Chapter V: Part 5

“Sweet messenger of ‘calm decay,’
Saluting sorrow as you may,
As one still bent to find or make the best,
In thee and in this quiet mead,
The lesson of sweet peace I read,
Rather in all to be resigned than blest.

“Oh cheerful, tender strain! the heart
That duly bears with you its part,
Singing so thankful to the dreary blast,
Though gone and spent its joyous prime,
And on the world’s Autumnal time,
’Mid withered hues and sere, its lot be cast,

“That is the heart for watchman true,
_Waiting to see what God will do_.”

* * * * *

Let us walk out into the garden. I love an Autumn garden, and I think that at any season of the year a garden is a book in which we may read a great deal about God. On the Sunday evenings, therefore, I like to sit there, under a tree may be, with some peaceful heavenly book, sometimes to read, and sometimes to close over my thumb, and keep just as company while I meditate; and God’s works seem an apt comment on God’s Word, which I have heard or read that day.

But now we will go in the early morning before breakfast--

“To bathe our brain from drowsy night
In the sharp air and golden light.
The dew, like frost, is on the pane,
The year begins, though fair, to wane:
There is a fragrance in its breath,
Which is not of the flowers, but death.”

And we pass out of the window that opens into the garden under the tulip-tree standing so tall and still, with pale green and now yellow-touched leaves, that harmonise well with the pale sky against which you see them. The beech in the shrubbery has begun to “gather brown”; the tall dark elms that shut it in remind you vividly of the poet’s description of

“Autumn laying here and there
A fiery finger on the leaves.”

Against the thick box-trees underneath you love to see

“The sunflower, shining fair,
Ray round with flames her disc of seed,”

and some tall hollyhocks, still keeping up a brave cheer of rose-coloured and primrose and black blossoms upon their highest spike. The grass is glistening with heavy dew, sapphire, rose-diamond, pure brilliant, and yellow-diamond;--move a little, and one drop changes from one to the other of these. Walking across the lawn towards that rose-bed, you leave distinct green foot-prints upon the hoary grass. Perhaps the feeling that at last almost weighs upon you, and depresses you, is the intense, _waiting_ stillness of everything. That apple-tree, bending down to the lawn with rosy apples, it seems so perfectly still and resting, that it quite makes you start to hear one of its red apples drop upon the path. The hurry and bustle and eager growth of the year has all gone by: these roses, that used to send out crowding bud after bud;--for some weeks a pause, a waiting, has come over them. This one purely white blossom, you watched it developing, unfolding so slowly, that it never seemed to change, taking a week for what would have taken no more than half a summer day, until at last it had opened fully, and hung down its head towards the brown damp mould. And there it seemed to stop. It seems not to have changed now for a week or two--why should it hurry to fade?--there were no more to come after it should go. Now half of it has detached itself, and lies in a little unbroken snowy heap on the ground. How quietly it must have fallen there! And the other half still stays on the tree, and leans down, and watches with a strange calm over the fallen white heaped petals,

“Innumerably frost impearled.”

Something of depression comes over you, I say, and there happens to be no cheery robin just now to put in a word, nor sedate rook sailing with still wings overhead across the pale sky, to give you even the poorer encouragement of his mere stoic _caw_. Why are you depressed? What is this strange sadness that seems to you to lurk under the exquisite calm and beautiful stillness of the Autumn morning?

Do you hardly know? I will tell you. That quiet is the quiet of Death coming on; that calm waiting and expectancy is the herald of its approach, the beauty is the hectic flush of the consumptive cheek. Death is sad for Life to contemplate; and we are so much akin to all this decay, that this quiet tells us of it almost more than the heavy bell that now and then stirs the air of the Summer morning. The coming death of the Summer leaves and the Summer flowers preaches to us a solemn sermon of our own death drawing near. Watch that leaf circling down from that silent tree, and listen to the echo in your own heart:

“We all do fade as a leaf.”

Yes, death, the sense of advancing death, is at the root of your sadness and depression. Death in its beauty, in a tender loveliness--death, the angel, not the skeleton, yet still DEATH. And,

“Whatever crazy sorrow saith,
No life that breathes with human breath
Has ever truly longed for death.

“’Tis LIFE, whereof our nerves are scant,
Oh life, not death, for which we pant,
More life, and fuller, that I want.”

And a great warrior, of long ago, one who had less cause than most to fear death, yet said:

“We that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened; not
for that we would be _unclothed_, but _clothed upon_, that
_mortality_ might be swallowed up of _life_.”

Well, this sadness must remain in some measure; the flowers must die, and the leaves must fall, and the robin’s attempts to cheer us bring the tears very near our eyes. “_Sin entered into the world, and death by sin_”: and the child of such a parent cannot bring joy as his attendant. Still, let us go on with our garden walk, and see whether, even in the face of nature, there be nothing else but only this peaceful waiting sadness.

