Chapter V: Part II: I (1)

THE POSTMAN

I must say a good word for the postman. He occupies so large a place in most of our lives that, as a matter of common courtesy, the least we can do is to recognize his value and importance. Others may not feel as I do, but I confess that I bless the postman every day of my life. Not that I am so fond of receiving letters, for I bless him with equal fervency whether he calls or whether he passes. I know that in this respect I am hopelessly illogical. If I am pleased to see the postmen pass the gate, I ought, if strictly logical, to be sorry to see him enter it. And, contrariwise, if the sight of the postman coming up the path affords me gratification, the spectacle of his passing my gate ought to fill me with disappointment. But I am _not_ logical, never was, and never shall be. The best things in the world are hopelessly illogical--motherhood for example. A mother sits in the arm-chair by the fire, even as I write. She is chattering away to her baby. She knows perfectly well that the baby doesn't understand a word she says. Knowing that she would, if she were logical, give up talking to the child. But, just because she is so hopelessly illogical, she prattles away as though the baby could understand every word. It is a way mothers have, and we love them all the better for it. An illogical lady is a very lovable affair; but who ever fell in love with a syllogism? Robert Louis Stevenson is the most lovable of all our English writers, and the most illogical. Here is an entry from his diary, by way of illustration. 'A little Irish girl,' he writes, 'is now reading my book aloud to her sister at my elbow. They chuckle, and I feel flattered; anon they yawn, and I am indifferent; such a wisely conceived thing is vanity.' Just so. And why not? There is a higher wisdom than the wisdom of logic. If Stevenson had been logical, he would have felt elated by the chuckles and crushed by the yawns. But he knew better, and so do I. If the postman passes my door, I heave a sigh of relief that I have no letters to answer; it is almost as good as being granted a half-holiday. Am I therefore to be angry when the postman enters the gate, and accept his letters with a grunt? Not at all. In that case I throw my logic over the hedge for the edification of my next-door neighbour, and feel pleased that some of my friends are thinking of me. I greet the postman with a smile, and try to make him feel that he has rendered me an appreciable service, as indeed he has.

I am writing on the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Anthony Trollope, and I fancy that it is the thought of Trollope and his extraordinary work that has set me scribbling about the postman. For Trollope was much more than a novelist. He was, in a sense, the prince of British postmen, and the forerunner of Rowland Hill and Henniker Heaton. To a far greater extent than we sometimes dream, we owe the efficiency of our modern postal service to Anthony Trollope. But before he died he became the victim of serious misgivings. He feared that we were losing the art of letter-writing. He produced a bundle of his mother's love-letters. 'In no novel of Richardson's or Miss Burney's,' he declared, 'is there a correspondence so sweet, so graceful, and so well expressed. What girl now studies the words with which she shall address her lover, or seeks to charm him with grace of diction?' And this lamentation was penned, mark you, years and years ago, before cheap telegrams and picture post cards had become the normal means of communication!

I suppose the real trouble is that we have allowed the amazing development of our commercial correspondence to corrupt the character of our private letter-writing. We indite all our letters in the phraseology of the business college. We write briefly, tersely, pointedly, and, most abominable of all, by return of post. I should like to write a separate chapter in vigorous denunciation of the prompt reply. Private letters should never be hastily answered. If my friend replies instantly to my long, familiar letter, he gives me the painful impression that he wants to be rid of me, and is unwilling to have on his mind the thought of the letter he owes me. One of these days I shall start a new society to be called the 'Wait a Week Society.' Its members will be solemnly pledged to wait at least a week before replying to their private letters. There are strong and subtle reasons for taking such a vow. First of all, private letters should be easy, leisurely, chatty, and should only be written when one is in the mood, or when, for some reason, the person to whom it is addressed is specially in one's thoughts. To this, it may be replied that one is never so much in the mood to write to a friend as when he has just received a letter from that friend. But the argument is fallacious. He is a very happy letter-writer indeed who can write me a long, free, chatty letter without saying anything that will rub me the wrong way or with which I shall disagree. During the first twenty-four hours after receiving his letter, _those_ are the things that are most emphatically impressed upon my mind. If I reply within twenty-four hours, my letter to my friend will deal largely with those disputatious and controversial points, and the inevitable result will be that _the whole_ of my letter will grate upon him just as _part_ of his letter has grated upon me. But if, as president of my own society, I wait a week before replying to his letter, I shall see things in their true perspective, and write him a long and breezy letter in which the things that vexed me find no place at all. I am often asked, What is the unpardonable sin? The only sin that I can never pardon is the sin of writing angry letters. I can forgive a man for _speaking_ hastily; I have a temper myself. But to deliberately commit one's spite to paper is to become guilty of an amazing atrocity and to degrade at the same time the postman's high and solemn office.

