m 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 WILLIAM OILMAN THOMPSON. 
 

BY THE SAME AUTHOR, 
 
 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 
 
 I volume. i6mo. $ i.oo. 
 
 A PEESENT HEAVEN. 
 
 ADDRESSED TO A FRIEND. 
 I volume. i6mo. $1.00. 
 
 In Press. 
 
 POEMS, 
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 TICKNOR AND FIELDS, Publishers. 
 
Two FRIENDS 
 
 BY 
 
 THE AUTHOR OF "THE PATIENCE OF HOPE 
 AND "A PRESENT HEAVEN" 
 
 ET TENEO ET TENEOR 
 
 H CM- a RrtCTl we W 
 
 BOSTON 
 T I C K N O R AND FIELDS 
 
 1863 
 
AUTHOR S EDITION. 
 
 UNIVERSITY PRESS: 
 
 WELCH, BIGELOW, AND COMPANY, 
 
 CAMBRIDGE. 
 
DEDICATED 
 
 THOMAS CONSTABLE 
 
 BY HIS ATTACHED FRIEND 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
 October -jth, 1862. 
 
" Meanwhile the gold King was asking the man, How 
 many secrets knowest thou? Three, replied the man. 
 Which is the most important ? said the silver King. 
 The open one? replied the other. Wilt thou open it to 
 us also ? said the brass King. When I know the fourth I 
 replied the man." 
 
 " Have we not all one Father? hath not one God created 
 us? And did not he make one?" MALACHI ii. 10, 15. 
 
Two FRIENDS. 
 
 WAS born beneath quiet hills, among 
 green pastures, beside still waters. 
 My first companion was a little 
 stream, my earliest counsellor an ancient book. 
 Along the edge of the stream ran a footpath, 
 so narrow, so rarely trodden, that the ferns 
 and wild-flowers would sometimes overgrow 
 and even hide it; and then the brook itself 
 became my guide : one that I followed con 
 fidingly, because I knew and loved it under 
 every change. It would sometimes so contract 
 the channel of its hurrying waters as to leave 
 a broad pebbly shingle, warm in the blaze of 
 noonday, and friendly to my childish feet. 
 The trees which fringed it on either side would 
 now interlace their boughs so closely that I 
 
2 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 could scarcely push my way between them, 
 and they would now recede, opening out some 
 little bay of verdure, some green savanna 
 which had been cleared of its thick nut-bushes 
 and clinging brambles, and from whence, through 
 the trees that still held it in their arms, one 
 might gain a sunny reach of corn-field, a 
 glimpse of some distant village, and see, be 
 yond all, a low range of hills that seemed to 
 bound the prospect, and yet to hide, to promise 
 nothing. I dwelt long beside the little stream ; 
 so long, that the seasons above me changed 
 greatly, the dark thunder-cloud broke above 
 me, the drenching shower fell, the frost set in 
 that is too intense to be searching, when Na 
 ture s heart dies within her, and makes no sign. 
 By the banks of that little brook, Trouble over 
 took me. Pain at whose breath the flowers 
 paled, the green leaves shrunk up, and fell upon 
 the ground fire-smitten led me long time by 
 the hand. Even Anguish met me; but never 
 Discord. My way might be steep and unallur- 
 ing ; but it was always plain, " straight as a line 
 could make it," and tending to a foreseen, though 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 3 
 
 distant end. My heart was troubled, but unre 
 sisting ; so methought He bringeth thorn to the 
 haven where they would be. The birds sang to 
 me at morn and even ; at morn and even I read 
 within my book. How was it that the brook 
 suddenly became wider; that it swelled into a 
 mighty river; that the trees upon its banks 
 grew thick and tangled, and spread into broad, 
 untracked woods ; while far behind, in place of 
 the low hills, that were but the plain raised to a 
 higher level, rose mountains with cloven sum 
 mits, down which the clouds stole. They beck 
 oned me to them with a lure, a promise : it was 
 not, I knew, for nothing that they lifted them 
 selves thus proudly into heaven ; that they sank 
 their firm foundations so deep within the earth, 
 placing themselves among the things that cannot 
 be shaken. I had heard, of old, this saying, 
 " The mountains shall bring peace." O that I 
 could reach unto them ! that I might gaze from 
 their glorious peaks ! that I might delve within 
 their unsunned mines ! and I struck within the 
 forest by many paths, but without finding that 
 which led to the mountains. 
 
4 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 One day, after a lorig breathing pause, I again 
 pressed onward. Suddenly parting the boughs, 
 I came upon the ruins of an ancient temple ; its 
 white shafts rose against the dark forest back 
 ground, and still, in their broken outline, pre 
 served the trace of the building s original plan, 
 as a lovely, once-heard tune will return upon 
 the ear in fragments, and hint out its half-for 
 gotten melody. Bright trailing weeds crept up 
 these broken pillars. Here and there a statue 
 still stood erect, still breathed with a divine 
 impassive life ; and some, fallen and mutilated, 
 lay among the warm grass ; but these, too, 
 lived; these too, methought, triumphed, for 
 their smile still made silence eloquent. Who 
 were these forms ? the sons of strength and 
 beauty, of light and freedom, the children of 
 some golden, untrammelled age, unfettered, god 
 like ? If sleeping they could thus stir, thus en 
 chain the soul, what had they been in their 
 waking ? What was this pride upon their lips, 
 this calm, this sweetness of their brows ? What 
 had my life been, how poor, how restricted, that 
 even the dream of such forms had never visited 
 
J 
 
 TWO FRIENDS. 5 
 
 it ; that the shadow of their wings had never 
 fallen across my sleep, the bright curve^ of their 
 half-parted lips never greeted my waking ? A 
 cold gnawing fell upon my heart ; a scorn, that 
 was almost hate of things familiar and accus 
 tomed, and of the life that had been passed 
 among them. Had this indeed been life? 
 
 While I asked myself this question, music 
 awoke around me. I listened : it was high 
 noon : the birds were silent in the forest ; the 
 shattered columns, the fair-gleaming statues, 
 stood up clear against the broad depth of the 
 summer heaven. Not a breeze rustled, not a 
 leaf shook. Yet around, above, within me, that 
 music gathered ; it grew stronger in the silence ; 
 it bore me up as on mighty wings ; it carried 
 me I knew not whither; in a moment of time 
 it had taught me the secret of a hundred hearts, 
 tears and raptures, despairs and exultations, 
 too mighty for one bounded spirit. It gathered 
 all things within it, as a mother might draw her 
 erring, repentant children unto her bosom ; 
 making room for deep confessions, for recon 
 ciliations that were still more ample. Here, 
 
6 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 too, were recognitions of wide relationships, 
 affinities disowned and slighted, that only could 
 meet and kiss each other for a moment while 
 the pitying music sobbed above them. And 
 still the strain awoke and died ; still it returned 
 upon itself, as friends, who, meeting after long 
 parting, must again part, come back again with 
 some word that can never be fully spoken. It 
 went forth, it returned, then with a firm, soft 
 clasp, as of a little child s hand, it clasped the 
 spirit closely ; it held Earth compressed in a lit 
 tle space ; it brought down Heaven to a point 
 of ecstasy. 
 
 I fled from it; I struggled to regain the 
 river ; I forced my way back through the thick 
 odor-breathing trees, through the wreaths, the 
 ropes of flowers that hung from them, and 
 sought to stay me in their twining arms. Were 
 these, too, conspirators, the purple and scarlet 
 blossoms, that breathed out their heavy hearts, 
 full of anguish and of love, so that I seemed, as 
 I tore my way through them, to drink in their 
 fiery and fragrant souls. Are there, I asked, 
 martyrs among the flowers ? spirits burning, yet 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 7 
 
 unconsumed, that light up their own lives ! 
 The strife, the revel of the music, had passed 
 within them ; they glowed, they paled with its 
 triumph and its decline. Like moons, they 
 filled themselves with light at its fountain ; 
 their hues, their odors, were in secret, deep 
 alliance with its choral mystery. Here, too, 
 were subtle interfusions; sudden, yet long-an 
 ticipated climaxes of splendor ; discords that 
 prophesied the harmony they seemed to contra 
 dict ; laws broken, to be fulfilled in a deeper 
 spirit. At length I regained the river, but not 
 at the point where I had left it ; at a little dis 
 tance it lay before me like a glittering bow, 
 flung down amid the woods that swept back 
 from it in broad, smooth masses. A little lower 
 down, I saw that the words were broken by 
 huge masses of rock, now reddening in the 
 westering sun, and I heard a hoarse murmur, 
 as of water, that chafed within a narrowed 
 channel ; but at the spot where I now stood, 
 all was peace and loveliness. The river looked 
 like a lake, so broad was it, so serene, so un 
 ruffled ; it spread its calm bosom to the evening 
 
8 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 sky; the clouds saw themselves within it like 
 islets of floating flame. It curved gently to my 
 feet, as if it would woo me also to linger. 
 Peace, peace, it whispered; wilt thou not also 
 rest? the evening bringeth all things home. 
 
 But even as it were half consciously I went 
 still onward, and drew gradually more near the 
 rocks. As I approached still nearer, a strong 
 slanting beam from the red sunset fell across 
 them for a moment, and I saw that they were 
 scored all over with Runic characters. These, 
 I thought, contain the history of some vanished 
 people, some race passed by, like a wave or a 
 cloud, for ever ; but, lo ! as I set my heart to 
 interpret these mystic traceries, I found that 
 they were but a long, unbroken family tradi 
 tion, the story of the Many and the One, the 
 life of Man. These rocks drew me to them 
 with an iron magnetism; I lived, I slept be 
 neath them ; morn and even I pored upon their 
 records till all their subtle symbolism grew fa 
 miliar to me, as to a child the pictures upon the 
 walls of his nursery. I stood beside the cradles 
 of giant nations ; I listened to the songs that 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 9 
 
 were sung, the legends that were told to races 
 in their mighty youth. They changed often, 
 yet they were still sweet, still intelligible ; for 
 they were the same songs sung by the same cra- 
 dle^ the same stories told beside the same hearth. 
 Through them all ran one device, as of two 
 arrows so closely bound together that they 
 seemed one. The arrow was borne onwards 
 by the song, the song sharpened by the arrow ; 
 each pointed to an age far back in dim perspec 
 tive, when gods walked on earth, and earth was 
 worthy of their footprints ; each pointed, though 
 darkly, to a return of this period ; a return only 
 to be achieved through voluntary, self-chosen 
 pain, and the suffering of that which is divine. 
 Then these songs of sadness and of glory 
 ceased, or came across the ear fitfully, as music 
 might come across a stormy and bitter wave. I 
 saw generations of men crowd and press upon 
 each other ; as the worm toils beneath the 
 Southern Ocean, so they toiled in countless 
 myriads from birth even unto death, building 
 up their lives within the fabric of some giant 
 despotism. Behold, what manner of stones, and 
 
10 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 what buildings are these, and within them a 
 mummy or an ape in effigy ! Then, as a mighty 
 inundation breaks down the thick-woven jungle, 
 snaps its tall reeds, lays bare the haunts of the 
 wild forest-dwellers, and hurries down to the 
 sea with the lion and the lamb, the snake and 
 the antelope, creatures deadly and innocent, 
 floating on its swift current, hurled to one com 
 mon ruin, so came the fresh tide of men : by 
 land and by sea they came ; swift, compact, 
 irresistible, bearing down all before them. I 
 heard their wild chants, their shouts of pride 
 and triumph : 
 
 " We have sung them the Mass of Lances, 
 It lasted from morning till sunset. 
 
 The might of the tempest is the strength of the rower, 
 It does but carry us where we wish to go." 
 
 Yet slowly, from amidst these wrecks, rose up 
 the old foundations, the strongholds of greed 
 and cruelty ; their stones were welded together 
 firmly as at the first, and cemented as at the 
 first with the sweat of man s brow, the life- 
 blood of his heart. I saw the people strong 
 and patient ; an ass that stooped down between 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 11 
 
 two burdens, accustomed to the yoke from 
 youth, yet sometimes striking out fiercely with 
 its iron-shod hoofs. I saw the human heart 
 made the football of tyrants, the plaything of 
 cruel children, who knew not the excellence of 
 that with which they sported. I saw it de 
 frauded both of its highest and its humblest 
 hopes ; cheated alike out of its birthright and 
 its pottage ; sold in the market-place and in the 
 temple ; its dearest interests set upon a cast of 
 dice, or bartered for the cold smile of a wanton. 
 Yea, more than this, I saw a Terror that had 
 crept within the souls of men. A divine voice 
 had once spoken : " Fear ye not them which kill 
 the body, and after that have no more that they 
 can do." Shall man be free within his own 
 spirit ; free to love and pray, to call upon God 
 in his own language ? Here also shall man be a 
 slave ; when the hunters are upon him, let him 
 not think to cross this boundary: it exists no 
 longer. Two dark tyrannies, stretching till they 
 meet, have taken in man s whole being. If he 
 would mount up into heaven, it is there ; if he 
 would lie down in the grave, it is there also : 
 
12 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 chains, darkness, the gripe of the unrelenting 
 bloodhound. I saw a foreground of desolation, 
 a background of abject terror, lit up with ghastly 
 fires. I saw Humanity stand within the world s 
 judgment-hall, gagged, insulted, with its hands 
 bound behind it, the scoff of Soldier and of 
 Priest, yet at that moment I heard the voice of 
 one that spake, low but distinct, from amid the 
 torture, "Uppure si muove" and I saw that the 
 soul grew. Bound even with a band of brass 
 and iron,* it lay yet in the tender grass of the 
 field, it was yet wet with the dew of heaven. 
 From time to time some heart, within which the 
 fire had long smouldered, would break and go 
 out, it seemed in ashes and darkness, yet those 
 fiery sparks had made the darkness visible ; no 
 longer was it such as could be felt. Then light 
 arose, but with it came confusion ; the heart 
 was no longer trampled on, but it erred, it was 
 the robber of its own wealth. 
 
 Then I remembered the saying of the wise 
 man, " That which is wanting cannot be num 
 bered." I thought I will read no longer ; these 
 
 * Daniel iv. 23. 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 13 
 
 records are too sorrowful ; there is surely a less 
 perplexing lore. I will seek out the bipad, lov 
 ing secret of the universe ; I will decipher its 
 clear story, not blurred and defeatured like this 
 one, but as it lies before me in the original hand 
 writing of God. But in this attempt also was 
 anguish. When I flung myself on Nature s 
 broad bosom for comfort, its coldness stung me 
 like a thorn ; there was no warm, tender heart 
 within it to respond to my own that beat so 
 wildly ; its pulsation was that of a vast ma 
 chinery, life and death that sprung out of each 
 other, all things bound in order, in fatality ; a 
 Universe that ground upon its way, sowing the 
 Expanse with worlds as its fiery sparks flew off. 
 Here I saw splendor and desolation, as of a 
 magnificent household, lavish in its expenditure, 
 because its resources are illimitable. What 
 meant these monkeys that grinned and chat 
 tered ; these snakes with their cold crowns and 
 glittering eyes ; the rustle of the fierce and 
 lovely leopard ? Also the flowers put on a look 
 of mockery; their aspects revealed strange af 
 finities, awoke suggestions of doubtful import. 
 
14 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 Were these house-children also wicked and 
 guileful? Was there treachery in this broad, 
 universal calm of Nature, in this impassive smile 
 that, sphinx-like, told nothing and hid so much ? 
 As I pursued her she still fled before me, still 
 flung me from time to time, half derisively, 
 some intricate toy, a golden apple that did but 
 stay me from the final goal. Then, as if in 
 sleep or death, she would stretch herself before 
 me in a feigned immobility, wrapped in a thou 
 sand folds ; and when I pierced beneath one, 
 beneath a hundred, there was still another 
 and another. Were these swaddling-clothes 
 or grave-bands ? I knew not. Here I found 
 design, I knew not to what end ; power ; here 
 also bondage more cruel, I thought, than that 
 of men over their fellows, for the heart that has 
 fallen under it has no escape; it is coextensive 
 with the universe itself. I sat down, a stone 
 among the stones ; let the seasons roll, I would 
 grow gray like them, and motionless. My eye 
 wandered listlessly over the gorgeous landscape, 
 the little islets of white sculptured lilies, the 
 purple woods, the far-distant mountains. Here 
 
TWO FMIENDS. 15 
 
 was a magnificent panorama of death, a shining 
 veil drawn over a face that writhed in anguish. 
 
 Then, upon a rock above me, my eye lit upon 
 a familiar sign, a cross, and beneath it these 
 letters, 
 
 "Vfs fujjere a 23eo, fujje aft JBeum," 
 
 and while I gazed, a pale majestic face looked 
 upon me rebukingly ; a form passed by, with 
 kingly but uneven step, as of one wounded 
 even to death. He spoke not, but I read with 
 in his eye this saying, "Faithful are the wounds 
 of a friend." Then I sighed within my spirit 
 so deeply that an icy band burst; resistance, 
 rebellion, were gone. The yoke to which God 
 himself had stooped could not be too grievous 
 to be borne. I saw this solemn Trinity, Nature 
 and Man and God, pierced with the self-same 
 wound. I knew that they would suffer, I knew 
 that they would be restored together. Where 
 was now the cold sequence, the crushing, uii- 
 pitying regularity? Let the worlds roll to 
 gether, let the heavens and the earth be 
 changed, Jesus, thou, too, art part of God s 
 
16 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 mighty plan! I sat down beneath this rock, 
 not elate, but satisfied; its broad shadow fell 
 over me ; from beneath it I gazed upon the 
 dark woods, the fair river. Once again I 
 looked up to that Sign of love and triumph ; 
 then I observed that it was green; some soft 
 bright lichen had sown itself within the deep- 
 cut symbol, and a prophetic word fell upon my 
 spirit : " The dry tree shall flourish " ; the cross 
 also shall become green, shall be vivified with 
 the heart it vivifies. 
 
 I arose and went forward, so sunk in thought 
 that I did not see that as I went on the river 
 shrunk gradually till it was scarcely broader 
 than it had been in olden days ; it grew nar 
 rower and narrower ; rocks shut it in on either 
 side, sometimes dipping clear into the water so 
 as to leave no foot-way, sometimes sending out 
 a wide stony strand which seemed to press the 
 contracted current out of life ; vexed and tor 
 tured, it revenged itself by wearing caverns 
 beneath the stone where it whirled in still black 
 pools unseen for ever. The trees, the flowers, 
 were left far behind ; the river had grown som- 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 17 
 
 bre and taciturn. O, how I missed its early 
 cheerfulness, the nut and alder busies that 
 overhung its banks ; the scarlet berry of the 
 mountain-ash in autumn, the white stain of the 
 wild cherry-tree in spring ; the leap of the trout, 
 the glimmer of the dragon-fly, the brown wet 
 shine of the smooth stones beneath the stream. 
 I thought of the unequal stepping-stones, invit 
 ing to a perilous joy ; .the frequent bridge, 
 rustic and tremulous, upon which it was so 
 
 sweet to linger, to cross and recross without 
 & > 
 
 any stringent motive. Then the little brook had 
 been companionable, garrulous ; it chode, it 
 murmured incessantly, yet said nothing ; it did 
 not need to speak articulately, for it was in 
 accordance with all that surrounded it. What 
 need for speech or language where a Voice was 
 ever heard ? 
 
 Then, too, I had had many companions, play 
 mates, and work-fellows, whose looks, whose 
 voices had been dearer to me than aught by the 
 brook or in the forest. Sometimes we had read 
 together in the book ; sometimes we had knelt 
 and prayed together in the clear evening light. 
 
18 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 We loved each other ; we shared together many 
 innocent secrets, many joys and tears, many 
 thoughts that we passed, as in a torch-race, 
 from hand to hand ; the light that dawned upon 
 one heart would grow to-day in another. I 
 thought it would be thus for ever. Had these 
 deserted me, or had I left them, ever following 
 the course of this mysterious river? Their 
 voices sounded clear and cold, like distant bells, 
 tender only through some long-past association. 
 Even those of my beloved Dead were nearer ; 
 but these, too, had grown thin as the music of 
 the wind-swept pine-tree. I knew that I was 
 now alone. I could not reunite these ties ; I 
 could not bring back the Past, which had gone 
 for ever. It was not night within my soul, for 
 neither moon nor stars appeared ; no soft lure 
 held me back ; no bright, unsteadfast hope 
 urged me forward. Neither found I the black 
 ness of darkness within my spirit, but a strange 
 freedom, joined with a loneliness that was 
 almost fearful. Around, within me was calm, 
 and silence that spread and stretched like the 
 desert, ever widening, to widen ever; a grave 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 19 
 
 that was shut in by no bars. " Free," I said, 
 44 among the dead." Like one continually as 
 cending, I had left the pale saxifrage, the last 
 flower that fringes the verge of ice, behind me. 
 The air grew keen and difficult. Every step 
 revealed some fresh undreamt-of glory, some 
 rose-flushed summit, some meeting-ground of 
 earth and heaven ; but it was chill ; I drew my 
 breath with pain ; my heart seemed to have 
 ceased beating, but when I laid my hand upon 
 it, I found that it burned with self-fed, self- 
 centred fire. 
 
