The Thread of Gold

XXXVII

Renewal

There sometimes falls upon me a great hunger of heart, a sad desire to build up and renew something – a broken building it may be, a fading flower, a failing institution, a ruinous character. I feel a great and vivid pity for a thing which sets out to be so bright and beautiful, and lapses into shapeless and uncomely neglect. Sometimes, indeed, it must be a desolate grief, a fruitless sorrow: as when a flower that has stood on one's table, and cheered the air with its freshness and fragrance, begins to droop, and to grow stained and sordid. Or I see some dying creature, a wounded animal; or even some well-loved friend under the shadow of death, with the hue of health fading, the dear features sharpening for the last change; and then one can only bow, with such resignation as one can muster, before the dreadful law of death, pray that the passage may not be long or dark, and try to dream of the bright secrets that may be waiting on the other side.

But sometimes it is a more fruitful sadness, when one feels that decay can be arrested, that new life can be infused; that a fresh start may be taken, and a life may be beautifully renewed, and be even the brighter, one dares to hope, for a lapse into the dreary ways of bitterness.

This sadness is most apt to beset those who have anything to do with the work of education. One feels sometimes, with a sudden shiver, as when the shadow of a cloud passes over a sunlit garden, that many elements are at work in a small society; that an evil secret is spreading over lives that were peaceful and contented, that suspicion and disunion and misunderstanding are springing up, like poisonous weeds, in the quiet corner that God has given one to dress and keep. Then perhaps one tries to put one's hand on what is amiss; sometimes one does too much, and in the wrong way; one has not enough faith, one dares not leave enough to God. Or from timidity or diffidence, or from the base desire not to be troubled, from the poor hope that perhaps things will straighten themselves out, one does too little; and that is the worst shadow of all, the shadow of cowardice or sloth.

Sometimes, too, one has the grief of seeing a slow and subtle change passing over the manner and face of one for whom one cares – not the change of languor or physical weakness; that can be pityingly borne; but one sees innocence withering, indifference to things wholesome and fair creeping on, even sometimes a ripe and evil sort of beauty maturing, such as comes of looking at evil unashamed, and seeing its strong seductiveness. One feels instinctively that the door which had been open before between such a soul and one's own spirit is being slowly and firmly closed, or even, if one attempts to open it, pulled to with a swift motion; and then one may hear sounds within, and even see, in that moment, a rush of gliding forms, that makes one sure that a visitant is there, who has brought with him a wicked company; and then one has to wait in sadness, with now and then a timid knocking, even happy, it may be, if the soul sometimes call fretfully within, to say that it is occupied and cannot come forth.

But sometimes, God be praised, it is the other way. A year ago a man came at his own request to see me. I hardly knew him; but I could see at once that he was in the grip of some hard conflict, which withered his natural bloom. I do not know how all came to be revealed; but in a little while he was speaking with simple frankness and naturalness of all his troubles, and they were many. What was the most touching thing of all was that he spoke as if he were quite alone in his experience, isolated and shut off from his kind, in a peculiar horror of darkness and doubt; as if the thoughts and difficulties at which he stumbled had never strewn a human path before. I said but little to him; and, indeed, there was but little to say. It was enough that he should "cleanse the stuff'd bosom of the perilous stuff that weighs upon the heart." I tried to make him feel that he was not alone in the matter, and that other feet had trodden the dark path before him. No advice is possible in such cases; "therein the patient must minister to himself"; the solution lies in the mind of the sufferer. He knows what he ought to do; the difficulty is for him sufficiently to desire to do it; yet even to speak frankly of cares and troubles is very often to melt and disperse the morbid mist that gathers round them, which grows in solitude. To state them makes them plain and simple; and, indeed, it is more than that; for I have often noticed that the mere act of formulating one's difficulties in the hearing of one who sympathises and feels, often brings the solution with it. One finds, like Christian in Doubting Castle, the key which has lain in one's bosom all the time – the key of Promise; and when one has finished the recital, one is lost in bewilderment that one ever was in any doubt at all.