I bless the postman because he can do for me, and do better than I could do, so many delicate things. I regard the postman as a faithful and indispensable assistant. It often falls to a minister's lot to approach people, and especially young people, on the most delicate and important subjects. Upon their decisions much of their future happiness and usefulness will depend. I must therefore go about the business with the utmost care. But if I go to that young man and abruptly introduce the matter to him, I at once put him in a false position, and greatly imperil my chance of success. We are face to face; I have spoken to him, and he, in common decency, must speak to me. It would be a thousand times better if, having opened my heart to him, I could withdraw before he uttered a single word. But as it is, I have forced him into a position in which he must say something. His judgement is not ripe, his mind is not made up, the whole subject is new to him, and yet my indiscretion has placed him in such a position that he is compelled to commit himself. He must say something without due consideration; I stand there, like a highway-robber, with my pistol pointed at his brow, and he must give me _words_. I may not want his words immediately; and he may wish he need not give his words immediately; but we are both the victims of a situation which I have foolishly precipitated. He speaks; and however he may guard his utterance, his final decision will inevitably be compromised by those hasty and immature sentences.

The evidence must be perfectly overwhelming that will lead a man to reverse a decision once made. And here am I, his would-be friend and helper, forcing him into a position from which he will find it very difficult to extricate himself. I meant to do him good, and I have done him incalculable harm. I meant to be his friend, and I have become his enemy. So true is it that evil is wrought from want of thought as well as want of heart.

Now see how much better the postman manages the matter. I sit down at my desk and write exactly what I want to say. I am not under any necessity to complete a sentence until I can do so to my own perfect satisfaction. I can pause to consider the exact word that I wish to employ. And if, when it is written, my letter does not please me, I can tear it up without his being any the wiser, and write it all over again. I am not driven to impromptu utterance or careless phraseology. I am free of the inevitable effect upon my expression produced by the presence of another person. I am not embarrassed by the embarrassment that he feels on being approached on so vital a theme. I am cool, collected, leisurely, and free. And the advantages that come to me in inditing the letter are shared by him in receiving it. He is alone, and therefore entirely himself. He is not disconcerted by the presence of an interviewer. He owes nothing to etiquette or ceremony. He has the advantage of having the case stated to him as forcefully and as well as I am able to state it. He can read at ease and in silence without the awkward feeling that, in one moment, he must make some sort of reply. If he is vexed at my intrusion into his private affairs, he has time to recover from his displeasure and to reflect that I am moved entirely by a desire for his welfare. If he is flattered at my attention, he has time to fling aside such superficial considerations and to face the issue on its merits. The matter sinks into his soul; becomes part of his normal life and thought; and, by the time we meet, he is prepared to talk it over without embarrassment, without personal feeling, and without undue reserve. In such matters--and they are among the most important matters with which a minister is called to deal--the postman is able to render me invaluable assistance.

There is something positively sacramental about the postman. For the letters that he carries have no value in themselves; they are simply paper and ink. They are precious only so far as they reveal the heart of the sender to the heart of the receiver. Here, for instance, is a letter for a young lady. She is at the door before the bell has ceased its ringing. She greets the postman with a smile, and blushes as she glances at the familiar handwriting. As soon as the postman has closed the gate after him, she hurries down to the summer-house, her favourite retreat, to read her letter. But she is not alone. Bruno, her big collie, goes bounding after his mistress. She reads the first pages of the letter, and allows the sheet to slip from her lap to the ground, whilst she proceeds to devour the following pages. And as the fluttering missive lies upon the floor of the summer-house, Bruno examines it. A dog's eyes are sharper than a girl's eyes; yet how little the dog sees! He sees a piece of white paper covered with black marks--sees perhaps more in that respect than she does--yet he sees nothing, and less than nothing, for all that. For she sees, not the black marks on the white paper, but the very heart of one who worships her. She is gazing so intently into the soul of her lover that she does not notice whether the 't's' are crossed, or the 'i's' dotted. To her the letter is a sacramental thing; its value lies not in itself, but in the revelation that it makes to her.

And it is because the postman spends his whole life among just such sacramental things that we welcome and honour him. We have an amiable way of transferring to the messenger the welcome that we accord to the message. Jessie Pope describes the joy of a mother on receiving a wire from her soldier-boy that he will soon be back again from the front.

'_Home at six-thirty to-day._'
Oh, what a tumult of joy!
Growing suspense flies away,
God bless that telegraph-boy!

_God bless that telegraph-boy!_ Exactly. And that is why we honour the postman. The messenger always shares in the welcome given to the message How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace! We ministers often share in the postman's benediction. We are welcomed and honoured and loved, not so much for our own sake as for the sake of the great, glad message that we bear. The heart leaps up to the message and blesses the messenger. God bless the telegraph-boy! God bless the postman!