 Then, suddenly, there fell upon my soul a 
 sense of greatness, telling me to be no more 
 sorrowful, for that I was not really alone, but 
 part of a Whole in which I should find all 
 things, those that I had left behind, those 
 that I had failed to reach to, yea, my own life 
 also. If it be indeed so, I thought, then I re 
 fuse not to die ; to lose that which is in part, in 
 the coming in of that which is perfect. But 
 how may my spirit attain unto this baptism? 
 Oftentimes I seemed near some mighty secret, 
 to lie on the very threshold of Truth ; but to be 
 
20 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 chained there : a spell was upon that threshold 
 that never allowed me to overpass it. On the 
 flower, the shell, the wing of the butterfly, 
 were traces of a writing whose counterpart was 
 in my own soul ; as when a page has been torn 
 down the midst, I found I had only to join these 
 characters to make their meaning plain. The 
 winds, the leaves, my own voice and that of the 
 birds, were harmony ; I strove to master it ; to 
 pierce to its deep fundamental structure. Then 
 the rocks began to give forth music at sunrise 
 and sunset ; not like that alluring, bewildering 
 music of the forest and ruined temple, but sol 
 emn and chastened. That sweetness dissolved 
 the spirit ; this built it up within its mighty 
 chord. Each scattered drop, each bright spark 
 of melody that had fallen here and there, mak 
 ing some stray blade or blossom lovely, shone 
 there, gathered up into a lofty arch of sound 
 that might grow, I thought, to one of Triumph, 
 spanning earth and heaven. It was ever pure, 
 ever prophetic ; yet now, as I listened, it seemed 
 to me that there were but two who spake within 
 it, exchanging, as in some old, simple song, the 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 21 
 
 J and Thou of an unalterable constancy ; then 
 it would grow to the voice of a great- multitude, 
 to the sound of many waters. I heard harpers 
 harping on their harps, compassing me about 
 with songs of deliverance ; and yet the music 
 did not change. 
 
 For hours I would lie listening to the birds ; 
 for hours I would toil among the flowers and 
 fossils I had collected ; once more I read at 
 morn and even in my book. Then as I lay at 
 midday, a light above the brightness of the 
 noon would sometimes be cast around me, and 
 a well-known Form would pass me, as one in 
 haste. His step was still regal; his garments 
 red, from the battle or the vintage, I knew not 
 which ; but his eye was calm as that of one who 
 follows out some vast, long-deliberated plan. 
 He did not stay to speak with me, but in pass 
 ing me his step was slower, and once he turned 
 and looked upon me for a moment. I under 
 stood that silent appeal, yet I did not respond 
 to it, did not follow where it led. I had ex 
 perienced, endured so much ; weariness of all 
 things, even of good, had overtaken me ; a 
 
22 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 spring in my life that kept all moving had run 
 low, had stopped altogether. Then understood 
 I why a certain Father had said, " I have writ 
 ten unto you, young men, because ye are strong" 
 Even now, far above the valley, I heard the 
 clear songs of the vintagers, the shouts of those 
 who carried home the corn ; the fields stood 
 white, all things told me that the Harvest of 
 the earth had come, and its Lord would imme 
 diately thrust in the sickle. How gladly would 
 I once have joined these bands, have shared in 
 their labors, their rewards ! I thought of the 
 plans I had formed with my old play-fellows, 
 how we would clear jungles, would found villa 
 ges ; now I had ceased to plan, perhaps because 
 I had ceased to hope. How, too, could I leave 
 this world so lately found, so hardly won ; too 
 late I loved thee, thou fair, ever-changing realm 
 of Nature ! This high rock-girdled paradise of 
 thought and beauty, this citadel of refuge, this 
 green enclosure, is it not a little one? passed 
 by by the busy foot, overlooked by the curious 
 eye, fair only to the heart that loves it, yet hard 
 to leave. I know thee, Jesus, that thou art an 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 23 
 
 hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, 
 gathering where thou hast not strawed. I 
 remembered one who had gone away sorrowful 
 because he had a small possession, and I felt that 
 the full hand has the loosest grasp. The with 
 ered tendrils cling closer than the green ; when 
 the rose was yet heavy with dew, and fragrance,, 
 it had not been so hard to pluck it off! 
 
 And that benignant form still passed upon his 
 way, still looked upon me in sadness, but with 
 out austerity. Jesus, thou knowest the heart, 
 but thou art greater than our heart, and know 
 est all things ! The Poor committeth himself 
 unto Thee. 
 
 One day I had turned aside to track the 
 course of a little brawling stream that fell into 
 the river ; its waters were of a clear golden 
 brown, like that of the dying fern ; it had come 
 across many a lonely moor from the mountains, 
 and might, I thought, take me with it to its 
 birthplace. First, however, it led me into a 
 still gray valley, strewn with pieces of rock, 
 that looked at a little distance like a flock of 
 sheep feeding, and added to the peaceful charm 
 
24 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 of the scene. All breathed security. I wan 
 dered to and fro without much thought; I 
 threw myself upon the warm grass, resting my 
 head upon one of the gray stones. It was Au 
 tumn, one of those days that are sweeter, kinder 
 than the Spring. The wind hlew strong, yet 
 softly ; it wakened I know not what echoes 
 among the rocks, the mountains, yet within the 
 valley all was still ; the birches that hung from 
 its rocky sides scarcely shook ; only from time 
 to time a thrill as of pleasure passed through 
 them. Often have I listened to the wind with 
 rapture, but never did it bear to me so full, so 
 rich a message, one of unspeakable tranquillity, 
 and hope so calm, that I knew not whether this 
 voice came to me out of the past or out of the 
 future ; all that was sweet, was desired in either, 
 seemed to mingle in it. Can ecstasy, I thought, 
 wear such sober colors ? A Hand seemed to 
 guide that rushing wind ; it fell upon my cheek, 
 my forehead, like a blessing warm from some 
 heart of more than human tenderness. Then 
 my own heart stirred and fluttered beneath that 
 brooding warmth, and from its very depths two 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 25 
 
 words went up, u Our Father," and I knew 
 that I had found the long-sought key, the pure, 
 primeval language. This then was what I 
 sought, what I needed, a Father who was a 
 Spirit, the Father of Spirits and of men. Had 
 he indeed come forth to meet me f Then I knew 
 that I was not far from home. 
 
 " I shall rest," I said, " beneath His wings, 
 and I shall be safe among His feathers." A 
 calm of feeling fell upon me, such as is wont to 
 precede the great crises of life, when the soul, 
 feeling itself upon the very threshold of a new 
 existence, is held back there by the old one, 
 which, before it is left behind forever, has 
 many things to say, and concentrates its spirit 
 within a few solemn moments : 
 
 " Last night I saw the new moon, 
 With the old moon in her arms." 
 
 There are some days, even moments, in our 
 lives, upon which the burden of the whole seems 
 laid, which, as in a parable, condense within 
 them the mystery, the contradiction of our ex 
 istence, and perhaps hint at its solution. After 
 such times, life grows clearer before and after. 
 2 
 
26 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 These seasons are set apart from the rest by a 
 solemn consecration. We feel that we are 
 anointed " above our fellows " ; it may be for 
 the joy of the bridal, for the wrestler s strug 
 gle, or against the day of our burial, we know 
 not which. 
 
 The mountain stream had become a friend to 
 me ; its voice reminded me of that of my earli 
 est companion, the brook, in the days when we 
 had been young together. The noon drew to 
 its decline, filling the glen with a calm golden 
 light, that, meeting with its own lustre on the 
 fading leaves, kindled them into a sudden radi 
 ance. I followed the stream slowly, when, as it 
 were, in a moment, it ended, and the valley 
 with it. It was as if the craggy, woody ledge 
 of a mountain had slipt forward, and brought 
 the scene to a close so abruptly that one might 
 think there was nothing beyond, and that the 
 world itself ended here. Yet the stream gave 
 this thought a joyous contradiction as it fell 
 from height to height, flashing lightly between 
 the bushes that half hid it, and gathering itself 
 at the foot of the rock into a deep unsunned 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 27 
 
 pool. Looking closer, too, I saw a steep path, 
 by which an agile climber might wend* his way 
 up the rock without much difficulty ; but I at 
 that moment felt in no mood for adventure. I 
 stood long, half listening to the falling water, 
 half gazing at the singular, enchanting scene ; 
 when far above me I heard a clear, low whistle, 
 and, looking up, saw the brown, handsome face 
 of one who bent over the crag, and nodded to 
 me, as if in recognition. 
 
 I smiled in return, for the loneliness drew us 
 together like a band. 
 
 He called to me, " Shall I show you the up 
 ward path ? " I shook my head ; so, half leaping 
 from point to point, half swinging himself from 
 bough to bough, using both feet and hands 
 freely, he let himself down the rock, and soon 
 reached the place where I was standing. Then 
 I saw that his dress was plain, even to homeli 
 ness, yet his air was free and noble ; he set his 
 foot firmly on the ground, as one who found his 
 place wherever he happened to stand. In all 
 his movements there was a decision, a rapidity, 
 that made, as it were, a wind that carried him 
 
28 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 forward; a light, pleasant rustling, a joyous 
 excitement, as of the chase or the voyage, 
 seemed to follow where he went. But did I 
 see this at first ! did I see anything in thee at 
 first and at last but thy kindness, Philip ! From 
 the first unto the last thou wert unto me a 
 friend ; one that showed himself friendly. 
 
 He saw that I looked wearied, and offered 
 me a cordial from a flask that he carried with 
 him. As he poured it out, the wind blew aside 
 his vest, and I saw that he carried within his 
 bosom the book that had so long been my com 
 panion. We sat together on the trunk of a 
 fallen tree ; we talked till the shadows began to 
 gather round us thickly. The dying light, the 
 faint shiver of the leaves above us, the mystery, 
 the solitude that enclosed us, all seemed to 
 exalt, to deepen our converse, to shorten our 
 way into each other s hearts, by removing all 
 that ofttimes drops like a veil between soul and 
 soul, changing us from our truer, better selves 
 in an evil transfiguration. But had I met thee, 
 Philip, in the thick of this world s conventions, 
 even there, even at first meeting, we had made 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 29 
 
 for ourselves a solitude, like this one, populous 
 with thought. 
 
 I asked him many questions about the moun 
 tains, about the broad plains of toil and conflict 
 that spread below them, on which I found he 
 was a dweller. Then, in return, he inquired 
 eagerly into the secrets of the broad river, the 
 rocks, the forest. I found they were not un 
 known ground to him, though their spells had 
 never laid so strong a grasp on his spirit as on 
 mine. " For I," he said, smiling, " came not in 
 by the Gate which is called Beautiful." He 
 examined my store of specimens with eager 
 curiosity. My own spirit caught the flame, 
 each withered flower seemed to bloom, each 
 pebble to flash like an opal, as I spread them 
 forth before him. They had never before 
 seemed so valuable to me, yet I exclaimed, with 
 a hasty impulse, " Take any of them, all ; you 
 will use, enjoy them ; I perhaps have done 
 neither/ 
 
 " Nay," he returned, laughing, " the best 
 things are those which are shared, not given. 
 I will take nothing from you ; for a gift de- 
 
30 
 
 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 mands a gift in return, and what have I to give 
 you in exchange ? Nothing." 
 
 " Nothing," I answered him, " except that 
 which is the fibre and soul of all things, 
 Hope." 
 
 " Well, then," he said, looking at me with 
 his clear, honest eyes, "I will make a good 
 bargain, and traffic with that against your 
 wisdom." 
 
 I laughed in my turn, and said, "Agreed, 
 if you will exchange that word for my expe 
 rience." 
 
 , eyjjerfence toorfcetj) Jwpe." 
 
T was in Autumn that I first met 
 Philip, and with Autumn, and all 
 that belongs to it, he is forever 
 associated to my mind; with walks through 
 the rustling corn-fields, across the breezy, 
 sunny hills; with rambles in the woods, the 
 faint decaying odor of the fallen leaves, and 
 the sound of our footsteps among them ; with 
 ripe nuts slipping from their husks; with the 
 berry, the fir-apple, the acorn ; with all that 
 makes up Autumn s sober, exhilarating charm. 
 And yet, more than with all of this, I connect 
 him with that sense of rest and fulfilment, " the 
 joy of harvest," which only Autumn brings. 
 How bright, how confident was Philip ! Yet 
 his was a sober, I had almost said a calculated 
 joy ; it held by a firm root, being not so much 
 
32 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 a part of his nature as belonging to the whole 
 of it. As we now stood together, I saw that I 
 was not so much older than he as I had at first 
 imagined ; no, nor yet so much poorer ; but his 
 spoils had been won in the free sunlight, mine 
 gathered from the darksome cave. What mat 
 ter that they had been won hardly, even 
 snatched from dark and slippery places, where 
 my footing had wellnigh failed? what matter 
 that they had now ceased to charm me ? that I 
 delight no longer in the dark glow of the car 
 buncle, in the opal s imprisoned fire ? for thou, 
 Philip, didst love and prize them, and they may 
 serve thee for use and beauty when thy friend 
 is here no longer. 
 
 Philip, too, had been, like me, a merchant 
 man seeking goodly pearls. Beauty, knowl 
 edge, power, had each cast its deep spell over 
 his spirit ; his toils had been as severe as mine, 
 yet mixed with far less of suffering, and this 
 because he had ever been at home in the world. 
 Growing as the tree, as the flower grows, from 
 within, yet drinking freely, as they do, of air 
 and dew and sunshine, for him, as regards each 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 33 
 
 common, kindly outward influence, had that 
 word been spoken, " Unto you are they given 
 for food" My life had been more restrained, 
 less natural; it would sometimes seem to me 
 that I formed no essential part of the things 
 that surrounded me, that I even lived by effort 
 and volition. Yet this secret sense of unfamil- 
 iarity sat heavily on my spirit ; I had been like 
 a stranger with a friendly heart, who, perplexed 
 with the bustle of the family, smiles and tries to 
 look as if he understands what it all means. 
 Even when I had been most bewildered by the 
 rush and clatter of the vast machinery of life, 
 with its, to me, unintelligible wheels and 
 springs, I had the most striven to knit myself 
 up within the complicated web it wrought. I 
 had sought to find for myself affinities which 
 even in courting I had in some degree dreaded, 
 for it was need rather than affection that drew 
 me to them, and I knew not how dangerously 
 powerful such alliances might prove ; they re 
 turned my grasp closely, but was their pressure 
 indeed kindly ? Often I felt the steel gauntlet 
 rather than the living hand. Might they not 
 
 2* C 
 
34 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 absorb the life they seemed to nourish? Yet 
 while I had now wound myself round a shelter 
 ing elm, while I had now been driven to em 
 brace the rock for a shelter, while I had been 
 ever solicitous of some exterior help, some but 
 tress that might support the fabric it seemed but 
 to adorn, Philip s mind resting on a sure foun 
 dation, and tending to a fixed aim, had lifted up 
 his whole life into the sunshine, self-poised, like 
 the dome of Brunelleschi. His whole spiritual 
 being was like a strongly-governed country, 
 where all things fall, as it were, inevitably un 
 der a few fixed all-inclusive laws ; the problems 
 of life and thought perplexed, but did not over 
 whelm him ; the enchanted forest of fancy was 
 safe ground to one who held within his bosom 
 the golden knife, ever ready to cut its clear, 
 swift way, when the path became too en 
 tangled, the knot too hard. 
 
 Yet Philip was no special pleader even for 
 Truth itself; he loved her for her own sake, 
 too well to ask her "whence she came, or 
 whither she was going " ; he held her, I often 
 thought, in a bold, loving clasp, as the maiden 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 35 
 
 is held in the ancient legend : let her turn 
 within his arms to sword or flame," let her 
 change there into some fearful and monstrous 
 shape, still would that fervent, unrelaxing grasp 
 compel her to reveal herself in her true like 
 ness ; still within those very arms would she 
 bless him. He knew that she would ofttimes 
 make herself strange to him, and lead him 
 through crooked paths ; and where she led, he 
 followed. He avoided no discussion ; he shrank 
 from no conclusion ; yet it was interesting 
 through all to watch his quiet, assured counte 
 nance, bright, I sometimes thought, with a sort 
 of patient, anticipated triumph, like that of one 
 to whom the end has been made surely known, 
 though he has been left to find for himself the 
 way. Duty, faith, accountability all that the 
 clear consciousness of spiritual freedom gives 
 were so strong in him as to determine the grav 
 itation of his intellect, as well as that of his 
 soul. To steadfast, implicit reliance on God, 
 to simple, practical obedience to His law, he 
 must come back after however strong and dar 
 ing a flight. Therefore he, of all whom I have 
 
36 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 known, was best able to realize the evangelic 
 privilege of serving the Lord without fear. Let 
 him wander where he would, he could not get 
 into a Far Country; the world was unto him 
 the Father s house, and he the Son who was 
 ever with him. His spirit was that of one to 
 whom the day of life, from dawn to dusk, was 
 emphatically the Day after which the Night 
 cometh, wherein no man can work; and yet 
 there was in him I know not what sweetness 
 and candor of nature, that saved him from the 
 narrowness that so often marks the compact, 
 established mind. He was no slave of the 
 Hours, to lie upon the grass and watch their 
 flight, as it is marked by sun-gleam and shadow, 
 by the opening and the closing flower. Yet 
 each station of the day, each spot where the 
 chariot of the sun rested, was dear to him : sun 
 rise, evening, the broad golden noon, the bird s 
 clear song, the sudden scent of bud and bough, 
 the spring s overcoming rapture, these might 
 not tempt thee, Philip, to linger on thy way, 
 yet which of them didst thou ever miss? 
 Often, it is true, I would accuse him, half 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 37 
 
 playfully, yet half seriously, of utilitarianism, 
 in a wider field than that commonly* assigned 
 to it, yet utilitarianism still. " You love," I 
 would say, " many things beautiful and excel 
 lent, not for their own sakes, but because they 
 help and cheer you to a higher aim." 
 
 "And I," said Philip, "shall not be too 
 careful to defend myself from that charge, or 
 from the kindred one which you brought 
 against me not many hours ago. When I lis 
 tened so fixedly to your Scandinavian legend, 
 I was, as you suspected, thinking of my Young 
 Men s class, and of improving it for their 
 benefit when we meet this evening. But did 
 this make me feel and enjoy its beauty less? 
 I do not share Schiller s jealousy about making 
 the Ideal useful; let her be so, when and as 
 she pleases. She will not, it is true, toil or 
 spin ; she will not grind at the mill for any 
 man ; she will not be the wife of his bosom, 
 his housemate and helpmeet, not even his 
 steady, reliable friend. And yet does it not 
 show how great Man s spirit is, that he should 
 have needs to which none but this fair, proud 
 
38 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 Queen can minister, weariness which she 
 alone can soothe, griefs which only she can 
 solace? There is a region within him in 
 which she also serves, and serves no less truly 
 because her action is, like that of all spiritual 
 forces, irregular and intermittent, an influence 
 which comes unwooed, and departs unbidden, 
 no more to be trained and disciplined than 
 the lightning can be steadied into the fire of a 
 household hearth, to live by and cook by. I 
 have long loved art and poetry, because I saw 
 that they had a power to raise and soften Hu 
 manity ; more lately I have seen that they are 
 good in themselves, or whence, but from their 
 native affinity with the things that are more 
 excellent, should come this acknowledged pow 
 er? Why, when the heart would reveal its 
 truest, deepest instincts, does it seek to express 
 itself in music ? Why, when the mind would 
 utter forth words of nobleness, when it would 
 be truer and sweeter than it can be under its 
 ordinary conditions, does it speak in poetry? 
 Could there be a prose psalm?" 
 " Even in dancing," I said, " there seems to 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 39 
 
 be something of this desire to escape into the 
 region you speak of, one less fettered, but more 
 ordered than that in which we ordinarily move. 
 A subtle charm lies in the apparent freedom 
 of the movement, and the sense of its being 
 bound to the music ; a pleasure akin to that 
 which music itself gives us, in the knowledge 
 that it must fall back upon an inevitable, rigor 
 ous law; its free, proud changes are like the 
 movements of a queen in captivity. The mind 
 loves to feel itself under a harmonious neces 
 sity, 
 
 Breaking its order, yet still to that order returning, 
 Changing and winding, yet true to its Measure and Law. 
 
 And in obeying this it attains a double eman 
 cipation, for in confusion there is ever bond 
 age; and it is to this confusion, the want of 
 rhythm and cadence in life, the absence of a 
 clear purpose and intention, that it owes so 
 much of its weariness and sadness. Have you 
 not felt how much there is in the ordinary 
 inevitable course of life which genders to bond 
 age ? The strong hours conquer us. We 
 are straitened in ourselves and in each other, 
 
40 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 fettered to a routine which makes us often say, 
 with John Bunyan, And so I went home to 
 prison. " 
 
 " And this, as you say, is inevitable ; we 
 blame society for being constrained and arti 
 ficial, but its conventionalities are only the 
 result of the limitations of man s own nature. 
 How much, for instance, of what is called re 
 serve belongs to this life, and passes away with 
 its waning, and the waxing of the new life ! 
 We can say to the dying, and hear from them, 
 things that, in the fulness of health and vigor, 
 could not be imparted without violence to some 
 inward instinct. And this is one reason, among 
 many others, why it is so good to be in the 
 house of mourning, the chamber of death. It 
 is there more easy to be natural, to be true, 
 I mean, to that which is deepest within us. Is 
 there not something in the daily, familiar course 
 of life which seems in a strange way to veil its 
 true aspect ? It is not Death, but Life, which 
 wraps us about with shroud and cerement. 
 Looking at this world as it is, I could exclaim, 
 How beautiful, if one could but get at it ! I see 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 41 
 
 in the heart of man an infinite desire, an infinite 
 capacity for happiness ; in the outward world, 
 abundant materials for its satisfaction ; but 
 between these two, an unseen wall of separa 
 tion. We want a door opening." 
 
