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The Sons of Strength 
 
And ivhy the Sons of Strength have been 
 Her cherished offspring ever . . . 
 . . . perusing love ivill shoiv.'" 
 
 — Meredith, 
 

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 J. R. P. Sclater |/|m! 
 
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TRINTED liY 
 
 TURNBULL AND SPEARS, 
 
 EDINBURGH 
 

 Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introductory Note ..... 7 
 
 I. The Call to be Strong . . . • 9 
 
 II. The Nature of the Strong . . .21 
 
 The Mark of Unity 
 The Mark of the Love of the Real 
 The Mark of Assent 
 
 III. The Inspirations . . •4' 
 
 The Companionship 
 The Forward View 
 
 55^7o',> 
 
Introductory Note 
 
 The quotation which stands at the beginning 
 of this brief booklet is somewhat misleading : 
 for it might suggest that what follows pretends to 
 be an exposition of George Meredith's " reading 
 of Earth." Even in regard to the restricted points 
 indicated in these pages, no such claim is made. 
 All that is done in them is to sketch some dis- 
 tinctively religious ideas, which are given in 
 Meredith's poems, and to use them as a basis for 
 exhortation rather than for exposition. During 
 the past winter, it has been my privilege to lecture 
 to a Sunday evening class in the New North 
 Church, Edinburgh, on the message of this strong 
 prophet of our own time ; and this booklet is, in 
 part, a by-product of the work then done. 
 
 This at least is certain, that in the writings of 
 him, who so recently was laid to rest amidst the 
 reverent mourning of a nation, there is much that 
 teachers of Christianity will do well to ponder. 
 For he garments great religious thoughts in fresh 
 language, and emphasises aspects of the right 
 life which we have been apt to neglect. " Faith," 
 we are told, " cometh by hearing." Hearing 
 requires a listener as well as a speaker. And 
 men incline to listen most readily to him whose 
 
8 The Sons of Strength 
 
 speech is new and arresting. The underlying 
 thought, indeed, need not be new. In fact, it is 
 only because Meredith's chief religious message 
 is old that it is valuable. But the clothing should 
 be new. The Church will do well to heed one 
 whose manner of speech has won attention from 
 so many of the best and strongest of his day. 
 
The Call to be Strong 
 
 " The Kingdom of Heaven suffer eth violence; and the violent take it byforceJ'^ 
 
 The late F. W. H. Myers somewhere puts up a 
 prayer after this manner: "From the torpor of 
 a foul tranquilHty may our souls be delivered 
 unto war." It is not the least debt which we 
 owe to George Meredith, that he has stirred all 
 who are willing to give him a hearing, to make 
 that prayer their own. He has laid us under 
 this further obligation, that he has impressed 
 upon us the need of strong effort, without por- 
 traying our present condition in a blackness 
 which tends to breed despair. This is a new 
 method of calling to battle. That which is 
 commonly adopted by those who appeal to their 
 fellows to be up and doing is to emphasize the 
 all but hopelessness of things as they are. This 
 state of affairs is so awful, they say, that 
 reasonable men must rise and make an end. 
 Meredith's appeal is the precise contradictory of 
 this. As Mr Chesterton points out, he in effect 
 
^^~-\ 
 
 I o The Sons of Strength 
 
 says, "Life is already a very splendid thing. Let 
 us, therefore, make it better : " with this result, 
 that he is at once the prophet of the joy of 
 hving and the herald of life's war. 
 
 On both these grounds, we hail him as a 
 teacher who can claim a hearing. We are, let it 
 be acknowledged, more than a little weary of our 
 Cassandras, of whom we have had a plentiful crop. 
 At the best, they cause us to underestimate the 
 value of their message, inasmuch as they seem 
 never to see things whole. They are born blind 
 to existing good and to the reasonableness of 
 gladness. At the worst, if we take them to 
 possess the right perspective, they tend to develop 
 an inactivity based on helplessness. If the world 
 is as bad as all that, we think, we may as well 
 ' sit and eat our pot of honey on the grave.' And 
 if we are weary of Cassandras, we are still more 
 weary, with a fuller justification, of teachers who 
 take no delight in strife. The paleness of the 
 right life has been presented more than sufficiently. 
 What we need is colour in the ideal : and we turn 
 with relief to one whose blood is manifestly red, 
 who finds an unconcealed satisfaction in the fact 
 that Hving here spells battle. We welcome him 
 none the less heartily, when we find that his tactics 
 are not solely those of defence. It will be agreed 
 that there is something to be urged on behalf of 
 the plan of campaign advocated by Admiral Sir John 
 Hawkins, of violent memory, when he said that 
 there were two ways to treat an enemy. The 
 first is to say, "Do that again, and I'll hit thee "; 
 
The Call to be Strong 1 1 
 
 the second (and the right) method is to say, 
 " Do that at all, and I'll hit thee again." When 
 we find a teacher who brings something of that 
 spirit into the moral sphere, we have found one 
 to whose prelections we are likely to give heed. 
 
 What may attract many to the life-teaching of 
 Meredith, in the first instance, is this manifest 
 battle-energy that there is in him. He loves 
 strength, and welcomes occasions for the use of 
 strength. In the ideal character which can be 
 constructed from his writings, whatever else is 
 lacking, the note of a certain violence is un- 
 questionably present. To him man is 
 
 " A creature matched with strife 
 To meet it as a bride.'* 
 
 His delight in the sound of the trumpet's note 
 recurs again and again. He rejoices that for the 
 chosen there is never to be peace, in the poorer 
 sense of the term. In morals, in love, in ordinary 
 circumstances of stress, we find him continually 
 urging on us a series of attitudes, which range 
 from an eager demanding and an eager grasping 
 of the best to a quiet fortitude. In the presence 
 of death itself, he would have us show the same 
 front. When the last shadow had begun to fall 
 upon one very dear to him, it was her 
 
 " Fortitude, quiet as Earth's 
 At the shedding of leaves,'' 
 
 that he noted and set in remembrance. If 
 we would have in general a description of the 
 type of manhood that is Earth's chosen, and that 
 
1 2 The Sons of Strength 
 
 is dear to his own heart, we may find it clearly- 
 exhibited in a familiar passage in Hard Weather — 
 
 " Look in the face of men who fare 
 Lock-mouthed, a match in lungs and thews 
 For this fierce angel of the air, 
 To twist with him and take his bruise. 
 That is the face beloved of old 
 Of Earth, young mother of her brood : 
 Nor broken for us shows the mould 
 When muscle is in mind renewed : 
 Though farther from her nature rude, 
 Yet nearer to her spirit's hold : 
 And though of gentler mood serene. 
 Still forceful of her fountain-jet/' 
 
 Inasmuch as he holds that the quality of 
 courageous strength is the quality chiefly to be 
 desired, he naturally welcomes those experiences 
 which tend to produce it. 
 
 " Behold the life at ease ; it drifts. 
 The sharpened life commands its course." 
 
 He is grateful for all happenings that come to us 
 from without, that have a " sharpening " effect, 
 all that — 
 
 "... may give us edgeing keen. 
 String us for battle, till as play 
 The common strokes of fortune shower." 
 
 Thus it is that in the apparent harshness of 
 experience, he sees evidence of a kindly, and not 
 of a cruel, thought for the children of Earth. 
 He tells us that if we can take his position, 
 emphasising to ourselves the good that comes 
 through stress, and making the development of a 
 
The Call to be Strong 13 
 
 strong mind and character our chosen life-purpose, 
 no happening will fall upon us, not even the great 
 happening of death, which will contain for us an 
 element of terror. The forest of life's perplexity- 
 contains no goblins that peep and mutter, no 
 ' eyeballs under hoods ' for those who dare. If 
 we are amongst that shining company who are 
 
 " Hopeful of victory most 
 When hard is the task to sustain 
 Assaults of the fearful sense 
 At a mind in desolate mood," 
 
 the reward of the banishment of that which, 
 from without, strikes chillness and fear into men's 
 hearts will be ours. Life's terror, he would tell 
 us, is a projection of man's own fearfulness. 
 If this be not entirely true, unless cowardice is 
 taken to cover all sin, it deals with a sufficient 
 range of fact to be well worth assimilating. 
 Courage in the moments of hardness : courage 
 based upon faith in the continuous victory of the 
 good, and in the good waiting to be gathered 
 from all experience : courage, with the discovery 
 of the unreality of the source of terror as its re- 
 ward — these are the words that Meredith has to 
 give us. To them we may well attend. 
 
 For, certainly, he would be bold who would 
 say that teaching such as this is too well known, 
 and too commonly acted upon, to be needed. 
 Even within the Christian Church, with its great 
 words of God's Fatherhood and of Christ's war- 
 fare on behalf of men, and His call to His followers 
 that they themselves should battle, there is sore 
 
14 The Sons of Strength 
 
 lack of this same message of buoyant courage. 
 General propositions about the state of a society 
 so diversified as the Church are seldom true ; but 
 it may fairly be said that in many circles definitely 
 Christian there has grown up an alarming fear 
 and distrust of vitality. When a hymn-writer 
 needs to exhort ^'fearful saints" to take fresh 
 courage, when songs of devotion mourn, not sin, 
 but the circumstances of living which are the 
 expression of the Perfect Will, there is clear 
 necessity for a recall to that attitude of joyous 
 acceptance of hardness, which ought to be the 
 natural outgrowth of Christian faith. Fearful- 
 ness, however excusable in many common circum- 
 stances, should be recognized as the mark of a 
 state not yet perfectly sanctified. Indeed, the 
 term '• fearful saint " should be acknowledged to 
 be as paradoxical as " irritable saint." It stands 
 parallel to such a name as " distrustful believer." 
 Not that a man who is wrestling on towards 
 heaven 'gainst the storm and wind and tide of his 
 own fear is not a true and right man; but he 
 would be a better one, and would show a clearer 
 understanding of what Christianity means, if, 
 through his faith, he was able to greet the 
 unseen with a cheer. 
 
