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Laa diagrammaa auivanta illuatrant la mithoda. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 MClOCOfY RESOIUTION TBI CHART (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2) A /APPLIED IM/IGE Inc ^^ 1653 East Main Strest : y,S Rochester. New York 14609 USA '■Jg (716) 482 - 0300 - Phone ^S (^^6) 283 - 5989 - Fax THAT ONE FACE s THAT ONE FACE STUDIES OF THE PLACE OF JESUS IN THE M'NDS CF POETS AND PROPHETS RICHARD ROBERTS **'nai out Faiff/ar/rom vjn/.A, r^Arr grewt, Or Jeiompettt hut to rtium/ioie^ Btcomtt my univerte thatfeih and knows." — RoiiKT BaowNiNn ASSOCIATION PRESS Nbw York: 347 Ma.ison Avbnui 1919 CopTOIOirr. 1919, BY ThI iNTERNATlONAt. COHHimE OF YouNC Men's Ciiristian Associations lZS99r The Bible Text used in this volume is taken from the Revised Version of 1881 I CONTENTS cuptn Foreword I. Vision and Revelation II. A General Survey III. The Poet of the Awakening— Dante IV. The J'oet as Reformer— Shelley. . . . V. The Poi-t as Rebel— William Blake. VI. The Pcr;T as Philosopher VII. The Poet as Seeker— Tennyson VIII. The Poet as Mystic— Francis Thompson .... IX. The Prophet of Righteousness- Savonarola X. The Prophet of Humanity— Mazzini XI. The Prophet of Service— John Ruskin i6^ XII. The Universal Jesus ,g, PAOB vii I 19 37 54 7« Browning ga 107 "3 141 •54 1 FOREWORD It is hardly necessary to say that this is not in any sense a volume of literary estimates. It is simply an attempt to show "the face of Jesus Christ" as certain great souls have seen it; and nothing is added to this save what seemed necessary in order to provide thi.: proper perspective. The selection of those whose view of Jesus is treated in this book has been determined entirely by the fact that the present writer happens to have learned more from them than from any others. Obviously other lists of the same kind might be made by other men ; but one may take leave to question whether the total result would be ap- preciably different. Some of the contents of the following pages appeared in the author's book, "The Meaning of Christ," which was published in 1906, but has been for many years out of print. A few paragraphs of the twelfth week's material have been taken *'-om tlie author's "The Renascence of Faith." All this matter has, however, been entirely re- written. a t! CHAPTER I Vision and Revelation The aim of this book is to help men and women to reach a true judgment about Jesus. It does not pretend to provide all the conditions and materials of such a judg- ment. It will endeavor to set in order a certain class of material, in the hope that the reader may be stimulated to pursue the study further, and especially to consider afresh the portrait of Jesus in the gospels. To the gospel pres- entation of Jesus we shall naturally refer again and again in the course of the present study ; but this will not do away with the need of a consecutive study of the gospels themselves. Indeed, this study will itself have proved a failure if it does not send those who may engage in it back to the gospels to seek out the face of Jesus for themselves. It will be observed that what is proposed here is an endeavor to show how Jesus impressed certain persons. These persons are of two classes, poets and prophets. Of the company only one has an ecclesiastical connection of a formal kind, namely, Savonarola. The rest are all laymen ; and consequently we may expect to find them largely free from professional and theological bias. The theological and clerical mind is perhaps open to the suspicion of partisan motives, of wanting to establish a case. The persons whom we propose to study will not suffer from this disadvantage. Indeed, some among them would have repudiated the suggestion that they ranked as orthodox Chri.stians; one, Shelley, even called himself an atheist. It will at least be interesting to find out what I II-.J THAT ONE FACE hese men thought about Jesus Wh., that .mpressed them? How did Yh """' '' '" «'>" Plainly this study should yield usl'^ react to Him? for a complete portrait of Jesus ""P°"""' ""^'"ial ^P-rnlaS:,":^---.