Chapter V: Two Appreciations (1)

The two following sketches of Forbes Robinson's life at Cambridge have been contributed, the first by the Rev. T. C. Fitzpatrick, Fellow and Dean of Christ's College, and the second by the Rev. Digby B. Kittermaster, of Clare College, now Head of the Shrewsbury School Mission in Liverpool.

Mr. Fitzpatrick writes:

'College life has changed a good deal since the days when a young graduate, on his election to a fellowship, was advised not to see too much of the undergraduate members of the College, that the division between the senior and junior members of the College might be preserved. A custom of that kind, once established, is not easy to break, for traditions of all sorts, good and bad, live long in College.

'Fortunately, the relations between the undergraduates and the fellows of the College are gradually becoming more natural, to the benefit of the whole body. Forbes Robinson will be long remembered for the influence that he exerted in this {37} direction, and what he has effected it will be comparatively easy for others to carry on.

'It is my desire to give some slight impression of his life in College, and I do not wish to say much about his teaching work. I must mention, however, what frequently struck me, the great joy he had in teaching; his success was not surprising. When he found (in January last) that he could not take up all his lecture work he would not allow another to give in his place the course of lectures on Church History. "I want," he said to me, "to give them myself in my own way," and he hoped to have given them this Easter term. I was not surprised to hear from a pupil of the interest that he and others found in a similar course of lectures which he had given the previous year. "He put things so," the pupil told me, "that you could not forget what he had said."

'My last recollection of him as a teacher bears witness to his interest and purpose. Word was brought me before morning chapel that he had been obliged to call in the doctor in the middle of the night. I went to his rooms after chapel and found that he was asleep, I put up a notice that he would be unable to lecture. He awoke soon after I had left his rooms; he had another notice put up that he would lecture in his rooms. When I came back to College later in the morning I looked in and found him lying on his sofa with the room full of men, sitting where they could. The class will not forget that lecture, nor shall I forget the sight.

'When two men have lived a number of years within the same College, it is difficult for them to {38} realise the change in their relationship that has come with time. There is a comradeship that comes through the influence of circumstances rather than from that personal attraction which two men feel for one another, and which arose they don't remember when or how. It was this comradeship of work and the sharing of responsibilities that led me to know Forbes Robinson. We had lived some years in College before I knew much of him; I was some years his senior, and our lines of work were very different. As far as I know, he never talked to older men in that frank way which was his custom with those of his own age, and still more with men younger than himself. Some weeks ago I was staying at the hotel on the Riviera where he had been at Christmas time. The English lady, whose husband keeps the house, told me that with them Forbes Robinson hardly talked at all, but that he took their boy out for long walks and talked to him; and the boy's face lit up as I spoke to him of Forbes.

'There is still the recollection in College, handed on from year to year, of the walk which he took at the end of a Long Vacation from London to Cambridge with two other men, and how he talked all the way. It was these conversations, often prolonged for two or three hours, that impressed those to whom he opened out his thoughts, and who in turn let him see something of their inner life.

'Forbes always had one or two special friends among the younger men, whom he seemed to me to look upon as heroes; he always yearned for sympathy, and he was prepared to give to others all that {39} he had got. This closer relationship with a few men did not in the least narrow his interest in the life of the College. He gained, I cannot believe that it can have been without an effort long and hard, the power of taking an interest in all sorts of things that form no small part of the life of the average man. There was nothing strained or exaggerated in his relations with other men; he was at all times just himself.

'When he was elected a Fellow, being also Theological Lecturer, he was anxious to do something to interest and help those who were not theological students, and he had, first on Sunday mornings after Chapel, and afterwards in the latter part of the afternoons, Greek Testament readings for non-theological men, and some terms he took up some of the problems that present themselves as difficulties to the thoughtful man. These papers were prepared with great care, and, as I know, at no small cost of time and energy.

'On Sunday evenings he was "at home" from 9 to 11 to any members of the College who cared to come. On those occasions it was a curious sight that met the eyes of any late comer as he opened the door and saw men in groups sitting on the floor, as chairs were insufficient; as a rule there was no general subject of conversation--numbers made that impossible. Most Sunday evenings there was music, but not always, and it was difficult at the end of the evening to say what could have brought so many men together. It was a common ground of meeting for different kinds of men. Forbes Robinson was often at his best on these occasions; he would join {40} first one group and then another, and take part in the subject which was being discussed. Generally one or two would remain when the others left, and deeper problems would then be talked over. Only on one Sunday of last term was Forbes Robinson well enough to be "at home." The room was more crowded than I had ever seen it. It was a sort of welcome back after his absence the previous term. It was evident that it gave him pleasure, and evident, too, that he was all the time in pain. Yet with a brightness, which must have cost him much, he talked with one and another of simple daily interests in the way that showed his sympathy with life, and gained for him the power of saying on other occasions deeper things.

'Nothing could have been simpler than the character of these gatherings. Simplicity was the secret of his power.

