'm-j. vv .,-1 ,-, '.•_
me.': -*-J, -'■,■ .V- .-/, -
■ ■ /;•:•■■ i' ■'"■■' ' 'U.,
?ri^:''^^?i^'';^y
:. . • ■<<' '*^\r-''^ ^.y. ;^.^■^■j ■ -^ .\^.i .^^■•^
■'<;■'*' ■*»ii''''''Oir 'Ti''.'^.'* ■,.':r""'-v" ,'',-■■:>;..?' ■, "
.N^':,v'
^■:^.^:'.- ^'
•^,r^r-;s.;.:*.--.^.--cv^
THE SPIRITUAL TEACHING OF
TENNYSON'S ''IN MEMORIAMr
By the same Author,
THE SPIRITUAL TEACHING
OF
THE HOLY GRAIL.
SIX LENTEN ADDRESSES.
Small Crown 8vo, cloth boards, 216.
"This is an unusual form in which to pre-
sent Lent teaching, and a very delightful one.
We are sure those who listened to these simple
and beautiful and spiritual addresses found
themselves not only edified so far as the life of
their souls was concerned, but also greatly
helped in their appreciation of what is perhaps
the most beautiftil portion of the Arthurian
legend." — Guardian.
LONDON :
Wells Gardner, Darton & Co.
t'it ^pititmi ^eac^in^
OF
Ztm^0on*B "3n (YKlewomm/'
SIX LENTEN ADDRESSES.
BY THE
REV. MORLEY STEVENSON, M.A.,
PRINCIPAL OF WARRINGTON TRAINING COLLEGE.
Eonlroii :
WELLS GARDNER, DARTON & Co.,
3, PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS.
^2>40 ^3 30
1904.
TO
MY DEAR COUSIN
AND LIFE-LONG FRIEND,
ANNA COLE,
I DEDICATE
THIS LITTLE BOOK.
019
PREFACE.
The kind reception accorded to my addresses
on "The Holy Grail" emboldens me to
publish these addresses on " In Memoriam."
They were delivered in substance in the
Churches of St. Margaret's, Prince's Road,
Liverpool, in St. Mary's, Grassendale, and in
the Chapel of the Training College, War-
rington, in Lent, 1904, but they have been
revised, and some additions made. I have
consulted several books, and, I hope, have
acknowledged all the quotations I have
made.
It would, however, be ungrateful if I did
not specially mention the great help I have
received from Mr. Masterman's thoughtful
work, "Tennyson, as a Religious Teacher."
The subjects suggested by "In Memo-
riam " must always be of the deepest interest
viii. PREFACE,
to all thoughtful people. It is with fear and
reverence that one ventures to write on
Death and the Future Life, or to approach
the problems of Sorrow and Suffering.
I can only hope that these thoughts in-
spired by our great poet may be of some
small use and comfort to those who are kind
enough to read them.
My grateful acknowledgments are due to
Messrs. Macmillan for their courteous per-
mission to quote so freely from various
poems of Tennyson.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
I. SORROW AND SUFFERING i
II. DEATH AND THE FUTURE STATE ... 22
III. DOUBT AND FAITH 42
IV. GOD ... 62
V. GOD AND HIS PURPOSE 78
VI. THE CHRIST 87
^^ In Memoriam/'
I.— borrow mb buffering.
"TN 1850," says the late Mr. Gladstone,
X " Tennyson gave to the world, under
the title of ' In Memoriam,' perhaps the
richest oblation ever offered by the affec-
tion of friendship at the tomb of the
departed."
" The poem raised him above all the
poets of his time, and the book was appre-
ciated, read and loved by the greater part
of the English-speaking world."
True as this judgment is, the value of
this poem does not consist only in the mar-
vellous exhibition of true friendship which
it portrays but in the deep thoughts of a
great thinker — a seer — on some of those
2 SORROW AND SUFFERING.
subjects which are of the gravest import
to every thoughtful person.
The underlying theme is that old story
of sorrow, suffering and perplexity which
has been told and is being told in varying
degrees in every human life, gradually
working itself out, as it ought always to
do, into resignation, peace, trust, and a
sure and certain hope of and for the
future.
The poem was written in memory of
Tennyson's great friend, Arthur Hallam,
who died suddenly and unexpectedly at
the early age of twenty-two.
" His powers seemed so exceptional that
his father " — the great historian — " who
was of all literary men the most sober and
balanced in his judgments, imagined him
capable of the greatest things. It was
thought that a splendid future was before
him, and his loss seemed to his friends to
be a loss to all mankind." ^
In stanzas 109 — 113 we may read the
1 Stopford Brooke.
SORROW AND SUFFERING, 3
poet's glowing description of his friend.
His was
"A life that all the Muses deck'd
With gifts of grace, that might express
All-comprehensive tenderness,
All-subtilizing intellect."
His was
" High nature amorous of the good,
But touch'd with no ascetic gloom."
Of him Tennyson says —
" Thy converse drew us with delight,
The men of rathe and riper years :
The feeble soul, a haunt of fears,
Forgot his weakness in thy sight.
On thee the loyal-hearted hung.
The proud was half disarm'd of pride.
Nor cared the serpent at thy side
To flicker with his double tongue.
The stern were mild when thou wert by,
The flippant put himself to school
And heard thee, and the brazen fool
Was soften'd and he knew not why."
The friendship between Tennyson and
Hallam was of an intensity rarely found
4 SORROW AND SUFFERING,
in modern life. " All their thoughts,
dreams, and aspirations, for the present
and the future, were shared together. It
seemed an affection that might defy the
shocks of time and the finger of change.
Then something intervened ; the ' fair com-
panionship ' was broken ; and the man he
loved was suddenly hurried out of sight.
Death was striking visibly in a manner
which drove his whole being into revolt
and fierce protest ; not coming as a wel-
come friend at the close of the long day's
toil, to round off and complete a well-
spent life ; not as the reply to persistent
prayer for relief from the burden of exist-
ence ; but unasked for and unbidden, defy-
ing, mocking, as it were, the intensity of
the love between them, striking at the
* human-hearted man ' with all his genius
just unfolding, with unfathomed possibili-
ties, with limitless affections and am-
bitions and desires, stricken down without
warning, and swept into the darkness with-
out a cry. One moment the two spirits
SORROW AND SUFFERING. 5
were growing together without a barrier
between them ; the next one had dis-
appeared for ever and no answer
remained." ^
The loss of such a friend was a terrible
blow to Tennyson, and for a while, as we
learn from his biography, " blotted out all
joy from his life." Hallam's remains were
brought to England and buried at Cleve-
don in Somersetshire, the Church of which
place overlooks a wide expanse of water
where the Severn flows into the Bristol
Channel.
A well-known and exquisite little poem
tells us something of Tennyson's grief: —
" Break, break, break
On thy cold, gray stones, O Sea !
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
O well for the fisherman's boy
That he shouts with his sister at play !
O well for the sailor lad
That he sings in his boat on the bay !
1 Masterman.
6 SORROW AND SUFFERING.
And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill,
But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand
And the sound of a voice that is still !
Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea !
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me."
When we come to the study of "In
Memoriam " we must remember that it is
not so much a poem as a collection of
poems, written at different times, and yet
fitly linked together as forming a com-
plete work, through which may be traced
the poet's conviction that sorrow, suffer-
ing and doubt will find answer and
gain relief only through faith in a GOD
of Love.
It will not be profitable therefore to con-
sider the poem in the order in which its
stanzas are written, but rather to listen to
the lessons which it has to teach us on cer-
tain subjects, while at the same time we
keep in mind the gradual progress which
we ought to perceive, the pilgrimage of the
SORROW AND SUFFERING. 7
soul from the depths of sorrow and doubt
into the light of faith and the security of
hope.
Indeed, the idea of the poem can hardly
be described better than in the words in
which the Psalmist depicts the life of those
who go down to the sea in ships :
" They are carried up to the heaven, and
down again to the deep ; their soul melteth
away because of the trouble : they reel to
and fro, and stagger like a drunken man,
and are at their wits' end. So when
they cry unto the Lord in their trouble.
He delivereth them out of their distress ;
for He maketh the storm to cease, so that
the waves thereof are still. Then are they
glad thereof, because they are at rest, and
so He bringeth them unto the haven where
they would be." ^
Our subject to-day is Sorrow and Suffer-
ing. The poem opens with the portrayal
of the anguish caused by the loss of the
poet's friend.
1 Psalm cvii. 26-30.
8 SORROW AND SUFFERING.
In the second stanza he sees in the yew
tree an image of stubborn sorrow. The
old Churchyard yew, which seems to keep
its sombre foliage unchanged for centuries,
and unmoved by all the changes of the
different seasons, is a fit emblem of that
sorrow and gloom which seem as if they
would wrap round him for evermore.
In the next stanza it appears to him as if
sorrow, " Priestess in the vaults of death,"
had distorted all Nature, as if all things
had been created in vain.
" A hollow form with empty hands."
Even in his sleep (stanza 4) " Clouds of
nameless trouble cross his eyes."
The first deep plunge into a great sor-
row produces a state of grief which seems
overwhelming. We read of such sorrow
as that of Jacob at the loss of his favourite
son, when " all his sons and all his
daughters rose up to comfort him ; but he
refused to be comforted " ; or of David at
the death of Absalom ; we listen sympa-
thetically to the pathos of his words,
SORROW AND SUFFERING. g
"Would God that I had died for thee,
O Absalom, my son, my son " ; or we wit-
ness great sorrow in others, we note the
traces of grief in their faces, the chastened
submission of their lives, and our hearts
are stirred with compassion ; or we go to
Church and join in the recitation of the
Psalter, and repeat glibly those marvellous
descriptions of anguish and sorrow. Yet
for us life is on the whole bright and
happy ; we do not realize what sorrow
really means. At last the blow falls, per-
haps unexpectedly, suddenly, and in a
moment we understand what grief really
is, and it almost seems as if life were no
longer worth the living, as if there could
be no more happiness in this world. The
sombre character of the yew must be ours
for ever : our life must be dark, gloomy
and cold.
Nor can the well-meant attempts at con-
solation offered in the commonplace stock
phrases of the world be of any avail to
comfort us.
10 SORROW AND SUFFERING.
"One writes that 'Other friends remain,'
That ' Loss is common to the race ' —
And common is the commonplace
And vacant chaff well meant for grain.
' That loss is common Avould not make
My own less bitter, rather more :
Too common ! Never morning wore
To evening, but some heart did break.'
O somewhere, meek unconscious dove,
That sittest ranging golden hair :
And glad to find thyself so fair,
Poor child, that waitest for thy love !
