"Namely, about what first concerns us all.
"One forgets it in his strenuous endeavor, a second in his zeal for conflict, a third in his backward vision, a fourth in the conceit of his own wisdom, a fifth in his daily routine, and we have all learned it more or less ill. For should I ask you who hear me now, you would all reply thoughtlessly, and just because I ask you from this place, 'Faith is first.'
"No, in very truth, it is not. Watch over your child, as it struggles for breath on the outermost verge of life, or see your wife follow the child to that outermost verge, beside herself for anxiety and sleeplessness,—then love will teach you that life comes first. And never from this day on will I seek God or God's will in any form of words, in any sacrament, or in any book or any place, as if He were first and foremost to be found there; no, life is first and foremost—life as we win it from the depths of despair, in the victory of the light, in the grace of self-devotion, in our intercourse with living human kind. God's supreme word to us is life, our highest worship of Him is love for the living. This lesson, self-evident as it is, was needed by me more than by most others. This it is that in various ways and upon many grounds I have hitherto rejected,—and of late most of all. But never more shall words be the highest for me, nor symbols, but the eternal revelation of life. Never more will I freeze fast in doctrine, but let the warmth of life melt my will. Never will I condemn men by the dogmas of old time justice, unless they fit with our own time's gospel of love. Never, for God's sake! And this because I believe in Him, the God of Life, and His never ending revelation in life itself."
Here is a gospel, indeed, one that needs no church for its promulgation, and no ceremonial for the enhancement of its impressiveness. It is a gospel, moreover, that is based upon no foundation of precarious logic, but finds its premises in the healthy instincts of the natural man. It is no small thing to have thus found the way, and to have helped others likewise to find the way, out of the mists of superstition, through the valleys of doubt and despondency, athwart the thickets of prejudice and bigotry with all their furtive foemen, up to these sunlit heights of serenity.
"Mary" is less explicit in its teaching than the two great novels just summarized, but what it misses in didacticism it more than gains in art. The radiant creature who gives her name to the book is one of Björnson's most exquisite figures. She is the very embodiment of youthful womanhood, filled with the joy of life, and bringing sunshine wherever she goes. Yet this temperament leads to her undoing, or what would be the undoing of any woman less splendid in character. But the strength that impels her to the misstep that comes so near to having tragic consequences is also the strength that saves her when chastened by suffering. In her the author "gives us the common stuff of life," says an English critic, "gives it us simple and direct. There is nothing here of Ibsen's pathology. We are in the sun. Her most hideous blunder cannot undo a woman's soul. Björnson knows that the deed is nothing at all. It is the soul behind the deed that he sees. Not everything that cometh out of a man defileth a man. At all events, so it is here: triumph and joy built upon an act that—as the Philistines would say—has defiled forever." As a triumph of sheer creation, this figure is hardly overmatched anywhere in the author's portrait gallery of women.
If Björnson's essential teaching may be found in a single page, as has above been suggested, his personality evades all such summarizing. In the present essay, he has been considered as a writer merely,—poet, dramatist, novelist,—but the man is vastly more than that. His other activities have been hinted at, indeed, but nothing adequate has been said about them. The director of three theatres, the editor of three newspapers and the contributor to many others, the promoter of schools and patriotic organizations, the participant in many political campaigns, the lay preacher of private and public morals, the chosen orator of his nation for all great occasions,—these are some of the characters in which we must view him to form anything like a complete conception of his many-sided individuality. Take the matter of oratory alone, and it is perhaps true that he has influenced as many people by the living word as he has by the printed page. He has addressed hundreds of audiences in the three Scandinavian countries and in Finland, he has spoken to more than twenty thousand at a time, and his winged speech has gone straight home to his hearers. All who ever heard him will agree that his oratory was of the most persuasive and vital impressiveness. Jaeger attempts to describe it in the following words:—
"It is eloquence of a very distinctive type; its most characteristic quality is its wealth of color; it finds expression for every mood, from the lightest to the most serious, from the most vigorous to the most delicate and tender. Now his words ring like the voice of doom, filled with thunder and lightning, now they become soft and persuasive with smiling mien. With a single cadence, or a play of the facial muscles, or a slight gesture, he can portray a person, a situation, or an object, so that it appears living in the sight of his hearers. And what the word alone cannot do, is accomplished in the most brilliant manner by the virtuosity of his delivery. He does not speak his words, he presents them; they take bodily form and seem alive."
In his more intimate relationships, on the other hand, in face to face conversation or in the home circle, the man takes on a quite different aspect; the prophet has become the friend, the impassioned preacher has become the genial story teller, and shares the gladsome or mirthful mood of the hour. Such a personality as this may be analyzed; it defies any concise synthesis. One resorts to figures of speech, and they were abundantly resorted to by those who paid him the tribute of their admiration and love upon the occasion of his seventieth anniversary. Let us take an instance at random from one of these tributes.
"The cataract that roars down to the free foaming sea. The mountain with its snowclad peaks towering up into the immensity of the starry heavens. The rustling of the woodland above the blossom-spangled and smiling meadows, the steep uptowering, the widely growing, and the joyously smiling. At once the soft melody that stirs the heart and the strong wind that sweeps over the Northern lands."
This concourse of metaphors gives some slight idea of the way in which Björnson's personality affected those who came into contact with it. The description may be supplemented by a few bits of anecdote and reminiscence. The composer Grieg contributes the following incident of the old days in Norway:—