'I find it impossible to write of my own conversations with him; they dealt chiefly with the difficulties of Cambridge, of College life, and of the lives of those in our College for whom we felt we had a responsibility. Talking of the difficulties of belief, I was struck by his quiet answer: "I do not believe some things which I did when I was younger; but those which I believe, I believe more firmly." Forbes Robinson had a great belief in the power of intercession. Quite recently a man in his year told me that when Forbes Robinson was an undergraduate he had known him spend two hours during the afternoon in intercession for his friends. One is not surprised that prayer was a subject on which he {41} thought much. He was to have written an important article on it.

'As we talked together of different men, I remember being struck with the desire he expressed that men should be good and strong, and not of any one type. He had a great confidence in the essential goodness that there is in men, and he always formed a high estimate of another.

'His letters will indicate how deeply he entered into the lives of others, and how wide were his sympathies. A member of another College told me that the news of the death of Forbes Robinson reached him just after the close of their evening chapel, and he had not long returned to his rooms when an Indian gentleman called, an undergraduate of this College, who almost in tears told him of all that Forbes had done for him, and how he had learnt in Hall at Christ's from the strange silence that something must have happened, and was told of the loss that came so unexpectedly upon us on Sunday, February 7.

'I close this short account of my friend with extracts from three letters casually taken from those which have reached me. A young clergyman writes: "I feel I owe a very great debt to him, both as a lecturer and as a friend. His clearness of mind and power of thought were such as I have never seen in any other man. But far more precious than these intellectual gifts was the inspiration of his personal character. His ideals were so high, and he lived so close to them. Few lives have better expressed the truth of the words of which he was so fond: 'He that {42} loseth his life shall find it.'" A schoolmaster writes: "The last talk I had with him was a month before my ordination, and I remember the emphasis that he laid on the praying side of a clergyman's life." A doctor writes: "Looking back upon my time at Christ's, I think that of all the influences which helped me, the most potent was my friendship with Forbes Robinson. . . . I came to know him somewhat intimately by spending an Easter vacation with him, and several of our conversations then have left a lasting impression on my mind. . . . I suppose, as one gets older and sees so much more of death, that a deepening faith takes away that sense of personal loss and leaves behind a feeling of gladness that yet another friend has passed to the Communion of Saints."

'Of his life we may use the motto of his College:

'AD HONOREM CHRISTI JESU ET FIDEI EJUS INCREMENTUM.'

Mr. Kittermaster writes:

'Forbes Robinson did not regard any one of us as a "mere undergraduate," one of a mass; that was the first thing which those of us who knew him as undergraduates learnt. He was genuinely interested from the first in his undergraduate acquaintances; interested in them as men, not as promising pupils, not as likely scholars, not as athletes, not as material for "improving" influence, but as men--individuals, each possessing a separate and distinct human {43} personality, and therefore of the truest and deepest interest to him.

'Our public schools taught us (and for most of us Cambridge continued the teaching) that to be of any real importance and consequence among his fellows a man must be "good at games," or perhaps--but this more rarely--"good at work." Such is the simple creed of the undergraduate. If he satisfies neither of the above requirements, then he recognises, with greater or less sadness, that he is an ordinary man, the "average undergraduate." He is one of the crowd if he has no athletic powers to commend him to the notice of his fellows _in statu pupillari_; he is one of the crowd if he has no slightest hope of making for himself any name in the intellectual world, to commend him to the leaders of thought at Cambridge. And this knowledge is to many a Cambridge boy, playing at being a man, a matter of real, if unconfessed, grief.

'But "there is no such thing as the average man, or at least as the average undergraduate." This was the belief which Forbes Robinson held with increasing conviction as his life went on. And it was this belief which accounted to some extent for the very large part which his friendship undoubtedly played in the life of many a Cambridge undergraduate.

'For a man condemned by his fellows and himself to the position of the "ordinary man" found himself in the presence of Forbes (as all of us universally called him) to be no such thing. Gradually and with genuine surprise he learned from him--not by any definite {44} word of teaching--that though it might cost him efforts painful and many to get the better of his "special," and though athletic fame knew him not at all, yet the possibilities of his own peculiar personal life were wonderful and great. For here was one who compelled men by his genuine unaffected interest in their lives and work to be themselves genuinely interested in them too. A man could not know Forbes for long and not be quickly conscious of a new sense of the value of himself, which made him believe that his own personality and life were things of great importance. For "He is interested in me" is what almost every man felt from the start of his acquaintance with Forbes. "He is interested in me" we felt when he passed us in the street with his quaint humorous smile of recognition; we felt the same when we entered his room, to be received often without a word but with the same half smile: we felt the same again if we knew that he was watching the progress of a football match or boat race in which we were taking part. And "he is interested in me"--most wonderful of all--we felt as we listened to him in the lecture room, and were compelled to attention; for his interest in the men in front of him, coupled with his interest in his subject, forced us all--pass men and honours men alike--to listen to the history of Church and Doctrine and Creeds. It was this unfeigned interest in men, simply as men, that in the first instance gave him the influence which he certainly exercised over all sorts of men, including the kind of men whom the majority of their fellows disregarded, {45} or perhaps despised; "the babes and sucklings of the undergraduate world," to quote another. Such men, in whom most of us could find little to attract us, were to him vastly interesting--interesting for their simple human personality.

