Chapter VII: Part 7

The ageing man looks back upon his past life, and on all the works that his hands have wrought, and on the labour that he has laboured to do; and behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun. What we meant to be, and what we are! The bright, soaring, heaven-adorned bubbles that gleamed about us, and the little mess of soapsuds that are sinking into the ground here and there! The crowd, the rush of emerald vivid buds that our boyhood knew; and now the bare, poor black twigs and branches, that drip above the yellow stained heaps below! Hopes, ambition, dreams, love, friendships, aspirations, yearnings, plans, resolves, scattered and lying about the lanes of our life, or here and there heaped in a mass at some well-remembered turn or corner, dead, and sodden, and desolate exceedingly.

“Oh! ’tis sad to lie and reckon
All the days of faded youth,
All the vows that we believed in,
All the words we spoke in truth.”

Well, and what then? Can there be a December to follow upon and beautify those sad chilly hours? I think so. Sometimes it is just when the leaves are all fallen, and the flowers all dead, and the fruits only represented by a straggler lying here and there, and when the bare boughs are strung with trembling tears that gleam with a dull light in the heavy enfolding mist; sometimes it is even then that a wondrous work is wrought. A pinching frost comes with, as it seems, the finishing stroke, and the last sere leaf circles down, and even the fading chrysanthemums blacken, and the little robin lies dead on the iron border. A dim sky overglooms all, and you go your sad way from the scene as night deepens over it. But God wakens you some morning, and bids you look out of the dim-lit room in which your heart was shut; and lo! a strange transformation! His consolations, and His teaching of the deep meaning of things, have descended thick and abundant from heaven, and even earth’s dull ruins and desolations are glorified and transfigured by the beauty of that heavenly snow. You are content now that the earthly foliage should have made way for and given place to that unearthly glory which reclothes earth’s bare boughs; you can think calmly, quietly, without any anguish, of those desolate leaves, and stained flowers, and cold robin, that all sleep undisturbedly under the snow. God’s snow, I think--the snow which He sends down upon hearts desolate and deserted,

“That once were gay, and felt the Spring.”

God’s quiet snow, I think, that succeeds all the Spring and Summer excitements, and ecstasies, and heats of life, is just that _peace of God which passeth all understanding_ sent down to keep our heart and mind, that its life be not destroyed nor its aspirations all cut off, but that it may be folded over warm and safe until the Resurrection, that Spring time, better than earth’s Springs, which do but reform perishable buds and leaves; a Spring which shall know no November, no Winter days; a Spring which shall no doubt revive and recover every feeling, and thought, and love, and aspiration which was really God-given and beautiful, and shall make those blighted hopes bright with the blossom of unearthly beauty, and shall bend the bare boughs of those unquiet inexpressible yearnings low towards Him with the abundant fruit of satisfaction.

“Brighter, fairer far than living,
With no trace of change or stain,
Robed in everlasting beauty,
Shall we see them once again.”

I think the contemplation a little way off, of any sorrow or bereavement, bears out what I have said concerning the _anticipation_ of Winter being really the worst and most cheerless time--a time when only the chill, and the death, and the dreariness is in our thoughts, and we do not suspect the strange beauties that will accompany it, nor the warm glow that is hidden in its heart. We only see the trouble coming, and we know not, until the time of need is even with us, of the consolation, and the support, and the spiritual loveliness that are coming too; coming with the silent step of the snow, or the unseen breath of the frost, to adorn thoughts, and feelings, and character with a fringe and foliage of heavenly beauty; coming with a glow of consolation, like Christmas in the heart of Winter--the warm fire of God’s love, which can keep out earth’s sharpest and most piercing cold. So that when the Winter has really come, and we look out on the soft snow of God’s peace, and creep closer to the fire of God’s love, we find that even the sharpest Winter days are not so terrible as November painted them; and, revolving and realising their beauty and their use, we can enter into his feelings who said, “It is good for me that I have been afflicted”; and say Amen with quiet grateful hearts to those once inexplicable words, “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

* * * * *

The thought of Winter days seems to lead us at once, by analogy, to the Winter of Death drawing near any one of us, old men and maidens, young men and children. And indeed this time, seen from the misty avenues of November, is apt to seem chill and cold to the mind and heart. Still, I am sure that death, since the Saviour died, is not a time of real unlovely or uncomforted gloom to the obedient and faithful child of God. Oh no! when that Winter has indeed come, such a one then perceives and realises its Christmas heart of warm comfort, and its unearthly frost work of strange sweet thoughts and teachings. To such a one, if gloomy, it is only gloomy by anticipation, and while the traces of earth’s Summers yet linger, and the tears and regrets of earth are yet glittering on the empty trees, bare lands, and faded flowers; only gloomy until God has quite weaned us, first by His chastenings and then by His consolations.

How sad it is that, in our common ideas, and representations, and modes of speech, Death, even the good man’s death--should be overshadowed with such dismal gloom! I remember a curious proof of this, if proof were needed.

In a small illustrated edition of Longfellow’s poems, the artist has chosen for illustration those sweet verses, “The Reaper and the Flowers.” You know them, of course, my reader, by heart. You remember these graceful lines:--

“He gazed at the flowers with tearful eyes,
He kissed their drooping leaves;
It was for the Lord of Paradise
He bound them in his sheaves.

