Letters to His Friends Part 7

8 Alexandra Gardens, Ventnor: January 3, 1894.

The fact that you have not all the sympathy and manly help and advice that you could wish for from those around you will, I trust, force you to depend with simpler confidence upon the unchanging Ground of all human sympathy. You will, I hope, take all these experiences without grumbling as a real and necessary stage in your education; remembering that if you find yourself repining at the distressful circ.u.mstances in which you are placed, you may be dishonouring Him who has placed you where you are. I do not, of course, mean that such reflection will make you condone and excuse the lukewarmness of others, but you will grasp the truth that G.o.d uses even the sin of this world as an instrument in the education of His people, and that you yourself may have your character formed partly through the faults of others, for whom you are still bound to pray.

{101} This great Christmas festival that is past must be a power to us in the year that is coming on. We must enter into and be penetrated by the Life that has been manifested. For it is life that you and I need. Our own puny individualistic life of morbid self-consciousness and sensibility must be transformed by the fuller Life in which all may have a share; and thus we shall come to think less of ourselves, our successes, our failures, what others think about us and what others ought to think about us--we shall forget all this because we shall share in the Universal Life, which penetrates through all and which makes men forget themselves and their ills, and be pure, simple, healthy, unselfish. And this life has been realised and men have seen it, and it is still with us to-day. In so far as we share in it we shall become natural, unaffected, human. Nay, more. Because the life there manifested is divine as well as human, we shall realise also with fuller force what it is to be a child of a Father who is in heaven. It is life, not a system, that we need. It is life which is given us when we are adopted as sons; it is life that we receive when the Source of all life gives us Himself to feed upon; it is life that Christ bestows upon us when we gradually realise our position as members of a society in which no man can live for himself alone. Life is life in so far as it is unselfish. May He who has called us and given to us all our privileges teach us to live out that which we know and believe!

{102}

_To F. S. H._

Cambridge: August 4, 1895.

Life will not be the same without having you up here. I am very dependent upon others, and I soon begin to be downcast if I have not some one to help or to be helped by. But happily He who takes away is the same as He who gives, and His great heart of affection understands our manifold and seemingly contradictory needs. Life would be intolerable if we had no one who knew us perfectly, not simply the outside part of our life, but that inside and apparently incommunicable part. Those who are least able to express themselves in words, or who (if they did express themselves) fear that they would be misunderstood, find in Him an unspeakable consolation. But I must not look at things from the individualistic standpoint. No problem can ever be solved until we have in some measure realised that the Life which flows through us is larger than our own individual life. We get morbid, and our reason becomes warped, when we think of our own future alone.

Every obstacle in our path, every interruption to the course which we have planned for ourselves, every rough discipline, tells us that our life and future are not our own, that they are intimately connected with a larger life, a greater future. I have been thinking of those words--so like Jesus Christ to have uttered them--_me merimnesete_. We are always anxious about a set of circ.u.mstances which will soon be upon us--engagements which we tremble to meet. Jesus Christ tells us, _me merimnesete_. I believe that work in the {103} present world would be far more free and effective if we would obey the command. We cannot enter into life as it comes, because we are living in an imaginary future. The man of G.o.d lives in the present; he leaves the future to G.o.d, _me merimnesete_. If G.o.d has conducted us so far, He will not leave us. It is easy to talk, hard to act. I think we gain the power to act, we gain the calm peace of G.o.d, by compelling ourselves to remain at certain times in His presence. Habits of prayer are slowly formed, but when formed are hard to break. Talking may be a great snare when it takes the place of prayer--and how easily it does! It is easier to talk with a man than to pray for him--in many cases.

[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrases in the above paragraph were transliterated as follows: _me_--mu, eta; _merimnesete_--mu, epsilon, rho, iota, mu, nu, eta, sigma, eta, tau, epsilon]

_To F. S. H._

Clovelly: September 11, 1895.

I am reading 'The Newcomes': have you ever read it? I find it hard to appreciate Thackeray as much as some people do. Occasionally he says some very true things and shows that he is acquainted with human nature in its brighter and darker aspects. But, on the whole, the story of marriage and giving in marriage--selling your daughter for money or a t.i.tle--the picture of young men who sow their wild oats and then repent and marry innocent ladies and live virtuously and die in the odour of sanct.i.ty--on the whole the story does not seem to correspond to the ideals which haunt me, even though I do not act up to them. Surely life is something utterly different from all this. Surely somewhere there is a picture of {104} human life, somewhere in the mind of G.o.d Himself, where the young man grows up without any harvest of wild oats, with clear and unselfish ideals, with a longing to make the world purer and diviner than he found it, a picture which is in some measure realised around us to-day. May G.o.d deliver us not only from vicious but from selfish thoughts! I believe Thackeray saw something of that picture, but he didn't draw it with the colours I could have wished.

There is a solemn text in Ezekiel, which came in the lesson lately, 'The righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him in the day of his transgression.' Past religious experiences are of little value without present righteousness.

_To his cousin G. F._

Clovelly, N. Devon: September 12, 1895.

I am in perhaps the quaintest and one of the loveliest villages in England, just doing nothing, and enjoying the simple life around me.

You would like this village, with its one steep, narrow, picturesque street, the great sea far down below, the little stone pier jutting out and helping to form a small harbour. Then on either side of the village are woods reaching down to the cliffs--beautiful woods, where oaks, and in places heather, are glad to grow. St. Paul says in the lesson to-day that the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. And one feels how true are his words--how the trees, woods, flowers fade and die; how the old sea wears slowly away the cliffs; how men and {105} their dwellings pa.s.s away; how all these things which are seen are temporal; and yet the beauty, the love, the joy, the purity, are more permanent than the particular manifestations of them are. The beauty which is manifested in the country around is eternal. The life which is seen in man has a future beyond this world.

