Part 9

“The Commodore was very kind to me when I got there, and I went about with him to the ships in the bay, and through the dock-yard, and picked up a good deal that was of use to me afterwards. I was a lieutenant in those days, and had seen a good deal of service, and I found the old Commodore had a great nephew whom he had adopted, and had set his whole heart upon. He was an old bachelor himself, but the boy had come to live with him, and was to go to sea; so he wanted to put him under some one who would give an eye to him for the first year or two. He was a light slip of a boy then, fourteen years old, with deep set blue eyes and long eyelashes, and cheeks like a girl’s, but as brave as a lion and as merry as a lark. The old gentleman was very pleased to see that we took to one another. We used to bathe and boat together; and he was never tired of hearing my stories about the great admirals, and the fleet, and the stations I had been on.

“Well, it was agreed that I should apply for a ship again directly, and go up to London with a letter to the Admiralty from the Commodore to help things on. After a month or two I was appointed to a brig, lying at Spithead; and so I wrote off to the Commodore, and he got his boy a midshipman’s berth on board, and brought him to Portsmouth himself a day or two before we sailed for the Mediterranean. The old gentleman came on board to see his boy’s hammock slung, and went below into the cockpit to make sure that all was right. He only left us by the pilot-boat when we were well out in the Channel. He was very low at parting from his boy, but bore up as well as he could; and we promised to write to him from Gibraltar, and as often afterwards as we had a chance.

“I was soon as proud and fond of little Tom Holdsworth as if he had been my own younger brother, and, for that matter, so were all the crew, from our captain to the cook’s boy. He was such a gallant youngster, and yet so gentle. In one cutting-out business we had, he climbed over the boatswain’s shoulders, and was almost first on deck; how he came out of it without a scratch I can’t think to this day. But he hadn’t a bit of bluster in him, and was as kind as a woman to any one who was wounded or down with sickness.

“After we had been out about a year we were sent to cruise off Malta, on the look-out for the French fleet. It was a long business, and the post wasn’t so good then as it is now. We were sometimes for months without getting a letter, and knew nothing of what was happening at home, or anywhere else. We had a sick time too on board, and at last he got a fever. He bore up against it like a man, and wouldn’t knock off duty for a long time. He was midshipman of my watch; so I used to make him turn in early, and tried to ease things to him as much as I could; but he didn’t pick up, and I began to get very anxious about him. I talked to the doctor, and turned matters over in my own mind, and at last I came to think he wouldn’t get any better unless he could sleep out of the cockpit. So one night, the 20th of October it was—I remember it well enough, better than I remember any day since; it was a dirty night, blowing half a gale of wind from the southward, and we were under close-reefed topsails—I had the first watch, and at nine o’clock I sent him down to my cabin to sleep there, where he would be fresher and quieter, and I was to turn into his hammock when my watch was over.

“I was on deck three hours or so after he went down, and the weather got dirtier and dirtier, and the scud drove by, and the wind sang and hummed through the rigging—it made me melancholy to listen to it. I could think of nothing but the youngster down below, and what I should say to his poor old uncle if anything happened. Well, soon after midnight I went down and turned into his hammock. I didn’t go to sleep at once, for I remember very well listening to the creaking of the ship’s timbers as she rose to the swell, and watching the lamp, which was slung from the ceiling, and gave light enough to make out the other hammocks swinging slowly all together. At last, however, I dropped off, and I reckon I must have been asleep about an hour, when I woke with a start. For the first moment I didn’t see anything but the swinging hammocks and the lamp; but then suddenly I became aware that some one was standing by my hammock, and I saw the figure as plainly as I see any of you now, for the foot of the hammock was close to the lamp, and the light struck full across on the head and shoulders, which was all that I could see of him. There he was, the old Commodore; his grizzled hair coming out from under a red woollen night cap, and his shoulders wrapped in an old thread-bare blue dressing-gown which I had often seen him in. His face looked pale and drawn, and there was a wistful, disappointed look about the eyes. I was so taken aback I could not speak, but lay watching him. He looked full at my face once or twice, but didn’t seem to recognize me; and, just as I was getting back my tongue and going to speak, he said slowly: ‘Where’s Tom? this is his hammock. I can’t see Tom;’ and then he looked vaguely about and passed away somehow, but how I couldn’t see. In a moment or two I jumped out and hurried to my cabin, but young Holdsworth was fast asleep. I sat down, and wrote down just what I had seen, making a note of the exact time, twenty minutes to two. I didn’t turn in again, but sat watching the youngster. When he woke I asked him if he had heard anything of his great uncle by the last mail. Yes, he had heard; the old gentleman was rather feeble, but nothing particular the matter. I kept my own counsel and never told a soul in the ship; and, when the mail came to hand a few days afterwards with a letter from the Commodore to his nephew, dated late in September, saying that he was well, I thought the figure by my hammock must have been all my own fancy.