“‘My Lord hath need of these flow’rets gay,’
The Reaper said, and smiled;
‘Dear tokens of the earth are they,
Where He was once a Child.’”

And how do you think the artist has represented that gentle Angel-Reaper? Actually as a hideous Skeleton with a lank scythe! So ingrained is that ghastly and loathsome idea of death in the common thought of men. Then think of all the impenetrable gloom with which we surround death in this Christian England in this nineteenth century; of the utter absence of hope or beauty (save for the glorious pæan of the service) in our obsequies. Listen, as soon as the happy, hopeful Christian has “fallen asleep,” to the manner in which we tell the news to the family of our village or town. Drop, drop, like melted lead falling, for a whole hour sometimes comes that dull monotony of gloom, TOLL, TOLL, TOLL, till the heart dies down into depression for the day.

Save that we know that that recurring note comes from the belfry of the peaceful little church that presides hopefully and holily over its gathering of sleepers--save for this, would there, I ask, be any thought but of dreariness in that dull ceaseless repetition of one desolate tone? Death is, indeed

always a grave and solemn thing, and it were well that a grave and solemn voice should announce its presence to the clustered or the scattered homes. But why change solemnity into despair? Why fill the air with nought but heavy gloom for a whole hour or half-hour? I would not say, in the words of Poe:--

“Avaunt! to-night my heart is light, no dirge will I upraise,
But waft the angel on her flight with a pæan of old days!
Let _no_ bell toll! lest her sweet soul, amid its hallowed mirth,
Should catch the note as it doth float up from the weeping earth.”

For there _must_ be sadness here, if there be joy where the spirit has gone. Only let not the dark cloud be debarred from any the least silver lining. Something gentle, tender, and sweet, in accordance, so far as earth’s lamenting can accord, with the glory and rapture of the released one, would surely be better for the living than that slow prolonged numbering the beads of their own sorrow. _I_ would have the bells rung, as for a wedding; only with a minute’s interval between each note. So the joy and the sorrow would each claim its share.

The early Christians used to speak of and commemorate the day of death, as “τὰ γενέθλια,” the birthday feast of the Dead. What a different way of putting things from our compassionate mention--not of the surviving, but of the dead. _Poor so-and-so! How sad!_--this, for the spirit, that we feel a good hope, is in Paradise! How the having it put before you in the just view--rather as an entering into true life, than a dying from it, casts a glow on what most seem to regard as nought but gloom. A most exquisite instance of such a beautiful putting of such a sharp Winter day to even a bereaved father and mother, I find in one of Archbishop Leighton’s heavenly letters. In what a different light must their loss, surely, have appeared to them, after its perusal.

“Indeed,” he writes, “it was a sharp stroke of a pen, that told me your pretty Johnny was dead: and I felt it truly more than, to my remembrance, I did the death of any child in my lifetime. Sweet thing! and is he so quickly _laid to sleep? Happy he!_ Though we shall have no more the pleasure of his lisping and laughing, he shall have no more the pain of crying, nor of being sick, nor of dying: and hath wholly escaped the trouble of schooling, and all other sufferings of boys, and the riper and deeper griefs of riper years, this poor life being all along but a linked chain of many sorrows and many deaths. Tell my dear sister she is now much more akin to the other world; and this will quickly be passed to us all. _John is but gone an hour or two sooner to bed, as children use to do, and we are undressing to follow._”

In another letter the same writer says of himself--

“I am grown exceedingly uneasy in writing and speaking, yea, almost in thinking, when I reflect how cloudy our clearest thoughts are; but, I think again what other can we do, till the day break and the shadows flee away, as one that lieth awake in the night must be thinking; and one thought that will likely oftenest return, when by all other thoughts he finds little relief, is, _when will it be day?_”

You see he would have wondered to be spoken of thus--“Poor Leighton has gone.” Answer, “How very sad,”--when at last he had attained to that day.

Let me show, by another noble instance, that, as Winter days, when they come, bring often unforeseen beauty and gladness with them, so not even the anticipation is always necessarily sad to the eye of exalted faith. Remember you those words of the mighty Apostle of Christ--when the Winter time was yet somewhat removed--with their more than calm anticipation of it, their deep warmth of joy?

“To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. What I shall choose
I wot not.
For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and
to be with Christ; _which is far better_.”

And then the stirring tones of exultation and triumph, as now but few leaves were left, and Winter days were even at the door.

“I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand.
I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept
the faith:
Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which
the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day.”

Here is an aurora borealis flashing up to the heavens in light and splendour, over the wide snow landscape of Winter days.

THE END OF THE SEASONS.

The Summer is past, the Autumn is passing quite away, the Harvest is long ended, the fruit all garnered. And the year seems as desolate as Solomon in his sad time, having been clad in more than all his glory. It has gathered gardens, and orchards, and pools, and singers, and delights; and whatsoever its eyes desired it kept not from them, nor withheld its heart from any joy or beauty; and it rejoiced in all its labour. But now what a change! You may fancy that it has looked on all the works that it had wrought, and on the labour that it had laboured to do,--and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun! And so it hastens to cast away all its gathered store and cherished delights, and stands naked, desolate, bankrupt, under the cold searching gaze of the clear bright stars. Ah!