For now her father's chimney glows
In expectation of a guest :
And thinking ' this will please him best,'
She takes a riband or a rose ;
For he will see them on to-night ;
And with the thought her colour burns ;
And, having left the glass, she turns
Once more to set a ringlet right :
And, even when she turn'd, the curse
Had fallen, and her future lord
Was drown'd in passing through the ford.
Or kill'd in falling from his horse.
SORROW AND SUFFERING. ii
O what to her shall be the end?
And what to me remains of ^ood ?
To her, perpetual maidenhood,
And unto me no second friend."
(Stanza 6.)
This is the very depth of sorrow, which
no human consolation can assuage.
Let us then approach this mystery with
all humility and reverence, and seek for
some lines of thought which may help us
to see in what spirit we may best meet the
trial.
First, we must try to understand that
sorrow and suffering have a distinct work
to do for individuals in particular and for
the world in general ; that even our Saviour
Himself was made " perfect through suffer-
ing," thereby setting an example for His
people ; that suffering is the chastisement,
the loving discipline which the Father
knows to be necessary for the child. When
we once grasp this truth, then we see that
sorrow and suffering are not to plunge us
into sullen despair, but are to educate us
12 SORROW AND SUFFERING.
in holiness and to form our character in
sanctity, that they are the chisel which is
to let the angel out from the rough block of
our life, and hammer out the image and
likeness of GOD, which has been overlaid
and disfigured by sin.
Secondly, we must learn to accept the
truth that " GOD is Love," and that GOD is
" our Father." This was Tennyson's solu-
tion of the problem, and his message to
the world. He was able to sum up his
great poem in the words, " Strong Son of
God, Immortal Love."
When once we accept this, then " through
all the mysteries of suffering and sin and
death we can follow the beam of light
which lit upon the world in the life and
the Cross of Jesus, to the truth of the
divine love beyond them. In the joy of
human love, of the sunshine and the sea,
and the streams and the birds, we can re-
joice in it ; but in the sadness and sorrow
of things we can trust it. We can endure
as still seeing the love which in them may
SORROW AND SUFFERING. 13
be invisible. . . . Once convinced that GOD
is Love, a man can go straight ahead upon
his way. He is master of his falls, for
he knows that he can rise. He is master
even of the blows that seem to strike him,
for they cannot overthrow him. He bows
his head in submission ; but his spirit rises
as he says, * I believe in the love of GOD.' " ^
The calm peace which had come to
Tennyson through his faith in GOD as a
GrOD of love may be well seen in
stanza 126 —
" Love is and was my Lord and King,
And in His presence I attend
To hear the tidings of my friend,
Which every hour his couriers bring.
Love is and was my King and Lord,
And will be, tho' as yet I keep
Within His court on earth, and sleep
Encompass'd by His faithful guard.
And hear at times a sentinel
W^ho moves about from place to place,
And whispers to the worlds of space,
In the deep night that all is well,"
1 Bishop Lang.
14 SORROW AND SUFFERING.
Thirdly, Time is a great healer. After
the first great shock of grief we realize
that with all the work which is waiting to
be done it is pure selfishness to shut our-
selves up and indulge in the luxury of
sorrow. Thus, if we are wise, we pass into
the daily round of duty ; we let ourselves
glide into the interests of life, above all
we take up GOD'S work as it is shown to
us, and throw ourselves earnestly into it.
Then does Time do her gentle work, and
we are surprised to feel the gradual but
sure healing of the wound.
This is most strikingly brought out in
" In Memoriam." For as we date the
different parts of the poem we can notice
the change from the sullen grief at its
beginning to the calm resignation and
assured hope at its close.
The opening stanzas express the depth
of sorrow, but with the exquisite 19th
stanza, referring to the remains of the poet's
departed friend being brought to England
SORROW AND SUFFERING. 15
to his home on the Severn, we note that the
cloud begins to lift —
" The Danube to the Severn gave
The darken'd heart that beat no more ;
They laid him by the pleasant shore,
And in the hearing of the wave.
There twice a day the Severn fills :
The salt sea-water passes by,
And hushes half the babbling Wye,
And makes a silence in the hills.
The Wye is hush'd nor moved along.
And hush'd my deepest grief of all,
When fill'd with tears that cannot fall,
I brim with sorrow drowning song.
The tide flows down, the wave again
Is vocal in its wooded walls ;
My deeper anguish also falls.
And I can speak a little then."
Passing on again to the concluding
verse of the 27th stanza, we read —
'• I hold it true, whate'er befall :
I feel it, when I sorrow most :
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all."
One more quotation out of many that
i6 SORROW AND SUFFERING.
could be quoted must serve to illustrate this
point. The ii6th stanza, near the close of
the poem, shows how his sorrow has been
soothed without lessening the love he
feels —
"Is it, then, regret for buried time
That keenlier in sweet April wakes,
And meets the year, and gives and takes
The colours of the crescent prime ?
Not all ; the songs, the stirring air,
The life re-orient out of dust,
Cry thro' the sense to hearten trust
In that which made the world so fair.
Not all regret ; the face will shine
Upon me, while I muse alone :
And that dear voice, I once have known.
Still speak to me of me and mine ;
Yet less of sorrow lives in me
For days of happy commune dead ;
Less yearning for the friendship fled,
Than some strong bond which is to be."
Thus, if we accept sorrow and suffering
as sent by GOD for a special and good pur-
pose, sent also by One Who is not only
All-powerful but also All-loving, we may
SORROW AND SUFFERING. 17
then expect the gradual healing of the sor-
row wrought by time, and aided by the
unselfish going forth from oneself to the
duties which lie around us and to work for
others.
" I will not shut me from my kind,
And lest I stiffen into stone,
I will not eat my heart alone,
Nor feed with sighs a passing wind."
{Stanza 108.)
This, of course, is not the teaching of
the world. The world bids us drown sor-
row in pleasure, in licentiousness, in evil.
The world laughs to scorn any attempt to
wear the crown of thorns, and refuses to
see any good that can come from sorrow
and suffering ; but the crown of suffering
confers its own blessings, though these are
unintelligible to the world. This is beau-
tifully expressed in the 69th stanza —
" I wander'd from the noisy town,
I found a wood with thorny boughs :
I took the thorns to bind my brows
I wore them like a civic crown :
B
i8 SORROW AND SUFFERING.
I met with scoffs, I met with scorns
From youth and babe and hoary hairs :
They call'd me in the public squares
The fool that wears a crown of thorns :
They call'd me fool, they call'd me child :
I found an angel of the night :
The voice was low, the look was bright :
He look'd upon my crown and smil'd.
He reach'd the glory of a hand,
That seem'd to touch it into leaf :
The voice was not the voice of grief,
The words were hard to understand."
What amount of sorrow and suffering
it may please GOD to send into our lives
is unknown to us. We only know that
" whom He loveth, He chasteneth," and
" He purgeth the branch that it may
bring forth more fruit " ; but come when
it may, and how it may, if we will patiently
wear our crown of thorns, the hand that
gave it in love will " touch it into leaf,"
though the reason may be " hard to under-
stand."
But there is one species of sorrow that
no Christian should ever shrink from, and
SORROW AND SUFFERING. 19
that is the penitential sorrow for sin.
How little we modern Christians realize
our sinfulness ! How unreal to us is the
penitential language of the saints! We
cannot, with St. Paul, call ourselves " the
chief of sinners," nor, to come to our own
times, can we use the language of such
an one as John Keble. In these days we
sin lightly and easily, thinking little of it,
and sorrowing little for it.
And yet " our growth depends on our con-
tinuance in penitence ; and the growth will
only go forward according to the measure
with which our growing penitence admits
of it.
" And still each admitted act of grace by
which we are succoured and uplifted
purges our blighted eyes, so that we can see
a little further into the mystery of Divine
Love, and as we see more of the Love we
see, too, a little more into our own outrage
upon it, our own ingratitude to it, our own
disregard of it, our own scandalous defeat
of it : and our shame is therefore deeper,
20 SORROW AND SUFFERING.
and our plea for pardon more real, and
our power of repentance more vivid and
sincere. And this, again, drives us out in
recoil upon GOD, Who ever pardons and
absolves ; and we cry to Him with a louder
voice, and we weep more bitter tears, and
we cling" to Him the faster as we realize
our impotence, and we lie open, with less
obstruction than before, to the incoming of
His pity, and become capable of a larger
spiritual gift, which, again, lays more bare
our own spiritual infirmity. . . .
" This is the spiritual process, which in-
creases in intensity as the soul advances in
apprehension of GOD, so that we are to
spend our whole lives in putting an ever-
deepening significance into the confession
with which we begin, * Have mercy upon
us miserable sinners.'
" When we first said it we were but as
children, sobbing for some blind and in-
tangible misery. The gathering years
bring us the realities of experience, by
which we can give shape and substance to
SORROW AND SUFFERING. 21
our sense of guilt ; and the confession
therefore grows more urgent, more articu-
late, more keen. And only by degrees,
under slow and bitter pressure, do we actu-
ally learn to enter, trembling and aston-
ished, into the mysterious depths of sorrow
which lie behind the language of these un-
known penitents, whose words may have
been on our lips from our childhood." ^
Grant to me, Lord, pardon for my past
sins, grace to resist present temptations, and
watchfulness for the future. Let not my
days be ended before my sins are forgiven ;
but grant that before I die T may fully
attain to Thy mercy : and as Thou wilt
and as Thou knowest, have mercy upon me,
O Lord.
I Scott Holland.
II.— ©eaf^ Ani> t^i fufure §t<xU,
WE pass now to learn what our poem
has to teach us about Death and
the Future. We shall be able to trace the
same process of growth in thought, as in
our last lecture. Death first presents itself
as an evil, an act of separation which fills
the cup of bitterness to the full. As the
poem goes on the poet learns that Death
is working for good until at its close he is
content to look forward to the future,
secure in the love of that friend whom he
believes he shall see once more.
It would be hardly possible to express
in more tender pathos the bitterness of the
separation caused by death than in the
22nd stanza —
" The path by which we twain did go
Which led by tracts that pleased us well,
Thro' four sweet years arose and fell.
From flower to flower and snow to snow :
DEATH AND THE FUTURE STATE. 23
And we with singing cheered the way,
And, crown'd with all the season lent,
From April on to April went,
And glad at heart from May to May :
But where the path we walk'd began
To slant the fifth autumnal slope.
As we descended following Hope
There sat the shadow fear'd of man :
Who broke our fair companionship.
And spread his mantle dark and cold.
And wrapt thee formless in the fold,
And dull'd the murmur on thy lip.
And bore thee where I could not see
Nor follow tho' I walk in haste,
And think, that somewhere in the waste
The Shadow sits and waits for me."