'Some men perhaps never discovered from what source his interest in them sprang. They knew that their views of the possibilities of their own life were enlarged, that they believed in themselves more for having been with him; but it was not all at once that they discovered the reason of his interest and belief in them. It was due to the Christ. With each new friendship and acquaintance which Forbes made--and this is especially true of young men--he saw deeper into the meaning of the Incarnation of Christ. This was the secret of his extraordinary interest and amazing belief in nearly every one of us. He saw in us all, however ordinary, however commonplace--yes, however unlovely were our lives--something somewhere of Jesus Christ.

'Then some of us were privileged to discover that what he felt for us was something far deeper and holier than is expressed by the word "interest." It was love. In every fullest sense he understood the grand full meaning of the word. His love for his friends was something altogether larger and deeper and truer than is generally understood by the word. It was so holy a thing that it is hard to write of it. He knew, and the knowledge is perhaps rarer than is supposed, what in all its fulness was the meaning of the love of one man for another. This is why he could enter into the spirit of Tennyson's "In {46} Memoriam" as almost no one else could. Tennyson's experience might have been so entirely his own. His love for his friends was indeed a wonderful, sacred thing, beautiful to see. With Henry Drummond he felt that it was better not to live than not to love. Love was to him a part of all his being: for in him dwelt "the strong Son of God, Immortal Love," compelling him to love his fellow-men.

'It was to him a real grief that (as he often quite wrongly supposed) one or two of those, for whom he would quite willingly have cut off his right hand if in any way it could have advantaged them, cared not at all for him, nor ever understood how he cared for them. But he found relief from the strange unsatisfied longing, engendered in him by this belief, in intense continuous prayer for those whom he loved. He prayed, it is certain, as few men pray. Prayer was to him the very breath of life. And his prayers, like his life, must have been utterly selfless. Many do not understand the amount they owe to his prayers. Some of us may some day realise the magnitude of the debt; at present it is not seen. But he prayed with all the effort of his being for his friends: eagerly, passionately, unceasingly he prayed. "Pray for him, believe in him; believe in him, pray for him," he was never tired of saying to those who spoke to him of some disappointing friend. And his own life was a proof of the power which lay behind such prayer.

'To those reading this who did not know Forbes Robinson it may seem that a man of such intensity of feeling and holiness of life would be more likely {47} to frighten away than to attract to close quarters the "average undergraduate" (whose existence he denied). This most certainly was not the case. For, if there was in him something utterly divine, he was also human as ever man could be. He admired, like the veriest freshman, the physical strength and powers of the athlete. In his presence the man of bodily attainments and strength of limb experienced the strange sensation of being looked up to by one whom he knew to be utterly superior to him. But perhaps nearly all who knew him experienced this at one time or another; for he must have been one of the most humble men that have ever lived. His humility was almost a fault. It led him to depreciate himself so far. And yet how beautiful a thing it was! He did indeed count all men better than himself.

'He easily condoned offences which in some eyes, and especially the eyes of dons, loom as a general rule heinous and large. And the riotous undergraduate, who cuts chapels and lectures, found that a don--yes, and a junior dean--could be a friend of his.

'He possessed too a keen and real sense of humour. He could, and often did, laugh with all his heart. He chaffed continuously his large circle of undergraduate friends. When he was questioning a man in the lecture-room, you felt that all the time he was half chaffing him. He addressed us all in lectures as "Mr.," in a half serious, half amused style. "It is the only chance for some men to retain any self-respect--to address them as 'Mr.'"--he would say, after the discovery of some more than usual piece of {48} ignorance in his class of "special" men; "for how can a man have any self-respect unless addressed as 'Mr.' who does not know which are the Pastoral Epistles, or who is the Bishop of Durham (then Bishop Westcott)?"

'He could not remember the name of his best friend on occasions, and he would recount with real glee how he had been known successfully to introduce two men, not knowing the name of either. On one occasion it fell to him to introduce to each other a low-caste West African native and a particularly high-caste Brahmin rejoicing in a lofty sounding polysyllabic title: of course he transposed the names--with results, so he declared, almost fatal to himself.

