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 [1; 
 
A CHRISTMAS CHAT ; 
 
 A Fragmentary Dialogue on 
 
 torn anb Heligion. 
 
 » ■ 
 
 BY 
 
 T. ARNOLD HAULTAIN, M.A., 
 
 Author of " A Critique of Cardinal Newman's Exposition of the Illative 
 
 Sense ;" " The War in the Soudan and the Causes which 
 
 Led to It/' etc. 
 
 ■ » 
 
 TORONTO : 
 
 Ellis, Moore & Bangs, Printers and Publishers, 
 39 & 41 Melinda Street. 
 
 1887. 
 
. . :*■ 
 
 •A -'. 
 
 %! "' 
 
 'f\ 
 
 ^ 
 
 i 4 
 
 ..»* ;>: 
 
# 
 
 CI <Ll}visimas CI?ai 
 
 ^^ ^IND what is your text ?" I asked. 
 
 ^*Qj\ " I must, of course, preach on the Nativity — 
 a Christmas sermon, you know," he replied ; 
 " but I was thinking of treating it from a new stand- 
 point. I have chosen the words " For God so loved the 
 world that he gave his only-begotten son.' " 
 
 n 
 
 
 It was the curate of the church I ought to have 
 attended (but didn't) who had come on Christmas Eve 
 into my old bachelor study for a " quiet, sensible chat," 
 as he called it. He was a nice little man of about 
 thirty ; a little pedantic perhaps, very orthodox, mildly 
 intelligent, above all a good listener. Looking at his 
 youthful face, a face which bore no traces of deep 
 thought, I thought to myself, " You have chosen a 
 harder topic than you think for, my good fellow." My 
 look must have betrayed my thought, for he at once 
 continued: — ^ - 
 
 " People don't expect much of a sermon on Christmas 
 
 .'^ 
 
1#. 
 
 i « I 
 
 "ir . -I ■ 
 
 V / ■ 
 
 morning, you must remember. The young women go to 
 see how their decorations look, the young men to see 
 how the young women look, the old women because it 
 is ' correct,' and the old men to get up an appetite for 
 the roast beef and turkey." 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! quite epigrammatic," I said. " But, to be 
 serious, what is the central thought that you are going 
 to * expound ' — is not that the right word ? " 
 
 " Simply that the giving was the result of the love." 
 
 " And a good one. You have got the pivot of your 
 whole system of Christianity there. Love," I went on 
 nfusingly, half to myself, " — it is the essence of religion; 
 even earthly love is a sort of mirror of religion. We 
 might call religion an infinite pantagram of earthly 
 love." 
 
 " I don't understand you." 
 
 " I am trying to rival you in epigram, you think, eh ? 
 Epigrams arj very dangerous instruments. Like the 
 surgeon's lancet, unless moet carefully handled, they will 
 cut much more than is necessary. They cut sharply 
 through error but there is a likelihood of mutilating 
 truth too. I suspect there is in every epigram an in- 
 gredient of falsehood. And truth and falsehood are not 
 in epigrams a mere mechanical mixture ; they are in 
 chemical combination. It is extremely difficult to 
 separate them. Every experiment is vitiated by unfor- 
 seen residual phenomena." ' ^ .. .■- 
 
 " Do not call me pedantic after such a sentence," he 
 
 • U *»;• 
 
 • 
 
 SS>^ 
 
 I 1 
 

 "^<s* 
 
 said, smiling. ♦ But what do you mean by a ' panta- 
 gram'?" 
 
 " 0, a pantagraph is an instrument by which to re- 
 produce on a larger scale a fac simile of any drawing. 
 This /ac simile I call a pantagram." 
 
 " Ought it not to be pantagraphema « " 
 
 " I took the analogy of 'telegraph ' and 'telegram.' 
 Never mind such a minor point. Light a cigarette, let me 
 give you another cup of chocolate, and we will usher in 
 the Christmas morn with a ' sensible chat,' as you call 
 it. I feel in a talkative humour to-night." 
 
 "With pleasure; I should like nothing better. I 
 might get some hints for my sermon, too. Though what 
 my congregation would say if they thought I accepted 
 hints from a deserter like you, I don't know." 
 
 (Of the character and views of the interlocutor who 
 speaks in the first person, the reader must form his own 
 opinion. The author does not hold himself altogether 
 responsible for him — at least not more than does the 
 ventriloquist for the voices he produces. — And these 
 maybe natural or disguised— that is left to the audience 
 to guess ) . 
 
