LXIII.

“The one remains, the many change and pass,Heaven’s light forever shines, earth’s shadows fly.Time, like a dome of many-colored glass,Stains the bright radiance of eternity,Until death tramples it to fragments.”

“The one remains, the many change and pass,Heaven’s light forever shines, earth’s shadows fly.Time, like a dome of many-colored glass,Stains the bright radiance of eternity,Until death tramples it to fragments.”

“The one remains, the many change and pass,

Heaven’s light forever shines, earth’s shadows fly.

Time, like a dome of many-colored glass,

Stains the bright radiance of eternity,

Until death tramples it to fragments.”

And so you and I are living now under the dome of many-colored glass, and shall live as long as we remain in these bodies, a temporal and an eternal life—“the next world,” which too many of our teachers speak of as a place which we shall first enter after death, being in fact “next” only in the truest sense of the word; namely, that it is nearest to us now. The dome of time can do nothing more (if we even allow it to do that) than partially to conceal from us the light which is always there, beneath, around, above us.

“The outer life of the devout man,” it has been well said, “should be thoroughly attractive to others. He would be simple, honest, straightforward, unpretending,gentle, kindly;—his conversation cheerful and sensible; he would be ready to share in all blameless mirth, indulgent to all save sin.”

In a noisy and confused time like ours, it does seem to me that most of us have need to be reminded of, and will be the better for bearing in mind, the reserve of strength and power which lies quietly at the nation’s call, outside the whirl and din of public and fashionable life, and entirely ignored in the columns of the daily press. There are thousands of Englishmen of high culture, high courage, high principle, who are living their own quiet lives in every corner of the kingdom, from John o’ Groat’s to the Land’s-End, bringing up their families in the love of God and their neighbor, and keeping the atmosphere around them clean, and pure, and strong, by their example—men who would come to the front, and might be relied on, in any serious national crisis.

One is too apt to fancy, from the photographs of the nation’s life which one gets day by day, that the old ship has lost the ballast which has stood her in such good stead for a thousand years, and is rolling more and more helplessly, in a gale which shows no sign of abating, for her or any other national vessel, until at last she must roll over and founder. But it is not so. Englandis in less stress, and in better trim, than she has been in many a stiffer gale.

The real fact is, that nations, and the families of which nations are composed, make no parade or fuss over that part of their affairs which is going right. National life depends on home life, and foreign critics are inclined to take the chronicles of our Divorce Court as a test by which to judge the standard of our home-life, like the old gentleman who always spelt through the police reports to see “what people were about.” An acquaintance, however, with any average English neighborhood, or any dozen English families taken at random, ought to be sufficient to re-assure the faint-hearted, and to satisfy them that (to use the good old formula) the Lord has much work yet for the nation to do, and the national manliness and godliness left to do it all, notwithstanding superficial appearances.

If the angel Gabriel were to come down from heaven, and head a successful rise against the most abominable and unrighteous vested interest which this poor world groans under, he would most certainly lose his character for many years, probably for centuries, not only with upholders of said vested interest, but with the respectable mass of the people whom he had delivered. They wouldn’t ask him to dinner, or let their names appearwith his in the papers; they would be very careful how they spoke of him in the Palaver, or at their clubs. What can we expect, then, when we have only poor, gallant, blundering men like Kossuth, Garibaldi, Mazzini, and righteous causes do not always triumph in their hands; men who have holes enough in their armor, God knows, easy to be hit by respectabilities sitting in their lounging-chairs, and having large balances at their bankers?

But you who only want to have your heads set straight to take the right side, bear in mind that majorities, especially respectable ones, are nine times out of ten in the wrong; and that if you see a man or boy striving earnestly on the weak side, however wrong-headed or blundering he may be, you are not to go and join the cry against him. If you can’t join him and help him, and make him wiser, at any rate remember that he has found something in the world which he will fight and suffer for, which is just what you have got to do for yourselves; and so think and speak of him tenderly.

If you have not already felt it, you will assuredly feel, that your lot is cast in a world which longs for nothing so much as to succeed in shaking off all belief in anything which cannot be tested by the senses, and gauged and measured by the intellect, as the trappingsof a worn-out superstition. Men have been trying, so runs the new gospel, to live by faith, and not by sight, ever since there is any record at all of their lives; and so they have had to manufacture for themselves the faiths they were to live by. What is called the life of the soul or spirit, and the life of the understanding, have been in conflict all this time, and the one has always been gaining on the other. Stronghold after stronghold has fallen till it is clear almost to demonstration that there will soon be no place left for that which was once deemed all-powerful. The spiritual life can no longer be led honestly. Man has no knowledge of the invisible on which he can build. Let him own the truth and turn to that upon which hecanbuild safely—the world of matter, his knowledge of which is always growing; and be content with the things he can see and taste and handle. Those who are telling you still in this time that your life can and ought to be lived in daily communion with the unseen—that so only you can loyally control the visible—are either wilfully deceiving you or are dreamers and visionaries.