II

CRYING FOR THE MOON

Let it be distinctly understood that nothing that I shall now say is addressed to the crowd. To the crowd it would probably do more harm than good. It is intended only for a single individual; and he, I think, will understand. I am told that there is a unique secret by means of which a wireless message from the British Navy can be transmitted to the Admiralty Office without risk of interception. At the Admiralty a superlatively sensitive and superlatively secret instrument is most carefully attuned to the instrument of the battleship from which the message is expected. Then, when all is ready, every wireless operator in the Grand Fleet pulls out all the stops and bangs on all the keys of his instrument, and the inevitable result is the creation of a din that is almost deafening to all listeners at ordinary receivers. But through the crash and the tumult the specially delicate instrument at the Admiralty Office can distinctly hear its mate, and the priceless syllables penetrate the thunder of senseless sound without the slightest loss or leakage. I am about to attempt a similar experiment. I have a message for a certain man. It is important that he, and he alone, should get it. It would do untold damage if it were heard at other receivers. Let him therefore take some pains to attune his instrument to mine.

Now it is usual, and it is altogether good, to encourage people to entertain lofty ambitions, high ideals, and great expectations. It is a most necessary injunction, and I have not a word to say against it. It stirs the blood like a trumpet-blast. It rouses us like a challenge. But, however excellent the medicine may be, it cannot be expected to suit every ailment. No one drug is a panacea for all our human ills. And even the stimulating tonic to which I have referred does not at all meet the need of the man for whom I am now prescribing. John Sheergood is a friend of mine, and a really capital fellow. But I should not call him a happy man. His trouble is that his ambitions are too lofty, his expectations too great, and his ideals, in a sense, too high. He is crying for the moon, and breaking his heart because he can't get it. I am profoundly sorry for this morbid friend of mine, and should dearly like to comfort him. His ideal is perfection, nothing less; and whenever he falls short of it he is in the depths of despair. If, as a student, he entered for a competition, he felt that he was in disgrace unless he secured the very first place. If he sat for an examination, he counted every mark short of the coveted hundred per cent. as an indelible stain upon his character. He is in abject misery unless he can strike twelve at every hour of the day. I both admire him and pity him at the same time. His parents once told me that when he was a very small boy he contracted measles. The illness went hardly with him, and left him frail and debilitated. The doctor ordered a prolonged holiday by the seaside, with plenty of good food, plenty of fresh air, and, above all, plenty of bathing. He was only a little fellow, and when he approached the bathing-sheds for the first time his father accompanied him.

'I don't want to go in, dad,' he cried appealingly; 'it's cold, and I'm cold, and I don't like it!'

'It will make you grow up into a big man, sonny!' his father replied persuasively.

Now this touched Jack on a very tender spot, for, although his father was tall, and he himself cherished an inordinate admiration for tall men, he was himself almost ridiculously small. He had several times contrasted himself with other small boys of the same age, and had felt shockingly humiliated.

'Will it really, dad; honour bright?' he asked anxiously, carefully scrutinizing his father's face.

'It will indeed, sonny; that is why the doctor ordered it.'

Poor little Jack submitted with a wry face to the process of disrobing, and, with a shiver, bravely approached the water. Summoning all his reserves of courage, he waded in until the water was up to his knees, to his waist, and at last to his neck. The excruciating part of the ordeal was by this time over; and, for the sake of the benefit so confidently promised him, he tolerated the caress of the waves for the next five minutes. Then he rushed out of the water. As soon as he was beyond the reach of the foam he stopped abruptly, surveyed himself carefully from top to toe, and straightway burst into tears. His mother, who was sitting knitting on the beach, at once ran to his assistance.

'Why, whatever's the matter, Jack? What are you crying for?'

'Oh, mum, just look how wee I am! And dad said that if I went into the water it would make a big man of me!'

He has often since joined in the laugh, whenever the story of his childish adventure has been related in his hearing. But it is worth recording as being so eminently characteristic of him. He has never outgrown that boyish peculiarity. He is always setting his heart on instantaneous maturity. He seems to think that the world should have been built on a sort of Jack-and-the-beanstalk principle. He is continually sowing seeds overnight, and feeling depressed if he cannot gather the fruit as soon as he wakes in the morning. Many of us have watched the Indian conjurer sow the seed of a mango-tree; throw a cloth over the pot; mutter mysterious charms and incantations; and then hit the cloth. And, behold, a full-grown mango-tree! He replaces the cloth, mutters further incantations, again removes the covering, and, lo, the mango-tree is in full flower! And when a third time he uncovers the plant, the mango-tree stands forth, every bough freighted with a heavy load of fruit! I have no idea as to how the trick is done. I only know that poor John Sheergood seems to be everlastingly lamenting the misfortune that ordained him to any existence other than that of an Indian conjurer. He is grievously disappointed, not because he was born with no silver spoon in his mouth, but because he was born with no magic wand in his hand. His mango-trees come to fruition very, very slowly. John believes in quick returns and lightning changes; and he is irritated and annoyed by the tardiness of that old-fashioned process called growth. It is good for a man to have lofty ideals; but I am sure that John Sheergood would be a happier man, and make us all more happy, if he would only break himself of his inveterate habit of crying for the moon.