 J , , .'.. ' ^ * -■",.■ ■■ ' 1 :,-■ , ' ■ ' ',. . . 
 
 " Can you find any more resemblances between love 
 and religion ? " continued the curate. 
 
 " The first resemblance I see," I answered, ** is in the 
 spontaneousness, the lawlessness of each." 
 
 " The lawlessness ? What can you mean ? " 
 
I 
 
 I k 
 
 " Do you know that I'ne from Ovid, 
 
 Sponte sua sine lege Hdem rectumque colebat 1 
 
 Love has no creeds or liturgies ; no proscribed chants or 
 set responses; no rubric, no'ritual. And surely you will 
 grant that worship ' in spirit and in truth ' needs not 
 any of these. ' Religion ' to most people means cere- 
 monies, doctrines, vestments, pew-rents, offertoriesi 
 consecrated burial grounds, and charity fairs. They 
 forget that these are merely what Carlyle would call 
 the * wrappages ' of religion. Think you not that the 
 pious savage sacrificing to his Fetish in heartfelt grati- 
 tude for safe deliverance from his foe is as truly 
 'religious' as any stoled and surpliced priest intoning 
 your ' General Thanksgiving ' ? " 
 
 " If you argue in that way," rather curtly he replied, 
 " any pagan, one who had never seen a missionary even, 
 could be religious." v. 
 
 " Assuredly. The sacrificers of children to Moloch as 
 much as Elizabeth Fry ; a fakir of Benares e([ually 
 with the infallible Pontiff, — if the one is as sincere as 
 the other." 
 
 He could scarcely restrain an expression of horror. 
 In fact, he so started that his cigarette ash fell all over 
 his natty ecclesiastically-cut waistcoat. I myself en- 
 joyed his discomfiture, for I dearly loved shocking him 
 occasionally. 
 
 " And there is a deeper sense in which love and re 
 
 ♦»* 
 
 i" 
 
I»t 
 
 ligion are lawless," I continued ; " as no one can tell us 
 why we love, why we ought to love, so I think no one 
 can tell us why we are religious, why wo ought to do 
 right and avoid evil." 
 
 " Why? Because God loves right and hates evil," he 
 said. ' . ' 
 
 " Ah ! my dear fellow ; do you not know that puzzling 
 qutJBtion of old Socrates': 'Is the holy ^ned by the 
 gods because it is holy; or is it holy because it ^s loved ?' 
 To me right and wrong seem relative, r. h absolute. I 
 only see dimly that nothing is isolated, that all things are 
 interdependent, that there i^ in reality no tnio ' or 
 ' Uiat,' no ' here ' or ' there,' no ' now ' or ' then ' ; that 
 the influence of actions, like the persistence of force, is 
 infinite and eternal ; that this tiny little piece of the 
 Kosmos, of the all, of the one, which I call me is not 
 divided off from any other piece of the all, of the one ; 
 that therefore I am pressed in upon on every side, just 
 as every particle in the physical Kosmos is pressed in 
 upon, by all the individuals round me. And because I 
 am not isolated, not separated, but dependent upon all 
 things about me, as they upon me, that therefore I must 
 not act for myself alone, but for the mutual benefit of 
 myself and " 
 
 " And what ? " said eagerly my guest. 
 
 ** And of as many of the individuals about me as 
 possible." . : . 
 
 ** Ah !" he sighed, '* I thought we were on the point of 
 
 *- -..* 
 
 -^- 
 

 ' 8 
 
 agreeing after all ; I thought you were going to say * for 
 the glory of God, for the mutual benefit of myself and 
 of the ALL, the one, as you call it." 
 
 " I grant you such an ethical standard, could we dis- 
 cover it, would be the true, the proper ethical standard. 
 But until we can with our little finite minds completely 
 understand the whole of all things, such standard must 
 remain beyond our grasp. We can act only according 
 to the widest knowledge we can obtain. We can love 
 God only by loving our neighbours. Is it not the same 
 in the physical world ? The atom finds its rule of action 
 in the molecule, the molecule in the crystal. The atom 
 ought really to know a great deal beyond the atomic 
 theory ; it ought to learn all crystallography, it ought 
 to learn all geology — all astronomy even. But alj it 
 knows is that it must always combine in certain propor- 
 tions with the atoms about it. So with the organic 
 world. The blood corpuscle in this capillary ought to 
 know not only my whole anatomy and physiology, but 
 also my whole past, present and future history — the end 
 and purport of my whole existence, before it moves one 
 step. But all it knows is a few such laws as those of 
 osmosis, gravitation, diapedesis, etc." 
 
