius est quam cogitatur.
I wish to be understood as considering Christianity in the present Essay rather in its relation to the intellect, as constituting the higher philosophy, than in its far more important bearing upon the hearts and destinies of us all. I shall propose the question in this form, “Isthere ground for believing that the existence of moral evil is absolutely necessary to the fulfilment of God’s essential love for Christ?” (i.e.of the Father for Christ, or of ὁ πατήρ for ὁ λόγος).“Can man by searching find out God?” I believe not. I believe that the unassisted efforts of man’s reason have not established the existence and attributes of Deity on so sure a basis as the Deist imagines. However sublime may be the notion of a supreme original mind, and however naturally human feelings adhered to it, the reasons by which it was justified were not, in my opinion, sufficient to clear it from considerable doubt and confusion.... I hesitate not to say that I derive from Revelation a conviction of Theism, which, without that assistance, would have been but a dark and ambiguous hope.I see that the Bible fits into every fold of the human heart. I am a man and I believe it to be God’s book because it is man’s book.It is true that the Bible affords me no additional means of demonstrating the falsity of Atheism;if mind had nothing to do with the formation of the Universe, doubtless whatever had was competent also to make the Bible; but I have gained this advantage, that my feelings and thoughts can no longer refuse their assent towhat is evidently framed to engage that assent; and what is it to me that I cannot disprove the bare logical possibility of my whole nature being fallacious? To seek for a certainty above certainty, an evidence beyond necessary belief, is the very lunacy of scepticism: we must trust our own faculties, or we can put no trust in anything, save that moment we call the present, which escapes us while we articulate its name.I am determined therefore to receive the Bible as Divinely authorized, and the scheme of human and Divine things which it contains, as essentially true.In the Supreme Nature those two capacities of Perfect Love and Perfect Joy are indivisible. Holiness and Happiness, says an old divine, are two several notions of one thing. Equally inseparable are the notions of Opposition to Love and Opposition to Bliss.Unless, therefore, the heart of a created being is at one with the heart of God, it cannot but be miserable.Moreover, there is no possibility of continuing for ever partly with God and partly against Him: we must either be capable by our nature of entire accordance with His will, or we must be incapable of anything but misery, further than He may for a while “not impute our trespasses to us,” that is, He may interpose some temporary barrier between sin and its attendant pain.For in the Eternal Idea of God a created spirit is perhaps not seen, as a series of successive states, of which some that are evil might be compensated by others that are good,but as one indivisible object of these almost divisible modes, and that either in accordance with His own nature, or in opposition to it....Before the Gospel was preached to man, how could a human soul have this love, and this consequent life? I see no way; but now that Christ has excited our love for Him by showing unutterable love for us; now that we know Him as an Elder Brother, a being of like thoughts,feelings, sensations, sufferings, with ourselves, it has become possible to love as God loves, that is, to love Christ, and thus to become united in heart to God. Besides, Christ is the express image of God’s person: in loving Him we are sure we are in a state of readiness to love the Father, whom we see, He tells us, when we see Him. Nor is this all: the tendency of love is towards a union so intimate as virtually to amount to identification; when then by affection towards Christ we have become blended with His being, the beams of eternal love, falling, as ever, on the one beloved object, will include us in Him, and their returning flashes of love out of His personality will carry along with them some from our own, since ours has become confused with His, and so shall we be one with Christ, and through Christ with God. Thus, then, we see the great effect of the Incarnation, as far as our nature is concerned,was to render human love for the Most High a possible thing. The law had said, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength”; and could men have lived by law, “which is the strength of sin,” verily righteousness and life would have been by that law. But it was not possible, and all were concluded under sin, that in Christ might be the deliverance of all. I believe that Redemption (i.e., what Christ has done and suffered for mankind) is universal, in so far as it left no obstacle between man and God, but man’s own will; that indeed is in the power of God’s election, with whom alone rest the abysmal secrets of personality; but as far as Christ is concerned, His death was for all, since His intentions and affections were equally directed to all, and “none who come to Him will He in any wise cast out.”I deprecate any hasty rejection of these thoughts as novelties. Christianity is indeed, as St. Augustine says, “pulchritudo tam antiqua”; but he adds, “tam nova,” for it is capable of presenting to every mind a new face of truth. The great doctrine which in my judgment these observations tend to strengthen and illumine,the doctrine of personal love for a personal God, is assuredly no novelty, but has in all times been the vital principle of the Church. Many are the forms of anti-christian heresy, which for a season have depressed and obscured that principle of life, but its nature is conflictive and resurgent; and neither the Papal Hierarchy with its pomp of systematized errors, nor the worst apostasy of latitudinarian Protestantism, have ever so far prevailed, but that many from age to age have proclaimed and vindicated the eternal gospel of love, believing, as I also firmly believe, that any opinion which tends to keep out of sight the living and loving God, whether it substitute for Him an idol, an occult agency, or a formal creed, can be nothing better than a vain and portentous shadow projected from the selfish darkness of unregenerate man.
I wish to be understood as considering Christianity in the present Essay rather in its relation to the intellect, as constituting the higher philosophy, than in its far more important bearing upon the hearts and destinies of us all. I shall propose the question in this form, “Isthere ground for believing that the existence of moral evil is absolutely necessary to the fulfilment of God’s essential love for Christ?” (i.e.of the Father for Christ, or of ὁ πατήρ for ὁ λόγος).
“Can man by searching find out God?” I believe not. I believe that the unassisted efforts of man’s reason have not established the existence and attributes of Deity on so sure a basis as the Deist imagines. However sublime may be the notion of a supreme original mind, and however naturally human feelings adhered to it, the reasons by which it was justified were not, in my opinion, sufficient to clear it from considerable doubt and confusion.... I hesitate not to say that I derive from Revelation a conviction of Theism, which, without that assistance, would have been but a dark and ambiguous hope.I see that the Bible fits into every fold of the human heart. I am a man and I believe it to be God’s book because it is man’s book.It is true that the Bible affords me no additional means of demonstrating the falsity of Atheism;if mind had nothing to do with the formation of the Universe, doubtless whatever had was competent also to make the Bible; but I have gained this advantage, that my feelings and thoughts can no longer refuse their assent towhat is evidently framed to engage that assent; and what is it to me that I cannot disprove the bare logical possibility of my whole nature being fallacious? To seek for a certainty above certainty, an evidence beyond necessary belief, is the very lunacy of scepticism: we must trust our own faculties, or we can put no trust in anything, save that moment we call the present, which escapes us while we articulate its name.I am determined therefore to receive the Bible as Divinely authorized, and the scheme of human and Divine things which it contains, as essentially true.
