Faces in the Fire Part 8

V

The three fierce creatures that challenged Dante's ascent of the sunlit hill represent evils of various kinds and characters. If a man cannot be deterred by one form of temptation, another will speedily present itself. It is, as the old prophet said, 'as if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him; or went into the house, and leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him.' If one form of evil is unsuccessful, another instantly replaces it. If the panther is driven off, the lion appears; and if the lion is vanquished, the lean wolf takes its place.

But there is more than this hidden in the poet's parable. Did Dante intend to set forth no subtle secret by placing the three beasts in that order? Most of his expositors agree that he meant the panther to represent _l.u.s.t_, the lion to represent _Pride_, and the wolf to represent _Avarice_. l.u.s.t is the besetting temptation of youth, and therefore the panther comes first. Pride is the sin to which we succ.u.mb most easily in the full vigour of life. We have won our spurs, made a way for ourselves in the world, and the glamour of our triumph is too much for us. And Avarice comes, not exactly in age, but just after the zenith has been pa.s.sed. The beasts were not equidistant. The lion came some time after the panther had vanished; but the wolf crept at the lion's heels. What a world of meaning is crowded into that masterly piece of imagery! a.s.suming that this interpretation be sound, two other suggestions immediately confront us; and we must lend an ear to each of them in turn.

VI

The three creatures differed in character. The panther was _beautiful_; the lion was _terrible_; the wolf was _horrible_. Although the poet knew full well the cruelty and deadliness of the crouching panther's spring, he was compelled to admire the creature's exquisite beauty. 'The hour,'

he says,

The hour was morning's prime, and on his way.

Aloft the sun ascended with those stars That with him rose, when Love divine first moved Those its fair works; so that with joyous hope All things conspire to fill me, the gay skin Of that swift animal, the matin dawn.

And the sweet season.

The lion, on the other hand, is the symbol of majesty and terror. But the lean she-wolf was positively horrible. Her hungry eyes, her gleaming fangs, her panting sides, filled the beholder with loathing.

'Her leanness seemed full of all wants.' The poet says that the very sight of her o'erwhelmed and appalled him. Dante himself confessed that, of the three, he regarded the last as by far the worst of these three brutal foes. Now I fancy that, in the temptations that respectively a.s.sail youth, maturity, and decline, I have noticed these same characteristics. As a rule, the sins of youth are beautiful sins. The appeals to youthful vice are invariably defended on aesthetic grounds.

The boundary-line that divides high art from indecency is a very difficult one to define. And it is so difficult to define because the blandishments to which youth succ.u.mbs are for the most part the blandishments of beauty. Like the panther, vice is cruel and pitiless; yet the glamour of it is so fair that it 'blends with the matin dawn and the sweet season.' The sins that bring down the strong man, on the other hand, are not so much beautiful as terrible. The man in his prime goes down before those terrific onslaughts that the forces of evil know so well how to organize and muster. They are not lovely; they are leonine.

And is it not true that the temptations that work havoc in later life are as a rule unalluring, hideous, and difficult to understand? The world is thunderstruck. It seems so incomprehensible that, after having survived his struggle with the beauteous panther and the terrible lion, a man of such mettle should yield to a lean and ugly wolf!

VII

The other thing is this: there is a distinction in method, a difference in approach, distinguishing these three beasts. The panther crouches, springs suddenly upon its unsuspecting prey, and relies on the advantage of surprise. Such are the sins of youth. 'Alas,' as George Macdonald so tersely says,

Alas, how easily things go wrong!

A sigh too deep, or a kiss too long, There follows a mist and a weeping rain.

And life is never the same again.

The lion meets you in the open, and relies upon his strength. The wolf simply persists. He follows your trail day after day. You see his wicked eyes, like fireflies, stabbing the darkness of the night. He relies not upon surprise or strength, but on wearing you down at the last.

Wherefore, let him that thinketh he standeth--having beaten off the _panther_--beware of the _lion_ and the _wolf_. And, still more imperatively, let him that thinketh he standeth--having vanquished both the _panther_ and the lion--take heed lest he fall at last to the grim and frightful persistence of the lean _she-wolf_. It is just six hundred and fifty years to-day since Dante was born; but, as my pen has been whispering these things to me, the centuries have fallen away like a curtain that is drawn. I have saluted across the ages a man of like pa.s.sions with myself, and his brave spirit has called upon mine to climb the sunlit hill in spite of everything.