 " The ordinary events of life," I said, " are 
 not strong enough to move the whole man ; its 
 deeper and more passionate moments show us 
 what we really are. There is a child within us 
 that has not strength to come forth, until some 
 outward stimulus, some strong exterior call, is 
 given. And this, it seems to me, is the true 
 use of the Heroic, of a life transcending life s 
 ordinary possibilities ; such a life is a direct call 
 upon the soul, saying, Friend, come up high 
 er ; and the heart recognizes its voice, and 
 exults in it, claims it, as the voice of kindred 
 risen to a more exalted sphere. It is like air 
 from a mountain summit where we could not 
 live, and yet it seems our native air, and braces 
 us in every nerve." 
 
 " In teaching criminals," said Philip, " of a 
 peculiarly ignorant and degraded class, I have 
 often been struck with their strange susceptibil- 
 
42 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 ity to what is morally exalted. To tell them of 
 a deed of heroic daring, of sublime self-devotion, 
 will visibly stir a fibre of their hearts, too torpid 
 to respond to the ordinary appeals of duty and 
 reason. I have also observed, that anything 
 legendary, and verging on the supernatural, wih 1 
 fix their attention at once, as if it awakened 
 within them the instinct of a spiritual nature, 
 the sense that man lives not by bread alone. In 
 teaching, perhaps, we usually trust too much to 
 mere intelligence ; surely there are many gate 
 ways into the soul. Feeling bursts through 
 them, making the world kin. Art unlocks 
 them gently, for Art is not the imitation of 
 Nature, but a sort of side-door into her inmost 
 recesses. And has it never occurred to you to 
 remark, that there is a whole region, connected 
 with all that is finest and purest in our nature, 
 that can only be reached through sensation ? As 
 a look will reveal what no word can ever speak, 
 so will a scent, a sound, the spring s warm 
 breath, the green unravelling of the larch- 
 bough, a sudden whisper in the summer leaves, 
 the bird s clear song at early morning, bring our 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 43 
 
 souls into contact with the illimitable, telling us 
 that we are one with ourselves, with JJature, 
 and with God ; these things have power to call 
 forth a music within us which has not yet had 
 words set to it. Secrets are revealed to us in a 
 flash of bliss, a flash that shows us nothing, as 
 when a wave retires, and does not leave at our 
 feet even a shell, which we can pick up, to 
 treasure and say, This came from a further 
 shore. " 
 
 " But the sea," I said, " implies the shore ; 
 and it is something also to have heard the mur 
 mur of the broad ocean. I think that these 
 moments, these intimations, which seem, as you 
 once observed to me, to come from a great dis 
 tance, prove many things, prove, above all, 
 that man s spirit is not a sand-locked pool. The 
 slender filaments of sensation are threads that 
 bind us to a mighty whole, and it is a higher, 
 more complete existence, the life in the whole, 
 which, through them, stirs in us, perhaps to 
 sleep the next moment." 
 
 " Beethoven, if you remember," interrupted 
 Philip, " said that music was the link between 
 
44 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 rational and sensitive life ; it addresses both, and 
 owes to this its power ; for music, of all the 
 arts, alone reaches to that within us, to which 
 the others can only appeal. Like divine grace 
 it gets fairly within the mind ; and while things 
 that address themselves to the eye or intellect 
 stand at the door and knock, it has already car 
 ried in its message, and brought us into an inner 
 world, richer and sweeter than the outward one, 
 yet linked with it at every turn. What is there 
 in life, as it now is, that answers to the feelings 
 which music calls forth, 
 
 " Its deeper pangs, its tears 
 More sweet," 
 
 its storming at the citadel of feeling through a 
 hundred gates at once, or winning it through 
 some single secret postern? You read, you 
 think, you ponder, and, lo ! a grinding organ at 
 the corner of the street, playing some common 
 tune, sends a fresh breath across your soul, that 
 turns over a new leaf within it, writ all over 
 with deeper, sweeter lore than was ever magi 
 cian s book." 
 
 " And surely," I said, " in considering this 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 45 
 
 subject, we must not forget the strange regions 
 into which some of the abnormal phases, of mind 
 admit us. What we commonly call " excite 
 ment," is but the awakening of the whole man. 
 Is it not, whether it arise from some tumult of 
 inner feeling, or the pressure of strong outward 
 exigency, always accompanied by a feeling of 
 freedom, of power over outward nature, of 
 escape from the limitations of time and space, 
 by a sense of being able to triumph over them 
 at will ? There is surely something significant 
 in its temporary insensibility to cold, hunger, 
 weariness ; while excitement lasts, we feel none 
 of these. Also, in dreaming, in delirium, or 
 when under the influence of narcotics, the soul 
 unfurls the wings, which life, under its ordinary 
 conditions, keeps pressed and folded helplessly 
 against its side. The sense of power, of free 
 dom, above all, of extension, is characteristic of 
 all these states ; and does not this, as an ad 
 mitted fact, throw a light upon our future life, 
 proving that mans capacities are as undeveloped 
 as is confessedly the case with his faculties ? We 
 are used to call the accustomed order of things 
 
46 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 natural, but is it not evident that man, viewed 
 in connection with this order, is a supernatural 
 being? He contains within him powers and 
 tendencies far greater than the present order of 
 things calls out." 
 
 " There is just now," said Philip, " a strange 
 jealousy of the supernatural ; a disposition, as 
 shown in rejecting whatever is miraculous, to 
 restrict even God to one mode of working. In 
 moral things, it is true, he has, indeed can have, 
 but one form of expression ; but in material 
 things, what is the supernatural but a stretch 
 ing of the senses, so as to take in a little more 
 of God, an extension of our own horizon, so as 
 to give us a broader view of the way in which 
 he acts ? What is a miracle, once proved, but 
 a fact, which extends our view of the capabili 
 ties of nature ? How are we to limit the possi 
 bilities wrapped up within any created being, as 
 the butterfly is anticipated, prepared for, in the 
 grub, the oak latent in the acorn ? Man, it is 
 evident, even in that part of him which is sen 
 sitive, is forever touching upon a system of 
 things upon which, under the present conditions 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 47 
 
 of his being, lie cannot enter fully. There is 
 within him an enchanted land of mystery and 
 beauty, a land where all slumbers, until some 
 outward shock, like the kiss of the Fairy Prince, 
 comes to awake it from sleep. So in that part 
 of our nature which is spiritual, there is a region 
 into which man cannot ascend until he is lifted 
 there by God through that supernatural action 
 upon the soul which we call grace ; the voice of 
 the Divine Spirit wakening up the human spirit 
 to its true life." 
 
 " And hence," I said, " the connection of 
 Christianity with poetry, music, nature, with all 
 the purer and more exalted movements of the 
 natural heart. These are helps, lifts to the 
 soul ; and people feel better, more able to be 
 lieve, to love, to pray, when the finer springs 
 of existence have been touched through any of 
 these. Genius, like Christianity, sees all things 
 in their mutual relation ; its tendency is to 
 throw the many-chambered mansions of the 
 soul into one. The simplest song, where its 
 breath is felt, stirs something which goes 
 through the whole. Is there not a delight. 
 
48 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 almost a religious pleasure, in a work of true 
 imaginative genius? a delight kindred to that 
 which is derived from the contemplation of 
 nature, the delight of being carried out of 
 one s self into something greater and truer than 
 self, because more universal. It often seems to 
 me that Imagination is the highest faculty of 
 man. It starts, as Faith does, from a higher 
 level than any of his other powers, and on that 
 level meets and familiarly accosts truths which 
 reason must struggle up to. And reason does 
 reach them, when they are thus foreshown, 
 though, left to itself, it could never either have 
 foreseen the glorious end, nor even the way that 
 led to it." 
 
 " Imagination, however," returned Philip, 
 " wins heights that it is not competent to 
 keep ; it alights on the mountain-top, and is 
 shown kingdoms in a moment of time ; but it 
 cannot keep its footing on that summit. Reason 
 must hew steps out of the rock ; patient experi 
 ence must follow after to make the path in 
 which the wayfaring man shall not err." 
 
 " And yet," I said, " the Idealist is always 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 49 
 
 the discoverer, the one who proclaims the 
 goodly vision. It has ever been so h> science ; 
 there is something prophetic in its very nature, 
 something which ever impels it forward, and 
 carries it beyond the word it is now speaking ; 
 which weights that word with a meaning which 
 the speaker intends not. So does the Poet 
 speak out of his heart things which he knows 
 not. He is a man not truer, better, or kinder 
 than his fellows ; his range of practical sympa 
 thies with others is, perhaps, from his very na 
 ture, more limited than that of ordinary men. 
 It is not experience, it is not feeling, it is 
 instinct, that has made him at home in all that 
 belongs to man. He sits beside the secret 
 springs of feeling, and knows the course the 
 rivers must take. He sees, but afar off and 
 dimly, the whole in which the part is included. 
 He who has the soul has all." 
 
 Philip s eyes sparkled. "I know," he said, 
 "no such pleasure, such emancipation, as that 
 of passing from the limited self-referring view 
 of things into the contemplation of absolute truth 
 and beauty. I love to hear you speak thus, 
 
50 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 you, who sometimes seem to fear the broad, 
 free sweep of imaginative greatness, as being in 
 some way antagonistic to the spirit of Christ, 
 who seem to dread, for instance, the free devel 
 opment of Art, though, after all, Art is but 
 Nature in her bridal hour, the shy virgin, the 
 wild woodland nymph wooed and wedded by 
 man, and brought home to dwell with him." 
 "I know not," I said, "how to express clearly 
 what I mean; but I do feel, sometimes pain 
 fully, a contradiction between the brokenness of 
 Christ and the clear perfection of Art. The 
 glory of the Terrestrial is one, and the glory of 
 the Celestial is another, and these stars differ, 
 the one from the other in glory. In Art there 
 is choice, self-pleasing, a drawing out of that 
 which is obviously best ; in Christ, things which 
 are not fair are yet pronounced good, prizeable. 
 Sometimes, after reading such a book, we will 
 say, as Shakespeare, I have been conscious of a 
 strange inner dissatisfaction, which I can only 
 describe as being the sense of an impaired com 
 munion ; and something has said within me, 
 4 All this is not of the Father, but of the world. 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 51 
 
 I do not feel this in reading any book of a sus 
 tained philosophic interest, as its scope,*if not 
 directly religious, carries you among the deep 
 and elevating realities which are not far from 
 the Kingdom, and indeed belong to it ; but I do 
 feel it in that mixed region of wit, and fancy, 
 and feeling which belongs to our mortal state as 
 such, and which seems in no way to bear upon 
 our inner or our future life ; and what is this 
 region but a world without souls, a world of sad 
 and ruined beauty, when looked at with refer 
 ence to man s true destinies, and yet a rich and 
 glorious world ? I see in Art and Literature, in 
 the subjects with which they deal, in the absorb 
 ing, intoxicating devotion they demand, some 
 thing which reminds me of the Greek worship 
 of Dionysus, "the God of flourishing, decaying, 
 changeable life," the kindler of a lofty enthusi 
 asm, the intensifier of life, the exalter of its pleas 
 ures, the deepener of its pangs, the bestower of 
 an impassioned sympathy with Nature. And 
 by the side of this regal Being, robed in the 
 purple he was born to, with, garments not too 
 careful of a stain, I see another form, severe, 
 
52 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 restricted, also life s deepener, its intensifier, but 
 after how different a spirit ! The first is of the 
 earth, earthy ; the second is the Lord from 
 heaven. 
 
 " The rose, ho ! the rose is the grace of the earth, 
 Is the light of the plants that are growing upon it." 
 
 The rose drunk with its own fragrance and 
 beauty ; the smell of the fresh earth hangs about 
 it, it is wet with the dews of heaven. En 
 joy me, it says, for I am the rose, I am fair, 
 I live but a day ; it needs the broad sunlight, 
 the free sweeping winds, it can bloom even on 
 the battle-field, and grow redder with the blood 
 of heroes. But Christ s flower grows under 
 neath the snow, in a broken flower-pot, in a 
 darkened cellar, anywhere ; its petals are pale, 
 and it seldom opens fully ; but when it expands 
 so as to show its heart, what do we see there 
 but the Cross and the emblems of the Pas 
 sion?" 
 
 Philip was silent a long while ; at last he said, 
 musingly, 
 
 " I have felt the antagonism you speak -of. I 
 have found it out, as I have found out many 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 53 
 
 antagonisms and affinities, by their helping or 
 hindering me in my work. I shall never- forget 
 sitting at an open window of a little parsonage, 
 in the west of England, during great part of a 
 golden summer s afternoon, reading Keats ; the 
 garden was full of flowers, and I read my book 
 to the scent of mignonette and pinks, as to a 
 music stealing within every sense. It was one 
 of those warm, brooding days that steep the 
 spirit in delight ; all around was silence, the 
 stillness not so much of sleep as of nature in a 
 blissful dream. Then an uneasy consciousness 
 came across me, breaking the delicious spell. I 
 ought to be setting forth on my parish round. I 
 started. First on my list came an aged woman, 
 almost stone-deaf, ignorant, but anxious. I had 
 to sit beside her before a huge fire ; her son 
 worked at his loom in an inner room, and did 
 not cease when I began to read. How hot and 
 noisy the cottage seemed ; how contracted all 
 around me ! Had the world of light and beauty 
 I lived and moved in but half an hour ago 
 collapsed into this ? How confused, too, seemed 
 my own statements, my very utterance thick 
 
54 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 and hesitating, as of one under a heavy thrall, 
 for my heart was with Endymion, and I had to 
 tell the story of Christ ; to tell it from its begin 
 ning to its end ; to tell it, too, to a person to 
 whom it was really news, and received as such 
 
 with eager childlike interest Another time, 
 
 and here the revulsion was even keener, this 
 was in winter, New Year s day, also an after 
 noon ; one of those days when the clear frosty 
 air seems to make thought itself more definite, 
 and to send it forth with an arrowy keenness. 
 You know the cathedral at ; I was walk 
 ing beneath it with a friend, eagerly discussing 
 Homer ; the sun went down, all that fine range 
 of buildings stood up clear against the solemn, 
 rose-flushed sky. We spoke of the antique 
 world ; its simplicity, its freedom, its ever youth 
 ful, self-renewing charm. I was suddenly called 
 away to see a woman supposed to be dying. I 
 found her, as regarded spiritual receptivity, far 
 below the old friend I have just spoken of. 
 Hers was the unawakened, unenlightened mind, 
 within which the sense of sin and need has 
 never sent a piercing ray, or a quickening 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 55 
 
 throb ; one of the class to whom a visit from 
 a clergyman is a viaticum and nothing more. 
 Her husband, an elderly working-man, received 
 me at the door with much show of friendliness ; 
 as he seemed disposed to talk, I sat with him a 
 few minutes before I went to the sick woman. 
 By way, I suppose, of making himself agreeable 
 to me, he brought forth some tracts, and began 
 to speak of religion in a patronizing sort of way, 
 not uncommon amongst the poor, as if it were 
 an accomplishment, something admirable in its 
 own way, an acquisition, like knowing French 
 or Latin, to those who possessed it, but by no 
 means of universal obligation. Yes, he said, 
 4 they were very pretty reading, he had no fault 
 to find with them ; prayer, too, was a nice 
 thing; good talk was very pretty and very nice. 
 I found that neither he nor any of his family 
 ever attended church, or any place of worship. 
 He took me to a small inner room, dark and 
 close, in which were two beds, almost filling it. 
 The sick woman was in one, suffering much 
 from spasms, too ill apparently to fix her mind 
 upon what I said. I spoke with her, however, 
 
56 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 as I best could. Seating myself, in the absence 
 of any chair, upon the other bed, suddenly I felt 
 something move beneath me. The poor woman 
 hastened to apologize : it was her grown-up son 
 sleeping off the drunken frolic of the night be 
 fore, New Year s Eve." 
 
 " But these," I said, laughing, " were very 
 sharp contrasts, very sudden descents into the 
 actual ; no wonder your system was jarred and 
 shaken a little rudely. You might have been 
 called to such a dying-bed as that you were tell 
 ing me of yesterday, the poor woman, " the 
 sinner exceedingly," who had spent literally 
 more than half of her short and evil life in 
 prisons, dying in jail at last, ignorant, hopeless, 
 yet not without hope, for Christ died for the 
 ungodly. In such a case the transition from 
 the ideal to the actual would have been keen, 
 perhaps, but less perplexing." 
 
 " True," returned Philip, " because in the 
 human soul one deep calleth to another. 
 There is a poetry in crime, in excessive want 
 and wretchedness, in fact in all the fierce ex 
 tremes of life, that lifts the soul above its ordi- 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 57 
 
 nary level, that stirs human nature to its very 
 depths, and makes us know that 
 
 We have all of us one human heart, 
 All mortal thoughts confess a common home. 
 
 Life can be transfigured through anguish as well 
 as through blessedness, and Christ still shows 
 himself, as in the mediaeval legends, in the form 
 of the leper and the outcast. But after all, 
 such keen emotions do not make up the staple 
 of spiritual any more than of natural life. It 
 is among the ignorant, the out-of-the-way, the 
 commonplace, that the Christian s daily lot is 
 thrown, and their daily appeals are to him as 
 sacred as those which come more seldom, and 
 with a louder knocking at the gate. That 
 Christianity should so fit in with the ordinary 
 and mediocre has always seemed to me a proof 
 of its crowning excellence. A little child shall 
 lead them, this, it seems to me, is the pass-word 
 into this kingdom of greatness and simplicity. 
 All other ideals draw away the heart from real 
 life ; the poet, the artist, is continually trying to 
 break out of the narrow circle of visible things ; 
 he t asks for better bread than can be made 
 
58 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 with wheat. The Christian ideal alone meets 
 the habitual, the practical, meets it while im 
 measurably transcending it, embraces it, and 
 walks with it hand in hand. The Christian 
 must be friends with every day, with its nar 
 row details, its homely atmosphere ; its loving 
 correction must make him great." 
 
 He paused for a moment. 
 
 "Is there not," he said, "the very life-core of 
 Christianity in this picture, the broken tomb 
 and the risen Christ, the angels in their shining 
 garments, the linen clothes folded, and laid in a 
 place by themselves?" 
 
NE morning I found Philip looking 
 over some of my papers ; he took 
 up one, " A Soul s History," and 
 
 began to read it aloud. 
 
 " The soul is a rare essence ; like the quick 
 And subtle spirit of the rose, it floods 
 Each chamber of its earthly house with fragrance, 
 Yet leaves, like it, no lingering breath behind, 
 Its sweetness taking with it where it goes ; 
 Else had this grave, like His, who, once of old, 
 Slept in a garden-tomb, been full of odors ; 
 And through this bare, black ground would roses spring, 
 To tell of one who lies within, wrapt round 
 
 . In folds of linen clean and white ; embalmed 
 In sweeter tears than ever fell from gums 
 Of Araby the Blest. 
 
 " Beside this open grave one winter morn 
 I stood as if alone, the hundreds round me 
 Swayed by one thought, and by a single name 
 
60 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 Together bound so close, it seemed one heart 
 Held by one sorrow, by one hope uplifted ; 
 Upon the stillness fell the words of Christ: 
 I am the life, and I the resurrection ; 
 He that in me believeth shall not die ; 
 And through the sound of falling earth, the voice 
 Went steadfast on: As God unto himself 
 In mercy hath been pleased to take the soul 
 Of this our Brother pausing ere the word 
 It faltered forth of this our Father ; then 
 One sob broke forth, for, oh ! on this our earth 
 We have not many Fathers ! few who go 
 To meet the wanderer on his homeward way, 
 Who watch him yet afar, who on the threshold 
 With welcome wait, and reconciling tear. 
 
 " Thou knewest him, this man of faith and power; 
 Thou knewest him, this Son of Consolation, 
 God s Levite of the kindlier covenant. 
 On thine his soul, a white and lucid star, 
 Shook down serene its full meridian splendor, 
 For thou didst know him in that after-summer 
 God ofttimes gives the good, that they may see 
 Their soul s deep travail satisfied in part, 
 And bless him ere they pass from life away ; 
 But I had known him in his rise and falling, 
 Had seen him sit upon the earth, as one 
 Astonished, desolate, within his heart 
 An arrow and the fragments of a song. 
 
 " 4 What aileth thee that now 
 Thou contest back so soon, my child; 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 61 
 
 In that garden fair, methought, all day, 
 Till the shadows fell thou wouldst wait to play " ; 
 So spake the mother mild. 
 
 " But the child said, weeping sore, 
 
 / have been where the roses blow, 
 The ruby red and the maiden s blush, 
 And the damask rose in its velvet Jlush, 
 
 And the white rose dropping snow. 
 
 " I will never pluck roses more, 
 Go take of these. . . . " 
 
 "I like this poem," he said. "Why have 
 you left it unfinished ? " 
 
 I looked at the date, which was many years 
 back. " Perhaps," I answered, " because my 
 heart, since those days, has, in some degree, de 
 parted from the idea upon which it is founded." 
 