 This sinister dread of life, which marks one 
 type of religious attitude, is seen more clearly 
 when we note the ethical ideal which is implicit 
 in the speech and practice of many Christian 
 people. They describe the good negatively. 
 Their gospel is that the right life may be reached 
 
The Call to be Strong 15 
 
 inactively. Their method of winning wholeness, 
 in a life full of dangers, is always to play for 
 safety. In any case that is not a very heroic pro- 
 ceeding : but for a religious society to fling up 
 defensive works and to sit cowering behind them 
 spells certain disaster. For the Church is called 
 to the high and lofty place : and what will be 
 its portion, if it becomes afraid of that which 
 is high? Its prospects are as gloomy as those of 
 a climber, who, through fear, can neither ascend 
 nor descend. The fact is that when the Church 
 begins to set forth what a man should be in 
 terms of ' thou shalt not ' rather than of ^ thou 
 shalt,' it is whimpering to the world that it has 
 lost its nerve. At the present time, part of the 
 alleged detachment of youth from the Church 
 may be explained simply on the ground that the 
 most vocal section of the Church, which is taken 
 to be representative of it, is hesitating a doubt 
 whether it is safe to dare to lay hold on life : a 
 thing which our young, although they do not so 
 phrase it to themselves, are most surely resolved 
 to do. When the Christian ideal consists merely 
 in avoidance, there need be no wonder that it is 
 an ideal definitely rejected by the healthiest of 
 our youth. The Church can never keep its hold 
 upon its vital children if it sets up as an ideal a 
 kind of permanent bloodlessness. It will only 
 retain them, if it teaches frankly that the battling 
 and enjoying character, the character of a man 
 who has a light in his eye and a smile on his lips 
 when he faces life, is one worthy of development. 
 
1 6 The Sons of Strength 
 
 The message of Meredith is needed not only 
 within the Church. It is still more required beyond 
 its borders. If the conception of the right man is 
 given by some religious persons as a man good by 
 avoidance, and not a little dull and futile withal, 
 the conception given by many who sneer at the 
 Church is poorer far. For the ideal of the Church 
 is always strong in one respect : always it involves 
 flesh-mastery by the spirit. Whereas, the ideal 
 of the man in the street frequently involves no 
 such thing. It is true that it has the thought 
 of courage and of honour in it : but both of 
 them are held in a restricted sense. A man need 
 not be brave in hidden temptation to be worthy 
 of commendation. He need have no sense of 
 honour to God — for the matter of that, he need 
 have very little sense of honour towards women. 
 Provided that he does not run away when he is 
 being shot at and that he does not cheat at 
 cards, he has fulfilled the Law and the Prophets 
 according to this teaching of the market-place. 
 One other mark of the complete man, indeed, is 
 added : and in the estimating of character an 
 absurdly disproportionate emphasis is placed upon 
 it. A man must be genial. No matter how 
 true is his core, or how deep his inner worth, he 
 is implicitly banned if he fail in those graces 
 which make him a pleasant and attractive com- 
 panion. Geniality is a worthy quality, no doubt. 
 If we consider the matter, we may be surprised 
 to find how much importance we attach to it in 
 our semi-conscious appraisings of our fellows. 
 
The Call to be Strong ly 
 
 But as a mark of ethical attainment it may easily 
 be overdone. For geniality and graciousness of 
 bearing are a matter of temperament and endow- 
 ment, and are not in the least inconsistent with a 
 good deal of rascaldom. It is quite simple to 
 smile and smile, and be a villain. The Prodigal 
 Son, I make no doubt, was the most popular 
 person in his village ; and many a scamp since 
 him has made assemblies shine. The Sons of 
 Strength cannot always command the gayest 
 laugh. Often, to their own sorrow, they may 
 lack the faculty of easy sympathy. Nevertheless, 
 it is they, and not those who were born popular, 
 who are Earth's chosen offspring ever. 
 
 The fact is that in this so common thought of 
 what a man should be — a thought compounded 
 of physical courage, honour within limits and 
 social graciousness — it is precisely the quality of 
 strength that is lacking: though, if the man in 
 the street is told that this is so, he will meet the 
 assertion with strong denial. It is exactly on 
 strength that he prides himself. Notwithstand- 
 ing, it is true that he ails here. For, in all his 
 conception, restraint in the chambers of the heart 
 and of imagery is not so much as hinted at. 
 To all who live as if a man might be a proper 
 man, while content to remain the slave of his 
 lower self, Meredith comes with a much-needed 
 word, when he proclaims that a man is a Son of 
 Strength only when he is harmonising with Earth's 
 process for the enthronement of spirit as lord of 
 the flesh. 
 
1 8 The Sons of Strength 
 
 Still further, this teaching of Meredith comes 
 most aptly to a large class both inside the Church 
 and outside it. In our society, a dismal figure 
 is painfully prevalent, whom we may term the 
 Looker-on. Within his ranks he includes many 
 different types : from the man who is too intelli- 
 gent to consider anything definitely wrong and de- 
 finitely requiring eradication, to the good-natured, 
 but futile, person, who, while sympathising with 
 efforts for the extension of the Kingdom of God, 
 is too inert to do any of the spade-work himself. 
 He is, no doubt, full of good intentions for the 
 morrow : but his morrow is a day that always 
 remains in the future. He and his brethren 
 stand in bad need of the re-vitalising, which a 
 teacher such as Meredith can give. For, while 
 such men do not act in opposition to those who 
 are anxious that things should be done, they 
 prove themselves a dead-weight upon the energies 
 of the world. Although they do not imagine them- 
 selves to be opponents of the forces that make 
 for righteousness, their immobility and inaction 
 cause them to be the most effective kind of 
 brake upon the wheels of progress. Within the 
 Church, for instance, none tends more to the 
 ineffectiveness of the society as a whole, — not 
 even those who stand in direct opposition — than 
 the " apathetic fringe." They not only deny the 
 Church the positive help which they might give, 
 and thus oppose by subtraction, but they become 
 a Laodicean leaven that leavens the whole. 
 For themselves, they are frequently the most 
 
The Call to be Strong 19 
 
 good-natured persons alive. Their heart, they 
 assure us, is in the right place. They are, unfor- 
 tunately, too busy, or too weary, or too nerye- 
 strained to give any positive help to the cause of 
 Christ. But they experience emotions ranging 
 from surprise to indignation, when they are told 
 that they are a positive hindrance to the work 
 with which they claim to be in sympathy. The 
 worst, they exclaim, that can be urged against 
 them is that they do nothing. To brand them 
 as opponents of Christianity, they expostulate, is 
 to rage furiously and to utter a vain thing. Such 
 men need to ponder that * great and terrible 
 Scripture,' " He that is not with Me is against 
 Me." For the fact is that these, and all like 
 them, are the murderers of the enthusiasms of 
 the Church ; which is a very fearful charge to be 
 laid against any man. For an enthusiasm is a 
 breath from God, which comes to possess a 
 man unto his stirring to do something and to 
 dare something in the brave venture of faith. 
 When a man is caught into an eagerness of this sort, 
 he is caught into greatness for a moment. And 
 all who are inadvertently creating a public opinion, 
 in which enthusiasms are difficult to retain, are by 
 their sins of omission doing their best to annihilate 
 the driving force by which the world grows from 
 flesh to spirit. Such an one will often say that 
 his inaction is of little account ; for he is but one, 
 and what can one do, or undo ? That is the most 
 miserable defence of all. One man may not be 
 able to do much : but all that he can do is all that 
 
20 The Sons of Strength 
 
 he can do. If he leaves it undone, he is reach- 
 ing his own maximum in the way of omission. A 
 man who makes this defence has forgotten 
 Meredith's strong word that in him who adopts it, 
 we can see the nation dying. 
 
 Anyone, then, will be bold, who, in the face of 
 all this, denies that the teaching of Meredith, that 
 we must aspire after a strong and courageous virility, 
 is not a word in season to the Church, as well as 
 those beyond its borders. We badly need manhood-. 
 manhood of the sort possessed by the great apostle 
 of the Gentiles, who, in his own person, displayed 
 so signally the type preached to us by this teacher 
 of a later day. Give us men with something of 
 his spirit : men who have the mark of violence in 
 their character : men who have a right impatience 
 of unessentials, and are eager to get things done : 
 men who are willing to take a risk : who are not 
 afraid to be ambitious in service : in whom the 
 old dragon is being slain : who are mastered by 
 that ' devotedness which we account the ultimate 
 in man :' and sooner, perhaps, than even at our 
 most hopeful we dare believe, there will come the 
 dawning of the society of the ' glad eyes, frank 
 hands, and a fellowship real ' of which Meredith 
 so splendidly dreamed. 
 
II 
 
 The Nature of the Strong 
 
 But it is necessary that we propound to our- 
 selves this question, what does Meredith mean by 
 a Son of Strength? In answer, it might be 
 sufficient to say (in his phraseology) one who 
 loves Earth, — reads her, that is to say, with 
 sympathy and insight, and acts accordingly : trusts 
 her, and therefore does not fear what experience 
 may bring unto him. But such an answer, apart 
 from the difficulties of the phrasing, is too general 
 for us, who love the concrete and the detailed. 
 Consequently, it is worth our while to see if 
 there be not some marks of the desirable character, 
 clearly set forth in his writings, which may help 
 to give form to his general conception. Of such 
 marks we may note three. 
 