In the Supreme Nature those two capacities of Perfect Love and Perfect Joy are indivisible. Holiness and Happiness, says an old divine, are two several notions of one thing. Equally inseparable are the notions of Opposition to Love and Opposition to Bliss.Unless, therefore, the heart of a created being is at one with the heart of God, it cannot but be miserable.Moreover, there is no possibility of continuing for ever partly with God and partly against Him: we must either be capable by our nature of entire accordance with His will, or we must be incapable of anything but misery, further than He may for a while “not impute our trespasses to us,” that is, He may interpose some temporary barrier between sin and its attendant pain.For in the Eternal Idea of God a created spirit is perhaps not seen, as a series of successive states, of which some that are evil might be compensated by others that are good,but as one indivisible object of these almost divisible modes, and that either in accordance with His own nature, or in opposition to it....
Before the Gospel was preached to man, how could a human soul have this love, and this consequent life? I see no way; but now that Christ has excited our love for Him by showing unutterable love for us; now that we know Him as an Elder Brother, a being of like thoughts,feelings, sensations, sufferings, with ourselves, it has become possible to love as God loves, that is, to love Christ, and thus to become united in heart to God. Besides, Christ is the express image of God’s person: in loving Him we are sure we are in a state of readiness to love the Father, whom we see, He tells us, when we see Him. Nor is this all: the tendency of love is towards a union so intimate as virtually to amount to identification; when then by affection towards Christ we have become blended with His being, the beams of eternal love, falling, as ever, on the one beloved object, will include us in Him, and their returning flashes of love out of His personality will carry along with them some from our own, since ours has become confused with His, and so shall we be one with Christ, and through Christ with God. Thus, then, we see the great effect of the Incarnation, as far as our nature is concerned,was to render human love for the Most High a possible thing. The law had said, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength”; and could men have lived by law, “which is the strength of sin,” verily righteousness and life would have been by that law. But it was not possible, and all were concluded under sin, that in Christ might be the deliverance of all. I believe that Redemption (i.e., what Christ has done and suffered for mankind) is universal, in so far as it left no obstacle between man and God, but man’s own will; that indeed is in the power of God’s election, with whom alone rest the abysmal secrets of personality; but as far as Christ is concerned, His death was for all, since His intentions and affections were equally directed to all, and “none who come to Him will He in any wise cast out.”
I deprecate any hasty rejection of these thoughts as novelties. Christianity is indeed, as St. Augustine says, “pulchritudo tam antiqua”; but he adds, “tam nova,” for it is capable of presenting to every mind a new face of truth. The great doctrine which in my judgment these observations tend to strengthen and illumine,the doctrine of personal love for a personal God, is assuredly no novelty, but has in all times been the vital principle of the Church. Many are the forms of anti-christian heresy, which for a season have depressed and obscured that principle of life, but its nature is conflictive and resurgent; and neither the Papal Hierarchy with its pomp of systematized errors, nor the worst apostasy of latitudinarian Protestantism, have ever so far prevailed, but that many from age to age have proclaimed and vindicated the eternal gospel of love, believing, as I also firmly believe, that any opinion which tends to keep out of sight the living and loving God, whether it substitute for Him an idol, an occult agency, or a formal creed, can be nothing better than a vain and portentous shadow projected from the selfish darkness of unregenerate man.
The following is from the Review of Tennyson’s Poems; we do not know that during the lapse of years anything better has been said:
Undoubtedly the true poet addresses himself, in all his conceptions, to the common nature of us all. Art is a lofty tree, and may shoot up far beyond our grasp, but its roots are in daily life and experience. Every bosom contains the elements of those complex emotions which the artist feels, and every head can, to a certain extent, go over in itself the process of their combination, so as to understand his expressions and sympathize with his state.But this requires exertion; more or less, indeed, according to the difference of occasion, but always some degree of exertion. For since the emotions of the poet during composition follow a regular law of association, it follows that to accompany their progress up to the harmonious prospect of the whole, and to perceive the proper dependence of every step on that which preceded, it is absolutely necessaryto start from the same point,i.e., clearly to apprehend that leading sentiment of the poet’s mind, by their conformity to which the host of suggestions are arranged.Now this requisite exertion is not willingly made by the large majority of readers. It is so easy to judge capriciously, and according to indolent impulse!Those different powers of poetic disposition, the energies of Sensitive, of Reflective, or Passionate emotion, which in former times were intermingled, and derived from mutual support an extensive empire over the feelings of men, were now restrained within separate spheres of agency. The whole system no longer worked harmoniously, and by intrinsic harmony acquired external freedom; but there arose a violent and unusual action in the several component functions, each for itself, all striving to reproduce the regular power which the whole had once enjoyed.Hence the melancholy which so evidently characterizes the spirit of modern poetry; hence that return of the mind upon itself, and the habit of seeking relief in idiosyncrasies rather than community of interest.In the old times the poetic impulse went along with the general impulse of the nation.One of the faithful Islâm, a poet in the truest and highest sense, we are anxious to present to our readers.... He sees all the forms of Nature with theeruditus oculus, and his ear has a fairy fineness. There isa strange earnestness in his worship of beauty, which throws a charm over his impassioned song more easily felt than described, and not to be escaped by those who have once felt it. We think that he hasmore definiteness and roundness of general conceptionthan the late Mr. Keats, and is much more free from blemishes of diction and hasty capriccios of fancy.... The author imitates nobody;we recognize the spirit of his age, but not the individual form of this or that writer. His thoughts bear no more resemblance to Byron or Scott, Shelley or Coleridge, than to Homer or Calderon, Ferdusi or Calidasa. We have remarked five distinctive excellences of his own manner. First, his luxuriance of imagination, and at the same time his control over it. Secondly, his power of embodying himself in ideal characters, or rather modes of character, with such extreme accuracy of adjustment, that the circumstances of the narration seem to have a natural correspondence with the predominant feeling, and, as it were, to be evolved from it by assimilative force. Thirdly, his vivid, picturesque delineation ofobjects, and the peculiar skill with which he holds all of themfused, to borrow a metaphor from science, in a medium of strong emotion. Fourthly, the variety of his lyrical measures, and exquisite modulation of harmonious words and cadences to the swell and fall of the feelings expressed. Fifthly, the elevated habits of thought, implied in these compositions, and imparting a mellow soberness of tone, more impressive, to our minds, than if the author had drawn up a set of opinions in verse, and sought to instruct the understanding,rather than to communicate the love of beauty to the heart.