 " And your idea," said Philip, " was that of 
 a life rising, through earthly blight and disap 
 pointment, into high spiritual perfection ; the 
 flowers of individual love dropping off to give 
 place to ripe, universal charity. I see you have 
 written, a little further on, 
 
 Seek not to live, to die in any heart. 
 This earthly rose, if pressed, will yield the thorn ; 
 0, let it bloom, its odor still diffusing! " 
 
62 TWO FlUENDS. 
 
 " Yes," I said, " the idea of a beautiful moral 
 and spiritual life, being built up out of the ruins 
 of the fair fabric of natural hope and happiness, 
 is a favorite one, we all know, in religious fic 
 tion ; take, as an instance, Lamartine s exqui 
 site story of the Stone-cutter of St. Point ; and 
 it has undoubtedly been in some degree realized 
 in actual life, but far less often and less fully 
 than the commonplaces which prevail with ref 
 erence to affliction would lead us to believe. 
 All that passes current upon this subject is 
 founded upon a partial truth, which ignores a 
 deeper one, which is this, that the plant of Hu 
 manity does not live by its root only, however 
 firmly this may be fixed ; it breathes at every 
 pore, through leaf and blossom ; it is nourished 
 by the curling tendrils that seem but to adorn 
 it. If these be torn off too unsparingly, its 
 fruit will be the poorer ; if its bark be stripped, 
 it will live, but as dying. How often do we see 
 the growth of a life stopped ! a life unable, 
 either from the blight of unfriendly outward 
 circumstances, or the strange warp of some 
 radical inward contradiction, to reveal the true 
 beauty of its nature." 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 63 
 
 " It seems to me," said Philip, " that I have 
 known such lives, unable to shoot up straight 
 to heaven, like the palm, or to bend down 
 richly laden to earth, like the banian ; lives off 
 the usual track ; lives in which there is a pain 
 ful secret, and yet pure, exalted lives ; truer and 
 nobler in their aim, richer even in their attain 
 ment, than those whose development has been 
 more free and happy ; souls that utter not their 
 perfect worth, yet are sweet in the very broken- 
 ness of their music." 
 
 " True ; yet it is certain that something 
 artificial and distorted is apt to creep within 
 a life, which, from whatever cause, is unable 
 to flow along in the broad channel of such 
 
 O 
 
 interests as are common to humanity. There 
 are many ghosts in life, appearing in the noon 
 day as well as at midnight. Dead hopes and 
 loves come back in strange forms ; tenderness 
 changed to an irritable sensitiveness ; clinging 
 affection to grasping vanity. The tendrils that 
 have lost their natural object still find some 
 thing to cling round; but what? A cold am 
 bition ; a thin transfiguration of self. Do you 
 
64 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 know the story of Agusina, the Greenlander, 
 one of the most earnest and gifted among the 
 converts of the United Brethren ? His own 
 people would listen to him with singular vener 
 ation, as he spoke to them of Christ, of the 
 breath of the Spirit, wafting the heart to Him, 
 as the sea-grass is driven to shore on the current 
 of the tide. His love, he would say, 4 melts 
 the heart, as the sun melts the snow ; and then 
 it is as with the lamp, when fresh oil is poured 
 into it; it burns brighter, and can enkindle 
 others. O Assarsoi ! * when I speak of thee, 
 my heart grows tender, as the moss in spring, 
 and soft, as the eider fowl s breast, when shel 
 tering its young ! He had an only daughter, 
 Beata, aged fifteen, who read the Scriptures to 
 him each evening, when their voices were heard 
 to ascend together in hymns. His wife was 
 dead; all his near relations, parents, brother, 
 and sisters, were gone, but not until he had per 
 suaded them to embrace Christianity. Beata 
 prepared his meals, and took charge of all; 
 when he came home from his hunting or fish- 
 * Eedeemer. 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 65 
 
 ing, she would stand anxiously waiting his re 
 turn. She, too, was taken from him by death. 
 Agusina bore the shock but feebly. Except 
 Christ, he said, she was his all on earth ; he 
 missed his loved companion, when he came from 
 the sea or from the mountains ; even the words 
 of Scripture, heard from her lips no longer, 
 seemed to lose half their charm. He gave way 
 to excessive sorrow ; but it was after the first 
 violence of this passed over, that the mission 
 aries observed a singular transformation. Self- 
 complacency rushed in to fill the void which 
 had fallen on his desolated soul ; his heart 
 became self-centred ; it found a solace in the 
 respect paid by his people ; a flattering unc 
 tion in the veneration and interest with which, 
 at the gatherings for hunting and fishing, they 
 listened to his words. There was a change 
 even in his outward aspect and bearing, a 
 change visible to all. At last one of the faith 
 ful Moravians spoke to him of it freely ; he lis 
 tened in surprise and displeasure. A few days 
 afterwards, however, he came, confessing it was 
 true ; that he had striven to deal with himself 
 
66 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 faithfully, and that God had given him light: 
 his mind was still so disturbed that he absent 
 ed himself from the Holy Communion. And 
 weeks passed over; no one saw Agusina at 
 the meetings or the confessions ; and when the 
 Moravians sought him out, they found him, 
 they say, in happy intercourse with the Friend 
 of his soul, but with the hand of death upon 
 him. He was going, he said, to Beata ; earth 
 was no longer safe for him; it was full of 
 snares ; and God was, in his mercy, about 
 to take him away. On the last day of his 
 life, his people gathered round him. All the 
 strength and self-possession of his soul had re 
 turned. His countenance, says the Mora 
 vian writer, seemed to us like that of an 
 angel. In the dim December day, more by 
 the light of the snow than of the sky, they laid 
 him, with a solemn prayer and hymn, in his 
 Beata s grave, close to her moss- wrapped re 
 mains. 
 
 " This story has always seemed to me deeply 
 affecting, and the more so from my having, not 
 many years ago, heard a pendant to it, in the 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 67 
 
 case of a distinguished man now living, in 
 whose character vanity of a transparent* sort 
 had always been noticeable ; yet it was remark 
 able, I was told, into what strong, unsubdued 
 relief this had come since the death of his be 
 loved only child. But, to consider this subject 
 in a broader light, is there not something fal 
 lacious in looking at affliction as a sort of divine 
 alchemy, with power in itself to transmute and 
 sublimate ? At the most, it can but work upon 
 what it finds ; it purges the dross from the gold, 
 according to the image so frequently employed 
 in Scripture, but does not change the original 
 nature of the ore into one of nobler quality. 
 
 " And to extend our view a little further, can 
 anything be more false than the so often re 
 peated maxim, that good comes out of evil, 
 moral evil ? never, in the sense of being pro 
 duced by it. All that evil can do, is to make 
 good manifest ; as oppression calls forth heroism, 
 or, as in family life, the selfishness of one mem 
 ber brings out the excellence of another. Yet, 
 in the very instances where this is most admira 
 bly shown, we may still say, that 4 if one mem- 
 
68 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 ber suffer, all the members suffer with it ; all 
 life is organic, and no individual ever neglects 
 or violates a moral or social obligation, but a 
 wound, more or less directly felt, goes through 
 the whole. The work of righteousness is 
 peace ; the natural tendency of good is to re 
 produce itself: even so does evil sow itself ad 
 infinitum; unless, through repentance, it ceases 
 to be evil, and even, after repentance, the seed 
 beforehand cast into the earth will still come up. 
 We see this in the life of nations. What con 
 fusion and anarchy result from forced appropri 
 ation and unequal laws ! A life may slowly get 
 over a great sorrow, but when does a country 
 get over a great wrong ? Germany was at least 
 two centuries in recovering from the effects of 
 the Thirty Years War, and it is certain that 
 Italy yet suffers from the desolating invasions of 
 the sixteenth century. What has Ireland been 
 to England, or Poland to Russia, but a standing 
 perplexity from age to age ? What else is the 
 African population even now to America ? It 
 is not only the wronged who suffer. The roots 
 of Humanity are so inextricably intertwined, 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 69 
 
 that we must grow altogether if we grow at all. 
 Every warp and canker tells upon the whole." 
 
 u True," said Philip, " as regards evil of a 
 moral kind; but in pain and affliction, into 
 which this element does not enter, I see much 
 of the alchemy which you disallow. There is 
 something in man which needs sorrow, a hum 
 bling, purifying work as regards his spiritual 
 recreation, which cannot go on without its min 
 istry. How many heavenly seeds would never 
 spring to life but for its loosening, detaching 
 agency, breaking up the hard, stony soil of 
 nature ! And to the believer, what is affliction 
 but God s hand upon his head to bless him, his 
 Father s hand, recognized through that heavy 
 pressure ? Think how Christianity exalts, al 
 most enthrones sorrow." 
 
 " Because," I said, " Christianity itself is 
 among us as one that is wounded, free among 
 the dead, and only free there. Do you not see 
 that Christianity, under its present manifesta 
 tion, is remedial, separation and sorrow are its 
 natural friends ? Consider, for instance, how 
 great, even to disproportion, is the strain which 
 
70 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 the Gospel lays upon the passive qualities of the 
 soul, those which tend to the death of the natural 
 man, acquiescence, long-suffering, self-abnega 
 tion. The Earth is given to the meek, and 
 Heaven to the poor in spirit. Christ s kingdom 
 is a kingdom of patience. Think of that sol 
 emn walk, when he went before his disciples 
 to Jerusalem ; his counsel of absolute self-re 
 nunciation to the young ruler ; his acceptance 
 of Peter s Lo ! we have left all ; his rebuke 
 to the self-seeking of the two brethren ; his un 
 folding of his own approaching humiliation. 
 What is it but a call to Humanity to strip off its 
 garments one by one, riches, affection, glory, 
 and lay them down in the way by which its 
 Lord walks to death." 
 
 " If I follow your meaning clearly," returned 
 Philip, " you would say that there is a natural 
 grandeur and completeness, which the soul, if 
 it would have Christ formed within it, must be 
 content to miss." 
 
 " And this because Christianity does not as yet 
 take in the whole of man ; it is the bringer of 
 the sword, setting one part of his nature in array 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 71 
 
 against the other ; it bids him emphatically lay 
 down his life, but to what end ? TJiat he may 
 take it again. We do not gain a true conception 
 of Christianity until we look at it under this 
 twofold aspect ; until we see in it a seed sown 
 in weakness to be raised in power; until we 
 covet, for every individual soul, that restitution 
 which the Universal Church will one day most 
 certainly enjoy, the taking again of life in 
 Christ. Christ is most truly and deeply a man 
 of sorrows ; yet in his revelation there is nothing 
 of that dull and aimless suffering which in nat 
 ural life is so saddening and perplexing. The 
 song of Moses and of the Lamb, which none but 
 the redeemed can sing, has the burden of the old 
 Greek chorus, 
 
 Sing sorrow, strife and sorrow, but let Victory remain ! 
 
 Understand well that I do not disallow sorrow ; 
 it has its appointed time and work, but when 
 that is over, let it go ; it is a hireling, and re- 
 maineth not in the house forever ; but the son 
 remaineth ever, and the son is Isaac, a son 
 of laughter. Nothing appears to me more shal- 
 
72 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 low, than the mode of viewing life which looks 
 upon pain as the deepest thing in our nature, 
 and union through pain the closest of any. 
 Sorrow is essentially separative. What is its ex- 
 tremest form insanity but isolation? The 
 French, with as much truth as tenderness, call 
 the insane les alienes. The mind, broken in 
 itself, has lost the power of blending with other 
 minds ; its action returns upon itself. Joy is a 
 uniting thing ; it builds up, while it enlarges, 
 the whole nature ; it is the wine to strengthen 
 man s heart, to brace it to every noble enter 
 prise. Schiller s crown was well won with that 
 one saying, 4 Was ist dem CrlucJclichen zu 
 schwer? " 
 
 " Res severa est verum gaudiumj " said Philip. 
 "I have sometimes thought, that, as regards 
 spiritual things, we shall not arrive at this, 
 the bringing in of the sacrifices of joy, except 
 through a fuller realization of our organic unity 
 in Christ. Gladness can scarcely be a solitary 
 thing, the very life of praise seems choral, it is 
 more than one bounded heart can utter. Its 
 finest expressions are those that, in the Psalms, 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 73 
 
 and some ancient Canticles, call on Nature, even 
 that which is not conscious and animate, to swell 
 its harmony : 
 
 ye showers and dew, praise ye the Lord ! 
 
 Once, even in music, I was content with mel 
 ody ; a tune, with its sweetness, like that of a 
 tinkling rill, was enough to gladden me; now 
 my heart asks for a deeper spell. Surely when 
 one has once entered into the blissful secrets of 
 harmony, the note seems to suggest the chord, 
 to ask to be built up within it." 
 
 " What you say reminds me of a strange 
 pleasure, the intense consciousness of existence, 
 which one sometimes feels in a crowd, especially 
 if that crowd be animated by one common feel 
 ing, and that of an exalting kind. Life seems 
 lifted out of its ordinary conditions, as if in the 
 whole it recovered something which the part had 
 missed. Does the heart in these moments re 
 claim some wide affinity, and ask to be built 
 within the human chord ? " 
 
 u I think," said Philip, " there is some feel 
 ing akin to this in the pleasure which exten- 
 
 4 
 
74 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 sion gives, something which intensifies feeling, 
 through bringing within it the sense of infinity, 
 as when we gaze over any great reach of coun 
 try, with the cattle upon a thousand hills, or 
 across the sea, with ships dropping under the 
 rim of the horizon. In the sight of any great 
 town from some little distance, or in looking 
 down at evening upon some sheltered hamlet, 
 what a deep and tender sentiment steals across 
 the mind ! We know that the city is not the 
 Celestial one, neither is the village Arcadian, yet 
 the impression left upon the heart is one of 
 peace, Peace and good-will with all mankind. 
 Breadth always imparts the feeling of serenity ; 
 all that is narrow and contradictory melts away 
 in it. 
 
 Colors laid 
 
 Upon the canvas oft the sense invade 
 Too suddenly, and wound the aching eye ; 
 Yet when did aught beneath the open sky 
 Seem harsh or violent ? So sun and shade 
 Attemper all. 
 
 Even so in contemplating men, say soldiers, 
 weavers, colliers, in a collective body, we feel 
 the heart drawn out in a deeper sympathy and 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 75 
 
 interest, which none among them, perhaps, as 
 individuals, would command. I have felt this 
 strongly without being able to analyze it." 
 
 " Does it not arise from being brought w r ithiii 
 the influence of the broad tendencies of human 
 ity, where individual limitations disappear, swept 
 away by the force of the current? Such mo 
 ments say to us, Behold the Man ! they 
 are baptismal, and endue the soul with much 
 strength. The slender stream of individual life 
 
 O 
 
 is choked by many rocks and rapids ; the strong 
 est heart knows that there are stones upon which 
 it has already fallen and been broken, that bar 
 riers are before it never to be wholly overpast ; 
 therefore it loves to hope, to strive for the 
 many. Passion, interest, caprice, belong to the 
 individual, and in this, surely, lies the strength of 
 the saying, Vox populi, vox Dei, that a number 
 of persons acting together are naturally less 
 under the control of circumstance, 4 this world s 
 unspiritual God, are less fettered by prejudice, 
 than the few. Also we know that in every 
 lump there is a leaven of nobleness, some, 
 perhaps many, tender and truthful souls. The 
 
76 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 heart of a people, if it could but speak, is always 
 in its right place." 
 
 " And it is this," said Philip, " that makes all 
 that belongs to national existence, the songs, the 
 customs upon which the life of a people has 
 left its stamp, so interesting, so unspeakably 
 affecting." 
 
 " And it is this, too," I continued, " which 
 gives such a double dye to all sins against na 
 tional freedom, which is but the expression of a 
 people s life. If it is a crime to slay a man, 
 what must it be to strike at a nation ; to kill 
 man in his organic life; to cut the nerves of 
 universal endeavor ; to aim at man s heart 
 through those relations with his fellow-men, 
 which are the veins through which his life-blood 
 flows, in which alone he can live and move and 
 have his secular being ? Slavery stabs man both 
 in his individual and in his organic life, and every 
 minor degree of oppression is the snapping of a 
 bond which knits one man to his fellows, and 
 the whole man to God. The oppressed man 
 does not live. There are no crimes so great as 
 political crimes. To break faith with a nation 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 77 
 
 is to break a deeper trust, to blight a fuller hope, 
 than can be involved in any treachery towards 
 an individual. Who is this, the true Antichrist, 
 he that denieth the Father and the Son, but the 
 absolutist, the tyrant ? We are not surely suf 
 ficiently sensible of the Atheism involved in the 
 deep iniquity of oppression. It is the denial of 
 God, through the denial of man ; the setting up 
 of what is partial and arbitrary against that 
 which is universal ; in other words, the assertion 
 of will against law." 
 
 11 The Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit 
 of the Lord is there is liberty, because there only 
 is the recognition of man s spiritual prerogative, 
 the freedom of the will, the power to choose. 
 All rational legislation is founded upon the idea 
 of man s being a governable being, and this, in 
 its turn, rests upon the basis of a moral and 
 intelligent Governor of the world. When a 
 community has lost faith in God, it cannot 
 achieve freedom for man, even when it starts, as 
 in the French Revolution, with being fanatically 
 in love with it; it quickly relapses into abso 
 lutism, and the governing of the masses by force. 
 
78 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 All materialism genders to bondage ; it is linked 
 with the ideas of fate and necessity ; they are 
 its powers, and they leave room for but one wor 
 ship, that of the God of Forces. How strange it 
 seems that the idea of liberty should ever be 
 associated with that of lawlessness, when, in 
 fact, it is the arbitrary, which is really unsettled 
 and reversible, depending on the breath which 
 called it forth. All national greatness requires 
 that which can only coexist with freedom, a slow, 
 safe growth under assured protection ; law not 
 depending on power , but power being founded 
 upon law" 
 
 " And how much," resumed Philip, " is the 
 spirit of Freedom connected with the sentiment 
 of nationality ! A slave has no country, no 
 national existence, and wherever there is a 
 strong awakening to liberty, it does not find 
 expression, as might have been looked for, in a 
 broad cosmopolitanism, but in bringing out more 
 fully the distinctive physiognomy of each people. 
 When a nation grows, it grows as an individ 
 ual does, in its own shape. I sometimes wonder 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 79 
 
 how far this tendency will act upon the future 
 destinies of the great Church of Christ. - There 
 is nothing more evident in the whole history of 
 the Church of Rome, than its hostility to all de 
 velopment of a national kind, its determination 
 to mould, at whatever cost, the European world 
 to its own pattern." 
 
 " Will it any longer," I said, " receive that 
 pattern ? " 
 
 " I know not ; but Rome s hand, ever firm 
 linked with that of material despotism, cannot 
 now, in the nature of things, lie so heavy on the 
 nations, as in the days when these two gave 
 their power and strength to each other. Will 
 the breaking up of Popery be connected with 
 the rise of churches really national, able to feed 
 the flocks of which they are the guardians; 
 churches built upon the rock of Christ, in all 
 that concerns faith and doctrine, yet, because 
 Christ lives, living also, advancing with the ad 
 vancing age, able to understand its needs, to in 
 terpret its aspirations, to give it back those 
 very aspirations, clothed as Aaron was, in gar 
 ments of glory and of beauty, churches whose 
 
80 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 priests, like those of old, will go before the 
 people? It seems to me that the Church of 
 Scotland, if not such a Church as this, is at 
 least a national Church, fitting the national 
 character, so that it is hard to say whether it 
 was made for the Scotch, or they for it ; it is the 
 educator and guide of the people, the expres 
 sion of their intellectual and spiritual life, the 
 home of the poor man s affections and hopes. 
 Such also, I believe, but here I cannot speak 
 from personal observation, is Roman Catholicism 
 in Ireland; a guide, a companion, a familiar 
 friend, that to which the national heart turns. 
 In England the Established Church has missed 
 this ; it has not won the heart of the poor." 
 
 " And yet," I said, " the Church of England 
 also represents England, and perhaps in that 
 aspect of it, which falls short of what exalted 
 minds desire, it illustrates a very valuable part 
 of the national character. The tendency of the 
 English mind is practical, it is not remorseless 
 in its logical requirements ; it is content to leave 
 many things as it finds them, undetermined, 
 to work with them as they are. The English 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 81 
 
 mind has never shown itself in love with an 
 ideal ; in political things it has never drawn 
 forth the image of liberty, in clear abstract per 
 fection, as the French have done. Freedom 
 does not sit for her picture in England. Why 
 should she, when we have her going in and out 
 among us, a daily household friend, whose fea 
 tures are too familiar to be much noticed ? So 
 in the things of God, the English mind is one 
 that must have room. It sees that the Bible is 
 not a systematic book, neither is the Church a 
 symmetrical building, nor the exigencies of the 
 human spirit of the kind that can be sounded 
 by line, or mapped out by compass, and it does 
 not insist upon making them what they are 
 not." 
 
 "In individuals," said Philip, "I can see how 
 the very desire for completeness springs from a 
 limited view of life, from failing to see how 
 great, complicated, and out-reaching a thing it 
 is. To minds of this class all truth appears 
 under a strict and absolute aspect, to which life 
 as it is cannot respond ; this, joined to a pure 
 and rigid conscientiousness, gives you the man 
 
82 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 who, like Lamennais, breaks not only the whole 
 purpose of his life, but his heart itself, over his 
 fair, unfound ideal. Among all nations, the 
 English, as you say, have least of this, and of 
 that which goes along with it, a tendency to 
 fanaticism, where the mind is so driven up to a 
 single truth, as to seek to explain all nature by 
 it, wrenching, lopping off whatever does not, 
 will not, fit. But, on the other hand, we miss 
 in some degree what the more ardent, if more 
 limited, nature arrives at, that which makes 
 martyrs, missionaries." 
 