So the high priests of the new gospel teach, and their teaching echoes through our literature, and colors the life of the streets and markets in a thousand ways; and a mammon-ridden generation, longing to be rid of what they hope are only certain old and clumsy superstitions—which theytryto believe injurious to others, and are quite sure make them uneasy in their own efforts toeat, drink, and be merry—applauds as openly as it dare, and hopes soon to see the millennium of the flesh-pots publicly declared and recognized.

Against which, wherever you may encounter them, that you may be ready and able to stand fast, is the hope and prayer of many anxious hearts; in a time, charged on every side with signs of the passing away of old things, such as have not been seen above the horizon in Christendom since Luther nailed his protest on the church-door of a German village.

The gospel of work is a true gospel, though not the only one, or the highest, and has been preached in our day by great teachers. Listen, for instance, to the ring of it in the rugged and incisive words of one of our strongest poets:

“That low man seeks a little thing to do,Sees it and does it.This high man, with a great thing to pursue,Dies ere he knows it.That low man goes on adding one to one,His hundreds soon hit.This high man aiming at a million,Misses a unit.”

“That low man seeks a little thing to do,Sees it and does it.This high man, with a great thing to pursue,Dies ere he knows it.That low man goes on adding one to one,His hundreds soon hit.This high man aiming at a million,Misses a unit.”

“That low man seeks a little thing to do,

Sees it and does it.

This high man, with a great thing to pursue,

Dies ere he knows it.

That low man goes on adding one to one,

His hundreds soon hit.

This high man aiming at a million,

Misses a unit.”

This sounds like a deliberate attack on the idealist, adirect preference of low to high aims and standards, of the seen to the unseen. It is in reality only a wholesome warning against aiming at any ideal by wrong methods, though the use of the words “low” and “high” is no doubt likely to mislead. The true idealist has no quarrel with the lesson of these lines; indeed, he would be glad to see them written on one of the door-posts of every great school, if only they were ballasted on the other by George Herbert’s quaint and deeper wisdom:

“Pitch thy behavior low, thy projects high,So shalt thou humble and magnanimous be.Sink not in spirit: who aimeth at the skyShoots higher much than he that means a tree.”

“Pitch thy behavior low, thy projects high,So shalt thou humble and magnanimous be.Sink not in spirit: who aimeth at the skyShoots higher much than he that means a tree.”

“Pitch thy behavior low, thy projects high,

So shalt thou humble and magnanimous be.

Sink not in spirit: who aimeth at the sky

Shoots higher much than he that means a tree.”

Both sayings are true, and worth carrying in your minds as part of their permanent furniture, and you will find that they will live there very peaceably side by side.

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.

It is a strange, blind sort of world we are in, with lots of blind alleys, down which we go blundering in the fog after some seedy gaslight, which we take for the sun till we run against the wall at the end, and find out that the light is a gaslight, and that there’s no thoroughfare. But for all that, one does get on. You get to know the sun’s light better and better, and to keep out of the blind alleys; and I am surer and surer every day that there’s always sunlight enough for every honest fellow, and a good sound road under his feet, if he will only step out on it.

We all have to learn, in one way or another, that neither men nor boys getsecondchances in this world. We all getnewchances till the end of our lives, but not second chances in the same set of circumstances; and the great difference between one person and another is, how he takes hold of and uses his first chance, and how he takes his fall if it is scored against him.

You will all find, if you haven’t found it out already, that a time comes in every human friendship when youmust go down into the depths of yourself, and lay bare what is there to your friend, and wait in fear for his answer. A few moments may do it; and it may be that you never do it but once. But done it must be, if the friendship is to be worth the name. You must find out what is there, at the very root and bottom of one another’s hearts; and if you are at one there, nothing on earth can, or at least ought, to sunder you.

It is only through our mysterious human relationships—through the love and tenderness and purity of mothers and sisters and wives—through the strength and courage and wisdom of fathers and brothers and teachers—that we can come to the knowledge of Him in whom alone the love, and the tenderness, and the purity, and the strength, and the courage, and the wisdom of all these dwell for ever and ever in perfect fulness.

