The Renaissance which fascinated half Europe in the fifteenth century, like a carillon of joy-bells ringing through the land, stirring the dull pulses of the people and reviving generous and graceful ideals of life, was just open rebellion against the crabbed austerities of the Church, practised in the name of religion falsely so called. The people threw off the galling yoke of forced asceticism and found liberty of spirit and peace of mind in literature and art, and in the spontaneous and natural flow of healthy human life. Unfortunately, there was a fly in the amber; the people borrowed most of their new pleasures from pagan Greece, and the old Greek gods came tripping back from fairyland hand in glove with Greek culture, which was embarrassing.
The advent of the light-hearted Cavaliers in England, flinging colour and warmth and gaiety over the land, was a sharp recoil from the drab severity of Puritan rule. The Puritans were men of strong personality: half soldiers and half preachers. They were honest without charm; strong-minded without pose; mighty in conscience, but mean in heart qualities. They were clean livers, but as they aged their visage grew hard and sour as unripe fruit, and their geniality of temper withered like a winter apple. They forgot to smile; the solemnities of life crushed them. They were grave and sagacious citizens lacking vivacity and humour, with plenty of flavour, but no sweetness. They dreamed of invisible kingdoms and fought for eternal verities. They command our admiration, but do not win our love. Their God was of the best theology mechanically constructed at Geneva by John Calvin, built up in parts composed of Righteousness, Justice, Holiness. Beauty was barred as a Divine attribute. The dismal meeting-house where they worshipped was the whitewashed prison in which the captured Deity dwelt. The burning light of this dread Presence enraptured the elect souls and intimidated the uncovenanted and graceless sinners, while the vast multitude of the nation held aloof, dreading contact with a religion so fierce and yet so gloomy, and they waited patiently through the shivering night of Roundhead rule, like watchmen on the city walls, for the coming of the king to set English homes once again humming with joy.
These two strong currents of life--Self-denial and Enjoyment--are flowing side by side in our midst to-day, dividing men in thought and purpose, driving men into open collision, only to relax their strangle-hold on one another to get firmer grip and fight again another day. These two different ideals of life represent two antagonistic sides of a man's nature that clash with each other, and the man has a stand-up fight with himself, which is an experience fiery temperaments often plunge into. Each side carries a half-truth and half an error. Blend the two half-truths into an intimate and harmonious whole and sink the errors into the bottomless pit from whence they came, and you discover human nature touching its highest and ripest form, approaching the Christlike in character, which combines the two elements in true and everlasting union.
Jesus of Nazareth, whose knightly character embodied all that the sweet romancists of the Middle Ages dreamed of and pictured in the faultless knight-errant of their day which won their hearts' devotion and consent (preux chevalier sans peur et sans reproche), and all that our own age typifies and holds dear in modern character of good repute when in a single phrase it proclaims the man a perfect gentleman--Jesus Christ means all that and more to us. Christ is not a withered flower on a broken stem torn from the Tree of Life; He is not a damaged idol of an effete civilization which modern progress sweeps aside in its forward march; He is not the Lord of an ancient faith whom the fires of scientific criticism have burnt up and left only His ashes in a cinerary urn reposing on the altar of our heart. He is the world's one fulfilment of the faultless and the ideal in human nature, blending all that is beautiful and enjoyable with all that is holy and vigorous.
IV
THE LURE OF MAGIC WORDS
Beautiful language is the flower of poetry. The magic of diction, of enchanted words transformed into radiant, marvellous sentient things pulsing with life and passion, capture our attention, and deep within us something vibrates in answer to their mastering call.
A writer with perfect felicity of expression voices thoughts and emotions of our own heart that we cannot give utterance to, yet of which we are dimly conscious. These ghostly creatures of our mind, half a memory and half a thing, peep and mutter within us; we try to hold them, but they are illusive as shadows on the wall. From the well-written words there leaps out something that has life and form and comeliness in it, and instantly we recognize an intimate returning from a far country laden with spoil. Words liberate the imprisoned thought that fretted within us and set it free: gloriously free for you and me and all the world to make familiar with.
There are words--spectacular words that print indelibly pleasant pictures on the mind, reveal in a sabre-flash thoughts that burn and things that were hidden. There are words--vivid, striking, portentous words that unfold noble vistas of truth in which happy, emancipated people walk freely in sunlight and song. There are melodious, aromatic words that ring tunefully through corridors of the mind like a carillon of merry bells charming the heart with far-reaching joy. There are strong, fiery, tempestuous words that crash and rattle and reverberate like rolling thunder through your being, and kindle the spirit of man into blazing passion and heroic fervour. There are dull, prosy, somnolent words that baffle like a London fog, envelop the writer's meaning in dense obscurity, and lure the reader's mentality into quagmires of perplexity and doubt.
There are ambrosial, honeyed, ornate words that regale us with fair visions of life, and steep the mind in dreams of romance and intoxicate with amorous delight. There are treacherous, lying words that distil murder in the air as they wing their evil flight. They strike deadly as a keen stiletto, or spit poison like a venomous adder in the grass.