IX

AMONG THE ICEBERGS

Not so very long ago, and not so very far from this Tasmanian home of mine, I beheld a spectacle that took me completely by surprise, and even now baffles my best endeavours to describe it. I was on board a fine steamship four days out from Hobart. In the early afternoon, as I was rising from a brief siesta, I was startled by a voice exclaiming excitedly, 'Oh, do come and see such a splendid iceberg!' I confess that at first I entertained the notion with a liberal allowance of caution. I was afflicted with very grave suspicions. At sea, folk are apt to forget the calendar, and every day in the year has an awkward way of getting itself mistaken for the first of April. But the manifest earnestness of my informant bore down before it all base doubts, and I was sufficiently convinced to hurry up to the promenade deck. I looked eagerly far out to port, and then to starboard, but nothing was to be seen! It was the old story of 'water, water everywhere!' My suspicions returned in an aggravated form. Indignantly I sought out my informant, and peremptorily demanded production of the promised iceberg. 'It's dead ahead,' he replied calmly, 'and can therefore only be seen as yet from the bows.'

To the bows I accordingly hastened, and there I found a crowd, comprising both pa.s.sengers and crew, already congregated.

And surely enough, I then and there beheld the most magnificent and awe-inspiring natural phenomenon upon which these eyes ever rested.

Right ahead of the ship there loomed up on the far horizon what appeared, under an overcast, leaden sky, to be a fair-sized island, with a high and rocky coast. In the distance stood a tall, rugged peak, as of a mountain towering up like a monarch coldly proud of his desolate island realm. The whole stood out strikingly gloomy and forbidding against the distant eastern skyline. But, hey, presto! even as we watched it, in less time than it takes to tell, a wonderful transformation scene was enacted before our eyes. Suddenly, from over the stern, the sun shone out, flinging all its radiant splendours on the colossal object of our undivided attention.

In the twinkling of an eye, as if by magic, that which but a second ago might have pa.s.sed for a barren rocky island was transformed into a brilliant ma.s.s of dazzling whiteness. Everything seemed to have been transfigured. A fairyland of pearly palaces, flashing with diamonds and emeralds, could not have eclipsed its glories now! There it still stood, indescribably terrible and grand, right in our track, as though daring us to approach any nearer to its gleaming purities. And as the sunlight refracted about it, all the colours of the rainbow seemed to play around its brow. Moreover, the genial warmth produced another wonder. For, under its benign influence, the glittering peaks gave off columns of vapour. They seemed to smoke like volcanoes.

In the mellow summer sun, The icebergs, one by one, Caught a spark of quickening fire, Every turret smoked a censer, Every pinnacle a pyre.

The wonder grew upon us as we watched. And yet, straight on, our good ship held her way, her course unaltered and her speed unabated, as if, fascinated by the majestic beauty before her, she were eager to dash herself to pieces at the feet of such pure and awful loveliness. Ever greater and ever more splendid it appeared as the distance lessened between us and it, until we really seemed to be approaching an almost perilous proximity. Then, of a sudden, the ship swerved to the north-ward, and we ran by within a few hundred yards of the icy monster.

Who could help recalling the adventure of Coleridge's 'Ancient Mariner'?

And now there came both mist and snow, And it grew wondrous cold, And ice, mast high, came floating by As green as emerald.

And through the drifts, the snowy clifts Did send a dismal sheen, Nor shapes of men, nor beasts we ken.

The ice was all between.

The ice was here, the ice was there, The ice was all around, It cracked and growled, and roared and howled, Like noises in a swound.

Or Tennyson's lovely simile, wherein he says that we ourselves are like

Floating lonely icebergs, our crests above the ocean, With deeply submerged portions united by the sea.

Then once again the fickle sun veiled his face, and that which had appeared at first as a rocky island in mid-ocean, and afterwards as a flashing palace of crystals, now a.s.sumed a dulled whiteness as of one huge ma.s.s of purest chalk.