Almost nightly, for years, Tom and Arthur, and by degrees East occasionally, and sometimes one, sometimes another of their friends, read a chapter of the Bible together, and talked it over afterwards. Tom was at first utterly astonished, and almost shocked, at thesort of way in which Arthur read the book and talked about the men and women whose lives are there told. The first night they happened to fall on the chapters about the famine in Egypt, and Arthur began talking about Joseph as if he were a living statesman; just as he might have talked about Lord Grey and the Reform Bill; only that they were much more living realities to him. The book was to him, Tom saw, the most vivid and delightful history of real people, who might do right or wrong, just like any one who was walking about Rugby—the doctor, or the masters, or the sixth-form boys. But the atmosphere soon passed off, the scales seemed to drop from his eyes, and the book became at once and forever to him the great human and divine book, and the men and women, whom he had looked upon as something quite different from himself, became his friends and counsellors.

Arthur, Tom, and East were together one night, and read the story of Naaman coming to Elisha to be cured of his leprosy. When the chapter was finished, Tom shut his Bible with a slap.

“I can’t stand that fellow Naaman,” said he, “after what he’d seen and felt, going back again and bowing himself down in the house of Rimmon, because his effeminate scoundrel of a master did it. I wonder Elisha took the trouble to heal him. How he must have despised him.”

“Yes, there you go off as usual, with a shell on yourhead,” struck in East, who always took the opposite side to Tom: half from love of argument, half from conviction. “How do you know he didn’t think better of it? how do you know his master was a scoundrel? His letter don’t look like it, and the book don’t say so.”

“I don’t care,” rejoined Tom; “why did Naaman talk about bowing down, then, if he didn’t mean to do it? He wasn’t likely to get more in earnest when he got back to Court, and away from the Prophet.”

“Well, but, Tom,” said Arthur, “look what Elisha says to him, ‘Go in peace.’ He wouldn’t have said that if Naaman had been in the wrong.”

“I don’t see that that means more than saying, ‘You’re not the man I took you for.’”

“No, no, that won’t do at all,” said East; “read the words fairly, and take men as you find them. I like Naaman, and think he was a very fine fellow.”

“I don’t,” said Tom, positively.

“Well, I think East is right,” said Arthur; “I can’t see but what it’s right to do the best you can, though it mayn’t be the best absolutely. Every man isn’t born to be a martyr.”

“Of course, of course,” said East; “but he’s on one of his pet hobbies. How often have I told you, Tom, that you must drive a nail where it’ll go?”

“And how often have I told you,” rejoined Tom, “that it’ll always go where you want, if you only stickto it and hit hard enough? I hate half-measures and compromises.”

“Yes, he’s a whole-hog man, is Tom. Must have the whole animal, hair and teeth, claws and tail,” laughed East. “Sooner have no bread any day than half a loaf.”

“I don’t know,” said Arthur, “it’s rather puzzling; but ain’t most right things got by proper compromises, I mean where the principle isn’t given up?”

“That’s not the point,” said Tom; “I don’t object to a compromise, where you don’t give up your principle.”

“Not you,” said East laughingly. “I know him of old, Arthur, and you’ll find him out some day. There isn’t such a reasonable fellow in the world to hear him talk. He never wants anything but what’s right and fair; only when you come to settle what’s right and fair, it’s everything that he wants, and nothing that you want. Give me the Brown compromise when I’m on his side.”

“Now, Harry,” said Tom, “no more chaff—I’m serious. Look here—this is what makes my blood tingle;” and he turned over the pages of his Bible and read: “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, ‘O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning, fiery furnace, and He will deliver us out of thine hand,O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.’” He read the last verse twice, emphasizing the nots, and dwelling on them as if they gave him actual pleasure and were hard to part with.

They were silent a minute, and then Arthur said, “Yes, that’s a glorious story, but it don’t prove your point, Tom, I think. There are times when there is only one way, and that the highest, and then the men are found to stand in the breach.”

“There’s always a highest way, and it’s always the right one,” said Tom. “How many times has the Doctor told us that in his sermons in the last year I should like to know!”

“Well, you ain’t going to convince us—is he Arthur? No Brown compromise to-night,” said East, looking at his watch. “But it’s past eight, and we must go to first lesson.”

So they took down their books and fell to work; but Arthur didn’t forget, and thought long and often over the conversation.

“Tom,” said Arthur, “I’ve had such strange thoughts about death lately. I’ve never told a soul of them, not even my mother. Sometimes, I think they’re wrong,but, do you know I don’t think in my heart I could be sorry at the death of any of my friends.”

Tom was taken quite aback.

“What in the world is the young un after now?” thought he; “I’ve swallowed a good many of his crotchets, but this altogether beats me. He can’t be quite right in his head.”

He didn’t want to say a word, and shifted about uneasily in the dark; however, Arthur seemed to be waiting for an answer, so at last he said, “I don’t think I quite see what you mean, Geordie. One’s told so often to think about death, that I’ve tried it on sometimes, especially this last week. But we won’t talk of it now. I’d better go—you’re getting tired, and I shall do you harm.”