Take these branches of the Lilac bushes, that we remember bending under their scented masses in the warm early Summer days. Bare and damp, bare of flowers, and only clad with sickly yellow leaves; but what else can we see in them? There is not one (examine them well) which has not already a full green bud of promise, developed even before the leaves, the old leaves, have fallen away. Look on the ground in the shrubberies. What are these little green points that begin just to break the mould? Ah, they are indeed the myriad white constellations of snowdrops already beginning to dawn, and the frail flower will sleep warm and safe in the bulb, under the patchwork counterpane of gold beech leaves, and bronze-purple pear-leaves, and silver-white poplar, and come out among the first to tell you that nature is not dead, but sleepeth. Look farther, on to the flower borders, at the base of the tall gaunt stalks of the once stately Queen of flowers. Lo, there already

“Green above the ground appear
The lilies of another year.”

Not all sad, then; no, not all sad! Memory droops indeed with dewy eyes, but the baby, Hope, is laughing on her lap. There is a resurrection for the flowers and the trees; true, this of itself could not assure us that there is one for man. But God has told us in the Book of His Word, the meaning of what we read in the Book of His Works. And we know now what the robin meant, in his small song without words, and we know what the promise of Spring means, hidden in each Autumn twig; and indeed, the garden and the field, and every hedgerow, and every grass, gather now into a great chorus that take up an Apostle’s words,

“This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must
put on immortality. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where
is thy victory?”

But it is now nearly half-past eight o’clock, and the family will be assembling for prayer. Let us pass round this walk, with hearts cheerful, or only tinged with a shade rather of quiet than of gloom--

“And then return, by walls of peach,
And pear-trees bending to our reach,
And rose-beds with the roses gone,
To bright-laid breakfast.”

Autumn days. Such thoughts as these may interpret to us the strange oppressive sadness that comes over us, as we watch them stealing on; also, why it is that this is such a tender, sweet sadness, and not a dark, deadly gloom--the shade of a solemn grove, not the blackness of a vault. Death is indeed a valley of shadow still. But the rays of the Sun of Righteousness have penetrated even there--and the hideous darkness is softened to a tender twilight hush. Oh,

“Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord
Jesus Christ.”

And now the Autumn days are very calm and restful to think upon, and there is a deep peace in the Autumn of life, for which we are well content to exchange the flush and glee of Spring, and the glory and glow of Summer. Our snowdrops and our primroses are all over, our lilac and laburnum, roses and lilies, all died long ago; even the fruit is plucked, except for the gleam of a stray red apple that burns upon the nearly leafless bough; and the corn is all carried, and we are wandering over life’s once waving fields, collecting just the last gleanings for our Master. Our larks are silent in the fallows, our thrushes and blackbirds voiceless in the groves; the rich flood of the nightingale’s thrilling song has long been lost to our hearts. The withered leaves sail down about us, the mists sleep on the hills, the dew lies thick in the valleys. But we are very happy and peaceful; even here there is a stray flower or two, and the Autumn crocus droops on the garden beds; and the berries are bright in the hedges, under the feathery tufts of the “traveller’s joy.” And our heart is well satisfied with the robin’s song of trust and content, that has taken the place of--if richer and fuller--yet less spiritual and more distracting strains. There is an intense waiting calm; but, oh, such thoughts of Life!--life everlasting, life indeed--push their way through the yet unfallen leaves of this frail existence, and that small cheery melody is, we well know, the prelude to the full symphonies that shall burst from Angel choirs.

How beautiful a time, thus thought of, is life’s Autumn time! I love to read of such a calm season in the life of a good man--a calm only broken by flashes of exultation, that come, like the aurora borealis, into the twilight sky. There is a sadness, no doubt--there _must_ be--in the coming shade of death which deepens on the path. But the bud of life in the very heart of death; of this we are more and more conscious, the closer we draw near to the withered branches. And, like the fabled scent of the Spice Islands, even over the darkening seas are wafted to us sweet odours from the Promised Land.

* * * * *

Autumn days--when the flowers are over, and the harvest well-nigh gathered in, and the flush and the eagerness very far behind, and the strength and the vigour things also of the past:--I think they are sweet days to which to look forward amid life’s hurry and bustle, its excitement of laughter and tears. A very peaceful land, a land of Beulah, where repose seems to reign, and all seems “only waiting.” No more wild dreams, it is true, of what life is going to be, but then no sad wakings, and, lo, it was a dream! No more quick blood coursing in the veins, no more excess of animal life making stillness impossible and silence torture; no more young devotion and quick enthusiasm, warming the heart even to tinder, ready to flare at the first spark of friendship or love. No more glow of poetry cast about every face, and every daisy, and every sky, and every scene of every act of the coming years. No more expectation of becoming a great poet, a mighty warrior, an evangeliser of the world. And then no vigour to act, as when life went on; no leading the front of the battle, striking strong strokes for the right; no rejoicing in the strength that has now come, and that is still, still in its prime.

All that, and more, has passed away from life’s Autumn days. It was, perhaps, rather sad to feel these things departing; to notice growth first come to a standstill--and then, here and there the streak of Autumn, and the first yellow leaves stealing down. To find the years so short, instead of so long; to lose the wonder and the thrill at the first snowdrop, the first cowslip; the first nest low in the bushes with five blue eggs; the first excursion round the park wall for violets, or into the wood for nuts. To lose the glow of early love, the despair of early disappointment, the vigour of early intention and action; and to mellow down into a half-light, undisturbed by any of those violent lights and shadows. It was, I say, perhaps rather sad to feel these things departing.