It is the thought of separation which is
the most bitter part of his trial. He tells
us in the 82nd stanza that he could ha.ve
forgiven Death anything else, such as
" Changes wrought on form and face,"
but the separation of himself and his
friend he finds it hard to pardon.
24 DEATH AND THE FUTURE STATE,
" P"or this alone on Death I wreak
The wrath that garners in my heart :
He put our lives so far apart
We cannot hear each other speak."
But although this terrible feeling of
separation adds so much to his grief he
has a firm belief in the future life and in
the existence of the dead in a state of
peace and consciousness.
Thus, in the 38th stanza, after the keep-
ing of the first Christmas Day since his
friend's death, and the gradual cessation
of game and song as the thought of the
departed made itself felt, he goes on —
" We ceased ; a gentler feeling crept
Upon us : surely rest is meet :
' They rest,' we said, * their sleep is sweet,'
And silence followed and we wept.
Our voices took a higher range ;
Once more we sang : ' They do not die
Nor lose their mortal sympathy,
Nor change to us, although they change.'"
Tennyson felt very strongly that this
DEATH AND THE FUTURE STATE. 25
life is inexplicable unless there be a life
beyond the grave. If this were not so, then
he felt that this life is not worth the living,
and that death would be preferable. So,
in the first and last verses of the 34th stanza,
" My own dim life should teach me this,
That life shall live for evermore,
Else earth is darkness at the core,
And dust and ashes all that is ; "
If this be not so :
" 'Tvvere best at once to sink to peace.
Like birds the charming serpent draws,
To drop head foremost in the jaws
Of vacant darkness and to cease."
Nor can I forbear to quote the last two
stanzas of that fine poem, " Vastness " —
"What is it all, if we all of us end but in being
our own corpse coffins at last,
Swallowed in Vastness, lost in Silence, drown'd
in the deeps of a meaningless Past ?
What but a murmur of gnats in the gloom, or
a moment's anger of bees in their hive ? —
26 DEATH AND THE FUTURE STATE.
Peace, let it be ! for I loved him, and love
him for ever : the dead are not dead but
alive."
Another step is reached when to the
thought of consciousness in the after life
is added the belief that the life of the
departed is no mere state of inaction but
one of energy and work in the great offices
of that blessed state. Thus, in the 40th
stanza,
" And doubtless unto thee is given
A life that bears immortal fruit
In such great offices as suit
The full-grown energies of heaven."
And in the 73rd,
" So many worlds, so much to do,
So little done, such things to be.
How know I what had need of thee,
For thou wert strong as thou wert true? "
So far, I suppose, we shall all feel that
Tennyson has carried us with him. In the
44th stanza he enters upon a question of the
kind in which his metaphysical mind de-
DEATH AND THE FUTURE STATE. 27
lighted, of a kind, however, which must
always be wrapped to some extent in un-
certainty, and can only be described as
speculative. He seeks to know how far
the departed can remember the persons and
things of this life.
He seems to think that the events of this
life would be largely blotted out by death
and the new existence of the next, and yet
he hopes that there may be gleams of
memory in which his friend may think of
him.
" How fares it with the happy dead ?
For here the man is more and more ;
But he {i.e., the dead) forgets the days
before
God shut the doorways of his head.
The days have vanish'd, tone and tint,
And yet perhaps the hoarding sense
Gives out at times (he knows not whence).
A little flash, a mystic hint :
And in the long harmonious years
(If Death so taste Lethean springs,)
May some dim touch of earthly things
Surprise thee ranging with thy peers.
28 DEATH AND THE FUTURE STATE.
If such a dreamy touch should fall,
O turn thee round, resolve the doubt ;
My guardian angel will speak out
In that high place and tell thee all."
However this may be, the poet is quite
clear that the future life is not an uncon-
scious sleep, nor a mere merging of each
soul in the general Soul, but the person-
ality will be preserved, and we shall know
each other. This is the theme of the 47th
stanza —
"That each, who seems a separate whole,
Should move his rounds, and fusing all
The skirts of self again, should fall
Remerging in the general Soul,
Is faith as vague as all unsweet :
Eternal form shall still divide
The eternal soul from all beside ;
And I shall know him when we meet :
And we shall sit at endless feast,
Enjoying each the other's good :
What vaster dream can hit the mood
Of Love on earth ? He seeks at least
DEATH AND THE FUTURE STATE. 29
Upon the last and sharpest height,
Before the spirits fade away,
Some landing place, to clasp and say,^^
< Farewell ! We lose ourselves in light.' "
Another question which exercises the
poet is whether the dead have any know-
ledge of the actions of the living, and, if
so, whether they are conscious of our baser
side and of our unworthy deeds. If so,
will they love us less? Surely not. They
too have been tried and tempted ; they will
feel for us in our temptations, they will
love us and watch with the keenest interest
the race we run.
" Do we indeed desire the dead
Should still be near us at our side ?
Is there no baseness we would hide ?
No inner vileness that we dread ?
Shall he for whose applause I strove,
I had such reverence for his blame,
See with clear eye some hidden shame
And I be lessen'd in his love?
I wrong the grave with fears untrue :
Shall love be blamed for want of faith?
There must be wisdom with great Death :
The dead shall look me thro' and thro'.
30 DEATH AND THE FUTURE STATE.
Be near us when we climb or fall :
Ye watch, like God, the rolling hours
With larger other eyes than ours,
To make allowance for us all."
{Stanza 51.)
There is no doubt that the death of one
dear to us, while still in his youth, adds
greatly to the keenness of the trial. We
are inclined to murmur that he was, as we
say, cut off in his prime. We perhaps
forget that with GOD there is no such
thing as Time, that, at a given moment,
the part which our dear one played in the
plan of this life has been played, and
there is other work for him to do elsewhere.
Then God's finger touches him, and he
sleeps to awaken to the activities and work
of Paradise.
In the 8 1st stanza Tennyson seems to
have caught and embodied this idea —
" Could I have said while he was here,
' My love shall now no further range ;
There cannot come a mellower change,
For now is love mature in ear.'
DEATH AND THE FUTURE STATE. 31
Love, then, had hope of richer store :
What end is here to my complaint?
This haunting whisper makes me faint,
' More years had made me love thee more.'
But Death returns an answer sweet :
' My sudden frost was sudden gain,
And gave all ripeness to the grain,
It might have drawn from after-heat.' "
Finally, at the close of the poem, we find
the poet has reached a quiet assurance as
to the future life of the departed and the
bliss of their state. Thus, in the Ii8th
stanza,
"Contemplate all this work of Time,
The giant labouring in his youth ;
Nor dream of human love and truth,
As dying Nature's earth and lime ;
But trust that those we call the dead
Are breathers of an ampler day
For ever nobler ends."
It remains now to gather up with some
brief comments the lessons we have learned
on this subject from the poem.
32 DEATH AND THE FUTURE STATE.
We saw that the author began with a
sense of dread and horror of death. Is
not this natural to us all ? Death is a ter-
rible thing-, made more awful by the sense
of the unknown which pervades it. There
is a well-known anecdote, quoted by the
late Dr. Liddon in one of his sermons,
which illustrates the awe with which we
must enter that unknown land.
" An Indian officer, who in his time had
seen a great deal of service, and had taken
part in more than one of those decisive
struggles by which the British authority
was finally established in the East Indies,
had returned to end his days in this coun-
try, and was talking with his friends about
the most striking experiences of his pro-
fessional career. They led him, by their
sympathy and their questions, to travel in
memory through a long series of years ;
and as he described skirmishes, battles,
sieges, personal encounters, hairbreadth
escapes, the outbreak of the mutiny, and
its suppression, reverses, victories — all the
DEATH AND THE FUTURE STATE. 33
swift alternations of anxiety and hojDe
which a man must know who is entrusted
with command, and is before the enemy —
tiieir interest in his story, as was natural,
became keener and more exacting. At last
he paused with the observation, ' I expect
to see something much more remarkable
than anything I have been describing.' As
he was some seventy years of age, and was
understood to have retired from active ser-
vice, his listeners failed to catch his mean-
ing. There was a pause ; and then he said
in an undertone, * I mean in the first five
minutes after death.' "
Yes, we may well look forward with a
reverential awe to the first five minutes
after death.
It IS, however, the general rule that the
actual passing from this life is a peaceful
process, a falling asleep.
" God's finger touch'd him and he slept "
is Tennyson's description, no less truthful
than beautiful.
But the thought that the future life is
34 DEATH AND THE FUTURE STATE.
a state of consciousness, full of marvel-
lous activities and high operations, is one
of intense interest for us to dwell upon.
I do not forget that there have been some
who have maintained that the future state
was a period of unconscious sleep. It is
true that in Holy Scripture Death is often
spoken of under the figure of sleep. St.
Stephen, after the commendation of his
spirit to God, " fell asleep." ^ Our Blessed
Lord is "the firstfruitsof them that slept. "^
But surely this is figurative language. Our
Lord went and " preached to the spirits
that were in prison." ^ Nor was it to a state
of unconscious slumber that He invited the
penitent thief ; nor, again, would such
words describe the feelings of St. Paul
when he spoke of " having a desire to
depart and to be with Christ." *
" The retention of consciousness in the
Intermediate State carries with it of neces-
sity the full possession of all other facul-
^ Acts vii. 60, 2 I Cor. xv. 20. " i Peter iii. 19.
<Phil. i. 2^
DEATH AND THE FUTURE STATE. 35
ties of the mind, for though in this life
they are exercised through the medium of
bodily organs, they are so far from being
dependent on these, that there is good
reason to believe that they will be largely
developed when freed from their restrain-
ing influence." ^
Thus, for example, we may look for a
development of knowledge. " Now we see
through a glass darkly, but then face to
face ; now I know in part ; but then shall
I know even as also I am known." ^ How
much we shall have to learn, and how
glorious will be the dawn of light and
truth as the mists and shadows of this
world roll away before the beams of the
Sun of Righteousness ! But if the increase
of knowledge forms one of the great occu-
pations of the future life, surely the purifi-
cation of the soul and its growth in sancti-
fication will form the all-important work
of each individual. Is there any one of us
who can feel, that if it should be the
1 Luckock, " Intermediate State," chap. vi. 2 j Cor. xiii. 12.
36 DEATH AND THE FUTURE STATE.
Divine Will that GOD's finger should
touch him at this moment that he is pre-
pared to pass into the immediate presence
of Him Who " dwelleth in the light which
no man can approach unto " ? ^ Do we not
feel that, though we may humbly and
firmly believe that we have received pardon
for our sins through the precious blood
of Jesus Christ, yet that preparation, puri-
fication, education, sanctification are sorely
needed before we dare to obtrude ourselves
into that awful Presence?
The common idea that Death has some
subtle power to change the spiritual nature
and transform the sinner into a saint is, by
a moment's reflection, seen to be false : for
Death is a physical process which touches
the body, but cannot affect the soul.
