Letters to His Friends Part 6

Paul knew so much of G.o.d. Read him, and as you read, a greater than St.

Paul will come into you, interpret {83} him, explain him. St. Paul himself will be with you, I think, trying to show you what he meant, and what he has found out that he means now.

But do write me a proper letter. We are just beginning life, and we have so much to learn from and to teach each other. Everything is new to us.

Everything is strange. Already it seems to me I have been trained in a hard school--harder, I hope, than you will ever need to be trained in--to understand what G.o.d and love mean. I seem to have had a rough time of it, perhaps rougher than most; and even now I am trained in a way which is not attractive to me, trained to throw myself not on any merely human love, but on Him who is perfectly human and perfectly divine. May G.o.d train you in a less rough school, if possible! But at any rate, may He train you--train you to get out of self, bring you into deeper sympathies, stronger attachments, simpler earnestness! He alone can give unity to all our thoughts and desires. He alone can give stability. And we poor little creatures, who seem to have twice as much affection as we have mind, how we do need that stability! We want not to be blown hither and thither by every manifestation of strength, beauty, brain--we want to be able to enter into the meaning of what we see and cannot help admiring, without becoming the slaves of the visible and the finite. We must build on the one foundation that is laid. We must lay our affections deep down in the man Christ Jesus. As we see Him in men--and, when we cannot see that, see men in Him--we shall be more stable, less childish, less fickle. We never go deep enough. We skim over {84} life.

We must get into its heart. We must never begin an affection which can have an end. For all affection must draw us into G.o.d, and G.o.d has no end. The moment we see any one whose strength, grace, goodness, beauty, or simplicity attracts us, we have deathless duties by that person. For the attraction is the outward sign of a spiritual connection--a sign that we ought to pray for that person, to thank G.o.d for the manifestation of His character, which we see in a riddle, through a gla.s.s in that life, that human life.

And then we shall be prepared to realise deeper relations.h.i.+ps, more wonderful mysteries of love--to see with clearer eyes the heart of the Supreme. We cannot make relations.h.i.+ps too spiritual. We cannot be too careful to see them in G.o.d and G.o.d in them. Think what it is to see a relations.h.i.+p _in G.o.d_, to see it existing there in His life, as His thought, long, long before we were born, long before we had an idea that we were intended to realise it. What a new light on old relations.h.i.+ps--brother and brother, brother and sister, father and child, husband and wife, all thoughts of G.o.d, all being gradually entered into, appropriated, realised, understood, worked out by us. They seem so common and natural, and yet they are intensely awful and sacred and mysterious. And then think what it is to see _G.o.d in them_--to see One from whom all family life flows, penetrating those whom we have never properly learnt to love and those whom we love as much as we can. G.o.d in them--all that is good and attractive--not their own, but G.o.d's. The eyes which seem to be {85} contemplating something which we cannot see, the face which lights up at times with another than human light; the eyes, the face, a realisation and expression of that Being who is at once human and divine, G.o.d and man. Why, this is bringing heaven down to earth, this is a realisation in part of the holy city coming down from heaven. For as we think of them, above all as we pray for them, we are led beyond them, we forget our own selfish interests in them, we are brought out from the 'garden' life of individual souls into the 'city'

corporate life of a great human society, a family, the Church of G.o.d. We should live, we should die for Christ and His Body--the Church--the fulness of His life, who is filling all in all. We must cease thinking and praying for ourselves and for others, as though we were alone. We are all part of one great society. Around us--nay, in us--are others, some whom we can see, some who in the course of development have burst the bonds of s.p.a.ce and time and matter, all one, one, for ever one. We all have one common Lord, one common hope, one common life, one common enemy, one common Saviour, who is working through us, in us, in those whom we least understand, in those in whom we should least expect it, in those who are almost repulsive to us, in all--working out one big purpose through the ages, the purpose of the Eternal.