But now they have gone, and the Autumn days have come, and the heart has settled down to this state of things, and is content that it should be so. It is better, far better, the old man sees, to be in the Autumn of life, though he yet thinks tenderly, lovingly, of those young days in the impetuous, over-blossomed Spring. The “visionary gleam” has left his sky. But a truer, if a quieter lustre has arisen in it and abides. “_There hath passed a glory from the earth._” But the glory has been transferred to Heaven. It was sad, at first, when the glamour, and the magic, and the glow, passed away from this world, which, to youth’s heart seemed so exceedingly, inexpressibly glorious and fair. But it is better so. A mirage gave, indeed, a certain sweet mysterious light to life’s horizon, and he could not but feel dashed at first to find little but bare sand where the unreal brightness had been. But he journeyed on, learning, somewhat sadly, in manhood, God’s loving lesson, that we are strangers and pilgrims upon earth, that we have _no continuing city here_, not love, nor fame, nor wealth, nor power; none of these could, even had we attained it, prove a City of Rest: we must still journey on before we can sit down satisfied. And God’s true servant, in his Autumn days, has learned not to miss nor to mourn over youth’s mirage. Nay, his future has “no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it. For the glory of God doth lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.”

He looks at the sky, which is certainly darkening, because life’s one-day sun is going down. But, the lower it sinks, the less he laments it, for he finds that it did indeed hide from him the vast tracts of Infinity, and close him in, by its light, in a small low-ceiled room. Oh quiet days of peace and reverence and mild serenity; the rocking waves of the passions asleep about the tossed heart, and the glittering thoughts of heaven reflected instead from the calm soul; and its speechless infinite depths gradually mirroring themselves in the being! Happy days, when life’s feverish, exciting novel is closed, and we are just reading quietly for an hour in the Book of peace, before the time comes for us to go off to bed! Happy days; when God Himself is striking off one by one the fetters and manacles of earth, and will soon send His Angel to open for us the last iron gate of earth’s prison!

How thankful we should be, as we grow into the Autumn, for those kind words which assure us that life’s beginning, not life’s end, is then really near; that it is but the bud of immortal youth that is pushing off those withered leaves of mortality; for those who have given the year of their life to God; or, at least (such is His mercy in Christ Jesus), the earnest gleaning of its late months. For else, how sad to watch the sun setting, the only sun we know of, and to hope for no long day beyond. Think of what a wise heathen said of old age. Cicero wrote a treatise, a wonderfully beautiful treatise, in praise of it. But all this was but playing with his own sadness, in his old age; pleading the cause of a client, in whose cause he did not believe. For, after all, he writes his real thought to his friend Atticus. “_Old age_,” he says, “_has embittered me--my life is spent_.” Sad, yet true from his point of view. Sad--all spent; and no good hope of a “treasure in the heavens _that faileth not_.” How even one of the little ones in our village schools could have cheered up sad Cicero!

Now see what Christianity can do, and has done. Think of waiting Simeon:

“Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace,
According to Thy word:
For mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.”

Hear aged Paul, the great champion Apostle, leaning now on his sword, and exhorting the younger warriors who are leading on that war, that he soon must leave. What peace, nay, what exultation, flashes through his waiting!

And a picture arises before us of another aged, very aged man, ending the Bible and his life with the solemn rapturous words of glowing expectation--

“He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly.
Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus!”

There is another aspect of Autumn days, dreary and sad as they apply to the worldling. But to the obedient faithful child of God, their sadness, we have seen, is gentle, peaceful sadness, a tender hush more than counterbalanced by the promise of we know not yet, _what_ exceeding ecstasy and glow of life, while we speak of it as _the life everlasting_. Aye,

“The grass withereth, the flower fadeth,”

and there must be a hush over Autumn days, because death must be sad, even when it is beautiful. But how sweet and glorious, amid the fall and decay of the loveliness and beauty around us, to be able to rest our heart quietly upon a land beyond earth’s horizon; and to look forward brightly and happily across these changes, “to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and _that fadeth not away_.”

MUSINGS ON THE SEA-SHORE.

“Mourn on, mourn on, O solitary sea
I love to hear thy moan,
The world’s mixed cries attuned to melody
In thy undying tone.
Lo, on the yielding sand I lie alone,
And the white cliffs around me draw their screen,
And part me from the world. Let me disown
For one short hour its pleasure and its spleen,
And wrapt in dreamy thought, some peaceful moments glean.”

The tide is coming in; the waves are big enough to be called waves, yet they break upon the shelving shore from a perfectly calm sea. And the long ranks rise and fall at my feet, curving and breaking in endless succession; line after line sent forth by the stern mandate of General Ocean, to die each in his turn upon the impregnable rampart of the Land. Ever since the third day of Creation has this assault been protracted, now by craft, now with the thunder of artillery and the violence of the storm; although it be really so hopeless that the balance of things remains about as it was at the beginning. If the armies of the Sea have made a breach here, fresh earthworks have been thrown up in another place by its stubborn antagonist, and the interminable strife remains equal still.