It is deeply to be regretted that a section
of the Church, by introducing the notion
that purification is accompanied by phy-
sical pain, has obscured the true idea of
1 1 Tim. vi. i6.
DEATH AND THE FUTURE STATE. 37
the process, and prejudiced the minds of
many against it.
The real, spiritual pain, which must be
felt even in the midst of peace and joy,
a pain which is engendered by the know-
ledge of the soul's unworthiness and the
thought of its past sinfulness, is beauti-
fully expressed in Newman's " Dream of
Gerontius " —
" It is the face of the Incarnate God
Shall smite thee with that keen and subtle
pain :
And yet the memory which it leaves will be
A sovereign febrifuge to heal the wound."
" for, though
Now sinless, thou wilt feel that thou hast
sinned.
As never didst thou feel ; and wilt desire
To slink away and hide thee from His sight :
And yet wilt have a longing, aye to dwell
Within the beauty of His countenance.
And these two pains, so counter and so
keen, —
The longing for Him, when thou see'st Him
not :
The shame of self at thought of seeing Him, —
Will be thy veriest, sharpest purgatory."
38 DEATH AND THE FUTURE STATE.
And yet while we speak, and rightly
speak, of the pain caused by the looking
back upon the failures and sins of this
life, and realizing how different it might
have been, we must be very careful
to understand that all the time the soul
is in a perfect state of peace and happiness.
Perhaps we should do better to speak of
the feeling as one of education rather than
of pain. The old time-honoured prayer,
" Requiescat in pace," expresses the true
mind of the Church on this point. We
can have no doubt that the early Christians
were right when they laid their faithful
dead in the catacombs, and wrote upon
their graves the simple but expressive
words, " In pace." " The souls of the
righteous are in the hand of GOD, and
there shall no torment touch them."
But the purification of the soul is not the
only work of the Intermediate State. There
are " the great offices," that suit " the full-
grown energies of Heaven."
Our Lord carried on in that state the
DEATH AND THE FUTURE STATE. 39
work in which He was engaged in this
world. " He preached to the spirits that
were in prison." It is surely no unsafe
inference from this that spiritual work
begun here, may be continued there. " The
influence, the preaching, the ministrations,
are not stopped, they are only transferred
to another sphere, to be continued with in-
tensified energy under spiritual conditions,
though no material ear may hear the voice,
no mortal hand shall feel the touch ; they
are lost to the Church on earth ; they are
gained by the Church in the Intermediate
State." '
There is a text often quoted, but not
always rightly understood, which bears
upon this. " Write, Blessed are the dead
which die in the Lord from henceforth ;
yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest
from their labours ; and their works do
follow them." -
There is no doubt that the literal trans-
lation of the last clause is, " Their works
M iickoLk. -Rev. xiv. 13.
40 DEATH AND THE FUTURE STATE.
follow with them." The works which they
practised in this life follow them into the
next, and are practised by them there also.
Our last point is that which was to
Tennyson's mind so comforting- a certainty.
" I shall know him when we meet." This
has been a belief common to all ages.
The old heathen writers, Homer, Vergil,
Piato, Cicero, all held it strongly. The
Jewish king consoled himself for the loss
of his child by the thought, " I shall go to
him." ^ Our Lord cheered the poor peni-
tent thief by His Divine word, " To-day
shalt thou be with Me." -
All nature teaches that change of form
does not mean loss of identity. The beau-
tiful stalk of wheat differs in form from
the tiny grain that was sown, )et their
identity is preserved, both are wheat. The
glory of the celestial body will not rob the
owner of his personal identity with the
body of this life.
Thus, if we feel, as we must feel, that
1 2 Sam. xii. 23. - S. Luke x.xiii. 43.
DEATH AND THE FUTURE STATE. 41
Death fills us with awe ; yet we may also
feel that it is the portal to another life, a
life of pardon, of peace, of sancti&cation,
of growth in knowledge and wisdom, of
high and holy occupations, of sweet re-
unions, and, above all, of a life lighted
with the presence of Him, " Whom, having
not seen, we love," Who is " The Resurrec-
tion and the Life."
III.— ®ou6f anb fait^.
EVEN if the biography of Tennyson
were not in our hands, we should be
able to infer from the internal evidence of
this poem that he was a Christian poet.
He speaks of Christ as " the Life Indeed " ;
" His power to raise the dead is confessed ;
He is the receiver of the souls of the dead
into the world beyond this world. He is
the Word of GOD that breathed human
breath, and wrought out the faith with
human deeds." ^
To go no further, the first verse of the
prologue seems to put this beyond dis-
pute —
" Strong Son of GOD, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen Thy face,
By faith, and faith alone embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove."
1 Siopford Brooke.
DOUBT AND FAITH. 43
" But it would not be true to say that
Tennyson had not to fight for it (this posi-
tion) against thoughts within, which en-
deavoured to betray it, and against doubts
which besieged it from without. He did
not always repose in it ; he had to fight
for it, sword in hand, and many a troublous
wound he took. ... It fell to his lot to
live at a time when the faith in immor-
tality has had to run the gauntlet between
foes and seeming friends, of a greater
variety and of a greater skill than ever
before in the history of man." ^ We can
see this struggle in his early poems, pre-
eminently in that of " The Two Voices,"
but at the date of the conclusion of " In
Memoriam " the victory has been won.
The poet has fought his doubts and laid
them. It is true that fresh difficulties en-
countered him at a later period of life,
which had to be fought in the same way,
but with these we have nothing to do now.
But " all through the seventeen years — •
1 Stopford Brooke.
44 DOUBT AND FAITH.
the period covered in writing * In Memo-
riam ' — a soul knowing its own bitterness,
wrapped in profound meditation, tried
manfully to beat back its own scepticism
by patient, earnest inquiry into the rational
grounds for believing that GOD is ; that
He is personal ; that He is essential Justice
and Love ; that life, with its love and duty,
has intrinsic worth and meaning ; that
destiny is something loftier than the
dust." '
The 54th stanza shows us something of
this struggle —
" Oh yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood ;
That nothing walks with aimless feet ;
That not one life shall be destroy'd,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete ;
That not a worm is cloven in vain.
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivel'd in a fruitless fire.
Or but subserves another's gain.
1 Sneath.
DOUBT AND FAITH. 45
Behold we know not anything,
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last— far off— at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.
So runs my dream : but what am I ?
An infant crying in the night :
An infant crying for the light :
And with no language but a cry."
Or again, the concluding" verses of the
next two stanzas —
" I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world's altar-stairs
That slope thro' darkness up to GOD.
I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all.
And faintly trust the larger hope."
[Stanza 55.)
"O life as futile, then, as frail!
O for thy voice to soothe and bless !
What hope of answer, or redress ?
Behind the veil, behind the veil."
[Stanza 56.)
The trial of doubt is one that comes to
46 DOUBT AND FAITH.
many, pre-eminently to those who think
most deeply.
He who paddles in shallow water is
secure of his footing; but as he advances
into the deep he is liable to be swept off
his feet and carried away.
Honest doubt is not a state of mind for
anyone to desire. Happy are those who
keep the child-like, simple faith of child-
hood throughout their lives ; but if doubt
comes, if the trial is met and faced, the
victory won then, the result is generally a
stronger faith and an ability to hold out
a sympathetic helping hand to those who
are passing through the same trial. We do
not, must not, seek for illness, but often we
are stronger when sickness has come and
gone than we were before. Such, I believe,
were the thoughts that prompted the C)6th
stanza —
" You say, but with no touch of scorn,
Sweet-hearted, you, whose light-blue eyes
Are tender over drowning flies,
You tell me, doubt is Devil-born.
DOUBT AND FAITH. 47
I know not : one indeed I knew
In many a subtle question versed
Who touched a jarring lyre at first,
But ever strove to make it true :
Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds,
At last he beat his music out.
There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.
He fought his doubts and gathered strength,
He would not make his judgment blind.
He faced the spectres of the mind
And laid them : thus he came at length
To find a stronger faith his own ;
And Power was with him in the night,
Which makes the darkness and the light,
And dwells not in the light alone,
But in the darkness and the cloud.
As over Sinai's peaks of old,
While Israel made their gods of gold,
Altho' the trumpet blew so loud."
Yes, there is such a thing as a formal,
lazy, thoughtless assent to a creed, an
assent which involves no exercise of faith,
and is consequently worthless. And there
48 DOUBT AND FAITH.
is an " honest doubt," which longs to be-
lieve, and carries on an earnest wrestling
with difficulties until the victory is won.
In such an honest doubt there is more of
true faith than in the formal, careless
acceptance of a creed, which is nothing
more than a form of words, and a form
which produces little or no effect upon the
life of him who subscribes to it.
It is certain that in the past believers have
been far too apt " to condemn doubters,
as if doubt were wilful and unpardonable
sin."
Yet it is a fact " that on the one hand
great and good men believe ; and on the
other hand great and good men doubt"
Facts such as these deserve a more just
treatment than insolent condemnation or
mere insolent ridicule.
There are two ways in which doubt may
be, and often is, regarded, each of which
errs, though in a different direction.
By some it is condemned as an almost
hopeless condition. The terms " sceptic,"
DOUBT AND FAITH. 49
" atheist," etc., often too thoughtlessly
applied, stamp the unfortunate person as
a kind of spiritual pariah, who should be
shunned by all good people.
But Doubt is a matter not for scorn, but
for the most compassionate sympathy. It
shows that there is a defect in the
spiritual part of the doubter's nature, but
a defect which may be made good.
" No man on earth is perfect and with-
out defect. The defect sometimes appears
in the body, and is a defect of sense ; of
sight, or hearing", or taste, or speech.
Sometimes the defect is in the soul, and
produces imperfection of understanding,
or emotion, or affection, or will. And
sometimes the imperfection is in the spirit,
and produces imperfection of faith. . . .
As men may be, and sometimes are,
without sight or without reason, so like-
wise may they be, and sometimes are, with-
out faith." ^
We pity the blind and the mad. We
1 Diggle.
D
50 DOUBT AND FAITH.
labour to restore to them their sight and
their reason. No less should we have com-
passion for the unbeliever, and endeavour
to help him into the comfort and strength
of faith.
But by others Doubt is regarded almost
with admiration. It is so much the fashion
that it is regarded as a necessity for those
who would march with the times. So many
intellectual minds have been assailed by it
that it is regarded as a sign of intellectual
power to be sceptical.