A year has passed since that date, and I have had the happiness of seeing health and contentment stream back into the man's face. He has not overcome, he has not won an easy triumph; but he is in the way now, not wandering on trackless hills.

So, in the mood of which I spoke at first – the mood in which one desires to build up and renew – one must not yield oneself to luxurious and pathetic reveries, or allow oneself to muse and wonder in the half-lit region in which one may beat one's wings in vain – the region, I mean, of sad stupefaction as to why the world is so full of broken dreams, shattered hopes, and unfulfilled possibilities. One must rather look round for some little definite failure that is within the circle of one's vision. And even so, there sometimes comes what is the most evil and subtle temptation of all, which creeps upon the mind in lowly guise, and preaches inaction. What concern have you, says the tempting voice, to meddle with the lives and characters of others – to guide, to direct, to help – when there is so much that is bitterly amiss with your own heart and life? How will you dare to preach what you do not practice? The answer of the brave heart is that, if one is aware of failure, if one has suffered, if one has gathered experience, one must be ready to share it. If I falter and stumble under my own heavy load, which I have borne so querulously, so clumsily, shall not I say a word which can help a fellow-sufferer to bear his load more easily, help him to avoid the mistakes, the falls into which my own perversity has betrayed me? To make another's burden lighter is to lighten one's own burden; and, sinful as it may be to err, it is still more sinful to see another err, and be silent, to withhold the word that might save him. Perhaps no one can help so much as one that has suffered himself, who knows the turns of the sad road, and the trenches which beset the way.

For thus comes most truly the joy of repentance; it is joy to feel that one's own lesson is learnt, and that the feeble feet are a little stronger; but if one may also feel that another has taken heed, has been saved the fall that must have come if he had not been warned, one does not grudge one's own pain, that has brought a blessing with it, that is outside of one's own blessing; one hardly even grudges the sin.

XXXVIII

The Secret

I have been away from my books lately, in a land of downs and valleys; I have walked much alone, or with a silent companion – that greatest of all luxuries. And, as is always the case when I get out of the reach of books, I feel that I read a great deal too much, and do not meditate enough. It sounds indolent advice to say that one ought to meditate; but I cannot help feeling that reading is often a still more indolent affair. When I am alone, or at leisure among my books, I take a volume down; and the result is that another man does my thinking for me. It is like putting oneself in a comfortable railway carriage; one runs smoothly along the iron track, one stops at specified stations, one sees a certain range of country, and an abundance of pretty things in flashes – too many, indeed, for the mind to digest; and that is the reason, I think, why a modern journey, even with all the luxuries that surround it, is so tiring a thing. But to meditate is to take one's own path among the hills; one turns off the track to examine anything that attracts the attention; one makes the most of the few things that one sees.

Reading is often a mere saving of trouble, a soporific for a restless brain. This last week, as I say, I have had very few books with me. One of the few has been Milton's Paradise Lost, and I have read it from end to end. I want to say a few words about the book first, and then to diverge, to a larger question. I have read the poem with a certain admiration; it is a large, strong, rugged, violent thing. I have, however, read it without emotion, except that a few of the similes in it, which lie like shells on a beach of sand, have pleased me. Yet it is not true to say that I have read it without emotion, because I have read it with anger and indignation. I have come to the conclusion that the book has done a great deal of harm. It is responsible, I think, for a great many of the harsh, business-like, dismal views of religion that prevail among us. Milton treated God, the Saviour, and the angels, from the point of view of a scholar who had read the Iliad. I declare that I think that the passages where God the Father speaks, discusses the situation of affairs, and arranges matters with the Saviour, are some of the most profane and vicious passages in English literature. I do not want to be profane myself, because it is a disgusting fault; but the passage where the scheme of Redemption is arranged, where God enquires whether any of the angels will undergo death in order to satisfy his sense of injured justice, is a passage of what I can only call stupid brutality, disguised, alas, in the solemn and majestic robe of sonorous language. The angels timidly decline, and the Saviour volunteers, which saves the shameful situation. The character of God, as displayed by Milton, is that of a commercial, complacent, irritable Puritan. There is no largeness or graciousness about it, no wistful love. He keeps his purposes to himself, and when his arrangements break down, as indeed they deserve to do, some one has got to be punished. If the guilty ones cannot, so much the worse; an innocent victim will do, but a victim there must be. It is a wicked, an abominable passage, and I would no more allow an intelligent child to read it than I would allow him to read an obscene book.

