Letters to His Friends Part 15

I do not like to weaken the paradoxes of the Gospel. I think there is more in Christ's words concerning 'loving one's life' or 'self' than you suggest. You say it means 'self-denial.' Yes, that is true, but what a tremendous meaning 'deny one's self' has! To disown your ident.i.ty, that is not much easier when you come to think of it than to lose your life.

I know you will find out what it all means, and that human love, beauty, home, social service, will be more real than ever before, because you will see the eternal reality underneath. You will be a 'new creation.'

Now I must stop without satisfactorily answering your question, without entering into any casuistical questions concerning conformity such as you suggest. I should like you to think out that problem in casuistry more for yourself, before I attempt to answer it. Forgive me for talking so much about myself. When all is said and done, words fail me. I can only thank G.o.d that you exist, and that you let me love you.

{171}

_To H. P., a Clifton College master who had given up school work in order to devote himself to the School Mission in Bristol._

40 Upperton Gardens, Eastbourne: September 30, 1902.

. . . I am glad that you feel you have done right in giving up your school work. I am sorry that you left Clifton, but you thought you _ought_ to go, and that is an end of the matter. I can only hope that you are in some measure a connecting-link between the school and its mission. . . . Don't forget me in my very different work--and yet work for the same Master--at college. I have need of your prayers. It is so easy to blunder, and to drive a man further from the kingdom by lack of sympathy and love. I feel more than I used to my weakness, and my absolute need of prayer.

_To his brother Edward in South Africa._

40 Upperton Gardens, Eastbourne: October 1, 1902.

The October term has an interest of its own, bringing, as it does, a batch of freshmen. I try more and more not simply to impose my ideals upon them, but to find out their ideals and to quicken them with all my power. But a.s.suredly 'infinite sympathy is needed for the infinite pathos of human life;' and my sympathies are as yet imperfectly developed.

Still, as years go by, I think I can sympathise more with those who have been trained up in other schools of thought and experience. I was reading in a book lately that we are largely responsible for our {172} own experiences, that we have a duty to get them of the right kind. The book was by an American lady on social questions. I think there is truth in her words.

_To D. B. K., head of a Public School Mission._

Eastbourne: October 1902.

I delight to know men better, because I find so much more in them than I had expected. They differ from me, and I try to get out of the habit of making them in my own image, and try to find the image in which G.o.d is making them. I have been praying for you. I want a spirit of sanity and sacrifice to possess you, that you may be able to see the good works which G.o.d has prepared beforehand that you should walk in them. . . .

I am struck by the sacrifice which Christ demands. Unless the man hates father, mother, family, friends, yea, and himself also, he 'cannot be'

His disciple, Christ gives them all back again--only 'with persecutions.'

We find more in the world, when we are 'crucified to it,' than ever before; but there is a something added. We have a deeper joy in home ties, in human love, in social life, in the changing seasons, in the dear old earth. Only the joy has a note of sorrow, a pathos, which Christ calls 'persecutions.' We see more in life, and yet we are in a measure out of sympathy with our surroundings. We have heard and we can never forget the sorrows of those who are 'one man' with us. There is more in that word 'persecutions' than this, as no doubt {173} you have found.

But this, I think, is part of its signification, isn't it? . . .

I believe in your 'mission' even more than you do. It is men like you, who through great tribulations strive to enter the Kingdom, that G.o.d uses. The fact that you are two men, and that the true man--the Christ--is painfully yet surely being 'formed' in you, means that you will be able to appeal to others who are painfully conscious of their double consciousness and are often the slaves of the lower, inhuman self.

Your wealth of affection will make you feel as St. Paul did--_teknia mou, ous palin mechris ou morphothe Christos en humin_.