But the solemn Sea forbids longer trifling; and its oppressive vastness, and melancholy murmur, and mysterious whisper of ever born and ever dying waves, own, surely, some grave meaning.

“The earnest sea,
Which strives to gain an utterance on the shore,
But ne’er can shape unto the listening hills
The lore it gathered in its awful age--”

it seems to demand an interpreter. Let it be my mood to disentangle some of its utterances. Let me employ this hour of thought upon the lonely shore, in guessing at the meaning of the voice of the long lines which ever bow to the ground before me with eastern salaam, and then retire, having delivered their message.

“The sea approaches, with its weary heart
Mourning unquietly;
An earnest grief, too tranquil to depart,
Speaks in that troubled sigh;
Yet the glad waves sweep onward merrily,
For hope from them conceals the warning tone,
Gaily they rush toward the shore--to die.
All their bright spray upon the bare sand thrown,
How soon they learn their part in that old ceaseless moan!”

Yes, this well-worn lesson shall be the first that the waves shall teach us--the vanity and disappointment of human aspirations and early hopes and dreams. See now how glad and gleeful and bright and energetic they come on, twinkling with a myriad laugh, line behind line, eager ridge chasing eager ridge; all setting towards the cold sullen shore of the unsympathetic earth. Oh the clear pure curve, and the unsullied transparency; and the glancing crest of feathers and diamonds, and the rainbow tints as at last the longed-for shore is reached, and the eager plunge made! Oh the dis-illusion, the broken enchantment, the check, the change, the fall, when the white glittering spray lies now, lost and sullied and broken, upon the defiling earth; and the wave--amazed, daunted, shattered, quickly changing from over-hope to over-despair--flees back with a wild cry to the great Sea. Another and another and another, the warning is not taken; it is true that earth scattered this bright hope, this strong purpose, this brave design, this gleaming ambition; it is true that the yellow sands have been busy, ever since the Fall, inviting and then defeating the eager waves; receiving, marring, and sucking in the trembling snowy spray, the rainbow-tinged bubble dreams that the heart lavished upon them; and changing joyous onsets into moaning retreats. Yet who will expect the young heart to believe in the destiny of all its mere earth-dreams, _so long as, within it, the tide is coming up_? You almost smile, though with no scorn, to hear that momentary despairing sigh. For _you_ stand now on a point from which you can see a seemingly exhaustless and endless array of ever-new schemes, and hopes, and fancies, and purposes, and ambitions and dreams, line chasing line, towards that magic disenchanting shore. Those behind cry “Forward!” Vain for those before to cry “Back!” Yea, themselves soon pick up their broken forces, and swell the energy and join in the advance of the crested lines that chase one another to the shore.

This, then, is to me one lesson of the waves coming in. Human aspirations and dreams, advancing gaily in youth, awhile seeming to make some progress; but learning at high tide that they have but been conquering unprofitable tracts of barren sand. Then yielding ground inch by inch, losing their grasp of the world and relinquishing the very lust thereof; and spoiled, and stained, and marred, and with a very heart-moan, sinking to low ebb as life turns. Was not this Solomon’s story? Wave after wave dancing to the shore, curve after curve breaking eagerly upon it, scheme after scheme, toil after toil, pleasure after pleasure, hope after hope, ambition after ambition, dream after dream; the eye is bewildered and dizzied with the ceaseless motion, the steady endless advance of the gay and crested waters--“Whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them, I withheld not my heart from any joy: for my heart rejoiced in all my labour.” It was gladdening, exhilarating, exciting to see the flashing battalions of earthward plans, and earthward dreams, pressing each close upon each, to the inexorable, impassive line of rocks or sand--what matter that here one shattered with a crash against a cruel blunt crag, and fled with a scream, and that another left its light and beauty trembling and sinking into the sand, while itself slunk back with a hollow sigh; what matter these single and insignificant experiences of the vanity of things mundane, while there was yet a whole rising tide of wildly eager waters, coming in fast, fast, exhaustless, infinite, flashing and gleaming and dancing in the sun? On, gaily on, and what if some die? Are there not myriads to follow! Why heed the waste, amid youth’s profusion?

But a pause comes over all the glad onset; a stagnant time, a period of neither advance nor retreat: the tide is at the full. You mark no change for awhile either way: then at last a space of wet sand begins to border the line of dying spray. Broadening and broadening; but it was quite enough that it had once begun. The tide has turned. Here is “the check, the change, the fall.” An eager strife, a wild race, an impetuous advance, a profuse and uncalculating spending all youth’s energies, and purposes, and powers, and aspirations; an excited resistless march. And with what result? An unprofitable and transitory conquest of a narrow track of barren sand.

Oh draw off, draw off your broken forces, defeated in that they were victorious; disappointed by the very fact of attainment; steal back with that heart-sigh of “Vanity, vanity, vanity: all is vanity,”--back into the deep sea again! Leaving, it is true, the colour, and the light, and the gladness, and the purity; the crested spray, the diamond drops, the rainbow gleam; all lying wrecked and sucked in by the hungry shore. Leaving the spoils of youth, yet glad anyhow to get away; for what can equal the bitterness of that moment when the tide, long sluggish, begins at last to turn?

“Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and
on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was
vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under
the sun.”

No,--and the bitter thought is, that not the missing, but the attaining the prize, has disappointed; not failure, but success, has embittered: and that it might have been known from the very first that thus it must be--that the coveted possession was but lifeless rock or bare sand. There was a warning voice to this effect, but, oh, who heard or heeded it in that glorious advance of the long battalions of battling gleaming waters? And, to add bitterness to the cup, this was all an old story; we were not, as we dreamed, invading new worlds; no, those ancient sands have borne the furrows of myriads upon myriads of just such excited, eager, leaping tides. The anguish has not even the pathos of novelty; it is actually commonplace. That which seemed so new to us, at what more than millionth hand we received it!

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that
which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new
thing under the sun.

“Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it
hath been already of old time, which was before us.”

And so hark to the moan of the waves as they draw off, when the tide has turned, and the disenchantment has come, sigh after sigh, moan upon moan, in the weary and desolate retreat. “_Vanity of vanities; all is vanity._” Yes; and farther on, a more bitter wail, as it passes back over some spot where some of the gayest morning hopes were spilt: “_I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit._” Lower and lower yet, with yet duller and heavier moan: “_What hath man of all his labour, and of the vexation of his heart, wherein he hath laboured under the sun? For all his days are sorrows, and his travail grief; yea, his heart taketh not rest in the night. This is also vanity._” And now an almost fierce and angry cry: “_Therefore I hated life; because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me; for all is vanity and vexation of spirit._”

And what then? Is this the end of all? Is there no hope for the wailing tide; no redemption for the scattered spray?

I have seen what has seemed to me a sweet and touching answer to this question. Over the desolate sands a quiet Mist has been drawn, while the Sea moaned far away down at low tide. And I seemed thus taught how even earth’s wrecks may be repaired, and earth’s ruin turned into gain. Better to give to God the fresh sparkle and the first eager and joyous onset of life. But if not, and if the waves must set towards some earth shore, until they are broken, sullied, and wrecked there, see what the rising mist teaches. Let them remember themselves, and at last come homeward, leaving the stain and the defilement behind. So merciful is God, that even these ruins and disappointments are all messages of His patient love to us. If we will not turn at first to Him, He will let us break our hearts upon the shore of earth, content if but at last our hopes and aspirations will rise in a pure repentant mist from their overthrow and ruin, and wait beside the gate of heaven, touched now with the clear moonlight of peace, and expecting the rich sunburst of glory hereafter. The very overthrows and dissatisfactions of earth may thus rise, spiritualised and purified, to God at last.

This, no doubt, is the intention of the disappointments and inadequacies of this earth, upon which the heart, at the time of the coming in of the tide, spends so much of its powers, and against which it bursts and dies down into wild cries and weary sighings. This is the intention--an intention, alas! too often unfulfilled. For if God is saying, “Turn, my children, from that careless dwelling upon earth’s pursuits, excitements, and enterprises, to heavenly aspirations, letting your heart and mind, like rising mist from broken waves, ascend, instead of dwelling in tears on the bare sands that were never worth the winning--ascend thither, whither He who loved you is gone before, and continually dwell with Him, in the place called Fair Havens, where the waves of this troublesome world have ceased their restless eager quest, and are lulled into a peace beyond all understanding”--if God thus invites us, even by that sigh of our broken retiring waves, there is another voice, commonly heard, and too often heeded--a voice counselling hardness, repining, rebellion: a moan of sullenness, of despair, of defiance--a voice that whispers, “Curse God and die,” rather than, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.” The voice, oh let us be assured, of folly, not of wisdom; of our Enemy, and not of a friend.

The waves are still tumbling upon the shore; with scarce perceptible progress they have advanced really a broad piece since I took my station here. Ever gathering their forces in long parallels, ever bending and falling, and seething back in wide sheets of white foam, seemingly ever repulsed, but really ever advancing, they bring to my mind an idea of great beauty and truth that I have somewhere met with, though where I cannot recall. It was a comparison of the earnest humble Christian’s progress in holiness to this coming in of the tide. The healthy Christian life will always be advancing; there must ever be a progression in holiness. Stagnant water is deteriorating water; it does not remain the same as when it ceased to flow. And this oft-repeated truth will come sadliest home to the more earnest, who are therefore the more humble. There ought to be, there _must_ be an advance, if the water be a living sea, and not a stagnant pool.

But dare we hope that there _is_ any such progress, such steady continuous advance in our own Christian life? Alas! we look sadly back at it and see long lines of earnest endeavours, at least of passionate yearnings, after better things, after perfection, after the beauty of holiness, after Christ-like consistency: they came in, and come in still, bright perhaps, and intent, and resolved; and, lo! how they trip and fall as they reach the shore of trial, and slide back, losing all the ground again! Ever advancing, only to recede; ever rising, but to fall; ever trying, yet still baffled; only able to weep over their own weakness, and to sigh continually with a depression that men call a morbid pain. New yearnings at every special time of solemn self-examination; new resolves, driven on by the breath of prayers; new endeavours; and, after all, old failures! How the waves come in, earnest, but impotent, each running up the little way on the shore that its predecessor had attained, and giving ground again, to be succeeded by another as weak.