 " Dear me, you are drowning me with your scientific 
 phrases. What on earth is ' diapedesis ' ? " 
 
 " I am paying a compliment to your own learning, my 
 dear fellow. ' Diapedesis ' ? why that is one of the 
 most important of recent physiological discoveries. But 
 
 iv 
 
 / 
 
!,/ 
 
 .1 
 
 9 
 
 to go on: Does not the same hold gOv^dwith the individual 
 in a community ? He ought to know all sociology, the 
 history and destiny of his nation, of all nations, and go- 
 vern himself accordingly. But what really influences 
 most men in their conduct ? They are guided usually by 
 the opinions and fashions of their own rank of society, 
 by their families,, and, let us add, by their debtors and 
 creditors. Love and religion .are at once the most 
 selfish and the most unsefish of all emotions." 
 
 " ' A paradox, a paradox ; a most ingenious paradox,' " 
 quoted the curate. 
 
 " They both start from self, and, sacrificing self for 
 another or others, find self again in that other or others. 
 The lover will give up all for his mistress, but in return * 
 he will have his mistress give up all for him. So 
 with religion. By religion man, — by sacrificing his 
 individual will for the benefit of those around him, — 
 expands himself, annihilates himself, loses himself, finds 
 his completeness, his totality, as the centre of a circle — 
 produced, as it were, in all directions equally — finds it- - 
 self in the circumference. The larger the circle the 
 better, but a measurable circle it will on this earth 
 always be." 
 
 •* These are very alluring theories of yours, and they 
 can be expressed in very pretty phraseology. There is 
 a beautiful sentence of Matthew Arnold's ..." 
 " Do you read Matthew Arnold ?" 
 " His poems, chiefly." 
 
 i 
 

 10 
 
 " Pardon my interruption. What is the sentence you 
 are thinking of ? " 
 
 " I don't know that I can quote it from memory ; but 
 it is something like this : — * To walk staunchly by the 
 best light that one has ; to be strict and sincere with 
 one's self; not to be of the number of those who say 
 and do not ; to be in earnest — this is the discipline by 
 which alone man is enabled to rescue his life from 
 thraldom to the passing moment and to his bodily 
 senses, to ennoble it, and to make it eternal.' " 
 
 " Tiuly, as you say, a most beautiful sentence." 
 ^ " Yes ; but do you know what you and Matthew Ar- 
 nold ..." 
 
 " Thank you for coupling us." 
 
 " You and Matthew Arnold seem to me like children 
 trying to put the pieces of a puzzle together in the 
 dark. The * best light ' is in reality no light." 
 
 *' You mean the puzzle of life ; our whence and 
 whither ; why we should do right ; what is right ; and 
 so on." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " And what light could you supply us with ? " 
 
 ** The light of the Gospel — the inspired Scriptures." 
 
 " Ah ! that question would lead us into the most en- 
 tangled theological discussion. Let us not enter upon 
 that to-night. This is the season of peace and good- 
 will — two things rarely found in the arena of theologi- 
 cal controversy." 
 
11 
 
 A long pause here ensued. The curate seemed disin- 
 clined further to attempt to confute either Matthew 
 Arnold or myself. He leisurely sipped his chocolate and 
 gazed into the fire. Where his thoughts were I could 
 not tell ; but his next remark showed that they had 
 reverted to the subject of love with which we had 
 begun. 
 