^^^ There are in the creeds J,xln, ' ^^^ Testament n.t.ons of the Person of Chris°tr"\^''""''^"' ^-^fi- recogn.ze that formal star.?, ; \ ""= ^^"^ hegun to ■mitations. Usually hey ha"", °' T'" ''^ve Vave fires of controversy- anH ""'' f^shinned in the -fleet the Was of Var ' n "m^ '"^^ — -ch nowadays that intellectual nrnnnV " ^'^ ^'^° ''"ow 'he whole meaning of I'fe. ^ °P°^""'"« «nnot compass "l^r^'V^'^y ^'"^ love What s best worth saying can't be said •' s^rr:syou:-;^-r-----^ ^^e-^Xlr-t^^r-J^r^hSet- tematically drawn out. We are m„ t '"^'^'^ «"d ^y^" what we want in th- snlf '''' '"°'"e h'kely to find "t'erances of per"ons^X ^1^, '".' °''^" "i"-d S were not in the least conce n^d L "^ ' "' "^^^ '^^ =•"nipass 1 his is I true s not sys- > find irded and fend It a rid, lom len, lur th: VISION AND REVELATION [i.,] Il!!r''i.^5"'' «ye "w not. and ear heard not. And which entered not into the heart of man ; WThaUoever things God prepared for th?m 'that love I 5,"*^.*° "s G°d revealed them through the Soirif for * God "porX"''*'' "" **■',"«"• "«"• *'• deep tilngs oJ God. For who among men Imoweth the thines of a man .; save the spint of the man, which is in him? eveS^ so 1 But w"*" °^°°/ "°"' i?-"^"*, save the Sp?r t of God But we received, not the spirit of the world but the \ thit ,7^"''," °^ °°'': *•""* *« "iffht know the things we speak "o^^r;orH°."^^'l°°'*• W^'^'' tWngs a"ro we speaK. not in words which man's wisdom teacheth but which the Spirit teacheth; comparing sp°rTtuafthin« with spiritual. Now the natural man receiveth not the thmgs of the Spirit of God: for they are fQonS;n«S unto him; and he cannot know thern. 'Lecausi ?hey are spiritually judged. But he that is spiritual ?ud«th all things, and he himself is judged o" no man For who hfmp'^Rir *''\'"'"<» °f *i Lfrd. that he"Sould °nstruc? him? But we have the mind of Christ.— I Cor. ": 6-16. Our first business is to try to understand the peculiar quality of the mind of the poet and the prophet William Blake once said that he saw not with his eyes but through ih^m- by which he meant that he saw with ms mind. To him, secins consisted not in perceiving alone but in the way his mind reacted to the thine per- ceived. The vision included not only the object, but what his mind was provoked to add to or to read into the object ^o he went on to say that when he looked at the sun- rise, It was not a round disc of fire that he saw, but "a great multitude of the heavenly host, cn-ing 'Holy Holv Holy, Lord God Almighty.- " So Francis Thompson Took mg at the sunset found in it a suggestion of his crucified Lord: Thou art," he sang, "Thou art of Him a type memorial; Like Him thou hang'st in dreadful pomp of blood Upon thy western rood." But it is given to few of us to see things after this 3 [I-2J THAT ONE FACE of vision. For neither did Wil am riS. .^'"'''' «''' Francis Thompson at sunset read Tnttf, "TT ""' 'ts essential secret. They saw tL" /^ ?" °^ ">*= ^"" the one saw the Creator ^he other the°P T' """=- the ..nage under which ei her «^L «• 'Redeemer; but of his own imagi'atio". "nX^-L"'^ ''^ ""''"" through the sun; what he ri;H " were— saw the face of the un a pttJe T '?■ ?,"'"' " P'<^'"^«= "" but still a picture. The'^reatLt^fft n ^•'•"'^ "° '^°"'''' agination but insight, not the Xhat'ldH" '' "?' '"- however true, to the fact h.f ,?■ u • ^^^^ ^ picture, fact and discovers the mean! h^H "•''•" '''^""S'' the same William Blake wTote "^ nn V" "' '^"«- This Revolutionary War but for hi^ T. ''^"' '^^ ^""i"" the thirteen colonies but th. • ^- "^"-^""^ *« "ot tween heaven andllf.