From The London Society.
A CHRISTMAS DREAM.
A Pilgrim to the West returned, whose palm-branch, drenched in dew,
Shook off bright drops like childhood's tears when childhood's heart is new,
Stole up the hills at eventide, like mist in wintry weather,
Where locked in dream-like trance I lay, at rest among the heather.
The red ferns, answering to his tread; sent up a savor sweet;
The yellow gorse, like Magian gold, glowed bright about his feet:
The waving brooms, the winter blooms, each happy voice in air,
Grew great with life and melody, as if a Christ stood there.
Unlike to mortal man was he. His brow rose broad and high:
The peace of heaven was on his lip, the God-light in his eye;
And rayed with richer glory streamed, through night and darkness shed,
To crown that holy Pilgrim's brow, the one star overhead.
Long gazing on that staff he bore, beholding how it grew
With sprouts of green, with buds between, and young leaves ever new.
The marvels of the Eastern land I bade him all unfold.
And thus to my impassioned ears the wondrous tale he told:
"Each growth upon that sacred soil where one died not in vain,
Though crushed and shed, though seeming dead, in beauty lives again:
The branching bough the knife may cleave, the root the axe may sever,
But on the ground his presence lighted, nothing dies for ever.
"Where once amid the lowly stalls fell soft the Virgin's tear,
The littered straw 'neath children's feet turns to green wheat in ear.
The corn he pluck'd on Sabbath days, though ne'er it feels the sun,
Though millions since have trod the field, bears fruit for every one.
"The palms that on his way were strewn wave ever in the air;
From clouded earth to sun-bright heaven they form a leafy stair.
In Cana's bowers the love of man is touched by the divine;
And snows that fall on Galilee have still the taste of wine.
"Where thy lost locks, poor Magdalen! around his feet were rolled,
Still springs in woman's worship-ways the gracious Mary-gold:
Men know when o'er that bowed down head they hear the angels weeping,
The purer spirit is not dead—not dead, but only sleeping.
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"Aloft on blackened Calvary no more the shadows lower:
Where fell the piercing crown of thorns, there blooms a thorn in flower.
Bright on the prickled holy-tree and mistletoe' appear,
Reflecting rays of heavenly shine, the blod-drop and the tear.
"The sounding rocks that knew his tread wake up each dead abyss,
Where echoes caught from higher worlds ring gloriously in this;
And, leaning where his voice once filled the temple where he taught,
The listener's eyes grew spirit-full—full with a heavenly thought."
The Pilgrim ceased. My heart beat fast. I marked a change of hue;
As if those more than mortal eyes a soul from God looked through.
Then rising slow as angels rise, and soaring faint and far,
He passed my bound of vision, robed in glory, as a star.
Strange herald voices filled the air: glad anthems swelled around:
The wakened winds rose eager-voiced, and lapsed in dreamy sound.
It seemed all birds that wintered far, drawn home by some blessed power,
Made music in the Christmas woods, mistaking of the hour.
A new glad spirit raptured me! I woke to breathe the morn
With heart fresh-strung to charity—as though a Christ were born.
Then knew I how each earth-born thought, though tombed in clay it seem,
It bursts the sod, it soars to God, transfigured in a dream.
ELEANORA L. HERVEY
From the Month.
VICTIMS OF DOUBT.
It is not the fashion at present to scoff at Christianity, or to make an open profession of infidelity. Ponderous treatises to prove that revealed religion is an impossibility, and coarse blasphemies against holy things, are equally out of date. Yet to men of earnest convictions, whether holding the whole or only some portions of revealed truth, the moral atmosphere is not reassuring. The pious Catholic, the Bible-loving Protestant, and the hybrid of the last phase of Tractarianism, are alike distrustful of the smooth aspect of controversy and the calm surface of the irreligious element. There is something worse than bigotry or mischief, and that is skepticism. And, if we may judge from what we hear and read, it is this to which most schools of thought outside the Catholic Church are rapidly drifting, if they have not already reached it, and into which restless and disloyal Catholics are in danger of being precipitated. An answer made to an old Oxford friend by one who was once with him in the van of the Tractarian movement, but did not accompany him into the fold, "I agree with you, that if there is a divine revelation, the Roman Catholic Church is the ordained depository of it; but this is an uncertainty which I cannot solve," would probably express the habitual state of mind of a fearfully [{551}] large number of the more thoughtful of our countrymen, and the occasional reflection of many more who do not often give themselves time to think. And to the multitudes who are plunging or gliding into doubts the Catholic system, which there unhappy training has made it one of their first principles to despise for detest, has not even presented itself as an alternative.
The current literature of the day, which is mostly framed to suit the taste of the market, and reacts again in developing that taste further in the same direction, is pre-eminently, not blasphemous, or anti-Catholic, or polemical, but sceptical. The following description of the periodical press by the Abbé Louis Baunard, in his recent publication, [Footnote 168] might seem to have been written for London instead of Paris:
[Footnote 168: Le Doute ses Victimes dans le Siècle présent, par M. l'Abbé Louis Baunard. Paris.]
"With some rare exceptions, you will not find any rude scoffing, violent expressions, unfashionable cynicism, harsh systems, or exclusive intolerance. Yet is not controversy that is the business of these writers, but criticism. They deal in expositions and suppositions, but almost always without deciding anything. It is a principle with them that there are only shades of difference between the most contradictory propositions; and the reader becomes accustomed to see these shades in such questions as those which relate to the personality of God, the divinity of Jesus Christ, and the supernatural generally. This does not hinder these men from calling themselves Christians, in the vague sense of a loose Christianity, which allows the names of ancient beliefs to remain, while it destroys their substance. They do not assault the old religion in front, but silently undermine the foundations on which it rests, and carry on ingenious parallels by the side of revealed truth, till some conclusion emerges which utterly subverts it, without having appeared to be intentionally directed against it. There is one review, the most widely circulated of all, in the same number of which an article dearly atheistical will be found by the side of another article breathing the most correct orthodoxy, and very much surprised to see itself in such company. Such concessions to truth, which are made only now and then, serve to give the publication that makes them a certain appearance of impartiality, and thus to accredit error, and to lay one more snare for the reader."