More Pages from a Journal

by William Hale White

DREAMING

During the retreat from Moscow a French soldier was mortally wounded. His comrades tried to lift him into a waggon. ‘No bandages, no brandy!’ he cried; ‘go, you cannot help me.’ They hesitated, but seeing that he could not recover, and knowing that the enemy was hard upon them in pursuit, they left him. For half an hour he was alive and alone. The Emperor, whom he worshipped, was far away; his friends had fled; to remain would have been folly, and yet! It was late in the afternoon and bitterly cold. He looked with dim and closing eyes over the vast, dreary, snowy and silent plain. What were the images which passed before them? Were they of home, of the Emperor and the retreating army, of the crucifix and the figure thereon? Who can tell? Death is preceded by thoughts which life cannot anticipate. Perhaps his herald was a simple longing to be at rest, joy at his approach blotting out all bitterness and regret. Who can tell? But I dream and dream; the dying, wintry day, the dark, heavily-clouded sky, the snow, and the blood. A Cossack came up and drove his lance through him.

OURSELVES

Lord Bacon says that ‘To be wise by rule and to be wise by experience are contrary proceedings; he that accustoms himself to the one unfits himself for the other.’ It is singular how little attention, in the guidance of our lives, we pay to our own needs. It is a common falsehood of these times that all knowledge is good for everybody, the truth being that knowledge is good only if it helps us, and that if it does not help us it is bad. ‘Whatever knowledge,’ to quote from Bacon again, ‘we cannot convert into food or medicine endangereth a dissolution of the mind and understanding.’ We ought to turn aside from what we cannot manage, no matter how important it may seem to be. David refused Saul’s helmet of brass and coat of mail. If he had taken the orthodox accoutrements and weapons he would have been encumbered and slain. He killed Goliath with the rustic sling and stone. No doubt if we determine to be ignorant of those things with which the world thinks it necessary that everybody should be familiar we shall be thought ill-educated, but our very ignorance will be a better education, provided it be a principled ignorance, than much which secures a local examination certificate or a degree. At the same time, if any study fits us, it should be pursued unflaggingly. We must not be afraid of the imputation of narrowness. Our subject will begin to be of most service to us when we have passed the threshold and can think for ourselves. If we devote ourselves, for example, to the works and biography of any great man, the pleasure and moral effect come when we have read him and re-read him and have traced every thread we can find, connecting him with his contemporaries. It is then, and then only, that we understand him and he becomes a living soul. Flesh and blood are given by details.

We are misled by heroes whom we admire, and the greater the genius the more perilous is its influence upon us if we allow it to be a dictator to us. It is really of little consequence to me what a saint or philosopher thought it necessary to do in order to protect and save himself. It is myself that I have to protect and save. Every man is prone to lean on some particular side and on that side requires special support. Every man has particular fears and troubles, and it is against these and not against the fears and troubles of others that he must provide remedies. A religion is but a general direction, and the real working Thirty-nine Articles or Assembly’s Catechism each one of us has to construct on his own behalf.

A not insignificant advantage of loyalty to our Divine Director will be a more correct and generally a more lenient criticism of our fellow-creatures. We shall cease to judge them by standards which are not applicable to them. Much that we might erroneously consider wrong we shall discern to be a necessary effort to secure stability or even to preserve sanity. We shall pardon deviation from the obvious path. The boat which crosses the river may traverse obliquely the direct line to the point for which it is making, and if we reflect that perhaps a strong current besets it we shall not call the steersman a fool.

THE RIDDLE

Men had sinned against the gods, and had even denied their existence. Zeus had a mind to destroy them, but at last resolved to inflict on them a punishment worse than death. He sent Hermes to one of the chief cities with a scroll on which a few magic letters were written, and the wise men declared they contained a riddle. Its solution would bring immortal happiness. The whole human race, neglecting all ordinary pursuits, applied itself ceaselessly to the solution of the mystery. Professors were appointed to lecture on it, it was attacked on all sides by induction, deduction, and by flights of inspiration, but nobody was able to unravel it. At last a child, seeing the perplexity in which her father and mother were, took one of the copies of the scroll which were hung in all the public buildings of the city, and secretly set off to consult a distant oracle of Phœbus Apollo of which she had heard. She had to traverse thirsty deserts, and not till she was nearly dead did she reach the shrine. She told her story and handed in her scroll to a priestess, who disappeared in an inner chamber. In a few minutes the temple of the Sun-god was filled with blazing light, the child prostrated herself on the floor, and she heard the words, There is no riddle. She lifted herself up, and, fortified with some food given her by the priestess, began her journey home. She was just able to struggle through the city gates and deliver the message before she fell down lifeless. It was not believed; the Secret, the Secret, everybody upheld it, the professors lectured, the mad inquisition and guesses continued, and the vengeance of Zeus is not yet satisfied.

AN EPOCH

I was no longer young: in fact I was well over sixty. The winter had been dark and tedious. For some reason or other I had not been able to read much, and I began to think there were signs of the coming end. Suddenly, with hardly any warning, spring burst upon us. Day after day we had clear, warm sunshine which deepened every contrast of colour, and at intervals we were blessed with refreshing rains. I spent most of my time out of doors on the edge of a favourite wood. All my life I had been a lover of the country, and had believed, if this is the right word, that the same thought, spirit, life, God, which was in everything I beheld, was also in me. But my creed had been taken over from books; it was accepted as an intellectual proposition. Most of us are satisfied with this kind of belief, and even call it religion. We are more content the more definite the object becomes, no matter whether or not it is in any intimate relationship with us, and we do not see that the moment God can be named he ceases to be God.