“However, by the next mail came the news of the old Commodore’s death. ‘It had been a very sudden break-up,’ his executor said. He had left all his property, which was not much, to his great nephew, who was to get leave to come home as soon as he could.

“The first time we touched at Malta, Tom Holdsworth left us and went home. We followed about two years afterwards, and the first thing I did after landing was to find out the Commodore’s executor. He was a quiet, dry little Plymouth lawyer, and very civilly answered all my questions about the last days of my old friend. At last I asked him to tell me as near as he could the time of his death; and he put on his spectacles, and got his diary, and turned over the leaves. I was quite nervous till he looked up and said, ‘Twenty-five minutes to two, sir, A.M., on the morning of October 21st; or it might be a few minutes later.’

“‘How do you mean, sir?’ I asked.

“‘Well,’ he said, ‘it is an odd story. The doctor was sitting with me, watching the old man, and, as I tell you, at twenty-five minutes to two, he got up and said it was all over. We stood together, talking in whispers for, it might be, four or five minutes, when the body seemed to move. He was an odd old man, you know, the Commodore, and we never could get him properly to bed, but he lay in his red nightcap and old dressing-gown, with a blanket over him. It was not a pleasant sight, I can tell you, sir. I don’t think one of you gentlemen, who are bred to face all manner of dangers, would have liked it. As I was saying, the body first moved, and then sat up, propping itself behind with its hands. The eyes were wide open, and he looked at us for a moment, and said slowly, “I’ve been to the Mediterranean, but I didn’t see Tom.” Then the body sank back again, and this time the old Commodore was really dead. But it was not a pleasant thing to happen to one, sir. I do not remember anything like it in my forty years’ practise.’”

There was a silence of a few seconds after the captain had finished his story, all the men sitting with eyes fixed on him, and not a little surprised at the results of their call. Drysdale was the first to break the silence, which he did with a long respiration; but, as he did not seem prepared with any further remark, Tom took up the running.

“What a strange story,” he said; “and that really happened to you, Captain Hardy?”

“To me, sir, in the Mediterranean, more than forty years ago.”

“The strangest thing about it is that the old Commodore should have managed to get all the way to the ship, and then not have known where his nephew was,” said Blake.

“He only knew his nephew’s berth, you see, sir,” said the Captain.

“But he might have beat about through the ship till he had found him.”

“You must remember that he was at his last breath, sir,” said the Captain; “you can’t expect a man to have his head clear at such a moment.”

“Not a man, perhaps; but I should a ghost,” said Blake.

“Time was everything to him,” went on the Captain, without regarding the interruption, “space nothing. But the strangest part of it is that I should have seen the figure at all. It’s true I had been thinking of the old uncle, because of the boy’s illness; but I can’t suppose he was thinking of me, and, as I say, he never recognized me. I have taken a great deal of interest in such matters since that time, but I have never met with just such a case as this.”

“No, that is the puzzle. One can fancy his appearing to his nephew well enough,” said Tom.

“We can’t account for these things, or for a good many other things which ought to be quite as startling, only we see them every day.”

LXXVII.

Christianity is in no more real danger now than it was a hundred and fifty years ago, when Dean Swift, and many other greater wits than we have amongst us nowadays, thought and said that it was doomed. We hold in perfect good faith, that the good news our Lord brought is the best the world will ever hear; that there has been a revelation in the man Jesus Christ, of God the Creator of the world as our Father, so that the humblest and poorest man can know God for all purposes for which men need to know him in this life, and can have his help in becoming like him, the business for which they were sent into it: and that there will be no other revelation, though this one will be, through all time, unfolding to men more and more of its unspeakable depth, and glory, and beauty, in external nature, in human society, in individual men. That, I believe to be a fair statement of the positive religious belief of average Englishmen, if they had to think it out and to put it in words; and all who hold it must of course look upon Christ’s gospel as the great purifying, reforming, redeeming power in the world, and desire that it shall be free to work in their own country on the most favorable conditions which can be found for it.

LXXVIII.