“Where is the pride of Summer, the green prime,--
The many, many leaves all twinkling? Three
On the mossed elm; three on the naked lime,
Trembling,--and one upon the old oak tree!”

Nature is always beautiful to those who always look for beauty in her. But perhaps she is _least_ lovely when clad in a close thick fog. And it is thus that we have seen her continually of late. The wet black trees stood dim and ghostlike in the mist, and much like seaweed under tissue-paper. The hedges looked unreal and distant, as you passed between them on the pale road. Passengers and carriages loomed blurred and big and indistinct, out of the chill cloud in front of you, long after the wheels and the steps had been heard. Dull unglittering dew strung the branches that stretched over you, and gave a blunt light here and there in the hedge. You were isolated from your kind; scarce could you see one approaching until he was close upon you; and then, a few steps, and he was straightway swallowed up. It was not a fading morning mist; but a good November fog, one developing from cold blue to grey, and thence to yellow, and so on to tawny dun. Homeward-bound, you emerge from it into the railway-station. The train is late; the fire is pleasant; and you muse or doze away half-an-hour by the waiting-room fire. Presently a red spot dyes part of the mist; a behemoth mass is perceivable beside the platform; you get into a carriage, the whistle shrills, the train moves, and the station lights are gone in a minute,--and you also are swallowed up in the fog.

And as you pass, up the garden, home,--the chance is that you hurry on, where you would have paused to admire beauty. In the cold fog, the asparagus, hung with leaden mist-drops that chilly gleam here and there, bends and falls about its mounded bed; a black, wet, sere leaf or two clings to the ragged black sticks against that wall; the acacias drop pattering drops upon the broad fallen sycamore leaves: you might as well walk through water, as cross that lawn for a short cut to the warm mellow room, at whose window, which opens to the ground, stands she who chiefly makes that house, home. You are not sorry to shut the windows, and to have the curtains drawn, and to let the earth stand without, like a shrouded ghost, clad in winding-sheet of fog, while you enjoy the genial blaze, the cosy meal, the little ones on your lap after dinner, the gentle wifely smile that loves to see these loved.

Well, I contend that there is beauty even in the fog; but I will not stop to prove this now. I will only say that there is less beauty in this than in most other aspects of nature, and much excuse for the connecting the foggy bare time of year with chill and dreary thoughts. Then, growth of flower and fruit seems suspended, save for a scarlet splash on the hedge here and there; and dead-fingered fungi crowd in bunches above the graves of the flowers, and at the roots of the trees.

The fields are bare, with no coming crops; only swart and self-satisfied pigs roam in herds over them: the grass has stopped growing; there is neither blossom nor fruit, nor leaves upon the trees; the birds’ nests are empty and sodden; hope and fulfilment seem alike departed, and death seems to reign in solitary gloom over the pale and shrouded land. Is not all this sad beyond tears?

No; we are sure that this is not sad in the year, really; for that memory and hope are alike supporting the year’s aged steps, as it totters into December. The hope is to be found in every twig, as well as in the broad brown lands that are beginning to be ruled in music lines of thin emerald. The memory suggests by analogy, and in a sweet figure, those words that have comforted many a mourner,--

“I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are
the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the
Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works
do follow them.”

It is not sad, really, to see the year in its bareness and barrenness; lonely winds searching over the cornless uplands, and sighing amid the stripped boughs; dull fogs brooding over the damp fields, and shrouding the universal desolation and decay. No; because the fruits _have been_, and are garnered in. It is not that the year’s work has been left, until too late, to do. It is only that _it is done_. It is not sad, really; for when we walk through the dull bare fields, that once moved with millions of stalks and one whisper, we think of the heaped, massed grain, or of the crumbling white flour, or of the tawny square loaves. Or, if we miss the dancing grass and the bobbing clover, we look at the goodly camps of close-stacked hay, under the peaked roofs of straw. And walking through the garden or the orchard, if for a moment we are chilled by the bare look of the pitiful cold boughs, black, and ragged, and starred with tears, our thought flies from these to the bright, smooth red or white cherries, and the dark blue-bloomed damsons, and the ruddy plums, and the yellow pears, and the grey greengages, and the dead-orange apricots, and the smooth nectarines, and the soft, crimson-hearted peaches,--all of which were, in their turn, yielded faithfully by those desolate branches. Ay, and we think with double satisfaction of a store yet left; of the cosy apples and freckled pears, sorted, wiped, and laid by in rows--brown-yellow nonpareils, streaked ribstones, mellow Blenheim oranges, and russets, betraying a gleam of gold just where the brown has rubbed. We may, perhaps, think--but this is a pleasing thought,--how different all would be with the year, were all this otherwise, and had the Spring, and Summer, and Autumn been squandered in merely making wreaths of dying flowers, that perished at the chill breath of the fogs and frosts.