 " And yet," I said, " even here we have not 
 been found wanting, and shall not be. There 
 is a practical enthusiasm, and this is ours ; an 
 energy which will not kindle up for an abstract 
 truth, but which, once convinced of the motive 
 excellence of such, once finding it work towards 
 a tangible, worthy aim, will carry it out with 
 unflinching perseverance. All that the English 
 nation needs is to believe more implicity than 
 it has yet done, and then it will work wonders. 
 It is now high noon with us ; what we, with the 
 universal Church, need, is the midday miracle, 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 83 
 
 the Light, like that which appeared unto Saul 
 of Tarsus, above the brightness of the. sun, in 
 the clear conviction of the understanding, the 
 full consent of the will, the turning of the heart 
 to God, whose Word endureth forever in 
 heaven. When we believe in miracles, when we 
 expect them, then we shall see them, then we shall 
 work them, and not until then" 
 
 " Some years ago," said Philip, " I read some 
 interesting tracts on Church subjects by a Mr. 
 Applegarth, in which he remarked that there 
 had always been a lurking Pelagianism in the 
 Church of England. I did not understand at 
 the time what he meant ; but since then I have 
 seemed to discover this tendency, in its remark 
 able deadness to the gifts and calling of the Holy 
 Spirit. Any drawing to a closer and more devot 
 ed walk with Christ is apt to be set down to the 
 score of enthusiasm, and is not recognized, as I 
 think it is in almost every other communion, as 
 coming from God. Witness the pertinacious 
 attachment of Presbyterianism to its called 
 ministry, the leadings of Quakers and Mora 
 vians, the vocation of the Church of Rome. 
 
84 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 There is a timidity and half-heartedness about 
 us in this matter, which is unworthy of what we 
 are in others ; a want of clearly recognizing the 
 consequences of those great spiritual facts which 
 we speculatively accept as true. 
 
 " And I think the same timidity and want of 
 confidence in a Divine leading is shown in our 
 superstitious dread of discussion and alteration. 
 A people that believes the Bible to be from God 
 will not fear to appeal often and searchingly to 
 human reason ; a Church that believes in the 
 Trinity will not be very jealous to retain the 
 Athanasian Creed. In true faith there is noth 
 ing of a vice-like, mechanical grasp ; its hold is 
 firm and free ; because it holds with the living 
 hand, it can afford to let go what it no longer 
 needs, while Formalism is like the false mother 
 in Solomon s judgment, it cares not whether the 
 child be alive or dead, so long as it is there, to 
 be shown when it is asked for. It seems ad 
 mitted now on all hands, that our Church would 
 gain much by adaptation and elasticity ; shorter 
 and more varied services, a fuller recognition of 
 the services of the laity, would do much to en- 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 85 
 
 dear her to the people. Yet we run on in the 
 accustomed groove. The most difficult -chapters 
 from the Old Testament are constantly read in 
 our churches ; but when the sermon comes, it 
 contains no word of comment, of explanation ; it 
 makes no attempt to throw light upon those yet 
 more difficult passages of human experience, to 
 which our hearts, our homes, every hour bear 
 witness, and which it is the glory of the Gospel 
 to reconcile : it is generally the Gospel unap 
 plied. The views which are presented to us are 
 true, but brought into no relation with what we 
 are doing or thinking about. God s commands 
 are as little arbitrary as they are grievous ; there 
 is in the two Sacraments, in Prayer, in all things 
 ordained by Him, a rationale : why not some 
 times present us with it ? " 
 
 " One thing," returned Philip, " is abundantly 
 significant of our present time ; it will not, as 
 former ages have done, rest under the shadow 
 of forms and creeds in which it does not believe. 
 In reading the history of those times, you must 
 have been struck with the real, yet wholly un- 
 vivifying belief, which people of the most evil 
 
86 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 hearts and lives kept upon the great central 
 truths of revelation, and this in the case of both 
 Catholics and Protestants. A trebly-dyed mur 
 derer, like Leicester, commends himself in his 
 will ; to the alone merits of Jesus Christ, with 
 a fervor which is not quite hypocrisy, but some 
 thing which is, I think, even more fearful. Noth 
 ing is to me more strange and appalling than 
 their general acceptance of these truths as math 
 ematical certainties, as things laid alongside of 
 their actual life, without ever touching or quick 
 ening their spiritual consciousness. I have seen 
 something of this in a less repulsive form among 
 the poor of our own age, belief and conscience 
 running on in two parallel lines which never 
 meet ; also, among people of the last generation, 
 a belief in revelation, and a respect for it, which 
 is not vivifying, and yet is belief, if not faith. 
 But we do not, cannot, so accept these eternal 
 verities. Our age needs more, asks more. Its 
 Church must be a sheltering tree, stretching out 
 her boughs unto the river, and her branches 
 unto the sea; not a pyramid, however awful 
 and venerable, that does but cast a shadow across 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 87 
 
 the desert. How significant are the notices, that 
 now reach us, from those who are famrliar with 
 the signs of spiritual life on the Continent ! 
 Materialism making rapid strides, both in Prot 
 estant and Romish countries ; persons of the 
 class who would formerly have lived under the 
 forms of religion, without being influenced by its 
 power, are now rejecting it as a whole, professing 
 open disbelief in all save that which can be seen 
 and experienced ; denying the capability of man 
 to know anything of the unseen world. And 
 yet, alongside of this, in Protestant and Romish 
 countries alike, is growing up a counter move 
 ment ; sometimes shown, as in part of the Lu 
 theran Church, in a return and a passionate 
 attachment to the old forms and creeds, which 
 are now to it things having and giving life ; 
 sometimes appearing under less-defined outlines ; 
 a soul, perhaps, that still wants a body to work 
 in ; a desire of the heart towards Christ and his 
 appearing. There is at present a sifting of the 
 nations, and when it is over, this that cannot be 
 shaken will remain. It sometimes seems to me 
 that we are on the verge of a great constructive 
 
88 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 era. Men are beginning to repair the old wastes, 
 the desolations of many generations. The Crit 
 ical is now having its day ; we may compare its 
 work to that clearing away, which is the first 
 sign of improvement ; but its day must pass, as 
 nothing of a simply negative kind can be lasting. 
 Then comes a glad rebuilding, of which I can 
 but prophesy dimly ; but I foresee that the per 
 son and work of Christ will be its centre. 
 
 " And He, when he is lifted up, will draw 
 all men unto him. Is there not among us a 
 manifest desire for union, an impatience of those 
 Shibboleths, those inner tests, which, in Protes 
 tant countries, tend to needless exclusivism and 
 separation ; an impatience with all that, like the 
 arrogant pretensions of Rome, making itself 
 alone in the earth, renders equal communion 
 and reciprocal interchange impossible ? Is there 
 not now among us a core of vital religion, a 
 hidden Church waiting as a fruit-tree in spring 
 will wait long, all set with blossom, for a day 
 warm enough to blow in, a day when it will blow 
 all at once ? " 
 
OMETTMES," said Philip, calling 
 many tendencies of our age to mind, 
 I wonder whether, as regards spirit 
 ual science, our future may not be more synthet 
 ical than any past age has been ; will there not 
 be less of analysis, of separation, a greater 
 disposition to look at things in their mutual re 
 lation ? The study of natural science is ever 
 tending to form this habit of mind within us." 
 
 " So much so," I said, " that even in art we 
 can scarcely now be satisfied with that which 
 does not, at least by implication, present us with 
 something of the whole. Whatever is painted 
 lovingly, whether broadly or minutely, does 
 this. David Cox flings you down a page of 
 nature in writing, scarcely legible from emotion ; 
 rough, blurred lines bring before you the wet 
 
90 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 reaches of sand, the ever-widening moor, the 
 darkening sky, the wind blowing where it list- 
 eth, and make you feel as if you were among 
 them, bound within the wings of sadness, 
 beauty, and mystery, and carried you know not 
 whither. So will one of W. Hunt s moss- 
 grown, leafy, primrose-studded hedge-banks 
 give you the breath and bloom of spring, the 
 sense of the woods and fields, and of the broad 
 open sky, within the compass of a few square 
 inches. But there is a way of depicting nature 
 and life, which, because we feel that it is not 
 true to the whole, satisfies the understanding as 
 little as it delights the heart; it takes feature 
 by feature, and yet the picture is not like, be 
 cause the expression that which belongs to the 
 whole, and cannot be had without it is not 
 there. Thackeray, for instance, takes up some 
 fair and cherished ideal of humanity, pulls it in 
 pieces, and says, You thought this was a lovely, 
 breathing form ; you loved it, mourned over it, 
 but see, it is a doh 1 ; it never lived, its eyes are 
 glass, I can show you the wires by which they 
 open and shut. This withered flower that you 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 91 
 
 have kept within your heart s book so long, 
 that its leaves still open at the place where it is 
 pressed, is not a flower ; it never drank in the 
 dew, or spread its leaves in the sunshine. Your 
 treasure is a thing of shreds and patches, held 
 together by a little gum. Yet life is still beau 
 tiful and beloved. Love and truth and con 
 stancy, all things the human heart believes in, 
 remain ; and that heart is still greater than the 
 things which do surround it, able, if fair and 
 noble things were not, to create them out of its 
 own wealth." 
 
 " The whole," resumed Philip, " interprets 
 to us the parts, more surely than the parts the 
 whole, so that to judge of any great or good 
 thing fairly we must have the whole before us, 
 we must even presuppose it, in order to a just 
 conception of the parts. To get a true idea of 
 any character or system, we must seize, as Nean- 
 der advises, upon its higher forming element ; 
 I would even go further than he does, and say 
 that we cannot understand the Actual of a char 
 acter or system without in some degree entering 
 into its Ideal, that to which it naturally tends. 
 
92 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 For there is in all things an Ideal, a Divine 
 principle, revealing itself in spite of contradic 
 tory elements, something which it would fain 
 be, yet which it only can be in a sudden, transi 
 tory flash ; as an ordinary face will in some mo 
 ment of satisfied affection, of exalted feeling, be 
 transfigured into beauty and nobleness. Who 
 has not known moments when the whole of a 
 friend s heart has been in his looks and voice ; 
 moments in which a lifetime of goodness and 
 affection has revealed itself, perhaps at the touch 
 of some slight and apparently casual circum 
 stance? And I think it is for this that the 
 general heart of humanity has been ever dis 
 posed to set such a seemingly disproportionate 
 value upon sudden acts of self-sacrifice and 
 heroic daring, deeds like those of the Chevalier 
 d Assas, that though they occupy but a mo 
 ment, the whole of a life is in them. Moments 
 of sudden emergency leave, it is true, no time 
 for choice, for reflection, for much that makes 
 an action morally great ; but they are like the 
 lightning s flash across the spirit, bringing out 
 its lineaments in clear and awful distinctness. 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 93 
 
 Such deeds give us a great soul speaking in its 
 unguarded sleep, showing us what it truly is. 
 And the less exalted aspects of life have also at 
 a lower level their consistency ; the whole tree 
 is in its every leaf; the whole body ,. soul, and 
 spirit of man is in some degree in his every 
 action. When a person is known intimately, 
 each of his movements and gestures bears a 
 characteristic stamp ; even a garment he has 
 worn becomes instinct with life and individu 
 ality ; it suggests the familiar face, it is filled out 
 with the well-known form. This, we say, be 
 longs to him. So may God be discerned in Hu 
 manity, so may Christ be seen in his Church." 
 
 " And yet," I said, " as regards this last 
 great subject, how poor, insufficient, and there 
 fore practically inefficient, are our conceptions ! 
 The Bible, as De Maistre says, clearly intimates 
 that the Church is as necessary to Christ as he 
 is to the Church ; it is emphatically the fulness 
 of him who filleth all in all.* This wonderful 
 saying shows us that unity is the end of all the 
 Divine plans with regard to us. Even Christ is 
 
 * Ephesians i. 23. 
 
94 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 only complete through the building up of his 
 body, the Church : we are complete in him ; he 
 is completed in us. His words are not only 
 4 You in me, but also, I in you : the Head of 
 the great body says not to any one of his mem 
 bers, I have no need of thee. The Epistles 
 are full of references to the organic life of the 
 Church ; the building up of this breathing 
 house not made with hands is spoken of as a 
 gradual work, a work which moves alto 
 gether, if it moves at all; the whole body, St. 
 Paul tells us, grows through that which every 
 joint supplieth. They also testify to a common, 
 a transferable spiritual property ; a bread some 
 times of affliction, sometimes of rejoicing, of 
 which 4 all are partakers. If we be afflicted, 
 says St. Paul, it is for your salvation which 
 is wrought in the enduring of the same suffer 
 ings which we also suffer, or whether we be 
 comforted, it is for your consolation and salva 
 tion. 4 We also, he says again, are weak in 
 Christ, but we shall live by the power of God 
 toward you. He speaks further of individual 
 poverty, which tends, and not indirectly, to 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 95 
 
 the general wealth, We are fools for Christ s 
 sake, but ye are wise in Christ ; we are weak, 
 but ye are strong ; and intimates that the 
 prayers of 4 many helping together will bring 
 upon Timothy and himself a blessing for which 
 * many will return thanks. Nay, he does not 
 even limit this reciprocal interchange, this mu 
 tual interest and help, to the members of the 
 human family, whether militant on earth or 
 rejoicing in heaven. How many of his deep 
 sayings, such as Col. i. 20, Eph. i. 10, imply 
 that the benefits of Christ s great sacrifice have 
 a bearing beyond that family, such as bring it 
 into relations with other and spiritual orders 
 of existence. Who knows upon what worlds, 
 what systems, Christian prayer and effort even 
 now tells ? It was not to men only that St. 
 Paul s commission was addressed. He preached 
 among them the unsearchable riches of Christ, 
 to the intent that the manifold wisdom of God 
 might be made known to principalities and 
 powers in heavenly places through the Church 
 which was thus founding. See Eph. iii. 10. 
 4 The fellowship of the mystery he there speaks 
 
96 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 of is a mystery of fellowship, one that fellowship 
 only can admit us to." 
 
 " You have quoted De Maistre," said Philip, 
 thoughtfully ; " do not these expressions, at 
 least in the sense in which you receive them, 
 and I do not see how they will bear any 
 other, come very near his favorite theory 
 of reversibility ? " 
 
 " Not nearer," I returned, " than Baxter 
 comes, when he speaks of his own times a truth 
 that holds good of all : It is because we have 
 so few high saints among us, that we have so 
 many low sinners, and not nearer certainly 
 than life itself comes. In the meanest thing of 
 every day, no man liveth, no man dieth unto 
 himself, so inwrapt and interfolded are human 
 destinies in the continual action and reaction 
 that goes on through life. And if it is thus 
 with the outward course of things, dealing with 
 what is material and secular, how much more so 
 in that great unseen order where finer springs 
 are touched to surer issues, the spiritual life of 
 man ! The Christian is one who in w r ork and 
 life and prayer 4 strengthens himself for the 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 97 
 
 sake of many ; he belongs consciously to a king 
 dom in which there is nothing unrelated.", 
 
 " True," said Philip, " and a time comes to 
 the soul when individualism becomes cramping, 
 narrowing ; when we feel conscious that we 
 cannot breathe and move freely either in work 
 or prayer, except through the universal organic 
 whole." 
 
 " What," I resumed, " is Christianity itself, 
 but living to the whole instead of living to the 
 part f It gives the heart Christ instead of self 
 for its spring and centre ; it says unto it, 4 Be 
 hold the Man ; not Paul now, nor Apollos, 
 not even Christ Jesus himself as a man ; if we 
 have known him as such in a merely personal 
 relation, we know him as such no more, but as 
 the great High-Priest standing before Crod in 
 the place of humanity, whose sins, whose griefs, 
 and burdens, he has taken upon himself, first 
 born among many brethren. Ecce Homo ! the 
 earliest impression I ever received of Christ was 
 from a colored engraving, with these words be 
 neath it ; I remember distinctly the place where 
 it used to hang ; the crown of thorns, the bleed- 
 5 o 
 
98 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 ing forehead, the kind and sorrowful counte 
 nance. I remember, as a very little child, 
 asking what the two Latin words meant ; how 
 long have I been in learning their full mean 
 ing ! Protestantism has done much for the 
 world by its consistent testimony to moral re 
 sponsibility, by its faithful education of the 
 individual spirit ; but from the exclusive stress 
 it lays upon what is individual and interior, 
 it bears but feeble witness to one organic spir 
 itual unity ; to the fact that we, being many 
 members, are one body in Christ. Roman 
 Catholicism has loudly proclaimed this unity; 
 it has been its lot to keep and to transmit a 
 secret which it has not apparently understood. 
 It has testified that the human race, whether 
 in Adam or in Christ, is one; but it has 
 missed the contingent necessary truth, that be 
 cause we are one, because we possess organic 
 life, that life will assume different manifesta 
 tions. All that lives grows, and grows after its 
 own fashion ; it is only that which is made, 
 ready made, which can be reproduced a thou 
 sand times over, in any age or in any clime, in 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 99 
 
 the order and pattern desired. This truth, 
 Popery, waiting from age to age to devour 
 the man-child of mental and spiritual freedom 
 so soon as it should be born, has ignored, has 
 trampled under foot, and even yet, wherever 
 Popery continues in the ascendant there can be 
 no harmonious development, no free, progressive 
 life, none of that mutual help and enlighten 
 ment, each supplying what each needs, which is 
 the soul and life-breath of Church fellowship. 
 Stiff with its own infallibility, the Church of 
 Rome sits before Christendom like the enchan 
 ter before the lady in Comus, ready to chain up 
 its nerves in alabaster." 
 
 "It is not hard, I think," said Philip, "to 
 contemplate Catholicity apart from Popery." 
 
 " And in that case," I continued, " not hard 
 to see how Catholicity still holds to her heart 
 this flower, the unity of man! Often has its 
 fragrance, as that of a flower cast forth to perish, 
 come across me in lonely and uncultured places, 
 making the desert glad ; here only I find it 
 planted in the garden of the Lord, and drawing 
 round it, as thick as bees in summer, every ten- 
 
100 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 der and hopeful thought. There are in the 
 world many kinds of voices, and none of them 
 without signification ; wandering, wind-awak 
 ened tones seeming to die upon the air that calls 
 them forth, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, the 
 sound of a trumpet and the voice of words. 
 But what has it been to me to recognize this 
 
 O 
 
 voice, dear in the poet s song, the patriot s vis 
 ion, sweet even in its most bitter accents, 
 wrung from the heart of some stern, solitary- 
 thinker grown desperate over this world s 
 wrong ; what has it been to me to hear it speak 
 ing to us no longer in parables, but showing us 
 plainly of the Father ? What but the awakening 
 into a blissful dream ? The intellect has many 
 illusions ; but the dreams of the heart come 
 true, because the instinct of the heart is pro 
 phetic. Catholicity, or, in other words, apos 
 tolic Christianity, is the fulfilment of the heart s 
 best dream ; it contemplates humanity as one, 
 and as such aims at its restoration; as One 
 fallen in Adam, as One redeemed in Christ ; it 
 works ever towards the whole, its task is to 
 bring back the One to the One, humanity to 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 101 
 
 God. It looks also upon the individual man as 
 one, a being spiritual, rational, and v sensitive, 
 and as such provides him with food convenient 
 for him ; it gives us no manna of mere spiritu 
 ality, angels food, thin and unsatisfying ; but 
 sets before us bread, the bread of which Christ 
 said, 4 It is my flesh, which I will give for the 
 life of the world. It does not throw the whole 
 strain of spiritual life upon a moment, a feeling, 
 a movement of the heart, of which, at some 
 other moment and under some other feeling, the 
 heart itself may doubt ; it receives us while 
 yet passive ; unconscious of either good or evil, 
 it takes us up within its arms to bless us. It 
 makes not upon the heart that continual, ex 
 haustive demand, Faith, faith, but lays within 
 it faith s deep foundation ; it declares of our 
 spiritual Zion that this Man was born there, 
 and proclaims that the Highest doth even now 
 inhabit her ; it brings forth the headstone with 
 shoutings of Grace, grace. 
 