“No, no, indeed—I ain’t Tom; you must stop till nine, there’s only twenty minutes. I’ve settled you must stop till nine. And oh! do let me talk to you—I must talk to you. I see it’s just as I feared. You think I’m half-mad—don’t you now?”

“Well, I did think it odd what you said, Geordie, as you ask me.”

Arthur paused a moment, and then said quickly, “I’ll tell you how it all happened. At first, when I was sent to the sick-room, and found I had really got the fever, I was terribly frightened. I thought I should die, and I could not face it for a moment. I don’t think it was sheer cowardice at first, but I thought how hard it wasto be taken away from my mother and sisters, and you all, just as I was beginning to see my way to many things, and to feel that I might be a man and do a man’s work. To die without having fought and worked, and given one’s life away, was too hard to bear. I got terribly impatient, and accused God of injustice, and strove to justify myself; and the harder I strove, the deeper I sank. Then the image of my dear father often came across me, but I turned from it. Whenever it came, a heavy numbing throb seemed to take hold of my heart, and say ‘Dead—dead, dead.’ And I cried out, ‘The living, the living shall praise thee O God; the dead cannot praise Thee. There is no work in the grave; in the night no man can work. But I can work. I can do great things. Iwilldo great things. Why wilt Thou slay me.’ And so I struggled and plunged, deeper and deeper, and went down into a living black tomb. I was alone there, with no power to stir or think; along with myself; beyond the reach of all human fellowship; beyond Christ’s reach, I thought, in my nightmare. You who are brave and bright and strong, can have no idea of that agony. Pray to God you never may. Pray as for your life.”

Arthur stopped—from exhaustion, Tom thought; but what between his fear lest Arthur should hurt himself, his awe, and longing for him to go on, he couldn’t ask, or stir to help him. Presently he went on, but quite calm and slow:

“I don’t know how long I was in that state. For more than a day, I know; for I was quite conscious, and lived my outer life all the time, and took my medicines, and spoke to my mother, and heard what they said. But I didn’t take much note of time; I thought time was over for me, and that that tomb was what was beyond. Well, on last Sunday morning, as I seemed to lie in that tomb, alone, as I thought, for ever and ever, the black, dead wall was cleft in two, and I was caught up and borne through into the light by some great power, some living, mighty spirit. Tom, do you remember the living creatures and the wheels in Ezekiel? It was just like that: ‘when they went I heard the noise of their wings, like the noise of great waters, as the voice of the Almighty, the voice of speech, as the noise of an host; when they stood they let down their wings’—‘and they went every one straight forward; whither the spirit was to go they went, and they turned not when they went.’ And we rushed through the bright air, which was full of myriads of living creatures, and paused on the brink of a great river. And the power held me up, and I knew that great river was the grave, and death dwelt there; but not the death I had met in the black tomb—that I felt was gone forever. For on the other bank of the great river I saw men and women and children rising up pure and bright, and the tears were wiped from their eyes, and they put on glory and strength, and all weariness and pain fell away. Andbeyond were a multitude which no man could number, and they worked at some great work; and they who rose from the river went on and joined them in the work. They all worked, and each worked in a different way, but all at the same work. And I saw there my father, and the men in the old town whom I knew when I was a child; many a hard, stern man, who never came to church, and whom they called atheist and infidel. There they were, side by side with my father, whom I had seen toil and die for them, and women and little children, and the seal was on the foreheads of all. And I longed to see what the work was, and could not; so I tried to plunge in the river, for I thought I would join them, but I could not. Then I looked about to see how they got into the river. And this I could not see, but I saw myriads on this side, and they too worked, and I knew that it was the same work; and the same seal was on their foreheads. And though I saw there was toil and anguish in the work of these, and that most that were working were blind and feeble, yet I longed no more to plunge into the river, but more and more to know what the work was. And as I looked I saw my mother and my sisters, and I saw the Doctor, and you, Tom, and hundreds more whom I knew; and at last I saw myself, too, and I was toiling and doing ever so little a piece of the great work. Then it all melted away, and the power left me, and as it left me I thought I heard a voice say, ‘The vision is for an appointed time;though it tarry, wait for it, for in the end it shall speak and not lie, it shall surely come, it shall not tarry.’ It was early morning I know, then, it was so quiet and cool, and my mother was fast asleep in the chair by my bedside; but it wasn’t only a dream of mine. I know it wasn’t a dream. Then I fell into a deep sleep, and only woke after afternoon chapel; and the Doctor came and gave me the sacrament. I told him and my mother I should get well—I knew I should; but I couldn’t tell them why. Tom,” said Arthur, gently, after another minute, “do you see why I could not grieve now to see my dearest friend die? It can’t be—it isn’t, all fever or illness. God would never have let me see it so clear if it wasn’t true. I don’t understand it all yet—it will take me my life and longer to do that—to find out what the work is.”