Thus, then, our sober thought concludes. But still, to our fancy the year seems desolate, forlorn, and sad; the fog is a chill and heavy depression; the rain sobs out its heart in tears; the wind--

“Like a broken worldling wails,
And the flying gold of the ruined woodland drives through the air.”

In poetry, and even in prose, we do not most readily think of the year, between November and Christmas, as asleep after work done, but as stagnant, and brooding in despair over a wasted life and lost opportunities, and hopes withered and gone by. Why does this aspect arise most naturally to our mind? for no such thought would trouble that of a contemplating angel.

Well, the truth is, that _we_ look through coloured glass, tinting with a hue of sadness to the mind’s eye things not really sad. We see the leaves circle down, and straightway are reminded that--

“We all do fade as a leaf.”

We see the mists gather and the rain descend, and no one but can recall heavy mists of sorrow that rose over the heart’s landscape, and glooming clouds that burst in bitter tears. And the wind gets its wail as it passes through our heart, and not from the bare boughs of the watered resting trees. And we choose to represent the year as thoughtlessly glad and wastefully profuse in its lost seasons, and as _now_ broken-hearted and despairing; because this is so common a case, if not in our own experience, yet in the history of so very many about us. We cannot but think how this idle business and succeeding gloom is indeed to be found too often, too often, in the year of man’s life. Flowers, when he is young; flowers, in life’s prime; flowers, in its Autumn; and what will ye do in the end thereof? What, when the fogs and the frosts have come, and the evil days are close at hand, and the years draw nigh when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them? Where is the secure store, the treasure laid up in the safe garner, to cheer the heart when the sap has gone down for this year, and the fields are blank, and growth is stayed?

How foolish, we can see and should readily acknowledge; how unpardonably shortsighted it would be of the Year to postpone its work of preparing, maturing, ripening its fruits until the dark, short, chill days towards its end. “It is the sweet pleasure time, this Spring; wait for Summer, I will then begin. Summer, with its thick leaves and hazy blue--who would begin at such a time as this to work? Autumn--let me enjoy the cool bracing air after Summer’s heat; soon, really, a start shall be made.” And so November--and all the year’s harvest, and all the year’s fruits to be begun, grown, matured, all the year’s work crowded into the last thin group of dwindling days. Desolate, indeed, would the year be then, and a wild wail of “Too late!” would sweep with a shiver over the dreary land; no sunshine now, no time, no opportunity, no inclination, no power. The sap would be sluggish, the impulse of growth gone by; and at last a stolid, hard frost of indifference and fixed sterility close the sad story of the year.

Well, this may be fanciful--yet, brothers and sisters mine, that which is fanciful in the year of Nature, which always does God’s work faithfully, even while it enjoys His glad sun and refreshing rain, and smiles up to Him in flowers--that which is fanciful applied to the life of the Year, is gravely, heart-touchingly true of many and many a life of Man. Nature,

“True to her trust, tree, herb, or reed,
She renders for each scattered seed,
And to her Lord with duteous heed
Gives large increase:
Thus year by year she works unfee’d,
And will not cease.”

But, many among us, how do _we_ look at this life, this brief life which God has given to each--a life which has so many close analogies with Nature’s year? For what is our short year given us? To trifle away? or to use in God’s service in preparing fruit for eternity--wheat that shall be gathered into God’s barn? The latter, you will own; and happy, if not your lips only, but your life gives this answer, too!

But how many, owning the truth of this grave view of life with their words, deny it with their deeds! Yet a little longer--there is time enough. It is now the time for enjoyment--the time for work will come. Vain to answer,

“But if indeed with reckless faith,
We trust the flattering voice,
Which whispers, ‘Take thy fill ere death,
Indulge thee, and rejoice,’

“Too surely, every setting day,
Some lost delight we mourn,
The flowers all die along our way,
Till we, too, die forlorn”;

and there is, then, indeed, an unredeemed bareness and desolation without the glow of memory or hope, in life’s ending days. Vain to urge this: even if the words call up a grave look for a while, the thought is soon shelved till “a convenient season.” And the life, if not the lips, of many proclaims--Let the world have my Spring, Summer, Autumn; and after that no doubt a good crop of holiness and heavenly-mindedness will yet be found in the thin last sere days of Life’s year. Let the world have the best of the year; we will spare its fragments and leavings for God. To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, and Spring goes, and Summer passes, and Autumn dwindles, and the foolish heart begins to discover that it is too late then. For its life is chilled, its sap gone down, its fertility exhausted. It is not the time for blossoms now, or fruit; habits are fixed, and effort is paralysed; often ugly fungi have sprung from the ruins of comparatively innocent thoughtless delights. And this was not foreseen, nor will men believe it, although you sadly warn them of it. We read it from the Bible, we cry it from the pulpit--

“They that seek Me early shall find Me.”

“Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth,
While the evil days come not,
Nor the years draw nigh,
When thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them.”

“To-day if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts.”

But young and old listen, and then go home to their Sunday dinner; and other talk, and other interests, and other thoughts, dry up the water that had stood in a little pool upon the heart, but had not sunk in. God’s Spirit could have drawn it in, but His help was not heartily asked, even if asked at all.