 " Catholicity," said Philip, " is great in this, 
 that while it leaves within it room and scope 
 for the most ardent personal aspiration, for the 
 
102 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 closest individual union with Christ that the 
 heart can claim, it does not leave the heart to it 
 self, to its own experiences, its own aspirations. 
 It regards humanity as a field which the Lord 
 hath blessed, as a soil where the good seed is al 
 ready sown, and needs but to be quickened and 
 developed. It brings Christ into the foreground 
 of spiritual life, and lets life root itself round his 
 life. It lifts before the soul its great Object, 
 that which alone can lift it up ; through rite, 
 through creed, through symbol, it brings the 
 human spirit into neighborhood with Christ, and 
 lets it grow up gradually unto him." 
 
 u Catholicity," I continued, " requires noth 
 ing from the individual but sincerity ; its con 
 gregation, like that of the Israelites, are all holy 
 de jure ; all, until reprobate and self- excluded, 
 are citizens of no mean city. They have noth 
 ing to prove, nothing to keep up before men ; 
 let but their light burn unto God, it may take 
 care of its own shining. It is easy to see how 
 different a position the individual holds in com 
 munities where the test of fellowship is inward, 
 as among the Baptist and other of the stricter 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 103 
 
 Protestant sects, where membership in Christ 
 is not admitted until the individual lias gone 
 through a conscious spiritual change. There, 
 even in the countenance, you can often trace 
 a painful constraint and self-consciousness, as 
 of persons committed to a standard of feeling 
 which they may not be at all times equal to 
 maintain. The spirit of man, we all know, 
 
 Is competent to win 
 Heights which it is not competent to keep. " 
 
 "The heart of man," said Philip, "is too 
 weak to be forever self-regulating. Christ is 
 to his Church what the sun is to the world, 
 its great universal clock, to which the whole 
 system is so adapted, that a flower opens and 
 shuts to the same law by which the heavenly 
 bodies move. In Catholicity there is little of 
 stimulus and pressure ; little to fear from those 
 sharp collapses which are their inevitable result. 
 It lifts the strain from self to Christ ; it is evi 
 dently made for man ; suited for Mm as he is 
 now. But is there not also something beautiful 
 in the Protestant ideal of a Church, striving 
 
104 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 as it does to antedate the time when God s 
 people shall be all righteous ? Something in it, 
 too, which answers to that deep-seated longing 
 for inner purity, that desire after perfection, 
 which must, as things are at present constituted, 
 ever defeat itself, and yet ever form part of true 
 
 Christian consciousness ? And what, after 
 
 all," resumed Philip, thoughtfully, "is a sect 
 but the recognition of a Church ? the effort to 
 tighten the bonds which, in the great national 
 churches, are apt to hang so loosely as to be 
 scarcely felt ? There is something in Chris 
 tianity, if we examine its history closely, which 
 always for its full development requires an inner 
 circle, a church within the church. It has 
 found this in the Sect, the Order; it finds it 
 too, in many an English parish, in a humble, 
 healthful, almost unsuspected shape, in the work 
 which, under good organization, grows up nat 
 urally about the Church. I once lived in a 
 large manufacturing village, where a numer 
 ously attended Sunday school became such a 
 spiritual centre, and possessed all the attractive, 
 binding energy I speak of; the more thought- 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 105 
 
 fill persons of every class being drawn out as 
 teachers, meeting the clergyman for prayer and 
 reading of the Scriptures, with an especial refer 
 ence to the common work ; while these> in their 
 turn, influenced the more seriously disposed 
 young people, to whom the care of the very 
 little ones was committed. I often recall these 
 younger teachers, factory boys and girls, some 
 of them even unable to read very fluently, yet 
 most successful in the management of their 
 infant classes. How attached they were to 
 their little pupils, visiting them when sick, and 
 taking them various small comforts ! How 
 affectionate to their elder friends ! That was 
 the only place," said Philip, smiling, " where I 
 was ever serenaded ! My boys knew my fa 
 vorite hymns, and used to sing them under 
 my window in summer evenings. All things 
 seemed to unite us more closely, the mirth 
 of our yearly festivals ; the happy deaths of 
 some among us ; even the sorrowful fallings 
 away of some that at first did run well; the 
 losses belonging to every great gain ; the dis 
 appointments inseparable from every real work : 
 
 5* 
 
106 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 in all things we were as members, rejoicing and 
 
 suffering together 
 
 " Again, . in large towns you will find an 
 interest in the great Christian societies, such as 
 those connected with foreign missions, or active 
 local work among the destitute and fallen, work 
 ing the same effect in calling forth the more 
 intimate spiritual affections. There is no such 
 firm, such attaching bond, as that of prayer and 
 a common work for Christ. A common work 
 tends to a common life, fuller than the individual 
 can ever live. How can one, being alone, be 
 warm? Do you remember the almost secret 
 associations established during the last century, 
 a period of great license in the Nation, and of 
 great coldness in the Church, for the refor 
 mation of manners ? societies so humble in 
 their scope, and so quiet in their action, that 
 it is now difficult to gather any exact account 
 of them. They are only to be traced back in 
 the works which have followed them, not only 
 discernible in sweeter manners, purer laws, 
 but in their direct historical connection with the 
 great religious and missionary societies which 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 107 
 
 now go through the length and breadth of our 
 land. It is evident that our spiritual and our 
 natural life are alike in this, that each needs, 
 from time to time, to be refreshed, quickened, 
 by something not within ourselves. We require 
 the reciprocal action of heart upon heart, life 
 calling forth life. Even in natural things there 
 is no fulness except through participation ; and 
 I myself have been long persuaded that we do 
 not fully live unto Christ except through mutual 
 communion. How significant is that saying of 
 St. John s, If we walk in the light, as he is in 
 the light, we have fellowship one with another ! 
 And there is surely a mystery in our Saviour s 
 words, Where two or three are gathered 
 together in my name, there am I in the midst 
 of them. The genius of the old Dispensation 
 was individual, God speaking to the soul of 
 patriarch and prophet, and receiving for answer, 
 4 Here am /. The new Covenant knows little 
 of solitary manifestations. When Jesus is to be 
 transfigured, he taketh with him Peter and 
 James and John ; when the Holy Spirit is to be 
 given, the disciples are all assembled with one 
 accord, in one place." 
 
108 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 As I looked at Philip, and saw how he 
 warmed and almost grew with his great theme, 
 I was reminded of the sermon some mediaeval 
 divine preached upon it to the text, " Philip 
 and Bartholomew," the last-named of these two 
 disciples being never mentioned in Holy Writ 
 except in connection with the former. 
 
 " And there is yet another side," he contin 
 ued, " from which it is well to look at this sub 
 ject. In the frequent darkness and deadness 
 of the human spirit, how strange, how power 
 fully re-enforcing is the influence of true com 
 munion ! You, I know, from some cheerfulness 
 of my voice and aspect, find it hard to think of 
 me but as strong and equal ; you do not easily 
 believe that I, like yourself, am visited by 
 moods in which earth seems desolate, and 
 heaven even geographically a long way off, with 
 all lines of communication broken. At such 
 seasons how does one desire a gale, a lift; to be 
 taken up like a little bird under the wing of a 
 strong eagle, and brought nearer the sun ! But 
 does it ever come to you to suffer under an 
 anguish of unbelief, of a rational, or apparently 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 109 
 
 rational, irresistible kind, when some dark, be 
 sieging thought, which the soul can neither 
 answer nor dismiss, comes forward in a form so 
 fixed and definite, that reason seems spell-bound 
 before it ; and though the heart and spirit pro 
 test, it is so feebly as to appear almost like con 
 sent ? This state of mind is, I think, the hard 
 est of all to bear, because it is one which leaves 
 the soul no place to flee unto ; it is hunted from 
 one desolation to another. I shall never forget 
 a day of this kind last summer ; a day out 
 wardly of golden warmth and sweetness ; of 
 quiet, too ; for I was staying in my old parish 
 in the country. In the evening a few of my 
 young men, Sunday scholars and pupil-teachers, 
 with whom, five years ago, I had spent many a 
 happy, well-remembered hour, came in to see 
 and welcome me. It was an effort to me, under 
 such circumstances, to appear so glad to see 
 them as I should naturally have felt ; a still 
 greater effort to pass into any intercourse be 
 yond that of kindly chat and greetings ; yet I 
 made it, and we had reading and talk and 
 prayer together as of old. I cannot describe to 
 
110 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 you the effect this little hour of prayer and of 
 true communion had upon me ; even like that 
 of the bursting of a dark thunder-cloud, and it 
 affected me in this way. I felt that Christ and 
 the Holy Spirit, regeneration, and the blessed, 
 glorious hopes that the Gospel holds out to us, 
 are at any rate as real as the gulfs set between 
 man and all that he seems made for, sin, indif 
 ference, despair, as real as all that had per 
 plexed me ; these, too, are/acfc, historic, living 
 facts, met and answered by the heart to which 
 they are addressed, meeting our deep need. At 
 that time I could not have prayed alone ; a wind 
 from the desert, a dry, searching breath, would 
 have swept my words ; I needed to pass out of 
 my own soul, wasted and girt with fire, into the 
 freedom of less harassed spirits. Seasons like 
 these have made me think much on the subject 
 of communion and its deep inward blessedness. 
 To know, as I do, looking over the country at 
 this moment, till my eye rests upon the remote 
 edge of the horizon, that there is a poor man or 
 woman living there who believes, and loves, and 
 prays, makes me a happier, abler Christian. To 
 
TWO FRIENDS. Ill 
 
 borrow an illustration from nature, do you 
 know that ice cannot change to water^ or water 
 to steam, until the temperature of the whole 
 has been raised to a certain level ? We cannot 
 raise the temperature of a thawing mass of ice 
 until we have thawed the whole ; until all the 
 ice has passed into water, all the water into 
 steam. Any heat short of the amount required 
 to produce these changes becomes latent and 
 disappears ; it is absorbed in producing these 
 changes. How much Christian energy and 
 love disappears, sinks below the surface, in this 
 way, depressed by the low level of the sur 
 rounding atmosphere. 
 
 " As the world is, the few earnest Christians 
 scattered here and there in it, one in a family, 
 a few in a city, are enough to keep the mass 
 from freezing ; but their life, we may say, is 
 spent in keeping up their life : 
 
 A flower that, bold and patient, thrusts its way 
 Through stony chinks, lives on from day to day, 
 But little shows of fragrance or of bloom. 
 
 How sorely in social life will the want of gen 
 erous and exalted aims, the absence of lofty and 
 
112 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 kindly traditions, affect a whole community ! 
 It is hard to be always in opposition ; even the 
 nobler mind will in some degree succumb to 
 what it continually meets, becoming, like the 
 dyer s hand, subdued to that it works in. 
 How different it is when heart is met by heart, 
 and hand helped out by hand, as is sometimes, 
 if too seldom, seen in a household that have 
 among them but one heart and one mind, and 
 that the mind which was in Christ Jesus ! A 
 home wherein earthly affections, without losing 
 their characteristic sweetness, have been made 
 to bear the image of the heavenly ; where love 
 between child and parent, between husband and 
 wife, has been transfigured into a more perfect 
 likeness ; where to brotherly kindness, a natural 
 bond which is strong, but not always tender, has 
 been 4 added the spiritual tie of charity. What 
 is there too hard for such a family to undertake 
 and to accomplish?" 
 
 Philip took from his pocket-book a little 
 prayer, which he had found, he told me, in a 
 very old collection : 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 113 
 
 for Cfwst s 
 
 " But how unthankful I am, and sorrowless, Lord, thou 
 knowest, for my heart is not hid from thee. be merciful 
 unto me, good Father, and grant me the Spirit of thy chil 
 dren, to reveal unto me my ignorance of thy kingdom, my 
 poverty, and perversity, that I may lament the same, and 
 daily labor for thy help and thy Holy Spirit to suppress the 
 kingdom of sin in myself and others. Again, grant me that 
 same, thy Holy Spirit, to reveal to me thy kingdom of power, 
 grace, and glory ; to kindle mine affections towards it; to 
 renew me more and more ; to reign in me as in a piece of 
 thy kingdom ; to give me to desire, to pray, and to labor for 
 thy kingdom, loth to myself and others ; that the power, ex 
 cellence, and majesty of thy kingdom may be known among 
 men" 
 
 We were both long silent. Philip resumed : 
 " Do you not think that the secret of the ex 
 traordinary hold of Methodism upon the English 
 poor lies in the strict and intimate communion 
 which forms so essential a part of it ? Before 
 John Wesley commenced that great revival 
 of spiritual religion which was blest to whole 
 counties, towns, villages, and the fruits of which 
 are still to be found, not only in many a remote 
 and many a populous district in England, but 
 
114 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 in America, Sweden, and almost the whole of 
 Protestant Christendom, he describes himself as 
 having walked many miles to see and discourse 
 with a serious person, who said to him, You 
 must either find companions or make them ; 
 there is no such thing as going to heaven 
 alone. Methodism is eminently social ; its idea 
 is that of journeying Zion wards in companies, 
 gathering as they go ; husbands, wives, friends, 
 servants, little ones, leaving not a hoof be 
 hind ; its activities are ever aggressive, its 
 sympathies ever widening ; 
 
 * We weep for those who weep below, 
 
 And burdened, for the afflicted sigh; 
 The various forms of human woe 
 Attract our softest sympathy. " 
 
 " True," I said, " I know no more singular 
 contrast than to turn, as I have lately done, 
 from Wesley s hymns to those of Augustus 
 Toplady, in their way as fine as any in our 
 language, but admitting us into a world in which 
 there is God and the individual soul only ; no 
 breath or whisper to tell of any other creature, 
 the hymn goes up straight like a flame or dart ; 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 115 
 
 it is Jacob s ladder into heaven without either 
 man or angel ascending or descending -the shin 
 
 ing stairs." 
 
 " Have you seen," continued Philip, "a book 
 called Ploughing and Sowing, by a lady deeply 
 interested in the improvement of the boys and 
 young men employed on the great farms in 
 Yorkshire, a class hitherto neglected, and ex 
 posed to the peculiar evils which arise from 
 close association, when, as under the Bothy sys 
 tem in Scotland, the humanizing influences of 
 family life are withdrawn. She, the daughter of 
 a clergyman, speaks of Methodism in the part 
 of England she lives in the East Riding of 
 Yorkshire as being a mitigated form of dis 
 sent, involving little feeling of separation from 
 the Church, and no ill-will towards it. She 
 says it is the only real religion of the working 
 classes ; to be brought in and to join a 
 society is with them synonymous with true 
 earnestness in religion, and the conversion of 
 the soul to God. When you are told that such 
 a one is 4 religious, you always find on inquiry 
 that it means he has joined a society ; a well- 
 
116 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 conducted person who has not done so will be 
 spoken of as being very good for a worldly- 
 man. A boy said to the writer, All the folks 
 at our farm are religious except me, and I m 
 going to be so very soon. The boys, influ 
 enced for good by this lady herself a firm 
 Churchwoman seem, with little more than 
 one exception, to become Wesleyans, as if it 
 had been the natural fruit of her admonitions ; 
 they give as one reason, You see, what with 
 class-meetings, and prayer-meetings, and preach 
 ings, Wesleyans have so much more means* 
 than Church people. I know well how much 
 is involved in this last statement, for I have 
 so often, in talking to devout poor people, found 
 that it was the need of a closer warmth of spir 
 itual sympathy, and this need only, that had 
 drawn them from the Church to Methodism, or 
 some other form of dissent. They will tell you 
 that when they first became interested in spir 
 itual things, anxious inquirers after salvation, 
 they found no one in the Church to whom 
 they could open their hearts ; the clergyman 
 
 * I. e. " means of grace." 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 117 
 
 removed from familiar intercourse, fellow Church 
 people of their own class indifferent and. unen 
 lightened." 
 
 " True," I said, " but how much, too, of the 
 strength of Methodism is to be found in its 
 directness. As Napoleon in his grand secret of 
 battle would accumulate all his force upon one 
 point in the enemy s ranks, instead of diffusing 
 it from line to line in a series of desultory 
 attacks, so does this teaching press home upon 
 the soul the one point that it either is or is not 
 turned to God, and urge it, if still reluctant and 
 wavering, to take at once that self-renunciating, 
 self-dedicatory step. Surely there is great, ines 
 timable gain in thus bringing a soul into a felt 
 relation with its God, in making the first step 
 in spiritual progress to consist in a real con 
 scious transaction between the soul and him ; 
 and yet I know that in this very directness 
 there may be danger ; the risk of recoil that 
 follows upon extreme tension, the possibility of 
 mistaking a spasm for a birth." 
 
 " These are dangers," returned Philip, " in 
 herent in every system that makes conversion 
 
118 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 the beginning of life unto God ; they cease to 
 exist when this great fact of spiritual experience 
 is received, as in apostolical teaching, in its con 
 nection with other facts, when it is recognized as 
 growing out of an already established relation 
 between the soul and God." 
 
 " You would then preach conversion," I said, 
 " as being not the soul s birth, but its awakening ; 
 you would set it forth as the turning-point in 
 the direction of the soul s journey, a turning, 
 be it ever remembered, not always needed, for 
 the great family of Christ should surely number 
 with it many plants grown up in their youth/ 
 requiring no violent transformation ; and yet 
 to the great mass of professing Christians a 
 needed change, a change of purpose and of 
 affection worked by the Holy Spirit upon the 
 human soul, a change of which it must in some 
 degree be conscious." 
 
 " Yes," resumed Philip, " as surely as it 
 would be conscious of any earthly love, or hope, 
 or joy. He that believeth hath the witness in 
 himself. And here we touch upon another 
 secret of the strength of Methodism, that it 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 119 
 
 brings the great and comforting reality of pardon 
 and acceptance, the love and peace and joy of 
 believing, into far stronger relief than is usually 
 done in Church teaching. When we consider 
 the state of our lapsed masses, the great gulf 
 their modes of life and thought have fixed 
 between them and all methods of regular in 
 struction and gradual training, we learn to bless 
 a teaching that applies such powerful stimulants, 
 such strong consolations to the soul ; that rouses 
 it from the deadly lethargy of sense and sin, 
 and sends it out, perhaps, to weep in solitary 
 places, to 4 wrestle, as the poor Methodist ex 
 presses it, with its God ; that lifts it from the 
 conflict into the clear sunshine of peace and 
 hope and rejoicing; that leaves it at the feet 
 of Jesus, saying, * I have found him whom 
 my soul loveth. Sudden conversions, with the 
 ecstatic warmth of feeling that follows upon 
 them, are derided, but only by those who know, 
 even as regards natural things, little of the 
 secret powers, the reserved forces of the human 
 spirit, and are unaware that in the depths of 
 ignorant, and hardened, and weary, and dis- 
 
120 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 traded souls there is still a Strength, blind and 
 fettered like that of Samson, needing a shock 
 to set it free. 4 The kingdom of heaven suffer- 
 eth violence, and the violent take it by force. 
 Methodism has entered into the heart of this 
 saying." 
 
 " More deeply, you think, than the Church 
 has done ? " 
 
 " Far more deeply. And yet," continued 
 Philip, " is not the Church, as all-inclusive, 
 able to provide for all exceptional as well as 
 for all ordinary wants ? Should any exigency, 
 whether spiritual or social, whether of the age 
 or of the individual spirit, find her unprepared 
 to meet and minister unto it ? In the whole 
 ness of Catholicity she possesses each gift, each 
 doctrine that, taken in isolation, makes, as it 
 were, the peculiar treasure of the Separated 
 Communions ; she possesses them, but in how 
 many cases as treasure hid! her best things, as 
 in careful households, being too often kept as 
 things of state, rather than used as things of 
 daily service and delight. What does she need, 
 however, but, even like the scriptural house- 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 121 
 
 holder, to bring forth out of her treasure things 
 new and old ; what does she need but -to take 
 up from the heart her ancient, true confession, 
 * I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and 
 Giver of life ? Has this third Divine Person 
 been as yet worshipped and glorified among us 
 together with the Father and the Son ? And yet 
 where shall we meet with a more implicit avowal 
 of dependence upon its Mighty Agency than is 
 to be found in our liturgy ? Our collects have 
 among them but one speech and language ; 
 and this is the confession of natural weakness, 
 joined with the reliance upon supernatural help. 
 O God, forasmuch as without thee we are not 
 able to please thee ; mercifully grant that thy 
 Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule 
 our hearts through Jesus Christ our Lord. 
 When I consider these inspired prayers, and 
 remember how long they have been the life- 
 breath of our National Church, I can but com 
 pare her with the Bride in Canticles, who said, 
 4 1 sleep, but my heart waketh. Her Lord, 
 however, cometh that he may awake her out 
 of sleep. We have long had Eldad and Medad 
 
122 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 prophesying in the camp, fire has broken out 
 in strange remote places, and all that we see 
 within and without us leads us, with a writer 
 of our day, to claim as the world s chiefest 
 blessing a revival in the Catholic Church. Of 
 this revival there are now many signs, and even 
 if we still miss something of an inward spiritual 
 glow, the baptism of the Holy Ghost and of fire, 
 the very statistics of our Church are cheering. 
 She has lighted her candle, and begun to sweep 
 her house diligently ; soon, perhaps, in a closer 
 union with her Head, in a fuller communion 
 with his earthly members, she may call in her 
 friends and neighbors to rejoice with her." 
 
 Philip was silent ; after a long pause I said : 
 " Will not this revival, in becoming more defi 
 nite, take the form of a deepened appreciation 
 of the blessings which the Church has held per 
 haps in a loose grasp, held out with a cold hand, 
 but always held? These will become her gifts, 
 her treasures, rightly divided, lovingly distrib 
 uted among her children, who will become 
 aware of their true value through rational and 
 spiritual recognition. I place these two words 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 123 
 
 together advisedly, for it is the irrational which is 
 above all else the unspiritual; we shall erer find 
 that the least rational view, or in other words 
 the most superstitious one, of any divine ordi 
 nance, is invariably the one which least helps to 
 spirituality. As the mere formalist, who values 
 form for its own sake, and would bind it where 
 it does not grow, is the one person in the world 
 who the least appreciates form s deep signifi 
 cance as being the result of an inner law, the 
 expression which life naturally takes, so is it the 
 person who looks to Baptism or to the Lord s 
 Supper to save him, who blindly and ignorantly 
 accepts the rites of Christianity as an end, the 
 one who least of all enters into their inapprecia 
 ble value as means." 
 
 " And as with its rites," said Philip, " so with 
 its great institutions ; it is those who understand 
 what a Church is, who are the least likely to 
 rest in it, or in anything short of Him to whom 
 it leads. And even so with the Priesthood ; 
 I sometimes feel as if this Order, coexistent 
 with Christianity itself, sometimes unduly ex 
 alted, sometimes unduly depressed, had yet to 
 
124 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 show forth its true beauty, and the general 
 Church yet to learn its true value. How inter 
 esting is it in its connection with national and 
 with family life ; it is impossible, even where 
 this is made an express aim, to detach these 
 bonds, 
 
 As with the priest, so with the people ; 
 As with the people, so with the priest. 
 
