Chapter III: Part I: I (2)

Or perhaps the pattern is a floral one. It thinks to coax me into a feeling that I am in the garden among the roses, the rhododendrons, or the chrysanthemums. But it is a hopeless failure. Whoever saw roses, rhododendrons, or chrysanthemums, all of exactly the same size, of precisely the same colour, and hanging in rows at mathematically identical levels? The beauty of the garden is that having looked at _this_ rose, I am the more eager to see _that_ one; having admired _this_ chrysanthemum, I am the more curious to mark the variety presented by _the next_. No two are precisely the same. And because this infinite diversity is the essential charm both of the heavens above and of the earth beneath, I am shocked and repelled by the monotony of the pattern on the linoleum. In the old days it was customary to plaster the walls, even of sick-rooms, with papers of patterns equally pronounced, and many a poor patient was tortured almost to death by the glaring geometrical abominations. The doctor said that the sufferer was to be kept perfectly quiet; yet the pattern on the wall is allowed to scream at him and shout at him from night until morning, and from morning until night. He has counted those awful stars or roses, perpendicularly, horizontally, diagonally, from right to left, from left to right, from top to bottom, and from bottom to top, until the hideous monstrosities are reproduced in frightful duplicate upon the fevered tissues of his throbbing brain. He may close his eyes, but he sees them still. It was a form of torture worthy of an inquisitor-general. The pattern on the linoleum is happily not quite so bad. When we are ill we do not see it; and when we are well we may to some extent avoid it. Not altogether; for even if we do not look at it, we have an uncanny feeling that it is there. Between the hearthrug and the table I catch sight of the bright flaunting head of a scarlet poppy, or of the tossing petals of a huge chrysanthemum, and my imagination instantly flashes to my mind the horrible impression of tantalizing rows of exactly similar blossoms running off with mathematical precision in every conceivable direction.

For some reason or other we instinctively recoil from these monotonous regularities. I once heard a friend observe that the average woman would rather marry a man whose life was painfully irregular than a man whose life was painfully regular. It may have been an over-statement of the case; but there is something in it. We fall in love with good people, and we fall in love with bad people; but with the man who is 'too proper,' and the woman who is 'too straight-laced,' we very, very rarely fall in love. It is the problem of Tennyson's 'Maud.' As a girl Maud was irregular--and lovable.

Maud, with her venturous climbings and tumbles and childish escapes,
Maud, the delight of the village, the ringing joy of the Hall,
Maud, with her sweet purse-mouth when my father dangled the grapes,
Maud, the beloved of my mother, the moon-faced darling of all.

But later on Maud was regular--and as unattractive as linoleum.

... Maud, she has neither savour nor salt,
But a cold and clear-cut face, as I found when her carriage passed,
Perfectly beautiful: let it be granted her: where is the fault?
All that I saw (for her eyes were downcast, not to be seen)
Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null,
Dead perfection, no more.

Shall I be told that this is high doctrine, and hard to bear, this doctrine of the lovableness of irregularity? I think not. Towering above all our biographies, as snowclad heights tower above dusty little molehills, there stands the life-story of One who, alone among the sons of men, was altogether good. It is the most charming and the most varied life-story that has ever been written since this little world began. Its lovely deeds and graceful speech, its tender pathos and its awful tragedy, have won the hearts of men all over the world, and all down the ages. But find monotony there if you can! It is like a sky full of stars or a field of fairest flowers. The life that repels, as the linoleum repels, by the very severity of its regularity, has something wrong with it somewhere.

If I have outraged the sensibilities of any well-meaning champion of a geometrical and mathematical and linoleum-like regularity, let me hasten to conciliate him! I know that even regularity--the regularity of the linoleum pattern--may have its advantages. Dr. George MacDonald, in _Robert Falconer_, says that 'there is a well-authenticated story of a notorious convict who was reformed by entering, in one of the colonies, a church where the matting along the aisle was of the same pattern as that in the church to which he had gone with his mother as a boy.' Bravo! It is pleasant, extremely pleasant, to find that even monotony has its compensations. Let me but get to know my 'too proper' and 'straight-laced' friends a little better, and I shall doubtless discover even there a few redeeming features.

But, for all that, the linoleum is cold; and we do not fall in love with cold things. A volcano is a much more dangerous affair than an iceberg; but it is much more easy to fall in love with the things that make you shudder than with the things that make you shiver. That was the trouble with Maud, she was so chilly and chilling; her 'cold and clear-cut face, faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null!' And that is precisely the trouble with every system of religion, morality, or philosophy--save one--that has ever been presented to the minds of men. Plato and Aristotle and Marcus Aurelius were splendid, simply splendid; but they were frigid, frigid as Maud, and their counsels of perfection could never have enchained my heart. Buddha, Confucius, Mohammed--the stars of the East--were wonderful, but oh, so cold! I turn from these icy regularities to the lovely life I have already mentioned. And, to use Whittier's expressive word, it is 'warm.'

Yes, warm, sweet, tender, even yet
A present help is He;
And faith has yet its Olivet,
And love its Galilee.

