Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence.
It may be doubted, whether any life is left wholly unvisited by some misgiving, some dim, faltering instinct, some pulse of hope or sorrow, which is akin to that which these words disclose; and the moments of such visitation are the supreme opportunities of a human soul, the crises of its tragedy. Then the things that belong to its peace are being proffered to it; then the Sibyl stands before it with the treasures of unimagined wisdom. We rise, and we live and grow and see by the right understanding and employment of such moments; by the fresh acts of self-committal which they render possible: and in all the infinite pathos of this world there is no misery comparable with this—that they should cease to trouble us. Whatever a man may believe or disbelieve, he will do well to trust these moments when they come: and, perhaps, if he has grace to know and use them, he may be nearer to the kingdom of God than he at all suspects. But Christianity does not leave such 'shoots of everlastingness' wholly unexplained or unprovided for.
They are in truth the fountain light of all our seeing, for they are the disclosure, the assertion, the stepping forward of His presence who alone sustains our life, our thought, our love. And, being this, they are therefore also the tokens, the emerging witness of a work that has begun in us, a life that is astir, a process of change that may be carried forward to an issue which, even faintly surmised, might make all other desire die away in us.
That we should be perfectly set free from sin; that God should so dwell in us and pervade our whole being that no part should lag behind the other; that whatsoever weakness or reluctance or coarseness may have clung about the body here should utterly pass away, being driven back by the victorious onset of the Spirit of God, claiming us wholly, body, soul, and spirit for His own; that whatsoever pure and true delight has here engaged us should be found, faultless and unwearied, in that energy which shall be at once our work and our rest for ever;—this is how Christianity represents to us the end of our development: and if indeed the powers which are to achieve so vast a change are already setting about their work in us, it is not strange that we should be disturbed now and then with some suspicion of it. We may understand alike the severity of external discipline, and the sharp disturbance and upheaval of anything like complacency, in a nature that is being here led on towards so splendid and inconceivable a transfiguration.
But Christianity does not merely declare to us the origin and meaning of these strange invasions of our ordinary life; these emergings, as it were, of that which is behind our normal activity, when the light, the strength, the love in which alone we live seems to push aside the curtain on which the background of our daily life is painted, and to appear unveiled among the things of time. He who telleth the number of the stars and calleth them all by their names, He who sendeth the springs into the valleys, and sweetly and mightily ordereth all things; He would not have these moments of intenser life, of keener consciousness, of quicker and more excellent growth, to be precarious and unaccountable, to be abrupt and arbitrary as the rush of the meteor which is gone before the eye has clearly seen it, or could use its light. They come from Him; they are the moments in which He makes His power to be known; in which His hand is felt, and His voice pervades the soul; the moments when His presence advances, as it were, and bends over us, and we know that it is He, Himself. And must we merely wait in blank and idle helplessness for that which we so greatly need; for that which is our only source of strength and growth? Must we wait, flagging and fruitless, with just a vague hope that the quickening presence may chance to visit us again, lighting on us with arbitrary beneficence, as the insect lights upon the plant, that it may bring forth fruit in due season? Must we wonder through days and months, yes, and through years perhaps of dim and desolate bewilderment, whether it was a real presence that came to us; with nothing but the fading memory of an individual and unconfirmed impression to sustain our hope, to keep the door against the gathering forces of doubt and worldliness and despair? Must we find our way as best we can, by guidance given long ago, imperfectly realized even then, and more and more hazily remembered, more drearily inadequate as time goes on, and the path grows rougher and less clear? Is the greatest effort to be demanded of us just when our strength is least and our light lowest[405]? Surely it is not His way to be thus arbitrary in compassion, thus desultory and precarious in shewing mercy. Surely He would not have us stray and faint and suffer thus. No, His compassions fail not; and, with the orderliness of a father's love, He has made us sure of all we need; and the historic Church and the triumphs of His saints declare that He is true. He has, with the certainty of His own unchanging word, promised that the unseen gift, which is the power of saintliness in sinful man, shall be given to all faithful, humble souls by ordered means through appointed acts. We need not vaguely hope that we may somehow receive His grace; for He has told us where and how we are to find it, and what are the conditions of its unhindered entrance into our souls. We need not be always going back to wonder whether our sins have been forgiven, or laboriously stirring up the glow of a past conviction; for there is a ministry which He has empowered to convey to us that cleansing glory which is ever ready to transfigure penitence into peace and thanksgiving. We need not live an utterly unequal life, stumbling to and fro between our ideal and our caricature[406]; for He has prepared for us a way which leads from strength to strength; and we know where He is ready to meet us and to replenish us with life and light. There is a glory that shall be revealed in us; and here on earth we may so draw near and take it to ourselves that its quiet incoming tide may more and more pervade our being; with radiance ever steadier and more transforming; till, in this world and beyond it, He has made a perfect work: till we are wholly ruled and gladdened by His presence, and wholly wrought into His image. For not by vague waves of feeling or by moments of experience which admit no certain measure, no unvarying test, no objective verification, but by an actual change, a cleansing and renewal of our manhood, a transformation which we can mark in human lives and human faces, or trace in that strange trait of saintliness which Christianity has wrought into the rough fabric of human history, may the reality of Sacramental grace be known on earth; known clearly enough, at all events, to make us hopeful about its perfect work in those who shall hereafter be presented faultless in body, soul and spirit before the throne of God.