In justice to John I am bound to say that, as on the sands years ago, his principal disappointment is with himself. I have done my best to persuade him that a man should be infinitely patient with himself. Nothing is to be gained by getting out of temper with yourself. You may scold yourself and scourge yourself unmercifully; but I doubt if it does much good. A man must win his self-respect; and you can only learn to respect yourself by being very gentle and very considerate and very patient with yourself. A man's self-culture is his first and principal charge; and he will never succeed unless he both loves himself and treats himself lovingly. A man should be as gentle with himself as a gardener is with his orchids; as a nurse is with her patient; as a mother is with her troublesome child. A gardener who lost all patience with his delicate plants; a nurse who treated her poor patient peevishly; or a mother who met ill-temper with ill-temper could only expect to fail. I have urged John Sheergood to treat himself with a softer hand, and to greet himself with a smile. I lent him Henry Drummond's lovely essay on _The Lilies_, taking the precaution, before doing so, to underline the following sentences: 'Growth must be spontaneous. A boy not only grows without trying, but he cannot grow if he tries. The man who struggles in agony to grow makes the church into a workshop when God meant it to be a beautiful garden.' There is a good deal in the chapter that will have a special interest for my poor self-castigated friend.

But, although his lash falls principally upon his own back, he is not the only sufferer. I shall never forget when, as a young fellow, he joined the church. His conversion was a very radiant experience, and, in the ecstasy of it all, he formed a brightly rose-tinted conception of what the fellowship of the church must be. The idea of being admitted to the society of numbers of people as happy as himself! They would be able to tell of experiences as glorious as his own; they would be sure to congratulate him on his inexpressible joy, and to help him in relation to the difficulties that beset his daily path. They would encourage him by their sympathy and stimulate him by their example. Their conversation would illumine for him the sacred page; their vivid testimonies to answered prayer would give him greater confidence in approaching the Throne of Grace; the very atmosphere that he expected to breathe would, he felt sure, inflame his own devotion to the highest and holiest things.

He has often since told me of his disillusionment. It happened to be a wet night when he was received into membership, and there were fewer members present than were usually there. As soon as the service was over they broke up into knots. He overheard one group discussing a wedding; and heard a man with a strident voice say that it was a beastly night to be out without an umbrella. But nobody took any notice of John, and he left the building. To complete his discomfiture he mistook the step as he passed out of the church and stumbled awkwardly into the street. 'The whole thing was an awful come-down,' he told me afterwards, 'the greatest surprise I had ever known. I felt as if the bottom had dropped out of everything.' He got over it, of course; and learned by happy experience that the people who treated him so coyly on that memorable night are not half as bad as they seemed. Many of them are now among his dearest and most intimate friends; whilst even with the man who growled at the weather he has since spent some really delightful times. One of the oddest things in life is the dread that some people feel of appearing as good as they really are. And John has found out now that, in spite of the cold douche administered to him that night, there is in the church a glow of genuine enthusiasm and a wealth of spirituality that in those days he never suspected. But it did not reveal itself all at once. The best things never do. And because the church did not put on her beautiful garments as soon as he entered, John was mortified and confounded. He felt just as he felt that day on the sands when he discovered with disgust that, under the spell of the sea, he had not immediately assumed gigantic proportions. As I say, he has got over it now, and smiles at it, just as he smiles when his adventure by the seaside is recounted.

He was a great favourite in the church, but his ingrained peculiarity betrayed itself with unfailing regularity in one particular direction. Oddly enough, in view of his own experience, he was a little severe with new members. I do not mean that he treated them coldly or distantly; nobody was more genial. But he expected too much of them. He was disappointed unless the convert of yesterday proved himself the full-blown saint of to-day. To satisfy him, they had to be raw recruits one day and hardened veterans the next. It was merely another phase of his Jack-and-the-beanstalk philosophy. It was the magician and the mango-tree over again. In a way it was very fine to see how he grieved over the slightest lapse on the part of these new members. The smallest inconsistency in their behaviour filled him with remorse, and he was afflicted with the gravest suspicions as to our wisdom in welcoming such people into fellowship. He failed, it seemed to me, to distinguish between the raw material and the finished article. The Church evidently had some very raw material in her membership when the Pauline Epistles were written; and it is a mercy for John that he was not born some centuries earlier.