“Hullo, Brown! here’s something for you,” called out the reading man. “Why, your old master, Arnold of Rugby, is dead.”

Tom’s hand stopped half-way in his cast, and his line and flies went all tangling round and round his fishing-rod; you might have knocked him over with a feather.

Neither of his companions took any notice of him, luckily; and with a violent effort he set to work mechanically to disentangle his line. He felt completelycarried off his moral and intellectual legs, as if he had lost his standing-point in the invisible world. Besides which, the deep loving loyalty he felt for his old leader made the shock intensely painful. It was the first great wrench of his life, the first gap which the angel Death had made in his circle, and he felt numbed, and beaten down, and spiritless. Well, well! I believe it was good for him and for many others in like case; who had to learn by that loss, that the soul of man cannot stand or lean upon any human prop, however strong, and wise, and good; but that He upon whom alone it can stand and lean will knock away all such props in His own wise and merciful way, until there is no ground or stay left but Himself, the Rock of Ages, upon whom alone a sure foundation for every soul of man is laid.

At the school-gates Tom made a dead pause; there was not a soul in the quadrangle—all was lonely, and silent, and sad. So with another effort he strode through the quadrangle, and into the school-house offices.

He found the little matron in her room in deep mourning; shook her hand, tried to talk, and moved nervously about; she was evidently thinking of the same subject as he, but he couldn’t begin talking.

“Where shall I find Thomas?” said he at last, getting desperate.

“In the servants’ hall, I think, sir. But won’t you take anything?” said the matron looking rather disappointed.

“No, thank you,” said he, and strode off again to find the old verger, who was sitting in his little den as of old puzzling over hieroglyphics.

He looked up through his spectacles, as Tom seized his hand and wrung it.

“Ah! you’ve heard all about it, sir, I see,” said he.

Tom nodded, and then sat down on the shoe-board, while the old man told his tale, and wiped his spectacles, and fairly flowed over with quaint, homely, honest sorrow.

By the time he had done, Tom felt much better.

“Where is he buried, Thomas?” said he at last.

“Under the altar in the chapel, sir,” answered Thomas. “You’d like to have the key, I dare say.”

“Thank you, Thomas. Yes, I should very much.” And the old man fumbled among his bunch, and then got up as though he would go with him; but after a few steps stopped short and said, “Perhaps you’d like to go by yourself, sir?”

Tom nodded, and the bunch of keys were handed to him with an injunction to be sure and lock the door after him, and bring them back before eight o’clock.

We walked quickly through the quadrangle and outinto the close. The longing which had been upon him and driven him thus far, like the gad-fly in the Greek legends, giving him no rest in mind or body, seemed all of a sudden not to be satisfied, but to shrivel up, and pall. “Why should I go on? It is no use,” he thought, and threw himself at full length on the turf, and looked vaguely and listlessly at all the well-known objects. There were a few of the town-boys playing cricket, their wicket pitched on the best piece in the middle of the big-side ground, a sin about equal to sacrilege in the eyes of a captain of the eleven. He was very nearly getting up to go and send them off. “Pshaw! they won’t remember me. They’ve more right there than I,” he muttered. And the thought that his sceptre had departed, and his mark was wearing out, came home to him for the first time, and bitterly enough. He was lying on the very spot where the fights came off; where he himself had fought six years ago his first and last battle. He conjured up the scene till he could almost hear the shouts of the ring, and East’s whisper in his ear; and looking across the close to the Doctor’s private door, half-expected to see it open, and the tall figure in cap and gown come striding under the elm-trees towards him.

No, no! that sight could never be seen again. There was no flag flying on the round tower; the school-house windows were all shuttered up; and when the flag went up again, and the shutters came down, it would be towelcome a stranger. All that was left on earth of him whom he had honored, was lying cold and still under the chapel-floor. He would go in and see the place once more, and then leave it once for all. New men and new methods might do for other people; let those who would, worship the rising star; he at least would be faithful to the sun which had set. And so he got up, and walked to the chapel-door and unlocked it, fancying himself the only mourner in all the broad land, and feeding on his own selfish sorrow.

He passed through the vestibule, and then paused for a moment to glance over the empty benches. His heart was still proud and high, and he walked up to the seat which he had last occupied as a sixth-form boy, and sat himself down there to collect his thoughts.