'He would display with humorous pride to his athletic friends a photograph of himself coming in second in a toboggan handicap race at St. Moritz, which he always maintained he morally won. He was full of spontaneous humour. When he greeted you, when he looked at you, when he talked with you, it was always with a half smile on his face. It was his sense of humour which procured him a quick entrance into many a man's life and heart. It was his sense of humour which made the hostile undergraduate, hauled for cutting lectures or chapels, forget his hostility and the presence of the don; though at the end of the interview he, probably for the first time, began to think whether chapel-going had any meaning, whether a lecture, if listened to, might conceivably profit the listener. It was his sense of humour which made all feel at home with him, which at the first attracted the most unlikely men, {49} which inspired with confidence the shyest, and made the most frivolous and thoughtless not afraid of him. Yet while he would laugh, and make us laugh, for as long as ever any one wished, through all his unaffected merriment he made men feel the strange earnestness of his life. And all knew that, while he never obtruded on us religious or even serious matters, he was ready at a moment's notice to speak with us of spiritual things. And most men felt something of what a friend of his wrote of him after his death: "He understood of 'the things that matter' more than any man that I shall ever meet." And many men who owe to Forbes Robinson their first serious thoughts of and their first insight into "the things that matter" must feel the same. It is this fact that makes it impossible to measure the far-reaching deep influence of his life. For the greatness of that life lay not in any large influence on any large body of undergraduates, though the undergraduate life of Christ's College must, as a whole, have felt his real influence; nor was his life great simply because he was a scholar and a thinker. But his life was great, and will for all time remain great, because it was an inspiration--there is no other word: it was, and is, a lasting, vivid, real inspiration to a few. What Bishop Westcott did on a large scale, Forbes Robinson did on a small. He inspired men--inspired them to search for and hold to the realities of life.

'To sum up: a man admitted into the inner chamber of his life learnt there something of these three things: (_a_) The value of his own personality, (_b_) the meaning of love, (_c_) the power of prayer.

{50}

'_a. The value of his own personality._--A man, as he talked with Forbes, was taught with increasing clearness the amazing possibilities of life for any one who has tried to think what it means to say that "this is I." Many of us, conscious in ourselves only of very ordinary attainments, of no very high ideals, of weaknesses of character, learnt from our friend that in spite of all this, our own personality was God's greatest gift to us. We learnt from him that our own particular commonplace life was, with all its failures and inconsistencies, a tremendous enterprise, big with opportunities. He taught us this by his belief in us. He held (again like Bishop Westcott) through everything to the faith of "man naturally Christian." By his belief in a man he forced him at last to believe in himself. For he taught us that we were, each one, two men--the real "Ego" and the false--and that the real self must in the end have the mastery over the false, because that real self was the Christ.

'_b. The meaning of love._--It is impossible for lesser natures to enter into all that the word "love" meant to Forbes. His love for his friends was "wonderful, passing the love of women." He loved some men with an intensity of feeling impossible to describe. It was almost pain to him. If he loved a man he loved him with a passionate love (no weaker expression will do). We undergraduates found our natures too small to understand it. Yet, as we learnt to know him more and more, we began too to learn a little of what real love is--we began to learn what can be the meaning and the wonder and the power {51} and the depth of the love of man for man. And we understood in time that his love for us and his belief in us sprang from the same high source--from the Christ in him, in us.

'_c. The power of prayer._--This last lesson explained the other two. Perhaps only a few of those who knew Forbes as undergraduates learnt it. Yet an intimate knowledge of him must have forced almost any man to the belief that 'more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.' He prayed for those he loved, it is certain, for hours at a time. All his thoughts about some men gradually became prayers. He could not teach us everything that prayer meant to him; he could not teach us to pray as he prayed. Yet through him one or two at least of his undergraduate friends saw a little further into the eternal mystery of prayer. And men must sometimes--with all reverence be it said--have experienced in his presence the same kind of a feeling of some great unseen influence at work as that which the disciples must have experienced in the presence of Christ after He, apart and alone, had watched through the night with God in prayer. For many an hour of his life did Forbes spend like that, striving with God for those he loved. He believed--he knew (this was his own testimony)--that he could in this way bring to bear upon a man's life more real effective influence than by any word of direct personal teaching or advice. So did he prove once more that the man of power in the spiritual world is the man of prayer.

'These are the great lessons of Forbes Robinson's {52} life--lessons which many a careless undergraduate learnt in a greater or less degree, and, learning, caught from the teacher something of his passion for life and love and prayer, for service of God and man.

'There must be many who will not soon forget the lessons; there must be many in whose lives the influence and inspiration of that saintly life will be for ever a power making for holiness and high ideals of living; there are, it is certain, very many who will thank God continually that they were, in their undergraduate days, allowed to call Forbes Robinson friend.

'How many of us, when we heard with a shock of almost horror that he had passed from us, conjured up before us the picture we shall never see again--the picture of our friend sitting any evening at his table in Darwin's historic rooms at Christ's, dimly lighted with candles! We shall remember long the quick look up at our entrance, the half-smile on his face, the welcome of a man's love in his eyes, however busy and tired he might be. Then, though it cost him later hours out of bed, the invitation to sit down, followed quickly by an indignant remonstrance as we ousted his cat from the best arm-chair. And then the talk that followed: sometimes almost trivial; sometimes (but only if we wished it) deeply serious; sometimes--and these occasions were precious--a kind of soliloquy on his part, as he spoke of God, of the realities of life, of love, of prayer. Then, with still the same half-smile, he would bid us "Good night," and watch us out of the room with the same look of love in his eyes with which he welcomed us, {53} as he turned back to his table to work and think and pray far into the night.