But this is to mistake one thing for
another. " Strong minds doubt, but doubt
is no proof of strength ; noble minds
doubt — in these davs all the noblest must
pass through doubt — but doubt is no proof
of nobility. The strength and nobility
are shown when the doubts are grappled
with till they yield up some hidden treasure
of truth." '
The " honest doubt "of which Tennyson
speaks implies that the doubter
1 Tainsb.
DOUBT AND FAITH. 51
" Fought his doubts and gathered strength,
He would not make his judgment blind,
He faced the spectres of his mind
And laid them."
No careful student of this poem can
fail to see the importance which the author
attaches to faith. He had but little belief
in the great verities of religion being ca-
pable of proof, nor did he think highly of
what is commonly called " the Evidences
of Christianity"; but he felt that these
great truths were borne in upon the soul by
a great wave of faith, which satisfied the
believer and gave him rest and peace.
So Professor Sidgwick, writing of this
poem, says : " What * In Memoriam ' did
for us, for me at least, in this struggle,
was to impress on us the ineffaceable and
ineradicable conviction that hinnanity will
not, and cannot, acquiesce in a godless
world : the * man in men ' will not do this,
whatever individual men may do. . . ."
"If the possibility of a ' godless world '
is excluded, the faith thus restored is, for
52 DOUBT AND FAITH.
the poet, unquestionably a form of Christ-
ian faith ; there seems to him then no
reason for doubting that the
' Sinless years
That breathed beneath the Syrian blue,'
and the marvel of the life continued, after
the bodily death, were a manifestation of
the immortal love which, by faith, we em-
brace as the essence of the Divine Nature."
This clear faith felt by the poet, even in
the midst of all the darkness of mystery
and clouds of doubt, finds its expression
in the 124th stanza —
" That which we dare invoke to bless
Our dearest faith : our ghastliest doubt ;
He, They, One, All : within, without ;
The Power in darkness whom we guess :
I found Him not in world or sun,
Or eagle's wing, or insect's eye :
Nor thro' the questions men may try,
The petty cobwebs we have spun :
H e'er when faith had fallen asleep,
I heard a voice ' believe no more '
And heard an ever-breaking shore
That tumbled in the Godless deep :
DOUBT AND FAITH. 53
A warmth within the heart would melt
The freezing reason's colder part,
And like a man in wrath the heart
Stood up and answered ' I have felt.'
No, like a child in doubt and fear :
But that blind clamour made me wise :
Then was I as a child that cries.
But, crying, knows his father near :
And what I am beheld again
What is, and no man understands ;
And out of darkness came the hands
That reach thro' nature, moulding men."
This would seem to be the fitting- place
to say a few words on the nature of faith.
The nature of man is tripartite. Body,
soul or mind and spirit. The body is the
material part ; the soul, the intellectual ;
the spirit, the highest part, which differenti-
ates man from the rest of the animal crea-
tion, and enables him to enter into relation
to, and communion with, the Divine Being.
Each of these parts has its own peculiar
faculties — e.g., the body has the power of
motion, and of exercising the organs of
sense. The soul has the intellectual facul-
54 DOUBT AND FAITH.
ties of memory, thought, etc., and the spirit
has also its own faculties, among which
we may reckon faith.
But we must remember that so intimately
are these three parts united that often an
action involves the use of all three. Thus
an act of prayer may cause the body to
assume the humble posture of kneeling,
the soul to arrange its thoughts and to
express them in words, and the spirit to
exercise faith and communion with GOD.
It is, of course, the case that an indi-
vidual may be defective in one or other of
these parts. For example, the organ of
hearing may be defective in the body ; the
faculty of reasoning in the soul, and the
faculty of Faith in the Spirit. It is
therefore no proof of the non-existence of
Faith because some men do not believe,
any more than it would be a proof of the
non-existence of sight because some men
are blind.
The complete man is he who possesses
these three parts of his nature in their en-
DOUBT AND FAITH. 55
tirety. The faculties of each part are
cultivated and improved by use. Exercise
your reasoning power, and you will reason
more accurately ; exercise your faith, and
you will strengthen it, till out of weakness
it is made strong.
It is thus that "honest doubt" may in
the long run prove a blessing. Faith
grows strong by grappling with obstacles.
Faith is not a heyday of believing what
we will. This borders upon credulity.
Faith is the grasping of ultimate spiritual
realities, and it needs to be tested, tried,
chastened, ere it attain its true balance and
proportion, and be worthy to rank with
reason as the noblest endowment of man-
hood.
There are splendid heights of assurance
reserved for those who win their way
thereto by unflinching courage. Spiritual
certitudes multiply in strength and sweet-
ness as a man walks humbly with GOD.
Faith is helped and strengthened in
different ways.
56 DOUBT AND FAITH.
Many have been helped in their belief by
the argument that the wonders of creation
demand an Author, Who must be a Being
far transcending man in intelligence, in
wisdom, and in power. Nor is this argu-
ment to be despised. But it did not appeal
to Tennyson.
" I found Him not in world or sun,
Or eagle's wing or insect's eye.''
" Nothing worthy proving can be
proven." It is here that the venture of
Faith must be made. We cannot, with our
limited knowledge, escape from difficulties,
nor can we hope to solve all the perplexing
problems which surround us, but we can
believe that the solution will come in the
future ; we can refuse to acquiesce in the
counsels of despair, and as we do this there
will arise in our hearts a conviction that
" all is well."
" Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne
connait pas!' ^
1 Pascal.
DOUBT AND FAITH. 57
Tennyson dreaded the idea of the loss
of faith among men. " Take away belief
in the self-conscious personality of GOD,"
he said, " and you take away the backbone
of the world."
" On God and GOD-like men we build
our trust."
Another point in the faith of Tennyson
was its great reverence, coupled with its
deep humility. Speaking of GOD, he would
say, " I dare hardly name His Name." and
he would deprecate any rash intrusion into
mysteries which are beyond our under-
standing. Do we not need more of this
reverence and humility in the way in which
we deal with sacred things? In Dr.
Robbins' most valuable and suggestive
work, " An Essay toward Faith," he has
a chapter on " The Pride of Orthodoxy,"
from which I must make one quotation,
though the whole should be read.
" To know all about Almighty GOD is
perhaps a more hopeless state of mind than
Agnosticism. GOD mapped out with the
58 DOUBT AND FAITH.
precision of a mathematical demonstra-
tion ; Jesus Christ and His Atoning Work
fully explicated with the nicety of a scien-
tific definition ; spiritual life elaborated
according to the precedents of casuistry
until a rule of thumb determines every
problem beyond a peradventure ; here
is nutriment for pride which shall o'er-
top all other vanities of earth. Theology
is indeed the queen of sciences. Based
upon the revelation of GOD in Jesus Christ,
the development of doctrine in the Church
has safeguarded the fundamental truths of
the Gospel from the rash and perverse
speculations of men. The Catholic Faith
is a beautifully ordered system, in which
the mind, as well as the heart of man, may
find infinite delight and satisfaction.
There is legitimate certitude in which the
faithful rejoice amidst the shifting winds
of human opinion. But a dogma may be
true without being exhaustive. Though it
be based on a fact of revelation, the medium
of its expression is still the fallible Ian-
DOUBT AND FAITH. 59
guage of earth. Finite terms cannot com-
pass infinite truth. At best a doctrinal
definition is but the stammering of chil-
dren, striving to utter the ineffable. When
definition serves to empty Divine truth of
its awe and mystery, it is doing the soul
a sorry service. Better a reverence which
dare not formulate, lest it derogate from
truth's dignity, than the shallow self-
assurance which would sound the depths
of eternity with the plummet of a glib
metaphysical statement."
Then as to reverence :
Is it not painful to read the most sacred
mysteries of our religion discussed in the
columns of the newspapers?
Is there no need for more reverence in the
way in which we patter off the well-known
words of a familiar prayer or the verses of
a favourite hymn?
Is the old idea of the practice of the
Presence of GOD quite lost?* Was it not a
good thing to teach as men used to teach,
that the first thing to do in kneeling down
6o DOUBT AND FAITH.
in God's House was to remember that
" Surely the Lord is in this place " ? Was
not the advice of the wise man sound?
** Keep thy foot when thou goest to the
House of God, and be more ready to hear
than to give the sacrifice of fools ; for they
consider not that they do evil. Be not rash
with thy mouth, and let not thine heart
be hasty to utter anything before GOD : for
God is in Heaven, and thou upon earth :
therefore let thy words be few." The very
frequency of our Services — rich blessing
though it is — is the very source of our dan-
ger. So soon as reverence departs and
formality enters we do not gain but lose.
The sole safeguard is the thought of the
Presence of GOD and all that it means.
Men flocked to hear Dr. Newman read
the Lessons at Oxford, and Prof. Maurice
say the daily Service at the Temple Church,
because they felt that there was a reality
about their ministrations which impressed
them as coming from " priests who were
clothed with righteousness."
DOUBT AND FAITH. 6i
Faith which is born of humihty and
sanctified by reverence will lead us into all
truth, the peace of GOD will steal into our
hearts, all things will be made new,
according to the promise of Christ, and
we shall know Him as the Way, the Truth,
and the Life.
" O Living Will that shalt endure
When all that seems shall suffer shock,
Rise in the spiritual rock.
Flow thro' our deeds and make them pure ;
That we may lift from out of dust
A voice as unto him that hears
A cry above the conquer'd gears
To one, that with us works, and trust.
With faith that comes of self-control,
The truths that never can be proved
Until we close with all we loved.
And all we flow from, soul in soul."
{Stanza 131.)
WE have seen that Tennyson's belief
in God was to him a matter of
faith, and not a matter of proof.
There is, as he thought, a domain of
knowledge and a domain of faith. These
are not contradictory. The domain of
faith lies beyond the domain of knowledge.
Knowledge is confined to what can be
known by the senses or demonstrated by
the reason. But beyond the limits of sense
and reason there lies the great world of
reality, w^hich can be entered only by faith.
So in the Prologue —
" Strong Son of GOD, immortal Love
Whom we, that have not seen Thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing, where we cannot prove."
GOD. 63
And further on —
" We have but faith ; we cannot know,
For knowledge is of things we see :
And yet we trust it comes from Thee,
A beam in darkness : let it grow."
In another poem, " The Ancient Sage,"
the same idea is worked out at greater
length. In the biography of Tennyson we
are told that the poet himself said of this
poem : " The whole poem is very personal.
The passages about * Faith ' and ' The
Passion of the Past ' were more especially
my own personal feelings." We may there-
fore fairly quote this poem as illustrating
Tennyson's thoughts and views. It is not
possible to do more than indicate passages,
which it is hoped the reader will peruse
in full in the original. The poem narrates
a conversation between an ancient sage and
a rich young man, " worn from wasteful
living." The youth has in his hand a scroll
of verse, which the sage asks permission to
read. And this is what he reads :
64 GOD.
" How far thro' all the bloom and brake
That nightingale is heard !