_'Warm'_ ... _'love'_ ... here are words that touch my soul to tears. 'We love Him because _He first loved us_.' The monotony and frigidity of the linoleum have given way to the beauty and the brightness of flowery fields all bathed in summer sunshine.

V

THE EDITOR

I approach my present theme with considerable diffidence, for reasons obvious and for reasons obscure. For one thing, I was for some years an editor myself, and I cannot satisfy myself that the experiment was even a moderate success. Everything went splendidly, so far as I was concerned, as long as I wrote everything myself; but I was terribly pestered by other people. They worried me year in and year out, morning, noon, and night. They would insist on sending me manuscripts that I had neither the grace to accept nor the courage to decline. They wrote the most learned treatises, the most pathetic stories, and the most affecting little sonnets. The latter, they explained, were for Poet's Corner. They actually deluged me with letters, intended for publication, dealing with all sorts of subjects in which I took not the slightest glimmer of interest. They sometimes even presumed, in some carping or captious way, to criticize or review things that I had myself written--as though such things were open to question! At other times they wrote to applaud the sentiments I had expressed--as though I needed their corroboration! They were an awful nuisance. The stupid thing was only a monthly, and how they imagined that there would be any room for _their_ contributions, by the time I had been a whole month writing, passes my comprehension. Then came the awakening, and it was a rude one. I suddenly realized that I was a fraud, a delusion, and a snare. I was not an editor at all. I was simply masquerading, playing a great game of bluff and make-believe. As a matter of fact, I was nothing more than an objectionably garrulous contributor who had gained possession of the editor's sanctum, usurped the editor's authority, and commandeered the editor's chair. I felt so ashamed of myself that I precipitately fled, and, although I have several times since been invited to assume editorial responsibilities, I have shown my profound respect for journalism by politely but firmly declining. It does not at all follow that, because a man can make a few bricks, he can therefore build a mansion. A chemist may be very clever at making up prescriptions, but that does not prove his ability to prescribe.

During the years to which I have referred, that paper really had no editor. An editor would have done three things. He would have written a few wise words himself. He would have pitilessly repressed my unconscionable volubility. And he would have given the public the benefit of some of those carefully prepared contributions which I, with savage satisfaction, hurled into the waste-paper basket. It would have been a good thing for the paper if the editorials had been so few and so brief that people could have been reasonably expected to read them. They would then have attached to them the gravity and authority that such contributions should normally carry. And it would have been good for the world in general, and for me in particular, if liberal quantities of my manuscript had been substitutionally sacrificed in redemption of some of those rolls of paper, whose destruction I now deplore, which I consigned to limbo with so light a heart. Since then I have had a fairly wide experience of editors, and the years have increased my respect. 'O Lord,' an up-country suppliant once exclaimed at the week-night prayer-meeting, 'O Lord, the more I sees of other people the more I likes myself!' I do not quite share the good man's feeling, at any rate so far as editors are concerned. The more I have seen of the ways of other editors the less am I pleased with the memory of my own attempt. The way in which these other editors have treated my own manuscript makes me blush for very shame as I remember my editorial intolerance of such packages. Very occasionally an editor has found it necessary to delete some portion of my contribution, and, nine times out of ten, I have admired the perspicacity which detected the excrescence and strengthened the whole by removing the part. I say nine times out of ten; but I hint at the tenth case in no spirit of resentment or bitterness. I am young yet, and the years may easily teach me that, even in the instances that still seem doubtful to me, I am under a deep and lasting obligation to the editorial surgery.

The editor is the emblem of all those potent, elusive, invisible forces that control our human destinies. We are clearly living in an edited world. We may not always agree with the editor; it would be passing strange if we did. We may see lots of things admitted that we, had we been editor, would have vigorously excluded. The venom of the cobra, the cruelty of the wolf, the anguish of a sickly babe, and the flaunting shame of the street corner; had I been editor I should have ruthlessly suppressed all these contributions. But my earlier experience of editorship haunts my memory to warn me. I was too fond of rejecting things in those days. I was too much attached to the waste-paper basket. And I have been sorry for it ever since. And perhaps when I have lived a few aeons longer, and have had experience of more worlds than one, I shall feel ashamed of my present inclination to doubt the editor's wisdom. Knowing as little as I know, I should certainly have rejected these contributions with scorn and impatience. The fangs of the viper, the teeth of the crocodile, and all things hideous and hateful, I should have intolerantly excluded. And, some ages later, with the experience of a few millenniums and the knowledge of many worlds to guide me, I should have lamented my folly, even as I now deplore my old editorial exclusiveness.

