“A smile for Hope, a tear for Pain,A breath to swell the voice of Prayer,”
“A smile for Hope, a tear for Pain,A breath to swell the voice of Prayer,”
“A smile for Hope, a tear for Pain,
A breath to swell the voice of Prayer,”
and may you have a pleasant journey, for it is time that the stoker should be looking to his going gear!
So now we rise slowly in the moonlight from St. Ambrose’s quadrangle, and, when we are clear of the clock-tower,steer away southwards, over Oxford city and all its sleeping wisdom and folly, over street and past spire, over Christ Church and the canons’ houses, and the fountain in Tom quad; over St. Aldate’s and the river, along which the moonbeams lie in a pathway of twinkling silver, over the railway sheds—no, there was then no railway, but only the quiet fields and foot-paths of Hincksey hamlet. Well, no matter; at any rate, the hills beyond, and Bagley Wood, were there then as now: and over hills and wood we rise, catching the purr of the night-jar, the trill of the nightingale, and the first crow of the earliest cock-pheasant, as he stretches his jewelled wings, conscious of his strength and his beauty, heedless of the fellows of St. John’s, who slumber within sight of his perch, on whose hospitable board he shall one day lie, prone on his back, with fair larded breast turned upwards for the carving knife, having crowed his last crow. He knows it not; what matters it to him? If he knew it, could a Bagley Wood cock-pheasant desire a better ending?
We pass over the vale beyond; hall and hamlet, church, and meadow, and copse, folded in mist and shadow below us, each hamlet holding in its bosom the materials of three-volumed novels by the dozen, if we could only pull off the roofs of the houses and look steadily into the interiors; but our destination is farther yet. The faint white streak behind the distant Chilterns reminds us that we have no time for gossip by the way;May nights are short, and the sun will be up by four. No matter; our journey will now be soon over, for the broad vale is crossed, and the chalk hills and downs beyond. Larks quiver up by us, “higher, ever higher,” hastening up to get a first glimpse of the coming monarch, careless of food, flooding the fresh air with song. Steady plodding rooks labor along below us, and lively starlings rush by on the look-out for the early worm; lark and swallow, rook and starling, each on his appointed round. The sun arises, and they get them to it; he is up now, and these breezy uplands over which we hang are swimming in the light of horizontal rays, though the shadows and mists still lie on the wooded dells which slope away southwards.
This is no chalk, this high knoll which rises above—one may almost say hangs over—the village, crowned with Scotch firs, its sides tufted with gorse and heather. It is the Hawk’s Lynch, the favorite resort of Englebourn folk, who come up for the view, for the air, because their fathers and mothers came up before them, because they came up themselves as children—from an instinct which moves them all in leisure hours and Sunday evenings, when the sun shines and the birds sing, whether they care for view or air or not. Something guides all their feet hitherward; the children, to play hide-and-seek and look for nests in the gorse-bushes; young men and maidens, to saunter and look and talk, as they will till the world’s end—or as long,at any rate, as the Hawk’s Lynch and Englebourn last—and to cut their initials, inclosed in a true lover’s knot, on the short rabbit’s turf; steady married couples, to plod along together consulting on hard times and growing families; even old tottering men, who love to sit at the feet of the firs, with chins leaning on their sticks, prattling of days long past, to any one who will listen, or looking silently with dim eyes into the summer air, feeling perhaps in their spirits after a wider and more peaceful view which will soon open for them. A common knoll, open to all, up in the silent air, well away from every-day Englebourn life, with the Hampshire range and the distant Beacon Hill lying soft on the horizon, and nothing higher between you and the southern sea, what a blessing the Hawk’s Lynch is to the village folk, one and all! May Heaven and a thankless soil long preserve it and them from an inclosure under the Act!
In January, 878, King Alfred disappears from the eyes of Saxon and Northmen, and we follow him, by such light as tradition throws upon these months, into the thickets and marshes of Selwood. It is at this point, as is natural enough, that romance has been most busy, and it has become impossible to disentangle the actual facts from monkish legend and Saxon ballad. In happiertimes Alfred was in the habit himself of talking over the events of his wandering life pleasantly with his courtiers, and there is no reason to doubt that the foundation of most of the stories still current rests on those conversations of the truth-loving king, noted down by Bishop Asser and others.
The best known of these is, of course, the story of the cakes. In the depths of the Saxon forests there were always a few neat-herds and swine-herds, scattered up and down, living in rough huts enough we may be sure, and occupied with the care of the cattle and herds of their masters. Amongst these in Selwood was a neat-herd of the king, a faithful man, to whom the secret of Alfred’s disguise was intrusted, and who kept it even from his wife. To this man’s hut the king came one day alone, and, sitting himself down by the burning logs on the hearth, began mending his bows and arrows. The neat-herd’s wife had just finished her baking, and, having other household matters to attend to, confided her loaves to the king, a poor, tired looking body, who might be glad of the warmth, and could make himself useful by turning the batch, and so earn his share while she got on with other business. But Alfred worked away at his weapons, thinking of anything but the good housewife’s batch of loaves, which in due course were not only done, but rapidly burning to a cinder. At this moment the neat-herd’s wife comes back, and flying to the hearth to rescue the bread, cries out, “D’rat theman! never to turn the loaves when you see them burning. I’ze warrant you ready enough to eat them when they’re done.” But beside the king’s faithful neat-herd, whose name is not preserved, there are other churls in the forest, who must be Alfred’s comrades just now if he will have any. And even here he has an eye for a good man, and will lose no opportunity to help one to the best of his power. Such a one he finds in a certain swine-herd called Denewulf, whom he gets to know, a thoughtful Saxon man, minding his charge there in the oak woods. The rough churl, or thrall, we know not which, has great capacity, as Alfred soon finds out, and desire to learn. So the king goes to work upon Denewulf under the oak trees, when the swine will let him, and is well satisfied with the results of his teachings and the progress of his pupil.