^^Ae^a^Tt Ir;'"''"*"'^"'' ""=- men or of political interests hi^ ^l ^ '=°"'"'=' "^ spiritual powers. His flncv ;at A.t '''"^'^ °* "t^n'<= and bewildering canvas but befnr'v ^" °" ^ ""^'^^d got to work, hi! insiX had' r ■ ^ t ™*e^'"^"°n had of eternal I^rinci^ef Thefts 1 " '° '"^ °"^ of the long and checkerpH Zl /.'*'* '*■ ^^^ part in which heaven and hel w °^ ''""'"" HberaHon, this world of li^inglen'^'Andthi'' Ir"'^ '="^^^^'' ^ vision, that break! rougt1heerLL*^?vf'"^"'°' event to its core of spiritu^ reair v tI "'^ °"'^"'" 't if he is to be more th^n T •'^' ^^^ P°'' ""=' have First Week, Second Howbei Day ^^'Ai-AXI'K^^ *.-«Krffij-4r4i.Vffi£ VISION AND REVELATION II-J] ination ;st gift ise nor lie sun here — r; but eation — saw ire on doubt, )t im- cture, h the This rican 5 not i be- et of tanic vded had one part tion, I as t of fard ave iirst city lUSt bimielf; but what thingi loever he shall hear, these I shall he speak: and he shall declare unto you the thines that are to come. He shall glorify me: for he shall take j of mine, and shall declare it unto you.— John i6: 13, 14. i What the true seer sees does not, however, depend solely upon his insight. Wordsworth in one of his poems asks, "Think you amid this mighty sum Of things forever speaking, 3 That nothing of itself will come And we must still be seeking?" Indeed, it is one of our commonest experiences that things do come to us. But in our day there has been considerable skepticism as to the value of anything that comes to us except along the accredited highw-/ of the "scientific method." The only safe knowledge, we have been told, is that which we gain first through the senses and then through the exercise of reason upon the data gathered by our senses, the knowledge toward which we struggle by the exercise of our natural faculties. But from this view we are nowadays being gradually emancipated. While we accept the validity of the scientific method in its own field, we do not now believe that it is efficient over the whole field of possible knowledge. "Reason," says G. J. Romanes, the English biologist, "is not the only attribute of man, nor is it the only faculty which he habitually uses in the ascertainment of truth. Moral and spiritual faculties are of no less importance in their respective spheres even of everyday life. Faith, trust, taste, etc., are as needful in ascertaining truth as to character, beauty, etc., as is reason. Indeed, v.e may take it that reason is concerned in ascertaining truth only where causation is concerned; the appropriate organs for its ascertainment where anything else is concerned belong to the mora l and spiritual region."' * "Thoughts on Religion," p. lu. fI-3J THAT ONE FACE -^^^'^LZ^-,^^^ and M.ho... have made more or greater-l«r '"T""^ ^"=* ""=" flashes. True, he had been XT. k '"?• '" '""den d>d not arrive at them by process"^ 'h"e things, but he They arrhcd. as it were and nf.» ""^?^'°"s reasoning, ■'"d places, when his m^d was eS," '!? '"■'='^^''"* ««« "s-all of which goes to sho w^!Pf *'"' "'her mat- faculties that are essential v r°^.*hat while we have -elc the truth, we hav'lers'The ■'%'''"* ^° »"' ""d receptive, they are there T r? • ""'"'' "^ *hich is ceded by spells of inteLr il . , ^^^^^ ^ad been pre- subject. He had goie out aTr "=°"""'"'>on on'^^he the truth, and thf„ the trutV hrd"'' '""'"'^'^ '° «-'«' From this we may infer that „n '?"'^ *° ""t him who does not put'^afl the mind h"'!! ^'" ""^erstand Je us ■"deed, will not of itselfT ^^'' '° 'he task. That J""s; but without it th re "an I "" ""^"^'anding of a". Yet if a man w 11 do th.". ?v "° "nderstandi„| at and the process by ^^ S^l^^^^^^ First Week. Third Day «.y. and the £ord hath no? done h? H 7" l-'fa" « uone It? Surely the Lord VISION AND REy ELATION 11-31 I Ood wil! do nothing, but he revealeth hit secret unto hit ■ervanti the prophett. The lion hath roared, whc will not tear? the Lord Ood hath ipoken, who cau but jpropheiy? — ^Amot 3: i-8. The conditions of an adequate personal judgment upon I Jesus — and indeed upon any subject that really matters —are first, insight backed by a '.