While holding as firmly and unreservedly to the belief that a revelation is a possibility that has actually been realised, I am becoming more aware of the partial and limited view which any single individual can have of the significance of such a revelation; and with this conviction comes a desire not to hinder by any words or prejudices of mine the education of one to whom I owe more than I at present know. Yet, as I believe that no individual life is beyond the wise ordering of a Divine economy, I am sure that he must have lessons to learn from me as well as I to learn from him. Hence I dare not refrain from suggesting to him—often in answer to questions that he puts to me—sides of truth which, as I believe, I have been allowed to apprehend. The knowledge of truth (in however small a degree) is a trust that we hold for the sake of others. What I fear for him and for you—for you even more than for him—is not that you will form wrong opinions on religious or ethical subjects, but that you will lack that moral earnestness that forces a man, whether he will or not, to look the facts of life in the face, that deadly earnestness that refuses to allow us to contemplate creeds as works of art, but forces us to ask whether these things be so. Life as a whole must be faced. What has induced men to believe this and that tenet? Why have men craved for a knowledge of an unseen Being? Why have systems of priestcraft arisen? How is it that those who most revolt against such systems are slaves to other systems bearing different names, but in substance the same? Is there a Deliverer? Is there a unity beneath all this confusion? Can man know such a unity if there be one? Can such a unity be revealed? Has it been revealed? Why do men think it has been revealed if it has not? While I am slow to force upon those whom I most respect and love lessons which I believe that I have slowly learnt in a school in which perhaps they have not been, and never will be, educated, yet I am sure that I cannot be wrong in praying for them and in urging them to be increasingly earnest in the search for and the practice of truth. You are a man in so far as you live. You live in so far as you are self-sacrificing. You are self-sacrificing in so far as you unswervingly practise the truth you know and follow after that which you do not yet apprehend. And I am sure, if there be a unity beneath our lives, if there be One who is educating us when we are most wayward, we shall eventually be led by, it may be, very different paths to a single goal. Meanwhile each failure to be earnest, each relapse into sentimentality, unmanliness, morbidness, despair, unreality, laziness, passiveness, may itself be a discipline, making us utterly mistrust ourselves, whether at our worst or at our best, and forcing us to inquire whether there be any help elsewhere, any power that can sweep through our lives and force us to be human.
For this reason I would impress on you the necessity of trying to think out your position, of asking yourself how you may be most human and best serve God (if, indeed, you believe that this is possible) and your generation. There are around you social forces making for good. Ought you to be—nay, can you be—isolated? Does isolation give greater strength? Does it enable you to do more or to be better? These questions are not merely suggested by me. They have already suggested themselves in one form or another to you. I am frightened of their not receiving the attention they merit.
To T. H. M.
8 Alexandra Gardens, Ventnor: January 3, 1894.
The fact that you have not all the sympathy and manly help and advice that you could wish for from those around you will, I trust, force you to depend with simpler confidence upon the unchanging Ground of all human sympathy. You will, I hope, take all these experiences without grumbling as a real and necessary stage in your education; remembering that if you find yourself repining at the distressful circumstances in which you are placed, you may be dishonouring Him who has placed you where you are. I do not, of course, mean that such reflection will make you condone and excuse the lukewarmness of others, but you will grasp the truth that God uses even the sin of this world as an instrument in the education of His people, and that you yourself may have your character formed partly through the faults of others, for whom you are still bound to pray. This great Christmas festival that is past must be a power to us in the year that is coming on. We must enter into and be penetrated by the Life that has been manifested. For it is life that you and I need. Our own puny individualistic life of morbid self-consciousness and sensibility must be transformed by the fuller Life in which all may have a share; and thus we shall come to think less of ourselves, our successes, our failures, what others think about us and what others ought to think about us—we shall forget all this because we shall share in the Universal Life, which penetrates through all and which makes men forget themselves and their ills, and be pure, simple, healthy, unselfish. And this life has been realised and men have seen it, and it is still with us to-day. In so far as we share in it we shall become natural, unaffected, human. Nay, more. Because the life there manifested is divine as well as human, we shall realise also with fuller force what it is to be a child of a Father who is in heaven. It is life, not a system, that we need. It is life which is given us when we are adopted as sons; it is life that we receive when the Source of all life gives us Himself to feed upon; it is life that Christ bestows upon us when we gradually realise our position as members of a society in which no man can live for himself alone. Life is life in so far as it is unselfish. May He who has called us and given to us all our privileges teach us to live out that which we
To F. S. H.
Cambridge: August 4, 1895.
Life will not be the same without having you up here. I am very dependent upon others, and I soon begin to be downcast if I have not some one to help or to be helped by. But happily He who takes away is the same as He who gives, and His great heart of affection understands our manifold and seemingly contradictory needs. Life would be intolerable if we had no one who knew us perfectly, not simply the outside part of our life, but that inside and apparently incommunicable part. Those who are least able to express themselves in words, or who (if they did express themselves) fear that they would be misunderstood, find in Him an unspeakable consolation. But I must not look at things from the individualistic standpoint. No problem can ever be solved until we have in some measure realised that the Life which flows through us is larger than our own individual life. We get morbid, and our reason becomes warped, when we think of our own future alone. Every obstacle in our path, every interruption to the course which we have planned for ourselves, every rough discipline, tells us that our life and future are not our own, that they are intimately connected with a larger life, a greater future. I have been thinking of those words—so like Jesus Christ to have uttered them—me merimnesete. We are always anxious about a set of circumstances which will soon be upon us—engagements which we tremble to meet. Jesus Christ tells us, me merimnesete. I believe that work in the present world would be far more free and effective if we would obey the command. We cannot enter into life as it comes, because we are living in an imaginary future. The man of God lives in the present; he leaves the future to God, me merimnesete. If God has conducted us so far, He will not leave us. It is easy to talk, hard to act. I think we gain the power to act, we gain the calm peace of God, by compelling ourselves to remain at certain times in His presence. Habits of prayer are slowly formed, but when formed are hard to break. Talking may be a great snare when it takes the place of prayer—and how easily it does! It is easier to talk with a man than to pray for him—in many cases.
[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrases in the above paragraph were transliterated as follows: me—mu, eta; merimnesete—mu, epsilon, rho, iota, mu, nu, eta, sigma, eta, tau, epsilon]