We should remember that truth is many-sided; that all truth comes from one source. There is only one sun in the heavens, yet, as you know, there are many beautiful colors, all of which come from the one sun. You cannot say that the red is better and truer than the blue, or that the blue is better and truer than the yellow. You may prefer one to the other; you may see that one color is more universal, more applicable for different purposes than another, but there is truth in each. In the same way there is only one earth, but there are a great many different trees which grow out of it, and which derive their nourishment from it; and although the oak may be very much better suited to England and the fir to Norway, yet we admit that there is truth in each; that one is just as good and true a tree as the other. Therefore, let us who are apt to think in the church and other religious communities that we have got all the truth ourselves, remember that truth is wider than can be apprehended by any body of human beings, and let us be tolerant to one another, not forgetting that those who are not in the same community with us hold their side of the truth as strongly as we do ours.

Each religious community has witnessed, and is witnessing, to some side of the truth. Religious communities are not perfect in themselves like trees or flowers, but for that very reason it is all the more necessary that the members of them should be tolerant, and should make the greatest effort to understand those of other religious beliefs.

LXXIX.

I can take little interest in the questions which divide Christian churches and sects, can see no reason why they should not now be working side by side to redeem our waste places, and to make the kingdoms of this world the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ.

St. Ambrose was a holy man, and exceeding zealous, even to slaying for the one true creed. One day as he was walking in deep meditation as to how to bring all men to his own mind, he was aware of a stream, and a youth seated beside it. He had never seen so beautiful a countenance, and sat down by him to speak of those things on which his mind continually dwelt. To his horror he found that the beautiful face covered a most heretical mind, and he spoke in sorrowful anger to the youth of his danger. Whereupon the young stranger produced six or seven vases, all of different shapes and colors, and, as he filled them from the brook, said to the saint (as the legend is versified by Mr. Lowell):—

“Now Ambrose, thou maker of creeds, look here— As into these vases this water I pour; One shall hold less, another more, But the water the same in every case, Shall take the figure of the vase. O thou who wouldst unity reach through strife, Canst thou fit this sign to the Waters of Life.”

When Ambrose looked up, the youth, the vases, and the stream were gone; but he knew he had talked with an angel, and his heart was changed. I wish that angel would come and do a great deal of preaching to our English Ambroses.

LXXX.

“There is no doubt,” as Lord Russell says, “that concession gives rise to demands for fresh concession, and it is right that it should be so. The true limit is, that all it is just to concede should be conceded; all that it is true to affirm should be affirmed; but that which is false should be denied.” Besides this power of concession, which she has in a much greater degree than any other religious body, the English Church, if she be a Catholic Church, as she pretends to be, has also greater power of assimilation. Let her not be afraid of those sides of the truth which have been most prominently put forward by other religious communities. She can assimilate them if she pleases, and it is her duty to assimilate whatever is true in them. Her mission in this world is not to hold her own in the sense of resisting all reform, of resisting all concession, but her duty and her mission is to go to the lost people of our country, and of every country where she is established or where she exists, and to draw those together into her fold who cannot get into that of other religious bodies, which have such limits as I have been speaking of to bar the gates of admission. Her great mission is to seek and save those which are lost in every community. The highest title of her ministers is _Servi servorum Dei_ (the servants of the servants of God), and, if she remembers this high mission, if she endeavors by her life to exemplify her Master’s spirit and to illustrate His life, she never need be afraid of disestablishment or disendowment. What did the greatest of churchmen who ever lived say on the point of people carrying on those miserable squabbles that are dividing us in this day? They were saying, “We are of Paul,” “We are of Apollos,” “We are of Peter?” and he said, “Who is Paul? Who is Apollos? Who is Peter?” If you only understand to what an inheritance you are called to, “all things are yours, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Peter, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come, all are yours, for ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.”

LXXXI.

It is said by some, as I think, unwise defenders of the faith, that a colorless Christianity is no Christianity at all, that you can have no church without a definite creed. To the first I would reply that, after all, the bright white light is, in its purity, better than all color. To the second, I admit that every church must have a definite creed, but the more simple and broad that creed is the better. It is only the simplest creed which can give us the unity, or the tolerance in diversity, for which all good men are longing.

LXXXII.

Meekness, liberality, tolerance of other confessions! These are great virtues, but hard, very hard to practise in such hurrying, driving, democratic, competitive times as ours, when respect for authority seems to have almost died out. Nevertheless, they must be practised, if the church is ever to fulfil her great mission, and to become in a larger and truer sense than she has ever yet been, “The Church of the People.”

LXXXIII.