But in those miserable days the commonest necessaries of life were hard enough to come by for the king and his few companions, and for his wife and family, who soon joined him in the forest, even if they were not with him from the first. The poor foresters cannot maintain them, nor are this band of exiles the men to live on the poor. So Alfred and his comrades are soon foraging on the borders of the forest, and getting what subsistence they can from the Pagan, or from the Christians who had submitted to their yoke. So we may imagine them dragging on life till near Easter when a gleam of good news comes up from the west, to gladdenthe hearts and strengthen the arms of these poor men in the depths of Selwood.
Soon after Guthrum and the main body of the Pagans moved from Gloster, southwards, the Viking Hubba, as had been agreed, sailed with thirty ships of war from his winter quarters on the South Welsh coast, and landed in Devon. The news of the catastrophe at Chippenham, and of the disappearance of the king, was no doubt already known in the west; and in the face of it Odda the alderman cannot gather strength to meet the Pagans in the open field. But he is a brave and true man, and will make no term with the spoilers; so, with other faithful thegns of King Alfred and their followers, he throws himself into a castle or fort called Cynwith, or Cynnit, there to abide whatever issue of this business God will send them. Hubba, with the war-flag Raven, and a host laden with the spoil of rich Devon vales, appear in due course before the place. It is not strong naturally, and has only “walls in our own fashion,” meaning probably rough earth-works. But there are resolute men behind them, and on the whole Hubba declines the assault, and sits down before the place. There is no spring of water, he hears, within the Saxon lines, and they are otherwise wholly unprepared for a siege. A few days will no doubt settle the matter, and the sword or slavery will be the portion of Odda and the rest of Alfred’s men; meantime there is spoil enough in the camp from Devonshire homesteads, which bravemen can revel in round the war-flag Raven, while they watch the Saxon ramparts. Odda, however, has quite other views than death from thirst, or surrender. Before any stress comes, early one morning, he and his whole force sally out over their earth-works, and from the first “cut down the Pagans in great numbers;” eight hundred and forty warriors (some say one thousand two hundred), with Hubba himself, are slain before Cynnit fort; the rest, few in number, escape to their ships. The war-flag Raven is left in the hands of Odda and the men of Devon.
This is the news which comes to Alfred, Ethelnoth the alderman of Somerset, Denewulf the swine-herd, and the rest of the Selwood Forest group, some time before Easter. These men of Devonshire, it seems, are still staunch, and ready to peril their lives against the Pagans. No doubt up and down Wessex, thrashed and trodden out as the nation is by this time, there are other good men and true, who will neither cross the sea or the Welsh marches, nor make terms with the Pagan; some sprinkling of men who will yet set life at stake, for faith in Christ and love of England. If these can only be rallied, who can say what may follow? So, in the lengthening days of spring, council is held in Selwood and there will have been Easter services in some chapel, or hermitage, in the forest, or, at any rate in some quiet glade. The “day of days” will surely have had its voice of hope for this poor remnant. Christ isrisen and reigns; and it is not in these heathen Danes, or in all the Northmen who ever sailed across the sea, to put back his kingdom, or enslave those whom he has freed.
The result is, that, far away from the eastern boundary of the forest, on a rising ground—hill it can scarcely be called—surrounded by dangerous marshes formed by the little rivers Thone and Parret, fordable only in summer, and even then dangerous to all who have not the secret, a small fortified camp is thrown up under Alfred’s eye, by Ethelnoth and the Somersetshire men, where he can once again raise his standard. The spot has been chosen by the king with the utmost care, for it is his last throw. He names it the Etheling’s eig or island, “Athelney.” Probably his young son, the Etheling of England, is there amongst the first, with his mother and his grand-mother Eadburgha, the widow of Ethelred Mucil, the venerable lady whom Asser saw in later years, and who has now no country but her daughter’s. There are, as has been reckoned, some two acres of hard ground on the island, and around vast brakes of alder-bush, full of deer and other game. Here the Somersetshire men can keep up constant communication with him, and a small army grows together. They are soon strong enough to make forays into the open country, and in many skirmishes they cut off parties of the Pagans, and supplies. “For, even when overthrown and cast down,” says Malmesbury,“Alfred had always to be fought with; so then, when one would esteem him altogether worn down and broken, like a snake slipping from the hand of him who would grasp it, he would suddenly flash out again from his hiding-places, rising up to smite his foes in the height of their insolent confidence, and never more hard to beat than after a flight.”
But it was still a trying life at Athelney. Followers came in slowly, and provender and supplies of all kinds are hard to wring from the Pagan, and harder still to take from Christian men. One day, while it was yet so cold that the water was still frozen, the king’s people had gone out “to get them fish or fowl, or some such purveyance as they sustained themselves withal.” No one was left in the royal hut for the moment but himself and his mother-in-law, Eadburgha. The king (after his constant wont whensoever he had opportunity) was reading from the Psalms of David, out of the Manual which he carried always in his bosom. At this moment a poor man appeared at the door and begged for a morsel of bread “for Christ his sake.” Whereupon the king, receiving the stranger as a brother, called to his mother-in-law to give him to eat. Eadburgha replied that there was but one loaf in their store, and a little wine in a pitcher, a provision wholly insufficient for his own family and people. But the king bade her, nevertheless, to give the stranger part of the last loaf, which she accordingly did. But when he had been served, thestranger was no more seen, and the loaf remained whole, and the pitcher full to the brim. Alfred, meantime, had turned to his reading, over which he fell asleep and dreamed that St. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne stood by him, and told him it was he who had been his guest, and that God had seen his afflictions and those of his people, which were now about to end, in token whereof his people would return that day from their expedition with a great take of fish. The king awaking, and being much impressed with his dream, called to his mother-in-law and recounted it to her, who thereupon assured him that she too had been overcome with sleep, and had had the same dream. And while they yet talked together on what had happened so strangely to them, their servants came in, bringing fish enough, as it seemed to them, to have fed an army.
The monkish legend goes on to tell that on the next morning the king crossed to the mainland in a boat, and wound his horn thrice, which drew to him before noon five hundred men. What we may think of the story and the dream, as Sir John Spelman says, “is not here very much material,” seeing that whether we deem it natural or supernatural, “the one as well as the other serves at God’s appointment, by raising or dejecting of the mind with hopes or fears, to lead man to the resolution of those things whereof he has before ordained the event.”
