I have already spoken of his recognition of the apparent dualism in Nature. His outlook on the universe could not ignore the dark and dismaying facts of existence, and his faith, which rose above the shriek of Nature, was not based upon arguments derived from any survey of external, physical Nature. When he confined his outlook to this, he could see power and mechanism, but he could not from these derive faith. His vision must go beyond the mere physical universe; he must see life and see it whole; he must include that which is highest in Nature, even man, and only then could he find the resting-place of faith. He thus summed up the matter once when we had been walking up and down the “Ball-room” at Farringford: “It is hard,” he said, “it is hard to believe in God; but it is harder not to believe. I believe in God, not from what I see in Nature, but from what I find in man.” I took him to mean that the witness of Nature was only complete when it included all that was in Nature, and that the effort to draw conclusions from Nature when man, the highest-known factor in Nature, was excluded, could only lead to mistake. I do not think he meant, however, that external Nature gave no hints of a superintending wisdom or even love, for his own writings show, I think, that such hints had been whispered to him by flower and star; I think he meant that faith did not find her platform finally secure beneath her feet till she had taken count of man. In short, he seemed to me to be near to the position of Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, who said that truth as soon as learned was felt to be held on a much deeper and more unshakable ground than any authority which appealed to mere intellect, namely, on its own discerned truthfulness. The response to all that is highest in Nature is found in the heart of man, and man cannot deny this highest, because it is latent in himself already. But I must continue Tennyson’s own words: “It is hard to believe in God, but it is harder not to believe in Him. I don’t believe in His goodness from what I see in Nature. In Nature I see the mechanician; I believe in His goodness from what I find in my own breast.” I said, “Then you believe that Man is the highest witness of God?” “Certainly,” he replied. I said, “Is not that what Christ said and was? He was in man the highest witness of God to Man,” and I quoted the recorded words, “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.” He assented, but said that there were, of course, difficulties in the idea of a Trinity—the Three. “But mind,” he said, “Son of God is quite right—that He was.”[75] He said that, of course, we must have doctrine, and then he added, “After all, the greatest thing is Faith.” Having said this, he paused, and then recited with earnest emphasis the lines which sang of faith in the reality of the Unseen and Spiritual, of a faith, therefore, which can wait the great disclosure:
Doubt no longer, that the Highest is the wisest and the best,
Let not all that saddens Nature blight thy hope, or break thy rest,
Quail not at the fiery mountain, at the shipwreck, or the rolling
Thunder, or the rending earthquake, or the famine, or the pest.
Neither mourn if human creeds be lower than the heart’s desire;
Thro’ the gates that bar the distance comes a gleam of what is higher.
Wait till death has flung them open, when the man will make the Maker
Dark no more with human hatred in the glare of deathless fire.
He was alive to the movements of modern thought. He saw in evolution, if not a fully proved law, yet a magnificent working hypothesis; he could not regard it as a theory hostile to ultimate faith; but far beyond the natural wish to reconcile faith and thought, which he shared with all right-thinking men, was the conviction of the changeless personal relationship between God and man. He might find difficulties about faith and about certain dogmas of faith, such as the Trinity. No doubt, however, the Poet’s conception brought the divine into all human life; it showed God in touch with us at all epochs of our existence—in our origin, in our history, in our final self-realization, for He is
Our Father and our Brother and our God.[76]
Religion largely lies in the consciousness of our true relation to Him who made us; and the yearning for the realization of this consciousness found constant expression in Tennyson’s works and conversation.[77] Perhaps its clearest expression is to be found in his instructions to his son: “Remember, I want ‘Crossing the Bar’ to be always at the end of all my works.”
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the Bar.
TENNYSON AND SIR JOHN SIMEON, AND TENNYSON’S LAST YEARS
By Louisa E. Ward[78]