 (a) The Mark of Unity 
 
 " All things are yours . . . ///>." 
 
 In the first place, the character at which we 
 are to aim, is one in which, frankly acknowledg- 
 ing that a man has a body as well as a mind, we 
 propose to ourselves completion in respect of 
 
22 The Sons of Strength 
 
 both. Meredith stands opposed not only to those 
 who would define goodness by negations. He 
 stands equally opposed to the sensualist on the 
 one hand, and to the ascetic on the other. 
 According to him, man is ' blood and brain and 
 spirit.' If he would deny his constitution in any 
 of these respects disaster lies before him : — 
 
 " Blood and brain and spirit, three 
 (Say the deepest gnomes of Earth), 
 Join for true felicity. 
 Are they parted, then expect 
 Someone sailing will be wrecked : 
 Separate hunting are they sped. 
 Scan the morsel coveted. 
 Earth that Triad is : she hides 
 Joy from him who that divides ; 
 Showers it when the three are one 
 Glassing her in union." 
 
 Whatever else this difficult passage means, it sets 
 forth clearly enough, that any man who attempts 
 to slay (' slain is no word in Westermain ') any 
 part of his own nature may look forward to 
 trouble. That which the body desires without 
 the consent of the mind, or that which the mind 
 covets, having no regard to the interests of the 
 body, is a morsel which needs to be eyed care- 
 fully. The chances of its proving to be desirable 
 are remote. Separate the mind from the body : 
 let the one forget the intimate companionship, 
 which it has with the other : and there will be 
 wrecking somewhere. 
 
 In this and kindred passages, Meredith in- 
 dicates that full manhood is not reached either 
 
The Nature of the Strong 23 
 
 by him who is the slave of his flesh, or by him 
 who crucifies it akogether. The mariner, who 
 permits his ' crazy barque ' to guide him where- 
 ever it would, will break upon the rocks sure 
 enough : but he who lacerates and disfigures the 
 tabernacle of his spirit will bring disaster no less 
 sure. 
 
 Now, it is by no means clear that these are 
 the days when fulminations against asceticism 
 are most to the point. Probably a little more 
 asceticism in practice would do most of us no 
 harm. Certainly, if in no clear manner of self- 
 denial are we keeping up the warfare between 
 the flesh and soul, we fall pitifully below the 
 level of those who counted the world and all its 
 joys well lost, if so be that the evil in them might 
 die. In many respects, this is an easy day. Some 
 of our acutest intellects are exercising themselves 
 chiefly to make it easier. Our houses, our furni- 
 ture, our methods of travel, our anaesthetics, and all 
 that is ours are being so fashioned, that, physically, 
 life may be made as comfortable as possible. 
 The occasions of physical stress and physical 
 endurance are becoming fewer and fewer: and 
 we are not so grown from flesh to spirit, that a 
 little enduring of hardness in this sort might not 
 be good for us. Very likely the word chiefly 
 requiring to be spoken is the word that calls to 
 some voluntary physical discomfort. 
 
 At the same time, the propounding of a plan 
 to meet a particular case is one thing, and the 
 statement of an ideal is another. In the 
 
24 The Sons of Strength 
 
 region of ideals, there can be no question chat 
 Meredith's is not only the right one, biic the 
 loftiest and the most Christian. The great 
 ascetics, says Mr C. F. G. Masterman, have been 
 " the wonder and despair of the world." Perhaps 
 that is true, in that they saw sin through the 
 eyes of Christ, and saw the marvel of glorifying 
 God and enjoying Him — saw it so that no price 
 of wounded body or of solitary soul was too 
 great to pay for its winning. But they are the 
 'wonder and despair' that they are, because of 
 the clearness of their spiritual vision : not because 
 of the method which they adopted to win the great 
 Good. They are to be reverenced, that is to 
 say, as seers, not as ascetics; or if as ascetics, then 
 only in so far as their practice gave proof of the 
 genuineness of their spiritual desire. That ascetics 
 were splendidly religious and good men does not 
 prove that asceticism is a good thing. Inquisitors 
 were occasionally religious and good men : but 
 the Inquisition was neither the one nor the other. 
 So also with asceticism — though in a very different 
 degree. Our objection to it is that by its means, 
 if the renunciation of earth's joys be complete, 
 men cannot reach the full God-intended state of 
 being — for man is ' blood and brain and spirit.' 
 In this shape it was that God made Him in His 
 own image : and in this shape it is, when the 
 stains of selfishness are removed, that God pur- 
 poses His image in man to stand out clear once 
 again upon this earth of ours. 
 
 Is it straining the facts to say that the ascetic 
 
The Nature of the Strong 25 
 
 solution of the problem of the attainment of 
 holiness is not the wonder of men, but the 
 rejected of men, because it is too simple'^. There 
 is a dim appreciation, at least in many minds, that 
 perfection cannot be reached by that method : 
 that it is not the God-purposed path: and that 
 men in adopting asceticism, splendidly heroic 
 though it often is, are attempting a short cut to 
 the Great Reward, in the course of which someone 
 sailing is very likely to be wrecked. It is even 
 possible to believe that if asceticism offered 
 to the mind in man a real solution of the 
 problem of holiness, so great is the desire for 
 goodness deep-planted in the hearts of us, that 
 there is not a cave on all our shores, that would 
 be untenanted to-morrow. The difficulty is that 
 we recognise life's problem as insoluble upon 
 these terms. Everywhere we have to strike a 
 balance between forces that seem to be opposing. 
 The middle way between cheerful carelessness 
 and earnest gravity, between self-care and the 
 care of our neighbour, between flesh and spirit — 
 this it is that is hard to find. But this it is that 
 God calls us to discover. If only the balance 
 would come down comfortably upon one side or 
 the other, our task would be easier. If, for 
 instance, Jesus had said, "Thou shalt love thyself 
 and not thy neighbour," the project would have 
 been simple. If He had said, " Thou shalt not 
 love thyself, but thou shalt love thy neighbour," 
 at least the project would have been clear. But 
 because He says, " Thou shalt love thy neighbour 
 
26 The Sons of Strength 
 
 as thyself/' life becomes complex. So is it when 
 a man finds himself at once flesh and spirit. The 
 problem becomes not only a problem of strife 
 against tempting, but also a problem of adjust- 
 ment. Neither the one nor the other is to 
 be denied. And the man who seeks wholeness 
 on these terms, is setting himself to a 'stey 
 brae.' 
 
 At any rate, difficult or not, there is no doubt 
 that this unified view of hfe is the Christian one. 
 There is a very fine phrase used by the Apostle 
 Paul in regard to Jesus Christ. "In Him," he 
 says, " was yea." The great word of Christ, when 
 faced with life and all it brings of joy and woe, 
 was 'yes.' He says 'yes' to the laughter of 
 little children, ' yes ' to the gladness of their 
 eyes : ' yes ' to friendship and ' yes ' to feasting : 
 * yes ' to the beauty and the wonder of the world : 
 ' yes ' to the energy and the vigour of life : 
 'yes' to marriage. Everywhere, over the whole 
 of life, except to that which in itself is wrong, 
 He flings His splendid 'yes.' 
 
 It has, however, to be repeated, that those who 
 reject asceticism as an ideal, substituting for it that 
 perfection of blood and brain, which Meredith 
 sets before us, are choosing an ideal still more 
 difficult of attainment than that which they have 
 set aside. That is not the common apprehension : 
 but it is a fact. To live holily, as well as com- 
 pletely : to Hve a man amongst men : to enter 
 into the full relations of living, and still to keep 
 the soul white, this is the hard task. It is a 
 
The Nature of the Strong 27 
 
 project of which we may speak in Meredith's own 
 words, written in a very different connection : — 
 
 " She whom I love is hard to catch and conquer, 
 Hard, but O the glory of the winning were she won ! '' 
 
 But it must never be imagined that Meredith, 
 while he keeps a very watchful eye on the 
 ascetic, leaves any sort of doubt as to the side 
 on which the mastery lies in this dual relation. 
 In his adjustment of blood and brain, the control 
 is with mind. The proper man, according to this 
 conception, is one who lives a full life, but always 
 at the dictates of reason. By a reading of Earth, 
 he has come to a knowledge of those practices 
 which will enable him to be healthiest alike in 
 body and in mind : and, according to his under- 
 standing of reality and its laws, he orders his 
 whole conduct. Thus he comes to be one who 
 dwells in the world as in a glad home, wherein 
 he moves about as master. 
 
 " Sharing still its bliss and woe ; 
 Harnessed to its hungers, no." 
 
 Such a position, he maintains, can only be 
 achieved by a race which at once has a highly 
 developed intellect and a proper regard for 
 intellect. He lays great stress on his belief, based 
 on his reading of Earth, that experience is tending 
 to produce a race of clear and strong minds, that 
 can read the laws of physical and moral wxll- 
 being accurately and can frame conduct in 
 consonance with them. 
 
28 The Sons of Strength 
 
 " Change is on the wing to bud 
 Rose in brain from rose in blood." 
 
 That is to say, experience is developing virility in 
 the mental sphere, as previously it developed 
 virility in the physical sphere. So complete is 
 the sovereignty of mind to be that it is to be 
 master of the seat of emotion, the heart, as well 
 as of the seat of passion, the body. 
 