“Mrs. Winburn is ill, isn’t she?” asked Tom, after looking his guide over.
“Ees, her be—terrible bad,” said the constable.
“What is the matter with her, do you know?”
“Zummat o’ fits, I hears. Her’ve had ’em this six year, on and off.”
“I suppose it’s dangerous. I mean she isn’t likely to get well?”
“’Tis in the Lord’s hands,” replied the constable, “but her’s that bad wi’ pain, at times, ’twould be a mussy if ’twoud plaase He to tak’ her out on’t.”
“Perhaps she mightn’t think so,” said Tom, superciliously; he was not in the mind to agree with any one. The constable looked at him solemnly for a moment and then said:
“Her’s been a God-fearin’ woman from her youth up, and her’s had a deal o’ trouble. Thaay as the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and ’tisn’t such as thaay as is afeard to go afore Him.”
“Well, I never found that having trouble made people a bit more anxious to get ‘out on’t,’ as you call it,” said Tom.
“It don’t seem to me as you can ’a had much o’ trouble to judge by,” said the constable, who was beginning to be nettled by Tom’s manner.
“How can you tell that?”
“Leastways ’twould be whoam-made, then,” persisted the constable; “and ther’s a sight o’ odds atween whoam-made troubles and thaay as the Lord sends.”
“So there may; but I may have seen both sorts for anything you can tell.”
“Nay, nay; the Lord’s troubles leave His marks.”
“And I be to write to you, sir, then, if Harry gets into trouble?”
“Yes; but we must keep him out of trouble, even home-made ones, which don’t leave good marks, you know,” said Tom.
“And thaay be nine out o’ ten o’ aal as comes to a man, sir,” said David, “as I’ve a told Harry scores o’ times.”
“That seems to be your text, David,” said Tom, laughing.
“Ah, and ’tis a good un too, sir. ’Tis a sight better to have the Lord’s troubles while you be about it, for thaay as hasn’t makes wus for theirselves out o’ nothin’.”
Grey, who had never given up hopes of bringing Tom round to his own views, had not neglected the opportunitieswhich his residence in town offered, and had enlisted Tom’s services on more than one occasion. He had found him specially useful in instructing the big boys, whom he was trying to bring together and civilize in a “Young Men’s Club,” in the rudiments of cricket on Saturday evenings. But on the morning in question an altogether different work was on hand.
A lady living some eight or nine miles to the northwest of London, who took great interest in Grey’s doings, had asked him to bring the children of his night-school down to spend a day in her grounds, and this was the happy occasion. It was before the days of cheap excursions by rail, so that vans had to be found for the party; and Grey had discovered a benevolent remover of furniture in Paddington, who was ready to take them at a reasonable figure. The two vans, with awnings and curtains in the height of the fashion, and horses with tasselled ear-caps, and everything handsome about them, were already drawn up in the midst of a group of excited children, and scarcely less excited mothers, when Tom arrived. Grey was arranging his forces, and laboring to reduce the Irish children, who formed almost half of his ragged little flock, into something like order before starting. By degrees this was managed, and Tom was placed in command of the rear van, while Grey reserved the leading one to himself. The children were divided, and warned not to lean over the sides and tumble out—a somewhat superfluous caution, as mostof them, though unused to riding in any legitimate manner, were pretty well used to balancing themselves behind any vehicle which offered as much as a spike to sit on, out of sight of the driver. Then came the rush into the vans. Grey and Tom took up their places next the doors as conductors, and the procession lumbered off with great success, and much shouting from treble voices.
Tom soon found that he had plenty of work on his hands to keep the peace amongst his flock. The Irish element was in a state of wild effervescence, and he had to draft them down to his own end, leaving the foremost part of the van to the sober English children. He was much struck by the contrast of the whole set to the Englebourn school children, whom he had lately seen under somewhat similar circumstances. The difficulty with them had been to draw them out, and put anything like life into them; here, all he had to do was to repress the superabundant life. However, the vans held on their way, and got safely into the suburbs, and so at last to an occasional hedge, and a suspicion of trees, and green fields beyond.
It became more and more difficult now to keep the boys in; and when they came to a hill, where the horses had to walk, he yielded to their entreaties, and, opening the door, let them out, insisting only that the girls should remain seated. They scattered over the sides of the roads, and up the banks; now chasing pigs andfowls up to the very doors of their owners; now gathering the commonest road-side weeds, and running up to show them to him, and ask their names, as if they were rare treasures. The ignorance of most of the children as to the commonest country matters astonished him. One small boy particularly came back time after time to ask him, with solemn face, “Please, sir, is this the country?” and when at last he allowed that it was, rejoined, “Then, please, where are the nuts?”
The clothing of most of the Irish boys began to tumble to pieces in an alarming manner. Grey had insisted on their being made tidy for the occasion, but the tidiness was of a superficial kind. The hasty stitching soon began to give way, and they were rushing about with wild locks; the strips of what might have once been nether garments hanging about their legs; their feet and heads bare, the shoes which their mothers had borrowed for the state occasion having been deposited under the seat of the van, so when the procession arrived at the trim lodge-gates of their hostess, and his charge descended and fell in on the beautifully clipped turf at the side of the drive, Tom felt some of the sensations of Falstaff when he had to lead his ragged regiment through Coventry streets.
He was soon at his ease again, and enjoyed the day thoroughly, and the drive home; but, as they drew near town again, a sense of discomfort and shyness came over him, and he wished the journey to Westminster wellover, and hoped that the carman would have the sense to go through the quiet parts of the town.
He was much disconcerted, consequently, when the vans came to a sudden stop, opposite one of the Park entrances, in the Bayswater road. “What in the world is Grey about?” he thought, as he saw him get out, and all the children after him. So he got out himself, and went forward to get an explanation.
“Oh, I have told the man that he need not drive us round to Westminster. He is close at home here, and his horses have had a hard day; so we can just get out and walk home.”
