Part 13

But it will be said, assuming all that is asked, what practical difference can it possibly make in the government of nations? Admit as pointedly as you can, by profession and by worship, and honestly believe, that a Divine will is ruling in the world, and in each nation, what will it effect? Will it alter the course of events one iota, or the acts of any government or governor. Would not a Neapolitan Bourbon be just as ready to make it his watchword as any English Alfred! Might not a committee of public safety placard the scaffold with a declaration of this faith? It is a contention for a shadow.

Is it so? Does not every man recognize in his own life, and in his own observation of the world around him, the enormous and radical difference between the two principles of action and the results which they bring about? What man do we reckon worthy of honor, and delight to obey and follow—him who asks, when he has to act, what will A, B, and C say to this? or him who asks, is this right, true, just, in harmony with the will of God. Don’t we despise ourselves when we give way to the former tendency, or in other words, when we admit the sovereignty of public opinion? Don’t we feel that we are in the right and manly path when we follow the latter? And if this be true of private men, it must hold in the case of those who are in authority.

Those rulers, whatever name they may go by, who turn to what constituents, leagues, the press are saying or doing, to guide them as to the course they are to follow, in the faith that the will of the majority is the ultimate and only possible arbiter, will never deliver or strengthen a nation however skilful they may be in occupying its best places.

CII.

All the signs of our time tell us that the day of earthly kings has gone by, and the advent to power of the great body of the people, those who live by manual labor, is at hand. Already a considerable percentage of them are as intelligent and provident as the classes above them, and as capable of conducting affairs, and administering large interests successfully. In England, the co-operative movement and the organization of the trade societies should be enough to prove this, to any one who has eyes, and is open to conviction. In another generation that number will have increased tenfold, and the sovereignty of the country will virtually pass into their hands. Upon their patriotism and good sense the fortunes of the kingdom will depend as directly and absolutely as they have ever depended on the will of earthly king or statesman. It is vain to blink the fact that democracy is upon us, that “new order of society which is to be founded by labor for labor,” and the only thing for wise men to do is to look it in the face, and see how the short intervening years may be used to the best advantage. Happily for us, the task has been already begun in earnest. Our soundest and wisest political thinkers are all engaged upon the great and inevitable change, whether they dread, or exult in the prospect. Thus far, too, they all agree that the great danger of the future lies in that very readiness of the people to act in great masses, and to get rid of personal and individual responsibility, which is the characteristic of the organizations by which they have gained, and secured, their present position. Nor is there any danger as to how this danger is to be met. Our first aim must be to develop to the utmost the sense of personal and individual responsibility.

But how is this to be done? To whom are men wielding great powers to be taught that they are responsible? If they can learn that there is still a King ruling in England through them, whom if they will fear they need fear no other power in earth or heaven, whom if they can love and trust they will want no other guide or helper, all will be well, and we may look for a reign of justice in England such as she has never seen yet, whatever form our government may take. But, in any case, those who hold the old faith will still be sure that the order of God’s kingdom will not change. If the kings of the earth are passing away, because they have never acknowledged the order which was established for them, the conditions on which they were set in high places, those who succeed them will have to come under the same order, and the same conditions. When the great body of those who have done the hard work of the world, and got little enough of its wages hitherto—the real stuff of which every nation is composed—have entered on their inheritance, they may sweep away many things, and make short work with thrones and kings. But there is one throne which they cannot pull down—the throne of righteousness, which is over all the nations; and one King whose rule they cannot throw off—the Son of God and Son of Man, who will judge them as he has judged all kings and all governments before them.

CIII.

Kings, priests, judges, whatever men succeed to, or usurp, or are thrust into power, come immediately under that eternal government which the God of the nation has established, and the order of which cannot be violated with impunity. Every ruler who ignores or defies it saps the national life and prosperity, and brings trouble on his country, sometimes swiftly, but always surely. There is the perpetual presence of a King, with whom rulers and people must come to a reckoning in every national crisis and convulsion, and who is no less present when the course of affairs is quiet and prosperous. The greatest and wisest men of the nation are those in whom this faith burns most strongly. Elijah’s solemn opening, “As the Lord liveth, before whom I stand;” David’s pleading, “Whither shall I go from thy Spirit, or whither shall I flee from thy presence?”—his confession that in heaven or hell, or the uttermost parts of the sea, “there also shall thy hand lead, and thy right hand shall guide me”—are only well-known instances of a universal consciousness which never wholly leaves men or nations, however much they may struggle to get rid of it.

CIV.

“Who is that who has just come in, in beaver?” said Tom, touching the next man to him.

“Oh, don’t you know? That’s Blake; he’s the most wonderful fellow in Oxford,” answered his neighbor.

