The final test of religions, however, is to be found in their fruits, and the boast of Christianity is its “passion for souls”. Now Whitman is among the great examples of this passion, and his book is one long “personal appeal” addressed, sometimes almost painfully, “to You”.
But, it may be asked, did he aim at “saving souls for Christ”? If I understand this very mystical and obscure question, and its ordinary use, I must answer, No,—but I am not sure of its meaning. Whitman’s own salvation urged him to save men and women by the Love of God for the glory of manhood and of womanhood and for the service of humanity.
Far as this may be from an affirmative reply to the question, the seer who has glimpses of ultimate things will yet recognise Whitman as an evangelical. For he brought good tidings in his very face. He preached Yourself, as God purposed you, and will help and have you to be. Whether this is Paganism or Christianity let us leave the others to decide; sure for ourselves, at least, that it is no cold code of ethical precepts and impersonal injunctions, but the utterance of a personality become radiant, impassioned and procreative by the potency of the divine spirit within.
In stating thus the nature of Whitman’s vision, I do not wish to place it too far out of the field of our common experience. His ordinary consciousness had been touched by it in earlier hours; and some gleam or glimmer of it enters every life as an element of romance. But for most of us, only as a light on the waters that passes and is gone, not as in Whitman’s case, and in the case of many another mystic whether Pagan or Christian—for mysticism is far older and more original than the creeds—as the inward shining and immortal light which henceforward becomes for them synonymous with health and wholeness. For most men, the fairy light of childhood becomes a half-forgotten, wholly foolish memory; Romance also we outgrow, or cling only to its dead corpse as to a pretty sentiment. Thus the wonder of our childhood and our youth, so essentially real in itself, fades into the light of common day; it becomes for our unbelief a light that never was on sea or land.
But in Whitman’s story we find it living on, to become transformed in manhood into the soul of all reality. His wonder at the world grew more. And this wonder, always bringing with it, to the man as to the child, a sense of exhilaration and expansion, was at the heart of his religion, as it is doubtless at the heart of all. No one will ever understand Whitman or his influence upon those who come in contact with him, who does not grasp this fact of his unflagging and delighted wonder at life. It kept him young to the end. The high-arched brows over his eyes are its witness.
FOOTNOTES:
[116] Bucke, 25.
[117] J. T. Trowbridge, My Own Story. Cf. list of articles, etc., in Camden, vol. x.
[118] Later than this, spring, 1859; cf. Camden, ix., 92.