Then, again, the passage where the rebel angels cast cannon, make gunpowder, and mow the good angels down in rows, is incredibly puerile and ridiculous. The hateful materialism of the whole thing is patent. I wish that the English Church could have an Index, and put Paradise Lost upon it, and allow no one to read it until he had reached years of discretion, and then only with a certificate, and for purely literary purposes.

It is a terrible instance how strong a thing Art is; the grim old author, master of every form of ugly vituperation, had drifted miserably away from his beautiful youth, when he wrote the sweet poems and sonnets that make the pedestal for his fame; and on that delicate pedestal stands this hideous iron figure, with its angry gestures, its sickening strength.

I could pile up indignant instances of the further harm the book has done. Who but Milton is responsible for the hard and shameful view of the position of women? He represents her as a clinging, soft, compliant creature, whose only ideal is to be to make things comfortable for her husband, and to submit to his embraces. Milton spoilt the lives of all the women he had to do with, by making them into slaves, with the same consciousness of rectitude with which he whipped his nephews, the sound of whose cries made his poor girl-wife so miserable. But I do not want to go further into the question of Milton himself. I want to follow out a wider thought which came to me among the downs to-day.

There seems to me to be in art, to take the metaphor of the temple at Jerusalem, three gradations or regions, which may be typified by the Court, the Holy Place, and the Holy of Holies. Into the Court many have admittance, both writers and readers; it is just shut off from the world, but admittance is easy and common. All who are moved and stirred by ideas and images can enter here. Then there is the Holy Place, dark and glorious, where the candlestick glimmers and the altar gleams. And to this place the priests of art have access. Here are to be found all delicate and strenuous craftsmen, all who understand that there are secrets and mysteries in art. They can please and thrill the mind and ear; they can offer up a fragrant incense; but the full mystery is not revealed to them. Here are to be found many graceful and soulless poets, many writers of moving tales, and discriminating critics, who are satisfied, but cannot satisfy. Those who frequent this place are generally of opinion that they know all that is to be known; they talk much of form and colour, of values and order. They can make the most of their materials; and indeed their skill outruns their emotion.

But there is the inmost shrine of all within, where the darkness broods, lit at intervals by the shining of a divine light, that glimmers on the ark and touches the taper wings of the adoring angels. The contents indeed of the sacred chest are of the simplest; a withered branch, a pot of food, two slabs of grey stone, obscurely engraved. Nothing rich or rare. But those who have access to the inner shrine are face to face with the mystery. Some have the skill to hint it, none to describe it. And there are some, too, who have no skill to express themselves, but who have visited the place, and bring back some touch of radiance gushing from their brows.

Milton, in his youth, had looked within the shrine, but he forgot, in the clamorous and sordid world, what he had seen. Only those who have visited the Holiest place know those others who have set foot there, and they cannot err. I cannot define exactly what it is that makes the difference. It cannot be seen in performance; for here I will humbly and sincerely make the avowal that I have been within the veil myself, though I know not when or how. I learnt there no perfection of skill, no methods of expression. But ever since, I have looked out for the signs that tell me whether another has set foot there or no. I sometimes see the sign in a book, or a picture; sometimes it comes out in talk; and sometimes I discern it in the glance of an eye, for all the silence of the lips. It is not knowledge, it is not pride that the access confers. Indeed it is often a sweet humility of soul. It is nothing definite; but it is a certain attitude of mind, a certain quality of thought. Some of those who have been within are very sinful persons, very unhappy, very unsatisfactory, as the world would say. But they are never perverse or wilful natures; they are never cold or mean. Those in whom coldness and meanness are found are of necessity excluded from the Presence. But though the power to step behind the veil seldom brings serenity, or strength, or confidence, yet it is the best thing that can happen to a man in the world.