And, on the other hand, we sometimes catch a glimpse of the editor's waste-paper basket, and the revelation is an astounding one. The waste of the world is terrific. And among these rejected manuscripts I see some most exquisitely beautiful things. The other day, not far from here, a snake bit a little girl and killed her. Now here was a curious freak of editorship! On the editor's table there lay two manuscripts. There was the snake--a loathsome, scaly brute, with wicked little eyes and venomous fangs, a thing that made your flesh creep to look at it. And there was the little girl, a sweet little thing with curly hair and soft blue eyes, a thing that you could not see without loving. Had I been there, I should have tried to kill the snake and save the child. That is to say, I should have accepted the child-manuscript, and rejected the snake-manuscript. But the editor does exactly the opposite. The snake-manuscript is accepted; the horrid thing glides through the bush at this moment as a recognized part of the scheme of the universe. The child-manuscript is rejected; it is thrown away; have we not seen it, like a crumpled poem, in the editor's waste-paper basket? How differently I should have acted had I been editor! And then, when I afterwards reviewed my editorship, as I to-day review that other editorship of mine, I should have seen that I was wrong. And that reflection makes me very thankful that I am not the editor. We shall yet come to see, in spite of all present appearances to the contrary, that the editor adopted the kindest, wisest, best course with each of the manuscripts presented. We shall see

That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroyed,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete;

That not a worm is cloven in vain;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another's gain.

Everybody feels at liberty to criticize the Editor; but, depend upon it, when all the information is before us that is before Him, we shall see that our paltry judgement was very blind. And we shall recognize with profound admiration that we have been living in a most skilfully edited world.

For, after all, that is the point. The Editor knows so much more than I do. He has eyes and ears in the ends of the earth. His sanctum seems so remote from everything, and yet it is an observatory from which He beholds all the drama of the world's great throbbing life. When I was a boy I was very fond of a contrivance that was called a camera-obscura. I usually found it among the attractions of a seaside town. You paid a penny, entered a room, and sat down beside a round white table. The operator followed, and closed the door. The place was then in total darkness; you could not see your hand before you. It seemed incredible that in this black hole one could get a clearer view of all that was happening in the neighbourhood than was possible out in the sunlight. Yet, as soon as the lens above you was opened, the whole scene appeared like a moving coloured photograph on the white table. The waves breaking on the beach; the people strolling on the promenade; everything was faithfully depicted there. Not a dog could wag his tail but there, in the darkness, you saw him do it. An observer who watched you enter, and saw the door close after you, could be certain that now, for awhile, you were cut off from everything. And yet, as a fact, you only went into the darkness that you might see the whole scene in the more perfect perspective. What is this but the editor's sanctum? He enters it and, to all appearances, he leaves the world behind him as he does so. But it is a mere illusion. He enters it that he may see the whole world more clearly from its quiet seclusion.

In the same way, when I look round upon the world, and see the things that are allowed to happen, the Editor seems fearfully aloof. He seems to have gone into His heaven and closed the door behind Him. 'Clouds and darkness are round about Him,' says the psalmist. And if clouds and darkness are round about Him, is it any wonder that His vision is obscure? If clouds and darkness are round about Him, is it any wonder that He acts so strangely? If clouds and darkness are round about Him, is it any wonder that He rejects the child-manuscript and accepts the snake-manuscript? And yet, and yet; what if the darkness that envelops Him be the darkness of the camera-obscura? The psalmist declares that it is just because clouds and darkness are round about Him that righteousness and judgement are the habitation of His throne. It is a darkness that obscures Him from me without in the slightest degree concealing me from Him.

So there the editor sits in his seclusion. Nobody is so unobtrusive. You may read your paper, day after day, year in and year out, without even discovering the editor's name. You would not recognize him if you met him on the street. He may be young or old, tall or short, stout or slim, dark or fair, shabby or genteel--you have no idea. There is something strangely mysterious about the elusive individuality of that potent personage who every day draws so near to you, and yet of whom you know so little. One of these days I shall be invited to preach a special sermon to editors, and, in view of so dazzling an opportunity, I have already selected my text. I shall speak of that Ideal Servant of Humanity of whom the prophet tells. 'He shall not scream, nor be loud, nor advertise Himself,' Isaiah says, 'but He shall never break a bruised reed nor quench a smouldering wick.' That would make a great theme for a sermon to editors. There He is, so mysterious and yet so mighty; so remote and yet so omniscient; so invisible and yet so eloquent; so slow to obtrude Himself and yet so swift to discern any flickering spark of genius in others. He shall not advertise Himself nor quench a single smouldering wick.

There are two great moments in the history of a manuscript. The first is the moment of its preparation; the second is the moment of its appearance. And in between the two comes the editor's censorship and revision. I said just now that I had noticed that editorial emendations are almost invariably distinct improvements. The article as it appears is better than the article as it left my hands. Now let me think. I spoke a moment ago of the child-manuscript and the snake-manuscript; but what about myself? Am not I too a manuscript, and shall I not also fall into the Editor's hands? What about all the blots, and the smudges, and the erasures, and the alterations? Will they all be seen when I appear, _when I appear_? The Editor sees to that. The Editor will take care that none of the smudges on this poor manuscript shall be seen when I appear. 'For we know,' says one of the Editor's most intimate friends, 'we know that _when we appear_ we shall be like Him--without spot or wrinkle or any such thing!' It is a great thing to know that, before I appear, I shall undergo the Editor's revision.