What power but the bird's could make
This music in the bird ?
How summer bright are yonder skies,
And earth as fair in hue !
And yet what sign of aught that lies
Behind the green and blue ?
But man to-day is fancy's fool
As man hath ever been,
The nameless Power, or Powers, that rule
Were never heard or seen."
Here we have a thorough unbelief in the
existence of GOD, or, at best, an admission
that there may be some nameless Power or
Powers, but that man is but the fool of his
fancy if he thinks that he can apprehend
the Power.
The reply of the sage is expressed in
some of the noblest lines that Tennyson
ever wrote, beginning as follows :
" H thou would'st hear the Nameless, and wilt
dive
Into the Temple-cave of thine own self,
There, brooding by the central altar, thou
May'st haply learn the Nameless hath a voice,
GOD. 65
By which thou wilt abide if thou be wise,
As if thou knewest, tho' thou canst not know ;
For Knowledge is the swallow on the lake
That sees and stirs the surface-shadow there."
We note in this passage that it is not by
knowledge that we apprehend GOD, for
knowledge does but skim, like a swallow,
upon the surface of the water ; but by faith
in the inmost depths of our own being we
can hear the voice of the Nameless.
The sage now continues to read the roll,
which demands proof of the existence of
the Nameless ; when he breaks off he
interjects this reply :
" Thou canst not prove the Nameless, O my
son,
Nor canst thou prove the world thou movest
in,
Thou canst not prove that thou art body alone,
Nor canst thou prove that thou are spirit
alone,
Nor canst thou prove that thou art both in
one :
* * ♦ * *
E
66 GOD.
For nothing worthy proving, can be proven,
Nor yet disproven ; wherefore thou be wise,
Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt,
And cling to faith, beyond the forms of Faith ! "
Here again the poet is dwelling upon
the thought that GOD cannot be proved, but
the power of faith can penetrate where
those of knowledge and reason fail.
These extracts show clearly Tennyson's
position. As we have said before, the argu-
ment from design did not appeal to him,
nor did philosophical arguments commend
themselves to his mind.
" Nor thro' the questions men may try
The petty cobwebs we have spun."
For him, the existence of GOD is neces-
sary for the satisfaction of the demands
of the human race. " With a clear acknow-
ledgment that there is no purpose behind
the changes of things, and no working
towards an end, all striving must become
aimless, and life eventually intolerable." ^
1 Masterman.
GOD. 67
Some are led to the Truth by one path ;
others by another. We need not think that
the arguments which were voiceless to
Tennyson have necessarily no message for
others. A great preacher has said, " There
are three great postulates of reason — the
existence of self, of the world, of
God." '
No doubt this is true, and yet it may be
helpful to make a brief digression from
Tennyson's views and to indicate certain
lines of thought which have undoubtedly
helped many towards Faith.
There is, first, the fact that the idea of
a Deity is everywhere rooted in the mind
of man. "A nation of pure Atheists is
yet to be discovered. Unworthy and de-
graded as are many of the beliefs on the
subject of a Higher Power that are to be
found in the heathen world, some groping
after the great unseen, some tentative in-
tuition, some shadowy belief there is to
be found always and everywhere. Man
^ Bishop Alexander.
68 GOD.
thinks of a Higher Power as he thinks of
the world around him or of himself." ^
Secondly, as man looks out upon the
Universe he seeks for its productive cause.
" What cause, what force preceded and
brought into existence this Universe? All
the causes with which we come in contact
here are, as we term them, second causes ;
but they point to a cause beyond them-
selves, to a cause of causes, to a supreme
all-producing Cause, Itself uncaused, un-
originated. . . . The whole universe bids
us look beyond itself for the adequate ex-
planation of its existence. . . . ' How do
you know,' a Bedouin was asked, * that
there is a GOD ? ' 'In the same way,' he
replied, ' that I know, on looking at the
sand, when a man or a beast has crossed
the desert — by His footprints in the world
around me.' " ^
Thirdly, there is another line of thought
which proceeds from the contemplation of
iLiddon, " Some Elements of Religion."
2 " Some Elements of Religion," Liddon.
GOD. 69
our own being. The voice o f conscience bears
perpetual witness to us that we ought to
abhor evil and to do good. It also affirms
that if we are virtuous we should be happy.
"Yet, in the experience of life, the good
man who does good is often unhappy,
while vice is not unfrequently salaried and
crowned with rewards that are denied to
virtue. The sight of this contradiction
forces the conscience to infer a life to come,
and a Moral Being, Who, in His justice,
will re-establish those relations between
happiness and virtue which it persistently
recognizes as necessary." ^
Let us now return to Tennyson's views,
and learn some of his thoughts concerning
the Divine Being.
To him, God was a Personal GOD : no
force, no tendency, no vague abstraction,
but a Living, Loving, Personal Being.
The last stanza in the poem may be
quoted in support of this —
1 Liddon.
70 GOD.
" That God, Which ever lives and loves,
One God, one law, one element.
And one far-off divine event
To which the whole creation moves."
God was no blind force, put forward to
account for the existence of the world and
then withdrawn, allowing the machinery of
the Universe to grind along as best it
could by itself, but a Personal Being,
working out His own great purpose and
watching over His own creation.
" Speak to Him thou for He hears, and Spirit
with Spirit can meet —
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than
hands and feet." ^
He was asked to write the words of an
anthem about GOD, and he wrote " The
Human Cry."
"Hallowed be Thy Name— Hallelujah ! —
Infinite Ideality !
Immeasurable Reality !
Infinite Personality !
Hallowed be Thy Name— Hallelujah !
I'l'he Higher Pantheism.
GOD. 71
We feel we are nothing— for all is Thou and
in Thee :
We feel we are something— that also has come
from Thee ;
We know we are nothing— but Thou wilt help
us to be.
Hallowed be Thy Name— Hallelujah ! "
To the idea of Personality, Tennyson
added that of Love.
" That Love which is and was
My Father and my Brother and my GOD." ^
Thus, in the 126th stanza,
a
Love is and was my Lord and King,
And in His presence I attend
To hear the tidings of my friend.
Which every hour his couriers bring.
Love is and was my King and Lord,
And will be, tho' as yet I keep
Within His court on earth, and sleep
Encompass'd by His faithful guard.
And hear at times a sentinel
Who moves about from place to place,
And whispers to the worlds of space.
In the deep night that all is well."
^ Doubt and Prayer.
72 GOD.
It is true that at times he was troubled
by the problem of the apparent waste of
life, and by the vast amount of sin and
suffering throughout the world.
Thus, in these lines —
" O me ! for why is all around us here
As if some lesser god had made the world,
But had not force to shape it as He would,
Till the high GOD behold it from beyond,
And enter it, and make it beautiful ? "
It is a problem which has perplexed
many. If Tennyson has presented it to
us in the beauty of his verse, Newman has
done the same in the majesty of his prose.
" To consider the world in its length
and breadth, its various history, the many
races of men, their starts, their fortunes,
their mutual alienation, their conflicts ; and
then their ways, habits, governments, forms
of worship, their enterprises, their aimless
courses, their random achievements and
acquirements, the impotent conclusion of
long-standing facts, the tokens so faint
and broken of a superintending design,
GOD. 73
the blind evolution of what turn out to be
great powers or truths, the progress of
things, as if from unreasoning elements,
not towards final causes, the greatness and
littleness of man, his far-reaching aims, his
short duration, the curtain hung over his
futurity, the disappointments of life, the
defeat of good, the success of evil, phy-
sical pain, mental anguish, the prevalence
and intensity of sin, the pervading idola-
tries, the corruptions, the dreary, hopeless
irreligion, that condition of the whole race
so fearfully yet exactly described in the
Apostle's words, ' having no hope and with-
out God in the world '—all this is a vision
to dizzy and appal, and inflicts upon the
mind a sense of a profound mystery, which
is absolutely beyond human solution." ^
But if such thoughts troubled Tennyson
at times, as they have troubled others, if
he felt *' the sense of a profound mystery,"
and was appalled by the dizzy vision, it
was only for a time.
^Newman's "Apologia."
74 GOD.
" After one of these moods," we are told
in his life, " he exclaimed — Yet GOD is love,
transcendent, all pervading ! We do not
get this faith from Nature or the World.
. . . We get this faith from ourselves, from
what is highest within us, which recognizes
that there is not one fruitless pang, just
as there is not one lost good."
So in a short poem, entitled " Faith " —
" Doubt no longer that the Highest is the wisest
and the best,
Let not all that saddens Nature blight thy
hope or break thy rest,
Quail not at the fiery mountain, at the ship-
wreck, or the rolling
Thunder, or the rending earthquake, or the
famine, or the pest ! "
And so in the 54th stanza of our
poem —
" Oh yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will.
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood."
GOD. 75
"Behold, we know not anything
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last— far off— at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring."
Tennyson's attitude, therefore, was to
admit that there is much in the mystery of
suffering- we cannot understand, but never-
theless to hold firmly to the belief that
God is Love, and that the mystery will be
solved when we no longer " know in part,"
but "know even as we are known."
But may we not go a step further than
this, and say, in all humility, that we are
permitted to see a little way into this mys-
tery, at least far enough to understand
that pain and suffering serve a purpose, a
merciful purpose, and that in permitting
them to exist, and to do their work in this
world, God is proving Himself a GOD of
Love.
We can see the necessity for pain as a
warning force. If pain were not the con-
sequence of injurious actions, how could
men be taucrht to refrain from them?
76 GOD.
We can see the necessity for pain for the
development of character.
We can see the necessity for pain in the
reign of law.
" It seems hard, no doubt it is hard, that
a mother should lose her darling child by
accident or disease, and that she cannot,
by any agony of prayer, recall the child
to life. But it would be harder for the
world if she could. The child has died
through a violation of some of Nature's
laws : and if such violation were ever un-
attended with death, men would lose all
inducement to discover and obey them. It
seems hard, no doubt, that girls, young and
innocent, like Kate and Lily, whom Walter
Besant so graphically describes in ' Katha-
rine Regina,' it is hard that they should
be so destitute and wretched. Lily says to
her friend, ' We have done no harm to any-
body, why are we so horribly punished?
I have prayed for hours in the night ; I
have torn out my heart with prayer ; I have
prayed till I felt my words echoed back from
GOD. 77
the senseless rocks.' It is hard for the indi-
vidual that such prayers are not answered ;
but It would be harder for the world if they
were. The miraculous providing of food
and comfort for one person would lead all
others to expect a miraculous provision.
... It seems hard, it is hard, that children
are made to suffer for their fathers' crimes.
But it would be harder for the world if
they were not. If the father's wrong-doing
were averted from the children, men would
lose the strongest motive to do right."