 " First then, nor utterly then 
 Till our lord of sensations at war, 
 The rebel, the heart, yields place 
 To brain, each prompting the soul. 
 Thus our dear Earth we embrace 
 For the milk, her strength to man." 
 
 It is an attractive conception. He presents to us 
 the thought of a man entirely human, in every 
 tingling vein life strongly beating, but with the 
 impulses of his flesh under the severe, unrelaxing 
 hold of his reason, which is so enlightened by a 
 constant companionship with the real, that nothing 
 that he does will be to the hurt of himself or 
 of the society of which he is a part. It may cer- 
 tainly be objected that he takes an unduly hopeful 
 view of that which intellect can do. ' The rebel, 
 the heart,' will need to do a good deal of 
 ' prompting ' of the soul, along with brain, if a 
 man is rightly to be master in his own house. 
 Martineau in Faitb and Self -Surrender points out 
 how often, in actual fact, appeal may be made to 
 a man's reason to give up habits which are im- 
 poverishing his life and the lives of those about 
 him, with no eflfect: ''but touch the lever of 
 
The Nature of the Strong 29 
 
 his affections and you move his world." Meredith 
 undoubtedly would not deny the value of an 
 appeal to the emotions, if their impulse was to a 
 course of action approved by reason. All that he 
 teaches is that where there is clashing between 
 the ' heart ' and the mind, it is the latter that must 
 be permitted to take control. At the same time, in 
 his enthusiasm for intellect, he seems to underesti- 
 mate, or at least to neglect, the great part that the 
 ' heart ' plays in bringing men to a right conduct, 
 and, it may be, even to a knowledge of the true. 
 It will probably be agreed that in emphasising 
 unity as he does, Meredith is only giving voice to 
 the thought that is in the minds of most of us. 
 To permit the mastership of the flesh is, we 
 admit, to acknowledge defeat in the battle of life. 
 As for that, our desire is to be able to exclaim, 
 in words which Myers has put into the mouth of 
 St Paul :— 
 
 *' Well, let me sin, but not with my consenting, 
 Well, let me die, but willing to be whole : 
 Never, O Christ, so stay me from relenting. 
 Shall there be truce, betwixt my flesh and soul." 
 
 At the same time, we recognise that the ascetic 
 ideal will not work. We are members one of 
 another, and meant to live as such. The joys of 
 human companionship, the ripplings of laughter, 
 the love of a man for a maid and of a maid for a 
 man, — these things are our possessions. It is 
 not only our right, but our duty, to lay hold on 
 life. And the man who tells us that it is only 
 in the endeavour to possess it all, that we can 
 
30 The Sons of Strength 
 
 fulfil the purpose for which we are made, is tell- 
 ing us that which we feel to be implicit in the 
 fact of things. We cannot but believe that the 
 character thus indicated, strong, loving, human, 
 ^ pure from the night and splendid for the day,' 
 is a character for which much striving and many- 
 prayers will not be cast away, if only, by any 
 means, it may be achieved. 
 
 (J?) The Mark of the Love of the Real. 
 
 And ye shah know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. 
 
 The emphasis which Meredith places on unity 
 is an outcome of the facing of fact. He looks at 
 man as he is, and constructs his conception 
 accordingly. He implies that it is only by 
 adopting a similar attitude that man can become 
 what he ought to be. This, then, let us note 
 as the second element in his conception of 
 strength. He is strong, who not only recognises 
 that he is blood as well as brain, but also has a 
 faculty of facing the thing that is. This faculty 
 will only develop in him who has a love of the real. 
 
 The quality of fact-facing is one of the 
 qualities, which strike us first in coming to 
 Meredith's writings. In a moment of great 
 sorrow he writes of himself : — 
 
 " I fled nothing, nothing pursued." 
 
 He might very well have said that he fled 
 nothing at any time. Those things which were 
 there he acknowledged to be there. Despite his 
 
The Nature of the Strong 3 1 
 
 invincible optimism, which is an optimism of feeling 
 as well as of thought, he never flinches from the 
 facts of pain, which he sees about him : and he 
 never attempts to hide them in ineffective 
 draperies, as is the tendency of so many loving 
 hands to do. Whatever else his readers may 
 gain from him, they will be compelled by him to 
 look fair and square in the face at the darker 
 facts of our living. In speaking of his own dying 
 wife, in the greatest of his didactic poems, when 
 he is looking with weary eyes to our Mother 
 Earth for comfort, ' for crumbs by the way to 
 sustain,' he writes as one who is steadily accepting 
 the fact that she, ^ his own, his good companion, 
 mate, pulse of him,' was unquestionably taking 
 the long farewell. He states — 
 
 " Her sentence I knew past grace." 
 Earth's sentence of death he knew and recog- 
 nised and acknowledged : and it was with his 
 front to the real that comfort came to him. The 
 first of his poems which the present writer came 
 across is specially distinguished by a note of 
 clear-cut acknowledgment of shadowed fact : 
 and it was the strong vigour of realisation in 
 this poem that sent him reading further : — 
 
 " A wind sways the pines, 
 And below 
 Not a breath of wild air ; 
 Still as the mosses that glow 
 On the flooring and over the lines 
 Of the roots here and there, 
 The pine-tree drops its dead ; 
 They are quiet, as under the sea. 
 
32 The Sons of Strength 
 
 Overhead, overhead 
 
 Rushes life in a race, 
 
 As the clouds the clouds chase ; 
 
 And we go 
 And we drop like the fruits of the tree, 
 
 Even we, 
 
 Even so." 
 
 We cannot read this without appreciating the 
 almost brutal genuineness of it. But in so facing 
 fact, the poet is only behaving as a true Son of 
 Earth, which is, as he himself describes it — 
 
 "... Mother of simple truth, 
 Relentless quencher of lies." 
 
 Now, there are those who say that this is the 
 whole of Meredith's gospel ; as if his message 
 ran, ' here are facts : you have the power to 
 recognise them as such : commonsense tells you 
 that you had better do so and act accordingly.' It 
 is maintained that this does not take us much 
 farther. Well, perhaps that is true. At the 
 same time, we need not admit that it is a work of 
 supererogation to remind us that it is advisable to 
 look at things as they are. For willingness to 
 look at fact, and the power of recognising fact 
 when we are willing to look, is one of the rarest 
 endowments on earth. Our sins, our omissions 
 of duty, our squandering of faculty and oppor- 
 tunity — what do they indicate but sheer neglect 
 of fact ? If we would only look at ourselves as 
 we know ourselves to be, and would frankly ac- 
 knowledge to our own minds the loss that is 
 necessitated by our inertia and slackness of spirit, 
 surely the sum total of the world's sinning would 
 
The Nature of the Strong 33 
 
 be reduced. At any rate, if we faced fact, the 
 devil's favourite suggestion, that we can begin the 
 enterprise of righteousness to-morrow, would fail 
 of its effect. We have had long enough experience 
 of that to-morrow to know that it never comes : 
 that to-day is the day if we will hear God's voice. 
 The faculty that we have chiefly cultivated in 
 these matters is that of placing the telescope 
 to the blind eye ; and a teacher is doing us no 
 disservice who tells us to shift it to the seeing one. 
 But, of course, it is untrue to say that this is 
 the whole of Meredith's message in this region. He 
 makes it clear that there is a difference between 
 the recognition of fact and the realising of fact : 
 between the mere acknowledgment that such 
 and such a thing is true, and the biting of that 
 truth into the mind so that it becomes a motive 
 of action. " Strange^'" he writes, " when it strikes to 
 within is the known." He proceeds to teach us 
 two great lessons in connection therewith. First, 
 that one of the effects of the grief of life is 
 precisely to make the known 'strike to within.' 
 Even his own 'pure white cherry in bloom' became 
 * richer than newness revealed,' when he saw it 
 at the moment of his great sorrow. Second, he 
 teaches us that when truth fairly strikes to within, 
 it brings with itself that which enables us rightly 
 to face it. 
 
 " And when from my soul I said, 
 
 . . . smite, 
 Sacred Reality ! power 
 Filled me to front it aright." 
 
34 The Sons of Strength 
 
 It is true that, in this passage he is thinking of the 
 dethronement of self, which is necessary before a 
 man can put up such a prayer. Nevertheless, 
 the passage also contains the idea with which we 
 are concerned. When a man bares himself to 
 the truth, and permits it to grip him, the act of 
 so doing makes him strong for any circumstances. 
 It is the lesson which Another taught us when He 
 said, "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth 
 shall make you free." A text this for all who are 
 engaged in moral teaching to ponder. Get a man 
 convinced of the great facts — of Sin, of Pardon, 
 of Christ, and of the Indwelling Power — let it come 
 upon his mind one day that these things are true — 
 and behold ! he is set free. 
 
 It is no wonder that one who understands men 
 as well as Meredith pleads with us strongly 
 to desire to know, and to realise, the thing that is. 
 
 (c) The Mark of Assent. 
 
 *' Thy will be done J ^ 
 
 If we are asked to give two phrases which are 
 specially characteristic of Meredith, we should not 
 err in offering these two — first, ' assent to Earth,' 
 and second, 'the rapture of the forward view.' 
 Both require to be considered, if we would obtain 
 a grasp of his thought of strength ; but only the 
 former can be taken to indicate an element in 
 strength. We set it down now as a third mark. It 
 follows naturally on the facing of facts and the need 
 for realising them, which we have j ust noted. Truth 
 
The Nature of the Strong ^^ 
 
 must not only be acknowledged. It must also be 
 accepted. If, after Meredith's fashion, we pray 
 sacred reality to smite, we imply that we are will- 
 ing to assent to its blows. Our heads are in no sort 
 to be ' bloody, but unbowed.' Whatever reality 
 may spell for us, our eyes are to remain serene : 
 and their serenity is to be that of acceptance. 
 