* * * * *

Ah yes, is it not true, as one writes, that “men are ever beguiling themselves with the dream that they shall one day be what they are not now; they balance their present consciousness of a low worldly life, and of a mind heavy and dull to spiritual things, with the lazy thought that some day God will bring home to them in power the realities of faith in Christ. Who is there that has not at some time secretly indulged this soothing flattery, that the staid gravity of age, when youth is quelled, or the leisure of retirement, when the fret of busy life is over, or, it may be, the inevitable pains and griefs which are man’s inheritance, shall break up in his heart the now-sealed fountains of repentance, and make, at last, his religion a reality? So men dream away their lives in pleasures, sloth, trade, or study. Who has not allayed the uneasy consciousness of a meagre religion, with the hope of a future change? Who has not been thus mocked by the enemy of man? Who has not listened, all too readily, to him who would cheat us of the hour that is, and of all the spiritual earnings which faith makes day by day in God’s service, stealing from us the present hour, and leaving us a lie in exchange? And yet, this present hour is all we have. To-morrow must be to-day before we can use it; and day after day we squander in the hope of a to-morrow; but to-morrow shall be stolen away too, as to-day and yesterday. God’s kingdom was very nigh to him who trembled at the judgment to come. Felix trembled once; we nowhere read that he trembled again.”

Habits are stronger when we are weaker. People forget this, and imagine that they can cast off fetters that have grown from silken to iron, and that with force that has dwindled from vigour to impotence. That they can lie fallow all the growing time of life, and cram clearing, ploughing, sowing, growth, harvest, all into the dark, few, shortening days of life’s decay. “A convenient season!” Ah! does this mean, then, _the end of the seasons_--the meagre leavings of life’s year? Is this the season convenient for God’s work--for the great purpose of our being? Is spiritual life likely to be then first lifting up its head, when all life is fading away?

“Gather up the fragments, that nothing be lost.” This is a command exquisitely applicable to the gleanings of an old age, whose harvest has been given to God:

“They shall still bring forth fruit in old age”;

--not like the old age of the year--for the fruit of this, at the best, is hips and haws, and holly-berries.

But can the command ever apply to a life of which the world, and the flesh, and the devil have had the harvest? Will God accept the mere gleanings?

“Autumn departs--from busy fields no more
Come rural sounds, our kindred banks to cheer;
Blent with the stream, and gale that wafts it o’er,
No more the distant reaper’s mirth we hear.
The last blithe shout hath died upon the ear,
And harvest-home hath hushed the clanging wain:
On the waste hill no forms of life appear,
Save where, sad laggard of the Autumnal train,
Some age-struck wanderer gleans few ears of scattered grain.”

Thus, when the world’s shouts and glee have passed by him, may we sometimes see the sad late seeker of God occupied. Sometimes, not often; for be it well laid to heart that God’s enemies seldom leave any gleanings on their fields, but are busy with careful rake to collect even life’s last days. Not often; for settled habits are hardest to overcome; and when the character and tastes are formed, there will seldom remain even the hearty wish to alter. Not often, then, but _sometimes_, in later life the worldling, or the devil’s labourer, turns back with wrung hands and tears--smitten and pricked to the heart by some sharp voice from God--and wanders over the bare, desolate fields in life’s chill and fog, and shakes the dreary boughs;--if perhaps there may be a little handful of corn, or an overlooked grape, or any fruit, that yet may be tremblingly offered to the Master of the Harvest, when He comes to take account with His labourers.

And now the question is, Is this late labour, labour in vain?

“Will God indeed with fragments bear,
Snatched late from the decaying year?
Or can the Saviour’s blood endear
The dregs of a polluted life?”

He will: it can. If the heart be _truly_ turned to Him at last, it will not be turned to Him in vain. Many of my readers will recall a beautiful allegory of servants trading for their lord, and how one, late caused to tremble and to turn, brought at the reckoning-day salt tears and rough sackcloth, that changed as he bore them into rich stuff and jewels. Aye, a broken and a contrite heart, if real, at _no_ time in life will He despise. Better give the harvest than only the gleanings, but better these than nothing.

It is a base truth that men often only desert the world when the world deserts them. But, I have seen it observed, there is something very touching in the fact that men thus find that they must turn to God at last, after all, without Him, has disappointed, and that if they truly turn, so gracious is He, that He will deign to accept the world’s leavings. The story of the lost sheep, of the piece of money, but chiefly of the prodigal son, assure us of the truth of this. When he had spent all, it was,--all his rich patrimony of young powers, feelings, hopes, and after he had even gone after swine’s husks,--after he had spent _all_, the Father accepted the empty casket! When the seed-time, and the ripening-time, and the harvest-time had passed, the bare November fields and stripped boughs were accepted, because over them had gathered the mournful mist of true repentance, and because they were thickly strung with abundance of sorrowful tears!

Oh, wonderful love, not of earth, but divine!--God deigns to prize what earth has thrown away! Therefore let those who seem even settled on their lees, fixed in the ways of the world or of sin, let them tremble exceedingly, but let them not despair. If they _will_, they yet _may_. Let them cry to the Helper, let them retrace the path with tears, gleaning as they go a scattered rare grain here and there,--redeeming the time, although the evil days have come. There is One for whose perfect merits the harvest of the saint and the handful of the sinner shall alike find acceptance; and though ’tis best to “sin not,” nevertheless, “if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”

Let none presume, however; for the gleaning commonly goes the same way that the harvest has gone. And it were base indeed, designedly, to set apart only life’s leavings for God’s share. Oh, rather let those who can give life’s whole broad year to God!