Undoubtedly the true poet addresses himself, in all his conceptions, to the common nature of us all. Art is a lofty tree, and may shoot up far beyond our grasp, but its roots are in daily life and experience. Every bosom contains the elements of those complex emotions which the artist feels, and every head can, to a certain extent, go over in itself the process of their combination, so as to understand his expressions and sympathize with his state.But this requires exertion; more or less, indeed, according to the difference of occasion, but always some degree of exertion. For since the emotions of the poet during composition follow a regular law of association, it follows that to accompany their progress up to the harmonious prospect of the whole, and to perceive the proper dependence of every step on that which preceded, it is absolutely necessaryto start from the same point,i.e., clearly to apprehend that leading sentiment of the poet’s mind, by their conformity to which the host of suggestions are arranged.Now this requisite exertion is not willingly made by the large majority of readers. It is so easy to judge capriciously, and according to indolent impulse!
Those different powers of poetic disposition, the energies of Sensitive, of Reflective, or Passionate emotion, which in former times were intermingled, and derived from mutual support an extensive empire over the feelings of men, were now restrained within separate spheres of agency. The whole system no longer worked harmoniously, and by intrinsic harmony acquired external freedom; but there arose a violent and unusual action in the several component functions, each for itself, all striving to reproduce the regular power which the whole had once enjoyed.Hence the melancholy which so evidently characterizes the spirit of modern poetry; hence that return of the mind upon itself, and the habit of seeking relief in idiosyncrasies rather than community of interest.In the old times the poetic impulse went along with the general impulse of the nation.
One of the faithful Islâm, a poet in the truest and highest sense, we are anxious to present to our readers.... He sees all the forms of Nature with theeruditus oculus, and his ear has a fairy fineness. There isa strange earnestness in his worship of beauty, which throws a charm over his impassioned song more easily felt than described, and not to be escaped by those who have once felt it. We think that he hasmore definiteness and roundness of general conceptionthan the late Mr. Keats, and is much more free from blemishes of diction and hasty capriccios of fancy.... The author imitates nobody;we recognize the spirit of his age, but not the individual form of this or that writer. His thoughts bear no more resemblance to Byron or Scott, Shelley or Coleridge, than to Homer or Calderon, Ferdusi or Calidasa. We have remarked five distinctive excellences of his own manner. First, his luxuriance of imagination, and at the same time his control over it. Secondly, his power of embodying himself in ideal characters, or rather modes of character, with such extreme accuracy of adjustment, that the circumstances of the narration seem to have a natural correspondence with the predominant feeling, and, as it were, to be evolved from it by assimilative force. Thirdly, his vivid, picturesque delineation ofobjects, and the peculiar skill with which he holds all of themfused, to borrow a metaphor from science, in a medium of strong emotion. Fourthly, the variety of his lyrical measures, and exquisite modulation of harmonious words and cadences to the swell and fall of the feelings expressed. Fifthly, the elevated habits of thought, implied in these compositions, and imparting a mellow soberness of tone, more impressive, to our minds, than if the author had drawn up a set of opinions in verse, and sought to instruct the understanding,rather than to communicate the love of beauty to the heart.
What follows is justly thought and well said:
And is it not a noble thing that the English tongue is, as it were, the common focus and point of union to which opposite beauties converge? Is it a trifle that we temper energy with softness, strength with flexibility, capaciousness of sound with pliancy of idiom? Some, I know, insensible to these virtues, and ambitious of I know not what unattainable decomposition, prefer to utter funereal praises over the grave of departed Anglo-Saxon, or, starting with convulsive shudder, are ready to leap from surrounding Latinisms into the kindred, sympathetic arms of modern German. For myself, I neither share their regret, nor their terror. Willing at all times to pay filial homage to the shades of Hengist and Horsa, and to admit they have laid the base of our compound language; or, if you will, have prepared the soil from which the chief nutriment of the goodly tree, our British oak, must be derived, I am yet proud to confess that I look with sentiments more exulting and more reverential to the bonds by which the law of the universe has fastened me to my distant brethren of the same Caucasian race; to the privileges which I, an inhabitant of the gloomy North, share in common with climates imparadized in perpetual summer, to the universality and efficacy resulting from blended intelligence, which, while it endears in our eyes the land of our fathers as a seat of peculiar blessing, tends to elevate and expand our thoughts into communion with humanity at large; and, in the “sublimer spirit” of the Poet, to make us feelThat God is everywhere—the God who framedMankind to be one mighty family,Himself our Father, and the world our home.
And is it not a noble thing that the English tongue is, as it were, the common focus and point of union to which opposite beauties converge? Is it a trifle that we temper energy with softness, strength with flexibility, capaciousness of sound with pliancy of idiom? Some, I know, insensible to these virtues, and ambitious of I know not what unattainable decomposition, prefer to utter funereal praises over the grave of departed Anglo-Saxon, or, starting with convulsive shudder, are ready to leap from surrounding Latinisms into the kindred, sympathetic arms of modern German. For myself, I neither share their regret, nor their terror. Willing at all times to pay filial homage to the shades of Hengist and Horsa, and to admit they have laid the base of our compound language; or, if you will, have prepared the soil from which the chief nutriment of the goodly tree, our British oak, must be derived, I am yet proud to confess that I look with sentiments more exulting and more reverential to the bonds by which the law of the universe has fastened me to my distant brethren of the same Caucasian race; to the privileges which I, an inhabitant of the gloomy North, share in common with climates imparadized in perpetual summer, to the universality and efficacy resulting from blended intelligence, which, while it endears in our eyes the land of our fathers as a seat of peculiar blessing, tends to elevate and expand our thoughts into communion with humanity at large; and, in the “sublimer spirit” of the Poet, to make us feel
That God is everywhere—the God who framedMankind to be one mighty family,Himself our Father, and the world our home.
What nice shading of thought do his remarks on Petrarch discover!
But it is not so much to his direct adoptions that I refer,as to the general modulation of thought, that clear softness of his images, that energetic self-possession of his conceptions, and that melodious repose in which are held together all the emotions he delineates.
But it is not so much to his direct adoptions that I refer,as to the general modulation of thought, that clear softness of his images, that energetic self-possession of his conceptions, and that melodious repose in which are held together all the emotions he delineates.