 It is very remarkable that, from a teacher 
 so full of fight as this man is, we should obtain, 
 as one of his chiefest words, that which seems 
 to bring him into harmony with those who 
 emphasise resignation. 
 
 "The sighting brain her good decree accepts." 
 
 " Accept, she says ; it is not hard 
 
 In woods ; but she in towns 
 Repeats, accept ; and have we wept, 
 
 And have we quailed with fears, 
 Or shrunk with horrors, sure reward 
 
 We have whom knowledge crowns ; 
 Who see in mould the rose unfold. 
 
 The soul through blood and tears." 
 
 What he has to say upon the duty of accept- 
 ance of experience coming from without, or at least 
 that part of it which is caused by the working 
 of natural law, is not very far removed from the 
 Christian teaching upon this matter. For — and 
 let it be underlined in our minds — we are not to 
 think of Meredith's message as a non-religious 
 one. He urges upon us no sort of impotent, 
 sullen yielding to the decrees of a blind force. 
 In considering his teaching, we have to bear 
 in mind that Earth, to which assent is to be 
 
36 The Sons of Strength 
 
 given, is the revelation of the will of ' the Great 
 Over-Reason we name Beneficence.' His resigna- 
 tion, therefore, is the resignation of a religious 
 man ; of a man, that is to say, who trusts in 
 the Power that is round about him, constantly- 
 expressed in the happenings which he is called 
 upon to accept. His teaching is a restatement 
 (in less simple and less adequate terms be it 
 granted) of the older word, * Thy will be 
 done.' It is worth noting that one, who is 
 alleged to stand apart from the main stream of 
 Christianity, comes to us with this so Christian 
 instruction. 
 
 His resignation, however, it need hardly be 
 said, is not a state of mind in which he folds 
 his hands and allows the external to have its 
 will of him. What he does is to recognise that 
 there are limitations imposed upon us, and that, 
 in so far as we can be active, it is within those 
 limitations : while, at the same time, urging us 
 to be none the less active for that. His anxiety 
 is that we should not spend time and energy, 
 which ought to be given to right living, to 
 bewailing restrictions which we cannot remove, 
 which have been placed upon us in order to 
 act as spurs to endeavour. He has no sympathy 
 with kicking against the pricks. The kind of 
 man who says, * I did not ask to be here : there- 
 fore, I have a right to complain of what I do 
 not like,' would receive short shrift at his hands. 
 Almost angrily, he would fling the words ' assent, 
 accept,' at him; and then, more tenderly, 'read 
 
The Nature of the Strong 37 
 
 Earth, and assent will be easy when you share 
 in her dream of the blossom of good, and 
 perceive the processes by which she is turning 
 it into fact.' 
 
 The thought, which he is here pressing upon 
 us, is like some which we have already looked 
 at, semi-consciously possessed by many of our 
 unreflecting best. A man is a right man, it 
 is felt, who goes on doing his duty, ' playing 
 the game,' with satisfaction in the playing of 
 it, despite the slings and arrows of outrageous 
 fortune. Such a man, without grumbling at that 
 which he cannot avoid, proceeds to make the best 
 of that which he has : and all with a smile on 
 his lips. The smile becomes a genuine expression 
 of a contented mind, according to Meredith, if 
 he have enough understanding and love of 
 Earth to recognise that those experiences, which 
 seem at first blush to justify complaint, are the 
 spurrings of a kindly mother that desires her 
 children to grow into men. 
 
 " Ye that nourish hopes of fame ! 
 Ye who would be known in song ! 
 Ponder old history, and duly frame 
 Your souls to meek acceptance of the thong. 
 
 Lo ! of hundreds who aspire, 
 
 Eighties perish — nineties tire ! 
 They who bear up, in spite of wrecks and wracks. 
 Were season'd by celestial hail of thwacks. 
 
 Fortune in this mortal race 
 
 Builds on thwackings for its base ; 
 Thus the All-Wise doth make a flail a stafl^, 
 And separates his heavenly corn from chaff." 
 
38 The Sons of Strength 
 
 To those who are perplexed, not merely 
 by the difficulties which stand in the way of 
 achievement, but by the great facts of bereave- 
 ment and death, he has similar counsel. Death 
 is but one part of the process of the great Bene- 
 ficence to produce true Sons of Strength. 
 
 In his teaching on this matter, he falls foul of 
 a certain type of sentiment that has crept into the 
 Christian Church. With the attitude which calls 
 the normal difficulty of moral achievement bad 
 names, and looks forward to new conditions in which 
 goodness will be made easy of access, he has no sort 
 of sympathy. The Lord God, he would say, is one 
 God, and His will is expressed in the steep ascent 
 of holiness which we find on earth. Nowhere 
 shall we find the conditions altered. The differ- 
 ence between heaven and earth, if he would permit 
 such a distinction momentarily to be made, is not 
 in these conditions of life, but in the state of the 
 persons living. Those whose w411s are harmonised 
 to the Over-Will are in heaven. Those whose 
 wills are not harmonised, are even now surrounded 
 by ^ eye-balls under hoods, which have them by 
 the hair ' ; and they will find no change in their 
 surroundings till themselves change. With that 
 we ought all to agree. We have, upon this earth 
 of ours, the eternal conditions of attainment clearly 
 set forth. If ever we are to gain peace, we must 
 adapt ourselves to them. They will not be 
 changed to suit our fancy. And we may go on 
 to agree with his corollary from this position, that 
 if Earth is to be called hard names, so is all God's 
 
The Nature of the Strong 39 
 
 Universe. To speak of Earth, as God made it, 
 as a desert drear, is dangerously like rebuking 
 the Perfect Will. Meredith will have done the 
 Christian Church no ill service if he has helped 
 to banish from its speech phrases which, however 
 pardonable in moments of heaviness and of sorrow, 
 are really cries of unfaith. 
 
 And how is this splendid power of assent to 
 be reached ^ Here again he gives us an entirely 
 Christian word. It is to be reached by the 
 slaughter of self. In the emphasis upon self he 
 finds the primal source of all the world's fears. 
 If our experience is sore, it is Earth that is 
 wrestling 
 
 " with our old worm 
 Self in the narrow and wide," 
 
 with the worm that ' slavers at the root ' of our 
 heart-wounds, to the end that we, being purged 
 of the emphasis upon self, may find the ' well of 
 the sorrows cleansed ' in us. This is the central 
 point of his teaching. It may appear to many, as 
 it does to the present writer, that he confuses 
 selfishness, or self-willedness, with the thought of 
 personality as a whole. Some of his views would 
 seem to imply that any relation into which the '' I " 
 enters is a relation which may be termed selfish — 
 a position which would lead to strange paradoxes. 
 It is by some such straining of words that he says 
 that a freedom from selfishness will deliver us from 
 a desire from immortality, and, therefore, from 
 bitter grief for our dead. But apart from criti- 
 cisms which may be made upon his attitude to 
 
40 The Sons of Strength 
 
 immortality, we can have nothing but admiration 
 for the force and point and courage with which 
 he has re-phrased the teaching of long ago, that 
 a man to save his life must lose it, and that if he 
 is to be able to say that he lives, he must be able 
 to say that he lives no longer, but that Another 
 has come to dominate him and make him His 
 own. 
 
Ill 
 The Inspirations 
 
 It is one thing to construct an ideal: it is 
 another to live up to it. Systems of good con- 
 duct may easily be fashioned, but the practice of 
 them is another affair. Here we have a character 
 and an attitude to hfe portrayed which is mani- 
 festly of great worth. It is a character which 
 aims at a full Hfe, which loves the real, which 
 assents to the Perfect Will, and works for the 
 purging of self. But what we would particularly 
 be at is how to achieve that character. In 
 especial, do we set forth upon this warfare at our 
 own charges, or are there any inspirations that will 
 be given us ? 
 
 It is in this region that we turn to Meredith 
 with most attention. For here is a man who for 
 himself won much of the strength which he 
 taught; and we are ever justifiably eager to 
 discover the secret of one who thus, in the 
 noblest sense, succeeds in life. From the Chris- 
 tian point of view what he has to say is specially 
 interesting. For we proclaim that a man cannot 
 win the best by himself, and that it is only reason- 
 able to call upon us to work out our own salva- 
 
42 The Sons of Strength 
 
 tion, because it is God that worketh in us. 
 Wherefore, we wonder what this man, with a 
 right to speak, has to say on this high matter. 
 
 Now, one thing at any rate may be stated 
 definitely ; and that is that Meredith does not 
 teach us that we can scale the heights of good- 
 ness unaided. He is not one of those who 
 tell us that man is the sole architect of his 
 moral fortunes. The achievement of worth is a 
 process of co-operation between the man and a 
 Power that is without, that makes for righteous- 
 ness. There are inspirations of which it may be 
 more truly said that they seize the man, than that 
 the man seizes them. Further, it is of much inter- 
 est to observe that the inspirations, which he finds 
 catching him and strengthening him with might in 
 the inner man, are precisely those which religion, 
 understood in the Christian sense, has to offer — 
 namely, the inspiration of the Companionship and 
 the inspiration of the Forward View. 
 
