Part 27

When Mr. Thackeray propounds the query, Who can foresee everything, and always? and returns his own answer (a sufficiently safe one), Not the wisest amongst us,—he does so in reference to the counsels of the worldly woman who governed and directed the Newcome family; which counsels bore results so different from what that elderly lady desired, and foresaw. And he proceeds to point his moral by the tale of a French king’s fall. “When his majesty, Louis XIV., jockied his grandson on to the throne of Spain (founding thereby the present revered dynasty of that country), did he expect to peril his own, and bring all Europe about his royal ears? Could a late King of France, eager for the advantageous establishment of one of his darling sons, and anxious to procure a beautiful Spanish princess, with a crown and kingdom in reversion, for the simple and obedient youth, ever suppose that the welfare of his whole august race and reign would be upset by that smart speculation?” The master of irony professes to take only the most noble examples to illustrate the conduct of such a noble old personage as her ladyship of Kew, who brought a prodigious deal of trouble upon some of the innocent members of her family, whom no doubt she thought to better in life by her experienced guidance, and undoubted worldly wisdom. We may be as deep as Jesuits, he continues,—may know the world ever so well, lay the best ordered plans, and the profoundest combinations,—and by a certain not unnatural turn of fate, we, and our plans and combinations, are sent flying before the wind. “We may be as wise as Louis Philippe, that many counselled Ulysses whom the respectable world admired so; and after years of patient scheming, and prodigies of skill; after coaxing, wheedling, doubling, bullying wisdom, behold, yet stronger powers interpose: and schemes and skill and violence are nought.” As Schiller’s Wallenstein puts it, in his rather heathenish way—

“For jealous are the powers of destiny. Joy premature, and shouts ere victory, Encroach upon their rights and privileges. We sow the seed, and they the growth determine.”

“Il y a,” in the words of a masterly French moralist, “je ne sais quelle _force cachée_, a dit Lucrèce (ce que d’autres avec Bossuet nommeront Providence), qui semble se plaire à briser les choses humaines, à faire manquer d’un coup l’appereil établi de la puissance, et à déjouer la pièce, juste au moment ou elle promettait de mieux aller.” O fate of fools! exclaims Zara, in the “Mourning Bride,”—“officious in contriving; in executing, puzzled, lame, and lost;” a rebuke which Selim deprecates in his reply:—

“Prescience is Heaven’s alone, not given to man. If I have failed in what, as being man, I needs must fail, impute not as a crime My nature’s want.”

So with the resolute undertaking of Argantes, in Tasso, to slay Tancred, the slayer of his betrothed; all the people applauding his resolve, and rejoicing in the assurance that this—

“... boaster stout Would kill the prince who late had slain his love. O promise vain! it otherwise fell out. Men purpose, but high gods dispose above; For underneath his sword this boaster died, Whom there he scorned and threatened in his pride.”

In Homer, again, how grieves Achilles, and, impetuous, vents to all his myrmidons his loud laments?

“By what vain promise, gods! did I engage, When, to console Menætius’ feeble age, I vowed his much-loved offspring to restore; Charged with rich spoils to fair Opuntia’s shore. But mighty Jove cuts short, with just disdain, The long, long views of poor designing man!”

_A PURSEBEARER’S PROTEST AGAINST PURPOSELESS WASTE._

ST. JOHN xii. 5.

It was very costly ointment of spikenard that Mary took and anointed therewith the feet of Jesus, so that the house was filled with the odour of the ointment. So costly, that it set one of His apostles to work, counting the cost. Judas Iscariot was this ready reckoner. He was conversant with figures. He was the pursebearer of the apostolic circle, and knew, it seems, how and when and why to keep a tight finger on the purse-strings. The wasted contents—waste he accounted it—of that alabaster box might have been sold for three hundred denarii, and the proceeds given to the poor. As pursebearer he protested. And nominally his protest was in behalf of the poor.