[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrases in the above paragraph were transliterated as follows: _teknia_--tau, epsilon, kappa, nu, iota, alpha; _mou_--mu, omicron, upsilon; _ous_--omicron, upsilon, final sigma; _palin_--pi, alpha, lambda, iota, nu; _mechris_--mu, epsilon, ch, rho, iota, final sigma; _ou_--omicron, upsilon; _morphothe_--mu, omicron, rho, phi, omega, theta, eta; _Christos_--Chi, rho, iota, sigma, tau, omicron, final sigma; _en_--epsilon, nu; _humin_--(rough breathing mark) upsilon, mu, iota, nu]

These words sum up for me, better than any others, my deepest wish for my friends. I fall back with desperate energy upon prayer, as the one power by which my wish can be realised.

You seem to look ahead almost more than is necessary. I delight in the feeling that I am in eternity, that I can serve G.o.d now fully and effectively, that the next piece of the road will come in sight when I am ready to walk on it 'I do not ask to see the distant scene.' I hate the unsettled feeling that I have not yet begun my main work.

Don't measure work by human standards of greatness. Your present occupation might well be the envy of angels--if they could envy.

But now I am lecturing. So it is time to shut up. . . .

I fear that the origin of evil is more of a mystery to me now than when I wrote that essay! But I still think that we are fighting a real being, one whom {174} we can best describe as personal. His will, it seems to me, must be given to him by G.o.d. He has identified it with a hitherto unrealised potentiality for disobedience. In plain language, his will is free, and therefore capable of resisting G.o.d. I should like to have a talk with you some day about it. But, as you see, the problem is beyond me. . . .

It is a strength to me to feel that you are fighting the devil in yourself and others up in ----, and that I am 'one man' with you.

_To D. B. K._

St. Moritz: January 1903.

It is getting on for your birthday, isn't it? Congratulations. I wish I knew the exact day. I think more and more that a birthday is a subject not--as poor Job thought--for anathemas, but for congratulations. To be a reasonable human being--with capacity for seeing something of G.o.d's purposes for the race--with power to forward them--with opportunities for love and sacrifice and prayer--oh! I am so glad that I was not a mere animal. And to be born at the end of the nineteenth century--I prefer that period even to Apostolic times. We can know more of G.o.d's purposes, enter more deeply into His mind and even His heart, than primitive Christians.

I have been reading to-day Temple's essay on 'The Education of the World'

in 'Essays and Reviews.' Get hold of an old copy of that book, and read it. It is strong and manly, and rings true. I {175} love that old man with his tenderness, simplicity, thoughtfulness, and will of steel. I thank G.o.d for him. There is something about utter goodness which makes me wors.h.i.+p, and fills me with the challenge, 'Go and do thou likewise.'

Goodness is as infectious as any disease.

I have been thinking lately of the self-sacrifice of G.o.d's life. I suppose that is the reason why He can enter into our lives--see them from the inside.

Thou canst conceive our highest and our lowest, Pulses of n.o.bleness and aches of shame.

It must have been the wealth of His self-sacrifice which made Him give us selves--wills--of our own. Then He makes them His own by more self-sacrifice. We are made in His image--made to go out of self, and find our self by losing it. Other men at first seem to limit our freedom, but later we find that the apparent limitations are only just scope for realising our true self. Each time we go out of self, and enter into another 'ego,' we return the richer for our sacrifice. We take up other lives into our own, and are richer than a millionaire.

I think that when the other 'ego' is most unlike our own--when at first sight the man is repulsive, and (worse still) uninteresting to us--when the sacrifice is great, if we would see life through his eyes, share his ambitions, fears, longings, and mental outlook, then is the time when we are peculiarly rewarded for our pains. Our consciousness is larger, more human, more divine than before.

'By feeblest agents doth our G.o.d fulfil His {176} righteous will' is the thought suggested by some of our brother-clergy. G.o.d does not choose the agents we should choose. Or perhaps the latter do not respond to His choice. Yet I feel that I am one of them, and that it is my faults writ large which I detest in them. I feel that, with all the riches of the revelation which I possess, I have that same self-satisfaction and lack of sympathy which I loathe in others. It is my life which is the stumbling-block to my message. They have often far less light than I have, but walk in it more simply than I do. The rafter in my own eye troubles me even more than the speck in theirs. But it is hard, G.o.d knows, sometimes to feel His presence in their presence. But the forces of good must be united ('Keep, ah! keep them combined. Else . . .'), and if by any effort we can enter into their lives, and transcend the barriers between us, we are not only enriching our own life, but we are doing our best to show a combined front against the almost overwhelming forces of evil.

