Letters to His Friends Part 13

But one or two things that you said to me live in {153} my memory, and make me wish to be more fit to talk to you.

St. Moritz is much as usual. It is a strange little world in itself.

The comic and the tragic are blended weirdly together, and nature is unimaginably beautiful. I wish you could see this snow. It has an attraction for me, and I am sure it would have for you. I think you understand more about the meaning of beauty than I do. When I see a magnificent landscape, I want to share the sight with some one else. I feel quite lonely when I am interpreting it alone. I wonder why that is?

_To F. J. C._

Hotel Belvedere, St. Moritz: December 21, 1901.

Christmas seems to mean more to me, the longer that I live. I gaze with bewilderment on that stupendous mystery of love--the very G.o.d entering into and raising our human nature. My whole conception of the meaning, the possibilities of our common human nature is transformed, as I see that it can become a perfect reflection and manifestation of the Divine nature. 'The Word became flesh, and lodged _in us_.' The manger at Bethlehem reverses all our human conceptions of dignity and greatness. 'The folly of G.o.d is wiser than men.' It is to the humble--to babes--that G.o.d can reveal Himself. In them He can find His home.

O Father, touch the East and light The light that shone when Hope was born.

It is in Christmas that Tennyson found the birth of {154} Hope. It is Christmas that, as life goes on, bids us never despair--of our own or of human nature around us.

_To a friend at Cambridge._

Hotel Belvedere, St. Moritz: December 30, 1901.

I shall never forget this last Christmas Day, for your letter came in the evening. I read it again and again, and wonder at it more each time I read it. I can't tell you what I feel about it. I knew that you more or less liked and respected me, but I didn't know that you loved me. I've got what I wanted. When you merely respected me, I dreaded the day when you would find that I was different to what you thought I was. But now I feel I am safe _phobos ouk estin en te agape_, however imperfect you find me. I know now that I can trust you not to throw me off. And love is not extreme to mark what is amiss, _hoti agape kaluptei plethos amartion_. I can't thank you for your kindness, but I thank G.o.d for giving me the most precious gift in the world, a human soul 'to love and be loved by for ever.' As I look at your letter I feel a mere worm, and my one wonder is how on earth a man like you can call me your friend. I can't thank you; but I'll do my best to live up to the standard you expect of me, and to be a true friend to you. And my idea of friendship is, as you know, prayer. I can't, worse luck, do much for you, but I do pray for you, and 'whatever ye ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.' It has been truly said that the _how_, the _where_, and the _when_ are not told us, but only the {155} _what_. And I am quite certain that every prayer I offer for you is heard and answered, when I believe what I say; but the manner, the place, and the occasion of the answer--of these things I know nothing. I am sure that G.o.d loves to see us happy, and the pure joy of the knowledge that such a man as you loves me is almost more than I can bear. It throws a new light on life here, and on that fuller life to which G.o.d is leading us hereafter; like you, thank G.o.d, I cannot complain of lack of friends, but I have never had one who has written me such a letter, full of an affection for which I crave. The worst is, I can't repay your kindness. You bring me nearer to G.o.d, you make me realise in the strangest way His affection, you make me feel the worth and mystery of a human soul. I wish I could return your help somehow or other. Do show me the way. I wish you did not find it so difficult to pray for me. I am sure you are right in going back to such a man as St. Paul for subjects of prayer. The opening chapters of his letters to the Ephesians and Colossians give the kinds of requests which it is worth making on behalf of any one. There is surely no harm in finding that, as you pray for another, your own faith is growing.

There is nothing selfish in that. It is rather the result of the law _didote kai dothesetai humin_.