As we enter in behind the veil, as we see that life and love which are expressing themselves in objects around us, we are already in the eternal, in that which endures.

It is not, as we are constantly thinking, the things that are _present_ which are temporal, and the things that are _future_ which are eternal.

No; the things which are present have an eternal side to them--the unseen side.

The man who is a slave to the seen has least of the eternal about him: the man who despises not the seen, but who through the seen rises to the unseen, is partaking of eternal life. . . .

_To F. S. H._

Cambridge: October 23, 1895.

Let me congratulate you on the way you ran against Yale.[1] I was delighted to read of your 'romping' home!! . . . . It seems to me that every unfulfilled longing is no accidental part of life. The longing, in so far as it is genuinely human, is derived from Him in whose image man is made. When it is hard to see why it is not gratified, yet we {106} may confidently believe that this is part of our training. Is it not a n.o.ble work to enter into and, in some measure, bear the burdens of other men's lives, even if they have only imperfect sympathy with ours? May we not sometimes even learn more in this way--or at least learn different lessons--than if they were so similar to ourselves that they could at once understand us? I am afraid that you have a hard struggle before you. You must take care not to act upon first impressions, or impulse--not even if those impressions are favourable . . . your best 'pearls' must be used carefully.

[1] In the international athletic sports in U.S.A.

_To F. S. H. on his going to a curacy in Liverpool._

Cambridge: October 18, 1896.

In some respects I am glad to hear of your change of plans. I think you will be more in your element working in a poor part of a large town. . . . Our dean has just been preaching on the words 'One soweth, and another reapeth.' It is a help to realise the continuity of work.

We enter into the work of many a man who has pa.s.sed away, and who, while he worked, often despaired and thought that he was achieving nothing. No work is lost. The obscure and petty--these are relative terms. We use them, but we are told on the best authority that there is nothing secret which shall not be made manifest. The consciousness of the continuity and perpetuity of work quiets and calms us; we need not hurry over anything. When we have left off sowing, others will reap. G.o.d give us grace to work, for the night {107} cometh when no man can work. I am so sorry that I have not been able to come up and see you. But we are working in the same field, though it is too large across to see one another!

_To C. T. W._

St. Moritz: February 1898.

Two new toboggan runs have been opened: one is a Canadian run on soft snow without turns, short and sweet; the other is part of the Crista run, an ice run, which I suppose is quite the finest in the world, with splendid corners. When it is all made it will be about a mile in length. . . . In a noisy salon it is difficult to collect my scattered thoughts. Music and other atrocities are in full swing; and as I seldom use my brain now, the works are rusty. I wish you could see this country in winter. . . . A male rival of The Brook has appeared.

He is impressed with the dust and dampness of the atmosphere--takes out trays to toboggan on into Italy--sprinkles water on his bedroom floor, because he considers a damp atmosphere conducive to sleep. So far we have not fallen out altogether with one another; some of us are on speaking terms. We only confidentially discuss whether so-and-so has come here for his mind. We have an archdeacon, a canon, a curate, two captains; one Plymouth-brother-like, who takes most gloomy views about the future of us, or most of us, including the parsons; the other very noisy, who attempted the Canadian toboggan run which is supposed to be safe for ladies and {108} children, and swears that he almost broke his neck. He had an upset and went head foremost into the snow, and, according to his own account, had to be dug out. If he had been a heavier man, I understand that he would have broken his neck. As two accidents have occurred there, it is not absolutely safe. . . . This place is a splendid pick-me-up. I am a reformed character--go to bed between 6 and 10.30 P.M. I was detected last night cheating at cards.

But reformation to be effective requires time. Give up, I say, one bad habit at a time, and then tackle the next. I have given up early rising as being the most patent of my evil practices.

_To J. K._

Christ's College, Cambridge: August 19, 1898.

. . . . I am sure that we have need to learn not only in the school of health but also in the school of sickness. These breaks in life, and the sense of helplessness and weakness which attend them, are not simply periods to be 'got over'--to be made the best of till we can 'start again'--but they have a meaning which we can find, if we only look with the eye of faith. It is strange how, although G.o.d sees the whole way in which we ought to go, He leaves us in comparative darkness. We need, I am sure, _revelation_. 'Lord, open the young man's eyes, that he may see.' We shall take the wrong turning if we trust to our ordinary eyes; we shall find the path if we have the eye of faith to see what G.o.d is revealing. . . . And now at this time I need your prayers. I have--and {109} this, I need hardly say, is private--an invitation from the Bishop of ---- to come and lecture to theological students, whom he hopes to gather round him. Of course the scheme is rather in the air so far. He has not yet got the men. But he has an attractive power, and he might on a smaller scale do some such work as Vaughan used to do for men who did not go to definite theological colleges. Will you pray for me that I may go if I ought, and not go if I ought not, please?

Our wills are ours, we know not how, Our wills are ours, to make them Thine.

_To J. L. D._

Cliff Dale, Cromer: October 3, 1898.

I do not belong and I never have belonged to any of the societies or guilds which you mention. I am a member of a Church. For that reason I dare not join any party. In fact, I cannot understand what 'parties'

have to do with a Church. The Church by its very existence is a witness against parties and divisions. It will take me more than a lifetime to learn what it is to be a member of a Church; and no one can learn the lesson while he persists in clinging to a party. He must be a member not of a _part_ but of a _whole_. I therefore have no time to waste in joining a party.

I feel strongly that the various societies and guilds, based upon _party_ life, are eating away the very life of the Church. But I am slow in condemning my neighbour for conscientiously joining any such {110} society. He may only be able to see one side of truth, and it is better--far better--that he should see that side than nothing at all.

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

April 12, 1899.