“How do you mean?” said Tom.

“Why, he can do everything better than almost anybody, and without any trouble at all. Miller was obliged to have him in the boat last year though he never trained a bit. Then he’s in the eleven, and is a wonderful rider, and tennis-player, and shot.”

“Aye, and he’s so awfully clever with it all,” joined in the man on the other side. “He’ll be a safe first, though I don’t believe he reads more than you or I. He can write songs, too, as fast as you can talk nearly, and sings them wonderfully.”

“Is he of our College, then?”

“Yes, of course, or he couldn’t have been in our boat last year.”

“But I don’t think I ever saw him in chapel or hall.”

“No, I dare say not. He hardly ever goes to either, and yet he manages never to get hauled up much, no one knows how. He never gets up now till the afternoon, and sits up nearly all night playing cards with the fastest fellows, or going round singing glees at three or four in the morning.”

Tom looked with great interest at the admirable Crichton of St. Ambrose’s; and, after watching him a few minutes, said in a low tone to his neighbor:

“How wretched he looks! I never saw a sadder face.”

Poor Blake! one can’t help calling him “poor,” although he himself would have winced at it more than at any other name you could have called him. You might have admired, feared, or wondered at him, and he would have been pleased; the object of his life was to raise such feelings in his neighbors; but pity was the last which he would have liked to excite.

He was indeed a wonderfully gifted fellow, full of all sorts of energy and talent, and power and tenderness; and yet, as his face told only too truly to any one who watched him when he was exerting himself in society, one of the most wretched men in the College. He had a passion for success—for beating everybody else in whatever he took in hand, and that, too, without seeming to make any great effort himself. The doing a thing well and thoroughly gave him no satisfaction unless he could feel that he was doing it better and more easily than A, B, or C, and that they felt and acknowledged this. He had had his full swing of success for two years, and now the Nemesis was coming.

For, although not an extravagant man, many of the pursuits in which he had eclipsed all rivals were far beyond the means of any but a rich one, and Blake was not rich. He had a fair allowance, but by the end of his first year was considerably in debt, and, at the time we are speaking of, the whole pack of Oxford tradesmen, into whose books he had got (having smelt out the leanness of his expectations), were upon him, besieging him for payment. This miserable and constant annoyance was wearing his soul out. This was the reason why his oak was sported, and he was never seen till the afternoons, and turned night into day. He was too proud to come to an understanding with his persecutors, even had it been possible; and now, at his sorest need, his whole scheme of life was failing him; his love of success was turning into ashes in his mouth; he felt much more disgust than pleasure at his triumphs over other men, and yet the habit of striving for such successes, notwithstanding its irksomeness, was too strong to be resisted.

Poor Blake! he was living on from hand to mouth, flashing out with all his old brilliancy and power, and forcing himself to take the lead in whatever company he might be; but utterly lonely and depressed when by himself—reading feverishly in secret, in a desperate effort to retrieve all by high honors and a fellowship. As Tom said to his neighbors, there was no sadder face than his to be seen in Oxford.

CV.

One of the moralists whom we sat under in my youth—was it the great Richard Swiveller, or Mr. Stiggins?—says: “We are born in a vale, and must take the consequences of being found in such a situation.” These consequences, I for one am ready to encounter. I pity people who weren’t found in a vale. I don’t mean a flat country, but a vale; that is a flat country bounded by hills. The having your hill _always_ in view if you choose to turn towards him, that’s the essence of a vale. There he is for ever in the distance, your friend and companion; you never lose him as you do in hilly districts.

CVI.

All dwellers in and about London are, alas, too well acquainted with that never-to-be-enough-hated change which we have to undergo once, at least, in every spring. As each succeeding winter wears away, the same thing happens to us.

For some time we do not trust the fair lengthening days, and cannot believe that the dirty pair of sparrows who live opposite our window are really making love and going to build, notwithstanding all their twittering. But morning after morning rises fresh and gentle; there is no longer any vice in the air; we drop our overcoats; we rejoice in the green shoots which the privet-hedge is making in the square garden, and hail the returning tender-pointed leaves of the plane-trees as friends; we go out of our way to walk through Covent Garden Market to see the ever-brightening show of flowers from the happy country.

This state of things goes on sometimes for a few days only, sometimes for weeks, till we make sure that we are safe for this spring at any rate. Don’t we wish we may get it! Sooner or later, but sure—sure as Christmas bills, or the income-tax, or anything, if there be anything surer than these—comes the morning when we are suddenly conscious as soon as we rise that there is something the matter. We do not feel comfortable in our clothes; nothing tastes quite as it should at breakfast; though the day looks bright enough, there is a fierce dusty taint about it as we look out through windows, which no instinct now prompts us to throw open, as it has done every day for the last month.

