Letters to His Friends Part 4

_To T. H. M._

Christ's College, Cambridge: July 18, 1891.

We have but lately heard that my missionary brother[1] has pa.s.sed away into the eternal world. He died in Africa. He gave up all, he gave up his life for Christ. Terribly as we feel the loss, and shall feel it still more, I cannot help thanking the Eternal Father that He has accepted the life-sacrifice, and feeling that He calls upon us here and now, each day and moment of our lives, to offer up ourselves on the altar of universal thanksgiving. Life is sacrifice, renunciation: true life is dependence on G.o.d. Sin is isolation, death--a failure to recognise and act on our dependence. I do feel as I seldom felt before something of the love of the Father, the grace of the Son, the communion of the Spirit. We _must_ learn that an individual hope, aspiration, ambition, is against the law of the universe--the law of self-sacrifice. We _must_ learn that our wills are ours to make them G.o.d's; that if we have a single hope or thought which He does not inspire, which true humanity cannot share, the hope and thought are wrong. G.o.d grant that you and I may renounce {57} our individual lives, and become truly ourselves by martyrdom, by allowing the Christ in us to live.

I am to be ordained in September. Pray for me. There is no power like prayer. Let us pray for one another. The great Father longs for simple lives, simple piety, perpetual thanksgiving. And we have so much to be thankful for--so much here and now. I do long to offer body, mind, soul, affections, will, hope, to Him as a thanksgiving.

Self-renunciation, life in a Church, a Body, is the only life. G.o.d grant we may live it!

[1] John Alfred Robinson, formerly a scholar of Christ's College, who died at Lokoja on the River Niger, on June 25, 1891.

_To T. H. M._

Christ's College, Cambridge: November 17, 1891.

Do you know that it isn't a bad thing to feel a babe? We must all become simple little children before we enter the kingdom of heaven, because G.o.d, who lives in that kingdom, has the simplest heart in all the wide universe--the most childlike, for G.o.d is Love. He has no cross purposes. Though He is stronger and better and bigger than we are, He is simpler. He will love a poor, simple old woman in His simple way with a wonderful affection. He is so simple, because He does not know what sin is. G.o.d never sins. G.o.d is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all.

It is this simplicity, this love of One who is omnipotent, uncreate, illimitable, eternal, that makes me reverence Him, adore Him, live for Him, love Him.

Simplicity is wonderfully attractive. The man who knows least of sin is most helpful to me, because {58} he is most simple and G.o.dlike. The 'man of the world' is most repulsive, because he is most like the Devil.

_To E. N. L., on the occasion of his ordination._

Cambridge: March 10, 1892.

It gives me great pleasure to think that on Sunday next you will be made a Deacon in G.o.d's Church. I thank G.o.d that He has called you to one of the highest offices on earth, that henceforth you will be 'in'

or (shall we say?) 'under' orders--G.o.d's orders--that you willingly renounce your life, your thoughts, your hopes, your ambitions to Him.

You will probably hear much and be told much at this time. I have nothing to say that you have not heard and will not hear said far better by others. Our Church gives the keynote in the collect for Sunday: 'We have no power.' I never realised my weakness, my pride, my hollowness so much as I did at my ordination. G.o.d has been teaching me, even in the short time since I was ordained, wonderful lessons--lessons of strength being perfected in weakness. He alone knows the depths of our hypocrisy, our vanity, our atheism, and He alone can help us. To get nearer to Him, to know Him better--this is what I want, this is eternal life. As we believe in a Person who is by our side, who is helping us, training us, we shall be able to proclaim Him to others. Do not mind about feelings. You may have beautiful feelings at your ordination time. Thank G.o.d if you have. He sends them. You may have none. Thank G.o.d if you have not, for He has kept them back. We do {59} not want to _feel_ better and stronger; we want to _be_ better and stronger. And He _has_ made us better and stronger.

He has given us His Spirit as we knelt before the bishop. We must go forth in that strength. We must use it, live on it, and it will be ours. _Kata ten pistin humon genetheto humin_. When we feel most hopeless, most wretched, most distant from G.o.d, remember 'feelings don't matter.' Remember that G.o.d's Son felt the same temptation, remember that He too was forsaken by His G.o.d. And when all seems lost, Satan seems master, we are misunderstood; remember that 'I believe in the Holy Ghost,' who is stronger than separation or death, than feelings, than our hearts. All our feelings and thoughts and wishes are nothing. G.o.d is everything and in all. All our conceptions will be shattered, all our schemes overthrown, that a Great Person behind may be revealed. To know, to love, to make known, to make men love that Person is our work in life . . . .

[Transcriber's note: The Greek words in the above paragraph were transliterated as follows: _Kata_--Kappa, alpha, tau, alpha; _ten_--tau, eta, nu; _pistin_--pi, iota, sigma, tau, iota, nu; _humon_--(rough breathing mark) upsilon, mu, omega, nu; _genetheto_--gamma, epsilon, nu, eta, theta, eta, tau, omega; _humin_--(rough breathing mark) upsilon, mu, iota, nu]

We are men sent from G.o.d. We come to bear witness of a Light. Do not let us confuse ourselves with our message. The message is everything; we are nothing. The Light simply shines through us. We must be glad to be shattered, rejected, if so be that the Light shining through us may be manifested.

