England's Antiphon Part 41

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE QUESTIONING FERVOUR.

And now I turn to the other cla.s.s--that which, while the former has fled to tradition for refuge from doubt, sets its face towards the spiritual east, and in prayer and sorrow and hope looks for a dawn--the n.o.ble band of reverent doubters--as unlike those of the last century who scoffed, as those of the present who pa.s.s on the other side. They too would know; but they know enough already to know further, that it is from the hills and not from the mines their aid must come. They know that a perfect intellectual proof would leave them doubting all the same; that their high questions cannot be answered to the intellect alone, for their whole nature is the questioner; that the answers can only come as questioners and their questions grow towards them. Hence, growing hope, blossoming ever and anon into the white flower of confidence, is their answer as yet; their hope--the Beatific Vision--the _happy-making sight_, as Milton renders the word of the mystics.

It is strange how gentle a certain large cla.s.s of the priesthood will be with those who, believing there is a G.o.d, find it hard to trust him, and how fierce with those who, unable, from the lack of harmony around and in them, to say they are sure there is a G.o.d, would yet, could they find him, trust him indeed. "Ah, but," answer such of the clergy and their followers, "you want a G.o.d of your own making." "Certainly," the doubters reply, "we do not want a G.o.d of your making: that would be to turn the universe into a h.e.l.l, and you into its torturing demons. We want a G.o.d like that man whose name is so often on your lips, but whose spirit you understand so little--so like him that he shall be the bread of life to _all_ our hunger--not that hunger only already satisfied in you, who take the limit of your present consciousness for that of the race, and say, 'This is all the world needs:' we know the bitterness of our own hearts, and your incapacity for intermeddling with its joy. We

have another mountain-range, from whence Bursteth a sun unutterably bright;

nor for us only, but for you also, who will not have the truth except it come to you in a system authorized of man."

I have attributed a general utterance to these men, widely different from each other as I know they are.

Here is a voice from one of them, Arthur Hugh Clough, who died in 1861, well beloved. It follows upon two fine poems, called _The Questioning Spirit_, and _Bethesda_, in which is represented the condition of many of the finest minds of the present century. Let us receive it as spoken by one in the foremost ranks of these doubters, men reviled by their brethren who dare not doubt for fear of offending the G.o.d to whom they attribute their own jealousy. But G.o.d is a.s.suredly pleased with those who will neither lie for him, quench their dim vision of himself, nor count _that_ his mind which they would despise in a man of his making.

Across the sea, along the sh.o.r.e, In numbers more and ever more, From lonely hut and busy town, The valley through, the mountain down, What was it ye went out to see, Ye silly folk of Galilee?

The reed that in the wind doth shake?

The weed that washes in the lake?

The reeds that waver, the weeds that float?-- young man preaching in a boat.

What was it ye went out to hear By sea and land, from far and near?

A teacher? Rather seek the feet Of those who sit in Moses' seat.

Go humbly seek, and bow to them, Far off in great Jerusalem.

From them that in her courts ye saw, Her perfect doctors of the law, What is it came ye here to note?-- A young man preaching in a boat

A prophet! Boys and women weak!

Declare, or cease to rave: Whence is it he hath learned to speak?

Say, who his doctrine gave?

A prophet? Prophet wherefore he Of all in Israel tribes?-- _He teacheth with authority, And not as do the Scribes_.

Here is another from one who will not be offended if I cla.s.s him with this school--the finest of critics as one of the most finished of poets--Matthew Arnold. Only my reader must remember that of none of my poets am I free to choose that which is most characteristic: I have the scope of my volume to restrain me.

THE GOOD SHEPHERD WITH THE KID.

He saves the sheep; the goats he doth not save!

So rang Tertullian's sentence, on the side Of that unpitying Phrygian sect which cried: "Him can no fount of fresh forgiveness lave, Who sins, once washed by the baptismal wave!"

So spake the fierce Tertullian. But she sighed, The infant Church: of love she felt the tide Stream on her from her Lord's yet recent grave.

And then she smiled, and in the Catacombs, With eye suffused but heart inspired true, On those walls subterranean, where she hid Her head in ignominy, death, and tombs, She her Good Shepherd's hasty image drew; And on his shoulders, not a lamb, a kid.