'So many a one of us has left him again and again, to return to the merry, careless, selfish undergraduate world a nobler, better man. And now he has passed from us--"dead ere his prime" we should say, did we not understand that somewhere the faithful, hopeful, loving soul has better work to do. He is, as he ever was, "in Christ." He lives. His life remains here and beyond. His faith in God, in prayer; his hope for every man; his utterly wonderful, amazing love,--they still remain. For _nuni menei_ (nothing can rob us of the word) _pistis, elpis, agape, ta tria tauta; meizpon de touton he agape_.'

[Transcriber's note: The above Greek phrases were transliterated as follows: _nuni_--nu, upsilon, nu, iota; _menei_--mu, epsilon, nu, epsilon, iota; _pistis_--pi, iota, sigma, tau, iota, final sigma; _elpis_--epsilon, lambda, pi, iota, final sigma; _agape_--alpha (soft breathing mark), gamma, alpha, pi, eta; _ta_--tau, alpha; _tria_--tau, rho, iota, alpha; _tauta_--tau, alpha, upsilon, tau, alpha; _meizpon_--mu, epsilon, iota, zeta, omega, nu; _de_--delta, epsilon; _touton_--tau, omicron, upsilon, tau, omega, nu; _he_--(rough breathing mark) epsilon; _agape_--alpha (soft breathing mark), gamma, alpha, pi, eta]

{54}

LETTERS

_To A. V. R._

Brislington Hill, Bristol: September 24, 1890.

. . . I have been persuaded to try the Semitic Languages Tripos. I have been learning German and Syriac a little this Long with that aim in view. . . . I don't really know what to do. I am trying to do what will best fit me for my future work. It is hard to know what is right.

. . . The only thing I want is not to develop into a mere bookworm. . . . The atmosphere of Cambridge so tends to deaden one, and to make one unsympathetic with humanity; and yet the Church today does so need men who know something, men who can express with no uncertain sound the truth of Old Testament and New Testament criticism. I want so to find out what the Old Testament is, and how far we can believe in it, in its essential truth, in its historical accuracy. The question can only be settled by scholars--by scholars filled with the spirit of humility and understanding. It cannot be settled by the so-called spiritual faculty alone, but only by the intellect guided by the Spirit of Truth.

I have been reading St. John's Gospel in Greek and Syriac, and more and more I become convinced {55} that what it says is truth: _zoe_--life--anything worth calling life--anything that can last--anything that is of use here and hereafter--is to be gained alone by actually eating and drinking the Body of the Son of Man. The expression is awfully strong--the expression in itself. I am not talking of all sorts of modern explanations of the expression. Take it as it stands in the original: 'You have no life, unless you eat and drink. . . .'

[Transcriber's note: The word _zoe_ in the above paragraph was transliterated from the Greek letters zeta, omega, eta.]

I wish there could be a small Greek Testament reading in the College for considering what the New Testament really means, apart from modern interpretations. Is it possible to find out the true, original meaning of that book, and to understand its problems a little and its solutions? 'Quid importat scientia sine timore Dei?'

_To T. H. M._

Aldeburgh House, Blackheath: March 20, 1891.

I am gradually finding out how ignorant I am of the meaning of the New Testament, and how miserably I have read my own miserable notions and glosses into the words of St. Paul. I am sure that the solution of the greatest problems which concern humanity is to be found in his Epistles, if we could only approach them without bias and with more childishness. I feel certain that the Incarnation is the great fact of the world's, and probably of the universe's, history. 'The Word was made flesh.'

And so the Word had breath, and wrought
With human hands the creed of creeds
In loveliness of perfect deeds,
More strong than all poetic thought.

{56}

The death on Calvary must have had effects far beyond this particular world. 'He descended into hell.' He claimed His power over all parts of His universe. The Good _has_ conquered. The Bad _is_ defeated.

_To T. H. M._

Christ's College, Cambridge: July 18, 1891.

We have but lately heard that my missionary brother[1] has passed away into the eternal world. He died in Africa. He gave up all, he gave up his life for Christ. Terribly as we feel the loss, and shall feel it still more, I cannot help thanking the Eternal Father that He has accepted the life-sacrifice, and feeling that He calls upon us here and now, each day and moment of our lives, to offer up ourselves on the altar of universal thanksgiving. Life is sacrifice, renunciation: true life is dependence on God. Sin is isolation, death--a failure to recognise and act on our dependence. I do feel as I seldom felt before something of the love of the Father, the grace of the Son, the communion of the Spirit. We _must_ learn that an individual hope, aspiration, ambition, is against the law of the universe--the law of self-sacrifice. We _must_ learn that our wills are ours to make them God's; that if we have a single hope or thought which He does not inspire, which true humanity cannot share, the hope and thought are wrong. God grant that you and I may renounce {57} our individual lives, and become truly ourselves by martyrdom, by allowing the Christ in us to live.