 (a) The Companionship 
 
 ** / have called you friends. '^ 
 '"'' Lo ! I am with you alnvay.^^ 
 
 The most important of the poems, for the 
 purpose of discovering Meredith's intimate thought, 
 is A Faith on Trial. Not that the majority of 
 his poems are other than frankly didactic ; but in 
 A Faith on Trial he is giving us his statement of 
 how he ' came of his faith's ordeal,' at a time 
 when that faith was subjected to the most severe 
 
The Inspirations 43 
 
 test to which a faith can be exposed — the loss of 
 one who made the world glad to him. In a poem 
 written in such circumstances, with an admitted 
 candour, we should expect to find the writer dis- 
 playing insight at its deepest and most frankly- 
 uncovering the secret places of his heart. More 
 weight may be placed on such a poem, in an 
 attempt to state the author's final teaching, than 
 on a volume written when the known is not 
 striking so sharply to within. It is important 
 that we should note this for reasons which we 
 shall come to shortly. Meantime, we mark it 
 for this, that in the moment of his stress 
 we find him seeking a Companionship. He 
 goes out to commune with the Nature that 
 he loved. 
 
 " The changeful visible face 
 Of our Mother I sought for my food ; 
 Crumbs by the way to sustain." 
 
 It is from that companionship, bringing, as it 
 does, into lively remembrance a moment of long 
 ago when the gracious pressure of the ' Great 
 Unseen, nowise the dark Unknown ' had been 
 very strong upon him, that he finds the strength 
 by which he can face his sorrow and come forth 
 conqueror. And here, especially, we are to 
 remember that the Earth, into whose Com- 
 munion he comes, is, to him, the revelation of 
 the Beneficent Over-Reason. 
 
 This also we must note, that he, on his side, 
 had fulfilled the condition of conscious companion- 
 
44 The Sons of Strength 
 
 ship, by seeking, from his youth up, that with 
 which he would commune. He found, as we 
 have already remarked, his Friend in Nature. 
 And he deserved so to do. For with delight and 
 expectation he had looked in Nature's face for many 
 a day. The water 'first of singers,' the leaves 
 fluttering together into a pathway of gold beneath 
 sun, the living things, the lark ascending, above 
 all his famous pure wild cherry — these had been 
 the light of his eyes all through the journey. 
 So greatly did he love Nature, that she taught 
 him a new voice of song. Just as Browning 
 forgets to be harsh and breaks into a melody 
 that is pure, when his song tells of his love, so 
 Meredith forgets to be obscure, when he hymns 
 the delights of Earth. For the most part, it has 
 to be admitted his poetry is too much of a 
 metrical version of philosophy. His poetry is the 
 ' vessel of the thought ' : and some may be inclined 
 to apply prophetically his own words to his writ- 
 ings, ' the vessel splits, the thought survives.' 
 He is one who is compelled to teach and chooses 
 to sing, rather than one who is compelled to 
 sing and chooses to teach. His manner of 
 teaching, in Henley's phrase, often requires ' a 
 dark lantern and a case of jemmies.' But when 
 he comes to nature description, he wins the true 
 soul of song. Let anyone who thinks that he is 
 a novelist, who has strayed by mistake into the 
 realm of poetry, turn, for instance, to The Lark 
 Ascending^ and take any of its passages, such as 
 this : ~ 
 
The Inspirations 45 
 
 " He rises and begins to round, 
 He drops the silver chain of sound, 
 Of many links without a break. 
 In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake. 
 All intervolved and spreading wide, 
 Like water-dimples down a tide 
 Where ripple ripple overcurls 
 And eddy into eddy whirls ; 
 A press of hurried notes that run 
 So fleet they scarce are more than one. 
 Yet changeingly the trills repeat 
 And linger ringing while they fleet, 
 
 So thirsty of his voice is he. 
 For all to hear and all to know 
 That he is joy, awake, aglow. 
 The tumult of his heart to hear 
 Through pureness filtered crystal-clear. 
 And know the pleasure sprinkled bright 
 By simple singing of delight. 
 Shrill, irreflective, unrestrained. 
 Rapt, ringing, on the jet sustained 
 Without a break, without a fall. 
 Sweet-silvery, sheer lyrical. 
 Perennial." 
 
 Or let him turn to passages in T^he Bay of the 
 Daughter of Hades ^ or to such prose poems as the 
 description at the beginning of Vittoria^ and then 
 deny, if he can, to Meredith the power of 
 poetry. Not that it is in Nature-description 
 only that he reaches the heights. Love in a 
 Valley stands to prove that untrue. But it fis 
 when inspired by a Nature theme that he most 
 frequently finds his grasp and reach to be equal, 
 and that he is most definitely a singer pure and 
 simple. 
 
46 The Sons of Strength 
 
 Now, the point we are to emphasise is this : that 
 to Nature, that sets him carolling for sheer delight, 
 he comes successfully for companionship in his 
 day of need, because he has ever been glad to be 
 at her side. He was a man whose heart, despite 
 its battle-loving, rested when he could ' leave the 
 uproar, and at a leap strike a woodland path ; ' one 
 whose own feeling is represented in Woodland Peace. 
 
 " Sweet as Eden is the air, 
 
 And Eden-sweet the ray, 
 No Paradise is lost for them 
 Who foot by branching root and stem, 
 And lightly with the woodland share 
 The change of night and day. 
 
 Sweet as Eden is the air, 
 And Eden-sweet the ray." 
 
 Of such a man it can be said that he is one 
 in whom the spirit has so far gained the mastery. 
 For the flesh-controlled are not at home in 
 Nature. ^'The heavens declare the glory of 
 God : and the firmament sheweth His handi- 
 work ; " and so does Earth. Is it wonderful that 
 those who are opposed to God turn uneasily 
 from the place of His glory .? The splendour 
 of the hills, the might and majesty of the sea, 
 the more tender beauty of the woodland are 
 no companions for the man who is controlled by 
 his lower self. Indeed, we may say that he 
 only finds companionship from our Mother, who 
 has in him the child-like spirit. Watch a child 
 in a wood, when the sunlight is breaking through 
 the branches on to the fern and the heather. 
 
The Inspirations 47 
 
 He is come into his own place. For a moment 
 he gazes down the aisles of it, stilled into a 
 wonder : then, with a new note of glee, 
 ' irreflective, unrestrained,' he runs along the 
 woodland path, in harmony with all that surrounds 
 him. The trees are his brothers : he looks up 
 at them and smiles : and their branches bend 
 caressingly towards him. After his manner, re- 
 ceptive, simple, trustful must the heart ever be 
 that can rest in the companionship of the forests 
 and the mountains. It is not pressing the thought 
 too much to quote the old words, with this 
 emphasis : " Who shall ascend into the hill of the 
 Lord .f* He that hath clean hands and a pure 
 heart : who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, 
 nor sworn deceitfully." The more child-like and 
 the better the man, the more the companionship 
 will be manifest. On the other hand, the closer 
 the companionship the more simple goodness will 
 be won. Thus God and man ever work together 
 for man's raising from poverty to richness of life. 
 The intimate communion into which Meredith 
 came with Nature implied definite eifort on his 
 part. He sought Nature. ' Our Mother I 
 sought for my food.' And behind that particular 
 eifort referred to in A Faith on Trial there stood 
 a whole life-time of purposeful communion. In 
 his moment of need, he tells us, he had but 
 one asset left, and that was his ' disciplined habit 
 to see.' As it proved, that was sufficient: but 
 apart from that disciplined habit, the inspiration, 
 which finally came to him, would not have been 
 
48 The Sons of Strength 
 
 his. He contributed his share to the Companion- 
 ship, by deliberately attending to the word of 
 God in Earth. 
 
 Now, this is the crux of the whole matter. 
 The problem of the winning of strength, the 
 problem of life, is solved by the right attention, 
 which leads to the right Companionship. We 
 are placed in a world in which we can make 
 companionships of two main sorts. Whether 
 we like it or no, we are bound to have them of 
 one sort or the other. Our problem is to choose 
 the right sort : and that problem finds its solution 
 in the region in which we are freest, the region 
 of attention. We can, for the most part, choose 
 where our minds are to dwell. We cannot, 
 indeed, alter the subsequent effects of our choice 
 of dwelling. If we choose the companionship 
 of the true, we cannot avoid being impelled 
 thereby to genuineness. If we choose the 
 companionship of the base, we cannot avoid 
 the development of baseness in our minds. Our 
 choice lies in the matter of which companionship 
 it is to be ; the choice of where our minds are 
 to dwell. Dwell — that is the significant word. 
 For there is such a thing as ' the homing instinct 
 of the mind.' When our minds are set free 
 from present business, they spread the wings of 
 their thought and fly home. And where is their 
 dwelling ? In the midst of the white mountains, 
 in the glad and sunlit vales, in the high and lofty 
 place? Our destinies stretch themselves out 
 brightly, if that be so. Or, are they in the 
 
The Inspirations 49 
 
 dark places, which love not the light ? Ah ! it 
 is ill with us then. 
 
 There is a great strangeness and a great 
 solemnising in the remembrance of what different 
 worlds men may make for themselves out of 
 apparently the same constituents, by the process 
 of attending. I remember once buying a book 
 of poems, which had evidently lain long in some 
 old library, before it found its way into the 
 mingled tray outside the bookseller's shop. 
 Throughout, the poems had been marked, pro- 
 bably by some dead hand. It was easy, so 
 far, to reconstruct the mind that once had per- 
 used the lines. A wholesome mind it must have 
 been. Every unexpected phrase, every courtly 
 turn of words, every dainty image and fancy had 
 been lined for remembrance. It was a pleasure 
 to think of this charming gentleman of the older 
 school, possessed of a grace and dignity that now 
 are lost, dwelling with delight on the daintiness 
 of the poet. Some time afterwards, I happened 
 to be in a public library and took up a volume of 
 the same poet for reference. Here was marking 
 again. But what a different world this second reader 
 hved in from the first. All that was unlovely, 
 all that could set the machine of imagery working 
 corruptly was emphasised, every morsel of naughti- 
 ness was set aside for future rolling on the palate. 
 This man, too, we might know. He was one 
 making a companionship of the base ; and, while he 
 sought that friendship, no efforts and no sudden 
 fears could change the sure degrading of his mind. 
 