And, truth to tell, they needed collecting and setting in order not a little. The memories of eight years were all dancing through his brain, and carrying him about whither they would; while, beneath them all, his heart was throbbing with the dull sense of a loss that could never be made up to him. The rays of the evening sun came solemnly through the painted windows above his head, and fell in gorgeous colors on the opposite wall, and the perfect stillness soothed his spirit by little and little. And he turned to the pulpit, and looked at it, and then, leaning forward with his head on his hands, groaned aloud:

“If he could only have seen the Doctor again for onefive minutes—have told him all that was in his heart, what he owed to him, how he loved and reverenced him, and would by God’s help follow his steps in life and death—he could have borne it all without a murmur. But that he should have gone away for ever without knowing it all, was too much to bear.”—“But am I sure he does not know it all?”—the thought made him start—“May he not even now be near me, in this very chapel? If he be, am I sorrowing as he would have me sorrow—as I should wish to have sorrowed when I shall meet him again?”

He raised himself up and looked around; and after a minute rose and walked humbly down to the lowest bench, and sat down on the very seat which he had occupied on his first Sunday at Rugby. And then the old memories rushed back again, but softened and subdued, and soothing him as he let himself be carried away by them. And he looked up at the great painted window above the altar, and remembered how when a little boy he used to try not to look through it at the elm-trees and the rocks, before the painted glass came—and the subscription for the painted glass, and the letter he wrote home for money to give to it. And there, down below, was the very name of the boy who sat on his right hand on that first day, scratched rudely in the oak paneling.

And then came the thought of all his own school-fellows; and form after form of boys nobler, and braver,and purer than he, rose up and seemed to rebuke him. Could he not think of them, and what they had felt and were feeling, they who had honored and loved from the first, the man whom he had taken years to know and love? Could he not think of those yet dearer to him who was gone, who bore his name and shared his blood, and were now without a husband or a father? Then the grief which he began to share with others became gentle and holy, and he rose up once more, and walked up the steps to the altar; and while the tears flowed freely down his cheeks, knelt down humbly and hopefully, to lay down there his share of a burden which had proved itself too heavy for him to bear in his own strength.

“It will be forty years ago next month,” said the old Captain, “since the ship I was then in came home from the West Indies station, and was paid off. I had nowhere in particular to go just then, and so was very glad to get a letter, the morning after I went ashore at Portsmouth, asking me to go down to Plymouth for a week or so. It came from an old sailor, a friend of my family, who had been Commodore of the fleet. He lived at Plymouth; he was a thorough old sailor—what you young men would call ‘an old salt’—and couldn’t live out of sight of the blue sea and the shipping. It isa disease that a good many of us take who have spent our best years on the sea. I have it myself—a sort of feeling that we must be under another kind of Providence, when we look out and see a hill on this side and a hill on that. It’s wonderful to see the trees come out and the corn grow, but then it doesn’t come so home to an old sailor. I know that we’re all just as much under the Lord’s hand on shore as at sea; but you can’t read in a book you haven’t been used to, and they that go down to the sea in ships, they see the works of the Lord and His wonders in the deep. It isn’t their fault if they don’t see His wonders on the land so easily as other people.

“But, for all that, there’s no man enjoys a cruise in the country more than a sailor. It’s forty years ago since I started for Plymouth, but I haven’t forgotten the road a bit, or how beautiful it was; all through the New Forest, and over Salisbury Plain, and then on by the mail to Exeter, and through Devonshire. It took me three days to get to Plymouth, for we didn’t get about so quick in those days.

“The Commodore was very kind to me when I got there, and I went about with him to the ships in the bay, and through the dock-yard, and picked up a good deal that was of use to me afterwards. I was a lieutenant in those days, and had seen a good deal of service, and I found the old Commodore had a great nephew whom he had adopted, and had set his whole heartupon. He was an old bachelor himself, but the boy had come to live with him, and was to go to sea; so he wanted to put him under some one who would give an eye to him for the first year or two. He was a light slip of a boy then, fourteen years old, with deep set blue eyes and long eyelashes, and cheeks like a girl’s, but as brave as a lion and as merry as a lark. The old gentleman was very pleased to see that we took to one another. We used to bathe and boat together; and he was never tired of hearing my stories about the great admirals, and the fleet, and the stations I had been on.

“Well, it was agreed that I should apply for a ship again directly, and go up to London with a letter to the Admiralty from the Commodore to help things on. After a month or two I was appointed to a brig, lying at Spithead; and so I wrote off to the Commodore, and he got his boy a midshipman’s berth on board, and brought him to Portsmouth himself a day or two before we sailed for the Mediterranean. The old gentleman came on board to see his boy’s hammock slung, and went below into the cockpit to make sure that all was right. He only left us by the pilot-boat when we were well out in the Channel. He was very low at parting from his boy, but bore up as well as he could; and we promised to write to him from Gibraltar, and as often afterwards as we had a chance.