“What, across the Park?” asked Tom.
“Yes, it will amuse the children, you know.”
“But they’re tired,” persisted Tom; “come now, it’s all nonsense letting the fellow off; he’s bound to take us back.”
“I’m afraid I have promised him,” said Grey; “besides, the children all think it a treat. Don’t you all want to walk across the Park?” he went on, turning to them, and a general affirmative chorus was the answer. So Tom had nothing for it but to shrug his shoulders, empty his own van, and follow into the Park with his convoy, not in the best humor with Grey for having arranged this ending to their excursion.
They might have got over a third of the distance between the Bayswater Road and the Serpentine, when he was aware of a small thin voice addressing him.
“Oh, please won’t you carry me a bit? I’m so tired,” said the voice. He turned in some trepidation to look for the speaker, and found her to be a sickly undergrown little girl, of ten or thereabouts, with large pleading gray eyes, very shabbily dressed, and a little lame. He had remarked her several times in the course of the day, not for any beauty or grace about her, for the poor child had none, but for her transparent confidence and trustfulness. After dinner, as they had been all sitting on the grass under the shade of a great elm to hear Grey read a story, and Tom had been sitting a little apart from the rest with his back against the trunk, she had come up and sat quietly down by him, leaning on his knee. Then he had seen her go up and take the hand of the lady who had entertained them, and walk along by her, talking without the least shyness. Soon afterwards she had squeezed into the swing by the side of the beautifully-dressed little daughter of the same lady, who, after looking for a minute at her shabby little sister with large round eyes, had jumped out and run off to her mother, evidently in a state of childish bewilderment as to whether it was not wicked for a child to wear such dirty old clothes.
Tom had chuckled to himself as he saw Cinderella settling herself comfortably in the swing in the place of the ousted princess, and had taken a fancy to the child, speculating to himself as to how she could have been brought up, to be so utterly unconscious of differences ofrank and dress. “She seems really to treat her fellow-creatures as if she had been studying theSartor Resartus,” he thought. “She has cut down through all clothes-philosophy without knowing it. I wonder, if she had a chance, whether she would go and sit down in the Queen’s lap?”
He did not at that time anticipate that she would put his own clothes-philosophy to so severe a test before the day was over. The child had been as merry and active as any of the rest during the earlier part of day; but now, as he looked down in answer to her reiterated plea, “Won’t you carry me a bit? I’m so tired!” he saw that she could scarcely drag one foot after another.
What was to be done? He was already keenly alive to the discomfort of walking across Hyde Park in a procession of ragged children, with such a figure of fun as Grey at their head, looking, in his long rusty, straight-cut black coat, as if he had come fresh out of Noah’s ark. He didn’t care about it so much while they were on the turf in the out-of-the-way parts, and would meet nobody but guards, and nurse-maids, and trades-people, and mechanics out for an evening’s stroll. But the Drive and Rotten-row lay before them, and must be crossed. It was just the most crowded time of the day. He had almost made up his mind once or twice to stop Grey and the procession, and propose to sit down for half an hour or so and let the children play, by which time the world would be going home to dinner. But there wasno play left in the children; and he had resisted the temptation, meaning, when they came to the most crowded part, to look unconscious, as if it were by chance that he got into such company, and had in fact nothing to do with them. But now, if he listened to the child’s plea, and carried her, all hope of concealment was over. If he did not, he felt that there would be no greater flunkey in the Park that evening than Thomas Brown, the enlightened radical and philosopher, amongst the young gentlemen riders in Rotten-row, or the powdered footmen lounging behind the great glaring carriages in the drive.
So he looked down at the child once or twice in a state of puzzle. A third time she looked up with her great eyes, and said, “Oh, please carry me a bit!” and her piteous, tired face turned the scale. “If she were Lady Mary or Lady Blanche,” thought he, “I should pick her up at once, and be proud of the burden. Here goes!” And he took her up in his arms, and walked on, desperate and reckless.
Notwithstanding all his philosophy, he felt his ears tingling and his face getting red, as they approached the Drive. It was crowded. They were kept standing a minute or two at the crossing. He made a desperate effort to abstract himself wholly from the visible world, and retire into a state of serene contemplation. But it would not do, and he was painfully conscious of the stare of lack-lustre eyes of well-dressed men leaningover the rails, and the amused look of delicate ladies, lounging in open carriages, and surveying him and Grey and their ragged rout through glasses.
At last they scrambled across, and he breathed freely for a minute, as they struggled along the comparatively quiet path leading to Albert Gate, and stopped to drink at the fountain. Then came Rotten-row, and another pause amongst the loungers, and a plunge into the Ride, where he was nearly run down by two men whom he had known at Oxford. They shouted to him to get out of the way; and he felt the hot defiant blood rushing through his veins as he strode across without heeding. They passed on, one of them having to pull his horse out of his stride to avoid him. Did they recognize him? He felt a strange mixture of utter indifference, and longing to strangle them.
The worst was now over; besides, he was getting used to the situation, and his good sense was beginning to rally. So he marched through Albert Gate, carrying his ragged little charge, who prattled away to him without a pause, and surrounded by the rest of the children, scarcely caring who might see him.
They went safely through the omnibuses and carriages on the Kensington Road, and so into Belgravia. At last he was quite at his ease again, and began listening to what the child was saying to him, and was strolling carelessly along, when once more, at one of the crossings, he was startled by a shout from some riders.There was straw laid down in the street, so that he had not heard them as they cantered round the corner, hurrying home to dress for dinner; and they were all but upon him, and had to rein up their horses sharply.
The party consisted of a lady and two gentlemen, one old, the other young; the latter dressed in the height of fashion, and with the supercilious air which Tom hated from his soul. The shout came from the young man, and drew Tom’s attention to him first. All the devil rushed up as he recognized St. Cloud. The lady’s horse swerved against his, and began to rear. He put his hand on its bridle, as if he had a right to protect her. Another glance told Tom that the lady was Mary, and the old gentleman, fussing up on his stout cob on the other side of her, Mr. Porter.