Every one who knows anything of himself, and of his fellow-men, will acknowledge the wisdom of what follows. Itdisplays an intimate knowledge both of the constitution and history of man, and there is much in it suited to our present need:
I do not hesitate to express my conviction, that the spirit of the critical philosophy, as seen by its fruits in all the ramifications of art, literature, and morality, is as much more dangerous than the spirit of mechanical philosophy, as it is fairer in appearance, and more capable of alliance with our natural feelings of enthusiasm and delight. Its dangerous tendency is this, that it perverts those very minds, whose office it was to resist the perverse impulses of society, and to proclaim truth under the dominion of falsehood. However precipitate may be at any time the current of public opinion, bearing along the mass of men to the grosser agitations of life, and to such schemes of belief as make these the prominent objects,there will always be in reserve a force of antagonistic opinion, strengthened by opposition, and attesting the sanctity of those higher principles which are despised or forgotten by the majority. These menare secured by natural temperamentand peculiar circumstances from participating in the common delusion: but if some other and deeper fallacy be invented; if some more subtle beast of the field should speak to them in wicked flattery; if a digest of intellectual aphorisms can be substituted in their minds for a code of living truths, and the lovely semblances of beauty, truth, affection, can be made first to obscure the presence, and then to conceal the loss, of that religious humility, without which, as their central life, all these are but dreadful shadows; if so fatal a stratagem can be successfully practised; I see not what hope remains for a people against whom the gates of hell have so prevailed.But the number of pure artists is small: few souls are so finely tempered as to preserve the delicacy of meditative feeling, untainted by the allurements of accidental suggestion. The voice of the critical conscience is still and small, like that of the moral: it cannot entirely be stifled where it has been heard, but it may be disobeyed. Temptations are never wanting: some immediate and temporary effect can be produced at less expense of inward exertion than the high and more ideal effect which art demands: it is much easier to pander to the ordinary and often recurring wish for excitement, than to promote the rare and difficult intuition of beauty.To raise the many to his own real point of view, the artist must employ his energies, and create energy in others: to descend to their position is less noble, but practicable with ease.If I may be allowed the metaphor, one partakes of the nature of redemptive power; the other of that self-abased and degenerate will, which “flung from his splendours” the fairest star in heaven.Revelation is a voluntary approximation of the Infinite Being to the ways and thoughts of finite humanity.But until this step has been taken by Almighty Grace, how should man have a warrant for loving with all his heart and mind and strength?... Without the gospel, nature exhibits a want of harmony between our intrinsic constitution and the system in which it is placed. But Christianity has made upthe difference. It is possible and natural to love the Father, who has made us His children by the spirit of adoption: it is possible and natural to love the Elder Brother, who was, in all things, like as we are, except sin, and can succour those in temptation, having been himself tempted.Thus the Christian faith is the necessary complement of a sound ethical system.
I do not hesitate to express my conviction, that the spirit of the critical philosophy, as seen by its fruits in all the ramifications of art, literature, and morality, is as much more dangerous than the spirit of mechanical philosophy, as it is fairer in appearance, and more capable of alliance with our natural feelings of enthusiasm and delight. Its dangerous tendency is this, that it perverts those very minds, whose office it was to resist the perverse impulses of society, and to proclaim truth under the dominion of falsehood. However precipitate may be at any time the current of public opinion, bearing along the mass of men to the grosser agitations of life, and to such schemes of belief as make these the prominent objects,there will always be in reserve a force of antagonistic opinion, strengthened by opposition, and attesting the sanctity of those higher principles which are despised or forgotten by the majority. These menare secured by natural temperamentand peculiar circumstances from participating in the common delusion: but if some other and deeper fallacy be invented; if some more subtle beast of the field should speak to them in wicked flattery; if a digest of intellectual aphorisms can be substituted in their minds for a code of living truths, and the lovely semblances of beauty, truth, affection, can be made first to obscure the presence, and then to conceal the loss, of that religious humility, without which, as their central life, all these are but dreadful shadows; if so fatal a stratagem can be successfully practised; I see not what hope remains for a people against whom the gates of hell have so prevailed.
But the number of pure artists is small: few souls are so finely tempered as to preserve the delicacy of meditative feeling, untainted by the allurements of accidental suggestion. The voice of the critical conscience is still and small, like that of the moral: it cannot entirely be stifled where it has been heard, but it may be disobeyed. Temptations are never wanting: some immediate and temporary effect can be produced at less expense of inward exertion than the high and more ideal effect which art demands: it is much easier to pander to the ordinary and often recurring wish for excitement, than to promote the rare and difficult intuition of beauty.To raise the many to his own real point of view, the artist must employ his energies, and create energy in others: to descend to their position is less noble, but practicable with ease.If I may be allowed the metaphor, one partakes of the nature of redemptive power; the other of that self-abased and degenerate will, which “flung from his splendours” the fairest star in heaven.
Revelation is a voluntary approximation of the Infinite Being to the ways and thoughts of finite humanity.But until this step has been taken by Almighty Grace, how should man have a warrant for loving with all his heart and mind and strength?... Without the gospel, nature exhibits a want of harmony between our intrinsic constitution and the system in which it is placed. But Christianity has made upthe difference. It is possible and natural to love the Father, who has made us His children by the spirit of adoption: it is possible and natural to love the Elder Brother, who was, in all things, like as we are, except sin, and can succour those in temptation, having been himself tempted.Thus the Christian faith is the necessary complement of a sound ethical system.