50 The Sons of Strength 
 
 Whenever he was set free, he would go to his 
 own place, until it became his prison, from which 
 there w^as no escaping. 
 
 The thought of Companionship is not, however, 
 presented to us only in the metaphorical sense of 
 companionship with ideas. Meredith's com- 
 muning with Nature, or Earth, is of deeper 
 religious value. For there is a mysticism in him, 
 and his Earth-rapture reaches the height that it 
 does because in Earth he comes into relation 
 with a Spirit, a great, pervading Presence, which 
 is the Uncreated Loveliness. Earth, it cannot be 
 too often emphasised, is the revelation of God, 
 The closing passages of A Faith on Trial can 
 mean nothing but a faith in a great Unseen felt 
 through Earth. The language is such that we find 
 it difficult to avoid the belief that it is a One with 
 whom^ not an It with which^ he communes. This, 
 if it be true, brings him into harmony, in the central 
 place of religion, with those whom we more com- 
 monly call religious teachers. The communion 
 which has come to him, which he seeks by purposive 
 attention to develop, is a communion with the 
 spirit of God. Although he speaks of it in terms 
 of Earth, it is, in the last instance, coming into 
 touch with God that is the source of his strength. 
 
 He is brought still more completely into harmony 
 with the religious experience of Christian men by 
 the hint which he gives in the poem to which re- 
 ference is being specially made, that in the moment 
 of his need the Presence in Earth brought to his 
 mind the memory of a vivid moment of companion- 
 
The Inspirations 51 
 
 ship in days gone by. In the days of his youth, at 
 that period when our spirits are laid open to 
 God's touch, a vision of what life might be, a 
 vision which contained in it an expression of the 
 splendour of the Mind behind things, struck 
 home strongly upon him. Through ^ a pure wild 
 cherry in bloom ' strange voices spoke to him : 
 in it, a Presence came very near to him. And 
 in his day of sorrow, the sight of the same tree 
 
 "Choir over choir white-winged, 
 White-bosomed fold within fold,'* 
 
 brought back to him the thought of life which had 
 been given him long before. A voice in Earth 
 spoke to him by the present and through the 
 past, telling him to be strong and very courageous, 
 and to trust unto the end. When we read what 
 he has to say about the effect of the ' forest's 
 white virgin ' upon him, in connection with 
 closing lines of the poem, which tell so clearly of an 
 Over-Mind that is Beneficence, it is hard to escape 
 from the conviction that Meredith, like all whose 
 teachings on religion take a lasting hold of the at- 
 tention of men, is stating, even if it be in language 
 that sounds strange, that he found his power from 
 communion with Him who is Love and Life. 
 
 At any rate, it is clear that the inspiration of 
 companionship is to be found in this poem. Now, 
 it takes two to make a companionship. For 
 the great companionship of religion one of these 
 two must be God. Not that we need to attempt to 
 define Him. Attempts at defining only put Him 
 
52 The Sons of Strength 
 
 far away. But there must be the acknowledg- 
 ment of a Someone, a Great Unseen, who bends 
 to us as we approach Him, a Spirit that can hear, 
 and hearing, can interpenetrate us with His hfe, 
 that we may be strong. I do not think that the 
 term "religious teaching" should be applied to 
 any system or statement of experience that has 
 not in it this acknowledgment of the touch of a 
 Someone with whom we have to do. For, let it 
 be understood, the religious inspiration is nothing 
 more nor less than the inspiration of the com- 
 panionship of God. The Christian inspiration is 
 the inspiration of the companionship of the God 
 seen in Christ. It is but imperfectly realised. 
 Our selfishness dulls its vividness. But when 
 the moment comes that we wake to behold His 
 glory and to feel him near, from that time onwards 
 we are new men : for we never quite escape from 
 Him again. When we have need of Him, at 
 least we remember that moment of awakening ; 
 though we see Him not, we cannot doubt that 
 He is by our side. If we would be strong, 
 our great purpose should be to seek His near 
 Presence at all times ; to think His thoughts after 
 Him ; and so to live, and so to pray, that our 
 spirits again may be open to His breath, when 
 He listeth to breathe upon us. For a Christian 
 man the practice of the Presence ought to be no 
 unwilling task, seeing that we have Christ to give 
 us, so that our minds can understand, the heart 
 of God. Surely we need not hesitate to seek 
 the God that is in Christ Jesus. If a man by 
 
The Inspirations 53 
 
 seeking has reached this, that his mind, when 
 set free, turns to the regions into which the 
 Unstained can accompany him, and if, though it 
 be with varying vividness, he feels that Christ is 
 round about him as his guide and sheker, then 
 that man can say with confidence that he will not 
 be moved. 
 
 Our great difficulty is to present the fact of 
 the Divine companionship as a fact, and as having 
 its parallel in other experiences of men. It re- 
 quires constant re-phrasing ; if possible, by men 
 who are neither singers of many words nor 
 professional theologians. Meredith, being, on 
 the one hand, a poet addressing himself to the 
 intellect, and, on the other, the contradictory of 
 a schoolman, has laid us under a heavy debt in 
 uttering this great religious fact in a manner 
 which is catching the attention of some, who are 
 weary of the set of phrases of religious speech. 
 Possibly, the fact that a man so downright, 
 so reality-loving, hints at this region of the in- 
 expressible as containing the supremely real, 
 may have its effect on those whose temper of mind 
 leads them to suggest that the companionship of 
 the Great Spirit, and the strengthening that 
 comes from it, is too intangible a conception for 
 practical men. For there are minds of that sort. 
 When St Paul, for instance, writes that he prays 
 that friends of his may be strengthened with 
 might by God's Spirit in the inner man, they turn 
 on us and ask how that may be. By companion- 
 ship, we answer. But they shake their heads 
 
54 The Sons of Strength 
 
 and reply that we use words that have sound but 
 little meaning, words unintelligible to men that 
 have to deal with hard facts. Yet there is 
 no fact harder than that strengthening comes 
 from the right companionship. Any man who 
 has a friend worth the having knows that well. 
 If a man has lived with one who is truer than 
 himself, more delicate-minded, with a higher 
 sense of honour and of duty, whose delight is in 
 that which is lovely and true and of good report, 
 he simply cannot help having caught something 
 of his friend's spirit into himself. When he 
 examines himself, he will be the first, if he is 
 candid, to recognise how much he owes to his 
 friendship ; and, probably, he will agree that his 
 debt is not ill-expressed in the phrase that he has 
 been strengthened with might by his friend's 
 spirit in the inner man. 
 
 Now, it is our claim that in friendship we get 
 the best analogies of the relation between God's 
 spirit and man's. Given that the companionship 
 exists, the strengthening is bound to follow in 
 this region also. We are grateful to Meredith 
 for giving us, in a fresh and strong phrasing, a 
 statement of the manner in which the Over-spirit 
 communes with men. But it is not the only 
 phrasing. We would say that it is not the best. 
 For it is in terms of Christ that the noblest of 
 the saints, who have ' lain breast to breast with 
 God,' have set forth the Friend who made them 
 strong. There are, indeed, a reference or two 
 to Christ in Meredith's writings. The loftiest 
 
The Inspirations 55 
 
 part of his teaching is the teaching of Christ re- 
 stated. And yet there is a regret left in the 
 mind, that Earth is not forgotten for a moment 
 as a vehicle of the knowledge of God, and He 
 in whom Earth has touched highest, placed where 
 He ought to be, as the sum and completion of all 
 God's long revealing of Himself Such, at least, 
 will be the thought of Christian people as they 
 come to this man for instruction. But, as for 
 them, their possession of Christ will only make the 
 inspiration of the Companionship more mighty. 
 For He who was the gracious and the true, 
 whose heart bled for the weak, to whom little 
 children ran ; who, with willing hands, pressed 
 the points of the world's pain to His own bosom ; 
 who, when done to death by men whom it was 
 His passion to save, gave His last breath to prayer 
 that they might be forgiven, — He it is that in- 
 terprets the strange Presence that is upon us in 
 the stillness. If it be one like unto the Son 
 of Man that calls us friends, and strengthens us 
 with might by His spirit, what may we not dream 
 of whiteness and of truth to be won by those 
 who with Him dwell ? 
 
 But, manifestly, a companionship will not give 
 its inspiration if it is not sought. Nor can it be 
 tested as a real thing, if it is not sought. Of 
 what manner of use is it for men to tell us that 
 the claims of religion are not genuine, if they 
 never attempt to ' taste and see ' that the Lord 
 is gracious.'' Little aid should we get from our 
 friend, if, when he came to have speech with us, 
 
56 The Sons of Strength 
 
 we barred the door upon him and refused him en- 
 trance. Likewise, little help can we expect from the 
 companionship of God in Christ, if to the thought 
 of Him we never turn, if to His voice we give deaf- 
 ness, and to His eyes, as they plead, the averted face. 
 