* * * * *

But to cheer and encourage us sometimes, amid all this depressing history of failures, which may well serve to keep us humble, there is another analogy with the rising tide besides that of its endless endeavours and endless failings. There is, as with the waters, _an advance upon the whole_, though they seem to keep at much the same point, and to be doing little but ceaselessly recede and fail. You might mark, were you a watching angel, how this point is reached, and that passed; and how, though (and better for them here and now) the sighing waters perceive it not, each day’s expiring and almost despairing, but still earnest and prayerful efforts, have increased a little upon the shore to-day, and deepened and secured yesterday’s work. And quiet earnestness seems recommended by this thought: for have we not seen some impetuous waves come dashing in, as though to take the shore at one rush? And it is these most commonly which, meeting steady and sustained resistance, and feeling the strength which excitement had lent dying out from them; it is these impatient spirits that then lose heart most deeply, and sink back the farther, and sometimes quite fall away with a shrill and bitter cry, and lose themselves in the Deep, too dismayed to return,--rather, too little really in earnest to face the necessity of the daily, hourly strife--the inch by inch advance, the little by little, the day of small things.

If we are humbly in earnest, and if we are stedfastly, quietly striving, with unyielding watch and instant prayer, and faithful use of every means of grace, then we may hope, amid that which seems sometimes scarce anything but a sad history of failures, that thus there may be yet _advance upon the whole_.

But now I remember that there is, in appearance, and to the unpractised or uncareful beholder, little difference between the tide that is advancing and that which is going down. Still the endless hurry of flocking waves, still the appearance of life and purpose, still the advance and retreat upon the shore--and what is the difference? If there are many, many broken, defeated, and baffled endeavours, why so there were when the tide was rising. Ay, but there we found advance,--here we find retrogression--_upon the whole_. Alas! how great is the danger that is subtle and unseen; and in a spiritual falling back, it is the very slightness and imperceptibility of the loss of ground that makes the case so perilous. They have given over their watchfulness, their close observation of marks; the breath of prayer has fallen to a stillness; the waves seem to gleam and ripple and rustle as of old, and how shall the unearnest heart and the unwatchful eye ever know that _the tide is going down_?--a sinking so gradual, so stealthy, with such slight difference from day to day.

Many noteworthy causes there are of this lamentable failure and decline, many subtle enemies, that is to say, to diligent watchfulness and continual prayer. “Much trading, or much toiling for advancement, or much popularity, or much intercourse in the usages and engagements of society, or the giving up of much time to the refinements of a soft life--these, and many like snares, steal away the quick powers of the heart, and leave us estranged from God.” “How awfully do people deceive themselves in this matter! We hear them saying, ‘It does me no harm to go into the world. I come away, and can go into my room and pray as usual.’ Oh, surest sign of a heart half laid asleep! You are not aware of the change, _because it has passed upon you_. Once, in days of livelier faith, you would have wept over the indevoutness of your present prayers, and joined them to the confession of your other backslidings; but now your heart is not more earnest than your prayers, and there is no index to mark the decline. Even they that lament the loss of their former earnestness do not half know the real measure of their loss. The growth of a duller feeling has the power of masking itself. Little by little it creeps on, marked by no great changes.” And yet you would start, had you an Angel’s point of view, to see how wide a strip of former advance is relinquished now. The treacherous sands suck in the wet line, and it ever seems just before you--just a narrow band such as always edges the advancing and retiring waters, whether at ebb or flow. And how great does this danger then appear to be!--how deadly the craft of an Enemy too subtle ever to startle us!--how needful to watch for that retrogression which can hardly be perceived! Little by little we advance, and commonly little by little we decline. Even a great fall, it has been pointed out--one which seemed a sudden catastrophe, unheralded by any warnings--what a slow gradual process of “retirement neglected and hurried prayers” had been long preparing secretly for this. But now a saint, men think--and on a sudden a notorious sinner! Ah, they know not for how long, how secretly, how imperceptibly and undetected, how surely and how fatally _the tide had been going down_.

* * * * *

Enough of these desultory musings. Let us pause awhile in reverent silence, contemplating the mighty Sea as a whole, assuredly of things upon this earth our greatest emblem--an emblem grand, oppressive in its vastness--of Eternity and Infinity.

MUSINGS ON THE MOUNTAINS.

Mountains! I scarcely feel myself competent to fulfil the promise of this title, for I was never upon one in my life! Never had I the advantage of contemplating the mighty eminences of America; I have not even had the experience of standing beneath and toiling up to the summit of the white-haired Alps; nay, even the grand hills of Scotland, or the classic watchers beside the English lakes, have never been visited by me. Still imagination will often supplement the deficiencies of experience, and it is a good thing, I am convinced, for us all, so far as we can, to leave sometimes the plain of our daily routine of life, and to muse upon at least relatively higher ground.

I will begin by recalling my nearest approach to any experience of mountain ascent.