Too late, too late! This, if the year had postponed its work, must be the sad burden of the winds’ wailing over its desolate and weed-strewn fields. But it is a thought to humble the heart, and bring tears of shame and gratitude into the eyes, that no human life with which God’s Spirit is still striving need take that bitter wail for its own. Too late to love God? Nay, be assured that, if it _be_ love, it shall be as tenderly, gladly welcomed as the dawn of the lonely white Christmas rose on the bare Winter beds.

“For love too late can never glow;
The scattered fragments love can glean,
Refine the dregs, and yield us clean
To regions where one thought serene
Breathes sweeter than whole years of sacrifice below.”

UNDER BARE BOUGHS.

December is here--one of those mild cheery days, however, when you can hardly realise that the boughs are indeed bare, and the beds flowerless, and the Spring birds far away;--one of those days which tempt you out into the garden, to saunter and loiter there, and look at the patches that will be snowdrops soon, and to think longingly of leaves where you had before naturally and as of course acquiesced in the canopy of bare boughs;--a day on which you--at least _I_--do not care to go beyond the garden. To me it seems a peaceful, and far from gloomy, churchyard. Like a spire that tall, ancient, ivy-clothed spruce-fir stands out of the shrubbery; here, near it, the gay laburnum tresses lie buried; here the pink apple-blossom crumbled into dust; each round bed along the lawn is sacred to the memory of some choice rose; the violets sleep under that high wall--the lilies, tall, white, stately, but dead and gone--claim remembrance from each side of the walk; the geraniums, verbenas, heliotropes, petunias, have their cemetery in those dark beds on the smooth sward, and each flower has some spot specially or generally consecrated to it.

The memory of my old friends and companions has a tender charm for me, and I look at the stripped rose-twigs, and at the brown mould where the flowers were, with a faint halo of that feeling which is keen at the heart, when we pace among the mounds that hide the dust of friends. There is promise everywhere, I know, and the naked twigs are strung with germs of future leaves, and there are next year’s flowers sleeping at the heart of the rose. But I rather cling to any relic of the past, than care just now to look forward; and I hail this lingering arrested bud with the buff-yellow petals, or this half-shattered pure white blossom, as belonging to the sweet array of the dead flowers. True, I accept this cluster of the winter-cherry, leaning forward on to the path, an orange globe in a golden network; and the unfolding buds of the Christmas rose,--as being a link between the past and the future. But my thoughts slant backwards now, as I look upon the setting sun of the year; nor am I, in this mood, regarding it from the point that it will rise again all fresh and new to-morrow. No, I am not now concerned with the lovely wealth of leaves and flowers, the new year’s dower,--so soon all spent,--so soon all spent;--I am now of a mind to muse under the

“Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.”

Let me sit down under this network of sycamore and chesnut boughs, while the faint patches of pale sunlight move about me on the rank and drenched, yet ungrowing grass; let me sit down under the bare boughs, while the brown, wet, marred leaves huddle by the side of the garden seat, and under the barred plank that serves as my footstool. I dare say my old and unfailing friend will soon come and perch near me, his lover, and match the sad cheery gleams of sunlight with sad cheery gleams of song. Bird of the mild dark loving eye, and quick quiet motion, and olive plumage, and warm sienna-red breast; bird of the soft song,--passion subdued now to tenderness, hope that has sunk to patience, eagerness that is merged in tranquillity,--faithful bird, whose every tone and motion, familiar and loved, seems to fit the Winter heart as well as the Spring fancy,--those fervent, passionate songsters of the Spring, that now are flown, they never drowned to my ear thy quiet song of peace; no, not even in the days when the nightingale’s thrilling utterance made the world as it were full of the unsubstantial beauty of a dream. And so now I feel a sort of right to the calm and comfort of thy tranquil, unfailing utterance, when the evanescent dream has passed away, and the disenchanted world stands naked. Thus, while you are young, O my friends, and all the boughs are clothed, and all the birds are singing, and your heart makes answer to the loveliness and the music,--do not disdain, then, to listen to and to heed that quieter voice which tells, in an undertone, very beautiful, if attended to, of the love of God. Your heart, if you knew it, cannot really afford to dispense with it when all the woods are loud, “and all the trees are green.” And if you _did_ hear and heed and love it then, ah, how exquisite, how refreshing, how more than cheering the faithful notes appear, as you sit meditating under a pale winter sky, and looking at silent, leafless boughs,--and the songster draws nearer to you then, finding you alone!

* * * * *

Well, let me, I say, sit me down on this garden seat, under these “bare ruined choirs,” and hail the one little chorister, whose quiet, modest song ever seems to me to compensate for the absence of all the rest. The dewdrops twinkle about me in the drenched grass, groups of brown toadstools cluster here and there, and wax-white fungi straggle away in a broken line; there is a scarlet gleam of hips in the rose-bushes under the shrubbery, and of mountain-ash higher above them. It is Winter, but nature has not forgotten to stick some sprays of Christmas about her bare pillars, and to twist them in devices about her arches, that run up around me into this groined roof above.