 " Do you remember," he said quietly, " do you re- 
 member the effect of love upon the rugged Herr Teu- 
 felsdrockh ?— ' Holy was he and happy ; the words from 
 those sweetest lips came over him like dew on thirsty 
 grass ; all better feelings in his soul seemed to whisper : 
 It is good for us to be here ' " 
 
 *• Yes ; a true transfiguration takes place in the object 
 of love. The inspiring object need be no veritable god- 
 dess — that were too much for mortal man ; but it needs 
 that she bear in her person the concrete embodiment of 
 divinity, it needs that she be the god-like made visible, 
 that she * show us the Father.' Perhaps, too, it needs 
 that she bring her worshipper into a high mountain 
 apart, away from the petty conventionalities of * society.' 
 No complete understanding of her divine mission is 
 possible on the plains where the multitude is busied 
 with the devouring of fishes and loaves. It is not until 
 a bright cloud overshadows her, not until he sees evi- 
 dence of her divine parentage, that her worshipper 
 ' sees her glory ' and cries, * It is good for us tq bq 
 here,'" 
 
 M 
 
1^ 
 
 m 
 
 " I cannot say I quite like the tone of your allusions," 
 said the curate, sedately. 
 
 " I am simply keeping my mind fixed on the resem- 
 blance of love to religion, and am speaking quite rever- 
 ently. Let me go on for one moment. Do you remem- 
 ber the effect of Christ's transfiguration upon Peter ? " 
 
 " Yes ; he * wist not what to say.' " 
 
 '* Yes ; he wist not what to say. There is a profoiHid 
 truth underlying that simple fact. Always ia the pre- 
 sence of the Good, the God-sent, we wis not what to 
 say. Language fails, even thought is baffled. 
 
 ' In such access of mind, in such high hour 
 Of visitation from the living God, ' 
 
 Thought is not.' ' . 
 
 So is it with all our deepest emotions. What an inex- 
 pressibly potent influence beauty of all kinds exercises 
 over us. I do not know whether other people sufier as 
 I do in the presence of the bdautiful ..." 
 
 *' Suffer, do you say ? " - 
 
 " Yes ; a picture, a statue, a sonata, a beaut ful face, 
 a graceful figure— ah ! '^ ' ' . 
 
 t _. 
 
 ' Would that my tongue could utter , * 
 
 ■ ' ! The thoughts that arise in me,' ' • 
 
 or the ' half-embodyings of thoughts ' which spring up 
 not to be stamped down, — for to stamp them down I 
 often do try. Beauty seems so unreachable, seems to 
 beckon over such impassable barriers to such uninhabit- 
 
 • t 
 
18 
 
 1- 
 
 •* 
 
 able realms, that truly I feel inclined sometimes to 
 clench my teeth, shut my eyes and ears, and "say. No ; 
 I will not look or hear. There seems to be in all beauty 
 something not earthly, something not of time or space, 
 something not belonging to frail, sinful man. I get a 
 glimpse of some mysterious union between the beauti- 
 ful and the good." 
 
 " Yes ; I think I see what you mean. I remember 
 some sentences of Euskin's that show this very clearly. 
 * The beauty of Greece,' he says, * depended on the laws 
 of Lycurgus ; the beauty of Eome on those of Numa ; 
 our own on the laws of Christ.' I like that thought very 
 much. And he goes on : * On all the beautiful features 
 of men and women throughout the ages are written the 
 solemnities and majesty of the law they knew, with the 
 charity and meekness of their obedience.' " 
 
 " Beautiful, and beautifully expressed. Beauty is an 
 argument for the existence of a Law-giver, an Infinite 
 an Absolute, a * not ourselves,' — a God. And beauty 
 seems in some wonderful way to connect us with this 
 Infinite, this * not ourselves.' I feel myself groping, 
 searching,, questioning, when in the presence of the 
 beautiful. To bridge the chasm which separates me 
 from the archetype of the good and beautiful, to link 
 myself with it, to lose myself in it, to sacrifice myself 
 if need be for that unnameable, unthinkable Infinite of 
 which every little bit of beauty seems to be a part, a 
 shadow — something of this I feel. But — and it is strange 
 

 u 
 
 and unaccountable — at such times flash across my mind 
 two texts of Scripture : ' Depart from me ; for I am a 
 sinful man, Lord ;' and ' Lord, who shall abide in thy 
 tabernacle ? who shall dwell in thy holy hill ? ' But, 
 dear me, here am I monopolizing all the conversation. 
 I must apologize." . - 
 
 " Not a bit. I would rather listen. What you ought 
 to apologize for is for taking me out of my depth. I 
 cannot follow you into all these profundities. What I 
 am puzzling over is your using the word ' suffer.* The 
 only explanation I can think of for this peculiar feeling 
 of yours is in a sentence of Goethe's, to the effect that 
 man's discontent and agitation arise from the unrealiza- 
 bility of his conceptions." 
 
