Tennyson and his friends

by Unknown

Our young author thus goes on:

This opens upon us an ampler view in which the subject deserves to be considered, and a relation still more direct and close between the Christian religion and the passion of love. What is the distinguishing character of Hebrew literature, which separates it by so broad a line of demarcation from that of every ancient people? Undoubtedly the sentiment of erotic devotion which pervades it. Their poets never represent the Deity as an impassive principle, a mere organizing intellect, removed at infinite distance from human hopes and fears. He is for them a being of like passions with themselves, requiring heart for heart, and capable of inspiring affection, because capable of feeling and returning it. Awful indeed are the thunders of His utterance and the clouds that surround His dwelling-place; very terrible is the vengeance He executes on the nations that forget Him: but to His chosen people, and especially to the men “after His own heart,” whom He anoints from the midst of them, His “still, small voice” speaks in sympathy and loving-kindness. Every Hebrew, while his breast glowed with patriotic enthusiasm at those promises, which he shared as one of the favoured race, had a yet deeper source of emotion, from which gushed perpetually the aspirations of prayer and thanksgiving. He might consider himself alone in the presence of his God; the single being to whom a great revelation had been made, and over whose head an “exceeding weight of glory” was suspended. For him the rocks of Horeb had trembled, and the waters of the Red Sea were parted in their course. The word given on Sinai with such solemn pomp of ministration was given to his own individual soul, and brought him into immediate communion with his Creator. That awful Being could never be put away from him. He was about his path, and about his bed, and knew all his thoughts long before. Yet this tremendous, enclosing presence was a presence of love. It was a manifold, everlasting manifestation of one deep feeling—a desire for human affection. Such a belief, while it enlisted even pride and self-interest on the side of piety, had a direct tendency to excite the best passions of our nature. Love is not long asked in vain from generous dispositions. A Being, never absent, but standing beside the life of each man with ever-watchful tenderness, and recognized, though invisible, in every blessing that befel them from youth to age, became naturally the object of their warmest affections. Their belief in Him could not exist without producing, as a necessary effect, that profound impression of passionate individual attachment which in the Hebrew authors always mingles with and vivifies their faith in the Invisible. All the books of the Old Testament are breathed upon by this breath of life. Especially is it to be found in that beautiful collection, entitled the Psalms of David, which remains, after some thousand years, perhaps the most perfect form in which the religious sentiment of man has been embodied.

But what is true of Judaism is yet more true of Christianity: “matre pulchrâ filia pulchrior.” In addition to all the characters of Hebrew Monotheism, there exists in the doctrine of the Cross a peculiar and inexhaustible treasure for the affectionate feelings. The idea of the Θεανθρωπος, the God whose goings forth have been from everlasting, yet visible to men for their redemption as an earthly, temporal creature, living, acting, and suffering among themselves, then (which is yet more important) transferring to the unseen place of His spiritual agency the same humanity He wore on earth, so that the lapse of generations can in no way affect the conception of His identity; this is the most powerful thought that ever addressed itself to a human imagination. It is the που στῶ, which alone was wanted to move the world. Here was solved at once the great problem which so long had distressed the teachers of mankind, how to make virtue the object of passion, and to secure at once the warmest enthusiasm in the heart with the clearest perception of right and wrong in the understanding. The character of the blessed Founder of our faith became an abstract of morality to determine the judgment, while at the same time it remained personal, and liable to love. The written word and established church prevented a degeneration into ungoverned mysticism, but the predominant principle of vital religion always remained that of self-sacrifice to the Saviour. Not only the higher divisions of moral duties, but the simple, primary impulses of benevolence, were subordinated to this new absorbing passion. The world was loved “in Christ alone.” The brethren were members of His mystical body. All the other bonds that had fastened down the spirit of the universe to our narrow round of earth were as nothing in comparison to this golden chain of suffering and self-sacrifice, which at once riveted the heart of man to one who, like himself, was acquainted with grief. Pain is the deepest thing we have in our nature, and union through pain has always seemed more real and more holy than any other.[115]

There is a sad pleasure—non ingrata amaritudo—and a sort of meditative tenderness in contemplating the little life of this “dear youth,” and in letting the mind rest upon these his earnest thoughts; to watch his keen and fearless, but childlike spirit, moving itself aright—going straight onward along “the lines of limitless desires”—throwing himself into the very deepest of the ways of God, and striking out as a strong swimmer striketh out his hands to swim; to see him “mewing his mighty youth, and kindling his undazzled eye at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance”:

Light intellectual, and full of love,
Love of true beauty, therefore full of joy,
Joy, every other sweetness far above.

It is good for every one to look upon such a sight, and as we look, to love. We should all be the better for it; and should desire to be thankful for, and to use aright a gift so good and perfect, coming down as it does from above, from the Father of lights, in whom alone there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

Thus it is, that to each one of us the death of Arthur Hallam—his thoughts and affections—his views of God, of our relations to Him, of duty, of the meaning and worth of this world and the next—where he now is—have an individual significance. He is bound up in our bundle of life; we must be the better or the worse of having known what manner of man he was; and in a sense less peculiar, but not less true, each of us may say:

——The tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.
——O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!
God gives us love! Something to love
He lends us; but when love is grown
To ripeness, that on which it throve
Falls off, and love is left alone:
This is the curse of time. Alas!
In grief we are not all unlearned;
Once, through our own doors Death did pass;
One went who never hath returned.
This star
Rose with us, through a little arc
Of heaven, nor having wandered far,
Shot on the sudden into dark.
Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace;
Sleep, holy spirit, blessed soul,
While the stars burn, the moons increase,
And the great ages onward roll.
Sleep till the end, true soul and sweet,
Nothing comes to thee new or strange,
Sleep, full of rest from head to feet;
Lie still, dry dust, secure of change.

Vattene in pace, alma beata e bella.—Go in peace, soul beautiful and blessed.

“O man greatly beloved, go thou thy way till the end, for thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days.”—Daniel.