Chapter 25

THE QUESTIONING FERVOUR.

And now I turn to the other class--that which, while the former has fled to tradition for refuge from doubt, sets its face towards the spiritual east, and in prayer and sorrow and hope looks for a dawn--the noble band of reverent doubters--as unlike those of the last century who scoffed, as those of the present who pass on the other side. They too would know; but they know enough already to know further, that it is from the hills and not from the mines their aid must come. They know that a perfect intellectual proof would leave them doubting all the same; that their high questions cannot be answered to the intellect alone, for their whole nature is the questioner; that the answers can only come as questioners and their questions grow towards them. Hence, growing hope, blossoming ever and anon into the white flower of confidence, is their answer as yet; their hope--the Beatific Vision--the _happy-making sight_, as Milton renders the word of the mystics.

It is strange how gentle a certain large class of the priesthood will be with those who, believing there is a God, find it hard to trust him, and how fierce with those who, unable, from the lack of harmony around and in them, to say they are sure there is a God, would yet, could they find him, trust him indeed. "Ah, but," answer such of the clergy and their followers, "you want a God of your own making." "Certainly," the doubters reply, "we do not want a God of your making: that would be to turn the universe into a hell, and you into its torturing demons. We want a God like that man whose name is so often on your lips, but whose spirit you understand so little--so like him that he shall be the bread of life to _all_ our hunger--not that hunger only already satisfied in you, who take the limit of your present consciousness for that of the race, and say, 'This is all the world needs:' we know the bitterness of our own hearts, and your incapacity for intermeddling with its joy. We

have another mountain-range, from whence Bursteth a sun unutterably bright;

nor for us only, but for you also, who will not have the truth except it come to you in a system authorized of man."

I have attributed a general utterance to these men, widely different from each other as I know they are.

Here is a voice from one of them, Arthur Hugh Clough, who died in 1861, well beloved. It follows upon two fine poems, called _The Questioning Spirit_, and _Bethesda_, in which is represented the condition of many of the finest minds of the present century. Let us receive it as spoken by one in the foremost ranks of these doubters, men reviled by their brethren who dare not doubt for fear of offending the God to whom they attribute their own jealousy. But God is assuredly pleased with those who will neither lie for him, quench their dim vision of himself, nor count _that_ his mind which they would despise in a man of his making.

Across the sea, along the shore, In numbers more and ever more, From lonely hut and busy town, The valley through, the mountain down, What was it ye went out to see, Ye silly folk of Galilee? The reed that in the wind doth shake? The weed that washes in the lake? The reeds that waver, the weeds that float?-- young man preaching in a boat.

What was it ye went out to hear By sea and land, from far and near? A teacher? Rather seek the feet Of those who sit in Moses' seat. Go humbly seek, and bow to them, Far off in great Jerusalem. From them that in her courts ye saw, Her perfect doctors of the law, What is it came ye here to note?-- A young man preaching in a boat

A prophet! Boys and women weak! Declare, or cease to rave: Whence is it he hath learned to speak? Say, who his doctrine gave? A prophet? Prophet wherefore he Of all in Israel tribes?-- _He teacheth with authority, And not as do the Scribes_.

Here is another from one who will not be offended if I class him with this school--the finest of critics as one of the most finished of poets--Matthew Arnold. Only my reader must remember that of none of my poets am I free to choose that which is most characteristic: I have the scope of my volume to restrain me.

THE GOOD SHEPHERD WITH THE KID.

He saves the sheep; the goats he doth not save! So rang Tertullian's sentence, on the side Of that unpitying Phrygian sect which cried: "Him can no fount of fresh forgiveness lave, Who sins, once washed by the baptismal wave!" So spake the fierce Tertullian. But she sighed, The infant Church: of love she felt the tide Stream on her from her Lord's yet recent grave. And then she smiled, and in the Catacombs, With eye suffused but heart inspired true, On those walls subterranean, where she hid Her head in ignominy, death, and tombs, She her Good Shepherd's hasty image drew; And on his shoulders, not a lamb, a kid.

Of these writers, Tennyson is the foremost: he has written _the_ poem of the hoping doubters, _the_ poem of our age, the grand minor organ-fugue of _In Memoriam_. It is the cry of the bereaved Psyche into the dark infinite after the vanished Love. His friend is nowhere in his sight, and God is silent. Death, God's final compulsion to prayer, in its dread, its gloom, its utter stillness, its apparent nothingness, urges the cry. Meanings over the dead are mingled with profoundest questionings of philosophy, the signs of nature, and the story of Jesus, while now and then the star of the morning, bright Phosphor, flashes a few rays through the shifting cloudy dark. And if the sun has not arisen on the close of the book, yet the Aurora of the coming dawn gives light enough to make the onward journey possible and hopeful: who dares say that he walks in the full light? that the counsels of God are to him not a matter of faith, but of vision?