They all knew him in another moment. He stared from one to the other, was conscious that she turned her horse’s head sharply, so as to disengage the bridle from St. Cloud’s hand, and of his insolent stare, and of the embarrassment of Mr. Porter; and then, setting his face straight before him, he passed on in a bewildered dream, never looking back till they were out of sight. The dream gave way to bitter and wild thoughts, upon which it will do none of us any good to dwell. He put down the little girl outside the school, turning abruptly from the mother, a poor widow in scant, well-preserved black clothes, who was waiting for the child, and began thanking him for his care of her; refused Grey’s pressing invitationto tea, and set his face eastward. Bitterer and more wild and more scornful grew his thoughts as he strode along past the Abbey, and up Whitehall, and away down the Strand, holding on over the crossings without paying the slightest heed to vehicle, or horse, or man. Incensed coachmen had to pull up with a jerk to avoid running over him, and more than one sturdy walker turned round in indignation at a collision which they felt had been intended, or at least which there had been no effort to avoid.
As he passed under the window of the Banqueting Hall, and by the place in Charing-cross where the pillory used to stand, he growled to himself what a pity it was that the times for cutting off heads and cropping ears had gone by. The whole of the dense population from either side of the Strand seemed to have crowded out into that thoroughfare to impede his march and aggravate him. The further eastward he got the thicker got the crowd; and the vans, the omnibuses, the cabs, seemed to multiply and get noisier. Not an altogether pleasant sight to a man in the most Christian frame of mind is the crowd that a fine summer evening fetches out into the roaring Strand, as the sun fetches out flies on the window of a village grocery. To him just then it was at once depressing and provoking, and he went shouldering his way towards Temple Bar as thoroughly out of tune as he had been for many a long day.
As he passed from the narrowest part of the Strandinto the space round St. Clement Danes’ church, he was startled, in a momentary lull of the uproar, by the sound of chiming bells. He slackened his pace to listen; but a huge van lumbered by, shaking the houses on both sides, and drowning all sounds but its own rattle; and then he found himself suddenly immersed in a crowd, vociferating and gesticulating round a policeman, who was conveying a woman towards the station-house. He shouldered through it—another lull came, and with it the same slow, gentle, calm cadence of chiming bells. Again and again he caught it as he passed on to Temple Bar; whenever the roar subsided the notes of the old hymn-tune came dropping down on him like balm from the air. If the ancient benefactor who caused the bells of St. Clement Danes’ church to be arranged to play that chime so many times a day is allowed to hover round the steeple at such times, to watch the effect of his benefaction on posterity, he must have been well satisfied on that evening. Tom passed under the Bar, and turned into the Temple another man, softened again, and in his right mind.
“There’s always a voice saying the right thing to you somewhere, if you’ll only listen for it,” he thought.
“It was because you were out of sorts with the world, smarting with the wrongs you saw on every side, strugglingafter something better and higher, and siding and sympathizing with the poor and weak, that I loved you. We should never have been here, dear, if you had been a young gentleman satisfied with himself and the world, and likely to get on well in society.”
“Ah, Mary, it’s all very well for a man. It’s a man’s business. But why is a woman’s life to be made wretched? Why should you be dragged into all my perplexities, and doubts, and dreams, and struggles?”
“And why should I not?”
“Life should be all bright and beautiful to a woman. It is every man’s duty to shield her from all that can vex, or pain, or soil.”
“But have women different souls from men?”
“God forbid!”
“Then are we not fit to share your highest hopes?”
“To share our highest hopes! Yes, when we have any. But the mire and clay where one sticks fast over and over again, with no high hopes or high anything else in sight—a man must be a selfish brute to bring one he pretends to love into all that.”
“Now, Tom,” she said almost solemnly, “you are not true to yourself. Would you, part with your own deepest convictions? Would you if you could, go back to the time when you cared for and thought about none of these things?”
“He thought a minute, and then, pressing her hand, said:
“No, dearest, I would not. The consciousness of the darkness in one and around one brings the longing for light. And then the light dawns; through mist and fog, perhaps, but enough to pick one’s way by.” He stopped a moment, and then added, “and shines ever brighter unto the-perfect day. Yes, I begin to know it.”
“Then, why not put me on your own level? Why not let me pick my way by your side? Cannot a woman feel the wrongs that are going on in the world? Cannot she long to see them set right, and pray that they may be set right? We are not meant to sit in fine silks, and look pretty, and spend money, any more than you are meant to make it, and cry peace where there is no peace. If a woman cannot do much herself, she can honor and love a man who can.”
He turned to her, and bent over her, and kissed her forehead, and kissed her lips. She looked up with sparkling eyes and said:
“Am I not right, dear?”
“Yes, you are right, and I have been false to my creed. You have taken a load off my heart, dearest. Henceforth there shall be but one mind and one soul between us. You have made me feel what it is that a man wants, what is the help that is meet for him.”
He looked into her eyes, and kissed her again; and then rose up, for there was something within him like a moving of new life, which lifted him, and set him onhis feet. And he stood with kindling brow, gazing into the autumn air, as his heart went sorrowing, but hopefully “sorrowing, back through all the faultful past.” And she sat on at first, and watched his face; and neither spoke nor moved for some minutes. Then she rose too, and stood by his side:
And on her lover’s arm she leant,And round her waist she felt it fold;And so across the hills they went,In that new world which is the old.
And on her lover’s arm she leant,And round her waist she felt it fold;And so across the hills they went,In that new world which is the old.
And on her lover’s arm she leant,
And round her waist she felt it fold;
And so across the hills they went,
In that new world which is the old.
There is no recorded end of a life that I know of more entirely brave and manly than the one of Captain John Brown, of which we know every minutest detail, as it happened in the full glare of our modern life not twenty years ago. About that I think there would scarcely be disagreement anywhere. The very men who allowed him to lie in his bloody clothes till the day of his execution, and then hanged him, recognized this. “You are a game man, Captain Brown,” the Southern sheriff said in the wagon. “Yes,” he answered, “I was so brought up. It was one of my mother’s lessons. From infancy I have not suffered from physical fear. I have suffered a thousand times more from bashfulness;” and then he kissed a negro child in its mother’s arms, and walked cheerfully on to the scaffold, thankful that hewas “allowed to die for a cause, and not merely to pay the debt of nature, as all must.”