“I was soon as proud and fond of little Tom Holdsworth as if he had been my own younger brother, and,for that matter, so were all the crew, from our captain to the cook’s boy. He was such a gallant youngster, and yet so gentle. In one cutting-out business we had, he climbed over the boatswain’s shoulders, and was almost first on deck; how he came out of it without a scratch I can’t think to this day. But he hadn’t a bit of bluster in him, and was as kind as a woman to any one who was wounded or down with sickness.

“After we had been out about a year we were sent to cruise off Malta, on the look-out for the French fleet. It was a long business, and the post wasn’t so good then as it is now. We were sometimes for months without getting a letter, and knew nothing of what was happening at home, or anywhere else. We had a sick time too on board, and at last he got a fever. He bore up against it like a man, and wouldn’t knock off duty for a long time. He was midshipman of my watch; so I used to make him turn in early, and tried to ease things to him as much as I could; but he didn’t pick up, and I began to get very anxious about him. I talked to the doctor, and turned matters over in my own mind, and at last I came to think he wouldn’t get any better unless he could sleep out of the cockpit. So one night, the 20th of October it was—I remember it well enough, better than I remember any day since; it was a dirty night, blowing half a gale of wind from the southward, and we were under close-reefed topsails—I had the first watch, and at nine o’clock I sent him down to my cabin to sleep there,where he would be fresher and quieter, and I was to turn into his hammock when my watch was over.

“I was on deck three hours or so after he went down, and the weather got dirtier and dirtier, and the scud drove by, and the wind sang and hummed through the rigging—it made me melancholy to listen to it. I could think of nothing but the youngster down below, and what I should say to his poor old uncle if anything happened. Well, soon after midnight I went down and turned into his hammock. I didn’t go to sleep at once, for I remember very well listening to the creaking of the ship’s timbers as she rose to the swell, and watching the lamp, which was slung from the ceiling, and gave light enough to make out the other hammocks swinging slowly all together. At last, however, I dropped off, and I reckon I must have been asleep about an hour, when I woke with a start. For the first moment I didn’t see anything but the swinging hammocks and the lamp; but then suddenly I became aware that some one was standing by my hammock, and I saw the figure as plainly as I see any of you now, for the foot of the hammock was close to the lamp, and the light struck full across on the head and shoulders, which was all that I could see of him. There he was, the old Commodore; his grizzled hair coming out from under a red woollen night cap, and his shoulders wrapped in an old thread-bare blue dressing-gown which I had often seen him in. His face looked pale and drawn, and there was a wistful, disappointedlook about the eyes. I was so taken aback I could not speak, but lay watching him. He looked full at my face once or twice, but didn’t seem to recognize me; and, just as I was getting back my tongue and going to speak, he said slowly: ‘Where’s Tom? this is his hammock. I can’t see Tom;’ and then he looked vaguely about and passed away somehow, but how I couldn’t see. In a moment or two I jumped out and hurried to my cabin, but young Holdsworth was fast asleep. I sat down, and wrote down just what I had seen, making a note of the exact time, twenty minutes to two. I didn’t turn in again, but sat watching the youngster. When he woke I asked him if he had heard anything of his great uncle by the last mail. Yes, he had heard; the old gentleman was rather feeble, but nothing particular the matter. I kept my own counsel and never told a soul in the ship; and, when the mail came to hand a few days afterwards with a letter from the Commodore to his nephew, dated late in September, saying that he was well, I thought the figure by my hammock must have been all my own fancy.

“However, by the next mail came the news of the old Commodore’s death. ‘It had been a very sudden break-up,’ his executor said. He had left all his property, which was not much, to his great nephew, who was to get leave to come home as soon as he could.

“The first time we touched at Malta, Tom Holdsworth left us and went home. We followed about twoyears afterwards, and the first thing I did after landing was to find out the Commodore’s executor. He was a quiet, dry little Plymouth lawyer, and very civilly answered all my questions about the last days of my old friend. At last I asked him to tell me as near as he could the time of his death; and he put on his spectacles, and got his diary, and turned over the leaves. I was quite nervous till he looked up and said, ‘Twenty-five minutes to two, sir,A.M., on the morning of October 21st; or it might be a few minutes later.’

“‘How do you mean, sir?’ I asked.