One suggestion I make: that you do what I believe you are expected by the words of the Prayer-book to do--say the Morning and Evening Prayer daily _always_, unless you are ill, at home or in church, and the Litany on Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. You will find this a greater help than almost anything else--a help against superst.i.tion, narrowness, bigotry, {60} heartlessness. If you decide not to do so, do it with some _really_ good reason, and not because others do the same, or because it is a bother.

And now good-bye. And may G.o.d grant us to know Him on earth, so that we may together know Him better hereafter.

_To W. A. B._

Blackheath: April 30, 1892.

. . . No amount of philosophical theories are worth much compared with a simple picture of home life. It is these common relations of life which are most awful and sacred. The highest life we know is, I think I may say with reverence, family life--life of Father and Son; family life on earth is a faint picture of something better in heaven. We shall be surprised some day to find that, while we have been searching for the n.o.ble and divine, we have it all the while at home. The relations of brother and brother, son and father, are eternal realities, which we shall never fathom, for G.o.d Himself is below them.

'Omnia exeunt in mysterium,' as Kingsley says in 'Yeast.' I am very pleased with that novel. The description he gives of the sufferings and squalor of villages is positively awful. We do want men who believe that self-sacrifice, not selfishness, is at the top of all, who are sure that family life is made in heaven and is made in the image of G.o.d's life, who know that in the present is the eternal, to go and live and work and die in our villages. But Kingsley shows it is not enough to give alms or other social benefits--we must do more than that, we must raise their whole {61} life and condition. I believe myself that this can only be done from inside. Thus, when G.o.d wished to redeem man, He did it from inside. Man himself fought and conquered. Deity entered into humanity. It is not merely that we must live simply, think simply, work, as they do. That is well, but we must do more. If we want to look at them from the inside, I know only one way--the old, old way which G.o.d Himself adopts. We must love them, love the Christ, the Spirit in them--not the beast, the devil in them. Like attracts like. To love and to detect that, we must have some of that Spirit, that Christ.

That means to say that to help others from the inside, we must be right inside ourselves. And yet none of us are right inside. But there is that in us which is right, that in us which is not ourselves, but is deeper than ourselves. A Son who will make us true sons, a Brother who will teach us how to be brothers, a Human Being who will show us what is in all human beings; a Love who will teach us what we always fancy we know, but what we don't know (else we should be divine)--how to love; a Man who will make us saints and gentlemen--the Man Christ Jesus. Yes, and there is in us a Great Spirit who is uniting us by invisible bonds to all that is good and healthy and G.o.dlike, a Spirit who disciplines our will when it is weakest and most self-indulgent, who trains our spirit and fights our battles against the evil spirit, a Person who makes us persons. How then do men differ? If in every man there is the Light which lightens him, the Christ, the Spirit, what is the difference between good and bad men? Does {62} a good man possess religion, or faith, or love? No, the best men would tell you they were possessed by faith and love, rather than that they possessed them.

What faith or love they have is not a possession--it is in them, not of them, not belonging to them. It comes from the Christ in them. The difference between men is not that one is inspired and another is not, but that one yields to the Spirit, another does not. We begin to obey when we lose ourselves in that Spirit and forget all but G.o.d. We ought never to settle any detail in life without taking Him into account: we are fools if we do. How can we be logical? For He is in that detail, and not to think of Him is not to understand that detail. For every detail is more than a detail--it is the expression of a Person.

I have wandered into a train of thought suggested by 'Yeast,' and in part copied directly from it. Forgive me. I was half thinking aloud.

That is my one excuse for saying what I am trying to think.

I never played golf. I do that sort of thing by deputy. K---- is the sort of man to do it for me. At any rate, I trust him with my football and rowing. It doesn't tire you so much if you do it that way. Only let me give you one piece of advice, which I only wish I acted upon: 'Don't do your thinking by deputy:' do your rowing, golf, football, cricket, skittles, talking if you like, but not your thinking.

{63}

_To D. D. R; written apropos of a discussion on St. Paul's idea of the relation between Sin and the Law._

2 New Square, Cambridge; Monday before Easter, 1892.

I cannot but help feeling that part of your difficulties are self-made.

Is there such a difference between Jewish law and law in general? What is law--law in the abstract? What do you mean when you talk about laws of science or morality? Surely there is no such thing as law in the abstract. You really mean G.o.d's thought. All law existed long before this world existed, as the thought of G.o.d. This thought expresses itself, when the world is actually made, in animals, nature, man. But this thought is somewhat long before it expresses itself, because it is G.o.d's thought. With Him 'to think' is 'to do.' Before you and I were born, before men were made, man exists in G.o.d as a thought. Each of us is an expression of part of that thought. The whole thought is the image of G.o.d, not any one part. Now, when I speak of man as something in contra-distinction to men, I mean the thought of G.o.d in contradistinction to its individual realisation. So when I speak of law as distinct from special laws, I mean a thought of G.o.d as distinct from its special expressions. Otherwise 'man' and 'law' are abstractions and nonent.i.ties.

