At Large

by Arthur Christopher Benson

The fact is that the progress of science has created an immense demand for the quality of faith and hopefulness, by revealing so much that is pessimistic in the operation of natural law. If we are to live with any measure of contentment or tranquillity, we must acquire a confidence that God has not, as science tends to indicate, made all men for nought. We must, if we can, acquire some sort of hope that it is not in mere wantonness and indifference that He confronts us with the necessity for bearing the things that He has made us most to dread. It may be easy enough for robust, vigorous, contented persons to believe that God means us well; but the only solution that is worth anything is a solution that shall give us courage, patience, and even joy, at times when everything about us seems to speak of cruelty and terror and injustice. One of the things that has ministered comfort in large measure to souls so afflicted is the power of tracing a certain beauty and graciousness in the phenomena that surround us. Who is there who in moments of bewildered sorrow has not read a hint of some vast lovingness, moving dimly in the background of things, in the touch of familiar hands or in the glances of dear eyes? Surely, they have said to themselves, if love is the deepest, strongest, and most lasting force in the world, the same quality must be hidden deepest in the Heart of God. This is the unique strength of the Christian revelation, the thought of the Fatherhood of God, and His tender care for all that he has made. Again, who is there who in depression and anxiety has not had his load somewhat lightened by the sight of the fresh green of spring foliage against a blue sky, by the colour and scent of flowers, by the sweet melody of musical chords? The aching spirit has said, "They are there—beauty, and peace, and joy—if I could but find the way to them." Who has not had his fear of death alleviated by the happy end of some beloved life, when the dear one has made, as it were, solemn haste to be gone, falling gently into slumber? Who is there, who, speeding homewards in the sunset, has seen the dusky orange veil of flying light drawn softly westward over misty fields, where the old house stands up darkling among the glimmering pastures, and has not felt the presence of some sweet secret waiting for him beyond the gates of life and death? All these things are symbols, because the emotions they arouse are veritably there, as indisputable a phenomenon as any fact which science has analysed. The miserable mistake that many intellectual people make is to disregard what they would call vague emotions in the presence of scientific truth. Yet such emotions have a far more intimate concern for us than the dim sociology of bees, or the concentric forces of the stars. Our emotions are far more true and vivid experiences for us than indisputable laws of nature which never cut the line of our life at all. We may wish, perhaps, that the laws of such emotions were analysed and systematised too, for it is a very timid and faltering spirit that thinks that definiteness is the same as profanation. We may depend upon it that the deeper we can probe into such secrets, the richer will our conceptions of life and God become.

The mistake that is so often made by religious organisations, which depend so largely upon symbolism, is the terrible limiting of this symbolism to traditional ceremonies and venerable ritual. It has been said that religion is the only form of poetry accessible to the poor; and it is true in the sense that anything which hallows and quickens the most normal and simple experiences of lives divorced from intellectual and artistic influences is a very real and true kind of symbolism. It may be well to give people such symbolism as they can understand, and the best symbols of all are those that deal with the commonest emotions. But it is a lean wisdom that emphasises a limited range of emotions at the expense of a larger range; and the spirit which limits the sacred influences of religion to particular buildings and particular rites is very far removed from the spirit of Him who said that neither at Gerizim nor in Jerusalem was the Father to be worshipped, but in spirit and in truth. At the same time the natural impatience of one who discerns a symbolism all about him, in tree and flower, in sunshine and rain, and who hates to see the range restricted, is a feeling that a wise and tolerant man ought to resist. It is ill to break the pitcher because the well is at hand! One does not make a narrow soul broader by breaking down its boundaries, but by revealing the beauty of the further horizon. Even the false feeling of compassion must be resisted. A child is more encouraged by listening patiently to its tale of tiny exploits, than by casting ridicule upon them.

But on the other hand it is a wholly false timidity for one who has been brought up to love and reverence the narrower range of symbols, to choke and stifle the desires that stir in his heart for the wider range, out of deference to authority and custom. One must not discard a cramping garment until one has a freer one to take its place; but to continue in the confining robe with the larger lying ready to one's hand, from a sense of false pathos and unreasonable loyalty, is a piece of foolishness.