Referring to that text in Exodus which tells how the people brought much more than enough for the service of the work which the Lord commanded to make, the question was put by a divine who, being dead, yet speaketh: When will the earth again hear that glad announcement? Yet, until we bring more than enough, he said, at least until there is kindled in us a spirit which will make us desire to do so, we shall never bring enough. “And ought we not? Your economists will say _No._ They who would think the sun a useful creature, if he would come down from the sky and light their fires, will gravely reprehend such wasteful extravagance.” This last figure of speech has its parallel in Mr. Carlyle’s estimate of “the uses of this Dante:” he declines to say much about his “uses;” he holds that an influence working, like Dante’s, into the depths of our existence, and feeding through long times the life-roots of all excellent things whatsoever, is not to be very satisfactorily computed by “utilities.” Dante shall therefore be invaluable, or of no value: “We will not estimate the sun by the quantity of gas-light it saves us.”

Judas the pursebearer was, as a French divine characterizes him, _exact_, _positif_, _calculateur_; one who habituated himself to compute everything by a ready-money standard, and to appraise every action by the rule of immediate utility. He might be accurate to a fraction in his reckoning of what that “wasted” ointment would have fetched in the market; but, had not his heart been already in some sort ossified, he would have comprehended that “au dessus de l’utile il y a le beau, et au dessus du calcul le dévouement, et qu’ à une âme qui déborde d’une joie extraordinaire il faut des moyens extraordinaires aussi pour exprimer ce qu’elle éprouve. Judas a perdu le sens des réalités purement spirituelles, qui lui paraissent vagues, parce que, comme l’infini, elles résistent aux chiffres.”

When Dr. Justus Jonas told Dr. Martin Luther of a certain potent landholder, who said to Duke John Frederic, when commending to him the gospel of Christ, “Sir, the gospel pays no interest,”—“Have you no grains?” was Luther’s interrogative comment,—citing the words of the swine at the lion’s feast, when invited to feast on recondite dainties. Even so, said Dr. Martin, there are inveterate worldlings who, when invited to the spiritual feast of fat things well refined, “turn up their snouts, and ask for guilders. Offer a cow nutmeg, and she will reject it for old hay.”

It is a too true bill of indictment against the mass of men, that, knowing that two and two make four, and that four is of a higher value than three, they practically conclude, carrying out into practice the conclusion, that to amass is to become wealthy, and that to bestow is to become the poorer. With this arithmetic the children of this world are wise in their generation, and add field to field, house to house, to some purpose. But by what right, asks a voice from the sanctuary, do they take upon themselves to pronounce on such qualities and realities as devotion and charity, as detachment from the “good things of this life” and renunciation of indulgence to the senses? If they witness a deed of noble self-sacrifice, they can but wag their heads, in shocked surprise and bewilderment at such a blunder in arithmetic, _une telle faute de calcul_. “Ils ne comprennent pas qu’on puisse soupirer après d’autres biens que ceux de la matière, après d’autres vérités que celles de l’arithmétique.” There are many, very many more things than are dreamt of in their philosophy; dreaming, indeed, is rather out of their way; and perhaps philosophy too, for the matter of that.

Coleridge, denouncing the “moral” consequences of Napoleon’s tyranny, as far more to be dreaded than the worst of those outward and calculable evils, which chiefly shock the imaginations of men, is out of all patience with such objections as, “What _good_ will the Tyrolese do themselves by their heroic resistance?” “What are the Spaniards fighting for?” etc.,—as if man were made only to eat above ground, and be eaten; as if we had no dignity to preserve, no conscience to obey, no immortality to expect.

What good can it do him? demands the vulgar fine lady in “Cecil,” who hears that a certain well-to-do man of genius has written a book. A man, she argues, writes for money or distinction: what can be this man’s object? he don’t want to be made a baronet, nor does he want to increase his income. Where can be the _use_ of writing? And where, she is (by cross-questioning) answered, can be the use to the aloe of its flower, to the mine of its gold? Oldbuck of Monkbarns might have done worse than parody, as he did, the “brutal ignorance” of your _cui bono_ querists of the baser sort, in the strain of Gray’s Bard,—

“Weave the warp and weave the woof, The winding-sheet of wit and sense; Dull garment of defensive proof ’Gainst all that does not gather pence.”