“‘Well,’ he said, ‘it is an odd story. The doctor was sitting with me, watching the old man, and, as I tell you, at twenty-five minutes to two, he got up and said it was all over. We stood together, talking in whispers for, it might be, four or five minutes, when the body seemed to move. He was an odd old man, you know, the Commodore, and we never could get him properly to bed, but he lay in his red nightcap and old dressing-gown, with a blanket over him. It was not a pleasant sight, I can tell you, sir. I don’t think one of you gentlemen, who are bred to face all manner of dangers, would have liked it. As I was saying, the body first moved, and then sat up, propping itself behind with its hands. The eyes were wide open, and he looked at us for a moment, and said slowly, “I’ve been to the Mediterranean, but I didn’t see Tom.” Then the body sank back again, and this time the old Commodore was reallydead. But it was not a pleasant thing to happen to one, sir. I do not remember anything like it in my forty years’ practise.’”

There was a silence of a few seconds after the captain had finished his story, all the men sitting with eyes fixed on him, and not a little surprised at the results of their call. Drysdale was the first to break the silence, which he did with a long respiration; but, as he did not seem prepared with any further remark, Tom took up the running.

“What a strange story,” he said; “and that really happened to you, Captain Hardy?”

“To me, sir, in the Mediterranean, more than forty years ago.”

“The strangest thing about it is that the old Commodore should have managed to get all the way to the ship, and then not have known where his nephew was,” said Blake.

“He only knew his nephew’s berth, you see, sir,” said the Captain.

“But he might have beat about through the ship till he had found him.”

“You must remember that he was at his last breath, sir,” said the Captain; “you can’t expect a man to have his head clear at such a moment.”

“Not a man, perhaps; but I should a ghost,” said Blake.

“Time was everything to him,” went on the Captain, without regarding the interruption, “space nothing. But the strangest part of it is that I should have seen the figure at all. It’s true I had been thinking of the old uncle, because of the boy’s illness; but I can’t suppose he was thinking of me, and, as I say, he never recognized me. I have taken a great deal of interest in such matters since that time, but I have never met with just such a case as this.”

“No, that is the puzzle. One can fancy his appearing to his nephew well enough,” said Tom.

“We can’t account for these things, or for a good many other things which ought to be quite as startling, only we see them every day.”

Christianity is in no more real danger now than it was a hundred and fifty years ago, when Dean Swift, and many other greater wits than we have amongst us nowadays, thought and said that it was doomed. We hold in perfect good faith, that the good news our Lord brought is the best the world will ever hear; that there has been a revelation in the man Jesus Christ, of God the Creator of the world as our Father, so that the humblest and poorest man can know God for all purposes for which men need to know him in this life, andcan have his help in becoming like him, the business for which they were sent into it: and that there will be no other revelation, though this one will be, through all time, unfolding to men more and more of its unspeakable depth, and glory, and beauty, in external nature, in human society, in individual men. That, I believe to be a fair statement of the positive religious belief of average Englishmen, if they had to think it out and to put it in words; and all who hold it must of course look upon Christ’s gospel as the great purifying, reforming, redeeming power in the world, and desire that it shall be free to work in their own country on the most favorable conditions which can be found for it.

We should remember that truth is many-sided; that all truth comes from one source. There is only one sun in the heavens, yet, as you know, there are many beautiful colors, all of which come from the one sun. You cannot say that the red is better and truer than the blue, or that the blue is better and truer than the yellow. You may prefer one to the other; you may see that one color is more universal, more applicable for different purposes than another, but there is truth in each. In the same way there is only one earth, but there are a great many different trees which grow out ofit, and which derive their nourishment from it; and although the oak may be very much better suited to England and the fir to Norway, yet we admit that there is truth in each; that one is just as good and true a tree as the other. Therefore, let us who are apt to think in the church and other religious communities that we have got all the truth ourselves, remember that truth is wider than can be apprehended by any body of human beings, and let us be tolerant to one another, not forgetting that those who are not in the same community with us hold their side of the truth as strongly as we do ours.

Each religious community has witnessed, and is witnessing, to some side of the truth. Religious communities are not perfect in themselves like trees or flowers, but for that very reason it is all the more necessary that the members of them should be tolerant, and should make the greatest effort to understand those of other religious beliefs.

I can take little interest in the questions which divide Christian churches and sects, can see no reason why they should not now be working side by side to redeem our waste places, and to make the kingdoms of this world the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ.

St. Ambrose was a holy man, and exceeding zealous, even to slaying for the one true creed. One day as hewas walking in deep meditation as to how to bring all men to his own mind, he was aware of a stream, and a youth seated beside it. He had never seen so beautiful a countenance, and sat down by him to speak of those things on which his mind continually dwelt. To his horror he found that the beautiful face covered a most heretical mind, and he spoke in sorrowful anger to the youth of his danger. Whereupon the young stranger produced six or seven vases, all of different shapes and colors, and, as he filled them from the brook, said to the saint (as the legend is versified by Mr. Lowell):—

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