There are, I believe, hundreds of men and women now alive, who have outgrown their traditional faith, through no fault of their own; but who out of terror at the vague menaces of interested and Pharisaical persons do not dare to break away. One must of course weigh carefully whether one values comfort or liberty most. But what I would say is that it is of the essence of a faith to be elastic, to be capable of development, to be able to embrace the forward movement of thought. Now so far am I from wishing to suggest that we have outgrown Christianity, that I would assert that we have not yet mastered its simplest principles. I believe with all my soul that it is still able to embrace the most daring scientific speculations, for the simple reason that it is hardly concerned with them at all. Where religious faith conflicts with science is in the tenacity with which it holds to the literal truth of the miraculous occurrences related in the Scriptures. Some of these present no difficulty, some appear to be scientifically incredible. Yet these latter seem to me to be but the perfectly natural contemporary setting of the faith, and not to be of the essence of Christianity at all. Miracles, whether they are true or not, are at all events unverifiable, and no creed that claims to depend upon the acceptance of unverifiable events can have any vitality. But the personality, the force, the perception of Christ Himself emerges with absolute distinctness from the surrounding details. We may not be in a position to check exactly what He said and what He did not say, but just as no reasonable man can hold that He was merely an imaginative conception invented by people who obviously did not understand Him, so the general drift of His teaching is absolutely clear and convincing.

What I would have those do who can profess themselves sincerely convinced Christians, in spite of the uncertainty of many of the recorded details, is to adopt a simple compromise; to claim their part in the inheritance of Christ, and the symbols of His mysteries, but not to feel themselves bound by any ecclesiastical tradition. No one can forbid, by peevish regulations, direct access to the spirit of Christ and to the love of God. Christ's teaching was a purely individualistic teaching, based upon conduct and emotion, and half the difficulties of the position lie in His sanction and guidance having been claimed for what is only a human attempt to organise a society with a due deference for the secular spirit, its aims and ambitions. The sincere Christian should, I believe, gratefully receive the simple and sweet symbols of unity and forgiveness; but he should make his own a far higher and wider range of symbols, the symbols of natural beauty and art and literature—all the passionate dreams of peace and emotion that have thrilled the yearning hearts of men. Wherever those emotions have led men along selfish, cruel, sensual paths, they must be distrusted, just as we must distrust the religious emotions which have sanctioned such divergences from the spirit of Christ. We must believe that the essence of religion is to make us alive to the love of God, in whatever writing of light and air, of form and fragrance it is revealed; and we must further believe that religion is meant to guide and quicken the tender, compassionate, brotherly emotions, by which we lean to each other in this world where so much is dark. But to denounce the narrower forms of religion, or to abstain from them, is utterly alien to the spirit of Christ. He obeyed and reverenced the law, though He knew that the expanding spirit of His own teaching would break it in pieces. Of course, since liberty is the spirit of the Gospel, a liberty conditioned by the sense of equality, there may be occasions when a man is bound to resist what appears to him to be a moral or an intellectual tyranny. But short of that, the only thing of which one must beware is a conscious insincerity; and the limits of that a man must determine for himself. There are occasions when consideration for the feelings of others seems to conflict with one's own sense of sincerity; but I think that one is seldom wrong in preferring consideration for others to the personal indulgence of one's own apparent sincerity.

Peace and gentleness always prevail in the end over vehemence and violence, and a peaceful revolution brings about happier results for a country, as we have good reason to know, than a revolution of force. Even now the narrower religious systems prevail more in virtue of the gentleness and goodwill and persuasion of their ministers than through the spiritual terrors that they wield—the thunders are divorced from the lightning.

Thus may the victories of faith be won, not by noise and strife, but by the silent motion of a resistless tide. Even now it creeps softly over the sand and brims the stagnant pools with the freshening and invigorating brine.