-oncentrated effort of un- derstanding; and second, revelation, a something com- municated. The measure and vividness of a revelation depend upon the power and quality of one's insight; and that in its turn depends upon two things: first, natural endowment, and second, cultivation. The prophet is made by a unique original gift of insight, strengthened and sensitized by much thought and meditation, which make him capable of receiving great revelations. Prophets vary in size, of course. There are major prophets and minor, as there are major and minor poets.' But the difference between them is essentially one of scale and degree, not at all of kind. Moreover, it would be difficult to draw a psychological line which separates the prophet from the poet. The prophet is frequently a poet; and the poet is often a prophet. Both have the same quality of vision. The difference between them lies in another quarter, to which we shall attend presently. Meantime, let us consider the nature of this insight more particularly. What we sometimes call "common sense" is a kind of insight. It consists of a sane percep- tion of the relation of facts to each other, a just apprecia- tion of their comparative importance, and a sound judg- ment upon the conduct proper to the situation. It is a useful and generous gift; and though wc call it common, it is none too prodigally distributed. Few of us have as much as it would be good for us to have. Yet common ' In the Old Testament, the distinction between the major and minor prophets refers to tlie length of the books attributed to them. We are using the words here rather with reference to the quality of their message. The prophet who prophesies most is not neceisarily the (reatcit prophet Ezeldel ii not a greater prophet than Amoa. 11-31 THAT ONE FACE sense operates only on the outside of thin™ a ■ peculiar danger is to assume tha he thines Tu ' ,'I of dealing with cover the whole reaH.y ofi 1 8^, greater part of life is, after all, out of sieht'- fnH hav "t'oo" ' r"' J^^Pnent'concer^ni^X- urn' : Mo7es "o :rhe'inva""=Tie f^^^^°^^ the prophet's and thrpoet's inljhtt tC^t T^ " P'erce this unknown and uncharfed tVXt ."'''' " terpret life and man and cZiX S oiVt •" t' pit of spiritual discernment and interpfe at/on th " """ to apprehend the spiritual reality which I «T^L ^^ 1°*" and events, and to some e"t^?tate the .v"*" ""'"^^ ■n a language which others l^unde.stfnd rf '"" extent, notice; for all the spiritual reahtywhirr '"' tnay perceive cannot be exoresse^ in t„ ^ T ■ .,* "'^" through language and eLpl'-'l'^.Ta^ul '3'' w "'^ tion of the prophet and tL noet' fl^l lu " ""=J'^""<^- this way. Peter R.Ml took ?fh, •"' ""^ '«"^ ""ings in brim" alits face va ue ^ut th ^"T"'^ ^^ **"= "^"'= "every c. .monVsh^rflame ! h'ff ' S tt ^" ^ lies not in thinps wen ,„^ . . . ""^ *"*■" ■'eahty which are unteTandeUaV'''"'"'"'' ""' '" *"= ^''^e' simpt 'VX^t str the"' T '"' ^""^ P^P-^" '» clothes the thins: he se«'il» ^'°f "/!''''"• ^^"^ P°^' it at that; bZhe prophet iwl"''' °^ ''""'^ ^"'l '"^" hearing for his iag^'^He L, aTut.^Y""^ '° ^"" ^ to men; but he is not a 21 ''^^*.