Charlie was very excited. His father was a sailor. The ship was homeward bound, and dad would soon be home. Thinking so intently and exclusively of his father's coming, Charlie determined to carve out a ship of his own. He took a block of wood, and set to work. But the wood was hard, and the knife was blunt, and Charlie's fingers were very small.

'Dad may be here when you wake up in the morning, Charlie!' his mother said to him one night.

That night Charlie took his ship and his knife to bed with him. When his father came at midnight Charlie was fast asleep, the blistered hand on the counterpane not far from the knife and the ship. The father took the ship, and, with his own strong hand, and his own sharp knife, it was soon a trim and shapely vessel. Charlie awoke with the lark next morning, and, proudly seizing his ship, he ran to greet his father; and it is difficult to say which of the two was the more proud of it. It is an infinite comfort to know that, however blotted and blurred this poor manuscript may be when I lay down my pen at night, the Editor will see to it that I have nothing to be ashamed of _when I appear_ in the morning.

VI

THE PEACEMAKER

Things had come to a pretty pass up at Corinth, when Paul felt it incumbent upon him to write to the members of the Church, imploring them to be reconciled to God. 'Now then,' Paul said to those recalcitrant believers, 'now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us, we pray you, in Christ's stead, _be ye reconciled to God_.' I used to wonder what he can possibly have meant; but now I think I understand.

I

Claudius was wealthy. He dwelt in a beautiful house on the top of a hill, on the eastern side of the city of Corinth. From his spacious balconies he looked down upon the blue, blue waters of the Adriatic as they lapped caressingly the sands of the bay on the one side, and on the spreading sapphire of the island-studded Aegean gleaming most charmingly upon the other. Away in the distance he commanded a magnificent prospect, and could clearly make out the towers and domes of Athens as they pierced the sky on the far horizon. The Acropolis could be seen distinctly. It was a delightful home, delightfully situated. Claudius was a member of the Church; but he was not very happy about it. Claudius had prospered amazingly of late years, and his prosperity had involved him in commercial and social entanglements from which it would be very difficult now to escape. The life that Claudius had set before himself in the early days of his spiritual experience seemed to him later on like a beautiful dream. That is to say, it seemed to him like a dream when he thought about it; but he did not think about it more often than he could help. Claudius knew perfectly well that the life of which he used to dream was worth some sacrifice; and he knew that he was really the poorer, and not the richer, for having abandoned that radiant ideal. He occasionally attended the assembly of worshippers, it is true; but he derived small satisfaction from the exercise. It seemed like exposing his poor withered, emaciated soul to the limelight; and he saw with a start how starved and famished it had become. And so the inner experience of poor Claudius became a perpetual battle-ground. At times the old dream seemed within an ace of being victorious. He was more than half inclined to break away from all his later entanglements, and to renew the ardour of his youthful aspirations. But he had scarcely reached this devout determination when the glamour of his later life once more began to dazzle him. Alluring invitations, temptingly phrased, poured in upon him. It is horrid to be discourteous! How could he bring himself to offend people from whom he had received nothing but kindness? Surely a man owes something to the proprieties of life! And so the fight went on. But in the depths of his secret soul Claudius knew that that fight was a fight between Claudius on the one hand and God on the other. He knew, too, that in that stern conflict Claudius was altogether wrong, and God was altogether right. And he knew that, if he persisted in the unequal struggle, nothing but shame and humiliation awaited him. Claudius knew it, and Paul knew it. Paul knew it, and proffered his good offices as mediator. 'Now then,' he wrote, with Claudius in his eye, 'now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us, we pray you, in Christ's stead, _be ye reconciled to God_.' And the words brought to the heart of poor Claudius just such a surge of vehement emotion as a lover feels at the prospect of once more embracing the beloved form with which he had so angrily and hastily parted.

II

Polonius and Phebe were in a very different case. Polonius dwelt close to the city in order to be near his work, and his windows commanded no view of any kind. He was not a slave, but sometimes he said bitterly that the slaves were as happy as he. The world had gone hardly with Polonius. The stars in their courses seemed to be fighting against him. He had tried hard to be brave, but circumstances sometimes conspire against courage. Polonius, in spite of the most commendable endeavours, was poor; yet if poverty had been his only misfortune he could have borne it with a smile. But, in addition to poverty, troubles came thick and fast upon him. Like Claudius, he was a member of the church at Corinth; and it was in connexion with his labours of love for the sanctuary that he had first met Phebe. She was young and fair in those days, and her loveliness was glorified by her devotion. But his love for her had fallen upon her tender spirit like a malediction. It was as though his fondness for his sweet young wife had woven a malignant spell about her early womanhood. He would have died a thousand deaths to make her happy; yet since first they linked their lives they had known nothing but incessant struggle and ceaseless grief. Phebe herself had been ill again and again. Four little children had stolen like sunbeams into their home; only, like sunbeams, to vanish again, and give place to tempests of tears. Then came a long blank; and they fancied they were doomed to spend the rest of their sad lives childlessly. But, at length, to their unspeakable delight, their little home once more resounded with the shout of baby merriment and the patter of baby footsteps. It was as if the four children who had perished had bequeathed to this new treasure all the affection that they had excited in the breasts of their poor parents. And then, after seven happy years, it too faded and died. Polonius and Phebe were broken-hearted. Never again, they said, would they go to the assembly at Corinth. How could they believe in the love of God after this? And so their hearts grew hard, and their souls were soured, and all sweetness departed from their spirits.