That a new machine, a new experiment, the discovery of a salt, or of a bone, should, in England, receive a wider homage, than the most profound speculation from which no obvious results are apprehended,—this way of contemplating affairs Mr. Buckle was prompt to own as certainly productive of great good. But he also took care to declare it to be, with equal certainty, a one-sided way, satisfying a part only of the human mind—many of the noblest intellects craving for something which it cannot supply. There are mortals who, as a clerical essayist has said, cannot understand or sympathise with the gratification arising from a study of graceful and beautiful objects; who think that the supply of animal necessities is all that any man (but themselves, perhaps) can need. What more can he want? they exclaim, if the man be well-fed, and well-dressed, and well-lodged. Why, if he had been a horse or a pig, is the answer, he would have wanted nothing more; but the possession of a rational soul brings with it pressing wants which are not of a material nature, not to be supplied by material things, and not felt by pigs and horses. And the craving for surrounding objects of grace and beauty is held to be one of these. Mr. Emerson, in his far-going way, goes so far as to say, as regards the “base rate at which the highest mental and moral gifts are held” in his country,—that let a man attain the highest and broadest culture that any American has possessed, then let him die by sea-storm, railroad collision, or other accident, “and all America will acquiesce that the best thing has happened to him; that, after the education has gone far, such is the expensiveness of America, that the best use to put a fine person to, is, to drown him to save his board.” M. de Tocqueville somewhere observes, that to cross almost impenetrable forests, to swim deep rivers, to encounter pestilential marshes, to sleep exposed to the damp air of the woods,—these are efforts which an American easily conceives, if a dollar is to be gained by them—that is the point; but that a man should take such journeys from curiosity, he cannot understand. The German poet is often cited for his remark, that the Cow of Isis is to some the divine symbol of knowledge, to others but the milch cow, only regarded for the pounds of butter she will yield. An English sympathiser exclaims, “O tendency of our age, to look on Isis as the milch cow! Gaze on the goddess,” he bids a sordid aspirant, “and get ready the churn and thy scales, and let us see what butter will fetch in the market.” When Judge Haliburton’s typical Yankee is asked by the old minister what he thinks of Niagara, and forthwith expatiates on the “grand spec” it offers for factory purposes—for carding mills, fulling mills, cotton mills, grain mills, saw mills, plaster mills, and never a want of water for any or all of them, his pastor upbraids him with almost sacrilege in that style of talk; exclaiming, “How that dreadful thirst of gain has absorbed all other feelings in our people, when such an idea could be entertained for a moment! It [Niagara] is a grand spectacle, it is the voice of nature in the wilderness, proclaiming to the untutored tribes there of the power and majesty and glory of God.... Talk not to me of mills, factories, and machinery, sir, nor of introducing the money-changers into the temple of the Lord.”

_LIGHT AT EVENING-TIME._

ZECHARIAH xiv. 7.

The promise, or prediction, to be found in the words of the son of Berechiah, that “at evening-time it shall be light,” is gratefully accepted by devout souls in perhaps a strained and wrested sense; but a sense so comforting, so full of tenderness and beauty, that one is fain to believe the words may favour, if they cannot be said to warrant, this “accommodation of Scripture.” Divines are fain to give technical divinity the go-by for the nonce, while, as they confess, the deepening twilight seldom fails to suggest to them this cheering promise, a promise which “tells how the Christian’s day shall end, how the day of life may be somewhat overcast and dreary, but light shall come on the darkened way at last.” In the same spirit are welcome the words of Amos, the herdsman of Tekoa, concerning One who turneth the shadow of death into the morning. To Him the darkness and the light are both alike; and at His bidding, when despondent sufferers are in a horror of great darkness, and say surely the darkness shall cover them,—even the night shall be light about them; and in some sort to them, even as to Him, the night shineth as the day; or at least, in the language of Zechariah, there is light, which if not clear, is yet not dark; neither wholly day nor night, but twilight—soft, soothing, tranquillizing—instead of the dreaded darkness which may be felt. Even thus He brings the blind by a way that they knew not, making darkness light before them.