I am to be ordained in September. Pray for me. There is no power like prayer. Let us pray for one another. The great Father longs for simple lives, simple piety, perpetual thanksgiving. And we have so much to be thankful for--so much here and now. I do long to offer body, mind, soul, affections, will, hope, to Him as a thanksgiving. Self-renunciation, life in a Church, a Body, is the only life. God grant we may live it!

[1] John Alfred Robinson, formerly a scholar of Christ's College, who died at Lokoja on the River Niger, on June 25, 1891.

_To T. H. M._

Christ's College, Cambridge: November 17, 1891.

Do you know that it isn't a bad thing to feel a babe? We must all become simple little children before we enter the kingdom of heaven, because God, who lives in that kingdom, has the simplest heart in all the wide universe--the most childlike, for God is Love. He has no cross purposes. Though He is stronger and better and bigger than we are, He is simpler. He will love a poor, simple old woman in His simple way with a wonderful affection. He is so simple, because He does not know what sin is. God never sins. God is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all.

It is this simplicity, this love of One who is omnipotent, uncreate, illimitable, eternal, that makes me reverence Him, adore Him, live for Him, love Him.

Simplicity is wonderfully attractive. The man who knows least of sin is most helpful to me, because {58} he is most simple and Godlike. The 'man of the world' is most repulsive, because he is most like the Devil.

_To E. N. L., on the occasion of his ordination._

Cambridge: March 10, 1892.

It gives me great pleasure to think that on Sunday next you will be made a Deacon in God's Church. I thank God that He has called you to one of the highest offices on earth, that henceforth you will be 'in' or (shall we say?) 'under' orders--God's orders--that you willingly renounce your life, your thoughts, your hopes, your ambitions to Him. You will probably hear much and be told much at this time. I have nothing to say that you have not heard and will not hear said far better by others. Our Church gives the keynote in the collect for Sunday: 'We have no power.' I never realised my weakness, my pride, my hollowness so much as I did at my ordination. God has been teaching me, even in the short time since I was ordained, wonderful lessons--lessons of strength being perfected in weakness. He alone knows the depths of our hypocrisy, our vanity, our atheism, and He alone can help us. To get nearer to Him, to know Him better--this is what I want, this is eternal life. As we believe in a Person who is by our side, who is helping us, training us, we shall be able to proclaim Him to others. Do not mind about feelings. You may have beautiful feelings at your ordination time. Thank God if you have. He sends them. You may have none. Thank God if you have not, for He has kept them back. We do {59} not want to _feel_ better and stronger; we want to _be_ better and stronger. And He _has_ made us better and stronger. He has given us His Spirit as we knelt before the bishop. We must go forth in that strength. We must use it, live on it, and it will be ours. _Kata ten pistin humon genetheto humin_. When we feel most hopeless, most wretched, most distant from God, remember 'feelings don't matter.' Remember that God's Son felt the same temptation, remember that He too was forsaken by His God. And when all seems lost, Satan seems master, we are misunderstood; remember that 'I believe in the Holy Ghost,' who is stronger than separation or death, than feelings, than our hearts. All our feelings and thoughts and wishes are nothing. God is everything and in all. All our conceptions will be shattered, all our schemes overthrown, that a Great Person behind may be revealed. To know, to love, to make known, to make men love that Person is our work in life . . . .

[Transcriber's note: The Greek words in the above paragraph were transliterated as follows: _Kata_--Kappa, alpha, tau, alpha; _ten_--tau, eta, nu; _pistin_--pi, iota, sigma, tau, iota, nu; _humon_--(rough breathing mark) upsilon, mu, omega, nu; _genetheto_--gamma, epsilon, nu, eta, theta, eta, tau, omega; _humin_--(rough breathing mark) upsilon, mu, iota, nu]

We are men sent from God. We come to bear witness of a Light. Do not let us confuse ourselves with our message. The message is everything; we are nothing. The Light simply shines through us. We must be glad to be shattered, rejected, if so be that the Light shining through us may be manifested.

One suggestion I make: that you do what I believe you are expected by the words of the Prayer-book to do--say the Morning and Evening Prayer daily _always_, unless you are ill, at home or in church, and the Litany on Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. You will find this a greater help than almost anything else--a help against superstition, narrowness, bigotry, {60} heartlessness. If you decide not to do so, do it with some _really_ good reason, and not because others do the same, or because it is a bother.

And now good-bye. And may God grant us to know Him on earth, so that we may together know Him better hereafter.