 " Your quotations always solve our difficulties for us. 
 They are worth all my disquisitions." 
 
 ** * Psychological analyses ' call them, — that is the 
 favourite modern phrase. But what a pace you have 
 been going at — like an express train. I am afraid you 
 are off the main track, though." 
 
 *' Let me see, the main track was the resemblances 
 between love and religion, was it not ? No, I think we 
 are still on it. The last junction we passed (to keep up 
 your simile) was, that in our deepest and best emotions 
 we are always speechless, overpowered." 
 
 " Yes ; you were alluding to St. Peter worshipping 
 Christ on the mount of transfiguration." ^ 
 
 ^ '* Ah ! yes. * Worshipping '-- is not ' worship * a word 
 
15 
 
 as fitting to be used of love as it is of religion ? Is it 
 not the essence of each ? Deprive religion of worship 
 and what have we ? — cant. Eliminate worship from love 
 and we have — flirtation." 
 
 '' Another resemblance, eh ? " 
 
 " Yes. Cant and flirtation — each is heartlesB, a 
 mere lip-service, a pretence. Each borrows the outward 
 appearances of that it simulates." 
 
 " You are rather hard on flirts, I think." 
 
 " I speak not of the harmless variety, the sort of 
 butterfly that flits from flower to flower injuring none. 
 To me women seem in their faculty of loving to be en- 
 dowed with a priceless treasure. A woman's love — who 
 shall compute its worth ? It is incalculable — here or 
 hereafter. But the out-and-out flirt sells this treasure 
 for a song " 
 
 " Literally sometimes ! " 
 , " You ask her for love like a nugget of pure gold, and 
 you find she has given it away in small change — and 
 probably has added alloy to any left over. You ask for 
 bread and she gives you a stone. You ask for the * wine 
 of life,' you find it diluted to insipidity, — or turned to 
 vinegar. You expect a luscious fruit, you find in the 
 core a worm. Is it not the same with your canting 
 religionist? His religion does not spring from his 
 heart . It is not the real thing." 
 , " You are right. I have noticed with such people 
 that just when religion would be of most value to them 
 
 
rs 
 
 . I 
 
 • 16 
 
 'i n 
 
 ; 1 
 
 [ 
 
 i! 
 
 — in sickness or at the approach of death — they do not 
 know where to turn for comfort." 
 
 " And BO with the real flirt ; when a heart is offered 
 her, a heart is asked of her, she has none to give. And 
 we may carry the analogy yet further. Substitute a 
 false for a true worship, give up the worship of inward 
 purity and put in its place that of outward form only, 
 and we have, instead of religion — idolatry, and instead 
 of love — harlotry. It makes of God an idol, of woman 
 a mistress. Let the outward form be beautiful certainly 
 — else were it incongruous ; but let us first make sure 
 of the inner life. Till the marble breathes Galatea is 
 not truly loved nor Pygmalion wholly satisfied. Wor- 
 ship is a thing of the heart. It is the heart that 
 hungers and thirsts after righteousness, and it is the 
 heart that hungers and thirsts after love. Religion 
 without true worship is an agamic progeny (you know 
 something of zoology?) of morality, incapable of 
 differentiating by any process of sexual selection. It 
 is barren, fruitless ; like the 'Oi-nji 'dTOfio<i Xtifiuiv^ the un- 
 mown mead of (Eta, consecrated to the gods and there- 
 fore untouched by the plough, sacrad but unproductive. 
 It degenerates into forms and ceremonies, genuflexions 
 and vestments. These do not produce the * fruits of the 
 Spirit.' Think you that chasubles and albs, censers and 
 candles, elevations of the Host, turnings to the east, 
 call forth true religion ? No ; no more than do 
 
 Q uips and Cranks and Wanton Wiles 
 
 U 
 
 f:r/:5"rsi- 
 
17 
 
 create love. * Symbols/ say you ? Gimoraoks, say I. 
 Those be the parents of cant as these be the parents of 
 flirtation. Worship, true worship, springs, like Athene, 
 from one parent only — wonder, reverence, awe — call it 
 what we will." 
 