There is a story very like this in our own literature. In the old house at Kettering, Andrew Fuller was lying ill in one room, whilst his only surviving daughter--a child of six--lay at the point of death in the next. He tried hard to reconcile himself and his poor wife to the impending calamity. But their spirits revolted. The thought that, after having buried first one child and then another, this one too might be snatched from them was more than they could bear. But, 'on Tuesday, May 30,' says Fuller in his diary, 'on Tuesday, May 30, as I lay ill in bed in another room, I heard a whispering. I inquired, and all were silent! All were silent!--but all is well. _I feel reconciled to God_.' That is a fine saying. '_I feel reconciled to God_.' But poor Polonius and Phebe could as yet enter no such brave words in their domestic record. 'Wherefore,' writes Paul, with a thought, perhaps, of Polonius and Phebe, 'wherefore we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us, we pray you, in Christ's stead, _be ye reconciled to God_.' And when Polonius and Phebe heard that touching appeal they resolved no longer to kick against the pricks. 'Renew my will,' they prayed, anticipating the language of a later hymn:

Renew my will from day to day;
Blend it with Thine; and take away
All that now makes it hard to say,
'Thy will be done!'

And, like Andrew Fuller and his wife at Kettering, Polonius and his wife at Corinth were able to say, '_I feel reconciled to God_.'

III

To the south of Corinth, just where the great main road begins to ascend the ridge of the mountains, lived Julia. Julia was a widow, comfortably circumstanced. Her husband had died years before, leaving her with the charge of their one young son. And as the days had gone by, and time had sprinkled strands of silver into Julia's hair, she had built her hopes more and more upon the future of her boy. Julia's husband had died before either he or she had so much as heard the name of Jesus. But after his death Paul came over from Athens to Corinth in the course of that first memorable visit to Europe, and Julia had been among his earliest converts. After her conversion Julia often thought of her husband, and was ill at ease. But, like a wise woman, she determined to work for the things that remained rather than to weep over those that were lost to her. And so she devoted all her love, and all her thought, and all her energy, and all her time to her little son. When Paul's first letter to the Christians at Corinth was read to the church, she caught a phrase about being 'baptized for the dead.' She did not quite know what Paul meant by the words; but at any rate she would try to instil into the heart of her boy the lovely faith that she felt certain her husband would cheerfully have embraced. And wonderfully she succeeded. The boy listened with eyes wide open to the tender stories that Julia told him, and his heart acknowledged their profound significance. At the same age at which Jesus went with Mary to the Temple, and was found in the midst of the doctors, young Amplius went with Julia up to the church at Corinth, and was found in the midst of the deacons.

From the very first the soul of Amplius prospered. He was like those trees of which the psalmist sings which, 'planted in the courts of the Lord, flourish in the house of our God.' From the time of his baptism and reception into the sacred fellowship, the child Amplius grew, like the child Jesus, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him. Then, after about six years of happy Christian experience, Amplius confided a wonderful secret to Julia. He told her that he had resolved, with her consent, to devote himself to the sacred office of the ministry. And at that word the soul of Julia died within her. She knew what those early preachers and teachers had suffered. She knew of the martyrdom of all those first apostles. She had heard that even Paul himself had been 'in journeyings often, in perils of rivers and in perils of robbers, in perils by his own countrymen and in perils of the heathen, in perils of the city and in perils of the desert, in perils of the sea and in perils among false brethren.' And Julia's heart failed her as she thought of Amplius faced by such dangers. Moreover, Julia had other plans for Amplius. She had fondly dreamed of him as holding a great place in the city of Corinth. When she had seen rulers and governors performing exalted functions on State occasions, she had said within herself, 'Some day, perhaps, Amplius will wear those robes,' or 'Some day, perhaps, Amplius will make that speech.' And now all such dreams were rudely shattered. Her son would fain be a minister, an outcast, perhaps even a martyr. And at that thought the soul of Julia rebelled, and she began to fight against God.

There is a case like this, also, in our own literature. Grey Hazelrigg was the only child of Lady Hazelrigg, of Carlton Hall. Her ladyship intended her son for the army, but he failed to pass the tests. She then sent him to Cambridge University. There he came under deep religious influences. He began, as opportunities presented themselves, to preach the gospel. His efforts met with immediate acceptance, and he wrote to his astonished mother to say that he desired to become a minister of the old Strict Baptist Communion! The request struck Carlton Hall like a thunderbolt, and the spirit of Lady Hazelrigg rose in instant revolt. But Grey prayed in secret, and preached in public, and pleaded with his mother whenever a suitable opportunity occurred. Then came an experience of which, the Rev. W. Y. Fullerton says, he spoke with sparkling eyes seventy years afterwards. He was on a journey when his mind was suddenly and strangely arrested by the words of Jeremiah, 'Verily, it shall be well with Thy remnant.' He took it to refer to Lady Hazelrigg's opposition to his call; and, surely enough, 'the very next letter that he received from his mother bore the joyful tidings that she was, as she herself phrased it, _reconciled to God_.' Mr. Grey Hazelrigg lived to be nearly a hundred, and his work, both as a writer and a preacher, will be remembered in England with thankfulness for many a day to come. There can be no doubt, therefore, that, in those earlier days, Lady Hazelrigg was fighting against God. And there can be no doubt, either, that, in those early days, Julia was fighting against God. And therefore Paul wrote as he did, perhaps with Julia specially in mind. 'Now then,' he said, 'we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us, we pray you, in Christ's stead, _be ye reconciled to God_.' And, like Lady Hazelrigg, Julia made her peace with God, and her son adorned the Christian ministry for many a long day.