Bewildered in the perplexities of nature's enigmas, and driven by an awful pain of need, Tennyson betakes himself to the God of nature, thus:

LIV.

The wish, that of the living whole No life may fail beyond the grave; Derives it not from what we have The likest God within the soul?

Are God and Nature then at strife, That Nature lends such evil dreams, So careful of the type she seems, So careless of the single life;

That I, considering everywhere Her secret meaning in her deeds, And finding that of fifty seeds She often brings but one to bear;

I falter where I firmly trod, And falling with my weight of cares Upon the great world's altar-stairs That slope thro' darkness up to God;

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope, And gather dust and chaff, and call To what I feel is Lord of all, And faintly trust the larger hope.

Once more, this is how he uses the gospel-tale: Mary has returned home from the sepulchre, with Lazarus so late its prey, and her sister and Jesus:--

XXXII.

Her eyes are homes of silent prayer, Nor other thought her mind admits But, he was dead, and there he sits, And he that brought him back is there.

Then one deep love doth supersede All other, when her ardent gaze Roves from the living brother's face, And rests upon the Life indeed.

All subtle thought, all curious fears, Borne down by gladness so complete, She bows, she bathes the Saviour's feet With costly spikenard and with tears.

Thrice blest whose lives are faithful prayers, Whose loves in higher love endure; What souls possess themselves so pure, Or is there blessedness like theirs?

* * * * *

I have thus traced--how slightly!--the course of the religious poetry of England, from simple song, lovingly regardful of sacred story and legend, through the chant of philosophy, to the full-toned lyric of adoration. I have shown how the stream sinks in the sands of an evil taste generated by the worship of power and knowledge, and that a new growth of the love of nature--beauty counteracting not contradicting science--has led it by a fair channel back to the simplicities of faith in some, and to a holy questioning in others; the one class having for its faith, the other for its hope, that the heart of the Father is a heart like ours, a heart that will receive into its noon the song that ascends from the twilighted hearts of his children.

Gladly would I have prayed for the voices of many more of the singers of our country's psalms. Especially do I regret the arrival of the hour, because of the voices of living men and women. But the time is over and gone. The twilight has already embrowned the gray glooms of the cathedral arches, and is driving us forth to part at the door.

But the singers will yet sing on to him that hath ears to hear. When he returns to seek them, the shadowy door will open to his touch, the long-drawn aisles receding will guide his eye to the carven choir, and there they still stand, the sweet singers, content to repeat ancient psalm and new song to the prayer of the humblest whose heart would join in England's Antiphon.

THE END.

[1] The rhymes of the first and second and of the fourth and fifth lines throughout the stanzas, are all, I think, what the French call feminine rhymes, as in the words "sleeping," "weeping." This I think it better not to attempt retaining, because the final unaccented syllable is generally one of those _e_'s which, having first become mute, have since been dropped from our spelling altogether.

[2] For the grammatical interpretation of this line, I am indebted to Mr. Richard Morris. _Shall_ is here used, as it often is, in the sense of _must_, and _rede_ is a noun; the paraphrase of the whole being, "_Son, what must be to me for counsel?_" "_What counsel must I follow?_"

[3] "Do not blame me, it is my nature."

[4] _Mon_ is used for _man_ or _woman_: human being. It is so used in Lancashire still: they say _mon_ to a woman.

[5] "They weep quietly and _becomingly_." I think there must be in this word something of the sense of _gently,-uncomplainingly_.

[6] "And are shrunken (_clung_ with fear) _like_ the clay." _So_ here is the same as _as_. For this interpretation I am indebted to Mr. Morris.

[7] "It is no wonder though it pleases me very ill."

[8] I think the poet, wisely anxious to keep his last line just what it is, was perplexed for a rhyme, and fell on the odd device of saying, for "both day and night," "both day and the other."

[9] "All as if it were not never, I wis."

[10] "So that many men say--True it is, all goeth but God's will."

[11] I conjecture "All that grain (me) groweth green."

[12] _Not_ is a contraction for _ne wat, know not_. "For I know not whither I must go, nor how long here I dwell." I think _y_ is omitted by mistake before _duelle_.