There is something to us very striking in the words “Revelation is avoluntaryapproximation of the Infinite Being.” This states the case with an accuracy and a distinctness not at all common among either the opponents or the apologists ofrevealed religionin the ordinary sense of the expression. In one sense God is for ever revealing Himself. His heavens are for ever telling His glory, and the firmament showing His handiwork; day unto day is uttering speech, and night unto night is showing knowledge concerning Him. But in the word of the truth of the gospel, God draws near to His creatures; He bows His heavens, and comes down:
That glorious form, that light unsufferable,And that far-beaming blaze of majesty,
he lays aside. The Word dwelt with men. “Come then, letusreason together”;—“Waiting to be gracious”;—“Behold, I stand at the door, and knock; if any man open to Me, I will come in to him, and sup with him, and he with Me.” It is the father seeing his son while yet a great way off, and having compassion, and running to him and falling on his neck and kissing him; for “it was meet for us to rejoice, for this my son was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found.” Let no man confound the voice of God in His Works with the voice of God in His Word; they are utterances of the same infinite heart and will; they are in absolute harmony; together they make up “that undisturbèd song of pure concent”; one “perfect diapason”; but they are distinct; they are meant to be so. A poor traveller, “weary and waysore,” is stumbling in unknown places through the darkness of a night of fear, with no light near him, the everlasting stars twinkling far off in their depths, and yet unrisen sun, or the waning moon, sending up their pale beams into the upper heavens, but all this is distant and bewildering for his feet, doubtless better much than outer darkness, beautiful and full of God, if he could have the heart to look up, and the eyes to make use of its vague light; but he is miserable, and afraid, his next step is what he is thinkingof; a lamp secured against all winds of doctrine is put into his hands, it may in some respects widen the circle of darkness, but it will cheer his feet, it will tell them what to do next. What a silly fool he would be to throw away that lantern, or draw down the shutters, and make it dark to him, while it sits “i’ the centre and enjoys bright day,” and all upon the philosophical ground that its light was of the same kind as the stars’, and that it was beneath the dignity of human nature to do anything but struggle on and be lost in the attempt to get through the wilderness and the night by the guidance of those “natural” lights, which, though they are from heaven, have so often led the wanderer astray. The dignity of human nature indeed! Let him keep his lantern till the glad sun is up, with healing under his wings. Let him take good heed to the “sure” λόγον while in this αὐχμηρῷ τοπῷ—this dark, damp, unwholesome place, “till the day dawn and φωσφόρος—the day-star—arise.” Nature and the Bible, the Works and the Word of God, are two distinct things. In the mind of their Supreme Author they dwell in perfect peace, in that unspeakable unity which is of His essence; and to us His children, every day their harmony, their mutual relations, are discovering themselves; but let us beware of saying all nature is a revelation as the Bible is, and all the Bible is natural as nature is: there is a perilous juggle here.
The following passage develops Arthur Hallam’s views on religious feeling; this was the master idea of his mind, and it would not be easy to overrate its importance.
“My son, give me thine heart”;—“Thou shaltlovethe Lord thy God”;—“The fool hath said in hisheart, There is no God.”
“My son, give me thine heart”;—“Thou shaltlovethe Lord thy God”;—“The fool hath said in hisheart, There is no God.”
He expresses the same general idea in these words, remarkable in themselves, still more so as being the thought of one so young.
The work of intellect is posterior to the work of feeling.The latter lies at the foundation of the man; it is his proper self—the peculiar thing that characterizes him as an individual. No two men are alike in feeling; but conceptions of the understanding, when distinct are precisely similar in all—the ascertained relations of truths are the common property of the race.
The work of intellect is posterior to the work of feeling.The latter lies at the foundation of the man; it is his proper self—the peculiar thing that characterizes him as an individual. No two men are alike in feeling; but conceptions of the understanding, when distinct are precisely similar in all—the ascertained relations of truths are the common property of the race.
Tennyson, we have no doubt, had this thought of his friend in his mind, in the following lines; it is an answer to the question, Can man by searching find out God?—
I found Him not in world or sun,Or eagle’s wing, or insect’s eye;Nor thro’ the questions men may try,The petty cobwebs we have spun:If e’er when faith had fallen asleep,I heard a voice “believe no more,”And heard an ever-breaking shoreThat tumbled in the godless deep;A warmth within the breast would meltThe freezing reason’s colder part,And like a man in wrath, the heartStood up and answered, “I have felt.”No, like a child in doubt and fear:But that blind clamour made me wise;Then was I as a child that cries,But, crying, knows his father near;And what I seem beheld againWhat is, and no man understands:And out of darkness came the handsThat reach thro’ nature, moulding men.
This is a subject of the deepest personal as well as speculative interest. In the works of Augustine, of Baxter, Howe, and Jonathan Edwards, and of Alexander Knox, our readers will find how large a place the religious affections held in their view of Divine truth as well as of human duty. The last-mentioned writer expresses himself thus:
Our sentimental faculties are far stronger than our cogitative; and the best impressions on the latter will be but the moonshine of the mind, if they are alone. Feeling will be best excited by sympathy; rather, it cannot be excited in any other way. Heart must act upon heart—the idea of a living person being essential to all intercourse of heart. You cannot by any possibilitycordializewith a mereens rationis. “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us,” otherwise we could not have “beheld His glory,” much less “received of His fulness.”[114]
Our sentimental faculties are far stronger than our cogitative; and the best impressions on the latter will be but the moonshine of the mind, if they are alone. Feeling will be best excited by sympathy; rather, it cannot be excited in any other way. Heart must act upon heart—the idea of a living person being essential to all intercourse of heart. You cannot by any possibilitycordializewith a mereens rationis. “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us,” otherwise we could not have “beheld His glory,” much less “received of His fulness.”[114]
Our young author thus goes on:
This opens upon us an ampler view in which the subject deserves to be considered, and a relation still more direct and close between the Christian religion and the passion of love. What is the distinguishing character of Hebrew literature, which separates it by so broad a line of demarcation from that of every ancient people? Undoubtedly the sentiment oferotic devotionwhich pervades it.Their poets never represent the Deity as an impassive principle, a mere organizing intellect, removed at infinite distance from human hopes and fears. He is for them a being of like passions with themselves,requiring heart for heart, and capable of inspiring affection, because capable of feeling and returning it. Awful indeed are the thunders of His utterance and the clouds that surround His dwelling-place; very terrible is the vengeance He executes on the nations that forget Him: but to His chosen people, and especially to the men “after His own heart,” whom He anoints from the midst of them, His “still, small voice” speaks in sympathy and loving-kindness. Every Hebrew, while his breast glowed with patriotic enthusiasm at those promises, which he shared as one of the favoured race, had a yet deeper source of emotion, from which gushed perpetually the aspirations of prayer and thanksgiving. He might consider himself alone in the presence of his God; the single being to whom a great revelation had been made, and over whose head an “exceeding weight of glory” was suspended. For him the rocks of Horeb had trembled, and the waters of the Red Sea were parted in their course. The word given on Sinai with such solemn pomp of ministration was given to his own individual soul, and brought him into immediate communion with his Creator. That awful Being could never be put away from him. He was about his path, and about his bed, and knew all his thoughts long before.Yet this tremendous, enclosing