Remember me at my ordination as priest, please. Remember me, for I need it so much, you do not know how much. It is such an important time, and I cannot understand or enter into its significance, as I long to do.

Discipline, discipline, discipline, {86} self-discipline--obedience to 'orders.' Oh! how I long to have the power to realise these! Pray for me that I may; that you may, pray also. Be very strict with yourself.

Compel yourself to obey rules. You are hurting so many besides yourself when you are not strict with yourself. For we are 'one body.' You are injuring those whom you like best, for you have less power over them, when you have less power over yourself--less power to influence, to pray, to thank for them.

Do remember how marvellously sacred a schoolmaster's work is: it is not enough to be able to play games--how I sometimes wish I could!--it is not enough to be able to teach Latin and Greek: a schoolmaster should be so much more. He represents the authority of G.o.d. He can be _so_ much, he may be _so_ little to boys. We can never enter into a boy's life, into his deepest thoughts, his 'long, long thoughts,' unless we too become little children, unless we become young and fresh and simple--and all young life comes from Him, who makes all the little children who ever come into this big world. Let us enter into His life. Do not become a schoolmaster simply to fill up time, to have something to do.

_To W. A. B._

Christ's College, Cambridge: November 20, 1902.

. . . I am glad that you like your school, that you like your boys. . . . Think of the weak chaps, those who are 'out of the way,'

those who are not naturally {87} attractive, those who positively repel you. They often most need your sympathy, your prayers.

And now about your ordination. Do you know I am doubtful whether it would be a good thing for you to be ordained to a school chaplaincy. I am almost more than doubtful. You would, I suppose, have no parish work, nor anything to do with poor folk. Your work would be reading prayers, and preaching about three times a year, I suppose. You would scarcely care to be a curate in a country or poor town parish later on, would you, if you began thus? But, after all, I must not, I dare not, advise you.

I can only point you to the Being who alone can advise us. The great thing is to renounce all plans, all thoughts of self, to give up all we are and expect to be, to come into His presence, and then to ask His advice. Or rather we must come to Him like little helpless children and ask Him to _help_ us to renounce planning and arranging with _self_ as goal--to beg Him to give us strength to give up all.

The great thing is to get the life where we shall develop best all our powers--viz. the life in which we shall have most opportunities of sacrifice. Can you get, can you _use_, opportunities of self-sacrifice in your school life? Can you get fuller and better elsewhere? . . . Of course, if you find that you have more influence over boys than you would be likely to have over other folk, that might alter the case. Have you found that you can influence them more for good than you would be likely to influence others?

Our one work in life must be to advance G.o.d's glory, G.o.d's kingdom. The time is short. The night {88} soon comes. The great problem is how to do most in that short time; how we ourselves can best lose ourselves in the little time that we have for losing ourselves. 'He that loseth himself, findeth himself.'

_To D. D. R._

14 St. Margaret's Road, St. Leonards; January 10, 1893.

I have been thinking to-day of that strange statement 'I no longer call you slaves . . . but I have called you friends.' To understand any one you must be their friend: you are able then to judge their life from the inside, to see why and how they do what they do; all their actions which seemed disconnected and purposeless before are seen to be part of a plan, to have an end, a goal. We cannot understand the riddle of life, the necessity of all the details in the great scheme of redemption, the reason for certain means of grace, the real significance of the hope of glory, while we are slaves. The whole appears so purposeless, such waste of energy, such unintelligible and irrational self-sacrifice. Why must the Christ suffer? Why could not sin be overcome in a less costly way?