There is no simpler or nobler record in the “Book of Martyrs,” and in passing I would only remind you, that he at least was ready to acknowledge from whence came his strength. “Christ, the great Captain of liberty as well as of salvation,” he wrote just before his death, “saw fit to take from me the sword of steel after I had carried it for a time. But he has put another in my hand, the sword of the Spirit, and I pray God to make me a faithful soldier wherever he may send me.” And to a friend who left him with the words, “If you can be true to yourself to the end how glad we shall be,” he answered, “I cannot say, but I do not think I shall deny my Lord and Master, Jesus Christ.”
Patience, humility, and utter forgetfulness of self are the true royal qualities.
“By the light of burning martyr fires Christ’s bleeding feet I track,Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the cross that turns not back.”
“By the light of burning martyr fires Christ’s bleeding feet I track,Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the cross that turns not back.”
“By the light of burning martyr fires Christ’s bleeding feet I track,
Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the cross that turns not back.”
All chance of the speedy triumph of the kingdom of God, humanly speaking, in the lake country of Galilee—the battle-field chosen by himself, where his mightiestworks had been done and his mightiest words spoken—the district from which his chosen companions came, and in which clamorous crowds had been ready to declare him king—is now over. The conviction that this is so, that he is a baffled leader, in hourly danger of his life, has forced itself on Christ. Before entering that battle-field, face to face with the tempter in the wilderness, he had deliberately rejected all aid from the powers and kingdoms of this world, and now, for the moment, the powers of this world have proved too strong for him.
The rulers of that people—Pharisee, Sadducee, and Herodian, scribe and lawyer—were now marshalled against him in one compact phalanx, throughout all the coasts of Galilee, as well as in Judea.
His disciples, rough, most of them peasants, full of patriotism, but with small power of insight or self-control, were melting away from a leader who, while he refused them active service under a patriot chief at open war with Cæsar and his legions, bewildered them by assuming titles and talking to them in language which they could not understand. They were longing for one who would rally them against the Roman oppressor, and give them a chance, at any rate, of winning their own land again, purged of the heathen and free from tribute. Such an one would be worth following to the death. But what could they make of this “Son of Man,” who would prove his title to that name by giving his bodyand pouring out his blood for the life of man—of this “Son of God,” who spoke of redeeming mankind and exalting mankind to God’s right hand, instead of exalting the Jew to the head of mankind?
In the face of such a state of things, to remain in Capernaum, or the neighboring towns and villages, would have been to court death, there, and at once. The truly courageous man, you may remind me, is not turned from his path by the fear of death, which is the supreme test and touchstone of his courage. True; nor was Christ so turned, even for a moment.
Whatever may have been his hopes in the earlier part of his career, by this time he had no longer a thought that mankind could be redeemed without his own perfect and absolute sacrifice and humiliation. The cup would indeed have to be drunk to the dregs, but not here, nor now. This must be done at Jerusalem, the centre of the national life and the seat of the Roman government. It must be done during the Passover, the national commemoration of sacrifice and deliverance. And so he withdraws, with a handful of disciples, and even they still wayward, half-hearted, doubting, from the constant stress of a battle which has turned against him. From this time he keeps away from the great centres of population, except when, on two occasions—at the Feast of Tabernacles and the Feast of the Dedication—he flashes for a day on Jerusalem, and then disappears again into some haunt of outlaws, or of wild beasts. This portionof his life comprises something less than the last twelve months, from the summer of the second year of his ministry till the eve of the last Passover, at Easter, in the third year.
In glancing at the main facts of this period, as we have done in the former ones, we have to note chiefly his intercourse with the twelve apostles, and his preparation of them for the end of his own career and the beginning of theirs; his conduct at Jerusalem during those two autumnal and winter feasts, and the occasions when he again comes into collision with the rulers and Pharisees, both at these feasts, and in the intervals between them.
The keynote of it, in spite of certain short and beautiful interludes, appears to me to be a sense of loneliness and oppression, caused by the feeling that he has work to do, and words to speak, which those for whom they are to be done and spoken, and whom they are, first of all men, to bless, will either misunderstand or abhor. Here is all the visible result of his labor and of his travail, and the enemy is gathering strength every day.
This becomes clear, I think, at once, when, in the first days after his quitting the lake shores, he asks his disciples the question, “Whom do the world, and whom do ye, say that I am?” He is answered by Peter in the well-known burst of enthusiasm, that, though the people only look on him as a prophet, such as Elijah or Jeremiah, his own chosen followers see in him “the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
It is this particular moment which he selects for telling them distinctly, that Christ willnottriumph as they regard triumphing; that he will fall into the power of his enemies, and be humbled and slain by them. At once the proof comes of how little even the best of his own most intimate friends had caught the spirit of his teaching or of his kingdom. The announcement of his humiliation and death, which none but the most truthful and courageous of men would have made at such a moment, leaves them almost as much bewildered as the crowds in the lake cities had been a few days before.
Their hearts are faithful and simple, and upon them, as Peter has testified, the truth has flashed once for all, and there can be no other Saviour of men than this man with whom they are living. Still, by what means and to what end the salvation shall come, they are scarcely less ignorant than the people who had been in vain seeking from him a sign such as they desired. His own elect “understood not his saying, and it was hid from them, that they perceived it not.” Rather, indeed, they go straight from that teaching to dispute amongst themselves who of them shall be the greatest in that kingdom which they understand so little. And so their Master has to begin again at the beginning of his teaching, and, placing a little child amongst them, to declare that not of such men as they deem themselves, but of such as this child, is the kingdom of heaven.