[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrases in the above paragraph were transliterated as follows: _phobos_--phi, omicron, beta, omicron, final sigma; _ouk_--omicron, upsilon, kappa; _estin_--epsilon, sigma, tau, iota, nu; _en_--epsilon, nu; _te_--tau, eta; _agape_--alpha, gamma, alpha, pi, eta; _hoti_--(rough breathing mark) omicron, tau, iota; _agape_--alpha, gamma, alpha, pi, eta; _kaluptei_--kappa, alpha, lambda, upsilon, pi, tau, epsilon, iota; _plethos_--pi, lambda, eta, theta, omicron, final sigma; _amartion_--alpha, mu, alpha, rho, tau, iota, omega, nu; _didote_--delta, iota, delta, omicron, tau, epsilon; _kai_--kappa, alpha, iota; _dothesetai_--delta, omicron, theta, eta, sigma, eta, tai, alpha, iota; _humin_--(rough breathing mark) upsilon, mu, iota, nu]

Your faith can only grow with exercise, and you exercise it by praying for others. You would only be selfish if you prayed for some one else _in order that_ your own soul might be benefited.

But don't think too much of selfishness. Bring {156} all your half selfish desires to Him who knows us through and through; and in His presence, almost unconsciously, your motives will gradually be purified. You will learn to walk in the light as He Himself is in the light. As I look back on this letter, a large part of it seems selfish. I expect much is; but, even in the selfish parts, there is something more besides. I can only just say what I feel, and ask G.o.d gradually to eliminate what is wrong. In His light I shall see light.

Life is large, and I am fearful lest, in attempting a rough and ready asceticism, I should exclude as wrong some elements which are in reality G.o.d-given. I feel that in the case of our affections and our longing for beauty. They are implanted in us, and tended and watered by One who is perfect Love and perfect Beauty. They easily lead us into sin, but that fact does not imply that they are wrong in themselves. We have to bring them to their source that He may interpret them, 'Too late have I sought thee,' said Augustine, 'thou Beauty, so ancient and so new, too late have I sought thee.' I cannot understand the mystery of your life, dearest, but I feel that all that craving for beauty is in some kind of way a craving for G.o.d. Only G.o.d demands the first place in your life before He will give you any satisfying interpretation of that aspect of His life. You must love Him for what He is--not simply because He is Beauty.

I slept and dreamed that life was Beauty, I woke and found that life is Duty.

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They are not really contradictory conceptions. Nay, Duty has a spiritual beauty of her own. But sometimes they seem for a moment divergent, and then you must at all costs choose the latter, and you will find that

The topmost crags of Duty scaled, Are close upon that shining tableland To which G.o.d Himself is shield and sun.

And, if I am not mistaken, that land will be utterly full of an absolutely satisfying beauty.

But I feel that I scarcely yet understand anything about the meaning of Beauty. All I can do is to relate it immediately to G.o.d. If I see beautiful scenery, I am usually thinking of G.o.d and thanking Him. If I see human beauty, I feel that I am on holy ground, and I always try to pray for a face that attracts me. I feel that I have a duty in return for the revelation that has been given. But, as you see, I can explain but little. These are merely rules of practical life which we very imperfectly carry out. I cannot explain the relation of physical and spiritual beauty in human beings. I feel, of course, that there ought to be, there very often is, some such relation. But sometimes there is something utterly wrong, and apparently no such connective. The connection, I take it, is more perfect in nature; but in man, why, something has occurred, something anomalous, which mars the whole. Sin has come in somewhere, I suppose.

I can't express on paper what I feel, or give you any real conception of what you are to me. You {158} would be startled if you knew. G.o.d bless you, and work out in you, not my miserable ideal of what I think you ought to be, but His own ideal, which exceeds all our thoughts and imagination, of what you are to be.

_To G. J. C._

Christ's College: 1901.

. . . I was never so pleased to hear of any engagement as of yours. I thank G.o.d with all my heart. I cannot put my joy into words, but somehow or other it seems to bring me nearer to the source of all joy.

I feel more than ever that He cares for us and is educating us, and I feel that He has been so good to you, because He loves you. The older I grow the more I am impressed by His infinite sympathy and concern for us. And when He gives us not only love but a return of love, it seems to me that He is giving us the very best thing that He has--a part, as it were, of Himself. 'The merciful and gracious Lord hath so done His marvellous works, that they ought to be had in remembrance.'