Poor conscience! to what pitiful uses is that sacred name turned! The stolid Essex peasant, one of the Peculiar People, lets his child die because he will not allow it to take medicine, and believes himself to be suffering for conscience’s sake because he is summoned before a magistrate to answer for its life. And he has far more reason on his side than the Ritualist martyrs. I desire neither to speak nor think scornfully or bitterly of them, but this at least I must say, that men who can make matters of conscience of such trivialities as the shape and color of vestments, the burning of candles and incense, the position of tables, and the like, and in defence of these things are prepared to defy authority, and break what they know to be the law of their country, are not fit to be trusted with the spiritual guidance of any portion of our people. England has a great work still to do in the world, for which she needs children with quite other kind of consciences than these—consciences which shall be simple, manly, obedient, qualities which must disappear under such examples and teaching as these men are giving.

LXXXIV.

Let us look to the One life as our model, and turn to Him who lived it on our earth, as to the guide, and friend, and helper, who alone can strengthen the feeble knees, and lift up the fainting heart. Just in so far as we cleave to that teaching and follow that life, shall we live our own faithfully.

LXXXV.

In certain crises in one’s life nothing is so useful or healthy for one, as coming into direct and constant contact with an intellect stronger than one’s own, which looks at the same subjects from a widely different standpoint.

LXXXVI.

Ah! light words of those whom we love and honor, what a power ye are, and how carelessly wielded by those who can use you! Surely for these things also God will ask an account.

LXXXVII.

On went the talk and laughter. Two or three of the little boys in the long dormitory were already in bed, sitting up with their chins on their knees. The light burned clear, the noise went on. It was a trying moment for Arthur, the poor little lonely boy; however, this time he didn’t ask Tom what he might or might not do, but dropped on his knees by his bedside, as he had done every day from his childhood, to open his heart to Him who heareth the cry and beareth the sorrows of the tender child, and the strong man in agony....

There were many boys in the room by whom that little scene was taken to heart before they slept. But sleep seemed to have deserted the pillow of poor Tom. For some time his excitement, and the flood of memories which chased one another through his brain kept him from thinking or resolving. His head throbbed, his heart leapt, and he could hardly keep himself from springing out of bed and rushing about the room. Then the thought of his own mother came across him, and the promise he had made at her knee, years ago, never to forget to kneel by his bedside, and give himself up to his Father, before he laid his head on the pillow, from which it might never rise; and he lay down gently and cried as if his heart would break. He was only fourteen years old.

It was no light act of courage in those days for a little fellow to say his prayers publicly, even at Rugby. A few years later, when Arnold’s manly piety had begun to leaven the school, the tables turned; before he died, in the school-house, at least, and I believe in the other houses, the rule was the other way. But poor Tom had come to school in other times. The first few nights after he came he did not kneel down because of the noise, but sat up in bed till the candle was out, and then stole out and said his prayers, in fear lest some one should find him out. So did many another poor little fellow. Then he began to think that he might just as well say his prayers in bed, and then it didn’t matter whether he was kneeling, or sitting, or lying down. And so it had come to pass with Tom, as with all who will not confess their Lord before men; and for the last year he had probably not said his prayers in earnest a dozen times.

Poor Tom! the first and bitterest feeling which was likely to break his heart was the sense of his own cowardice. The vice of all others which he loathed was brought in and burned in on his own soul. He had lied to his mother, to his conscience, to his God. How could he bear it? And then the poor little weak boy, whom he had pitied and almost scorned for his weakness, had done that which he, braggart as he was, dared not do. The first dawn of comfort came to him in swearing to himself that he would stand by that boy through thick and thin, and cheer him, and help him, and bear his burdens, for the good deed done that night. Then he resolved to write home next day and tell his mother all, and what a coward her son had been. And then peace came to him, as he resolved lastly, to bear his testimony next morning. The morning would be harder than the night to begin with, but he felt that he could not afford to let one chance slip. Several times he faltered, for the devil showed him first all his old friends calling him “Saint” and “Square-toes,” and a dozen hard names, and whispered to him that his motives would be misunderstood, and he would only be misunderstood, and he would only be left alone with the new boy; whereas it was his duty to keep all means of influence, that he might do good to the largest number. And then came the more subtle temptation, “Shall I not be showing myself braver than others by doing this? Have I any right to begin it now? Ought I not rather to pray in my own study, letting other boys know that I do so, and trying to lead them to it, while in public at least I should go on as I have done?” However, his good angel was too strong that night, and he turned on his side and slept, tired of trying to reason, but resolved to follow the impulse which had been so strong, and in which he had found peace.