Of these writers, Tennyson is the foremost: he has written _the_ poem of the hoping doubters, _the_ poem of our age, the grand minor organ-fugue of _In Memoriam_. It is the cry of the bereaved Psyche into the dark infinite after the vanished Love. His friend is nowhere in his sight, and G.o.d is silent. Death, G.o.d's final compulsion to prayer, in its dread, its gloom, its utter stillness, its apparent nothingness, urges the cry.

Meanings over the dead are mingled with profoundest questionings of philosophy, the signs of nature, and the story of Jesus, while now and then the star of the morning, bright Phosphor, flashes a few rays through the shifting cloudy dark. And if the sun has not arisen on the close of the book, yet the Aurora of the coming dawn gives light enough to make the onward journey possible and hopeful: who dares say that he walks in the full light? that the counsels of G.o.d are to him not a matter of faith, but of vision?

Bewildered in the perplexities of nature's enigmas, and driven by an awful pain of need, Tennyson betakes himself to the G.o.d of nature, thus:

LIV.

The wish, that of the living whole No life may fail beyond the grave; Derives it not from what we have The likest G.o.d within the soul?

Are G.o.d and Nature then at strife, That Nature lends such evil dreams, So careful of the type she seems, So careless of the single life;

That I, considering everywhere Her secret meaning in her deeds, And finding that of fifty seeds She often brings but one to bear;

I falter where I firmly trod, And falling with my weight of cares Upon the great world's altar-stairs That slope thro' darkness up to G.o.d;

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope, And gather dust and chaff, and call To what I feel is Lord of all, And faintly trust the larger hope.

[Ill.u.s.tration:

"... he was dead, and there he sits, And he that brought him back is there."]

Once more, this is how he uses the gospel-tale: Mary has returned home from the sepulchre, with Lazarus so late its prey, and her sister and Jesus:--

x.x.xII.

Her eyes are homes of silent prayer, Nor other thought her mind admits But, he was dead, and there he sits, And he that brought him back is there.

Then one deep love doth supersede All other, when her ardent gaze Roves from the living brother's face, And rests upon the Life indeed.

All subtle thought, all curious fears, Borne down by gladness so complete, She bows, she bathes the Saviour's feet With costly spikenard and with tears.

Thrice blest whose lives are faithful prayers, Whose loves in higher love endure; What souls possess themselves so pure, Or is there blessedness like theirs?

I have thus traced--how slightly!--the course of the religious poetry of England, from simple song, lovingly regardful of sacred story and legend, through the chant of philosophy, to the full-toned lyric of adoration. I have shown how the stream sinks in the sands of an evil taste generated by the worship of power and knowledge, and that a new growth of the love of nature--beauty counteracting not contradicting science--has led it by a fair channel back to the simplicities of faith in some, and to a holy questioning in others; the one cla.s.s having for its faith, the other for its hope, that the heart of the Father is a heart like ours, a heart that will receive into its noon the song that ascends from the twilighted hearts of his children.

Gladly would I have prayed for the voices of many more of the singers of our country's psalms. Especially do I regret the arrival of the hour, because of the voices of living men and women. But the time is over and gone. The twilight has already embrowned the gray glooms of the cathedral arches, and is driving us forth to part at the door.

But the singers will yet sing on to him that hath ears to hear. When he returns to seek them, the shadowy door will open to his touch, the long-drawn aisles receding will guide his eye to the carven choir, and there they still stand, the sweet singers, content to repeat ancient psalm and new song to the prayer of the humblest whose heart would join in England's Antiphon.

THE END.

[1] The rhymes of the first and second and of the fourth and fifth lines throughout the stanzas, are all, I think, what the French call feminine rhymes, as in the words "sleeping," "weeping." This I think it better not to attempt retaining, because the final unaccented syllable is generally one of those _e_'s which, having first become mute, have since been dropped from our spelling altogether.

[2] For the grammatical interpretation of this line, I am indebted to Mr.

Richard Morris. _Shall_ is here used, as it often is, in the sense of _must_, and _rede_ is a noun; the paraphrase of the whole being, "_Son, what must be to me for counsel?_" "_What counsel must I follow?_"