Letters to His Friends Part 14

_To one about to be ordained._

Eastbourne: September 1901.

I shall indeed remember you on Sunday next. The words of the lesson come home to me to-day--_kai eireken moi Arkei soi he chariu mou; he gar dunamis en astheneia teleitai_.

We are poor creatures, but there is Grace--and we can come into contact with it--and that is all we need. We may have failed in the past, but Christ offers a new childlike life and endless hope.

I am glad to think that you will be returning to your difficult post at Cambridge. I am sure that you will return to it with fresh humility and courage--_en pleromati eulogias Christou_.

[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrases in the above paragraphs were transliterated as follows: _kai_--kappa, alpha, iota; _eireken_--epsilon, iota, rho, eta, kappa, epsilon, nu; _moi_--mu, omicron, iota; _Arkei_--Alpha, rho, kappa, epsilon, iota; _soi_--sigma, omicron, iota; _he_--(rough breating mark) eta; _chariu_--chi, alpha, rho, iota, final sigma; _mou_--mu, omicron, upsilon; _he_--(rough breathing mark) eta; _gar_--gamma, alpha, rho; _dunamis_--delta, upsilon; nu, alpha, mu, iota, final sigma; _en_--epsilon, nu; _astheneia_--alpha, sigma, theta, epsilon, nu, epsilon, iota, alpha; _teleitai_--tau, epsilon, lambda, epsilon, iota, tau, alpha, iota; _en_--_en_--epsilon, nu; _pleromati_--pi, lambda, eta, rho, omega, mu, alpha, tau, iota; _eulogias_--epsilon, upsilon, lambda, omicron, gamma, iota alpha, final sigma; _Christou_--Chi, rho, iota, sigma, tau, omicron, upsilon]

_To W. D. H._

St. Moritz: January 4, 1902.

I hope that you are now less overworked than you were in October. You must at all costs make quiet time. Give up work, if need be. Your influence finally depends upon your own first-hand knowledge of the unseen world, and on your experience of prayer. Love and sympathy and tact and insight are born of prayer. I am glad you have a Junior Clergy S. P. G. a.s.sociation. Try to take an intelligent interest in it, and mind you read a paper before long.

_To his brother Edward in South Africa._

Hotel Belvedere, St. Moritz: January 7, 1902.

I am glad to think that we are now in many respects agreed about the general question of the {163} war. I suppose in any great historical upheaval there are at the time a number of people who are attempting to make capital for themselves out of the misfortunes of others; there are many who are working for their own hand; and yet, when we look back on the crisis and judge it as a whole in the calm light of history, we see that a large and rational purpose has been worked out. At the time of the English Reformation--as some one was saying to me lately, pointing the parallel which I am working out--there must have been a number of honest and pure souls who held aloof from the whole of what appeared to be political jobbery and fortune-making at the expense of religious sentiment. Yet now most of us feel that the movement could not have had the effects that it had, unless down below all there was a strong upheaval of the national conscience. You will no doubt see many defects in this historical parallel; but the thought is at any rate suggestive, and full of what we require in these latter days--hope. Of course I feel that injustice, dishonesty, cruelty, selfishness are in no way palliated because they take cover and occasion in a real movement of national feeling.

I feel for you much in your work for examinations. It must come very hard with ill health and in a hot climate, with the freshness of youth to some extent pa.s.sed. But

O well for him whose will is strong, He suffers, but he shall not suffer long; He suffers, but he cannot suffer wrong

{164} It needs more courage than you were required to show on the field of battle. But the reward is sure. I feel strongly that this life is but the prelude to a larger life, when each faculty will have its full exercise.

Ah yet, when all is thought and said, The heart still overrules the head; Still what we hope we must believe, And what is given us receive; Must still believe, for still we hope, That in a world of larger scope, What here is faithfully begun Will be completed, not undone.

These words come from dough--the soul of honesty.

_To H. J. B._

Derwent Hill, Ebchester, Durham: April 14, 1902.

It seems to me a truism to say that we ought to look at life in the light of eternity. Only then does the true significance of the meanest action in life appear. Life is redeemed from triviality and vulgarity. So far from worldly possessions losing their value, and ordinary occupations appearing insignificant, their importance is realised as never before.

If man does not live for ever, his character and actions seem of comparative unimportance. If he does live for ever, it is rational for him to look at each action in the light of that larger life which he inherits. If something like cla.s.s distinctions are eternal, it is an inducement so to use your distinctive privileges here in a worthy manner, that hereafter you may use them for n.o.bler ends.

{165}

I have expressed myself badly, but you will see what I want to say. My relations to you surely become not less, but more important, when I realise that I am only beginning to know and love you here. The eternal element in them--the knowledge that there is throughout an implicit reference to a Third and Unseen Person in all that I say to you or think of you--fills me with a sense of awe, and makes the relations more real because more spiritual.

_To the mother of his G.o.dchild, Margaret Forbes._

July 6, 1902.

I cannot tell you what a pleasure it was to see my G.o.dchild. . . . I feel she has a strength of purpose and a desire to know the truth which will fit her for high service in G.o.d's kingdom on earth. I pray for her, and I shall do so in the future with fuller understanding and with great hope. What G.o.d hath begun He will a.s.suredly bring to perfection. I hope that some day she will learn to pray for Uncle Forbes. I should value her prayers. It is good to feel that in the midst of your weary time of weakness G.o.d has given you such a child as a pledge of His affection for you, as an a.s.surance that He believes in you. To give you a little child to train for Himself is a proof that He trusts you very much. I do not know that He could have given a greater proof of His confidence in you.

And it is G.o.d's implicit trust in us that draws out our trust in turn.