[13] This is very poor compared with the original.

[14] I owe almost all my information on the history of these plays to Mr. Collier's well-known work on English Dramatic Poetry.

[15] _Able to suffer_, deserving, subject to, obnoxious to, liable to death and vengeance.

[16] The word _harry_ is still used in Scotland, but only in regard to a bird's nest.

[17] Do-well, Do-better, and Do-best.

[18] Complexion.

[19] Ruddiness--complexion.

[20] Twig.

[21] Life (?).--I think _she_ should be _he_.

[22] Field.

[23] "Carry you beyond this region."

[24] For the knowledge of this poem I am indebted to the Early English Text Society, now printing so many valuable manuscripts.

[25] The _for_ here is only an intensive.

[26] _Pref_ is _proof_. _Put in pref_ seems to stand for something more than _being tested_. Might it not mean _proved to be a pearl of price?_

[27] A word acknowledged to be obscure. Mr. Morris suggests _on the left hand_, as unbelieved.

[28] "Except that which his sole wit may judge."

[29] "Be equal to thy possessions:" "fit thy desires to thy means."

[30] "Ambition has uncertainty." We use the word _ticklish_ still.

[31] "Is mingled everywhere."

[32] To relish, to like. "Desire no more than is fitting for thee."

[33] For.

[34] "Let thy spiritual and not thine animal nature guide thee."

[35] "And I dare not falsely judge the reverse."

[36] A poem so like this that it may have been written immediately after reading it, is attributed to Robert Henryson, the Scotch poet. It has the same refrain to every verse as Lydgate's.

[37] "Mourning for mishaps that I had caught made me almost mad."

[38] "Led me all one:" "brought me back to peace, unity, harmony." (?)

[39] "That I read on (it)."

[40] _Of_ in the original, as in the title.

[41] Does this mean by contemplation on it?

[42] "I paid good attention to it."

[43] "Greeted thee"--_in the very affliction._

[44] "For Christ's love let us do the same."

[45] "Whatever grief or woe enslaves thee." But _thrall_ is a blunder, for the word ought to have rhymed with _make._

[46] "The precious leader that shall judge us."

[47] "When thou art in sorry plight, think of this."

[48] "And death, beyond renewal, lay hold upon their life."

[49] _Sending, message:_ "whatever varying decree God sends thee."

[50] "Receives his message;" "accepts his will."

[51] Recently published by the Early English Text Society. S.L. IV.

[52] "Child born of a bright lady." _Bird, berd, brid, burd_, means _lady_ originally: thence comes our _bride_.

[53] In _Chalmers' English Poets_, from which I quote, it is _selly-worme;_ but I think this must be a mistake. _Silly_ would here mean _weak_.

[54] The first poem he wrote, a very fine one, _The Shepheard's Calender_, is so full of old and provincial words, that the educated people of his own time required a glossary to assist them in the reading of it.

[55] _Eyas_ is a young hawk, whose wings are not fully fledged.

[56] "What less than that is fitting?"

[57] _For_, even in Collier's edition, but certainly a blunder.

[58] _Was_, in the editions; clearly wrong.

[59] "Of the same mould and hand as we."

[60] There was no contempt in the use of this word then.

[61] Simple-hearted, therefore blessed; like the German _selig_.

[62] A shell plentiful on the coast of Palestine, and worn by pilgrims to show that they had visited that country.

[63] _Evil_ was pronounced almost as a monosyllable, and was at last contracted to _ill_.

[64] "Come to find a place." The transitive verb _stow_ means to put in a place: here it is used intransitively.

[65] The list of servants then kept in large houses, the number of such being far greater than it is now.

[66] There has been some blundering in the transcription of the last two lines of this stanza. In the former of the two I have substituted _doth_ for _dost_, evidently wrong. In the latter, the word _cradle_ is doubtful. I suggest _cradled_, but am not satisfied with it. The meaning is, however, plain enough.

[67] "The very blessing the soul needed."

[68] An old English game, still in use in Scotland and America, but vanishing before cricket.

[69] _Silly_ means _innocent_, and therefore _blessed_; ignorant of evil, and in so far helpless. It is easy to see how affection came to apply it to idiots. It is applied to the ox and ass in the next stanza, and is often an epithet of shepherds.

[70] See _Poems by Sir Henry Wotton and others. Edited by the Rev. John Hannah_.

[71] "Know thyself."

[72] "And I have grown their map."