But it is only when we open our doors and issue into the street, that the hateful reality comes right home to us. All moisture, and softness, and pleasantness has gone clean out of the air since last night; we seem to inhale yards of horsehair instead of satin; our skins dry up; our eyes, and hair, and whiskers, and clothes are soon filled with loathsome dust, and our nostrils with the reek of the great city. We glance at the weathercock on the nearest steeple, and see that it points N.E. And so long as the change lasts, we carry about with us a feeling of anger and impatience as though we personally were being ill-treated. We could have borne with it well enough in November; it would have been natural, and all in the day’s work in March; but now, when Rotten-row is beginning to be crowded, when long lines of pleasure-vans are leaving town on Monday mornings for Hampton Court or the poor remains of dear Epping Forrest, when the exhibitions are open or about to open, when the religious public is up, or on its way up, for May meetings, when the Thames is already sending up faint warnings of what we may expect as soon as his dirty old life’s blood shall have been thoroughly warmed up, and the Ship, and Trafalgar, and Star and Garter are in full swing at the antagonist poles of the cockney system, we do feel that this blight which has come over us and everything is an insult, and that while it lasts, as there is nobody who can be made particularly responsible for it, we are justified in going about in general disgust, and ready to quarrel with anybody we may meet on the smallest pretext.

This sort of east-windy state is perhaps the best physical analogy for certain mental ones through which most of us pass. The real crisis over, we drift into the skirts of the storm, and lay rolling under bare poles, comparatively safe, but without any power as yet to get the ship well in hand, and make her obey her helm. The storm may break over us again at any minute, and find us almost as helpless as ever.

CVII.

Amongst other distractions which Tom tried at one crisis of his life, was reading. For three or four days running, he really worked hard—very hard, if we were to reckon by the number of hours he spent in his own rooms over his books with his oak sported—hard, even though we should only reckon by results. For, though scarcely an hour passed that he was not balancing on the hind legs of his chair with a vacant look in his eyes, and thinking of anything but Greek roots or Latin constructions, yet on the whole he managed to get through a good deal, and one evening, for the first time since his quarrel with Hardy, felt a sensation of real comfort—it hardly amounted to pleasure—as he closed his Sophocles some hour or so after hall, having just finished the last of the Greek plays which he meant to take in for his first examination. He leaned back in his chair and sat for a few minutes, letting his thoughts follow their own bent. They soon took to going wrong, and he jumped up in fear lest he should be drifting back into the black stormy sea, in the trough of which he had been laboring so lately, and which he felt he was by no means clear of yet. At first he caught up his cap and gown as though he were going out. There was a wine party at one of his acquaintance’s rooms; or, he could go and smoke a cigar in the pool-room, or at any one of the dozen other places. On second thoughts, however, he threw his academicals back on to the sofa, and went to his bookcase. The reading had paid so well that evening that he resolved to go on with it. He had no particular object in selecting one book more than another, and so took down carelessly the first that came to hand.

It happened to be a volume of Plato, and opened of its own accord in the “Apology.” He glanced at a few lines. What a flood of memories they called up! This was almost the last book he had read at school; and teacher, and friends, and lofty oak-shelved library stood out before him at once. Then the blunders that he himself and others had made rushed through his mind, and he almost burst into a laugh as he wheeled his chair round to the window, and began reading where he had opened, encouraging every thought of the old times when he first read that marvellous defence, and throwing himself back into them with all his might. And still, as he read, forgotten words of wise comment, and strange thoughts of wonder and longing, came back to him. The great truth which he had been led to the brink of in those early days rose in all its awe and all its attractiveness before him. He leant back in his chair, and gave himself up to his thought; and how strangely that thought bore on the struggle which had been raging in him of late; how an answer seemed to be trembling to come out of it to all the cries, now defiant, now plaintive, which had gone out of his heart in this time of trouble! For his thought was of that spirit, distinct from himself, and yet communing with his inmost soul, always dwelling in him, knowing him better than he knew himself, never misleading him, always leading him to light and truth, of which the old philosopher spoke. “The old heathen, Socrates, did actually believe that—there can be no question about it;” he thought, “Has not the testimony of the best men through these two thousand years borne witness that he was right—that he did not believe a lie! That was what we were told. Surely I don’t mistake! Were we not told, too, or did I dream it, that what was true for him is true for every man—for me? That there is a spirit dwelling in me, striving with me, ready to lead me into all truth if I will submit to his guidance?

“Ah! submit, submit, there’s the rub! Give yourself up to his guidance! Throw up the reins, and say you’ve made a mess of it. Well, why not? Haven’t I made a mess of it? Am I fit to hold the reins?