 Their standard of dignity, their level of purity, 
 must be ever one ; the fire of the altar is always 
 brought from the household hearth, the hearth 
 kindled from the altar. It is from the earth 
 itself that the salt of the earth is taken. The 
 name of priest has been desecrated till the very 
 word, in some degree, carries with it the idea 
 of something either spiritually despotic, or dryly 
 ecclesiastical and official ; yet what word, what 
 thought is in reality so tender as that of a Man, 
 brought nearer than other men are, at once to man 
 and to God ? When applied to our Lord him 
 self, no other of his offices seems to bring and 
 to keep him beside us in so intimate and human 
 a relation as that of his * unchangeable Priest 
 hood. * He is a Priest forever ; one separate 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 125 
 
 from sinners and undefiled ; and yet, through 
 this very separation, drawn into the-, closest 
 union with Humanity. Christ, when on earth, 
 was upbraided for his freedom and accessibility. 
 4 Behold this man receive th sinners, and eateth 
 with them ; and yet, like Joseph, the very 
 type of bounty and brotherhood, he is one that 
 is separated from his brethren, drawing their 
 souls after him, while he withdraws from their 
 presence. The heart desires one who is greater, 
 purer, kinder, freer than itself, one standing 
 aloof from its conscious falseness, .its self-con 
 fessed littleness ; therefore is Christ, because Tie 
 is lifted up, able to draw all men unto him ; to 
 draw as none other can do, close to Humanity, 
 and to draw it close to him. And as with the 
 Master, so with his true disciples ; there is 
 ever something sacrificial in the Christian s life, 
 something which will ofttimes compel him to 
 4 put a space between his own soul and the 
 souls upon which his desires and prayers are 
 set ; he must free himself from every disturbing 
 element, and be content to depart from his 
 brethren in many things and at many seasons, 
 
126 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 so that he may abide with them forever in a 
 truer, deeper fellowship than any which is 
 founded upon the conditions of an earthly amity. 
 Unsecularity is the strength and glory of the 
 Christian Priesthood ; the Agency they deal 
 with is one which, like that of some great 
 mechanic force, must work apart from that on 
 which it is brought to bear, - its power is lost 
 in conformity, it lives in transformation, in re 
 newal ; it is content to die to its own individual 
 hopes and interests, so that, falling within the 
 wide field of Humanity, it may in dying bring 
 forth much fruit. 
 
ET a little while longer, and Philip 
 and I must part ; we saw before us 
 the point at which our paths would 
 break, never perhaps to be reunited, for the 
 last command of One long loved and followed, 
 " Go teach all nations," had ever been precious 
 to Philip s spirit ; he was now about to obey 
 its leading, and to go forth to fields of labor as 
 yet unbroken, but scarcely more arduous than 
 those in which he had toiled so long. " Even 
 unto this last " had been the motto of Philip s 
 life ; he had chosen his portion among the 
 things that all others reject, and in now devoting 
 himself to the most wronged and most benighted 
 among the nations, he did but follow out the 
 sure and secret instinct which had ever drawn 
 him towards the forlorn, the degraded, and the 
 
128 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 despised. He sailed for Africa in a few weeks. 
 And now that the time of his departure drew 
 nearer, it seemed that our hearts drew closer, 
 so would the idea of that solemn, perhaps life 
 long parting, pervade and deepen all our inter 
 course, and cast a shadow round us, a shadow 
 like that green twilight of the summer woods, 
 which is but the light grown tender. 
 
 And the idea of that utter separation brought 
 with it a strange feeling across my mind ; as 
 if Philip were already severed from my life and 
 all familiar things belonging to it, I seemed even 
 now to view him apart from circumstance, apart 
 from his bodily presence ; he was near to me, 
 and yet afar, like one who has been long dead. 
 Even while we talked together, my mind would 
 sometimes detach itself from the subject we 
 were engaged with, to occupy itself with him, 
 till all that he was grew up before me in clear 
 and defined outline. O that I could but retain 
 some one of these hasty gestures, some one 
 of these sudden, unlooked-for turns of thought 
 in which the deep sincerity of his nature was 
 revealed, that I could bring it back to me, 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 129 
 
 and Philip with it, in days that were yet to 
 come ! Yet it was doubtless expedient, for me 
 that he should go away, for man doth not live 
 by bread alone, not even by that which best 
 nourishes his heart and spirit, but by every 
 word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. 
 And that word was now Farewell. We 
 spent much of our remaining time together ; 
 we spoke often of his future work, and even 
 when we did not speak or consciously think of 
 it, the idea of Africa of its burning sky and 
 sands, its strange and glowing forms of life, its 
 vast undeveloped resources of all that makes 
 it a land of wonder and mystery was so far 
 present to us as to tinge our conversation with 
 something of an unearthly, ideal character. 
 How clearly I can recall those days, which 
 were passed by the sea-shore, the sea which 
 was so soon to part us ; how we would gaze 
 upon it from the rocks, or still looking over it, 
 lie for hours upon the grassy cliffs, and yet 
 keep within our hearts a sense of the rich inland 
 country that lay behind these green, desolate 
 ridges, thick with farms, and villages, and little 
 
130 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 peaceful towns. Even now, through a thin 
 belt of wood in the distance, I could see the 
 yellow, sword-like gleam of barley flashing in 
 the sunshine, for it was Autumn, and earth 
 wore upon her breast the rich and russet gold 
 that is more goodly than all she hides so deep 
 within it. The very air was still and fruit 
 ful, it seemed to ripen our fancies upon it along 
 with all that was now ripening, our words 
 seemed to linger on it lightly, as the loosened 
 leaves will linger and float awhile before their 
 quiet, unmarked fall. Then we would let the 
 broad ocean woo our thoughts into infinity; 
 we sent them across it fearlessly, for all things 
 seemed to beckon us onwards ; the line of silver 
 that spread over the wide glittering bay, the 
 white sea-birds that rose and fell with the 
 waves, even the dun sails of the fishing 
 vessels, touched by the light of evening with 
 a tawny splendor, seemed also to be winged 
 messengers, coming to us we knew not whence, 
 and taking us we cared not whither. 
 
 " How the sea," I remarked, " seems to round 
 a landscape, to finish it, and yet to make it illim- 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 131 
 
 itable, just as our life is rounded by eternity. 
 What strength and gladness too is there in its 
 voice, something in its very awfulness which 
 makes it facile and companionable. Its con 
 tinual movement without weariness, its flash, 
 its smile, the ever-changing music of its monot 
 ony, a monotony too vast to be oppressive, 
 always gives me a feeling intimately connected 
 with that of our future life, so that it seems 
 strange to me to read in Scripture that * there 
 shall be no more sea/ " 
 
 " It is hard," answered Philip, " to imagine 
 that there will be anything left out of our 
 future life which is beautiful and good in this 
 one. Once I was easily satisfied with the idea 
 of heaven ; I asked for nothing more than to 
 be there; now I have grown solicitous about the 
 nature of our happiness. How strange it is," 
 he continued, " that there should be in some 
 lives this order, first that which is spiritual, and 
 then that which is natural. Yet so it has been 
 with mine, and thus, judging from what has at 
 various times fallen from you, with your own 
 also. I feel now no longer able to contemplate 
 
132 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 life under the strict and absolute aspect under 
 which it once appeared to me, as being a 
 place of discipline, a training-ground for spirit 
 ual perfection, a way, in short, to a higher and 
 more complete life. Now I can see grandeur, 
 beauty, even divinity, in things tnat do not 
 minister to any of these objects, that even 
 appear to lead in far opposite directions ; great 
 ness, even Pagan greatness, irresistibly attracts 
 my spirit, and at times I feel my soul drawn out 
 of itself with a love that is almost passion for 
 universal truth and beauty, those things which 
 are eternal because they are. When such 
 moods as these are upon me, I sometimes won 
 der if heaven will be the resurrection of our 
 life, of our whole life, if it will be the bloom- 
 time and expansion, not only of our spiritual 
 being, but of all those germs of natural delight 
 which seem unable to unfold here. How much 
 is there in life to which life is itself unfriendly ! 
 How much that must fall off, wither, perish ; 
 how many first loves of the heart and soul and 
 spirit, whose destiny is written in their beauty, 
 they are fated to die young. Yet how fair and 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 133 
 
 exalted a thing, under its happier conditions, 
 is natural life I in its illusions, which .are but 
 truths anticipated in the clear second-sight of 
 the soul ; in its elations, when the heart dilates 
 and lifts up the whole of life along with it ! 
 I discern in the human heart an innate love of 
 splendor and distinction, showing itself in or 
 dinary life, in what is vulgar and ostentatious, 
 yet in truth, I think, connected with our higher 
 nature, in fact, a reminiscence of it, such as 
 a high-born child, stolen from his home in 
 youth, might feel awakening within him at 
 the sight of grandeur. 
 
 The poorest man 
 Is in the poorest thing superfluous ; 
 
 human nature always appears, as Shakespeare 
 observes, to claim something beyond what it 
 positively needs ; how readily will it, even un 
 der its most depressed conditions, respond to 
 the call of what is gay and festal ; how will 
 ingly will it let its hidden poetry bloom, if it 
 be but for half a day ! Our very Sunday- 
 school festivals would not be what they are 
 to us but for the bright flags and banners 
 
134 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 waving above our little procession, our music, 
 our triumphal arches, our wreaths and pictures 
 on the walls of the school-room. You know," 
 continued Philip, " what my daily life is ; how 
 little there is in it to minister to the instinct 
 I am now speaking of; yet it is strange how 
 my dreams will carry me among scenes of more 
 than earthly loveliness ; how all within me, 
 which possibly the day represses, seems to cul 
 minate in some vision of enchantment. Yet 
 it is no cold, metallic heaven to which the 
 gate of sleep admits me, no steely splendor, 
 no glittering, wearying glory, no Jerusalem 
 the golden, as so many of our hymns describe 
 it, making both the eyes and heart ache ; all 
 that I find there is tender, human, satisfying ; 
 its very light, clothing all things with splen 
 dor, comes warm and rose-flushed through the 
 heart." 
 
 Philip paused, and resumed abruptly : " I 
 should like to tell you one of these dreams, 
 though to do so will be like drawing out one 
 of these delicate films of sea-weed from the 
 pool, where it is spreading in such beauty, all 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 135 
 
 the glow and lustre will fade when it leaves 
 the water, even so with my dream .while I 
 try to put it into words ; 
 
 What marks hath blessedness ; 
 What characters whereby it may be told ? 
 
 I do not remember the beginning of my dream, 
 or how I came to find myself in a smooth, 
 grassy opening in the very depths of a forest ; 
 the thick wood stood round it in unbroken 
 masses, and made a wall of verdure, that gave 
 a feeling of security without the sense of gloom, 
 so wide was the clearing, so broad the sunshine 
 of the summer noonday that seemed to concen 
 trate its light upon it ; yet it was light with 
 out glare, a calm, steadfast light, like that of 
 a loving eye, too friendly to confuse or dazzle. 
 I seemed to be seated at a table, round which 
 men of noble, even princely bearing were gath 
 ered in deep conference, in which I myself was 
 a sharer, with One of middle age and majestic 
 aspect, who seemed to be their leader : in their 
 dress and language was a trace of something 
 that severed them from our present times, and 
 yet I knew not to what age of the world to 
 
136 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 refer it. At a little distance from the table 
 a boy richly dressed sang to the lute, in tones 
 so clear and ringing, that while I slept both 
 the music and the words seemed visible to me, 
 such ravishment did they pour within my soul. 
 The table was spread for a banquet, heaped 
 with costly plate, and fruits, and wine; all 
 showed splendor and profusion, and around 
 it was boundless hilarity, chastened, I thought, 
 but not checked by the presence of some lofty 
 aim, some common ground of hope and joy 
 and triumph, that shed I know not what moral 
 charm over the whole scene. Each brow I 
 looked on was as open as the sunshine that 
 streamed above us ; eye met eye, and heart 
 answered heart. Then the scene changed, and 
 I was wandering amid the deep glades of the 
 forest, in the warm stillness of the afternoon. 
 As I strayed onwards I met scattered parties 
 of children, searching for flowers and berries ; 
 they put their little hands within mine, they 
 drew me down beside them on the grassy path 
 to tell me some secret all important to their 
 childish hearts, and in the telling they put 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 137 
 
 their arms about my neck and kissed me, with 
 the kisses of the soul, closer than anything can 
 ever come on earth. A little farther on I met 
 bands of youths and maidens, crowned with 
 flowers, and singing as they descended a steep, 
 rocky path that led into the deep and now dark 
 ening ravines of the forest. They, too, greeted 
 me as one who had been long known, yet in 
 their greeting, I thought, was less of recog 
 nition than of affinity, close and intimate as 
 had been the kisses of the children. I wan 
 dered with them towards a castle, now shining 
 in the last evening glow. O, how rich was 
 that sunset, purple and a clear amber, that 
 strove long for the mastery, and at last fused 
 in a divided victory. It had grown dusk when 
 I reached the castle ; my bright companions 
 had vanished, but I heard their distant voices ; 
 and still far, far away, that of the singer sing 
 ing to his lute. Now, methought, I walked 
 in the sober twilight with one who has been 
 ever most dear to me, but from whom the 
 pressure of life has long parted me ; life that 
 can sever hearts far more utterly than death. 
 
138 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 We paced together up and down a mossy 
 terrace ; we spoke of many things, both of 
 trifling and of serious interest, as friends do 
 who meet after the separation of a day. I did 
 not forget the circumstances that had seemed 
 to estrange us, but they seemed scarcely worth 
 alluding to ; we were now* reunited, all was 
 accounted for, all was natural and right. I 
 awoke in a sort of rapture, my spirit bathed 
 in a conscious fulness of rest and satisfaction 
 such as not even my dream had given ; a state 
 described by the prophet when he says, After 
 this, I awoke and beheld, and lo ! my sleep 
 was sweet unto me. Slowly I awoke out of 
 this also into the gray November morning " 
 
 " And mourned, I suppose, to find it was 
 but a dream ? " 
 
 " No," returned Philip, his color heighten 
 ing ; " you will wonder when I tell you the 
 thought that crept over me with that blank, 
 chill dawn ; bitterness was in my soul, and 
 along with it a sort of contempt for the Life 
 hereafter; not even there, I thought, shall I 
 behold such beings, noble, beautiful, and lov- 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 139 
 
 ing as these that sleep has brought around 
 me. O, how dim and colorless, how. tame 
 and uniform, did the Christian heaven at that 
 moment seem ! " 
 
 " But why," I said, " should heaven seem 
 so?" 
 
 " Why, indeed," returned Philip, laughing ; 
 " I only say that it did seem so." 
 
 " Perhaps," I answered, " because you were 
 thinking of it as it appeared to the ancient 
 world. The blank, shadowy existence before 
 which Achilles and Iphigenia preferred life, 
 even were it that of a slave toiling among 
 men beneath the cheerful light of the sun, 
 the Sheol, of which Job said, I shall rest 
 in desolate places, among kings and counsellors 
 of old. You were thinking, as they did, of 
 the second life of the soul only, a thought 
 that lays a heavier weight upon the spirit than 
 even that of annihilation. How much has the 
 human heart gained in the One revelation, 
 which enables it to say, I believe in the res 
 urrection of the body ; that gives the flesh 
 also leave to rest in hope ! It is this belief 
 
140 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 which brings with it all that is actual and per 
 sonal into our future life ; all, too, that is home 
 ly and familiar ; that gives us back our friends, 
 looking and talking as they did here ; gives 
 us back our feelings and occupations, in fact, 
 our lives. For the body is, after all, the home 
 of the soul, endeared, even like the actual 
 home, by the very sorrows that have been 
 endured within it; and we can conceive of 
 nothing entered upon in separation from it 
 that is worthy to be called life. When I think 
 of death, it is never as setting the soul free 
 from the body, but rather as admitting it into 
 a state where these two, in the marriage of 
 the purified soul with the glorified body, will 
 learn the true blessedness of their union, all 
 being removed that has sometimes made it 
 irksome and constraining. 
 
 " And thus it has not been in seasons of 
 weariness and despondency that the thought 
 of death has been the sweetest to me; but 
 at times, when my whole nature has been the 
 most keenly strung to enjoyment, there has 
 come within my soul a longing, an aching wish 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 141 
 
 to be more in the heart of the beauty which 
 encompasses but does not touch it; a desire 
 not to be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mor 
 tality may be swallowed up in life. Do you 
 know anything of that feeling of sadness and 
 disquietude peculiar to the depth of summer ; 
 something which will not let the heart rest 
 in the midst of the fulness and stillness that 
 surrounds it, but weighs it down with a sense 
 of strain and oppression, as if it were hard 
 for it to respond to the full and joyful note 
 which nature then strikes ? It is not only the 
 renewed spirit that reaches out after something 
 far better than is here to be attained ; there 
 is a fulness of natural as well as of spiritual 
 joy not yet wholly given. We have nothing 
 to draw with, yet the well is deep, and man s 
 heart and his flesh cry out for the living God : 
 they claim the resurrection you speak of; they 
 ask to see life, the whole of life bloom, as a 
 flower, according to the fancy of the old al 
 chemists, might be revived from its ashes. 
 
 " And is it not some instinct of this resur 
 rection that lends such an intimate charm to 
 
142 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 all that gives oneness to life ? There is noth 
 ing in our nature more religious than that 
 which binds life consciously together, the power 
 of Association ; the full strength and sweetness 
 of its deep conservatism can be only known, 
 I think, to pure lives, whose very ghosts are 
 comfortable, to loving spirits that have been 
 faithful to the treasure committed to them, even 
 if it be but to the few things of their earli 
 est days. Also, I think its power is best felt 
 in lives that have been so far happy that they 
 have known no violent wrench or dislocation, 
 no blight, leaving some wide space unfruitful 
 for the after harvest, so that the wealthy soul, 
 enriched unto bountifulness, may bring forth 
 out of its treasure things new and old. Life 
 is one; therefore it is well that childhood and 
 youth should be happy ; every life should be 
 gin in Eden ; should have its blest traditions 
 to return to, its holy places on which an eter 
 nal consecration rests. The dew of the birth 
 of each most hallowed, most human thought 
 and impulse within us is of the womb of the 
 morning, and there is surely a literal meaning 
 
Tiro FRIEXDS. 1 ; ; 
 
 in our Saviour s words, * Unless ye become like 
 little children, ye cannot enter the> kingdom 
 of heaven.* The moments that set its doors 
 widest open show us this; at times, when the 
 great unseen world is nearest to us, the thought 
 of childhood will return, and at the sound of 
 the everlasting ocean, we stoop down to pick 
 up the shells we used then to play with. When 
 a great happiness floods our life, and lifts it 
 for above its accustomed level, it sets it down 
 upon no peak or summit of ecstasy, but brings 
 us upon its wave some childish, trivial joy, 
 some fondly recollected pleasure; it fills the 
 heart with the sunshine of some long, golden 
 afternoon of holiday, or with the fireside warmth 
 of some long-deserted parlor. Do you re 
 member how Joan of Arc, when crowned at 
 Rheims, sees the kind, homely faces of her 
 sisters in the crowd, and is at once carried 
 back to the green valley, the silent mountain, 
 the free simplicity of her early days? All 
 that she has attained since then seems dream 
 and shadow. * The evening and the morn 
 ing make our day.*" 
 
144 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 " The homeliest associations," said Philip, 
 " are ever those that have in them the most 
 of tenderness. No passage in Holy Scripture 
 has ever seemed to me more affecting than 
 those words used by the Evangelist in de 
 scribing our Saviour s garments at the Trans 
 figuration : Whiter than any fuller on earth can 
 whiten. The simplicity of the allusion seems 
 to bring that majestic, unearthly scene, with 
 all its overwhelming associations, into unity 
 with our daily life ; it knits and weaves to 
 gether the every-day and the everlasting, and 
 bids us 
 
 Live 
 In reconcilement with our stinted powers, 
 
 and seek 
 
 For present good in life s familiar face, 
 And build thereon our hopes of good to come. 
 
 " How often have I felt a sacred power in 
 the common things of life ! They set a limit 
 to thoughts that are too vast and oppressive 
 for our mortal nature, and tend, in some way 
 which I cannot analyze, to connect our per 
 sonal identity with the eternal existence of 
 God. I have known moments when they 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 145 
 
 have become sacramental to me ; when they 
 have seemed to bring God before ma as a 
 tender parent, whose mercies are over all his 
 works. How often is he made known to us 
 in the breaking of bread ; revealed through 
 some slight circumstance ; made manifest un 
 der some familiar aspect ! I remember, last 
 year, when I was recovering from a fever, 
 lying one evening between sleeping and wak 
 ing, too weak and restless to command my 
 thoughts, which drifted out far beyond every 
 known boundary into that dark, confused, dif 
 fused idea of God, in which he is at once 
 everywhere and nowhere. Gently, gradually, 
 I was drawn back by the low tones of my 
 mother and sister pleasantly talking over some 
 little household incidents in the fire-light ; their 
 gentle, subdued voices seemed to change the 
 world from the void and chaos of nature into 
 my Father s house ; they led my spirit into 
 His Presence who rejoices in the habitable 
 parts of the earth, and makes his delight in 
 the sons of men. 
 