presence was a presence of love. It was a manifold, everlasting manifestation of one deep feeling—a desire for human affection.Such a belief, while it enlisted even pride and self-interest on the side of piety, had a direct tendency to excite the best passions of our nature. Love is not long asked in vain from generous dispositions. A Being, never absent, but standing beside the life of each man with ever-watchful tenderness, and recognized, though invisible, in every blessing that befel them from youth to age, became naturally the object of their warmest affections. Their belief in Him could not exist without producing, as a necessary effect, that profound impressionof passionate individual attachmentwhich in the Hebrew authors always mingles with and vivifies their faith in the Invisible. All the books of the Old Testament are breathed upon by this breath of life. Especially is it to be found in that beautiful collection, entitled the Psalms of David, which remains, after some thousand years, perhaps the most perfect form in which the religious sentiment of man has been embodied.But what is true of Judaism is yet more true of Christianity: “matre pulchrâ filia pulchrior.” In addition to all the characters of Hebrew Monotheism,there exists in the doctrine of the Cross a peculiar and inexhaustible treasure for the affectionate feelings. The idea of the Θεανθρωπος, the God whose goings forth have been from everlasting, yet visible to men for their redemption as an earthly, temporal creature, living, acting, and suffering among themselves, then (which is yet more important) transferring to the unseen place of His spiritual agency the same humanity He wore on earth, so that the lapse of generations can in no way affect the conception of His identity; this is the mostpowerful thought that ever addressed itself to a human imagination. It is the που στῶ, which alone was wanted to move the world. Here was solved at once the great problem which so long had distressed the teachers of mankind, how to makevirtue the object of passion, and to secure at once the warmest enthusiasm in the heart with the clearest perception of right and wrong in the understanding. The character of the blessed Founder of our faith became an abstract of morality to determine the judgment,while at the same time it remained personal, and liable to love. The written word and established church prevented a degeneration into ungoverned mysticism, but the predominant principle of vital religion always remained that of self-sacrifice to the Saviour. Not only the higher divisions of moral duties, but the simple, primary impulses of benevolence, were subordinated to this new absorbing passion. The world was loved “in Christ alone.” The brethren were members of His mystical body. All the other bonds that had fastened down the spirit of the universe to our narrow round of earth were as nothing in comparison to this golden chain of suffering and self-sacrifice, which at once riveted the heart of man to one who, like himself, was acquainted with grief.Pain is the deepest thing we havein our nature, and union through pain has always seemed more real and more holy than any other.[115]
This opens upon us an ampler view in which the subject deserves to be considered, and a relation still more direct and close between the Christian religion and the passion of love. What is the distinguishing character of Hebrew literature, which separates it by so broad a line of demarcation from that of every ancient people? Undoubtedly the sentiment oferotic devotionwhich pervades it.Their poets never represent the Deity as an impassive principle, a mere organizing intellect, removed at infinite distance from human hopes and fears. He is for them a being of like passions with themselves,requiring heart for heart, and capable of inspiring affection, because capable of feeling and returning it. Awful indeed are the thunders of His utterance and the clouds that surround His dwelling-place; very terrible is the vengeance He executes on the nations that forget Him: but to His chosen people, and especially to the men “after His own heart,” whom He anoints from the midst of them, His “still, small voice” speaks in sympathy and loving-kindness. Every Hebrew, while his breast glowed with patriotic enthusiasm at those promises, which he shared as one of the favoured race, had a yet deeper source of emotion, from which gushed perpetually the aspirations of prayer and thanksgiving. He might consider himself alone in the presence of his God; the single being to whom a great revelation had been made, and over whose head an “exceeding weight of glory” was suspended. For him the rocks of Horeb had trembled, and the waters of the Red Sea were parted in their course. The word given on Sinai with such solemn pomp of ministration was given to his own individual soul, and brought him into immediate communion with his Creator. That awful Being could never be put away from him. He was about his path, and about his bed, and knew all his thoughts long before.Yet this tremendous, enclosing presence was a presence of love. It was a manifold, everlasting manifestation of one deep feeling—a desire for human affection.Such a belief, while it enlisted even pride and self-interest on the side of piety, had a direct tendency to excite the best passions of our nature. Love is not long asked in vain from generous dispositions. A Being, never absent, but standing beside the life of each man with ever-watchful tenderness, and recognized, though invisible, in every blessing that befel them from youth to age, became naturally the object of their warmest affections. Their belief in Him could not exist without producing, as a necessary effect, that profound impressionof passionate individual attachmentwhich in the Hebrew authors always mingles with and vivifies their faith in the Invisible. All the books of the Old Testament are breathed upon by this breath of life. Especially is it to be found in that beautiful collection, entitled the Psalms of David, which remains, after some thousand years, perhaps the most perfect form in which the religious sentiment of man has been embodied.
But what is true of Judaism is yet more true of Christianity: “matre pulchrâ filia pulchrior.” In addition to all the characters of Hebrew Monotheism,there exists in the doctrine of the Cross a peculiar and inexhaustible treasure for the affectionate feelings. The idea of the Θεανθρωπος, the God whose goings forth have been from everlasting, yet visible to men for their redemption as an earthly, temporal creature, living, acting, and suffering among themselves, then (which is yet more important) transferring to the unseen place of His spiritual agency the same humanity He wore on earth, so that the lapse of generations can in no way affect the conception of His identity; this is the mostpowerful thought that ever addressed itself to a human imagination. It is the που στῶ, which alone was wanted to move the world. Here was solved at once the great problem which so long had distressed the teachers of mankind, how to makevirtue the object of passion, and to secure at once the warmest enthusiasm in the heart with the clearest perception of right and wrong in the understanding. The character of the blessed Founder of our faith became an abstract of morality to determine the judgment,while at the same time it remained personal, and liable to love. The written word and established church prevented a degeneration into ungoverned mysticism, but the predominant principle of vital religion always remained that of self-sacrifice to the Saviour. Not only the higher divisions of moral duties, but the simple, primary impulses of benevolence, were subordinated to this new absorbing passion. The world was loved “in Christ alone.” The brethren were members of His mystical body. All the other bonds that had fastened down the spirit of the universe to our narrow round of earth were as nothing in comparison to this golden chain of suffering and self-sacrifice, which at once riveted the heart of man to one who, like himself, was acquainted with grief.Pain is the deepest thing we havein our nature, and union through pain has always seemed more real and more holy than any other.[115]
There is a sad pleasure—non ingrata amaritudo—and a sort of meditative tenderness in contemplating the little life of this “dear youth,” and in letting the mind rest upon these his earnest thoughts; to watch his keen and fearless, but childlike spirit, moving itself aright—going straight onward along “the lines of limitless desires”—throwing himself into the very deepest of the ways of God, and striking out as a strong swimmer striketh out his hands to swim; to see him “mewing his mighty youth, and kindling his undazzled eye at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance”:
Light intellectual, and full of love,Love of true beauty, therefore full of joy,Joy, every other sweetness far above.