John afterwards left us and entered the ministry. We were exceedingly sorry to lose him. A man more generally honoured, respected, and beloved I have seldom seen. The church was distinctly poorer after he left, although we were all glad that he had given himself to so great a work. But he carried his old characteristic up the pulpit steps with him. He has often told me the story of that first sermon and the way it was received. Such confidences between one minister and another are sacred, and I shall not betray this one. But I never hear John refer to that experience without thinking of Mark Rutherford. In his Autobiography, Mark Rutherford tells how, on settling at his first pastorate, he put all his soul into his first sermon. He was elated by the solemnity and grandeur of his calling, and spoke out of the very depths of his heart. 'After the service was over,' he says, 'I went down into the vestry. Nobody came near me but the chapel-keeper, who _said that it was raining_, and immediately went away to put out the lights and shut up the building. I had no umbrella, and there was nothing for it but to walk home in the wet. When I got to my lodgings I found that my supper, consisting of bread and cheese, was on the table, but there was no fire. I was overwrought, and paced about for hours in hysterics. All that I had been preaching seemed the merest vanity.' And so on. John Sheergood's experience was not unlike it. It was the sudden descent from the glowingly romantic ideal to the brutally prosaic reality. It nearly killed John just as it nearly killed Mark Rutherford. But he is getting over it. He is learning gradually, I think, that a minister can only get the best out of his people by being very patient with them, just as the people can only get the best out of their minister by being very patient with him. The world has evidently been built that way. Jack and the beanstalk is only a fairy-story and the mango-tree is a piece of Oriental trickery; there is no room for such prodigies in a world like this. Like the lilies, we begin in a very modest way, and grow very slowly; we must therefore exercise infinite patience with each other. I have fancied lately that some inkling of this has at length entered into the mind even of John Sheergood, and he has seemed a very much happier man in consequence.

III

OUR LOST ROMANCES

There are few days in a girl's life more critical than the day on which the sawdust streams from the mangled carcase of her dearest doll. It is a day of bitter disillusionment, a day in which a philosophy of some kind is painfully born. The doll came into the home amidst all the excitements of a birthday. It was instantly invested with every attribute of personality. The task of naming it was as solemn a function as the business of naming a baby. And when the choice had been made, and the name selected, that name was as unalterable as though it had been officially recorded at Somerset House. By that name it was greeted with delight every morning; by that name it was hushed to sleep every night; by that name it was introduced to other dolls, as well as to less important people; and by that name it was addressed a hundred times a day. The doll has suffered accidents and illnesses after the fashion of fleshier folk; but such misadventures, as is the way with humans, has only rendered her more dear. But now an accident has happened, surpassing in seriousness all previous misfortunes. The thing has come to pieces! The girl has a shapeless rag in her hand; the floor is all powdered with sawdust; and her face is a spectacle for men and angels. I say again that this is an extremely critical day in a girl's life, and upon the way in which she negotiates this passage in her history a good deal will eventually depend.

I do not quite know why I have made the feminine element so prominent in my introduction. Boys are just the same. They affect to deride a girl's ridiculous weakness in cherishing so great a tenderness for a doll; but, for all their supercilious airs, they have illusions of their own. Dr. Samuel Johnson has told us how, as a boy, he consulted the oracle as to his future fortunes. If some issue were hanging in the balance--a game to be played, or an examination to be taken--he would endeavour to wrest from the unseen the secret that it held. He would note a particular stick or stone on the path before him; and then, with face turned skywards, he would walk towards it. If he trod on the object which he had chosen, he took it as a sign that he would win the game or pass the examination that was causing him such uneasiness. If, on the other hand, he stepped clean over it, he interpreted it as a sinister prediction of disaster. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes confesses to a similar weakness. 'As for all manner of superstitious observances,' says the autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 'I used to think I must have been peculiar in having such a list of them; but I now believe that half the children of the same age go through the same experience. No Roman soothsayer ever had such a catalogue of omens as I found in the Sibylline leaves of my childhood. That trick of throwing a stone at a tree and attaching some mighty issues to hitting or missing, which you will find mentioned in one or more biographies, I well remember.' And Dr. Holmes goes on to give us a good deal more in the same strain.

But, although they do not record it, there must have come to both Dr. Johnson and Dr. Holmes a day very similar to that on which the sawdust streamed from the mutilated doll. What about the day on which young Samuel Johnson, his scrofulous face and screwed-up eyes turned skywards, strode along the path towards the selected talisman, stepped plump upon it, and then lost the game that followed after all? And what about the day on which young Oliver Wendell Holmes, impatiently awaiting his father's return from Boston, wondered if his parent would bring him the pocket-knife for which he had so long and loudly clamoured? But there, not fifty yards away, was a tree; and here, at his feet, was a stone. 'If I hit it, he'll bring it; if I miss it, he won't!' he cried; and, taking more than usually careful aim, he threw the stone, and missed! But the pocket-knife was in his father's handbag all the same! Boys or girls, men or women, it matters not; there come into our lives great and memorable days when we have to take farewell of our illusions. Our romances leave us. There comes a Christmas Day on which, to our uttermost bewilderment, we discover the secret history of Santa Claus. And very much will depend upon the way in which we face such sensational and eye-opening experiences.