Manifestly, then, there is a reason, and
a good reason, for some of the pain in the
world. " And the fact that we can see a
reason for sojiie suffering affords a logical
basis for the hope that there are reasons—
though as yet undiscovered — for all." ^
In the belief that GOD is Good, and that
God is Love, we must be content to leave
the problem partly solved until we are
brought " behind the veil," and the dim twi-
light of this world is exchanged for the
endless, glorious noonday of the City of God.
1 Momerie on Pessimism.
v.— (Bo5 anb '^ie (purpoee*
WE have seen that Tennyson believed
in a Personal GOD, and in a GOD
Who is Love. We must now add to this
the further belief that GOD is no indifferent
spectator of all that is going on in the
world, but that He is working out a great
purpose, that all is " co-operant to an end,"
and bringing about that
" One far-off divine event
To which the whole creation moves."
Tennyson was an ardent advocate of the
principle of Evolution. When first this
principle was stated it came with a shock
upon a great part of the religious world.
It seemed to many to minimize the power
of the Deity, and to remove Him almost,
if not altogether, from His place as the
GOD AND HIS PURPOSE. 79
Creator of the World. With Tennyson
the effect was just the contrary. Behind
all the changes of Nature, all the dis-
coveries of science, all the events of history,
he could see a guiding hand bringing
order out of chaos, and developing all
things in the direction of the end He had
in view.
So in the 128th stanza —
'' The love that rose on stronger wings
Unpalsied when he met with Death,
Is comrade of the lesser faith
That sees the course of human things.
No doubt vast eddies in the flood
Of onward time shall yet be made,
And throned races may degrade ;
Yet, O ye mysteries of good,
Wild Hours that fly with Hope and Fear,
If all your office had to do
With old results that look like new ;
If this were all your mission here,
To draw, to sheathe a useless sword.
To fool the crowd with glorious lies.
To cleave a creed in sects and cries,
To change the bearing of a word.
80 GOD AND HIS PURPOSE.
To shift an arbitrary power,
To cramp the student at his desk,
To make old bareness picturesque
And tuft with grass a feudal tower ;
Why then my scorn might well descend
On you and yours. I see in part
That all, as in some piece of art,
Is toil co-operant to an end."
Yes, " toil co-operant to an end," and
that end will be achieved when the King-
dom of God comes in all its fulness, and
the earth is filled with the knowledge of
the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.
Is not this the vision we have in the last
chapters of Holy Scripture?
The new Heaven and the new earth : the
Holy City, in which shall be "no more
death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither
shall there be any more pain." A City
whose purity can only be likened to the
flawless transparency of the clearest gems,
whose characteristics are perfect beauty,
radiant light, and absolute holiness. From
it is banished all evil. '' There shall in
GOD AND HIS PURPOSE. 8i
no wise enter into it anything that defileth."
But the tree of life, and the river of the
water of life give to its inhabitants the gift
of life in its highest sense, life everlasting.
It is, no doubt, very difficult for us to
trace the working out of this purpose, be-
cause we only see such an infinitesimal
part, both in time and space, of the pro-
gress of the work.
We are constantly brought face to face
with sad, sorrowful, and sinful deeds,
which make us wonder why such things
should be permitted. We forget that it is
impossible for us to see the gradual on-
ward march of progress towards the " one
far-off divine event."
But it is well for us to try and realize
that behind so much that seems unintelli-
gible, God is working out His own end,
and that if, as must be the case,
" The old order changeth, yielding place to
new,"
yet it is also true that
" God fulfils Himself in many ways."
82 GOD AND HIS PURPOSE.
Tennyson has brought this out in a
striking passage in " Sea Dreams," de-
scribing the vision of the wife —
" Round the North, a light,
A belt, it seem'd, of luminous vapour, lay,
And ever in it a low musical note
Swell'd up and died ; and as it swell'd, a ridge
Of breaker issued from the belt, and still
Grew with the growing note, and when the note
Had reached a thunderous fulness, on those
cliffs
Broke, mixed with awful light (the same as that
Living within the belt), whereby she saw
That all those lines of cliffs were cliffs no more,
But huge cathedral fronts of every age,
Grave, florid, stern, as far as eye could see.
One after one : and then the great ridge drew,
Lessening to the lessening music, back
And pass'd into the belt and swell'd again
Slowly to music : ever when it broke
The statues, king or saint, or founder fell ;
Then from the gaps and chasms of ruin left
Came men and women in dark clusters round,
Some crying, ' Set them up ! they shall not
fall ! '
And others, ' Let them lie, for they have
fall'n ! '
And still they strove and wrangled : and she
grieved
GOD AND HIS PURPOSE. 83
In her strange dream, she knew not why, to
find
Their wildest wailings never out of tune
With that sweet note ; and ever as their shrieks
Ran highest up the gamut, that great wave
Returning, while none mark'd it, on the crowd
Broke, mixt with awful light, and show'd their
eyes
Glaring, and passionate looks, and swept away
The men of flesh and blood, and men of stone
To the waste deeps together."
It is a striking picture. We see the
changes, the passing away of old forms
and customs, once so highly venerated, the
consternation with which some view the
dissolution of things that seemed so last-
ing. We hear the loud outcry of party
strife and the din of party warfare, and
yet amidst all there is the sweet " note
never out of tune," the purpose of GOD
steadily working itself out in a progress
towards its appointed end.
If there is a gradual working out of
this purpose in the world, so must there
also be in mankind. Gradually, but
84 GOD AND HIS PURPOSE.
surely, man must " work out the beast/'
and " let the ape and tiger die,"
" That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things."
This is the thought that is contained in
the 1 1 8th stanza.
" They say
The solid earth whereon we tread
In tracts of fluent heat began,
And grew to seeming-random forms,
The seeming prey of cyclic storms.
Till at the last arose the man ;
Who throve and branch'd from clime to clime,
The herald of a higher race,
And of himself in higher place.
If so he type this work of time
Within himself, from more to more ;
Or crown'd with attributes of woe
Like glories, move his course, and show
That life is not an idle ore.
But iron dug from central gloom,
And heated hot with burning fears,
And dipt in baths of hissing tears,
And batter'd with the shocks of doom
GOD AND HIS PURPOSE. 85
To shape and use. Arise and fly
The reeling Faun, the sensual feast ;
Move upward, working out the beast,
And let the ape and tiger die."
Yes, surely all the events of this world
are working together to school mankind
into a higher life, the life of love. GOD
is Love. Man is made in the image of
God, therefore man must learn that Love
is the very Nature of GOD, and that to
draw near to GOD is to dwell in the very
atmosphere of love. As Browning says —
" For life with all it yields of joy and woe, and
hope and fear,
Is just our chance o' the prize of learnin.cf
love —
How love might be, hath been indeed, and
is."
But you say there is very little love in
the world. Nation goes to war with
nation. Tyranny, injustice and greed
grind down their victims, and in their
names nameless deeds are daily done. In
the Church of Christ itself party-spirit,
86 GOD AND HIS PURPOSE,
bitter hatred, and scarcely veiled persecu-
tion stalk abroad. It is too true, and yet
those who think most deeply tell us that
all these horrors are calling forth self-
sacrificing love on the part of many,
and are gradually but surely teaching men
that Love is the better way.
The evolution of love is steadily going
on. All thoughtful persons recognize its
value and its beauty. " The number of
self-sacrificing men and women, the num-
ber of those who have merged their own
life and well-being in the life and well-
being of the race is continually on the in-
crease." ^ And assuredly the time is com-
ing when there will be a reign of love in
humanity as invariable and as universal
as the present reign of law in Nature.
That is
" The one far-off Divine event
Towards which the whole creation moves."
^ Momerie.
VI.— e^c t^tiet.
WHEN Tennyson was asked for his
views about Jesus Christ, he
answered that they were to be found in
" In Memoriam."
The Prologue, the 36th stanza, and a
small part of the io6th contain these
views ; but scanty though the matter may
be, it is sufficient to show us how the
Christian position had penetrated into the
Poet's mind and heart. It would be hard
to find clearer witness to the Incarnation
of our Lord, and the Incarnation is the
key to the Christian position. Grant the
Incarnation, and the rest of the Creed fol-
lows naturally. Indeed, of what purpose
would have been the Incarnation without
the rest?
We will read the first four verses of the
Prologue :
88 THE CHRIST.
" Strong Son of GOD, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen Thy face.
By faith, and faith alone, embrace.
Believing where we cannot prove ;
Thine are these orbs of light and shade :
Thou madest Life in man and brute ;
Thou madest Death ; and lo, Thy foot
Is on the skull which Thou hast made.
Thou wilt not leave us in the dust :
Thou madest man, he knows not why ;
He thinks he was not made to die :
And Thou hast made him : Thou art just.
Thou seemest human and divine,
The highest, holiest manhood. Thou :
Our wills are ours, we know not how :
Our wills are ours, to make them Thine.*'
We now turn to the 36th stanza —
" Tho' truths in manhood darkly join,
Deep-seated in our mystic frame.
We yield all blessing to the Name
Of Him that made them current coin ;
For Wisdom dealt with mortal powers,
Where truth in closest words shall fail.
When truth embodied in a tale
Shall enter in at lowly doors.
THE CHRIST. 89
And so the Word had breath, and wrought
With human hands the creed of creeds
In loveliness of perfect deeds,
More strong than all poetic thought :
Which he may read that binds the sheaf.
Or builds the house, or digs the grave,
And those wild eyes that watch the wave
In roarings round the coral reef."
Surely no one can read these passages
without feeling that Tennyson believed
heartily in the Incarnation of the Son of
God — Human and Divine — " Who wrought
the creed of creeds in loveliness of perfect
deeds."
" A visitor once ventured to ask him, as
they were walking in the garden, what he
thought of our Saviour. He said nothing
at first ; then he stopped by a beautiful
flower, and said, * What the sun is to that
flower, Jesus Christ is to my soul. He is
the Sun of my soul.' His niece, Miss Weld,
among other touching recollections of her
uncle, says that he often dwelt in his talks
upon the special nearness of Christ to him
in the Holy Communion."
go THE CHRIST.
Tennyson's special contribution to re-
ligious thought does not lie in the fresh
exposition of theological subtleties so
much as the " reiteration and enforcement
of certain fundamental and central beliefs,
enshrined in that exquisite choice of pure
English of which he was such a master —
beliefs and truths that seem to be ever well-
ing up from the depths of his conscious-
ness, and from life-long experience of their
vital importance to have become a part of
his very being.