 My companion had been growing visibly restless 
 under this attack on what I knew he had a slight 
 penchant for. He felt, I saw, that he ought to reply 
 boldly. He thought a moment and then gravely and 
 with dignity replied, "Will not * wonder, reverence, awe,' 
 be excited, be enhanced, by a splendid ritual, by a wor- 
 ship conducted in some grand and noble edifice, the 
 aisles of which from century to century have reverber- 
 ated with the sounds of prayer and praise ? " 
 
 " Tell me," I answered, imitating his attempt at lofty 
 phrase, " need the prayer be any the less fervent, need 
 the praise be any the less joyous, if they be up-raised, 
 not on tesselated marble floor, not beneath frescoed 
 dome, nor within resounding nave, but on the altar of 
 the open earth, under the sacred shrine of heaven, in 
 the dwelling place of the Most High himself, that 
 boundless abode enriched with the myriad matchless 
 beauties of his own creating? It is the tendency of 
 external adornment to become purely meretricious. I 
 tell you candidly I see very little difference between a 
 ritual and a lollipop — one tickles the emotional the 
 other the sensual palate. Perhaps both are after all 
 pnly different kipds of nerve excitation," 
 
" fiut the Old Testament worship — " he began. 
 
 " Listen to what was onoe said about the Old Testa- 
 ment worship,"— and I got a Bible and read :— ** ' To 
 what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto 
 me ? saith the Lord : I am full of the burnt o£ferings 
 of rams, and the fat of fed beasts ; and I delight not in 
 the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats. 
 When ye come to appear before me, who hath required 
 this at your hand to tread my courts ? Bring no more 
 vain oblations : incense is an abomination unto me ; 
 the new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies^ 
 I cannot away with : it is iniquity, even the solemn 
 meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts 
 my soul hateth : they are a trouble unto me ; I am 
 weary to bear them.' And again : — ' I hate, I despise 
 your feast days, and I will not dwell in your solemn 
 assemblies. Though ye offer me burnt offerings and your 
 meat offerings I will not accept them ; neither will I 
 regard the peace' offerings of your fat beasts. Take 
 then away from me the noise o£ thy songs ; for I will 
 not hear the melody of thy viols.' " 
 ^ " We have wandered from the subject, have we not ? '* 
 said my companion rather glumly. 
 ^ ** Not so very far. Just as it is not the pageantry of 
 the church service that constitutes religion, so it is not 
 the bedizening of the woman that evokes love. If it 
 were otherwise, we could bow the knee before Barnum's 
 circus, and go into amorous ecstasieB over a lay figure." 
 
 
19 
 
 " Well, I do not want to enter into a controversy on 
 the relative advantages and disadvantages of some sys- 
 tem and order in oar method of worshipping. Besides 
 it is getting o;n towards eleven o'clock, and I must be 
 
 »t 
 
 gomg 
 
 " No, no, my dear fellow ; we shall not end our chat 
 in this abrupt way. I am going to stir the fire, refill 
 your cup, and promise faithfully to abstain from attack- 
 ing any description of church service whatsoever if you 
 will make yourself comfortable again and — talk." 
 
 *' I will listen if you like," said he, recovering his 
 good humour, " provided you keep to the main track — 
 love and religion." 
 
 " Very well. Let me see. What is the essence of 
 love ? la it not one long incessant attempt on the part 
 of the ME to unite itself with the thee ? The lover 
 strives ever to * take up the whole of love and utter it.' 
 To externalise, give outward form to, his inmost thought, 
 to make his thoughts, his actions, himself, one with the 
 object of his love — this is what the lover ever attempts 
 to do ; and not until this is done are lover and loved 
 truly united — look into ea,ch other's eyes, see into each 
 other's hearts, know and are known forever more. And 
 yet never upon this sin-bounded earth is this wholly 
 accomplished. Here upon this earth we see only reflec- 
 tions of one another. The true ME you know not ; the 
 real thee I know not. That lovely face upon which 
 ■ we could look forever and a day and not tire, those de- 
 
licious lips upon which we could ' kins away our soul,* 
 those deep deep eyes into which we could gaze for all 
 eternity — these are not the thee that lives and loves. 
 A sad thought this. Always between the me and thee, 
 be they father and son, or mother and daughter, or 
 brother and sister, or lover and loved — always between 
 the ME and the thee is ' a great gulf fixed.' " 
 
 " Yes, truly," said my guest. " Mr. Matthew Arnold — 
 to quote him once more — has put that thought into 
 musical words : — 
 
 * Yes, in this sea of life enisl'd, 
 With echoing straits between us thrown, 
 Dotting the shoreless, watery wild, 
 We mortal millions live aloneJ " 
 