We go through life leaving these shattered romances behind us. Our track is marked by the spatter of burst bubbles. What then? And in answer to that 'What then?' the obvious temptation is the temptation to cynicism. Since the doll has turned out to be a mere matter of sawdust and rags, since the talisman on the footpath told a lie, since the oracle of tree and stone deceived us, we make up our minds to fling to the scrap-heap such cherished beliefs as we still retain. We go in for a severe weeding out of everything that is imaginative, everything that is mystical, everything that is romantic. Life resolves itself into a dreary wilderness of matter-of-fact, an arid desert of common sense. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes was wiser. Referring to his oracular stone-throwing and the rest of it, he says, 'I won't swear that I have not some tendency to these unwise practices even at this present date. With these follies mingled sweet delusions, which I loved so well that I would not outgrow them, even when it required a voluntary effort to put a momentary trust in them.' It is a pity to sweep all our rainbow-tinted romances out of life simply because one of them has been reduced to the terms of rag and sawdust.

There stands before me as I write Sir John Millais' great picture of 'Bubbles.' Both the picture and the experience that it portrays are wonderfully familiar. The curly head; the upturned face; the entire absorption of the little bubble-blower in the shining balls that he is hurling into space; the half-formed hope that this one, at least, may not sputter out and become an unbeautiful splash of soapsuds on the floor; the wistful half-expectancy that now, at last, he has created a lovely globe that shall float on and on, like a little fairy-world, for ever and for evermore. It is all in the picture, as every beholder has observed; and it is all in life. It is the first tragedy of infancy; it is the last tragedy of age. Bubbles; bubbles; bubbles; and yet what would the world be without bubbles? They burst, of course; but we are the happier for having blown them! Our dreams may never come true; but it's lovely to dream! Illusions are part of life's treasure-trove. When they go, they leave nothing behind them. When we lose them, we lose everything. It is almost better to become criminal than to become cynical. To be criminal implies an evil hand; but to be cynical reveals a very evil heart. It is a thousand times better to be blowing bubbles that, though fragile, are very fair than to move sulkily about the world telling all the blowers of bubbles that their beautiful bubbles must burst. 'I want to forget!' cried the poor little 'Lady of the Decoration.' 'I want to begin life again as a girl with a few illusions!' Every fool knows that bubbles must burst. The man who feels it necessary to tell this to everybody proves, not that he possesses the gift of prophecy, but that he lacks the saving grace of common sense. The world would clearly be very much the poorer, and not one scrap the richer, if no bubbles were left in it. It is altogether wholesome to have a fair stock of illusions.

But at this point two serious questions press for answer. If illusions are so good, why do they fail us? Why are our bubbles permitted to burst? The question answers itself. If all the bubbles that had ever been blown were still floating about the world, there would be nothing so commonplace as bubbles. That is why the era of miracles ceased. It was a very romantic phase in the Church's childhood, and it answers to the superstitious element in our own. But we may easily exaggerate its value. If the age of miracles had been indefinitely lengthened, the effect would have been the same as if all the bubbles became everlasting. If all the bubbles that had ever been blown were with us still, who to-day would want to blow bubbles? And if miracles had once become commonplace, their charm and significance would have instantly vanished. 'I am persuaded,' Martin Luther sagely declares, 'that if Moses had continued his working of miracles in Egypt for two or three years, the people would have been so accustomed thereunto, and would have so lightly esteemed them, that they would have thought no more of the miracles of Moses than we think of the sun or the moon.' It would not be hard to prove that even the miracles of the New Testament tended to lose their effect. The amazement of the disciples at beholding what they took to be a ghost on the water is attributed to the fact that 'they considered not the miracle of the loaves' which had taken place a few hours earlier. A miracle was already so much a matter of course that the memory no longer treasured it as something phenomenal. No pains were taken to investigate its significance. It would have been a tragedy unspeakable if the miraculous element in the faith had become universally contemptible. As the eagle carefully builds the nest in which her eaglets are to see the light, and afterwards as carefully destroys it so that they may be forced to fly, so our illusions are made for our enjoyment, and then dashed to pieces under our very eyes. Our childhood was enriched beyond calculation by the fine romances that gave it such bright colours; and, in exactly the same way, the childhood of the Church was glorified by the wonder-workings of a Hand Invisible.