IV

'_Be ye reconciled to God_'--Paul the Peacemaker wrote to the Christians at Corinth. It is vastly important. We so easily drift away from early attachments and early friendships; and even the divine friendship is not immune from this cruel and heartless treatment. We drift away from it, and must needs be reconciled. '_Be ye reconciled to God_,' says Paul the Peacemaker 'for unless you yourselves are reconciled to God, how can you reconcile to God those who are without?' How can I reconcile hearts that are alienated if, between either of those hearts and mine, there exists some embarrassing estrangement? '_Be ye reconciled to God_,' said Paul the Peacemaker to the church at Corinth, for he knew that the Church's ministry of reconciliation would stand stultified and useless so long as the Church herself was out of touch with her Lord.

VII

NOTHING

Nature, they say, abhors a vacuum. For the life of me, I do not know why. But then, for the matter of that, I do not know why I myself love many of the things that I love, and loathe many of the things that I abhor. Nature, however, is not usually capricious. Some deep policy generally prompts her strange behaviour. I must go into this matter a little more carefully. First of all, what is a vacuum? What is Nothing?

I was at a prize distribution not long ago, and as I came out into the street I came upon a little chap crying as though his heart would break. He was quite alone. His parents had not thought it worth their while to accompany him to the function, and thus show their interest in his school life. Perhaps it was owing to the same lack of sympathy on their part that he was among the few boys who were bearing home no prize.

'Hullo, sonny,' I exclaimed,'what's the matter?'

'_Oh, nothing_!' he replied, between his sobs.

'Then what on earth are you crying for?'

'_Oh, nothing_!' he repeated.

I respected his delicacy, and probed no farther into the cause of his discomfiture, but I had collected further evidence of my contention that there is more in Nothing than you would suppose. Nor had I gone far before still further corroboration greeted me. For, at the top of the street, I came upon a group of lads in the centre of which was a boy with a very handsome prize. I paused and admired it.

'And what was this for?' I asked.

'_Oh, nothing_!' he answered, with a blush.

'But, my dear fellow, you must have done something to deserve it!'

'_Oh, it was nothing_!' he reiterated, and it was from his companions that I obtained the information that I sought. But here again it was made clear to me that there is a good deal in Nothing. Nothing is worth thinking about. It is a huge mistake to take things at their face value. Nothing may sometimes represent a modest contrivance for hiding everything; and we must not allow ourselves to be deceived.

An old tradition assures us that, on the sudden death of one of Frederick the Great's chaplains, a certain candidate showed himself most eager for the vacant post. The king told him to proceed to the royal chapel and to preach an impromptu sermon on a text that he would find in the pulpit on arrival. When the critical moment arrived, the preacher opened the sealed packet, and found it--_blank_! Not a word or pen-mark appeared! With a calm smile the clergyman cast his eyes over the congregation, and then said, 'Brethren, here is Nothing. Blessed is he whom Nothing can annoy, whom Nothing can make afraid or swerve from his duty. We read that God from Nothing made all things. And yet look at the stupendous majesty of His infinite creation! And does not Job tell us that Nothing is the foundation of everything? "He hangeth the world upon Nothing," the patriarch declares.' The candidate then proceeded to elaborate the wonder and majesty of that creation that emanated from Nothing, and depended on Nothing. I need scarcely add that Frederick bestowed upon so ingenious a preacher the vacant chaplaincy. And in the years that followed he became one of the monarch's most intimate friends and most trusted advisers.

