The term is almost over … I am enjoying a quiet Sunday. What a blessing these Sundays are to us—a foretaste of a fuller life of service and worship hereafter! I have been thinking lately with comfort of the quiet perpetual work of the Holy Spirit, silently but surely leading us on to higher things—comforting, correcting, guiding. It gives ground for hope in dealing with men, this knowledge that there is One who perfects what we feebly struggle to begin, who watches over men with a love that will not let them go. We are not alone in our work; we have omnipotence and illimitable wisdom on our side, forwarding our efforts. When I consider what the Spirit has accomplished in my own life, I have large hope for others. The argument from personal experience is singularly convincing. 'The fellowship of the Holy Ghost'—it is He who unites men and interprets them one to the other. It is He who gives spirit and life to our words.
To H. J. B.
Bexley House, Cromer: March 31, 1903.
It was good of you to send me that card from Florence. You don't know how glad it made me. To know that you were thinking of me was a strength to me. Your love for me comes as a perpetual surprise and inspiration. I feel a brute compared with you, but the knowledge that you care for me more than you do for most men makes me feel that I must try to be good. 'In Italy of the fifteenth century renaissance we see in strange confusion all that we love in art, and all that we loathe in man!' Greek history was short compared with the Hebrew: I suppose because intellectual and artistic ideals are more easily realised than ethical and religious. It takes time to make a saint. It is part of the discipline of life to find the two sets of ideas apparently antagonistic. There is a higher unity in which they are blended—in God Himself. It must be right to follow the dictates of conscience when it bids us lose our soul if we would gain it. We cannot trust God too much. If we forget our self, He will see that our truest self is ultimately realised.
I can't express myself well, for I have just finished a spell of hard work. I have sent away my tripos papers to-night. I am going up to Edinburgh on Friday or Saturday. I fear I shall not see you until April 21. Will you tell Armitage that I will, if convenient to him, sleep at Westminster that night instead of going straight to Cambridge? The hopelessness of ever showing my gratitude to you or of ever making you realise how much I love you oppresses me. I don't know what I should do if I had not One Higher than I am to confide in—if I could not leave you in His hands—if I could not gain strength and life for you by appealing to Him.
O brother, if my faith is vain,
If hopes like these betray,
Pray for me, that I too may gain
The sure and safer way.
And Thou, O God, by whom are seen
Thy creatures as they be,
Forgive me if too close I lean
My human heart on Thee!
I lean closer and closer as life goes on. I feel that our hope lies in despair—despair of self. The vessels which contain the treasure are, as to-night's lesson says, earthen, 'that the excess of the power may be God's and not from us.' And there is a power, there is a life working in us. It is the quiet, sane, constant work of the Spirit in and upon our spirit, that never hastes and never tires: which gives me comfort for you, for myself, for all of us. The same life that is at work in the hedge across the road is in us, only in us it attains full self-consciousness and freedom. We can deliberately use it or refuse it. Forgive the length of the letter. But I felt so tired that I thought it would do me good to write to you, selfish brute that I am.
I expect you enjoyed your time in Italy immensely. I should have liked to be with you. I wonder if ever we shall be there together? Some day we shall be in a world where the barriers of space are broken down: 'There shall be no more sea.' Yet it seems to me that we have not altogether to wait for that other world. They are half broken down already; and if we had faith as a grain of mustard seed, we should realise the meaning of a unity deeper than any special or temporal bond. If we fail to realise its meaning now, shall we realise it then? Is not life here a training for life hereafter? If we learn nothing in this school, we shall not be able to take our places in that school of 'broader love.' The best part in me does not complain. I thank God for His thoughtful goodness in bringing you near to me. I thank Him for the mystery of life, which enables me to realise that Power 'which lives not in the light alone, But in the darkness and the light.' I become more and more inclined to thank Him as I see Him more clearly.
To F. S. H. on his accepting the post of chaplain at the Royal Naval College, Osborne.