Some perhaps of those who read these words will think that it is all a vain shadow, and that I am but wrapping up an empty thought in veils of words. But though I cannot explain, though I cannot say what the secret is, I can claim to be able to say almost without hesitation whether a human spirit has passed within; and more than that. As I write these words, I know that if any who have set foot in the secret shrine reads them, they will understand, and recognise that I am speaking a simple truth.

Some, indeed, find their way thither through religion; but none whose religion is like Milton's. Indeed, part of the wonder of the secret is the infinite number of paths that lead there; they are all lonely; the moment is unexpected; indeed, as was the case with myself, it is possible to set foot within, and yet not to know it at the time.

It is this secret which constitutes the innermost brotherhood of the world. The innermost, I say, because neither creed, nor nationality, nor occupation, nor age, nor sex affects the matter. It is difficult, or shall I say unusual, for the old to enter; and most find the way there in youth, before habit and convention have become tyrannous, and have fenced the path of life with hedges and walls.

Again it is the most secret brotherhood of the world; no one can dare to make public proclamation of it, no one can gather the saints together, for the essence of the brotherhood is its isolation. One may indeed recognise a brother or a sister, and that is a blessed moment; but one must not speak of it in words; and indeed there is no need of words, where all that matters is known. It may be asked what are the benefits which this secret brings. It does not bring laughter, or prosperity, or success, or even cheerfulness; but it brings a high, though fitful, joy – a joy that can be captured, practised, retained. No one can, I think, of set purpose, capture the secret. No one can find the way by desiring it. And yet the desire to do so is the seed of hope. And if it be asked, why I write and print these veiled words about so deep and intimate a mystery, I would reply that it is because not all who have found the way, know that they have found it; and my hope is that these words of mine may show some restless hearts that they have found it. For one may find the shrine in youth, and for want of knowing that one has found it, may forget it in middle age; and that is what I sorrowfully think that not a few of my brothers do. And the sign of such a loss is that such persons speak contemptuously and disdainfully of their visions, and try to laugh and deride the young and gracious out of such hopes; which is a sin that is hateful to God, a kind of murder of souls.

And now I have travelled a long way from where I began, but the path was none of my own making. It was Milton, that fierce and childish poet, that held open the door, and within I saw the ladder, at the fiery head of which is God Himself. And like Jacob (who was indeed of our company) I made a pillow for my head of the stones of the place, that I might dream more abundantly.

And so, as I walked to-day among the green places of the down, I made a prayer in my heart to God, the matter of which I will now set down; and it was that all of us who have visited that most Holy Place may be true to the vision; and that God may reveal us to each other, as we go on pilgrimage; and that as the world goes forward, he may lead more and more souls to visit it, that bare and secret place, which yet holds more beauty than the richest palace of the world. For palaces but hold the outer beauty, in types and glimpses and similitudes. While in the secret shrine we visit the central fountainhead, from which the water of life, clear as crystal, breaks in innumerable channels, and flows out from beneath the temple door, as Ezekiel saw it flow, lingering and delaying, but surely coming to gladden the earth. I could indeed go further, and speak many things out of a full heart about the matter. I could quote the names of many poets and artists, great and small; and I could say which of them belongs to the inner company, and which of them is outside. But I will not do this, because it would but set inquisitive people puzzling and wondering, and trying to guess the secret; and that I have no desire to do; because these words are not written to make those who do not understand to be curious; but they are written to those who know, and, most of all, to those who know, but have forgotten. No one may traffic in these things; and indeed there is no opportunity to do so. I could learn in a moment, from a sentence or a smile, if one had the secret; and I could spend a long summer day trying to explain it to a learned and intelligent person, and yet give no hint of what I meant. For the thing is not an intelligible process, a matter of reasoning and logic; it is an intuition. And therefore it is that those who cannot believe in anything that they do not understand, will think these words of mine to be folly and vanity. The only case where I have found a difficulty in deciding, is when I talk to one who has lived much with those who had the secret, and has caught, by a kind of natural imitation, some of the accent and cadence of the truth. An old friend of mine, a pious woman, used in her last days to have prayers and hymns read much in her room; there was a parrot that sat there in his cage, very silent and attentive; and not long after, when the parrot was ill, he used to mutter prayers and hymns aloud, with a devotion that would have deceived the very elect. And it is even so with the people of whom I have spoken. Not long ago I had a long conversation with one, a clever woman, who had lived much in the house of a man who had seen the truth; and I was for a little deceived, and thought that she also knew the truth. But suddenly she made a hard judgment of her own, and I knew in a moment that she had never seen the shrine.