" This is indeed a boon which it is
scarcely possible to over-estimate in an age
when nothing has been thought too solemn
or too sacred to be called in question, and
canvassed and pronounced upon in almost
oracular language by the ephemeral litera-
ture of the magazine or newspaper. In
this aspect Tennyson must be regarded as
a true Va^es — prophet as well as poet — to
his generation, and to those that are to
come. For, again and again, we believe
that in the future men and women, jaded
THE CHRIST. 91
with the toil and hurry incident to modern
civilization, stunned and perplexed by the
many distracting voices around them, will
return for calm and repose to those serene
galleries peopled with the stately creatures
of his imagination, and vocal with utter-
ances full of elevated thought — a constant
source of strength and consolation, of in-
spiration and joy, to uplift from the earth,
and at the same time to nerve for the most
strenuous performance of daily duty." ^
We have seen that our poet felt and ex-
pressed a very true and loving belief in our
Incarnate Lord, in His creed of creeds, and
in His sinless life. We must next ask
what was that special aspect of the
Incarnate Christ which appealed most to
Tennyson.
In fact, when he wrote the line —
" Ring in the Christ that is to be "
what were the thoughts that were suggested
to his mind by " the Christ that is to be " ?
iQzanan "Etudes Germaniques."
92 THE CHRIST.
For nothing is clearer to the student of
Church History than that in every age the
Christ has been the central figure of attrac-
tion and the central factor in thought to
Christians : yet the aspect of Christianity,
that is, the way in which the Christ has
affected the thoughts and lives of people,
has varied very considerably ; so that the
history of the Church presents a series of
pictures of Christian life, different from
each other, yet each witnessing to some
truth, though often overlaid with the errors
and weaknesses of its particular age.
"The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils Himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the
Avorld."
Thus in the third century we have the
Hermits, who in their love for the Christ
fled from the awful wickedness of that
wicked epoch, and led in the solitude of
the desert a pure and simple life.
It was a protest which was most useful
THE CHRIST. 93
at the time, but it was not the ideal
Christian life, not the permanent expres-
sion of Christianity. Christ's disciples
were to leaven the world in which they
lived, not to stand aside from that world
and leave it to its fate.
The Hermits were followed by the
Monks. " At the close of the fifth century
the wild bands of Gothic barbarians were
shattering the political fabric of the Empire
to pieces. Amid homeless men, amid de-
populated provinces, amid perishing insti-
tutions, amid the rising deluges of heathen-
ism and barbarity, * a type of common life,'
says Bishop Westcott, ' was needed to pre-
serve the inheritance of the old world and
to offer a rallying point for the Christian
forces that should fashion the new.'
" What was it that had preserved the best
elements of Christianity in the fourth cen-
tury? The self-sacrifice of the hermits.
What was it which saved the principles of
law and order and civilization? What
rescued the wreck of ancient literature
94 THE CHRIST.
from the universal conflagration? What
kept alive the dying embers of science?
What fanned into a flame the white ashes
of art? What redeemed waste lands;
cleared forests, drained fens, protected
miserable populations, encouraged free
labour? What was the sole witness for
the cause of charity, the sole preservative
of even partial education, the sole rampart
against intolerable oppression? What
weak and unarmed power alone retained
the strength and the determination to dash
down the mailed hand of the baron when
it was uplifted against his serf, to pro-
claim a truce of GOD between warring vio-
lences, and to make insolent wickedness
tremble by asserting the inherent supre-
macy of goodness over transgression, of
knowledge over ignorance, of quiet right-
eousness over brutal force? You will say
the Church ; you will say Christianity.
Yes, but for many a long century the very
bulwarks and ramparts of the Church were
the monasteries, and the one invincible
THE CHRIST. 95
force of the Church lay in the self-sacrifice,
the holiness, the courage of the monks.
" Poverty, chastity, obedience had always
been the triple vow of the monk — poverty
in ages which were dying of opulence ;
chastity, in an age weakened by orgies ;
obedience, in an age perishing of d isorders." ^
This was the aspect of the Christian life
which presented itself to them, an aspect
most useful for the days in which they
lived and bore their witness.
But again the scene shifts, and we have
the age of the Franciscans, with their
speaking and stirring protest against the
worldliness and luxury which was sapping
the life of the clergy, and so of the
Church. To them the conception of the
Christ and the Christian life was contained
in the words : " Provide neither gold, nor
silver, nor brass in your purses ; neither
two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves.
And as ye go preach, saying : The King-
dom of Heaven is at hand."
^ Farrar's "Saintly Workers."
9* THE CHRIST.
These instances will be sufficient to show
what I mean. Let us return to the question,
What was the aspect presented by Tenny-
son in " the Christ that is to be " ?
If you will read the io6th stanza care-
fully I think you will see that what
Tennyson wishes to teach is the duty of
translating the Christian creed into action.
When this is done, when our belief influ-
ences our deeds, when we live the kind of
life that we profess to believe in, then in-
deed a new era will set in, an era of truth,
of charity, of nobler modes of life, of
sweeter manners, of peace, of kindliness,
of the teaching of the Christ expressed in
the lives of Christ's people.
The age in which we live is distinctly a
social age, and its problems are social
problems. It is for us Christians to see
that the social problems can only be
solved by the teaching of the Christ lived
out in our own lives and applied to the
lives of others. For " there is no depart-
ment of human life and action in Christen-
THE CHRIST. 97
dom which has not something to tell us of
the influence which His character has
exerted in the world. ... It is true that
He left no writing behind Him ; but what
literature would remain, if we were to give
up all in which the influence of His teach-
ing could be detected? He was neither
poet nor musician ; but poet and musician
alike have, in innumerable instances, bor-
rowed from His life the inspiration which
has enabled them to accomplish their best
work. He contributed nothing to archi-
tecture, nothing to art ; but to His honour,
and for the better realization of His
abiding presence, have been erected the
noblest buildings the world has seen, and
sculptors and painters have vied with each
other in perpetuating His memory and His
influence. He kept aloof from all politics,
and promulgated no schemes for the re-
dress of social evils ; but far and wide, in
civilized and in heathen lands, wherever
His teaching has become known and His
character has been understood, slavery and
G
98 THE CHRIST.
oppression have tended to disappear, and
justice and mercy to take their place." ^
It is by realizing the kind of character
which the Christ put before His people as
the chcLracter for His disciples, and then
living out that character in our daily life,
that we shall, each one of us, help to ring
in " the Christ that is to be."
This character is delineated with beauti-
ful simplicity in the Beatitudes.
The Blessed Life is lived by those who,
so far from setting their hearts upon riches,
sit lightly to the things of this world, and
are " poor in spirit " : by those who
worthily lament their own sins and are
ever ready to enter into the sorrows of
others with sympathy and aid — " They that
mourn " ; by those who are meek and
gentle, even under provocation ; by those
who strongly crave for all that is right,
true, and good, who " hunger and thirst
after righteousness " ; by those who are
1" Human Nature a Revelation of the Divine." C. H.
Robinson.
THE CHRIST. 99
merciful, who, realizing how often they
fall themselves, are ready to look with
pity and forgiveness on the falls of others ;
by those who are pure in heart, single-
minded, absolutely intent upon goodness
and the service of GOD ; by those who,
among all the strife and malice of this
world, are peacemakers ; and by those who
are ready to stand by these principles at
the risk of unpopularity, of scorn, possibly
of persecution.
This is a sadly imperfect sketch ; yet it
may give us food for thought.
This is the kind of character that the
Christ desires His people to form, and then
this character expressed in the life will have
its influence and effect upon others. It will
be the salt that will purify ; the Light that
will burn in the darkness ; the city that is
set on a hill, which must arrest attention.
If all of us Christians were aiming at
such a life as this, Christianity would be
an irresistible torrent that would carry
everything before it. It is because we lower
lOO THE CHRIST.
our ideals, because we are too fond of the
things of this world, to become poor in
spirit ; too unconscious of our sinfulness
to mourn for it ; too full of party-spirit
and controversialism to be meek ; too care-
less of righteousness to hunger and thirst
for it ; too easily offended to be merciful ;
too fond of ourselves and our pleasures
to be pure in heart ; too quarrelsome to be
peacemakers ; too cowardly to stand perse-
cution. Thus the Kingdom of Christ does
not make the progress it should, and the
fault is with us, His people.
Can we have any better work than to
draw near in penitence for the past to the
foot of the Cross, and to draw fresh teach-
ing and new grace for the future, that we
may go forth to " ring in the Christ that
is to be." Some of you may remember the
description which is given in the life of
F. \V. Robertson, of the effect which the
study of Christ's life produced upon his.
" The Incarnation was to him the centre
of all history. The life which followed
THH CHRIST. loi
the Incarnation was the explanation of the
Life of God, and the only solution of the
problem of the life of man. He did not
speak much of loving Christ ; his love was
fitly mingled with that veneration which
made love perfect ... he paused before
he spoke His Name in common talk ; for
what that Name meant had become the
central thought of his intellect and the
deepest realization of his spirit. He had
spent a world of study, of reverent medita-
tion, of adoring contemplation on the
Gospel history. Nothing comes forward
more visibly in his letters than the way in
which he had entered into the human life
of Christ. To that everything is referred —
by that everything is explained. The gos-
sip of a drawing-room, the tendencies of
the time, the religious questions of the
day . . . the loneliness and the difficulties
of his work, were not so much argued upon
or combated, as at once and instinctively
brought to the test of a life which was lived
out eighteen centuries ago, but which went
loa THE CHRIST.
everywhere with him. Out of this intuitive
reception of Christ, and from this ceaseless
silence of meditation which makes the
blessedness of great love, there grew up in
him a deep comprehension of the whole,
as well as a minute sympathy with all the
delicate details of the character of Christ
Day by day, with passionate imitation, he
followed his Master, musing on every
action, revolving in thought the inter-
dependence of all that Christ had said or
done, weaving into the fibres of his heart
the principles of the Life he worshipped,
till he had received into his being the very
impression and image of that unique per-
sonality. His very doctrines were the life
of Christ expressed in words. The Incar-
nation, Atonement and Resurrection of
Christ were not dogmas to him. In him-
self he was daily realizing them. They
were in him a life, a power, a light."
I could not find fitter words to express
what I mean, nor a better wish with which
to conclude these thoughts, than that some
THE CHRIST. 103
such conception may be ours, and that such
an ideal conceived in our hearts may be
carried out in our lives.
" Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light :
The year is dying in the night ;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow :
The year is going, let him go ;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind.
For those thai here we see no more ;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife ;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out the want, the care, the sin.
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite ;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
104 THE CHRIST,
Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring' out the narrowing lust of gold ;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free
The larger heart, the kindlier hand ;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be."
The End.
;/%/
■r-'.^y-i
GENERAL LIBRARY U.C. BERKELEY
BDODLSbMEl
mr
s<^
^
^'■*vf;<-'v,
My
,^.'H-
,^.