 " We might put the same idea in another way," I con- 
 tinued. " Each mind is enveloped in an atmosphere of 
 its own, just as are the planets ; and not one ray can 
 pass from one to another without distortion through 
 this refracting medium. We call it prejudice, envy, 
 hate, jealousy, selfishness — in a word sinfulness. This 
 atmosphere, too, is never still : ever expanding or con- 
 tracting ; now pressing heavily in upon itself, then again 
 rarified to extreme tenuity. Through it can never any 
 external object appear as it really is. Always either a 
 fictitious halo surrounds it or an unnatural gloom. Love 
 is the attempt to soar above this sin-formed atmosphere. 
 It cannot be done : the skyey ether is too rarified for 
 mortal breath, the sunny ' beatific vision ' too dazzling 
 
21 
 
 for human flight. A perfect love is only possible between 
 two perfectly sinless beings. Do you not think so ? " 
 
 " Yes, I think you are right. It is the hero, not the 
 villain, of the plot who is usuallv made to love the 
 most. Compare, too, Cordelia's love with that of 
 Regan or Goneril ; or ' pretty Em'ly's ' in Dickens's 
 * David Gopperfield ' with that of Agnes. Ceeterie paribus, 
 I should be inclined to think that our love is in propor- 
 tion to c . r goodness." 
 
 ** It is our imperfection that is the cause of our lone- 
 liness. No thing in this world completely breaks down 
 the sin-built wall which separates one self from another 
 self. We think hand-shakings, protestations, vows, will 
 do it ; we try loving looks, embraces, kisses — all to no 
 purpose. These are but mortal methods of breaking 
 through our prison walls ; blind, dark, aimless under- 
 minings of our dungeon cells. We live truly in solitary 
 confinement. Each here is immured. Now and again, 
 twice or thrice in a life-time, we loosen a brick, open a 
 crevice, stretch out an arm, get a glimpse, perhaps a 
 touchy of the occupant of a neighbouring cell ; over- 
 whelmed with a strange, incomprehensible, incommuni- 
 cable feeling at the momentary contact with a real living 
 loving self, hearts expand and tears flow ; soon comes 
 the inexorable gaoler, the crevice is filled, and we shrink 
 back crouching into solitary gloom. Ah ! something 
 there is above, beyond, outside fleshly prison walls. 
 Has not the light of eternal day peeped through the 
 
 \ 
 
 
22 
 
 grating ? Do we not feel, do we not know, that we are 
 ' heaven-encircled/ that somewhere there is somewhat 
 whereof ' eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither has 
 entered into the heart of man ' ? And what is all wor- 
 ship, what is all religion, but the attempt to fly to this 
 unknown realm, the attempt of the mortal, finite, sin- 
 ful MB to unite itself with the Immortal, the Infinite, the 
 Sinless thbb ? It is in love that we find a tiny mirror 
 
 •e. 
 
 of true religion. By love man comes nearest God, ap- 
 proaches the confines of the Good, peers, if but dimly, 
 into the realms of the Highest. It is an emanation 
 from the divine mind, a spark from that * far-beaming 
 blaze of majesty,* a miniature portrait of all religion — 
 painted in earthly pigments perhaps, yet resplendent 
 with heavenly hues." 
 
 " You are surpassing yourself to-night." 
 
 '* Then it is due to the stimulating effect of your 
 
 companionship. Hush ! listen ; what is that ? " 
 
 *• The Christmas chimes. It must be twelve o'clock. 
 Really I must say Good-night." 
 
 " I am painfully conscious of having talked you, if 
 not to death, or to sleep, at least to bed ! But you 
 wanted hints for your sermon, you know. The next time 
 you come, remember, you must be the talker, I the lis- 
 tener." 
 
 " Not if I consult my own happiness — or yours." 
 " Epigrammatic to the last, I see. Do you mean that 
 
• 23 
 
 as a hit at my garrulity or as a modest depreciation of 
 your own conversational powers ? " 
 
 " Ridentem dicer e verum quid vetat ? " 
 
 " And pedantic to the last. Ha ! ha ! that was tit 
 for tat. Well, a merry Christmas and a happy — ser- 
 mon ! " 
 
 "Thankyou. Good-night." ' - 
 
 
 .!"• 
 
 FINIS.