Cambridge: August 1901.
My thoughts are with you at this time. I am most thankful that you have been a year with that man of God, and have gained ideals and inspiration for work which will haunt you all your life long. In moments of weakness, at times 'when your light is low,' the memory of his strenuous, holy life will be a power making for self-discipline and righteousness. And it is more than a memory. For he taught us by word and deed that we are all one man, that those who have realised what it is to belong to the body here will enter more fully into its life there. 'We feebly struggle, they in glory shine'—yet we are verily and indeed one. That thought is often a comfort to me. When I feel the contradictions and perplexities and weaknesses of my own life, I love to think that I am part of a whole—that I belong to the same body and share in the same spirit as some other man who is immeasurably my superior.
When one whom we have known and venerated on earth passes to the eternal home, it seems more like home than it was before. It is peopled not only with countless saints of whom I have heard, but with one whom I have known and seen, and hope to see again. His prayers for us, his influence upon us there are more effective than they could have been here.
The great triumph of Christianity is to produce a few saints. They raise our ideal of humanity. They make us restless and discontented with our own lives, as long as they are lived on a lower plane. They speak to us in language more eloquent than words: 'Come up higher.'
To F. J. C.
Belvedere Hotel, St. Moritz: Sunday, December 15, 1901.
I feel more and more thankful that I have not had to wait till the next world to know God's true nature and character and will. It is passing strange that He should love us so much, and wish to unveil Himself to us, 'that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures.' But that phrase 'stewards of His mysteries' almost appals me. A steward must be faithful, and must render an account of the way in which he has used his master's goods. God grant that at the final reckoning we may not be found unprofitable servants.
How those simple words in the twenty-third Psalm satisfy us more and more as life advances, and as we realise that He is not our Shepherd only, but the chief Shepherd of the whole flock, and that He has yet other sheep whom He is looking for, and whom He will teach to hear His voice amid the babel tongues of the world. It is a comfort to me to feel that He has no private blessings for me apart from the rest of the family—that we are one in Him, and that each blessing unites us not only to the Head of the family, but to all the brothers within it.
I suppose at first it is hard to realise the unseen world for long together. But gradually that world dominates our being, and interprets the world we see, and makes all life intelligible and well worth the living.
To H. J. B.