 (b) The Forward View 
 
 ** The things nvhich God hath prepared for them that love Him.^* 
 
 The sense of companionship is not the only 
 inspiration which religion offers for the right 
 directing of life. Religion is never content with 
 the present. It reaches into the future, until 
 finally it rests in the halls of Eternity. In addi- 
 tion to the inspiration of companionship, it gives 
 the inspiration of an unbounded forward view. 
 
 Now, it is true, that, as far as Meredith is 
 concerned, the inspiration of the future is con- 
 fined to the future of the race. He has no hope, 
 apparently, for the individual as such. Instead, 
 he wages war upon the desire for individual 
 immortality, holding that it is a desire essentially 
 selfish, and that a reading of Earth offers no 
 evidence that it is a desire that will be granted. 
 Since such is the case, he maintains that it is the 
 duty of right men resolutely to set it from them, 
 and to accept life joyously as a good, whether 
 they themselves are to continue or no. 
 
 ** Then let our trust be firm in Good 
 Though we be of the fasting ; 
 Our questions are a mortal brood, 
 Our work is everlasting. 
 
The Inspirations 57 
 
 We children of Beneficence 
 
 Are in its being sharers ; 
 And whither vainer sounds than whence 
 
 For word with such wayfarers.'* 
 
 But while he does not give ground to the in- 
 dividual for dwelling in the light of eternal life 
 for himself, he urges upon him with greater force 
 and insight than any other modern English writer 
 the fact that he should live in the light of the 
 everlasting in regard to his work. He holds that, 
 in the thought of ourselves living on in those 
 that come after us, enough greatness is given to 
 our living and our working, to create in us hearts 
 devoutly thankful that we are alive. 
 
 Extended quotation could be adduced to show 
 the varied emphasis with which he re-iterates his 
 message than we can gain all needed inspiration 
 for self-development from the fact of our im- 
 mortality in the race : — 
 
 " The young generation ! ah, there is the child 
 Of our souls down the Ages ! to bleed for it, proof 
 That souls we have." 
 
 And we, who find new life rising from our 
 ashes, which will gain from our energy, and will 
 have opportunity of tasting the gladness of being, 
 may easily be content to undergo that process of 
 dissolution which is only one aspect of the process 
 of development. 
 
 "... The fuel, decay 
 Brightens the fire of renewal : and we ? 
 Death is the word of a bovine day, 
 Know you the breast of the springing To-be." 
 
58 The Sons of Strength 
 
 He draws, with evident delight, a glad and vivid 
 picture of society, which life and death together 
 are bringing to birth. 
 
 " By my faith, there is feasting to come. 
 Not the less, when our Earth we have seen 
 Beneath and on surface, her deeds and designs : 
 Who gives us the man-loving Nazarene, 
 The martyrs, the poets, the corn and the vines. 
 By my faith in the head, she has wonders in loom ; 
 Revelations, delights.'* 
 
 Now, in his teaching on this matter, three points 
 emerge. 
 
 First, we, in our lives, have work to do that 
 is effective. 
 
 " Whence looks he on a land 
 Whereon his labour is a carven page ; 
 And, forth from heritage to heritage 
 Nought writ on sand." 
 
 Second, it is work that has effect upon the 
 living. What we are, and what we do, is per- 
 petuated in lives. 
 
 Third, it is work, which is part of a great 
 process for the developing of a society, in which 
 our dreams of the best shall become actual fact. 
 It is worth noting that at the end of A Faith on 
 Trial he comes back to this thought. It is ' the 
 dream of the blossom of good ' that sustains him 
 so that he is enabled to acquiesce in his sorrow, 
 because he recognises that death and loss are 
 parts of the same process as life and possession. 
 
 ** By Death, as by Life, are we fed : 
 The two are one spring." 
 
The Inspirations 59 
 
 We ourselves, he implies, are the result of a 
 double process of life and death, continually pro- 
 ceeding through countless ages in the past ; and if 
 we have rejoiced in our lives, and in their activities 
 and their companionships, let us not fall to com- 
 plaining when we have to pass through the second 
 part of the process, namely death, whereby new 
 lives are coming into being, which, in their 
 turn, may rejoice in their labours under the 
 sun. 
 
 All this is worthy of our grave attention. 
 'Nought that we do is writ on sand.' All that 
 we think, all that we desire, all that makes up 
 the sum of what we are, in some sort lives on 
 in the days to come. From generation to genera- 
 tion, we are bound up in the bundle of life. 
 Our influence is spreading out from us horizontally 
 upon the men of our own time, and down from 
 us vertically through our children. No man can 
 set a bound to the effect of his living. When 
 we remember how we shall be perpetuated in 
 the good or evil of the young generation, how, 
 when the place where once we were shall know 
 us no more, still, in the truth and honour, or in 
 the baseness and self-centredness, of those that 
 in life were dear to us, we ourselves are alive, 
 the remembrance may well stir in us a new 
 gravity and seriousness. 
 
 It is through parentage, perhaps, that the 
 inspiration of the forward view comes most 
 poignantly. When a man has a child he begins to 
 bethink himself. Whatever we may have achieved 
 
6o The Sons of Strength 
 
 for ourselves, our desire for our children is that 
 they shall do justly and love mercy and walk 
 humbly before, their God. And, if it be that at 
 a time, we must remember that we, having walked 
 far from Christ, have made it harder for them to 
 walk near Him, there is a purpose of ' the zealous 
 amendment of our whole lives ' created within us. 
 It is recorded in the Old Testament that ' Enoch 
 walked with God after he begat Methuselah.' 
 Well, we are not surprised. 
 
 When, in addition, we have such faith as 
 Meredith had, in the Power of the Universe to 
 form at last a society of those who have grown 
 from flesh into spirit, and recognise that all who 
 do not aid in that process are standing outside 
 the stream of Earth's activity and are losing 
 thereby the inspiring which comes from the 
 sense of being part of a great whole, a desire may 
 possess us, during such life as remains, to work 
 in harmony with the Over-will, whose plan, up 
 to this point, we discern. A man must have sunk 
 far, if he is content to recognise himself as one 
 of Earth's waste products. 
 
 It is something to observe that Meredith, while 
 not giving that inspiration from the future, which 
 is given by Christianity, places so much emphasis 
 upon the inspiration from the future, which he 
 finds himself able to obtain. The fact is that he 
 was much too great a man to be content with the 
 present. No one, to whom life is a ' great and 
 noble calling,' can dwell contentedly in to-day 
 alone. Only one who is ^ at peace among the 
 
The Inspirations .'^i: 
 
 little worths ' can do that. We must, to live 
 well, live in some light of the eternal. Meredith 
 would not have caught the attention which he 
 has, if his teaching had contained no suggestion 
 of the power of an endless life. But he has 
 given us that, in the long and hopeful look which 
 he casts on our children's children. 
 
 " So mine are these new fruitings rich 
 The simple to the common brings ; 
 I keep the youth of souls who pitch 
 Their joy in this old heart of things : 
 
 Who feel the Coming young as aye, 
 Thrice hopeful as the ground we plough ; 
 Alive for life, awake to die ; 
 One voice to cheer the seedling Now. 
 
 Full lasting is the song, though he, 
 The singer, passes : lasting too, 
 For souls not lent in usury, 
 The rapture of the forward view." 
 
 These then are the inspirations that he would 
 give us ; the inspiration of companionship with 
 the Unseen through the Seen, and the inspiration 
 of the forward view. Truly, they are old 
 inspirings ; but they are none the less true for 
 that. They are inspirings that come from Christ. 
 
 We are not to maintain that Meredith's gospel 
 is complete. His apparent rejection of im- 
 mortality leaves a blank which the ' general 
 heart,' justifiably or no, will demand to have filled. 
 And, indeed, he seems to mistake what manner 
 
62 The .Sons of Strength 
 
 of desire the desire for life hereafter may be. It 
 is a misuse of language to call it necessarily a sel- 
 fish desire. So to describe it becomes a contra- 
 diction in terms, when the life, which is longed 
 for, is a life under the complete domination of the 
 Spirit of Christ, and, therefore, a life of continual 
 readiness for self-loss for love's sake. If he is 
 angry with us because, in Mr G. M. Trevelyan's 
 phrase, we regard immortality as ' a claim 
 established on the Universe,' he misrepresents 
 our position. The claim, if claim there be, is 
 established, not upon the Universe, but upon the 
 Fatherhood of God ; which is a very different thing. 
 Moreover, unquestionably, he can be charged 
 with never indicating a sense of the exceeding 
 sinfulness of sin. To him, it is but the re-appear- 
 ance of tendencies seemly enough in the lower 
 stages of life whence we are sprung, — a kind of 
 ethical casting-back. There is no hint of that 
 shuddering sense of its awfulness, of which those 
 very near to God have spoken with bated breath. 
 ' Enmity towards God ' : ^ alienation from God ' : 
 * the body of this death ' : these are not the words 
 of Meredith, though they come with so clear an 
 accent of conviction from such an one as Paul. 
 Thus, it may be, is it that we find in him, strangely 
 seldom, reference to Christ. It seems, indeed, 
 that we must see sin through Christ's eyes, before 
 He becomes the greatly Desired. These, truly, 
 are grave omissions. Nevertheless, he has a 
 word in season, and not least for the Church. 
 Live whole : accept the workings of the per- 
 
The Inspirations 
 
 ^?, 
 
 feet Will : make effort exultantly as men whose 
 lives — 
 
 "... Are but a little holding 
 Lent to do a mighty labour." 
 
 And for the rest, trust. For the great Power 
 has us in His guidance : and His hand is strong, 
 and His purpose is a purpose of good toward the 
 children of men. 
 
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