Even thus, at the last, He delivers them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. Bunyan exemplifies such in Mr. Fearing, the pilgrim, who at the entrance of the Valley of the Shadow of Death was “ready to die for fear.” But the valley was quiet from troublers. “I suppose those enemies here had now a special check from our Lord, and a command not to meddle until Mr. Fearing had passed over it.” “And here also I took notice of what was very remarkable—the water of that river was lower at this time than ever I saw it in all my life; so he went over at last, not much above wetshod.

“_Honesty_: Then it seems he was well at last?”

“_Greatheart_: Yes, yes; I never had a doubt about it.”

Often, observes Schleiermacher in one of his letters, the last radiant moment is called rapidly into being, even in souls wherein the eternal Light has not always shone with bright effulgence.

Biographers of Dr. Johnson tell us how, when at length the moment, dreaded through so many years, came close, the dark cloud passed away from his mind; how his temper became unusually patient and gentle, and he ceased to think with terror of death, and of that which lieth beyond death, and spoke much of the mercy of God and of the propitiation of Christ. One might apply to him in effect the lines of the poet of the Seasons.

“Joy seized his withered veins, and one bright gleam Of setting life shone on her evening hours.”

Meditating on various senses in which the words of the promise of light at evening-time speak truly, in which its great principle holds good, the signal blessing shall come when it is needed most and expected least, Dr. Boyd, thinks mainly how sometimes, at the close of the chequered and sober day, the Better Sun has broken through the clouds and made the flaming west all purple and gold. He pictures the chamber of death, while hushed and mournful gazers see also the summer sun in glory going down. “But it is only to us who remain that the evening darkness is growing, only for us that the sun is going down.” As the evening falls on us, but not on the departing believer; as the shadows deepen on us, but not on him; as the darkness gathers on us, but not on him; the “glorious promise has found its perfect fulfilment, that ‘at the evening-time there shall be light.’”

Secular literature has its analogous instances. Dr. Holmes describes Elsie Venner’s storm-tossed, vagrant spirit as composed and serene at the last; the cold glitter died out of the diamond eyes, and the stormy scowl disappeared from the dark brows. “It seemed to her father as if the malign influence—evil spirit it might almost be called—which had pervaded her being had at last been driven forth or exorcised,” and that the tears she now shed were “at once the sign and the pledge of her redeemed nature. But now she was to be soothed and not excited. After her tears she slept again, and the look her face wore was peaceful as never before.” And the devoted father, to whom her life-long career had been until now a perturbing trial, now thanked God for the brief interval of peace which had been granted her, and for the sweet communion they had enjoyed in these last days. There are those of whom it may be said that it comes to pass, when midday is over, and they cast wistful glances, and perhaps even reproachful petitions heavenwards, until evening-time, that there is from above neither voice, nor any to answer, nor seemingly any that regardeth; but with evening-time comes an answer and comes light. Applicable to the subject, in this sense, are the lines in “Paracelsus,” on one who lived without God in the world:—

“Then died, grown old; and just an hour before— Having lain long with blank and soulless eyes— He sate up suddenly, and with natural voice Said, that in spite of thick air and closed doors God told him it was June.”

Of Margaret Arundel, in “The Gordian Knot,” we read, in her hour of household desolation and distress, that could we have seen her fair face, now pale with pain, now flushed with emotion, we should have pitied her; but “it may be that some superior intelligence witnessed her suffering, and pitied her not; knowing that all she was to undergo was but the fiery trial destined for those for whom in the evening there is light.” Stephen Blackpool, in “Hard Times,” who has found life “aw a muddle,” and meets with his death in the pit, is tranquillized with light at the last—light which he identifies with the star that shone upon him while he lay mangled in the old shaft. “Often as I coom to myseln, and found it shinin’ on me down there in my trouble, I thowt it were the very star as guided to our Saviour’s home. I awmost think it be the very star.” His rescuers lift him up, and he is overjoyed to find they are about to take him in the direction whither the star seems to him to lead. Very gently they carry him along the fields and down the lanes; but it is soon a funeral procession. “The star had shown him where to find the God of the poor; and through humility and sorrow and forgiveness, he had gone to his Saviour’s rest.” It is not every life the early prime of which has been blissful enough to warrant the exclamation,—