And the other question is this: What shall we do when our illusions leave us? When the doll turns out to be sawdust and rag, when the youthful oracle speaks falsely, when the bubble bursts, what then? And again the answer is obvious. Why, to be sure, if one romance fails us, we must get a better, that is all! Any man who has not been soured by cynicism will confess that the romantic tints in the skein of life have deepened, rather than faded, as the years passed on. Surely, surely, the romance of youth was a lovelier thing than the romance of childhood! When a girl feels how silly it is to play with dolls, she begins to think of other things that will more appreciate her fondling. When a boy sees that it is senseless to throw stones at trees as a means of deciding his destiny, he takes to tossing precious stones and pretty trinkets in quite other directions, but with pretty much the same end in view. And so the romance of life--if life be well managed--increases with the years, until, by the time we become grandfathers and grandmothers, the world seems too wonderful for us, and we stand and gaze bewildered at all its abounding surprises. Everything depends on filling up the gaps. As soon as the sawdust streams out of the doll, as soon as the futility of the oracle stands exposed, we must make haste to fill the vacant place with something better.

Long, long ago there were a few Jewish Christians who felt just as a girl feels when the component parts of her dearest doll suddenly fall asunder, just as Samuel Johnson felt when the talisman prophesied falsely, just as Oliver Wendell Holmes felt when he saw that he could trust his oracle no more. They felt--those Hebrew believers--that everything had gone from them. 'To how great splendour,' says Dr. Meyer, 'had they been accustomed--marble courts, throngs of white-robed Levites, splendid vestments, the state and pomp of symbol, ceremonial and choral psalm! And to what a contrast were they reduced--a meeting in some hall, or school, with the poor, afflicted, and persecuted members of a despised and hated sect!' But the writer of the epistle addressed to them makes it his--or her--principal aim to point out that it is all a mistake. Just as a girl's richest romance follows upon the disillusionment of the terrible sawdust, so the wealthiest spiritual heritage of these Jewish Christians comes to them in place of the things that they were inclined to lament. 'For,' says the writer, 'ye have come unto Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.' And whoever finds himself the heir of so fabulous a wealth can well afford to smile at all his earlier disappointments.

IV

A FORBIDDEN DISH

I

I was at Wedge Bay. It was raining. Wondering what I should do, I remembered the great caves along the shore. For ages the waves had been at work scooping out for me a place of refuge for such a day as this. I put on my coat, slipped a novel in the pocket, and set off along the sands. I soon found a sheltered spot in which I was able to defy the weather, and to watch the waves or read my book just as the fancy took me. As a matter of fact, I had not much to read. The book was Sir Walter Scott's _Kenilworth_, and the bookmark was already near the end. I read therefore until, in the very climax of the tragic close, I suddenly came upon a text. Or perhaps it was less a text than a reference to a text, casually uttered in a moment of great excitement by one of the principal characters in the story. But it acted on my mind as the lever at the switch acts upon the oncoming railway train. In a flash, the novel and all its thrilling interest were left far behind, and I was flying along an entirely new track. And here are the words that so adroitly changed the current of my thought:

'"Oh, if there be judgement in heaven, thou hast well deserved it," said Foster, "and wilt meet it! Thou hast destroyed her by means of her best affections--_it is a seething of the kid in the mother's milk_."'

Almost involuntarily I closed the book, slipped it back into my pocket, and sat looking out to sea lost in a brown but interesting study.

II

_'Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk!'_ The striking prohibition occurs three times--twice in the Book of Exodus, and once in the Book of Deuteronomy. I do not know on what principle we assess the relative value and importance of texts; but, surely, a great commandment, thrice emphatically reiterated, ought not to be treated as beneath our notice. I find that the interdict applies primarily to an ancient Eastern custom. All nations have their own idea as to the special delicacy of certain viands. We British people fancy lamb and sucking-pig, and feel no shame in destroying the tiny creatures as soon as they are born. The predilection of the Arab was for a new-born kid; and when he wished to adorn his table with a particularly toothsome morsel, it was his habit to serve up the kid boiled in milk taken from the mother. It was against this favourite and familiar dish that the stern and repeated prohibition was launched. I do not know if there was any practical or utilitarian reason, based on hygienic or medical grounds, for the emphatic decree. Perhaps, or perhaps not. Some of the old commandments relating to animals seem to have been framed for no other purpose than to inculcate a certain gentleness and courtesy in our attitude towards these poorer relatives of ours. 'Thou shalt not kill a cow and her calf on the same day'; 'Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn'; and so on. It is difficult to see any real reason why the ewe and her lamb, or the cow and her calf, should not go to the shambles together. But it was strictly forbidden. And similarly, '_Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk_.' The finer feelings are certainly shocked at the thought of the cow and the calf going together to the slaughter, and at the idea of boiling the newly born and newly slain kid in the milk of its mother; and the most obvious moral seems to be that we are not to treat the creatures of the field and the forest in any way that grates and jars upon those finer instincts. As I sat watching the foam playing with the strands of seaweed, it seemed to me that, if ever I am asked to preach in support of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, I should have here a theme all ready to my hand. And I felt glad that I had read _Kenilworth_.