We trust and love Him, because He first trusted and loved us. I wonder more and more at the way in which He trusts us. To allow us to suffer without {166} telling us the reason, when He knows that we shall be inclined to think harshly of Him--that is, perhaps, the greatest proof that He believes in us. He can try our faith and perfect it by long-continued trial, because He knows that we shall respond, that we shall prove 'worthy to suffer.'

_To H. J. B._

Christ's College, Cambridge: August 26, 1902.

The worst of seeing you for some time is that I feel it all the more impossible to live without you. I realise now as never before that you are out and away before me, and better than I am; and yet I feel that you are part and parcel of my life. You mustn't be too hard on me if I can't come up to your ideal.

Intellectually the Hebrew and Greek ideals may be irreconcilable. Yet 'life is larger than logic;' and practically we may become heirs of both ideals. The man who loses the world, who gives up all without any desire for gain, is often given the whole back again transfigured, glorified by sacrifice. To get you must forget. If you love G.o.d absolutely with all your being, you inherit the life that is as well as that which is to come. If all is not given you, yet enough is given for the development of character. But there must, it seems to me, be an absolute sacrifice--a surrender of your whole being--whatever the result may be.

There must be no calculation.

High Heaven rejects the lore Of nicely calculated less and more.

{167}

You must love the Lord your G.o.d with all your heart and all your mind: you must trust Him to do the best by you. You say the Hebrew ideal does not appeal to you. But I know better; for you half like me, and I am a Hebrew of the Hebrews! There must be a dash of recklessness about the man who gains the other world. 'All or nothing' is the requirement of the kingdom of Heaven. To gain yourself you must throw yourself away--'lose your soul.' You must have faith. 'He who loves makes his own the grandeur that he loves' is a sentence of Emerson which consoles me when I think of my love for you.

_To a friend at Cambridge._

40 Upperton Gardens, Eastbourne: September 8, 1902.

I have been thinking of you. I keep myself from becoming morbid by making most of my thoughts into prayers for you. The glory--wonder--strangeness of being loved by a man from another and a better world fills me with grat.i.tude to G.o.d. Sometimes it seems a dream, and I half dread that I shall wake up and find that you have ceased to care for a worthless creature. But _phobos ouk estin en te agape, all he teleia agape exo ballei ton phobon_. I need not fear. I know that you will love me, whatever happens.

[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; _all_--alpha, lambda, lambda; _he_--(rough breathing mark) eta; _teleia_--tau, epsilon, lambda, epsilon, iota, alpha; _agape_--alpha, gamma, alpha, pi, eta; _exo_--epsilon, xi, omega; _ballei_--beta, alpha, lambda, lambda, epsilon, iota; _ton_--tau, omicron, nu; _phobon_--phi, omicron, beta, omicron, nu]

I want you to be one of the best men that ever lived--to see G.o.d and to reveal Him to men. This is the burden of my prayers. My whole being goes out in pa.s.sionate entreaty to G.o.d that He will give me what I ask.

I am sure He will, for the request {168} is after His own heart. I do not pray that you may 'succeed in life' or 'get on' in the world. I seldom even pray that you may love me better, or that I may see you oftener in this or any other world--much as I crave for this. But I ask, I implore, that Christ may be formed in you, that you may be made not in a likeness suggested by my imagination, but in the image of G.o.d--that you may realise, not mine, but His ideal, however much that ideal may bewilder me, however little I may fail to recognise it when it is created. I hate the thought that out of love for me you should accept my presentation--my feeble idea--of the Christ. I want G.o.d to reveal His Son in you independently of me--to give you a first-hand knowledge of Him whom I am only beginning to see. Sometimes more selfish thoughts will intrude, but this represents the main current of my prayers; and if the ideal is to be won from heaven by importunity, by ceaseless begging, I think I shall get it for you. But it grieves me to think that I can do nothing else for you. To receive so many favours from you, and to be incapable of doing more in return--this is what saddens me. I feel an ungrateful brute. You have brought new joy, hope, power into my life, and I want to show my grat.i.tude. You would be doing me a real kindness if you would tell me how I could show it.

Don't think by what I have said that I simply care--as an 'Evangelical'

would say--for your 'soul.' Every part of your being--everything you do or say--all that you are--has a strange fascination for me. Only I feel that the whole of it is a revelation of {169} G.o.d; and I want that revelation to be clearer, truer, simpler. I am sure G.o.d does not only care for our souls. It is every part of our complicated being--all sides of our manifold life--that attracts Him. He loves our home life, our affection for the dear old Mother Earth which He made, our interest in the men and women whom He formed in His own image. He longs that all those interests should be developed--that we should live genuine, sane human lives. But true development here or elsewhere--the law of existence in heaven or on earth--is life through death. 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit.' You must give up all. As I think of you, those words keep ringing in my ears: 'If any one cometh to Me, and hateth not his own father and mother, yea, and his own self also, he cannot be My disciple.'

I cannot tell you what they mean. You must find them out for yourself.

If I were a true disciple of Christ, you could see what they mean by looking at me. But I am not. You must learn their meaning for yourself.

Your mother's life will speak louder than words of mine. Only I know they are true. Christ will recreate the world, recreate the home, human beings, dear Mother Earth; but He cannot do so until you have been willing to give up all--until He has caused you to be 'born again.' When the ruler asked how these things could be, Christ could only repeat His words. The man must work it out for himself.

But I am sure that he that willeth to do the will {170} shall know whether the teaching be true. There are no doubt some mere intellectual obscurities in the ideal which I might make simpler if I were not such a duffer. But finally a paradox would be left--a paradox which can only be solved by living the ideal out, and finding it work. It is the pathos of our love, of G.o.d's love for us, that each man, however much he is loved, must work out the ideal for himself. No man can save his brother's soul.