The nominalist is right in so far as he denies that law as an abstract thing (considered apart from a person--as his thought) is anything: the realist is right in so far as he affirms that law, apart from {64} any particular manifestation, is an eternal reality. The reconciliation of nominalism and realism is found in G.o.d. Applying this to the case in hand--you admit that the Ten Commandments are the ground of morality; therefore, I say, they must be an expression of a thought of G.o.d, the Author of morality. But you are puzzled to find that the most trivial sanitary arrangements are considered by the Jew as equally a manifestation of G.o.d. Need we be? In every little sanitary precaution I recognise, or ought to recognise, an expression of that same mind as I see it in the Ten Commandments. G.o.d is Light, therefore the clean, the healthy, the decent is an expression of Him. G.o.d is Love, therefore the social, the self-sacrificing, is an expression of Him as well. But sanitary arrangements and the like, though an expression of an unchanging principle, change according to state of civilisation, climate, country. Therefore we take the principle, not the expression, as the ultimate reality in the case of these sanitary laws.

I am afraid I am rather stupid, and cannot make my meaning plain. I want to show you that the Jewish law only differs from English law as being in some ways a more complete expression of G.o.d's nature. But in all sanitary law, &c., _now_ we have G.o.d's nature expressed. And it would be true to say, 'G.o.d spake unto England, saying'--_e.g._ in a right decision in court; it would be true to say, 'G.o.d spake unto the judge, saying.' Therefore, what holds good of Moses' law holds good of all law, because all law is a thought of G.o.d. {65} Therefore St. Paul uses indifferently _nomos_ and _ho nomos_, for what is true of G.o.d's thought is true of every expression of it. In fact, he more often perhaps argues about one particular expression of it. Why? Because we can only tell what the thought is by studying the expression.

[Transcriber's note: The Greek words in the above paragraph were transliterated as follows: _nomos_--nu, omicron, mu, omicron, final sigma; _ho_--(rough breathing mark), omicron]

Don't be taken in by abstractions. An ideal is nothing--worse than nothing--unless our ideal is G.o.d's idea. Then it is the only reality, because G.o.d's idea will take effect. His idea is to make man in His image, and be sure it will take effect. Commandments, judgments, statutes, mean much the same in the Old Testament, I conceive, as we mean when we use them. The Ten Commandments are not so called in the Bible, I think. They are called 'words,' I think.

I do not think St. Paul at all restricted _nomos_ to the Ten Commandments. In fact, I don't know that he ever very clearly separated those off from all the rest.

Do not in your essay make the same mistake as many of the Jews in St.

Paul's time. Do not try to consider law apart from the Law-giver.

They looked upon law as a dead thing by itself, not as an expression of the character of a person.

Thus the Commandment about resting on the Sabbath day was considered by them as an order as though from a tyrant. But G.o.d, when He gave it, did not simply say, 'Here it is: do it'--but 'Do it because,' and He gives the reason why. The reason is different in Exodus and Deuteronomy, because the books were, to a certain degree perhaps, written to {66} ill.u.s.trate different aspects of G.o.d's character.

Exodus says: 'Work and rest, because G.o.d's life is work and rest.

Therefore human life made in His image is work and rest.' Deuteronomy says: 'Work and rest. G.o.d has emanc.i.p.ated you from slavery. He bids you rest.' In both cases G.o.d is the ground of the law. Study law--any law--English law--and in so far as it is law, and not lawlessness under guise of law, you will be studying G.o.d Himself; for if St. Paul's principles are true at all, they must be true of all law. But, oh!

don't deal with abstractions, which sound well, but mean little. Let us use what we have. It is a grand thing to know that the highest ideal we can conceive must be realised, for the highest ideal must be part of G.o.d's idea.

Don't try to look at moral law apart from national life. St. Paul did not. Law is seen in national life. A nation is a better expression of G.o.d than an individual, because G.o.d is three, not simply one. He is a social Being, a Being of relations. And nations will last for ever.

Law will always be seen worked out in national life. G.o.d has more worlds than one. Each nation is a thought of G.o.d worked out in human clay (cf. Jeremiah xviii. 1-6). Human clay lasts for ever ('I believe in the resurrection of the body'). Law will always be worked out thus.

We are part of a thought of G.o.d--part of an English nation--little fragments of a huge whole. Our immortality depends on the fact that we are parts of a nation, parts of a Divine idea, which lasts for ever.

Law is more completely seen in conscious than unconscious life, because G.o.d's life is conscious. Law is more completely seen {67} in family and national than individual life, because in G.o.d Himself are seen the archetypes of human relations.

This letter is disjointed, but contains a few thoughts which may prove helpful--thoughts I have been learning from others of late.

We are having lovely weather.