The episode of the Transfiguration follows; andimmediately after it, as though purposely to warn even the three chosen friends who had been present against new delusions, he repeats again the teaching as to his death and humiliation. And he reiterates it whenever any exhibition of power or wisdom seems likely to encourage the frame of mind in the twelve generally which had lately brought the great rebuke on Peter. How slowly it did its work, even with the foremost disciples, there are but too many proofs.
Amongst his kinsfolk and the people generally, his mission, thanks to the cabals of the rulers and elders, had come by this time to be looked upon with deep distrust and impatience. “How long dost thou make us to doubt? Go up to this coming feast, and there prove your title before those who know how to judge in such matters,” is the querulous cry of the former as the Feast of Tabernacles approaches. He does not go up publicly with the caravan, which would have been at this time needlessly to incur danger, but, when the feast is half over, suddenly appears in the temple. There he again openly affronts the rulers by justifying his former acts, and teaching and proclaiming that he who has sent him is true, and is their God.
It is evidently on account of this new proof of daring that the people now again begin to rally around him. “Behold, he speaketh boldly. Do our rulers know that this is Christ?” is the talk which fills the air, and inducesthe scribes and Pharisees, for the first time, to attempt his arrest by their officers.
The officers return without him, and their masters are, for the moment, powerless before the simple word of him who, as their own servants testify, “speaks as never man spake.” But if they cannot arrest and execute, they may entangle him further, and prepare for their day, which is surely and swiftly coming. So they bring to him the woman taken in adultery, and draw from him the discourse in which he tells them that the truth will make them free—the truth which he has come to tell them, but which they will not hear, because they are of their father the devil. He ends with asserting his claim to the name which every Jew held sacred, “before Abraham was, I am.” The narrative of the seventh and eighth chapters of St. John, which record these scenes at the Feast of Tabernacles, have, I believe, done more to make men courageous and truly manly than all the stirring accounts of bold deeds which ever were written elsewhere.
All that was best and worst in the Jewish character and history combined to render the Roman yoke intolerably galling to the nation. The peculiar position of Jerusalem—a sort of Mecca to the tribes acknowledging the Mosaic law—made Syria the most dangerousof all the Roman provinces. To that city enormous crowds of pilgrims of the most stiff-necked and fanatical of all races flocked, three times at least in every year, bringing with them offerings and tribute for the temple and its guardians, on a scale which must have made the hierarchy at Jerusalem formidable even to the world’s master, by their mere command of wealth.
But this would be the least of the causes of anxiety to the Roman governor, as he spent year after year face to face with these terrible leaders of a terrible people.
These high priests and rulers of the Jews were indeed quite another kind of adversaries from the leaders, secular or religious, of any of those conquered countries which the Romans were wont to treat with contemptuous toleration. They still represented living traditions of the glory and sanctity of their nation, and of Jerusalem, and exercised still a power over that nation which the most resolute and ruthless of Roman procurators did not care wantonly to brave.
At the same time the yoke of high priest and scribe and Pharisee was even heavier on the necks of their own people than that of the Roman. They had built up a huge superstructure of traditions and ceremonies round the law of Moses, which they held up to the people as more sacred and binding than the law itself. This superstructure was their special charge. This was, according to them, the great national inheritance, the most valuable portion of the covenant which God had madewith their fathers. To them, as leaders of their nation—a select, priestly, and learned caste—this precious inheritance had been committed. Outside that caste, the dim multitude, “the people which knoweth not the law,” were despised while they obeyed, accursed as soon as they showed any sign of disobedience. Such being the state of Judea, it would not be easy to name in all history a less hopeful place for the reforming mission of a young carpenter, a stranger from a despised province, one entirely outside the ruling caste, though of the royal race, and who had no position whatever in any rabbinical school.
In Galilee the surroundings were slightly different, but scarcely more promising. Herod Antipas, the weakest of that tyrant family, the seducer of his brother’s wife, the fawner on Cæsar, the spendthrift oppressor of the people of his tetrarchy, still ruled in name over the country, but with Roman garrisons in the cities and strongholds. Face to face with him, and exercising animperium in imperiothroughout Galilee were the same priestly caste, though far less formidable to the civil power and to the people, than in the southern province. Along the western coast of the Sea of Galilee, the chief scene of our Lord’s northern ministry, lay a net-work of towns densely inhabited, and containing a large admixture of Gentile traders. This infusion of foreign blood, the want of any such religious centre as Jerusalem, and the contempt with which the southern Jews regardedtheir provincial brethren of Galilee, had no doubt loosened to some extent the yoke of the priests and scribes and lawyers in that province. But even here their traditionary power over the masses of the people was very great, and the consequences of defying their authority as penal, though the penalty might be neither so swift or so certain, as in Jerusalem itself. Such was the society into which Christ came.
It is not easy to find a parallel case in the modern world, but perhaps the nearest exists in a portion of our own empire. The condition of parts of India in our day resembles in some respects that of Palestine in the yearA. D.30. In the Mahratta country, princes, not of the native dynasty, but the descendants of foreign courtiers (like the Idumean Herods), are reigning. British residents at their courts, hated and feared, but practically all-powerful as Roman procurators, answer to the officers and garrisons of Rome in Palestine. The people are in bondage to a priestly caste scarcely less heavy than that which weighed on the Judean and Galilean peasantry. If the Mahrattas were Mohammedans, and Mecca were situate in the territory of Scindia or Holkar; if the influence of twelve centuries of Christian training could be wiped out of the English character, and the stubborn and fierce nature of the Jew substituted for that of the Mahratta; a village reformer amongst them, whose preaching outraged the Brahmins, threatened the dynasties, and disturbed the English residents,would start under somewhat similar conditions to those which surrounded Christ when he commenced his ministry.
In one respect, and one only, the time seemed propitious. The mind and heart of the nation was full of the expectation of a coming Messiah—a King who should break every yoke from off the necks of his people, and should rule over the nations, sitting on the throne of David. The intensity of this expectation had, in the opening days of his ministry, drawn crowds into the wilderness beyond Jordan from all parts of Judea and Galilee, at the summons of a preacher who had caught up the last cadence of the song of their last great prophet, and was proclaiming that both the deliverance and the kingdom which they were looking for were at hand. In those crowds who flocked to hear John the Baptist there were doubtless some even amongst the priests and scribes, and many amongst the poor Jewish and Galilean peasantry, who felt that there was a heavier yoke upon them than that of Rome or of Herod Antipas. But the record of the next three years shows too clearly that even these were wholly unprepared for any other than a kingdom of this world, and a temporal throne to be set up in the holy city.