We must not, however, fly to the opposite extreme, and make too much of Nothing. For the odd thing is that, twice at least in her strange and chequered history, the Church has fallen in love with members of the Nothing family, and, after the fashion of lovers, has completely lost her head over them. On the first occasion she became deeply enamoured of Doing Nothing, and on the second occasion she went crazy over Having-Nothing. I must tell of these amorous exploits one at a time. The adoration of Doing-Nothing had a great vogue at one stage of the Church's history. Who that has once read the thirty-seventh chapter of Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_--the chapter on 'The Origin, Progress, and Effects of the Monastic Life'--will ever cease to be haunted by the weird, fantastic spectacle therein presented? Men suddenly took it into their heads that the only way of serving God was by doing nothing. They swarmed out into the deserts, and lived solitary lives. They took vows of perpetual silence, and ceased to speak; they ate only the most disgusting food; they lived the lives of wild beasts. 'Even sleep, the last refuge of the unhappy, was rigorously measured; the vacant hours rolled heavily on, without business and without pleasure; and, before the close of each day, the tedious progress of the sun was repeatedly accursed.' Here was an amazing phenomenon. It was, of course, only a passing fancy, the merest piece of coquetry on the Church's part. It is unthinkable that she thought seriously of Doing-Nothing, and of settling down with him for the rest of her natural life. The glamour of this casual flirtation soon wore off. The Church discovered to her mortification that there was nothing in Nothing. Saint Anthony, of Alexandria, who felt that the life of the city was too full of incitement to frivolity and pleasure, fled to the desert, to escape from these temptations. He became a hermit. But he gave it up, and returned to Alexandria. The abominable imaginations that haunted his mind in the solitude were far more loathsome and degrading than anything he had experienced in the busy city. Fra Angelico, who also fell in love with Doing-Nothing, says that he heard the flapping of the wings of unclean things about his lonely cell. And Francis Xavier has told us of the seven terrible days that he spent in the tomb of Thomas at Malabar. 'All around me,' he says, 'malignant devils prowled incessantly, and wrestled with me with invisible but obscene hands.' It is the old story, there is nothing in Nothing; and he who falls in love with any member of that family will live to regret the adventure. I remember being greatly impressed by a sentence or two in Nansen's _Farthest North_. He is describing the maddening monotony of the interminable Arctic night. 'Ah!' he exclaims suddenly, 'life's peace is said to be found by holy men in the desert. Here indeed is desert enough; _but peace_!--of that I know nothing. I suppose it is the holiness that is lacking.' The explorer was simply discovering that there is nothing in Nothing but what you yourself take into it.

One would have supposed that, after this heart-breaking affair with Doing-Nothing, the Church would have been on her guard against all members of the Nothing family. But no! she was deceived a second time--in this instance by the wiles of Having-Nothing. I allude, of course, to the story of the Mendicant Orders. We all know how Francis d'Assisi fell in love with Poverty. One day, to the consternation of his friends, they received a letter from the gay young soldier, telling them of his intention to lead an entirely new life. 'I am thinking of taking a wife more beautiful, more rich, more pure than you could ever imagine.' The wife was the Lady Poverty; and Giotto, in a fresco at Assisi, has represented Francis placing the ring on the finger of his bride. The feminine figure is crowned with roses, but she is arrayed in rags, and her feet are bruised with stones and torn with briars. Francis borrowed the tattered and filthy garments of a beggar, and sought alms at the street corners that he might enter into the secret of poverty; and then he and Dominic founded those orders of mendicant monks which became one of the most potent missionary forces of the Middle Ages.

But once again the Church found out that her affections were being played with. There is no more virtue in Having-Nothing than in Doing-Nothing. They are both good-for-nothing. It may be that some of us would be better men if we had less money; but then, others of us would be better men if we had more. It may be that, here and there, you may find a Silas Marner who has been saved by sudden poverty from miserly greed and hardening self-absorption. But, for one such case, it would be easy to point to hundreds of men who have been driven by poverty from the ways of honour, and to hundreds of women who have been forced by poverty from the paths of virtue. It all comes back to this: there is nothing in Nothing. Doing-Nothing and Having-Nothing are deceivers--the pair of them; and the Church must not be beguiled by their blandishments. Work and money are both good things. Even William Law saw that. His _Serious Call_ has often almost made a monk of me, but a sudden flash of common sense always breaks from the page just in time. 'There are two things,' he says in his fine chapter on 'The Wise and Pious Use of an Estate,' 'there are two things which, of all others, most want to be under a strict rule, and which are the greatest blessings both to ourselves and others, when they are rightly used. These two things are our time and our money. These talents are the continual means and opportunities of doing good.' Beware, that is to say, of Doing-Nothing, of Having-Nothing, and of the whole family of Nothings. It is not for nothing that Nature abhors them.

And now it suddenly comes home to me that I am playing on the very verge of a tremendous truth. There is nothing in Nothing. Let me remember that when next I am at death-grips with temptation! Cupid is said to have complained to Jupiter that he could never seize the Muses because he could never find them idle. And I suppose that our everyday remark that 'Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do' has its origin in the same idea. John Locke, the great philosopher, used to say that, in the hour of temptation, he preferred any company rather than his own. If possible, he sought the companionship of children. Anything rather than Nothing. It reminds us of Hannibal. The great Carthaginian led his troops up the Alpine passes, but he found that the heights were strongly held by the Romans. Attack was out of the question. Hannibal watched closely one night, however, and discovered that, under cover of darkness, the enemy withdrew for the night to the warmer valley on the opposite slope. Next night, therefore, Hannibal led his troops to the heights, and, when the Roman general approached in the morning, he found that the tables had been turned upon him. There is always peril in vacancy. The uncultivated garden brings forth weeds. The unoccupied mind becomes the devil's playground. The vacant soul is a lost soul. There is nothing in Nothing.