[73] The guilt of Adam's first sin, supposed by the theologians of Dr. Donne's time to be imputed to Adam's descendants.

[74] The past tense: ran.

[75] Their door to enter into sin--by his example.

[76] He was sent by James I. to assist an embassy to the Elector Palatine, who had married his daughter Elizabeth.

[77] He had lately lost his wife, for whom he had a rare love.

[78] "If they know us not by intuition, but by judging from circumstances and signs."

[79] "With most willingness."

[80] "Art proud."

[81] A strange use of the word; but it evidently means _recovered_, and has some analogy with the French _repasser_.

[82] _To_ understood: _to sweeten_.

[83] He plays upon the astrological terms, _houses_ and _schemes_. The astrologers divided the heavens into twelve _houses_; and the diagrams by which they represented the relative positions of the heavenly bodies, they called _schemes_.

[84] The tree of knowledge.

[85] Dyce, following Seward, substitutes _curse_.

[86] A glimmer of that Platonism of which, happily, we have so much more in the seventeenth century.

[87] Should this be "_in_ fees;" that is, in acknowledgment of his feudal sovereignty?

[88] _Warm_ is here elongated, almost treated as a dissyllable.

[89] "He ought not to be forsaken: whoever weighs the matter rightly, will come to this conclusion."

[90] The _Eridan_ is the _Po_.--As regards classical allusions in connexion with sacred things, I would remind my reader of the great reverence our ancestors had for the classics, from the influence they had had in reviving the literature of the country.--I need hardly remind him of the commonly-received fancy that the swan does sing once--just as his death draws nigh. Does this come from the legend of Cycnus changed into a swan while lamenting the death of his friend Phaeton? or was that legend founded on the yet older fancy? The glorious bird looks as if he ought to sing.

[91] The poet refers to the singing of the hymn before our Lord went to the garden by the brook Cedron.

[92] The construction is obscure just from the insertion of the _to_ before _breathe_, where it ought not to be after the verb _hear_. The poet does not mean that he delights to hear that voice more than to breathe gentle airs, but more than to hear gentle airs (to) breathe. _To hear_, understood, governs all the infinitives that follow; among the rest, _the winds (to) chide_.

[93] _Rut_ is used for the sound of the tide in Cheshire. (See _Halliwell's Dictionary_.) Does _rutty_ mean _roaring?_ or does it describe the deep, rugged shores of the Jordan?

[94] A monosyllable, contracted afterwards into _bloom_.

[95] Willows.

[96] _Groom_ originally means just _a man_. It was a word much used when pastoral poetry was the fashion. Spenser has _herd-grooms_ in his _Shepherd's Calendar_. This last is what it means here: _shepherds_.

[97] Obtain, save.

[98] Equivalent to "What are those hands of yours for?"

[99] He was but thirty-nine when he died.

[100] To rhyme with _pray_ in the second line.

[101] Bunch of flowers. He was thinking of Aaron's rod, perhaps.

[102] To correspond to that of Christ.

[103] Again a touch of holy humour: to match his Master's predestination, he will contrive something three years beforehand, with an _if_.

[104] The _here_ in the preceding line means _his book_; hence the _thy book_ is antithetical.

[105] _Concent_ is a singing together, or harmoniously.

[106] Music depends all on proportions.

[107] The diapason is the octave. Therefore "all notes true." See note 2, p. 205.

[108] An intransitive verb: _he was wont_.

[109] The birds called _halcyons_ were said to build their nests on the water, and, while they were brooding, to keep it calm.

[110] The morning star.

[111] The God of shepherds especially, but the God of all nature--the All in all, for _Pan_ means the _All_.

[112] Milton here uses the old Ptolemaic theory of a succession of solid crystal concentric spheres, in which the heavenly bodies were fixed, and which revolving carried these with them. The lowest or innermost of these spheres was that of the moon. "The hollow round of Cynthia's seat" is, therefore, this sphere in which the moon sits.

[113] That cannot be expressed or described.

[114] By _hinges_ he means the axis of the earth, on which it turns as on a hinge. The origin of _hinge_ is _hang_. It is what anything hangs on.

[115] This is an apostrophe to the nine spheres (_see former note_), which were believed by the ancients to send forth in their revolutions a grand harmony, too loud for mortals to hear. But no music of the lower region can make up full harmony without the bass of heaven's organ. The _music of the spheres_ was to Milton the embodiment of the theory of the universe. He uses the symbol often.

