Letters to His Friends Part 9

Then Rhodes woke up with a vengeance and gave them a great speech.

Ixopo is where Rhodes started out in South Africa. His name still figures on the magistrates' books--fined 10_l._, for selling a gun to a native.

_To his cousin, J. C. H; on the occasion of the death of his brother._

December 7, 1899.

You know, without my saying it, that you have my deep sympathy and prayers at this time. . . . We dare not and cannot sorrow as do others who have no certain hope. Our sorrow is of another kind. For I am quite sure that

In His vast world above, A world of broader love, G.o.d hath some grand employment for His son.[1]

{118} How real it all makes that other world, to have our own brothers there! It makes it in a deeper sense our home.

[1] Faber, _The Old Labourer_.

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

Dore House, St. Leonards: January 10, 1900.

I am so glad to feel that my little G.o.dchild will have real training.

I don't know how far I received such a training myself at an early age . . . I came towards the end of a large family. The only permanent instruction which I can remember imparted to me by my nursery maid was a caution not to look behind me when I pa.s.sed people in the street, enforced by the biblical precept, 'Remember Lot's wife.' I know what a fascination I had to look behind, accompanied by a terrible dread of the consequences.

I have always felt that Faber's 'G.o.d of my Childhood' describes the normal and true development of a child's life. I am sure that, although the gravity of sin should be early recognised, greater stress should be laid upon the Fatherhood and kindness of G.o.d. I was noticing to-day, when reading the second lesson, how Westcott and Hort have placed the clause in the Lord's Prayer which speaks of the Fatherhood of G.o.d in a line by itself as a heading to the whole prayer, putting a colon after the clause, and beginning the first pet.i.tion with a capital letter. The prayer begins with 'Fatherhood' and ends with a reference to 'Sinfulness.' I think this fact is significant. We may not all be intended to come to {119} know religious truth in that order. But I think we are intended, when we do know it, to lay even more stress on the Fatherhood of G.o.d than on our own imperfections. It is a wonderful and terrible thing to watch the development of a human spirit. We can understand so little about any life, even when it is near and dear to us. But I am not sure that we cannot learn more about others than we can about ourselves. I never think it is profitable to study oneself too closely! I never could meditate with any profit on my sins. But there, I dare say, I differ from many others.

Well, I hope that the hair of my G.o.dchild is growing, and that she has now more than her G.o.d-father. His is coming to an untimely end.

_To F. S. H; who had recently become a chaplain in the Navy._

St. Leonards: January 11, 1900.

I am thinking of you in your new, difficult, and interesting life, and wondering how you like it. Or, rather, I am sure that you like it in its main features. There are in every life drawbacks and discouragements, for we live by faith and not by sight, and faith must be perfected in the midst of perplexities and contradictions. The mists are useful. It would not do to have brilliant sunshine all the time. For in that case, where would faith come in? Steering towards our port in the fog means trusting the Pilot. 'Mercifully grant that we, which know Thee now by faith, may after this life have the fruition of Thy glorious G.o.dhead.' I suppose that none of us fully {120} knows what this prayer means. I think that there will be more need of faith hereafter than we usually think. Can we ever apprehend the Father or the Son without faith? The deepest truths are grasped by faith not sight. The man who has learned to exercise faith here will have fuller scope for his faith hereafter. What a shock to wake up in the next world and to find that the riddles of life still need faith for their solution! Yet I imagine that it will be so. Only faith will be able to go deeper than here. The faith perfected in the mists of life will, in the sunshine of eternity, see deeper into the meaning of events. I wish I had more faith. Not sudden flights of faith annihilating time and s.p.a.ce and rising up to the throne of heaven. But I wish I could ground all my actions on faith, and regularly see the invisible and live as one who could see always and everywhere the Unseen. We are schooled in different ways. We cannot attain to perfection in a night.

As we advance in the Christian life progress seems slower. In some sense it is so. It is easier to cast off a number of definite bad habits clearly inconsistent with the ideal just at first, than to perfect self-sacrifice, humility, and self-discipline. But we are advancing, though we know it not. If the engines are always kept working, we shall reach our goal!

_To C. N. W; who had recently been ordained._

St. Leonards-on-Sea: January 12, 1900.

You must remember how much your future efficiency is dependent upon a judicious use of your {121} strength during the next two or three years. I am sure you are right in looking back upon your life and tracing in its developments a higher than human guidance. It is a helpful thing to trace now and anon G.o.d's hand in our individual life.

It brings Him nearer to us, and it is an awful thought that He is actually working within us. It makes us trust Him for time to come even when the prospect is gloomy. I think that we do well to spend some time in trying to interpret details of our past life. As years go on, we should have such a firm faith founded on the rock of experience that we will not be lightly shaken. Peace should be a characteristic of our life--the joy and peace which come from a certainty that there is a Purpose in all events. The sense that G.o.d has been with us in the past is a help in interpreting the history of our nation. Even our troubles are a proof that He is disciplining us. For the service of Intercession, which my brother uses in Westminster Abbey at the time of this war, the opening sentence is 'The Lord our G.o.d be with us,' and the answer is, 'As He was with our fathers.'