Even the Apostles must have found it hard to work together. We know they did. Look at Peter and Paul. Yet the spirit of unity was stronger than all that opposed Him, and the One Body was in some measure realised.

What was difficult in the childhood of the Body is still more difficult in its manhood. And Englishmen, with their strong sense of individuality, find it a terrible lesson to learn.

But pray. You enter then into another man's 'ego.' You see him in G.o.d.

You see him as an end in himself. Remember Kant's maxim--a wonderful maxim from one who would not, I suppose, be {177} technically called a Christian--'Treat humanity, whether in thyself or in another, always as an end, not simply as a means.' Put aside a certain amount of time, and pray for one man. If your thoughts wander, do not be disturbed, do not try to find when they began or how they began to wander; do not despair, go back to the subject in hand. And G.o.d will have mercy. Your influence, your life, your all, depends on prayer.

We must faint sometimes. But let your saddest times, your deepest struggles be known to G.o.d. Gain there the strength and quietness which you need for life. But don't let men see the agony--let them see the peace which comes from wrestling alone with G.o.d--wrestling for them.

You are not one man, but two or three. Thank G.o.d for that. It means that you will have a hard life--an awful struggle with self or selves: but it also means more influence, more power to enter into man's life.

So many of the finest men owe their attractiveness to their diverse, many-sided nature. You will be able to feel for such, and perhaps to help them. You are half a Greek with your yearning for beauty and knowledge, half a Hebrew with your loathing for sin and love of G.o.d. The Greek in you must not be annihilated, but it must be subordinated to the Hebrew. Conscience must be absolute master. You must sacrifice the 'Greek' to Christ; but He will give you back what is best in the Greek ideal, all the better for the mark of the Cross on it. He will give it you back partly in this world, partly in the next, when you have learnt to renounce it--if need {178} were, for ever--for His sake. But you must give up all for Him without thought of reward. He can give no reward to the man who is looking for it. The thought of your life helps me. Go on, for the night cometh when no man can work. Thank G.o.d it is yet day.

_To his brother Edward in South Africa._

Muhlen, Switzerland: January 11, 1903.

I found walking a pleasant change after reading philosophy, which I have been doing during my holidays. I seem to have been getting my ideas a little clearer, and am no longer as content as I was with the Kantian doctrine, that our knowledge in speculative matters never gets beyond 'appearances.' I feel that at every turn we do get to that which _is_--to an underlying reality. I cannot feel that Kant's hard and fast division between 'speculative' and 'moral' reason holds good. The external world, because it is intelligible, must be akin to us; there must be an intelligence in it, otherwise it would never become an object of knowledge to our intelligence. It is not only in our ethical life that we come across the absolute consciousness. I feel now more than ever how we cannot divide up ourselves into water-tight compartments, and think of reason, will, and feeling as separate things, lying side by side. They can be separated--abstracted--in thought, but in actual life you never find one without the other. We cannot think without some degree of attention, and attention involves an exercise of will, and will cannot {179} be exercised without desire, and desire involves feeling.

I think faith also cannot be regarded as a separate faculty. Reason, will, and feeling are all involved even in the faith of a poor cottager; much more does reason enter into the faith of a thoughtful man.

I have been reading Butler, and hope when I go back to study Hume. What a wealth of light the conception of 'Development' has shed upon the problems which exercised the eighteenth century! I have read half through Leslie Stephen's 'Thought in the Eighteenth Century,' and I have been struck again and again at the new aspect that the old questions take when looked at from the standpoint of Evolution.

I feel also that we need to study more the evolution of _thought_--the necessary phases that reason (like man's physical life) must pa.s.s through before perfection. . . .