The heavy southern seas were dashing angrily against it, seeming jealously to resent its escape from their own frozen dominions. And the great clouds of spray which, as a consequence, were hurled into mid-air gave an added grandeur to a spectacle that seemed to need no supplementary charms. For miles around, the sea was strewn with enormous ma.s.ses of floating ice, some as large as an ordinary two-story house, and all of the most fantastic shapes, which had apparently swarmed off from the main berg. One long row of these, stretching out from the monster right across the ship's course, looked for a moment not unlike a great ice-reef connected with the berg, and caused no little anxiety until the line of apparent peril had been safely negotiated.

When we were clean abreast, a gun was fired from the bridge of the steamer, in order, I understand, to ascertain from the rapidity and volume of the echo the approximate distance, and, by deduction, the size of our polar acquaintance. Nor were there wanting those who were sanguine enough to expect that the atmospheric vibration set in operation by the explosion might finish the work of dislocation which any cracks or fissures had already begun, and bring down at least some tottering peaks or pinnacles. Sir John Franklin, in one of his northern voyages, saw this feat accomplished. But, if any of my companions expected to witness a similar phenomenon, they had reckoned without their host. The unaffected dignity of the sullen monster mocked our puny effort to bring about his downfall. Hercules scorned the ridiculous weapons of the pigmies! The dull booming of the gun started a thousand weird echoes on the desolate ice. They snarled out their remonstrance at our intrusion upon their wonted solitude, and then again lapsed sulkily into silence. The temperature dropped instantly, and I recalled a famous saying of Dr. Thomas Guthrie's, whose life I had just been reading. In one of his speeches, before the Synod of Angus and Mearns, he said, 'I know of churches that would be all the better of some little heat. _An iceberg of a minister_ has been floated in among them, and they have cooled down to something below zero.' '_An iceberg of a minister!_' I think of the nipping air on board when our ship was in the midst of the ice; and the memory of it makes me shiver! '_An iceberg of a minister!_'

G.o.d, in His great mercy, save me from being such a minister as that!

The long-sustained excitement to which these events had given rise had scarcely begun to subside when the cry arose, 'An iceberg on the starboard bow!' This, in its turn, was speedily succeeded by 'Another!'

Then, 'An iceberg on the port bow!' And yet once more 'Another!' till we were literally surrounded by icebergs. At tea-time we could peep through the saloon portholes at no fewer than five of these polar giants.

Although most of them were larger than our first acquaintance--at least one of them being about three miles in length--none of these later appearances succeeded in arousing the same degree of enthusiasm as that with which we hailed the advent of the first. For one thing, the charm of novelty had, of course, begun to wear off. And, for another, they were of a less romantic shape, most of them being perfectly flat, as though some great polar plain were being broken up and we were being favoured with the superfluous territory in casual instalments. And, by the way, speaking of the shape of icebergs, I am told that the icebergs of the two hemispheres are quite different in shape, the Arctic bergs being irregular in outline, with lofty pinnacles and glittering domes, while the Antarctic bergs are, generally speaking, flat-topped, and of less fantastic form. The delicate traceries of the far North do not reflect themselves in the st.u.r.dier and more matter-of-fact monsters of the South. The appearance of icebergs in such numbers, of such dimensions, in these lat.i.tudes, and at this time of the year, const.i.tutes, I am credibly informed, a very unusual if not, indeed, a quite unique experience. The theory was freely advanced that some volcanic disturbance had visited the polar regions and had dislodged these ma.s.sive fragments. However that may be, we were not at all sorry that it had fallen to our happy lot to behold a spectacle of such sublimity. And when we reflected that less than one-tenth of each ma.s.s was visible above the water-line, we were able to form a more adequate appreciation of the stupendous proportions of our gigantic neighbours.

Reflecting upon this aspect of the matter, I remembered to have heard, in my college days, a popular London preacher make excellent use of this phenomenon. 'When,' he said impressively, 'when you are tempted to judge sin from its superficial appearance, and to judge it leniently, remember that sins are like icebergs--_the greater part of them is out of sight_!'