“Ne’er tell me of glories serenely adorning The close of our day, the calm eve of our night: Give me back, give me back, the wild freshness of morning, Its smiles and its tears are worth evening’s best light.”

For sometimes the light comes at evening-time that has never come before.

Cellini opens his autobiography with a placid record of the enjoyment of his present lot, in life’s decline, in contrast with the storms and turmoil of his previous course. We read of James Watt, that not until he had reached what is termed the grand climacteric of man’s life did he know real freedom from bodily infirmities; and that his spirits became more equable as the principal causes of his anxiety and occasional depression were removed; so that although he was destined to be one of those “who are so strong that they come to fourscore years,” his strength even then, while it could scarcely be termed “labour,” was certainly very far from “sorrow.” The cloud which had so long hung over him was gently lifted up, and the curtain parted, to disclose a happier scene. “It is curious that even physical ease and enjoyment should come so late; but so it was. The term which commenced with his release from the evils of active business was a serene and golden time, in which he found repose”—with the softening retrospect of a struggle past and a victory won. John Galt, in “The Entail,” exemplifies a kindred experience in the widow Walkinshaw, whose deliverance from an all but lifelong thraldom, late in the day as it came, yet came in time enough to “allow the original brightness of her mind to shine out in the evening with a serene and pleasing lustre.”

Dr. Boyd quotes the dying speech of a poor English day labourer, than which, he affirms, few sentences ever touched him more with their hopeless pathos: “Wut wi’ faeth, and wut wi’ the earth goin’ round the sun, and wut wi’ the railways all a-whuzzing and a-buzzing, I’m clean muddled, confoozled, and bet!” It is Stephen Blackpool again in spirit, and to the letter. With that sentence the dying man is said to have feebly turned to the wall, and spoken no more. “Well, let us hope that light came at the evening-time upon that blind, benighted way.”

Among the dying words of Mrs. Schimmelpenninck, honourably known by her “Memoirs of Port Royal,” and other works, the remark is preserved that she had often in her life been inclined to occupy herself with the prospect close at hand, from finding the bleak, hard outline of the eternal hills cold and barren to her sight; but that, as she drew nearer, God’s mercy made His light to shine full upon them, so that she could now perceive they were covered with magnificent trees of the forest, and were rich in fruit and flowers far more pleasant than those close at hand, and yet a continuation of them.

A commentator on the text of “promised light at evening-time,” explains that by evening is understood the gradual withdrawal of the light; it is the lessening light that makes the evening-time: because of _that_ the daisies close, and the birds fly to their nests, and a hush comes over nature. And it is just because evening is the time when, in the ordinary course of things, the light is going and the darkness is coming, that there is found to be anything remarkable in the text of _um den Abend wird es licht seyn_, as Luther’s version runs. The promise, or prophecy, is that “light shall come at a time when it is not natural, when in the common course of things it is not looked for.” It would be no surprise, as this divine proceeds to remark, that light should come at noonday: we expect it then, it is just what we are accustomed to see. “But if, when the twilight shadows were falling deeper and deeper, ... with a sudden burst the noonday light were to spread around,—that would be a surprise.” One of his personal illustrations of its import is the instance of the Christian poet who passed away almost in despair,—the gloom that overshadowed his spirit enduring almost to the end: “but even in the last moment there came a wonderful change”—and they tell us how even on his dead face there remained, till it was hidden for ever, a look of bright and beautiful and sudden surprise; the reflection of that light at evening that had been long in coming, but had come at last. At eventide light may break forth as the morning; light rising in obscurity, and darkness becoming as the noonday.