Why is the victory of the Christ so incomplete? Why do some, who are better than we, take so little interest in the eternal? We cannot answer these and a thousand other questions while we are slaves. All is a hopeless enigma, a play without a plot, a novel with no plan. But become a friend of a man and all is changed. Each act in his life, each thought in his life, each word from his lips--they have not ceased to be a problem, {89} they are ten thousandfold more wonderful than they ever were before: they are still a problem; but there is, there must be, we feel, a purpose running through the whole. We have but one object--to understand him more, to see what divine ideal he is trying to work out in all the details of his common life. Each detail is important; each thought, however wayward, must be recognised and understood. All are seen in the clear, dry light of eternity; each is seen in something like its right proportion. We feel that his life is our life--nay, more interesting than our own miserable life--that if we are ever to know ourselves we must know him first. So, too, become a friend of Him who alone is, and all is changed. Gradually, perhaps painfully, yet surely, as we become like very little children, the meaning of the whole dawns upon us. We see it all: we see that it could not be otherwise: we cannot say why, but we are quite sure that we see it--at least, we see a little way, and where the light ends and it begins to get dark, we feel that it is all right beyond--that He who is with us in the light will be with us in the darkness. We are no longer slaves, doing His will because we must. We are friends, and we cannot help taking deep interest in all that He does. His acts, His thoughts, His words, they are still a problem--we cannot make them all out. But they are the same kind of problem as a friend is--a strange exquisite torture. We do not know what the whole of his life means; he can do things which we cannot, and which we rejoice to know that we can never do. We only see one side of him ever, and the rest is only known to G.o.d. {90} And yet we _do_ know part of his life, and we are content to know no more; what we know is good, and what we do not know or understand must also be good. We judge from what we see what that must be which we cannot see. We do not wish it otherwise. We feel that it would be impious to try and understand him fully, for is he not connected with G.o.d Himself? So we see one side of the life of the Eternal; but we are friends; we do not wish it otherwise.

We cannot understand Him--we never can. And yet 'I have called you friends.' His main purposes we see: the plan by which He realises them we see in part. And as we know Him better, we shall be able to track His footsteps even where we did not expect to find Him. We shall learn that His methods are simpler and better than ours, that His thoughts are surer, deeper, higher than all our schemes and plans. I am constantly finding that ordinances, customs, beliefs, which I used to despise as strange, antiquated, or useless, are yet the very ones which I need, that my fathers knew better than I my needs, that above all G.o.d Himself had provided inst.i.tutions and customs, and had waited until I was old enough to learn their use and to bless Him as I used them. So, as we know a man better, we feel that we must pray for him and his the more. As we become the friends of the Word, we feel we must pray that His will may be done ever more and more--His purposes realised by us and ours. Let us then not begin by criticising the world and G.o.d; let us first be the friends of G.o.d, and then in the light of undying friends.h.i.+p and prayer begin to criticise. {91} We must be the friend of a man before we understand his life; we must be the friends of Jesus Christ before we understand His life now upon earth.

I used to skate: I don't now. I obey herein one of the great maxims of my life: 'If you want to get a thing well done, _don't_ do it yourself.'

I consider that K----, in this as in other similar pursuits, performs the ancient and 'sacred duty of delegation.' I have no doubt that he does it admirably. Why must people try what they can't do well? Why not leave it to those who like it and can do it well? The wretched public-school-boy conception of dull uniformity is an abomination to me!

If K---- does the walking, you do the thinking; G---- does the dandy, M---- the grumbling, S---- the jack-in-the-box, G---- the running, M---- the philosopher, and D---- the little vulgar boy--allow me to do what after all is the hardest of all tasks, 'to do nothing gracefully.' (I am afraid that I begin by trying 'to do nothing--gracefully,' but end by 'doing nothing gracefully.' You see the difference!) I believe in division of labour--let each man do what he is made to do best--and those who feel their vocation to be nothing but receiving the results of the labour of others--why, let them try to do it with the best grace they can! Forgive me if such be my case.

_To J. L. D._

Christ's College, Cambridge: May 15, 1893.