It is good for every one to look upon such a sight, and as we look, to love. We should all be the better for it; and should desire to be thankful for, and to use aright a gift so good and perfect, coming down as it does from above, from the Father of lights, in whom alone there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.
Thus it is, that to each one of us the death of Arthur Hallam—his thoughts and affections—his views of God, of our relations to Him, of duty, of the meaning and worth of this world and the next—where he now is—have an individual significance. He is bound up in our bundle of life; we must be the better or the worse of having known what manner of man he was; and in a sense less peculiar, but not less true, each of us may say:
——The tender grace of a day that is deadWill never come back to me.——O for the touch of a vanished hand,And the sound of a voice that is still!God gives us love! Something to loveHe lends us; but when love is grownTo ripeness, that on which it throveFalls off, and love is left alone:This is the curse of time. Alas!In grief we are not all unlearned;Once, through our own doors Death did pass;One went who never hath returned.This starRose with us, through a little arcOf heaven, nor having wandered far,Shot on the sudden into dark.Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace;Sleep, holy spirit, blessed soul,While the stars burn, the moons increase,And the great ages onward roll.Sleep till the end, true soul and sweet,Nothing comes to thee new or strange,Sleep, full of rest from head to feet;Lie still, dry dust, secure of change.Vattene in pace, alma beata e bella.—Go in peace, soul beautiful and blessed.“O man greatly beloved, go thou thy way till the end, for thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days.”—Daniel.
——The tender grace of a day that is deadWill never come back to me.——O for the touch of a vanished hand,And the sound of a voice that is still!God gives us love! Something to loveHe lends us; but when love is grownTo ripeness, that on which it throveFalls off, and love is left alone:This is the curse of time. Alas!In grief we are not all unlearned;Once, through our own doors Death did pass;One went who never hath returned.This starRose with us, through a little arcOf heaven, nor having wandered far,Shot on the sudden into dark.Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace;Sleep, holy spirit, blessed soul,While the stars burn, the moons increase,And the great ages onward roll.Sleep till the end, true soul and sweet,Nothing comes to thee new or strange,Sleep, full of rest from head to feet;Lie still, dry dust, secure of change.
Vattene in pace, alma beata e bella.—Go in peace, soul beautiful and blessed.
“O man greatly beloved, go thou thy way till the end, for thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days.”—Daniel.
APPENDICES
THE COMMENTS OF TENNYSON ON ONE OF HIS LATER ETHICAL POEMS[116]
ByWilfrid Ward
He had often said he would go through the “De Profundis” with me line by line, and he did so late in January or early in February 1889, when I was staying at Farringford. He was still very ill, having had rheumatic fever in the previous year; and neither he nor his friends expected that he would recover after his many relapses. He could scarcely move his limbs, and his fingers were tied with bandages. We moved him from bed to sofa, but he could not sit up. His mind, however, was quite clear. He read through the “De Profundis,” and gave the substance of the explanation I have written down. He began languidly, but soon got deeply interested. When he reached the prayer at the end, he said: “A B” (naming a well-known Positivist thinker) “exclaimed, when I read it to him, ‘Do leave that prayer out; I like all the rest of it.’”
I proceed to set down the account of the poem written (in substance) immediately after his explanation of it. The mystery of life as a whole which so constantly exercised him is here most fully dealt with. He supposes a child just born, and considers the problems of human existence as presented by the thought of the child’s birth, and the child’s future life with all its possibilities. The poem takes the form of two greetings to the new-born child. In the first greeting life is viewed as we see it in the world, and as we know it by physical science, as a phenomenon; as the materialist might view it; notindeed coarsely, but as an outcome of all the physical forces of the universe, which have ever contained in themselves the potentiality of all that was to come—“all that was to be in all that was.” These vast and wondrous forces have now issued in this newly given life—this child born into the world. There is the sense of mystery in our greeting to it; but it is of the mysteries of the physical Universe and nothing beyond; the sense of awe fitting to finite man at the thought of infinite Time, of the countless years before human life was at all, during which the fixed laws of Nature were ruling and framing the earth as we know it, of the countless years earlier still, during which, on the nebular hypothesis, Nature’s laws were working before our planet was separated off from the mass of the sun’s light, and before the similar differentiation took place in the rest of the “vast waste dawn of multitudinous eddying light.” Again, there is awe in contemplating the vastness of space; in the thoughts which in ascending scale rise from the new-born infant to the great globe of which he is so small a part, from that to the whole solar system, from that again to the myriad similar systems “glimmering up the heights beyond” us which we partly see in the Milky Way; from that to those others which human sight can never descry. Forces in Time and Space as nearly infinite as our imagination can conceive, have been leading up to this one birth, with the short life of a single man before it. May that life be happy and noble! Viewing it still as the course determined by Nature’s laws—a course unknown to us and yet unalterably fixed—we sigh forth the hope that our child may pass unscathed through youth, may have a full and prosperous time on earth, blessed by man for good done to man, and may pass peacefully at last to rest. Such is the first greeting—full of the poetry of life, of its wondrous causes, of the overwhelming greatness of the Universe of which this new-given baby is the child, cared for, preserved hitherto unscathed amid these awful powers, all in all to its parents, inspiring the hope which new-given joy makes sanguine, that fortune may be kind to it, that happiness may be as great, sorrow and pain as little, as the chances of the world allow.
After his explanation, he read the first greeting to the child:
Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep,Where all that was to be, in all that was,Whirl’d for a million æons through the vastWaste dawn of multitudinous eddying light—Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep,Thro’ all this changing world of changeless law,And every phase of ever-heightening life,And nine long months of antenatal gloom,With this last moon, this crescent—her dark orbTouch’d with earth’s light—thou comest, darling boy;Our own; a babe in lineament and limbPerfect, and prophet of the perfect man;Whose face and form are hers and mine in one,Indissolubly married like our love;Live and be happy in thyself, and serveThis mortal race thy kin so well, that menMay bless thee as we bless thee, O young life,Breaking with laughter from the dark; and mayThe fated channel where thy motion livesBe prosperously shaped, and sway thy courseAlong the years of haste and random youthUnshatter’d; then full-current thro’ full man;And last, in kindly curves, with gentlest fall,By quiet fields, a slowly-dying powerTo that last deep where we and thou art still.