The first thing that we all should muse about, under the bare boughs, would be, I suppose, the leaves that once clad them. Ay, even if, under the full shading foliage, we never thought to give them an upward glance of gratitude, love, and admiration. But they are gone, and what was taken as a matter of course is valued, now that it is missed. There is repining as to the desolation of Winter, and this from those who did not consciously enjoy the Summer.

I cannot reproach myself on this score. I have loved and learnt by heart every shape and development, from the first vivid light of green to the sombre sameness of hue, and then the rich variety that dispersed this;--all this growth, and attainment, and decay have I heedfully and affectionately noted, during the space which separated last year’s bare boughs from these.

“A million emeralds break from the ruby-budded lime.”

Yes, I saw that,--and I watched the juicy foliage deepen, and the thin maize-coloured strips of flower chequer the darkening full mass, and change the picture into

“The lime, a summer home of murmurous wings.”

Then those curved chesnut boughs near the grass--I detected the first fresh crumpled gleam, bursting from the brown sticky buds, until all over the tree, as in an illumination,

“The budding twigs spread out their fan
To catch the breezy air.”

And so I watched them into milky spires, and swarthy green globes, that grew brown, and fell, and burst threefold, lying among the heaped leaves, such a picture, with the white lining and bright nut!

The beech, changing from soft silky fledging of its boughs into hardier green foliage, and afterwards becoming a very mint, each branch

“All overlaid with patines of bright gold”;

and so subsiding into a sparer dress of sienna brown.

“The pillared dusk of sounding sycamores.”

The brave oaks, soon passing out of their Chaucerian attire,

“Some very red, and some a glad light green,”

and now all gnarled and knotted, and only clutching still a wisp of pale dull dry leaves here and there:--all these, be sure, have had their meed of attention and of regard from me. And so I sit under the bare boughs with no remorseful if with some regretful feelings. But still, I say, who can look up at the stripped branches in the Winter without sometimes giving fancy and memory leave to clothe them again with the fair frail dreams and hopes and enjoyments that, though they were evanescent, yet were beautiful, and that, though passing away with the Summer of Time, yet no doubt have influenced the Eternal growth of the Tree. Yes, sometimes it will be graceful, and at least not harmful, to let memory wander back into the days of childhood and of youth, and bid the frail and inexperienced foliage cover the branches again with that rich but short-lived beauty:

“Old wishes, ghosts of broken plans,
And phantom hopes assemble;
And that child’s heart within the man’s
Begins to move and tremble.”

Aye, there they are again, for a moment, shimmering in the sunlight and in the shade, “clapping their little hands in glee.” But we start, and they are gone. And, instead, how clearly we may see the blue Sky through the stripped boughs!

* * * * *

I remember, some time ago, sitting under some sycamore trees, near the sea-side. Of course those trees are all bare now, but the leaves were then at the fall. It was just at that time of the year when all the sweeping in the world will not keep the lawn tidy, and every gust littered it with the crisp, curled leaves. Amid this surely advancing decay there was, however, a pathetic effort towards renovation and new life. The year could hardly yet quietly acquiesce in the truth that its once exuberant power of growth was over, and that it must give in to stagnation increasing to decay. The like of this we may trace in the human year: in the faded Beauty; in the worn-out Author and Wit; and there is always a sadness about the sight. Under the nearly black leaves some very yellow-green ones were clustering upon the lower shoots; a late frond or two bent timidly amid the burnt and battered growth of the fernery; autumn crocuses came like ghosts upon the rich moist beds, but fell prone with an overmastering weakness; one gleam of laburnum drooped, and two white clusters of pear-blossom tried to ignore the heavy mellowing fruit; and some frail crumpled bramble-bloom appeared among the blackberries; tenderest and most touching, but wildest and most abortive endeavour, a primrose, too pale even for that pale flower, started up here and there out of the long draggled, ragged leaves. I know that many days ago winter must have frightened away all this frail gathering, the more easily and suddenly, because of their weakness and timidity. But I took pleasure in watching and moralising upon the impotent yet graceful struggle. And then, I recall, I sat down under the trees, much as I do now, and in much such a day. The flickering spots of faint sunlight moved slowly on the sward: the day was calm, after a wild windy Summer. It was cool for Autumn as this is warm for Winter, and so the two days were near akin, except for this one difference, that the leaves were mostly still upon the trees. They had begun in good earnest to fall, but they were still left in considerable numbers upon the boughs. And I fell, after some unconscious watching these leaves, into a fit of musing upon them. There was a peculiarity about them all which caught my attention. Let me set down, under these bare boughs, some of my thoughts at that time. It can be done the less unkindly now that that generation of leaves has all, some weeks ago, fluttered away.