III

But the prohibition goes much farther than that. It enshrines a tremendous principle, a principle that is nowhere else so clearly stated. Sir Walter Scott evidently saw that; and no exposition could be clearer than his. The circumstances were, briefly, these. The Countess of Leicester was a prisoner. Just outside her room at the castle was a trapdoor. It was supported by iron bolts; but it was so arranged that even if the bolts were drawn, the trapdoor would still be held in its place by springs. Yet the weight of a mouse would cause it to yield and to precipitate its burden into the vault below. Varney and Foster decided to draw these bolts so that, if the Countess attempted to escape, the trap would destroy her. Later on, Foster heard the tread of a horse in the court-yard, and then a whistle similar to that which was the Earl's usual signal. The next moment the Countess's chamber opened, and instantly the trapdoor gave way. There was a rushing sound, a heavy fall, a faint groan, and all was over! At the same instant Varney called in at the window, 'Is the bird caught? Is the deed done?' Deep down in the vault Foster could see a heap of white clothes, like a snowdrift. It flashed upon him that the noise that he had heard was not the Earl's signal at all, but merely Varney's imitation, designed to deceive the Countess and lure her to her doom. She had rushed out to welcome her husband, and had miserably perished. In his indignation, Foster turned upon Varney. 'Oh, if there be judgement in heaven, thou hast deserved it,' he said, 'and wilt meet it! Thou hast destroyed her by means of her best affections. _It is a seething of the kid in the mother's milk!_'

At that touchstone the inner meaning of the interdict stands revealed. The mother's milk is Nature's beautiful provision for the life and sustenance of the kid. Thou shalt not pervert that which was intended to be a ministry of life into an instrument of destruction. The wifely instinct that led the Countess to rush forth to welcome her lord was one of the loveliest things in her womanhood, and Varney used it as the agency by which he destroyed her. She was lured to her doom by means of her best affections. Charles Lamb points out, in his _Tales from Shakespeare_, that Iago compassed the death of the fair Desdemona in precisely the same way. 'So mischievously did this artful villain lay his plots to turn the gentle qualities of this innocent lady into her destruction and make a net for her out of her own goodness to entrap her!' It is this that the prohibition forbids. Thou shalt not take the most sacred things in life and apply them to base and ignoble ends. _Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk._

IV

The possibilities of application are simply infinite. There is nothing high and holy that cannot be converted into an engine of destruction. A girl is fond of music. The impulse is a lofty and admirable one. But it may easily be used to lure her away from the best things into a life of frivolity, voluptuousness, and sensation. A boy is fond of Nature. He loves to climb the mountain, row on the river, or scour the bush. Nothing could be better. But if it leads him to forsake the place of worship, to forget God, to fling to the winds the faith of his boyhood, and to settle down to a life of animalism and materialism, he has been destroyed by means of his best affections. Or take our love of society and of revelry. There are few things more enjoyable than to sit by the fireside, or on the beach, with a few really congenial companions, to talk, and tell stories, and recall old times; to laugh, to eat, and to drink together. Talking and laughing and eating and drinking seem inseparable at such times. And yet out of that human, and therefore divine, impulse see the evils that arise! Look at our great national drink curse, with its tale of squalor and misery and shame! Did these men mean to be drunkards when first they entered the gaily lit bar-room? Nothing was farther from their minds. They were following a true instinct--the desire for companionship and congenial society. They have been lured to their doom, like Sir Walter Scott's heroine, by means of their best affections.

V

And what about Love? Love is a lovely thing, or why should we be so fond of love-stories? The love of a man for a maid, and the love of a maid for a man, are surely among the very sweetest and most sacred things in life. No story is so fascinating as the story of a courtship. And that is good, altogether good. Every man who has won the affection of a true, sweet, beautiful girl feels that a new sanction has entered into life. He is conscious of a new stimulus towards purity and goodness. And every girl who has won the heart of a good, brave, great-hearted man feels that life has become a grander and a holier thing for her. As Shakespeare says:

Indeed I know
Of no more subtle master under heaven
Than is the maiden passion for a maid,
Not only to keep down the base in man,
But to teach high thoughts and amiable words,
And courtliness, and the desire for fame,
And love of truth, and all that makes a man.

Lord Lytton illustrates this magic force in his _Last Days of Pompeii_. He tells us that Glaucus, the Athenian, 'had seen Ione, bright, pure, unsullied, in the midst of the gayest and most profligate gallants of Pompeii, charming rather than awing the boldest into respect, and changing the very nature of the most sensual and the least ideal as, by her intellectual and refining spells, she reversed the fable of Circe, and converted the animals into men.' Here, then, is something altogether good. It is clearly designed to minister new life to all who come beneath its spell. And yet the sordid fact remains that, through the degradation of this same high and holy impulse, thousands of young people make sad shipwreck.

VI