But in the worship of the symbol there is one deep danger; and that is that if one rests upon it, if one makes one's home in the palace of beauty or philosophy or religion, one has failed in the quest. It is the pursuit not of the unattained but of the unattainable to which we are vowed. Nothing but the unattainable can draw us onward. It is rest that is forbidden. We are pilgrims yet; and if, intoxicated and bemused by beauty or emotion or religion, we make our dwelling there, it is as though we slept in the enchanted ground. Enough is given us, and no more, to keep us moving forwards. To be satisfied is to slumber. The melancholy that follows hard in the footsteps of art, the sadness haunting the bravest music, the aching, troubled longing that creeps into the mind at the sight of the fairest scene, is but the warning presence of the guide that travels with us and fears that we may linger. Who has not seen across a rising ground the gables of the old house, the church tower, dark among the bare boughs of the rookery in a smiling sunset, and half lost himself at the thought of the impossibly beautiful life that might be lived there? To-day, just when the western sun began to tinge the floating clouds with purple and gold, I saw by the roadside an old labourer, fork on back, plodding heavily across a ploughland all stippled with lines of growing wheat. Hard by a windmill whirled its clattering arms. How I longed for something that would render permanent the scene, sight, and sound alike. It told me somehow that the end was not yet. What did it stand for? I hardly know; for life, slow and haggard with toil, hard-won sustenance, all overhung with the crimson glories of waning light, the wet road itself catching the golden hues of heaven. A little later, passing by the great pauper asylum that stands up so naked among the bare fields, I looked over a hedge, and there, behind the engine-house with its heaps of scoriae and rubbish, lay a little trim ugly burial-ground, with a dismal mortuary, upon which some pathetic and tawdry taste had been spent. There in rows lay the mouldering bones of the failures of life and old sin; not even a headstone over each with a word of hope, nothing but a number on a tin tablet. Nothing more incredibly sordid could be devised. One thought of the sad rite, the melancholy priest, the handful of relatives glad at heart that the poor broken life was over and the wretched associations at an end. Yet even that sight too warned one not to linger, and that the end was not yet. Presently, in the gathering twilight, I was making my way through the streets of the city. The dusk had obliterated all that was mean and dreary. Nothing but the irregular housefronts stood up against the still sky, the lighted windows giving the sense of home and ease. A quiet bell rang for vespers in a church tower, and as I passed I heard an organ roll within. It all seemed a sweetly framed message to the soul, a symbol of joy and peace.

But then I reflected that the danger was of selecting, out of the symbols that crowded around one on every side, merely those that ministered to one's own satisfaction and contentment. The sad horror of that other place, the little bare place of desolate graves—that must be a symbol as well, that must stand as a witness of some part of the awful mind of God, of the strange flaw or rent that seems to run through His world. It may be more comfortable, more luxurious to detach the symbol that testifies to the satisfaction of our needs; but not thus do we draw near to truth and God. And then I thought that perhaps it was best, when we are secure and careless and joyful, to look at times steadily into the dark abyss of the world, not in the spirit of morbidity, not with the sense of the macabre—the skeleton behind the rich robe, death at the monarch's shoulder; but to remind ourselves, faithfully and wisely, that for us too the shadow waits; and then that in our moments of dreariness and heaviness we should do well to seek for symbols of our peace, not thrusting them peevishly aside as only serving to remind us of what we have lost and forfeited, but dwelling on them patiently and hopefully, with a tender onlooking to the gracious horizon with all its golden lights and purple shadows. And thus not in a mercantile mood trafficking for our delight in the mysteries of life—for not by prudence can we draw near to God—but in a childlike mood, valuing the kindly word, the smile that lights up the narrow room and enriches the austere fare, and paying no heed at all to the jealousies and the covetous ingathering that turns the temple of the Father into a house of merchandise.

For here, deepest of all, lies the worth of the symbol; that this life of ours is not a little fretful space of days, rounded with a sleep, but an integral part of an inconceivably vast design, flooding through and behind the star-strewn heavens; that there is no sequence of events as we conceive, that acts are not done or words said, once and for all, and then laid away in the darkness; but that it is all an ever-living thing, in which the things that we call old are as much present in the mind of God as the things that shall be millions of centuries hence. There is no uncertainty with Him, no doubt as to what shall be hereafter; and if we once come near to that truth, we can draw from it, in our darkest hours, a refreshment that cannot fail; for the saddest thought in the mind of man is the thought that these things could have been, could be other than they are; and if we once can bring home to ourselves the knowledge that God is unchanged and unchangeable, our faithless doubts, our melancholy regrets melt in the light of truth, as the hoar-frost fades upon the grass in the rising sun, when every globed dewdrop flashes like a jewel in the radiance of the fiery dawn.