The peculiarity was this. The trees being within the scope of many contending and fierce and unremitting winds, there was not upon any twig, that I could see, one single _perfect_ leaf. Perhaps a young one, just born, and to die almost as soon as born, might keep somewhat of its intended shape. But those that had endured the fierce winds and the heat and the rain and the blights,--ah, how shattered and scarred and stained they were! Some marred out of any trace of the intention of their birth; rent and beaten into a sorry strip, hardly to be called a leaf at all. But even the best were defaced and disfigured, spotted and imperfect.

Now sentiment about these leaves would, obviously, be extremely ill-placed. But my thought traced in these battered masses of the sycamore a picture of this life of ours, until the trees almost became a mirror, in which I, with the myriad race of much-enduring men, seemed to be exactly reflected. _Not one_ perfect leaf; many _so_ shattered and stained and marred. So beaten out of that pattern to which God had designed them. Some with hardly the very least trace of that Image in which mankind was at first moulded. Most with little to remind us of it. But, saddest of all, it seemed to me, there was not one, not even the best, which would bear close inspection. Not one but, even if the shape were somewhat preserved, had yet some ugly scar or hole or crack; not one perfect, no, not one!

And so it is, that we are in truth fain to accept for our idea of a good man here, merely that one who is least defaced and disfigured. The wise among men, what is he, but only one not quite so foolish as most others. The kind, only one that is less often cruel. The dutiful, and obedient, only one that is at least and at best inadequately trying among the gross that are utterly careless, to fear God, and to regard man. How negative most of our goodness is, and the qualities whose possession inspires our fellow-men with admiration! A good son, a good husband--this surely only means one who is not bad, undutiful, unjust, unkind. And yet who could lay claim to either title, nor exhibit some, yea many, flaws and spots? And for positive goodness--ah, well, if it were not for the utterly marred and ragged growth with which we are surrounded, there would be little fear, surely of any, such as are we, laying claim to the possession of that here. _Great and good men?_--Rent and shattered, rent and shattered; and if in comparison with the shreds about us, we trace in ourselves some hint of the original shape, how often we must then think, “I was more in shelter, lower down on the tree,” and how little inclined shall we be, contemplating sadly our own stains and clefts, to think superciliously and pharisaically of those mere strips that, growing on the higher boughs, seemed the prey of every rough wind that blew.

“Safe home, safe home in port!--
Rent cordage, shattered deck,
Torn sails, provisions short,
And _only not a wreck_.”

This seems the most that the best can say. And that this is so, appears to me sad. God’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; and I puzzle about this long and universal history of successes which are but half-failures. Inveterate as is the evil of our nature, vast as has been its fall, yet, I ask myself, is there any limit to the stores of God’s grace? And, with such an armoury, ought the fight to be so sorry, only just not a defeat? I know we cannot attain; I know that perfection must fly before us, and ever elude our grasp, in this state. I know, by a guess, that the nearer we seem to it, in the view of others, surely the farther we shall, in our own view, appear to be behind it, the more vainly striving after it. And I know, nevertheless, that the soul hungry and thirsty for righteousness shall have even here some daily bread, to satisfy just the most restless gnawing of its desire, and that hereafter it shall fully feast, and be satisfied, at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.

But what distresses me is this: that even truly good men are often, if not always, so disappointing. You were awakened to the loveliness of Christianity, and yearning for sympathy and advice; you sought one of those ideals which seemed, to hope and fancy, sure to be embodiments of it--and how often a chilling want of gentleness, or patience, or tenderness, closed up the heart’s opening blossom! Or carrying some opportunity for serving Christ in the person of a poor member of His Body, to one who, you felt sure, would, at least, meet you with kindliness, if unfortunately other calls precluded aid: how often a cold manner or a chilling snub disappoints and damps you! There is frequently too much bloodless, abstract faith, where you expected warm human interest; and wounded and hurt and baffled, you betake yourself to the only perfect sympathy, that of God. There is hardness, where you had taken for granted Christ’s tenderness would be found; there is bitterness, where you had counted upon Christ’s badge of love (St. John xiii. 35); there is pride, even, where you had never dreamed of finding anything but absolute humility. There is anxiety about worldly matters, where you had pictured a perfect, restful trust in God; carefulness and trouble about many things, where you had looked forward to seeing at last the calm sitting at the Saviour’s feet. There is irritability, and fussiness at trifles, where you had dreamed that things of eternal moment would alone have greatly moved: there is, upon the whole, disappointment, where you had looked for the realisation of that Ideal which you possess, and after which you did not wonder to find your own weak self vainly toiling. The winds and the blights seem too much for poor human nature, that will not draw, as it might, upon Divine grace; and upon every branch that we examine, there is not a leaf that is not sadly marred and imperfect; no, not one.

I know this must be, in a measure, in this wingless, fallen state. I know that in the sight of God and of angels, yea, of our own selves, if we have at all really learned what goodness is, the best of us are but weak buffeters of those waters of evil in which many around us are drowning. Still, without taking an Angel’s point of view, might not our light, at least before men, shine a little more brightly and consistently, and not be made up of mere alternations of spasmodic flares and dimness or darkness? Must there be so many spots of inconsistency, so many rents of surely elementary and avoidable unloveliness; so many high places not taken away, even though God be served somewhat in His Temple; such marring flies making even genuine and precious ointment to stink?