And now I have said enough, and must make an end. I remember that long ago, when I was a boy, I painted a picture on a panel, and set it in my room. It was the figure of a kneeling youth on a hillock, looking upwards; and beyond the hillock came a burst of rays from a hidden sun. Underneath it, for no reason that I can well explain, I painted the words phôs etheasamen kai emphobos en—I beheld a light and was afraid. I was then very far indeed from the sight of the truth; but I know now that I was prophesying of what should be; for the secret sign of the mystery is a fear, not a timid and shrinking fear, but a holy and transfiguring awe. I little guessed what would some day befall me; but now that I have seen, I can only say with all my heart that it is better to remember and be sad, than to forget and smile.

XXXIX

The Message

I was awakened this morning, at the old house where I am staying, by low and sweet singing. The soft murmur of an organ was audible, on which some clear trebles seemed to swim and float – one voice of great richness and force seeming to utter the words, and to draw into itself the other voices, appropriating their tone but lending them personality. These were the words I heard —

The sweet sounds ceased; the organ lingered for an instant in a low chord of infinite sweetness, and then a voice was heard in prayer. That there was a chapel in the house I knew, and that a brief morning prayer was read there. But I could not help wondering at the remarkable distinctness with which I heard the words – they seemed close to my ear in the air beside me. I got up, and drawing my curtains found that it was day; and then I saw that a tiny window in the corner of my room, that gave on the gallery of the chapel, had been left open, by accident or design, and that thus I had been an auditor of the service.

I found myself pondering over the words of the hymn, which was familiar to me, though strangely enough is to be found in but few collections. It is a perfect lyric, both in its grave language and its beautiful balance; and it is too, so far as such a composition can be, or ought to be, intensely dramatic. The thought is just touched, and stated with exquisite brevity and restraint; there is not a word too much or too little; the image is swiftly presented, the inner meaning flashed upon the mind. It seemed to me, too, a beautiful and desirable thing to begin the day thus, with a delicate hallowing of the hours; to put one gentle thought into the heart, perfumed by the sweet music. But then my reflections took a further drift; beautiful as the little ceremony was, noble and refined as the thought of the tender hymn was, I began to wonder whether we do well to confine our religious life to so restricted a range of ideas. It seemed almost ungrateful to entertain the thought, but I felt a certain bewilderment as to whether this remote image, drawn from the ancient sacrificial ceremony, was not even too definite a thought to feed the heart upon. For strip the idea of its fair accessories, its delicate art, and what have we but the sad belief, drawn from the dark ages of the world, that the wrathful Creator of men, full of gloomy indignation at their perverseness and wilfulness, needs the constant intercession of the Eternal Son, who is too, in a sense, Himself, to appease the anger with which he regards the sheep of his hand. I cannot really in the depths of my heart echo that dark belief. I do not indeed know why God permits such blindness and sinfulness among men, and why he allows suffering to cloud and darken the world. But it would cause me to despair of God and man alike, if I felt that he had flung our pitiful race into the world, surrounded by temptation both within and without, and then abandoned himself to anger at their miserable dalliance with evil. I rather believe that we are rising and struggling to the light, and that his heart is with us, not against us in the battle. It may of course be said that all that kind of Calvinism has disappeared; that no rational Christians believe it, but hold a larger and a wider faith. I think that this is true of a few intelligent Christians, as far as the dropping of Calvinism goes, though it seems to me that they find it somewhat difficult to define their faith; but as to Calvinism having died out in England, I do not think that there is any reason to suppose that it has done so; I believe that a large majority of English Christians would believe the above-quoted hymn to be absolutely justified in its statements both by Scripture and reason, and that a considerable minority would hardly consider it definite enough.