I cannot tell you how glad I am. But I thank G.o.d in my prayers for you; and I am sure that if He has been so good to you in the past, He will not forget you in the future.

_To the same when he had just accepted a mastership at Eton._

Brislington, Bristol: 1901.

. . . . How good of you to write and tell me of your future work! . . . The responsibility of such a {159} life is to my mind almost overwhelming. 'Who is sufficient for these things? Our sufficiency is of G.o.d.'

I am thankful that the offer came as it did--unsought by you. You will feel happier in accepting it. 'Infinite sympathy is needed for the infinite pathos of human life'--more especially of a boy's life. The first, second, third, requisite for a master is, in my judgment, sympathy. As I look back on my own school days, I cannot help feeling that most of my masters were either lacking in it or else strangely incapable of manifesting it in a form which I could understand.

Sympathy with the dull, unpromising boy is a divine gift, and I trust that Holy Orders will confer upon you this grace also. I thank G.o.d that you are taking orders, and finding your work in teaching. Forgive this lecture from one who has no right to speak, and who is himself strangely deficient in sympathy.

_To D. B. K._

Eastbourne: September 1901.

I am glad that you have been home. I feel that home is a revelation--a means whereby the Eternal Father shows us Himself and His purposes, a strengthening and refreshing of our tired souls. . . . I have prayed earnestly for you that your faith and love may not fail. I feel intensely the same difficulty as you, and I am only slowly learning to overcome it. I do not think we can learn to love people who are altogether different from us in many respects, all at once. I love some men with a strange, unsatisfied affection. All my thoughts about them I am {160} gradually learning to resolve into prayers for them, and I want to live longer that I may pray for them more.

Well, it seems to me that G.o.d gives us this affection that we may learn to do to others as we would do to these. I cannot pretend to care for many with whom I come into contact as much as I do for the few. But I can pray for them, and the feeling will more or less come in time.

Just try to pray for some one person committed to your charge--say for half an hour or an hour--and you will begin really to love him. As you lay his life before G.o.d, as you think of his needs and hopes, and failings and possibilities, as you pray earnestly for him as you would for some one whom you feel intense affection for; at the end of the time you will feel more interested in him, you will think of him not as one of a cla.s.s but as a separate, mysterious person. You will not, it may be, have time to pray for many in this way, but you will learn imperceptibly to extend your sympathy--to feel real love for many more.

I advise you to keep a record of these prayers. It is quite worth your while to take practically a day off sometimes, and to force yourself to pray. It will be the best day's work you have ever done in your life.

Remember that!

Don't be troubled by comparing yourself with other clergymen. I think you are like me--not ecclesiastically minded. I don't have the sort of feelings which a large number of persons have about their work and their preaching. I can't put the difference into words, yet I feel it.

But I must serve G.o.d in my own way, and I am sure that He will use me to do the work for which I am best fitted. And the {161} same is true of you. Try to refer all your actions to His standard; and test your work in His presence; and don't ask what So-and-so thinks of it.

I very much wish you had some gentlemen to a.s.sociate with besides parsons. You must keep up as much as possible with your college friends; and use every opportunity which reasonably presents itself of seeing some 'society.' G.o.d knows what is best for you at present.

G.o.d nothing does or suffers to be done But thou wouldest do thyself, couldest thou but see The end of all events as well as He.

I am sure that He will not forget you. He knows what is best for your development. It may be that He takes you away from friends that you may learn to pray for them more and to see Him more clearly.

I think you will influence many men whom a more ordinary parson would not touch. . . . I am quite certain that if you have infinite hope--hope against hope--you will be a tremendous power in the place where G.o.d has put you.

Get as much exercise as you can, and always get a clear day off in the week, and don't give up any of your old interests. Don't always read 'religious' literature. . . . When the long day is done and we stand before the judgment seat, I believe that many will rise up and call you blessed. Only pray for individuals--for a long time together. To influence, you must love; to love, you must pray.

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