I think you are right in believing in the intense worth of sympathy. But 'sympathy' is the Greek {92} as 'compa.s.sion' is the Latin form of 'suffering together with.' He who has suffered most has perhaps the most power to sympathise; not simply to pity or console, but to go right out of self and to get right into another, to see life with his eyes, to feel as he feels. If, then, you find many of those among whom your lot is cast almost incapable of sympathy, may it not be that they have not yet learned the meaning of suffering? They may not have had so many opportunities of suffering as you, or, if they have had as many, they may not have found any one to interpret to them what it all meant. Thank Him from whom all sympathy comes if you have known anything of the sufferings of life, anything of the worries and disappointments and delays and unsatisfied ambitions which so many have; if you have known these--known their inner meaning, and have been led out and beyond your own into that wider life of suffering, and have learned what it is to fill up in your turn _ta husteremata ton thlipseon tou Christou_.

[Transcriber's note: The above Greek phrase was transliterated as follows: _ta_--tau, alpha; _husteremata_--(rough breathing mark) upsilon, sigma, tau, epsilon, rho, eta, mu, alpha, tau, alpha; _ton_--tau, omega, nu; _thlipseon_--theta, lambda, iota, psi, epsilon, omega, nu; _tou_--tau, omicron, upsilon; _Christou_--Chi, rho, iota, sigma, tau, omicron, upsilon]

One hates to see others whose centre is self. Their whole life looks so mean and low. Life over, the Ego alone left; and what a poor, wretched, snivelling creature after all--this what we pampered, this what we thrust forward for others to admire and flatter! If we were not in much the same case, we might be able to view it in others with somewhat different eyes. And yet do you know that, as a matter of fact, our Ego is dead--self is not--and the devil's greatest lie is to make us believe in this self? For do not you and I belong to One stronger than {93} self--One whose own self may live in us--does live in us--whether we recognise the fact or not? We died years ago to self when He claimed us for Himself, and we rose again to a selfless life in Him: _zo de ouketi ego, ze de en emoi Christos_.

[Transcriber's note: The above Greek phrase was transliterated as follows: _zo_--zeta, omega; _de_--delta, epsilon; _ouketi_--omicron, upsilon, kappa, epsilon, tau, iota; _ego_--epsilon, gamma, omega; _ze_--zeta, eta; _de_--delta, epsilon; _en_--epsilon, nu; _emoi_--epsilon, mu, omicron, iota; _Christos_--Chi, rho, iota, sigma, tau, omicron, final sigma]

We act a lie whenever we make our Ego instead of His Ego the centre. If He is our centre and our goal, then be sure our Ego will begin to live, because it is 'grounded' and rooted in His. Any trouble and anxiety that leads you out of self to the Infinite Ego, that makes you feel helpless and lonely and in need of a Human Helper and a Human Comforter, thank G.o.d for it. He is teaching you to cast yourself upon One who is perfectly human because perfectly divine. He is teaching you that you are not your own; that long, long ago yourself died: _ei oun sunegerthete to Christo, ta ano zeteite_.

[Transcriber's note: The above Greek phrase was transliterated as follows: _ei_--epsilon, iota; _oun_--omicron, upsilon, nu; _sunegerthete_--sigma, upsilon, nu, eta, gamma, epsilon, rho, theta, eta, tau, epsilon; _to_--tau, omega; _Christo_--chi, rho, iota, sigma, tau, omega; _ta_--tau, alpha; _ano_--alpha, nu, omega; _zeteite_--zeta, eta, tau, epsilon, iota, tau, epsilon]

Thus we are led to understand something of the meaning of our Christian names--to see that they are living pledges to us, whatever we do, wherever we go--that Christ's name is called upon us--that when tiny little children we were brought home to the Great Ego in whom alone our Ego can ever find satisfaction--to feel that we are His and He is ours.

_To J. L. D._

Christ's College, Cambridge: October 9, 1893.