“Not I,”—he got up and began walking about his rooms—“I give it up.”

“Give it up!” he went on presently; “yes, but to whom? Not to the dæmon, spirit, whatever it was, who took up his abode in the old Athenian—at least, so he said, and so I believe. No, no! Two thousand years and all that they have seen have not passed over the world to leave us just where he was left. We want no dæmons or spirits. And yet the old heathen was guided right, and what can a man want more? and who ever wanted guidance more than I now—here—in this room—at this minute? I give up the reins; who will take them?” And so there came on him one of those seasons when a man’s thoughts cannot be followed in words. A sense of awe came upon him, and over him, and wrapped him round; awe at a presence of which he was becoming suddenly conscious, into which he seemed to have wandered, and yet which he felt must have been there, around him, in his own heart and soul, though he knew it not. There was hope and longing in his heart mingling with the fear of that presence, but withal the old reckless and daring feeling which he knew so well, still bubbling up untamed, untamable it seemed to him.

CVIII.

Men and women occupied with the common work of life—who are earning their bread in the sweat of their brows, and marrying, and bringing up children, and struggling, and sinning, and repenting—feel that certain questions which school-men are discussing are somehow their questions. Not indeed in form, for not one in a thousand of the persons whose minds are thus disturbed care to make themselves acquainted with the forms and modes of theological controversies. If they try to do so, they soon throw them aside with impatience. They feel, “No, it is not this. We care not what may be said about ideology, or multitudinism, or evidential views, or cogenogonies. At the bottom of all this we suspect—nay, we know—there is a deeper strife, a strife about the very foundations of faith and human life. We want to know from you learned persons, whether (as we have been told from our infancy) there is a faith for mankind, for us as well as for you, for the millions of our own countrymen, and in all Christian and heathen lands, who find living their lives a sore business, and have need of all the light they can get to help them.”

It cannot be denied. The sooner we face the fact, the better. This is the question, and it has to be answered now, by us living Englishmen and Englishwomen; the deepest question which man has to do with, and yet—or rather, therefore—one which every toiling man must grapple with, for the sake of his own honesty, of his own life.

CIX.

For many years I have been thrown very much into the society of young men of all ranks. I spend a great part of my time with them, I like being with them, and I think they like being with me. I know well, therefore, how rare anything like a living faith—a faith in and by which you can live, and for which you would die—is amongst them. I know that it is becoming rarer every day. I find it every day more difficult to get them to speak on the subject: they will not do so unless you drive them to it.

I feel deeply that for the sake of England they must be driven to it, and therefore that it is the bounden duty of every man who has any faith himself, and who has a chance of being listened to by them, to speak out manfully what he has to say, concealing nothing, disguising nothing, and leaving the issue to God.

CX.

That which has been called the “negative theology,” has been spreading rapidly these last few years, though for the most part silently. In the first instance it may have been simply “a recoil from some of the doctrines which are to be heard at church and chapel; a distrust of the old arguments for, or proofs of, a miraculous revelation; and a misgiving as to the authority, or extent of the authority of the Scriptures.” But as was sure to be the case, the “negative theology” could not stop, and has not stopped here. Men who have come across these recoils, distrusts, misgivings, will soon find, if they are honest and resolute with themselves, that there is another doubt underlying all these, a doubt which they may turn from in horror when it is first whispered in their hearts, but which will come back again and again. That doubt is whether there is a God at all, or rather, whether a living, personal God, thinking, acting, and ruling in this world in which we are, has ever revealed Himself to man.

This is the one question of our time, and of all times; upon the answer which nations or men can give to it hang life and death.... One cannot stand upon a simple negation. The world is going on turning as it used to do, night succeeding day and generation generation; nations are waking into life, or falling into bondage; there is a deal of wonderful work of one sort or another going on in it, and you and I in our little corner have our own share of work to get done as well as we can. If you put out my old light, some light or other I must have, and you would wish me to have. What is it to be?

You will answer, probably, that I have touched the heart of the matter in putting my question. Night follows day, and generation, generation. All things are founded on a “permanent order,” “self-sustaining and self-evolving powers pervade all nature.” Of this order and these powers we are getting to know more every day; when we know them perfectly, man, the colossal man, will have reached the highest development of which he is capable. We need not trouble ourselves about breaking them, or submitting to them; some of you would add, for we cannot either break them or submit to them. They will fulfil themselves. It is they, these great generalizations, which are alone acting in, and ruling the world. We, however eccentric our actions may be, however we may pride ourselves on willing and working, are only simple links in the chain. A general _law of average_ orders the unruly wills and affections of sinful men.