_To W. A. B._

Blackheath: April 30, 1892.

. . . No amount of philosophical theories are worth much compared with a simple picture of home life. It is these common relations of life which are most awful and sacred. The highest life we know is, I think I may say with reverence, family life--life of Father and Son; family life on earth is a faint picture of something better in heaven. We shall be surprised some day to find that, while we have been searching for the noble and divine, we have it all the while at home. The relations of brother and brother, son and father, are eternal realities, which we shall never fathom, for God Himself is below them. 'Omnia exeunt in mysterium,' as Kingsley says in 'Yeast.' I am very pleased with that novel. The description he gives of the sufferings and squalor of villages is positively awful. We do want men who believe that self-sacrifice, not selfishness, is at the top of all, who are sure that family life is made in heaven and is made in the image of God's life, who know that in the present is the eternal, to go and live and work and die in our villages. But Kingsley shows it is not enough to give alms or other social benefits--we must do more than that, we must raise their whole {61} life and condition. I believe myself that this can only be done from inside. Thus, when God wished to redeem man, He did it from inside. Man himself fought and conquered. Deity entered into humanity. It is not merely that we must live simply, think simply, work, as they do. That is well, but we must do more. If we want to look at them from the inside, I know only one way--the old, old way which God Himself adopts. We must love them, love the Christ, the Spirit in them--not the beast, the devil in them. Like attracts like. To love and to detect that, we must have some of that Spirit, that Christ.

That means to say that to help others from the inside, we must be right inside ourselves. And yet none of us are right inside. But there is that in us which is right, that in us which is not ourselves, but is deeper than ourselves. A Son who will make us true sons, a Brother who will teach us how to be brothers, a Human Being who will show us what is in all human beings; a Love who will teach us what we always fancy we know, but what we don't know (else we should be divine)--how to love; a Man who will make us saints and gentlemen--the Man Christ Jesus. Yes, and there is in us a Great Spirit who is uniting us by invisible bonds to all that is good and healthy and Godlike, a Spirit who disciplines our will when it is weakest and most self-indulgent, who trains our spirit and fights our battles against the evil spirit, a Person who makes us persons. How then do men differ? If in every man there is the Light which lightens him, the Christ, the Spirit, what is the difference between good and bad men? Does {62} a good man possess religion, or faith, or love? No, the best men would tell you they were possessed by faith and love, rather than that they possessed them. What faith or love they have is not a possession--it is in them, not of them, not belonging to them. It comes from the Christ in them. The difference between men is not that one is inspired and another is not, but that one yields to the Spirit, another does not. We begin to obey when we lose ourselves in that Spirit and forget all but God. We ought never to settle any detail in life without taking Him into account: we are fools if we do. How can we be logical? For He is in that detail, and not to think of Him is not to understand that detail. For every detail is more than a detail--it is the expression of a Person.

I have wandered into a train of thought suggested by 'Yeast,' and in part copied directly from it. Forgive me. I was half thinking aloud. That is my one excuse for saying what I am trying to think.

I never played golf. I do that sort of thing by deputy. K---- is the sort of man to do it for me. At any rate, I trust him with my football and rowing. It doesn't tire you so much if you do it that way. Only let me give you one piece of advice, which I only wish I acted upon: 'Don't do your thinking by deputy:' do your rowing, golf, football, cricket, skittles, talking if you like, but not your thinking.

{63}

_To D. D. R; written apropos of a discussion on St. Paul's idea of the relation between Sin and the Law._

2 New Square, Cambridge; Monday before Easter, 1892.

I cannot but help feeling that part of your difficulties are self-made. Is there such a difference between Jewish law and law in general? What is law--law in the abstract? What do you mean when you talk about laws of science or morality? Surely there is no such thing as law in the abstract. You really mean God's thought. All law existed long before this world existed, as the thought of God. This thought expresses itself, when the world is actually made, in animals, nature, man. But this thought is somewhat long before it expresses itself, because it is God's thought. With Him 'to think' is 'to do.' Before you and I were born, before men were made, man exists in God as a thought. Each of us is an expression of part of that thought. The whole thought is the image of God, not any one part. Now, when I speak of man as something in contra-distinction to men, I mean the thought of God in contradistinction to its individual realisation. So when I speak of law as distinct from special laws, I mean a thought of God as distinct from its special expressions. Otherwise 'man' and 'law' are abstractions and nonentities.

The nominalist is right in so far as he denies that law as an abstract thing (considered apart from a person--as his thought) is anything: the realist is right in so far as he affirms that law, apart from {64} any particular manifestation, is an eternal reality. The reconciliation of nominalism and realism is found in God. Applying this to the case in hand--you admit that the Ten Commandments are the ground of morality; therefore, I say, they must be an expression of a thought of God, the Author of morality. But you are puzzled to find that the most trivial sanitary arrangements are considered by the Jew as equally a manifestation of God. Need we be? In every little sanitary precaution I recognise, or ought to recognise, an expression of that same mind as I see it in the Ten Commandments. God is Light, therefore the clean, the healthy, the decent is an expression of Him. God is Love, therefore the social, the self-sacrificing, is an expression of Him as well. But sanitary arrangements and the like, though an expression of an unchanging principle, change according to state of civilisation, climate, country. Therefore we take the principle, not the expression, as the ultimate reality in the case of these sanitary laws.