And so, from the first, Christ had to contend not only against the whole of the established powers of Palestine, but against the highest aspirations of the best of his countrymen. These very Messianic hopes, in fact,proved the greatest stumbling-block in his path. Those who entertained them most vividly had the greatest difficulty in accepting the carpenter’s son as the promised Deliverer. A few days only before the end he had sorrowfully to warn the most intimate and loving of his companions and disciples, “Ye know not what spirit ye are of.”
The Jews were always thinking of their exclusive religious privileges, of the sacredness of the Temple and of the law, and of the questionable and dangerous position of those who were outside the covenant. Now this habit of mind, undoubtedly religious as it was, is not held up to our admiration in the New Testament, but the contrary. It is denounced as being the opposite of a true spirituality. It is shown to us as associated with intolerance, bigotry, hardness, cruelty, as most offensive to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and fruitful of mischief in the world. St. Paul had to undergo the reproach of being disloyal to the religion of his fathers, because he contended against this ecclesiastical spirit. But the reproach was as unjust as it was painful to him. He loved the holy city and the temple and the ordinances of the law and his kindred according to the flesh; but he knew that the properaim of a devout man was not to hedge round an organization, but to glorify and bear witness to the Divine Spirit.
Not St. Paul only, but all the Apostles and Evangelists, were continually contemplating the heavenly glory of a brotherhood of men in full harmony with each other because all joined to Christ, of men walking in humility and meekness and love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is nothing in such an ideal less suited to us to-day than to the Christians of the first age. For ourselves, and for our neighbors and fellow-men, this hope should be in our hearts, this Divine ideal before our eyes. Let us believe that it is the Divine purpose, and that we are called to the fulfilment of it.
Is it not an express principle in the teaching of our Lord himself and of his Apostles, that means and instruments and agencies are not to be worshipped in themselves but to be estimated with reference to the end they are to promote? Think, for example, what is implied in that pregnant sentence, “The Sabbath wasmade for man, and not man for the Sabbath.” Means and instruments are not dishonored by this principle. If the end they serve is high and precious, they also will deserve to be valued. If the spiritual freedom of man is important, then the ordinance of a Day of Rest, which ministers to it, may well be sacred. But it is often appointed in the Providence of God that an apparent dishonor should be cast on means, that the minds of men may be forced away from resting upon them. And means may be varied, according to circumstances, whilst the same permanent end is to be sought.
Wherever there is good, in whatever Samaritan or heathen we may see kindness and the fear of God, there we are to welcome it and rejoice in it in our Father’s name.
There is no respect of persons with God, no acceptance of any man on account of his religion or his profession; under whatever religious garb, he that loveth is born of God, he that doeth righteousness is born of God. There is no danger in being ready to appreciate simple goodness and to refer it to the working of the Divine Spirit wherever we may find it; there is the greatest danger in failing to appreciate it. This is doctrine of unquestionable Divine authority, which wemay often have opportunities of putting into practice. Let us remember to cherish it in all our dealings with those who do not belong to our own church. Let us be afraid lest nature and the flesh should make us intolerant and unsympathetic; let us be sure that Christ and the Spirit would win us to modesty and reverence and sympathy.
“There is one body and one spirit, even as ye were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.” With this unity, there are distinctions of function; and each member, St. Paul holds, has his own gift of endowment to enable him to fill his own place. Christ is the great Giver, and besides these gifts to the several members of the body, he gave to the body as a whole the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, by whose various ministries sinful and self-willed men were to be moulded into true members, and ultimate perfecting of the body to be accomplished. St. Paul looked forward in hope to the time when the Body of Christ might be not only ideally perfect, but actually perfect also, in its adult growth and in the harmonious co-operation of all its parts.
There may be every sort of defect and irregularity in the men and women whom Christ has called to be his members. The unity is not made by them, and does not depend upon them. Their business is tokeepthe unity, to conform themselves to it. The supernatural body of Christ is theidealone, and it is realized with various degrees of imperfection wherever men acknowledge Christ as their head.
As I understand the word “politician,” it means a man who, whatever his other engagements in life may be, and however he may earn his daily bread, feels above all things deeply interested, feels that he is bound to be deeply interested, and to take as active a part as he can, in the public affairs of his country. I believe that every Englishman, if he is worth anything at all, is bound to be a politician, and can’t for the life of him help taking a deep interest in the public affairs of his country. The object of politics is the well-being of the nation, or in other words to make “a wise and understanding people.” Now, what are the means by which a wise and an understanding people is to be made? Well, of course, the chief means of making a wise andunderstanding people is by training them up in wisdom and understanding. The State wants men who are brave, truthful, generous; the State wants women who are pure, simple, gentle. By what means is the State to get citizens of that kind?
Such a politician looking around him and seeing how the national conscience is to be touched—for unless the national conscience be touched you can never raise citizens of that kind—finds that the great power which alone can do it, is that which goes by the name of religion.
The true work of the Liberal Party in a Liberal age is, with singleness of purpose and all its might, to lift the people to a fair and full share of all the best things of this life,—its highest culture, hopes, aspirations, burdens—as well as its loaves and fishes—and, setting before them a truly noble ideal of citizenship, to help them to attain it. Whatever goes beyond that, or beside that, savors of Jacobinism, for then comes in that jealousy which is the bane of true democracy. The true democrat has no old scores to pay, covets no man’s good things, wants nothing for himself which is not open to his neighbors, will destroy nothing which others value merely because he doesn’t value it himself, unless it is palpably and incurably unjust and unrighteous.I need not go on to contrast the Jacobin with him, beyond saying that the one is before all things constructive, the other destructive.