The step which you contemplate taking is one with far-reaching issues--reaching away through time and beyond it. I advise you to try and gain a general idea of the meaning of the first half of St. Paul's {94} second letter to the Corinthian Church--to try and enter into its general spirit. Few things will humble you more: you will see something of the unspeakable dignity of the office of him who represents G.o.d to his fellow-men, and of the tremendous enthusiasm and love which a man must have if he would be the minister that St. Paul would have him be. I do not know what St. Paul means when he says that we are amba.s.sadors on behalf of Christ: but the more I think of what the words seem to mean, the more I am startled at the awful responsibility that we have laid upon us. To represent Christ, to treat with men, to attempt to arrange--if one may so speak--terms, to use all our powers in performing the work of the emba.s.sy--this at least is involved in the words. What strikes me so much in the letter is the manner in which St. Paul literally loves the Church; how he longs to communicate his own enthusiasm to it; how he would die, almost does die, himself to bring life to them. All his hopes are bound up with theirs--his salvation with their salvation. He seems to 'fail from out his blood, and grow incorporate' into them. We are called to the same office as St. Paul, we have the same power working in us as he had working in him: we too shall have success in so far as we love--as we identify ourselves with those whom G.o.d has given us to take care of. The more we are disciplined and yet enthusiastic, the more capable shall we be of love--of getting out of self--of working our way into others--of representing the Christ to them--of understanding and making allowances for them--of seeing them in the ideal, the only real, light in {95} which G.o.d sees them--seeing them in the Christ, in whom we live--mind that, with all your intellectual training, you don't forget the other. Now is the time to learn, to force yourself to learn, to pray--to pray not for a few minutes at a time, but to pray for an hour at a time--to get alone with yourself--to get alone with your Maker. We shall not have to talk so much to others if we pray more for them. We talk and we do not influence, or we influence only for a time, because our lives are not more prayer-full.

_To J. L. D._

Aldeburgh House, Blackheath, S.E.: December 16, 1893.

I cannot help thinking of you both at this time. It means so much to you both--more than either of you dreams that it means. The issues of your Ordination day are very far reaching indeed. They stretch away and beyond this world in which we now are. The rush of school work and of preparation for examination has probably not left you as much time as you could have wished for thinking over what it all means. I hope you will have more time after the service is over. But you may be comforted in the thought that the last few years have been a definite preparation for your life-work. Though you must regret, as you never regretted before, misuse of time and powers in the past, yet you have had an education which has in some degree prepared you for this time, an education for which you may thank our common Master. But this {96} thought by itself would be but a small comfort. For you must feel, if you are the man I take you for, how unworthy you are to be what you are called to be. Now there are two ways of dealing with this feeling. You may say, 'I am not called to be an absolute saint; but I will try to reach a fairly high standard;' or you may say, 'Yes, I am called to be an absolute saint. I will not lower my ideal. I will comfort myself with that single word "called." If He has called me, He will do in me and for me what He wills.' This second way is the true way of dealing with feelings of unworthiness and unfitness. You and I are utterly unfit. But we are both called--called from our mother's womb--called to be saints and to be ministers. He who called us will help us. With man the call seems quixotic, impossible; with Him all things are possible. At times when the call is loudest we can but reply, 'Ah! Lord, I am but a little child.' We are intensely conscious of feebleness and, what is worse, of treachery and meanness within; we half love what we are called upon to denounce; we play with the sin we are to teach men to abhor. Yet the call is sure, is definite, is perpetual, and again and again you will in all probability find what a help it is to look back to that day in which the call took formal shape. You have that as a definite fact to rest upon, to reprove, to encourage, to urge to renewed effort, to force you to be true and energetic.

One thing you must learn to do. Whatever you leave undone you must not leave this undone. Your work will be stunted and half developed unless you {97} attend to it. You must force yourself to be alone and to pray.