 " And how friendly," he continued, " to our 
 
 7 j 
 
146 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 higher nature are all things that are simple, 
 kindly, homely, as opposed to such as are fac 
 titious and conventional. Artificial tastes and 
 pleasures can never either cheer or refresh the 
 heart ; they have no root within our true life ; 
 they are not of the Father, but of the world.! 
 How sweet and wholesome are the pleasures 
 that go into small room ; the humble, simple, 
 accustomed sights and sounds that bring the 
 soul at once into the open air. Some of 
 these are at all times full of deep suggestions, 
 of quiet, unspoken recognitions, filling the heart 
 with unspeakable tranquillity and peace. All 
 that has to do with rural occupations, hay 
 making and harvesting, the cheerful bustle and 
 cackle of a farm-yard, the breath of cows, the 
 broad, slanting light of evening, the wide glit 
 ter of a meadow in an autumn morning, and 
 neither last nor least, the aspect of a cottage 
 kitchen in the afternoon, with all things in 
 order stored, these things fill me with a sense 
 of the Fatherhood of God " 
 
 " Such," I said, " as you would gain from 
 some passage in the New Testament, where 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 147 
 
 Christ makes himself a partaker of flesh and 
 blood, through his gracious condescension to the 
 humble requirements, the lowly solaces our na 
 ture claims ; as when at the wedding-feast he 
 turns the water into wine, and stoops down at 
 the last supper to wash the feet of his disciples." 
 " And yet," returned Philip, musingly, " is 
 Christ indeed a friend to the region we have 
 been speaking of, a friend, I mean, who shows 
 himself friendly ? Sometimes it seems to me as 
 if he would at the last be generous to all that 
 is in itself excellent ; that he will yet stoop 
 down and recognize some of the fair and fading 
 flowers of humanity that he now passes by 
 without a glance ; that he will breathe upon 
 them and bid them be ever-blooming. Yet the 
 silence of the New Testament is a wonderful 
 thing. Love, except of a spiritual kind, is 
 never mentioned there. Outward nature, of 
 which the Old Testament is so full, scarcely 
 brought in, even as the background of the 
 scene filled up with man s deeper and immor 
 tal destinies. Where in these pages is the 
 world, the world that goes on around us, 
 
148 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 and we along with it ; the world of feeling, of 
 endeavor, of hope, of wearying care and bitter 
 anguish ; this world, troublesome and yet be 
 loved, that we do not, cannot escape from until 
 we have done with it forever ? And when I 
 think upon these things," he added, " an oblique 
 light seems cast upon what has long seemed 
 strangely certain to me, that Christianity should 
 tend not only, as you say, to separation, but 
 also to narrowness. It is easy to be wise upon 
 the mistakes of religious people, to say that 
 they miss the broad and loving character of the 
 Gospel, straitening it to their own minds ; but 
 it is not so easy to account for some constantly 
 reappearing signs of a limited mode of viewing 
 nature and life, such as over-strictness in the 
 education of the young, and a strained disap 
 proval of amusement, so evidently a part of 
 man, that it may, under its more favorable 
 conditions, be literally termed his re-creation. 
 Nor is it yet easy to account for what it would 
 be vain to deny, that, looking at things on a 
 broader scale, the spiritual basis has ever proved 
 too weak to bear up the whole man. How 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 149 
 
 narrow, how little human, has been in all ages 
 the merely religious world ! And how~ largely 
 has that very world benefited by movements 
 exterior, and even antagonistic to it ; as when 
 the revival of the Greek and Latin literature 
 brought a fresh breath over Christendom. 
 Mere spirituality seems to exhaust the soil that 
 rears it, so that Christianity must always gain 
 much from extraneous sources. It does so, in 
 our own day, from science and general social 
 progress. These are its friends, though some 
 times disguised ones; and Christ still gathers 
 where he did not straw, and reaps where he 
 did not sow." 
 
 " But are you so sure," I said, " that Christ 
 has not strawed and sown in these very fields ? 
 Christ is the light of the world as well as the 
 light of his Church. He is a Man, One to 
 whom nothing that Humanity endures or 
 achieves can be alien, so that it seems less 
 strange to me that some of the greatest con 
 quests of the truth should have been won for 
 the Church and not by it, that so many rich 
 acquisitions, take, for instance, that of religious 
 
150 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 toleration, should have fallen into it through 
 the gradual progress of human enlightenment. 
 The Church and the world must grow to 
 gether, they do grow together, though they 
 cannot as yet grow in harmony ; suffering 
 from the world s enmity, suffering still more 
 from its friendship, straitened on all sides, the 
 Church has become straitened in herself, timid 
 and distrustful, as that which is in antagonism 
 must ever be. In all that concerns Christianity 
 under its present dispensation, we must be pre 
 pared to meet with a certain degree of check 
 and disappointment. We find it even in Christ 
 himself ; he will now be loved for his own sake, 
 be followed in his silence and severity ; he will 
 still give a present contradiction to many of 
 the heart s most fair and cherished ideals, just 
 as his earthly coming in poverty and humilia 
 tion contradicted the Jewish idea of the Mes 
 sianic world-dominion, yet this was a true idea, 
 and one which Christ will yet abundantly fulfil. 
 And if the Christ of the New Testament does 
 not, as you say, meet and satisfy all the demands 
 of our nature, if it does not answer to the 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 151 
 
 whole man, is it not because it does not give 
 us the whole Christ ? Where in the four Gos 
 pels shall we find the Messiah, full of glory, 
 majesty, and terror, red in his apparel, travel 
 ling in the greatness of his strength, the King 
 of righteousness and peace, the Lord and Giver 
 of earthly fulness and felicity, binding his foal 
 to the vine and his ass s colt to the choice vine ? 
 Are we not slow to receive all that the Psalms 
 and the prophets have spoken concerning HIM ? 
 Wolff, if you remember, says that the error of 
 the Jews of old did not lie, as we often deem, 
 in looking to Christ as the founder of a tem 
 poral kingdom, but in failing to recognize him 
 under the humiliation which was foretold as to 
 precede its establishment. For this want of 
 recognition our Lord himself rebukes his disci 
 ples, when he says to them, Ought not Christ 
 to have suffered these things, and then to have 
 entered into his glory ? And as regards 
 present times, Wolff tells us that he was never 
 able to make any way in argument with his 
 own people until he freely admitted to them that 
 the Messiah had yet to come. At what time, 
 
152 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 they would ask, has the Christian Church seen 
 the fulfilment of prophecies such as those of 
 the llth of Isaiah and the 72d Psalm ? " 
 
 " True," said Philip, " there is nothing his 
 torical in these passages of Scripture, nor yet 
 in that remarkable series of Psalms, beginning 
 at the 95th, which have been, with the 100th, 
 in which they culminate, considered as form 
 ing one grand prophetic poem, celebrating the 
 majesty and righteousness of Christ s kingdom 
 on earth. Their cry is still, 4 He cometh, he 
 eometh to judge the world in righteousness, and 
 the people with his truth. 
 
 " And with Christ s second coming," I said, 
 " as the Restorer of all things, is evidently 
 linked the conversion and restitution of the 
 Jewish people ; when the Lord shall build up 
 Zion, he shall appear in his glory. This con 
 nection is brought out so clearly in the Old 
 Testament, that it seems strange that Christians 
 can continually read it, and still persist in tak 
 ing the magnificent promises, of which Isaiah, 
 Zechariah, and all the lesser prophets are so 
 full, in their spiritual regenerative aspect 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 153 
 
 when their plain literal meaning is one which 
 does not drop off like a husk at the. unfolding 
 of their spiritual import, but expands along 
 with it, growing like a double fruit upon the 
 same stalk, so that neither can ripen fully until 
 both do. Christ is to be a Light to lighten the 
 Gentiles, and to be the glory of his people 
 Israel ; the same Hour (so speaks prophetic 
 testimony) that brings in Israel s conversion, 
 will bring in man s full reconciliation with God. 
 The veil which overspreads all nations rests as 
 yet upon the eyes of Israel, and upon the heart 
 of the Gentile Church, yet in this mountain, 
 in Zion, saith God, 4 it shall be taken away ; 
 a promise initially fulfilled in the day of Pente 
 cost, but to receive a yet fuller accomplishment 
 in the Day when God returns to Jerusalem 
 with mercies. That day will be one of rich 
 ingathering. 4 Great, saith the Prophet Hosea, 
 4 shall be the day of Jezreel ; Jezreel, a name 
 combining terror with mercy, meaning at once 
 4 1 will scatter and 4 1 will sow. God will 
 sow by them whom he has scattered ; and it is 
 certain that the Jews will be in an eminent 
 7* 
 
154 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 degree the Evangelists of the Second Dispensa 
 tion, as they were of the First." 
 
 " It is an office," said Philip, " for which 
 they will be in many ways peculiarly fitted. 
 Called into the vineyard at the Eleventh Hour, 
 they have not, like the Christian Church, borne 
 the long day s heat and burden ; nor will 
 they have, like it, a time-engendered acrimony, 
 caused by the sharp separation of opinion, to 
 contend with. Do you remember the passage 
 in Wolff s Autobiography, where he tells us of 
 his going up Mount Sinai to pray for the whole 
 Church of God ; for the noble Stolberg and the 
 other Roman Catholic friends of his early life, 
 endeared through so many kindly associations ; 
 for Mr. Drummond and all his beloved Eng 
 lish friends and fellow-helpers in the work of 
 Christ ; and for his own people, those kinsfolk, 
 to whom pertaineth the promises, whose are the 
 fathers, and of whom concerning the flesh 
 Christ came ? God hath not cast away his 
 people whom he foreknew ; their faith, when 
 it is once enlightened to receive Christ, will 
 have a character of its own ; it will be child- 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 155 
 
 like, implicit, and objective. It must be easy, 
 I think, and natural for a Jew to look- to God 
 as a father; all their ancient ideas of him, 
 whether of severity or love, are fatherly; he 
 is even the Father of the dew : one who 
 takes all creation under his individual superin 
 tendence. So that to them, in a peculiar man 
 ner, belong the fruition of all those rich earthly 
 and yet evangelic promises, into which the 
 Christian Church, baptized into the death of 
 her beloved Lord, and cradled in suffering and 
 strife, has as yet scarcely entered. It must 
 wait for the companionship of the reconciled 
 Elder Brother, then there will be dancing and 
 music ; music in the heart, music in the 
 house, in the whole great united house 
 hold." 
 
 " The Messianic promises," I said, " are in 
 deed earthly ; they are of the earth, as the rose 
 and the lily are, and yet not earthy ; there is 
 no grave-damp about them, no odor of corrupti 
 bility. What picture can be conceived by the 
 human imagination more lovely than that scene 
 portrayed in the eighth chapter of Zechariah, 
 
156 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 where all the finer affections of our nature find 
 room and time for expansion, where the heart 
 enjoys its long-desolated Sabbaths ! Here, the 
 ground gives her increase, and the heavens 
 their dew ; 4 in the streets of Jerusalem old men 
 and old women dwell, and every man with his 
 staff in his hand for very age ; while the same 
 streets are 4 full of boys and girls playing ; and 
 the still remembered fasts of the Old Covenant 
 are 4 turned into joy and gladness, and cheerful 
 feasts. And we must not fail to remark, that 
 this period of unexampled temporal felicity is 
 also one of extraordinary * spiritual illumination, 
 a time of prayer, of intercession, of holy activity; 
 a time when God dwells in the midst of his 
 people ; a time of intimate correspondence be 
 tween earth and heaven. When God says in 
 Hosea, I will hear the heavens, and they shall 
 hear the earth, he says also, And the earth 
 shall hear the corn, and the wine, and the oiV It 
 is easy to decry the literal interpretation of 
 prophecy as carnal and limited; easy to ask, 
 what better shall we be for hills of corn and 
 
 * Zechariah viii. 19, seq. 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 157 
 
 barley, and for mountains dropping sweet wine ? 
 but who can look into the world as,it*nowis, 
 without admitting how true, how heaven-sent a 
 blessing material abundance would be, were 
 that within man which is inimical to its true 
 enjoyment once taken away ? It is only human 
 selfishness that makes good things evil to us ; 
 the richest boon the Father can send carries no 
 sorrow with it to hearts that are prepared to 
 share it as brethren. Even as we live and feel 
 now, comfort, which is too often a selfish and 
 hardening thing, may become an evangelic one. 
 The spirit of the world is one which makes a 
 great feast, and invites many to it, but gives no 
 kiss to the individual guest, does not anoint 
 his head with oil, brings him no water for his 
 feet; but do you not know houses where a 
 refined attention to bodily comfort seems but 
 the expression of an inward cordiality, houses 
 where a sort of physical bien-etre prevails, where 
 a genial soul makes its presence felt like that of 
 the summer sunshine, or the winter hearth, so 
 that your very food seems to do you more good 
 than it does elsewhere? In the late accounts 
 
158 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 of the work of the Bible-women in London, the 
 poor women who are sometimes invited to pass 
 an evening at the Mission-room seem to derive 
 as much benefit from the kind looks and gentle 
 voices of the ladies, from the good tea, the good 
 fire, the flowers set upon the table, the unaccus 
 tomed luxury of a quiet room, as from anything 
 they gain in the way of direct instruction. In 
 all these things there is a tenderness that goes 
 to the very soul." 
 
 fc * Yes," said Philip, " and that does not de 
 part from it quickly. There are some whom I 
 have known on earth, who are now departed 
 from it, that I find it difficult to think of, even 
 in heaven, under any other aspect than that 
 of ministering, welcoming, making every one 
 around them comfortable, though I know not 
 what form their tender, ever active solicitude 
 may take where there are none weary, or sick, 
 or sorrowful, where there are no strangers to be 
 entertained, no wayfarers to be cheered and 
 comforted." 
 
 Philip was silent; at this moment a sudden 
 smile came out over the sky and sea, that 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 159 
 
 seemed like an answer to our unspoken thoughts. 
 O, what did it not recall ; what v did it not 
 promise ! The glory of the terrestrial and of 
 the celestial in one ! Memory and Hope, that 
 met and kissed each other in the thought of 
 partings that had been rich in a heavenly fore 
 taste, in the anticipation of meetings that would 
 be more tender than even the partings of earth ! 
 
 " There was no cloud, no flaming bar, no line 
 Of fire along the west, but solemnly 
 Heaven glowed unto its depths, as if the curso 
 Were lifted upwards from our universe 
 One moment s Sabbath space, and only love 
 Stooped down above its world ! so from above 
 A smile dropt visibly on earth, that prest 
 To meet that sign of reconcilement, blest 
 On brow and bosom, blest." 
 
 Philip was the first to speak. " How Na 
 ture can sometimes hide her deep, original 
 wound ! Where, at such a moment as this, 
 is the faint undergroaning of creation ? " 
 
 " Yet surely," I said, "it is in such moments 
 as these that the heart puts in its strongest 
 claim for the promised restitution of all things. 
 When Nature hides her wound, she does but 
 
160 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 hide it, and of this the soul is conscious. When 
 her smile is the kindest, the heart feels that 
 she can hut smile ; she has no healing halm 
 to pour, no life-giving Word to speak. She 
 has, it is true, a ministry for man, hut in it 
 there is nothing priestly, no laver of regener 
 ating purity, no chrism of absolving love. Her 
 house is the house of bondage, out of which 
 she can never lead man s spirit, for Nature 
 herself needs to be redeemed. Science has taught 
 us that discord was not introduced into crea 
 tion by man, nor did it follow, as it is usual 
 to suppose, in consequence of his disobedience ; 
 the revelations of geology prove abundantly 
 that pain and death reigned from the begin 
 ning, therefore is it that the Cross must go so 
 deep. Christ must subdue this kingdom also, 
 must deliver it up to God,* even to the Father, 
 and until then Christ s own kingdom remains 
 a kingdom of patience and of subjection. His 
 word, one of separation, sharper than that of 
 any two-edged sword, and the Christian life, 
 one in which there is ever a foreseen death, 
 
 1 Cor. xv. 24. 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 161 
 
 the sacrifice of the human will, even the death 
 of the cross. " 
 
 " And are you," said Philip, " led to believe 
 that this separation will go on through the 
 whole of the present dispensation, becoming 
 ever more and more definite ? The final vic 
 tory of good is the one great certainty of the 
 believing heart ; and our natural feelings lead 
 us to expect that this victory will be gradual 
 and progressive ; an expectation, however, 
 which is not confirmed by prophecy, which 
 leads us rather to contemplate the two king 
 doms of good and evil, each increasing, 
 strengthening themselves against each other 
 before a great concluding struggle, out of 
 which good will rise triumphant and jubilant ? 
 A friend has asked me, l Will not good and 
 evil, before this final shock, draw more widely 
 apart, and become compact? Good, through 
 the building up of Christ s body, and the closer 
 mutual adhesion of his scattered members ; 
 Evil, also standing up incarnate in the person 
 of Antichrist ? " 
 
 " There is surely," I said, " something of 
 
162 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 this gradual separation revealed in the deep 
 ened moral consciousness of the days we live 
 in. Our eyes seem opened to discern between 
 good and evil ; those who now prefer the lat 
 ter, do so knowingly and consciously. We can 
 hardly, as even worthy people were wont to be 
 in the generation which is passing from us, be 
 amused with books and representations which 
 draw their zest from the exhibition of sin and 
 folly. We feel that there is in these things 
 the nature and the power of death ; and the 
 spirit of levity, even though it occupy a large 
 space in our literature, seems foreign to it, and 
 not to belong to our present order. Even the 
 intellect of our day revolts from the shallow 
 systems that are now afloat, afloat truly, and 
 drifting on the surface of the age, for they have 
 no root within its heart and life, such, I mean, 
 as tend to minimize the strength and depth and 
 vitality of sin. Whether they choose to repre 
 sent it as a lower undeveloped form of good, a 
 thing transmutable, with no essence of its own, 
 or as being merely the want of balance and 
 proportion, a question of too much or too little 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 163 
 
 in the poising of man s nature, only needing 
 readjustment, they have but one~ practical 
 effect, and that is, to eat the heart out of our 
 whole spiritual life ; to make even the life of 
 Christ, the truest life that has ever lived, to 
 make even his dying, a sort of drama. If there 
 is no reality in sin, what becomes of the deep 
 reality of sacrifice ? To what need was this 
 great cost? 
 
 " And what is there in Scripture which fa 
 vors the idea of any gradual absorption of evil ? 
 Isaiah, a book stored with evangelic comfort, 
 concludes with a denunciation on this point, 
 the awfulness of which cannot be surpassed by 
 human language ; and is there not something 
 deeply significant in a fact which the so-called 
 adherents of Jesus, not Paul, would do well 
 to consider, that it is from our Lord s own lips 
 (and this, I think, without a solitary exception) 
 that the severest warnings of future judgment 
 fall. He it is, and not any one apostle, who 
 speaks of the fire unquenchable, the worm that 
 never dies ; he who describes, under many si 
 militudes, the final separation between the good 
 
164 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 and evil, and the utter rejection of the latter. 
 Good and evil are antagonistic independent 
 powers, separate from the beginning, separate 
 even unto the end. What communion hath 
 Christ with Belial ? what fellowship hath light 
 with darkness ? Milton has taught us to look 
 upon the Devil as a fallen angel, a being origi 
 nally good ; yet we are told by St. John, and 
 .by One greater than he, that he was a liar and 
 a murderer from the beginning. This is a sub 
 ject which surely does not invite to a vague 
 sentimentalism. Who can trace the history of 
 the past ? who can read the history of the pres 
 ent ? who, in other words, can take up a news 
 paper and refuse to believe in the existence of 
 a dark kingdom of fraud, and cruelty, and un 
 speakable iniquity underlying the superficial 
 prosperity of our daily life ; a kingdom that 
 draws its strength and allurement from a spir 
 itual source, a kingdom that hath foundations, 
 foundations which are being continually more 
 and more laid bare by the Light which shall at 
 last triumph over them, as completely as the 
 glory of the sunshine now fills every nook and 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 165 
 
 crevice of some giant ruin that once resounded 
 to the shout of Ave Caesar, morituri ~te sala- 
 tant: " 
 
 " A cry," said Philip, " which, translated 
 into a purer language, has now become the 
 watchword of the soldier and servant of Christ. 
 It seems to me that in no other age of the 
 world has the attraction of the Cross been so 
 deeply felt as it is in this, perhaps because it 
 has been never so much needed as it is now to 
 explain the dark parables of nature ; the griev 
 ous contradictions of life. It is certain that the 
 primitive Church, though it lived beneath its 
 shadow, clasped it less closely to the heart than 
 we do. Simplicity and cheerfulness are the 
 leading characteristics of the pictures in the 
 Catacombs. It is remarkable that the Cross 
 does not appear in them, nor any figure that 
 tends to show a strong consciousness of sin, 
 and the corresponding sense of alienation from 
 God. Here we have Christ, the King, the 
 good Shepherd, ever with his book, in the midst 
 of his faithful ones in earth and heaven, be 
 tween which two places there is no division 
 
166 TWO FRIENDS. 
 
 apparent except that of Jordan, for so is 
 death represented, a slender, easily-crossed 
 stream, the opposite banks distinguishable by 
 the thorns and snares on one side, and the 
 ever-blooming flowers on the other. The two 
 pervading, continually recurring ideas are those 
 of the guardianship of Christ, Ego sum pastor 
 bonus, and of the Resurrection, brought out 
 over and again under the favorite type of 
 Jonah. This infant, blood-baptized Church, 
 deeply suffering, was not, it seems, so deeply 
 sorrowing as ours ; it did not know our in 
 tellectual sadness, our doubts, our weariness, 
 our worldliness, our strifes among brethren. 
 The star Wormwood had not then fallen, 
 making all the waters of the earth bitter." 
 
 "And yet," I said, "were they to become 
 exceeding bitter, so that no man could drink 
 them, the Lord hath showed us a Tree." 
 
 " Beneath thy Cross I stand, 
 
 Jesus, my Saviour, turn and look on me ! 
 0, who are these that, one on either hand, 
 Are crucified with thee ? 
 
 " The one that turns away 
 
 With sullen, scoffing lip, and one whose eyes 
 
TWO FRIENDS. 167 
 
 Close o er the words, Yet shalt thon be this day 
 With me in Paradise. . 
 
 " Here would I fain behold 
 
 This twofold mystery, Love s battle won, 
 Its warfare ended, and its ransom told, 
 Its conquest but begun ! 
 
 " I say not to thee now, 
 
 Come from the Cross and then will I believe ; 
 0, lift me up to thee, and teach me how 
 To love and how to grieve. 
 
 " I tracked thy footsteps long ; 
 
 For where thou wert, there would thy servant be ; 
 But now, methought the silence, now the throng, 
 Would part me still from thee. 
 
 " I sought thee mid the leaves, 
 
 I found thee on the dry and blasted tree; 
 I saw thee not until I saw the thieves 
 There crucified with thee ! " 
 
 Cambridge : Stereotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. 
 
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