The College is getting on well. You must come up and see me this year, while you still know a number of men. I have now a little evening service--compline--in my rooms at 10 o'clock; Masterman asked me to have it. He asked men to come, and they asked others. I purposely refrained from asking any one. We are sometimes a goodly number. I think it is helpful to those who come. It is, I know, to me. We have a hymn when we have sufficient musical talent!

{122}

_To G. J. C._

Christ's College, Cambridge: 1900.

Gwatkin has exploded Anthony, 'who never existed.' But for all that I think Anthony is much like Adam and Eve. The originals may 'never have existed.' Yet their story belongs to all time. And there will be Anthonies and Adams and Eves to the end of time. It comforts me to feel that that which makes for evil is not my true self, but a wretched, cunning animal existence independent of me, existing before I came into being, although capable of appealing to me--a serpent.

I am half glad and half sorry to hear of your harmonium. Public worship is a terribly difficult thing, and it is well at times that we should realise its difficulties, and have it stripped bare of many helpful accessories. Yet worship in a village church impresses me. As in a college chapel, I realise then the continuity of the race. An old church tells me of generations of men who lived my life, to whom the present was everything, and the dead almost nothing, who never could seriously believe that some day the world would whirl and follow the sun without them. It tells me more than most things of what St. Paul means when he said that we were all making one perfect man. And I am humbled and thankful to know that I in my generation can do something towards the Christ 'that is to be.'

Read the Old Testament itself. Nothing will {123} atone for lack of knowledge of the Bible. Robertson Smith's and Adam Smith's books (especially the latter's) on the Old Testament Prophets ought to prove useful. . . . When I call a man by his Christian name, I usually make it a rule to pray for him. I shall do so in your case. I will try to pray every day. I wonder whether you would sometimes pray for me: I believe immensely in the power of prayer. It is the greatest favour I can ask of you, and I know I have no right to prefer the request; but it would be kind of you if you could occasionally. One needs all the help one can get in this strange life up here. Now I will end. I have written you a strange, unreserved letter. Forgive me. How I wish this dreadful war was at an end! U----'s going was a blow to me; but I am sure he did the right thing. I admire and love that man. . . .

_To G. J. C._

Castleton, Swanage: 1900.

. . . You will not have misinterpreted my silence. I could not answer your letter until I had secured a time for quiet thought and for prayer. When I try to write, I feel the uselessness of words. I am doing better when I am praying for you than when I am writing to you.

Yet I must write. . . . It is strange that G.o.d should have made us thus. To those whom He honours most He gives largest capacity for love, and therefore largest capacity for suffering. It is still more strange that we would not wish to be {124} without the love in spite of the agony which it brings. It must be because

All loves are shadows cast By the beautiful eternal hills Of Thine unbeginning past.

I feel this truth 'in seasons of calm weather.' But at other times I ask myself, I ask G.o.d, angrily, Why should some men have no obstacle to their love? Why should another suffer more than any one can tell--more than, it sometimes seems to me, can ever be requited? I cannot answer the question. But I often think of the great unsatisfied heart of G.o.d, and then I think of this poor unsatisfied heart made in His image, and I feel that He understands me, and that I understand Him better than I used to do, before this terrible hunger of love began.

I pray G.o.d that He will deal tenderly with you, G----, and I am sure that He will. It cuts me to the heart to think of your suffering, and I would stop it this moment if I could. So would G.o.d--for He loves you more than I do--unless it were the best thing for you. It is written of the Son of man, _emathen aph on epathen_. May the same words be true of you and of me! G.o.d bless you and give you Light and Peace!

Peace is something more than joy, Even the joys above; For peace, of all created things, Is likest Him we love.

[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrase in the above paragraph was transliterated as follows: _emathen_--epsilon, mu, alpha, theta, epsilon, nu; _aph_--alpha, phi; _on_--emega, nu; _epathen_--epsilon, pi, alpha, theta, epsilon, nu]

This letter may appear cold to you. It is not. I feel more deeply than I write. . . . Some day, if {125} you care to hear, I will tell you something about my own imperfect life. I can't write it down.

Later the day will dawn. But G.o.d sends the darkness that we may learn to trust Him, I have never yet found Him to fail. We cannot trust Him too much.

_To the mother of a friend, after having been present at his funeral._

Cambridge: April 22, 1900.

I feel I must write and tell you how grateful I am to you for your kindness in allowing me to be present on Thursday. Whenever I think of your son who has pa.s.sed away, that text comes into my mind: 'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see G.o.d.' He was pure in heart, and I cannot think of him as lifeless, but as actually seeing G.o.d. . . . I am thankful to have been allowed to be his friend. I shall never forget him; his life remains a source of strength and inspiration to me. It comforts me now to know that he is sinking deeper and deeper into the peace of G.o.d, which pa.s.seth all understanding. You were talking to me about W----; I could not say all that I wished to say. . . . I am very, very slow to suggest ordination to a man. I realise the responsibility of doing so, but there is no man whom I desire to see ordained more than W----; he has been to me more help than I can possibly say. I dare not try to tell you all that he has done for me, because you would think I was exaggerating. I cannot help feeling that, if he helps me so much, he might help others also, and that, if he were ordained, {126} he would have singular opportunities for rendering such help. But I do not press him in the matter, because I might do wrong; but I pray again and again that, if G.o.d wishes him to be ordained, He will make His purpose clear, and I am quite sure that He will not leave us in the dark.

_To C. T. W._

Cambridge: July 1900.