Do make a point of this. You may be eloquent and attractive in your life, but your real effectiveness depends on your communion with the eternal world. You will easily find excuses. Work is so pressing, and work is necessary. Other engagements take time. You are tired. You want to go to bed. You go to bed late and want to get up late. So simple prayer and devotion are crowded out. And yet, T----, the necessity is paramount, is inexorable. If you and I are ever to be of any good, if we are to be a blessing, not a curse, to those with whom we are connected, we must enter into ourselves, we must be alone with the only source of unselfishness. If we are of use to others, it will chiefly be because we are simple, pure, unselfish. If we are to be simple, pure, unselfish, it will not be by reading books or talking or working primarily, it will be by coming in continual contact with the ground of simplicity, purity, selfishness. Heaven is the possibility of fresh acts of self-sacrifice, of a fuller life of unselfishness. You are a man and a minister in so far as you are unselfish. You cannot learn unselfishness save from the one Source. Definite habits of real devotion--these we must make and keep to and renew and increase. Then we shall gradually find that we are less dependent on self--that even in the busiest scenes we dare not act on our own responsibility--that, be the act ever so small and trifling, when we are in difficulty we shall naturally, inevitably, spontaneously turn to that place whence help alone can come. But it is a wonderful help again and again to feel that we have been {98} alone with Him, that we are not working on our own responsibility, that He is the 'Living Will' that rises and flows 'through our deeds and makes them pure.'

_To D. D. R._

8 Alexandra Gardens, Ventnor: Jan. 2, 1894.

While holding as firmly and unreservedly to the belief that a revelation is a possibility that has actually been realised, I am becoming more aware of the partial and limited view which any single individual can have of the significance of such a revelation; and with this conviction comes a desire not to hinder by any words or prejudices of mine the education of one to whom I owe more than I at present know. Yet, as I believe that no individual life is beyond the wise ordering of a Divine economy, I am sure that he must have lessons to learn from me as well as I to learn from him. Hence I dare not refrain from suggesting to him--often in answer to questions that he puts to me--sides of truth which, as I believe, I have been allowed to apprehend. The knowledge of truth (in however small a degree) is a trust that we hold for the sake of others. What I fear for him and for you--for you even more than for him--is not that you will form wrong opinions on religious or ethical subjects, but that you will lack that moral earnestness that forces a man, whether he will or not, to look the facts of life in the face, that deadly earnestness that refuses to allow us to contemplate creeds as works of art, but forces us to ask whether these things be so. Life as a whole must be faced. What has induced men to {99} believe this and that tenet? Why have men craved for a knowledge of an unseen Being? Why have systems of priestcraft arisen? How is it that those who most revolt against such systems are slaves to other systems bearing different names, but in substance the same? Is there a Deliverer? Is there a unity beneath all this confusion? Can man know such a unity if there be one?

Can such a unity be revealed? Has it been revealed? Why do men think it has been revealed if it has not? While I am slow to force upon those whom I most respect and love lessons which I believe that I have slowly learnt in a school in which perhaps they have not been, and never will be, educated, yet I am sure that I cannot be wrong in praying for them and in urging them to be increasingly earnest in the search for and the practice of truth. You are a man in so far as you live. You live in so far as you are self-sacrificing. You are self-sacrificing in so far as you unswervingly practise the truth you know and follow after that which you do not yet apprehend. And I am sure, if there be a unity beneath our lives, if there be One who is educating us when we are most wayward, we shall eventually be led by, it may be, very different paths to a single goal. Meanwhile each failure to be earnest, each relapse into sentimentality, unmanliness, morbidness, despair, unreality, laziness, pa.s.siveness, may itself be a discipline, making us utterly mistrust ourselves, whether at our worst or at our best, and forcing us to inquire whether there be any help elsewhere, any power that can sweep through our lives and force us to be human.

For this reason I would impress on you the {100} necessity of trying to think out your position, of asking yourself how you may be most human and best serve G.o.d (if, indeed, you believe that this is possible) and your generation. There are around you social forces making for good. Ought you to be--nay, can you be--isolated? Does isolation give greater strength? Does it enable you to do more or to be better? These questions are not merely suggested by me. They have already suggested themselves in one form or another to you. I am frightened of their not receiving the attention they merit.

_To T. H. M._