I was staying in Herefordshire with my brother, in his parish among the hills and woods. When a friend is with us, we seem to think it a necessity, both for his sake and our own, to rove somewhat, and to explore some of the more distant country. Accordingly we fell to planning expeditions, and after divers suggestions, contemplations, and rejections, fixed upon a small village beside a lovely stream renowned for its trout and grayling, and near a hill famous in those parts, and named Croft Ambrey. We were to sleep two nights at a small inn near the stream, and from that stream we were to extract our breakfast. There is always a great charm about these expeditions--a novelty, an independence, a breaking through the trammels of life’s daily routine, in their enterprising pic-nic character. And so my brother, his wife and I, started on the appointed morning, in high glee. We were, I remember, however, employed half the day in the vain endeavour to catch the white pony; and were at one time almost in despair of our getting off at all. The little rogue had been put up to some sly tricks by a horse with whom he had been observed to have been conferring over the fence for some days previously, and I remember the almost comic provocation with which he let us sidle up to him, with blandishments and barley, until just within range for the halter, and then, at the very moment of attainment, was off, and anon standing demure and meek at the other end of the field. Nor did we fare better if we altered our tactics, and, like wolves over the northern snows, tried to hem in our prey in a deadly half-circle. He ever contrived to give us the slip, and it was not until we were wearied out, and on the point of giving up our expedition for that day, that he surrendered at discretion.

We started, nevertheless, wound up again as to our spirits for the excursion, and thoroughly enjoying a twenty-miles drive through lovely scenery. It was so late, however, when we arrived near Croft Ambrey, that we had but time that afternoon for a walk towards it, and up a lesser hill, and so back to our quiet little inn, close to the Lugg. How one enjoys the meals on these occasions! That broiled ham and eggs, and home-brewed beer, in the little sanded room; what venison and champagne refection could for a moment compare with them? It is the charm of novelty, I suppose, in scene and room and everything. Of course, it is easy to understand the zest that attends a dish of trout and grayling of your own catching.

But to return to Croft Ambrey. Next day we were prevented by other engagements from fulfilling that with our hill. And, since we were to start quite early on the morrow, the chance of my ascending it seemed over when I retired to my homely but clean little bedroom at night. However, I had not quite given the thing up. It was in my mind, could I but contrive to wake at five in the morning, to sally forth, while great part of the world was asleep, and explore the peaks, passes, and glaciers of that noble hill. I am not good at waking, unless called. But--and this seems an illustration of how the mind controls the body--it is certain that if you go to sleep with a strong desire or sense of duty concerning the waking at a certain hour, you not unfrequently, after a careful fumbling under the pillow, find your watch demonstrating pretty nearly the time that your mind had appointed. This may be a mere coincidence, but it is one whose recurrence I have often marked. At any rate, I know that next morning I awoke, with a sudden instinct consulted my privy counsellor, and was by it informed that five o’clock was yet a few minutes distant. And so I arose, and drew the blind, and looked out upon the still world, in the sharp cool morning air. The light seemed clear and cold, and there was an incessant twitter and loud chirping dialogue of many awakened birds. A thin mist was withdrawing from the fields, and yet lay upon the course of the river. I hastened my dressing, and quietly slid down stairs. How well most of us know the weird strangeness of the house at the early morning hour, when all in it are still asleep, but day is peering in through closed shutters, and above locked doors! The darkling light; the breathing hush; the dog curled on the mat, rising uneasily, and surveying matters suspiciously, but, reassured, settling himself down again with a preliminary shake, when

“His sagacious eye an inmate owns”;

the sullen disturbing sound at the street door, of bolts and locks, and bars, that would have seemed noiseless enough by day. And then the clear sharp feeling of the air, when you step into the road; the silent unpeopled worship of nature at its matins’ hour; the shadows, long as those of evening, and more grey and pearly, along the white empty road. And, enhancing the stillness, perhaps one lonely traveller met, seeming the world’s only inhabitant; and, as you walk farther on into the day, presently

“The carter, and his arch-necked, sturdy team,
Following their shadows on the early road.”

Thus, then, I sallied forth, and to my mind the details of that morning walk are even more distinct than when I trod it. The pause of consideration as to the turning to be taken; the selection, as it happened, of just the right gate; the belt of pines half-way up the hill, that from below seemed so near the highest point, but attained, showed a great height still to be surmounted--much like all striving upwards here after any excellence, especially after holiness; the pleasure when at last the summit was attained; the little incidents connected with that attainment; the frail harebell plucked, and pressed even now in my pocket-book; the curious war that I found and left going on between a hawk and a rook; each striving to get above the other, each making and each avoiding the hostile swoop; all these slight matters are the details which make that day’s whole still a distinct sharp picture to my mind.

And very full of matter for musing appears to me now that morning expedition. I forget how many counties of England and Wales lay outspread before me; some six or seven, I think. Certainly a mist brooded over them, and I did not see them clearly; but yet there they were, and I know not but that the half-appearance may have more impressed (imagination being called in to complete the scene) than a clear panorama would have done. The world’s ordinary sights and sounds lay far beneath me; the narrow scope of the ordinary view was widened; for fields, I surveyed counties in my landscape, and for hedges, lines of distant hills. All things were wider and larger, and I breathed a more expansive, freer air; and I seemed, I think, a little raised above life’s pettinesses, by the quiet and the breadth of view of that early morning ascent.