[116] _Consort_ is the right word scientifically. It means the _fitting together_ of sounds according to their nature. _Concert_, however, is not wrong. It is even more poetic than _consort_, for it means a _striving together_, which is the idea of all peace: the strife is _together_, and not of one against the other. All harmony is an ordered, a divine strife. In the contest of music, every tone restrains its foot and bows its head to the rest in holy dance.

[117] _Symphony_ is here used for _chorus_, and quite correctly; for _symphony_ is a _voicing together_. To this symphony of the angels the spheres and the heavenly organ are the accompaniment.

[118] Die of the music.

[119] Not merely _swings_, but _lashes about_.

[120] Full of folds or coils.

[121] The legend concerning this cessation of the oracles associates it with the Crucifixion. Milton in _The Nativity_ represents it as the consequence of the very presence of the infant Saviour. War and lying are banished together.

[122] The _genius_ is the local god, the god of the place as a place.

[123] The _Lars_ were the protecting spirits of the ancestors of the family; the _Lemures_ were evil spirits, spectres, or bad ghosts. But the notions were somewhat indefinite.

[124] _Flamen_ was the word used for _priest_ when the Romans spoke of the priest of any particular divinity. Hence the _peculiar power_ in the last line of the stanza.

[125] Jupiter Ammon, worshipped in Libya, in the north of Africa, under the form of a goat. "He draws in his horn."

[126] The Syrian Adonis.

[127] Frightful, horrible, as, _a grisly bear_.

[128] Isis, Orus, Anubis, and Osiris, all Egyptian divinities--the last worshipped in the form of a bull.

[129] No rain falls in Egypt.

[130] Last-born: the star in the east.

[131] Bright-armoured.

[132] Ready for what service may arise.

[133] The _with_ we should now omit, for when we use it we mean the opposite of what is meant here.

[134] It is the light of the soul going out from the eyes, as certainly as the light of the world coming in at the eyes that makes things seen.

[135] The action by which a body attacked collects force by opposition.

[136] Cut roughly through.

[137] Intransitively used. They touch each other.

[138] Self-desire, which is death's pit, &c.

[139] _Which_ understood.

[140] How unpleasant conceit can become. The joy of seeing the Saviour was _stolen_ because they gained it in the absence of the sun!

[141] A trisyllable.

[142] His garland.

[143] The "sunny seed" in their hearts.

[144] From _tine_ or _tind_, to set on fire. Hence _tinder_.

[145] The body of Jesus.

[146] Mark i. 35; Luke xxi. 37. The word _time_ must be associated both with _progress_ and _prayer_--his walking-time and prayer-time.

[147] This is an allusion to the sphere-music: the great heavens is a clock whose hours are those when Jesus retires to his Father; and to these hours the sphere-music gives the chime.

[148] He continues his poetic synonyms for the night.

[149] "Behold I stand at the door and knock."

[150] A monosyllable.

[151] Often used for _chambers_.

[152] "The creation looks for the light, thy shadow?" Or, "The light looks for thy shadow, the sun"?

[153] _Perforce_: of necessity.

[154] He does not mean his fellows, but his bodily nature.

[155] _Savourest?_

[156] The first I ever saw of its hymns was on a broad-sheet of Christmas Carols, with coloured pictures, printed in Seven Dials.

[157] They passed through twenty editions, not to mention one lately published (_by Daniel Sedgwick, of 81, Sun-street, Bishopsgate, a man who, concerning hymns and their writers, knows more than any other man I have met_), from which, carefully edited, I have gathered all my _information_, although I had known the book itself for many years.

[158] The animal _spirits_ of the old physiologists.

[159] In the following five lines I have adopted the reading of the first edition, which, although a little florid, I prefer to the scanty two lines of the later.

[160] False in feeling, nor like God at all, although a ready pagan representation of him. There is much of the pagan left in many Christians--poets too.

[161] _Insisting--persistent_.

[162] Great cloudy ridges, one rising above the other, like a grand stair up to the heavens. _See Wordsworth's note_.

[163] The mountain.

[164] These two lines are just the symbol for the life of their author.

[165] From the rose-light on the snow of its peak.

[166] They all flow from under the glaciers, fed by their constant melting.

[167] Turning for contrast to the glaciers, which he apostrophizes in the next line.

[168] Antecedent, _peaks_.

[Transcriber's Note: In this electronic edition, the footnotes have been numbered and relocated to the end of the work. In chapter 14, the word "Iris", which appears in our print copy, seems to be a misprint for "Isis" and was corrected as such.]