A certain amount of anxiety was felt, I confess, by most of us as night cast her sable mantle over sea and ice. To admire an iceberg in broad daylight is one thing; to be racing on amidst a crowd of them by night is quite another. Ice, however, casts around it a weird, warning light of its own, which makes its presence perceptible even in the darkest night. So all night long the good ship sped bravely on her ocean track, and all night long the captain himself kept cold and sleepless vigil on the bridge. When morning broke, three fresh icebergs were to be seen away over the stern. But we had now shaped a more northerly course; and we therefore waved adieu to these magnificent monsters which we were so delighted to have seen, and scarcely less pleased to have left. They will doubtless have melted from existence long before they will have melted from our memories.

Yes, they will have melted! And that reminds me of another famous saying of the great Dr Thomas Guthrie, a saying which is peculiarly to the point just now. 'The existence,' he said, 'of the Mohammedan power in Turkey is just a question of time. Its foundations are year by year wearing away, like that of an iceberg which has floated into warm seas, and, as happens with that creation of a cold climate, it will by-and-by become top-heavy, the centre of gravity being changed, and it will topple over! What a commotion then!' Ah! what a commotion, to be sure!

They will have melted! Silly things! They grew weary of that realm of white and stainless purity to which they once belonged; they broke away from their old connexions and set out upon their long, long drift. They drifted on and on towards the milder north; on and on towards warmer seas; on and on towards the balmy breath and ceaseless sunshine of the tropics. And, in return, the sunshine destroyed them. Yes, the sunshine destroyed them. I have seen something very much like it in the Church and in the world. 'Therefore,' says a great writer, who had himself felt the fatal lure of too-much-sunshine, 'therefore let us take the more steadfast hold of the things which we have heard, lest at any time we drift away from them.' It is a tragedy of no small magnitude when, like the iceberg, a man is lured by sparkling summer seas to his own undoing.

PART III

I

A BOX OF TIN SOLDIERS

No philosophy is worth its salt unless it can make a boy forget that he has the toothache; and the philosophy which I am about to introduce has triumphantly survived that exacting ordeal. That Jack had the toothache everybody knew. The expression of his anguish resounded dismally through the neighbourhood; the evidence of it was visible in his swollen and distorted countenance. Poor Jack! All the standard cures--old-fashioned and new-fangled--had been tried in vain; all but one. It was that one that at last relieved the pain, and it is of that one that I now write.

It happened that Jack was within a week of his birthday. His parents, who are busy people, might easily have overlooked that interesting circ.u.mstance had not Jack chanced to allude to it at every opportune and inopportune moment during the previous month or so. Indeed, to guard against accidents, Jack had enlivened the conversation at the breakfast-table morning by morning with really ingenious conjectures as to the presents by which his personal friends might conceivably accompany their congratulations. His expressions of disappointment in certain supposit.i.tious cases, and of unbounded delight in others, was quite affecting.

Now Jack's father is afflicted by a wholesome dread of shopping. If a purchase must needs be made, Jack's mother has to make it. But Jack's mother labours under one severe disability. As Jack himself often tells her--and certainly he ought to know--she doesn't understand boys. The difficulty is therefore surmounted on this wise. Jack's mother visits the emporium; carefully avoids all those goods and chattels of which she has heard her son speak with such withering disdain; selects eight or ten of the articles that he has chanced to mention in tones of undisguised approval; orders these to be sent on approval at an hour at which Jack will be sure to be at school; and leaves to her husband the responsibility of making the final decision. Now this unwieldy parcel was still lying under the bed in the spare room on that fateful morning when Jack became smitten with toothache. Every other nostrum having failed, the mind of Jack's mother strangely turned to the toys beneath the bed. A woman's mind is an odd piece of mechanism, and works in strange ways. No doctor under the sun would dream of prescribing a box of tin soldiers as a remedy for toothache; yet the mind of Jack's mother fastened upon that box of tin soldiers. It was just as cheap as some of the other remedies to which they had so desperately resorted; and it could not possibly be less efficacious. And there would still be plenty of toys to choose from for the birthday present. Out came the box of soldiers, and off went Jack in greatest glee. Half an hour later his mother found him in the back garden. He had dug a trench two inches deep, piling up the earth in protective heaps in front of it. All along the trench stood the little tin soldiers heroically defying the armies of the universe. And the toothache was ancient history!