But for the greatest illustration of my present theme I must betake me to Mark Rutherford. The incident occurred at the most sunless and joyless stage of Mark's career. From all his wretchedness he sought relief in Nothing. He kept his own company, wandered about the fields, abandoned himself to moods, and lost himself in vague and insoluble problems. But one day a strange thing happened. 'I was walking along under the south side of a hill, which was a great place for butterflies, when I saw a man, apparently about fifty years old, coming along with a butterfly net.' They soon chummed up. 'He told me that he had come seven miles that morning to that spot, because he knew that it was haunted by one particular species of butterfly; and, as it was a still, bright day, he hoped to find a specimen.' At first Mark Rutherford felt a kind of contempt for a man who could give himself up to so childish a pastime. But, later on, he heard his story. Years before he had married a delicate girl, of whom he was devotedly fond. She died in childbirth, leaving him completely broken. And, by some inscrutable mystery of fate, the child grew up to be a cripple, horribly deformed, inexpressibly hideous, as ugly as an ape, as lustful as a satyr, and as ferocious as a tiger! The son, after many years, died in a mad-house; and the horror of it all nearly consigned his poor father to a similar asylum. 'During those dark days,' he told Mark Rutherford, 'I went on _gazing gloomily into dark emptiness_, till all life became nothing for me.' _Gazing into emptiness_, mark you! Then there swept across this aching void of nothingness a beautiful butterfly! It caught his fancy, interested him, filled the gap, and saved his reason from uttermost collapse. He began collecting butterflies. He was no longer _gazing into emptiness_. And the moral of the incident is stated in a single sentence. 'Men should not be too curious in analysing and condemning any means which Nature devises to save them from themselves, whether it be coins, old books, curiosities, fossils, or butterflies.'

'Any means which Nature devises.' We are back to Nature again.

'Nature abhors a vacuum'; it was at that point that we set out.

I see now that Nature is right, after all. I can never be saved by Nothing. The abstract will never satisfy me. I want something; aye, more, I want _Some One_; and until I find _Him_ my restless soul calls down all the echoing corridors of Nothingness, 'Oh that I knew _where I might find Him_!'

VIII

THE ANGEL AND THE IRON GATE

It is of no use arguing against an iron gate. There it stands--chained and padlocked, barred and bolted--right across your path, and you can neither coax nor cow it into yielding. So was it with Peter on the night of his miraculous escape from prison. 'Herod,' we are told, 'killed James with the sword, and, because he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to take Peter also.' There he lay, 'sleeping between two soldiers, bound with chains, whilst the keepers before the door kept the prison.' He expected that his next visitor would be the headsman; and whilst he waited for the _executioner_, there came an _angel_! This sort of thing happens fairly often. They are sitting round the fire, and the lady in the arm-chair is talking of her sailor-son.

'Ah!' she says, 'I haven't heard of him for over a year now, and I begin to think that I shall never hear again.'

There is a sharp ring at the bell. She starts.

'Something tells me,' she continues, 'that this is a message to say that the ship is lost, and that I shall never see my boy again.'

Even whilst she speaks the door is opened, and her last syllable is scarcely uttered before she is folded in the sailor's arms.

The principle holds true to the very end. It is a sick-room, and the pale wan face of the patient looks very weary.

'Oh, how I dread death!' she says; 'I cannot bear to think that I must die.'

An hour later the door of the unseen opens to her, and there stands on the threshold, not Death, but _Life Everlasting_!

Peter very, very often waits for the executioner, and welcomes an angel.

I

During the next few moments Peter scarcely knew whether he was in the body or out of the body. Was he alive or was he dead? Was he waking or was he dreaming? 'He wist not that it was true which was done by the angel, but thought he saw a vision.' He walked like a man with his head in the clouds. Doors were opening; chains were falling; he seemed to be living in a land of enchantment, a world of magic. But the iron gate put an end to all illusion. 'They came to the iron gate,' and, as I said a moment ago, an iron gate is a very difficult thing to argue with. The iron gate represents the return to reality. After our most radiant spiritual experiences we come abruptly to the humdrum and the commonplace. It was Mary's Sunday evening out. Mary, you must know, is a housemaid in a big boarding establishment, and her life is by no means an easy one. But Mary is also a member of the Church. On Sunday she was in her favourite seat. Perhaps it was that she was specially hungry for some uplifting word, or perhaps it was that the message was peculiarly suitable to her condition; but, be that as it may, the service that night seemed to carry poor Mary to the very gate of heaven. The Communion Service that followed completed her ecstasy, and Mary seemed scarcely to touch the pavement with her feet as she hurried home. She fell asleep crooning to herself the hymn with which the service closed:

O Love, that will not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in Thee;
I give Thee back the life I owe,
That in Thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.

She knew nothing more until, in the chilly dark of the morning, the alarum clock screamed at her to jump up, clean the cold front steps, dust the great silent rooms, and light the copper-fire. 'And she came to the iron gate.' There come points in life at which poetry merges into the severest prose; romance yields to reality; the miracle of the open prison is succeeded by the menace of the iron gate.

II