And then comes the second greeting. A deeper chord is struck. The listener, who has, perhaps, felt as if the first greeting contained all—all the mystery of birth, of life, of death—hears a sound unknown, unimagined before. A new range of ideas is opened to us. The starry firmament disappears for the moment. The “deep” of infinite time and space is forgotten. A fresh sense is awakened, a deeper depth disclosed. We leave this wondrous world of appearances. We gaze into that other deep—the world of spirit, the world of realities; we see the new-born babe coming to us from thattrueworld, with all the “abysmal depths of personality,” no longer a mere link in the chain of causes, with a fated course through the events of life, but a moral being, with the awful power of making or marring its own destiny and that of others. The proportions are abruptly reversed. The child is no longer the minute outcome of natural forces so much greater than itself. It is the “spirit,” the moral being, a reality which impinges on the world of appearances. Never can I forget the change of voice, the change of manner, as Lord Tennyson passed from the first greeting, with its purely human thoughts, to the second, so full of awe at the conception of the world behind the veil and the moral nature of man; an awe which seemed to culminatewhen he paused before the word “Spirit” in the seventh line and then gave it in deeper and more piercing tones: “Out of the deep—Spirit,—out of the deep.” This second greeting is in two parts:
IOut of the deep, my child, out of the deep,From that great deep, before our world begins,Whereon the Spirit of God moves as He will—Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep,From that true world within the world we see,Whereof our world is but the bounding shore—Out of the deep, Spirit, out of the deep,With this ninth moon, that sends the hidden sun,Down yon dark sea, thou comest, darling boy.IIFor in the world, which is not ours, they said,“Let us make man,” and that which should be man,From that one light no man can look upon,Drew to this shore, lit by the suns and moonsAnd all the shadows. O dear Spirit, half-lostIn thine own shadow and this fleshly signThat thou art thou—who wailest being bornAnd banish’d into mystery, and the painOf this divisible-indivisible worldAmong the numerable-innumerableSun, sun, and sun, thro’ finite-infinite space,In finite-infinite Time—our mortal veilAnd shatter’d phantom of that infinite One,Who made thee unconceivably ThyselfOut of His whole World-self, and all in all—Live thou, and of the grain and husk, the grapeAnd ivyberry, choose; and still departFrom death to death thro’ life and life, and findNearer and ever nearer Him, who wroughtNot matter, not the finite-infinite,But this main-miracle, that thou art thou,With power on thine own act and on the world.
Note that the second greeting considers the reality of the child’s life and its meaning, the first only its appearance. The great deep of the spiritual world is “that true world within the world we see, Whereof our world is but the bounding shore.” And this indication that the second greeting gives the deeper and truer view, is preserved in some of the side touches of description. In the first greeting, for example, the moon is spoken of as “touch’d with earth’s light”; in the second the truer and less obvious fact is suggested. It “sendsthe hidden sun down yon dark sea.” The material view again looks at bright and hopeful appearances in life, and it notes the new-born babe “breaking with laughter from the dark.” The spiritual view foresees the woes which, if Byron is right in calling melancholy the “telescope of truth,” are truer than the joys. It notes no longer the child’s laughter, but rather its tears, “Thou wailest being born and banished into mystery.” Life, in the spiritual view, is in part a veiling and obscuring of the true self as it is, in a world of appearances. The soul is “half lost” in the body which is part of the phenomenal world, “in thine own shadow and in this fleshly sign that thou art thou.” The suns and moons, too, are but shadows, as the body of the child itself is but a shadow—shadows of the spirit-world and of God Himself. The physical life is before the child; but not as a fatally determined course. Choice of the good is to lead the spirit ever nearer God. The wonders of the material Universe are still recognized: “Sun, sun, and sun, thro’ finite-infinite space, in finite-infinite Time”; but they vanish into insignificance when compared to the two great facts of the spirit-world which consciousness tells us unmistakably—the facts of personality and of a responsible will. The great mystery is “Not Matter, nor the finite-infinite,” but “this main-miracle, that thou art thou, with power on thine own act and on the world.”
“Out of the deep”—in this conception of the true “deep” of the world behind the veil we have the thought which recurs so often, as in the “Passing of Arthur” and in “Crossing the Bar”[117]—of birth and death as the coming from and returning to the spirit-world and God Himself. Birth[118]is the coming to land from that deep; “of which our world is but the bounding shore;” death the re-embarking on the same infinite sea, for the home of truth and light.
He seemed so much better when he had finished his explanation that I asked him to read the poem through again. This he did, more beautifully than I ever heard him read. I felt as though his long illness and his expectation ofdeath gave more intensity and force to his rendering of this wonderful poem on the mystery of life. He began quietly, and read the concluding lines of the first “greeting,” the brief description of a peaceful old age and death, from the human standpoint, with a very tender pathos:
And last, in kindly curves, with gentlest fallBy quiet fields, a slowly-dying power,To that last deep where we and thou are still.
Then he gathered force, and his voice deepened as the greeting to the immortal soul of the man was read. He raised his eyes from the book at the seventh line and looked for a moment at his hearer with an indescribable expression of awe before he uttered the word “spirit”; “Out of the deep—Spirit,—out of the deep.” When he had finished the second greeting he was trembling much. Then he read the prayer—a prayer he had told me of self-prostration before the Infinite. I think he intended it as a contrast to the analytical and reflective character of the rest. It is an outpouring of the simplest and most intense self-abandonment to the Creator, an acknowledgment, when all has been thought and said with such insight and beauty, that our best thoughts and words are as nothing in the Great Presence—in a sense parallel to the breaking off in the “Ode to the Duke of Wellington”:
Speak no more of his renown,Lay your earthly fancies down.
He began to chaunt in a loud clear voice:
Hallowed be Thy Name—Halleluiah.
His voice was growing tremulous as he reached the second part:
We feel we are nothing—for all is Thou and in Thee;We feel we are something—thatalso has come from Thee.
And he broke down as he finished the prayer:
We know we are nothing—but Thou wilt help us to be.Hallowed be Thy Name—Halleluiah!
It will be seen below that the lines to which reference is made—
That man’s the true cosmopoliteWho loves his native country best,
have been altered to suit my mother’s setting, arranged by Sir Charles Stanford, to
He best will serve the race of menWho loves his native country best.
HANDS ALL ROUND
A NATIONAL SONG
The Melody by EMILY, LADY TENNYSON and arranged by C. VILLIERS STANFORD