* * * * *

Ah, friends,--and brothers in both the meannesses and the great expectations of this strange finite, infinite existence,--how we need, how we need, these periodical ascents into Higher ground! How large life is; and yet, how little! How we fret and fume about fields and hedges--merest trifles, when counties and hills--nay, continents and seas--nay, worlds or systems, and space, might lie under the ken of our perception and contemplation, which, indeed, has no bounds, forward, through eternal time, and infinite space! How, in the littleness of things, are we apt to swamp the largeness which they might present to our thought! How life’s pettinesses overmaster the mighty tremendous prospect that God has set before us, looming indeed through a veil of mist, far below our feet! Oh, how grand, how stupendous, how magnificent, might this our life, rightly thought of, become! Money, love, fame, power; it is, while we stand on the mountain, the tinkle of a sheep-bell far below us in the valley; it is the pigmy form, it is the muffled cry of those things which seemed to us large and of full growth, when we met them down far below in the bustle and busy intercourse of life. I think of Martha, with the ordering of a meal the great matter in her eyes; Mary, indeed at the Saviour’s feet, but thus seated, placed, in good truth, upon a mountain, from whose wide range of view all merely of this world seemed petty, worthless, mean. Oh, for a mountain view of life! Oh, for an angel’s view! Then money, power, talents, influence, all would be noble, as offerings to Christ; contemptible in any other aspect. How I crave to take always that standing-point; to survey life--so far as such as I am can--from God’s point of sight; to look at time as, after all, only a tooth in the great cog-wheel of Eternity, as something very small, that fits into something very large! The littleness of life; its scandals, its jealousies, its irritations, its safe voyages or its wrecks, its gains or losses of a fast-flying hour; its loves and hopes, its hates and despairs, its ecstasies and anguishes; these are the fields and hedges that are perceived no longer, when we have ascended above this brief and transient state of things, and look down upon counties, continents, worlds.

How I mourn over life’s pettinesses! How I grieve, in my better mountain hours, to find myself always easily moved and disturbed, either to enjoyment or vexation, by the merest and most absolute trifles! How bitter it is to me, next time I get the wider view, to perceive how easily, and naturally, and contemptibly, I descended, after the last ascent, down among the thronging, chafing, soul-lowering interests and phantasies of this lower world, this span-long life again! Ah, spark of the Infinite, that finite things can so absorb thee! Ah, heir of Eternity, that time’s dancing motes can affect thee so much! Ah, member of Christ, child of God and inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven, that it can much concern thee in what station of life, in what external condition, it may please Him that thou shouldst serve Him, here, and now, in this minute of space and time!

* * * * *

In life’s morning we may all, I think, be said to stand on the mountain, and, although it be a morning view, made illusive by mist and early sunshine, obtain the widest, least petty, view. More wide, more noble, more expansive--all these the scope of youth’s sight must be conceded to be. There is not the suspicion, the narrow thought, the selfishness, the intent consideration of the present interest; there is a broader, more generous way of contemplating life than we shall find later in its course. Doubtless there is the greater proneness to be deceived. The eye is not yet trained to calculate distances; arduous undertakings are misjudged; easy attainments are regarded with admiration and awe; there are many mistakes, much proof of want of experience. But as life goes on, and as men descend to gain this knowledge and correctness of estimation, often the wider view narrows, the freer air is left behind, and the eye that roamed over and took in that nobler scope becomes shut in by surrounding trees and hedges into the range of but one small field. Could we, as a few have done, not barter youth’s aspirations and superb ideas for manhood’s experience and practical mind, but add the riches of manhood to the riches of youth, how much greater a thing we might make this life of ours to be! For certainly in youth we do stand upon an eminence, and look round upon counties and hills, and gradually, as manhood gains upon us, are apt to descend towards mere gardens, fields, and fences.

And so the evil to be guarded against--or to be deplored--will be the declension of the mind and heart from this wider, more open and generous view, a loss inward, not outward. Mixing, as we soon must, among life’s pettinesses, how many of us forget the mountain upon which we once stood, nor care to ascend it still from time to time, but are content to sink into hardness, coldness of heart, narrow-mindedness, selfishness, a cynical, unsympathetic temper, a habit of low suspicion, a littleness of caution, a close hand, an absorbed heart. So that we should try, from time to time, to draw apart from the highways and byways and crowded walks of life’s daily cares and concerns, and to ascend a point which overlooks them and brings them more into their just proportion with that wider view which diminishes if it does not absorb them.

In reading some of the highest poetry I have found this ascent gained. It carries you up into the ideal, from life’s mean realities and commonplaces; there is an atmosphere of honour and love and generosity; men think and act grandly, and money-getting is not the mainspring of all. And this is one profit of high and wholesome poetry, that it does water and keep alive those nobler greater ideas and yearnings that the dust of the world’s traffic might otherwise choke. For the heart’s true poetic sense (I do not mean mere sentimentality) is no doubt one of the links nearest to God in the chain which connects us with Him.