I am afraid I am rather stupid, and cannot make my meaning plain. I want to show you that the Jewish law only differs from English law as being in some ways a more complete expression of God's nature. But in all sanitary law, &c., _now_ we have God's nature expressed. And it would be true to say, 'God spake unto England, saying'--_e.g._ in a right decision in court; it would be true to say, 'God spake unto the judge, saying.' Therefore, what holds good of Moses' law holds good of all law, because all law is a thought of God. {65} Therefore St. Paul uses indifferently _nomos_ and _ho nomos_, for what is true of God's thought is true of every expression of it. In fact, he more often perhaps argues about one particular expression of it. Why? Because we can only tell what the thought is by studying the expression.

[Transcriber's note: The Greek words in the above paragraph were transliterated as follows: _nomos_--nu, omicron, mu, omicron, final sigma; _ho_--(rough breathing mark), omicron]

Don't be taken in by abstractions. An ideal is nothing--worse than nothing--unless our ideal is God's idea. Then it is the only reality, because God's idea will take effect. His idea is to make man in His image, and be sure it will take effect. Commandments, judgments, statutes, mean much the same in the Old Testament, I conceive, as we mean when we use them. The Ten Commandments are not so called in the Bible, I think. They are called 'words,' I think.

I do not think St. Paul at all restricted _nomos_ to the Ten Commandments. In fact, I don't know that he ever very clearly separated those off from all the rest.

Do not in your essay make the same mistake as many of the Jews in St. Paul's time. Do not try to consider law apart from the Law-giver. They looked upon law as a dead thing by itself, not as an expression of the character of a person.

Thus the Commandment about resting on the Sabbath day was considered by them as an order as though from a tyrant. But God, when He gave it, did not simply say, 'Here it is: do it'--but 'Do it because,' and He gives the reason why. The reason is different in Exodus and Deuteronomy, because the books were, to a certain degree perhaps, written to {66} illustrate different aspects of God's character. Exodus says: 'Work and rest, because God's life is work and rest. Therefore human life made in His image is work and rest.' Deuteronomy says: 'Work and rest. God has emancipated you from slavery. He bids you rest.' In both cases God is the ground of the law. Study law--any law--English law--and in so far as it is law, and not lawlessness under guise of law, you will be studying God Himself; for if St. Paul's principles are true at all, they must be true of all law. But, oh! don't deal with abstractions, which sound well, but mean little. Let us use what we have. It is a grand thing to know that the highest ideal we can conceive must be realised, for the highest ideal must be part of God's idea.

Don't try to look at moral law apart from national life. St. Paul did not. Law is seen in national life. A nation is a better expression of God than an individual, because God is three, not simply one. He is a social Being, a Being of relations. And nations will last for ever. Law will always be seen worked out in national life. God has more worlds than one. Each nation is a thought of God worked out in human clay (cf. Jeremiah xviii. 1-6). Human clay lasts for ever ('I believe in the resurrection of the body'). Law will always be worked out thus. We are part of a thought of God--part of an English nation--little fragments of a huge whole. Our immortality depends on the fact that we are parts of a nation, parts of a Divine idea, which lasts for ever. Law is more completely seen in conscious than unconscious life, because God's life is conscious. Law is more completely seen {67} in family and national than individual life, because in God Himself are seen the archetypes of human relations.

This letter is disjointed, but contains a few thoughts which may prove helpful--thoughts I have been learning from others of late.

We are having lovely weather.

The buds 'feeling' after each other--new life and resurrection life--a type, a pledge of fuller resurrection, of Easter life--nay, the same Life--'I am the Resurrection and the Life'--working in trees and flowers and man. What a glorious thing to live in a world which has been united with its Maker--a world of perfect law and order--a world where every infraction of law must and will be punished--a world where Love is Law and Law is Love--a world where a great thought is being realised, and will be realised in and for us! You use 'Theology' loosely--'Theology' is _the_ thing and 'Religion' is not, I think, nearly such a fine word. Theology is the Learning, Knowing, Studying God. I am sorry I have said nothing about Jewish sacrificial law. I meant to. That expresses a great fact. It dimly hints (as sacrificial law in other nations does) at the fact that the ground of the universe is self-sacrifice--that the ground of all human, whether family or national, life is a filial sacrifice. I think other nations besides Jews regarded _all_ law as coming from God; nay, I think all nations did in part at least.

{68}

_To E. N. L., on the occasion of the death of his brother, who was killed by lightning at Cambridge._[1]

June 18, 1892.