*™'' 'o communicate form in' which the truth i utS-\r""'' "'"^ ''' heard, anyhow and at any cos Bv .1 T- " *° ^'' " 8 yiSION AND REVELATION [U\ all art. All noble art communicates a truth; but it does so without meaning or professini; to do so. But the prophet's business is the preaching. This, however, does not prevent him from being a poet; again and again prophecy has seemed to cast itself into poetic form. We see this in the Old Testament; and a notable instance of il is Lamennais' "Paroles d^un Croyant," where the burn- ing message of the prophet expresses itself in long rolling cadences like an ocean swell. The poet and the prophet are near neighbors. First Week, Fourth Day Now when Jetui came into the part* o£ Caetarea Philippi, he asked hii diiciplet, saying, Who do met uy that the Son of man is? And they said, Some lay John the Baptist; some, Elijah: and others, Jeremiah, or one ot the prophets. He laith unto them, But who say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said. Thou art the Christ, the Son cf the living Ood. And Jesus anitwered and «aid unto him, Bletied art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.— Matt. i6: 13-17- This passage illustrates the difference between common sense and spiritual insight. When the ordinary man saiJ Jesus was Elijah or Jeremiah or one of the prophets, ha was expressing a judgment reached by common sense. So far as it went, it was true enough; and more, it was —in contrast with the prevailing official judgments — a favorable judgment. These people put Jesus in the high- est class they knew, but it was a judgment arrived at by the exercise of natural faculty. They said that Jesus bore some family resemblance to the great figures of the prophetic tradition ; but they failed to perceive the peculiar distinction of Jesus. It was left to Peter to see and to state what that was. "Thou art the Christ of God." But observe that Jesus explains Peter's perception of His significance by saying that he had received it from God. "Flesh and blood"— that is, natural faculty— "hath not (1-4J THAT ONE FACIi I ! ■"Sight completed ly tZllV'^ ''"'"'' "^ »P'"t".i inte,;eSo~ll^.rC'"^'^«''''°-"«i " the,, found or rece vedT LrthT^' "'""'^hing »=P'r.< ^' in'"pre,ation of the sforv MM r^^'' ^"^J^' '^ I end ors to sec the figure o\ ^ "" '^"°P''"- f»stor.cal setting; that is to savi* "^i "' "P''" f'-°'n its ■"/elation tr fhe ..ns en°S o7 e?'"'!'" P'"^"^ H'^ ■ts judgment is recorded T ,h. p ,"""' '"«'»''■'>; and anne^re^nir:^/: ■•^^'.t'/s^is: S Jo-th Cospe;-^:f-P--n of G„,. ^^°^-. the ..s dehberately placed in TsetHni '" P?"^''^^ form, t'nieless and careless of p ecise t ? "''."'' '" ^""""sly bac'jground is eternity ' '"stor.cal accuracy. I,, was duetThet5L.S'-S ^'"''''^ -"'-'e of Jesus term Ugos may U. 'n 'r'*r°""d of the writer Th, of God. the perfect self-exprei' on „, r' ^'"'""^ ""ought "^ outgoing toward man I, " *^°''' ^' " "'ere in Alexandria under Phil" ,h^ Jew whn^'''"^u "'^^^'oped in conception of the Logos by conrerH """.^"^ ">« Greek doctnne of the Jewf, wWch b"o> '' "'"' "'e Wisdom ^0^0^ Idea. But the Hebrew Vv'^. '"""Po-'ds to the spoken of as a person, which at ^r'?°"' ^"^ f^-^l^entlv !"ore than the common t^Senv to ""'' ^''' ''«=^" "o deas, but which becimp 1 ^ '° Personify abstract is clear that, by som? ^^ Pronounced in Phiio T* Phiio had influe;ceTer"chHr°"'T ^"^"eS ng o ■n the first chapter of isS^^r '''°"^'^'- St. ^u Hehr; '' i"" ""^ opening wo d, ;rtr"^°"''''='' '^^-^ Hebrews. But this drift ^f Thought re fveS^"'^ '° '"^ jjj s receives its crowning VISION AND REVELATION n-si expression in the P.ologuc of the Fourth Gospel, where the proposition is plainly set down that "The Word be- came flesh and dwelt among us"; and the view of the Fourth Gospel is that the Word became flesh in the Person of Jesus. From this we may infer that what men see in Jesus is influenced by their own mental background. It is this that, partly at least, explains the wonderful diversity in men's judgments upon Him: and that men sec Him so variously and so difTerently shows how unique a per- sonality He was. [First Week, Fifth Day . Havins therefore luch a hope, we use great boldnesi I of speecn, and a.e not ai Moiei, who put a veil upon his I face, that the children of Israel should not look ttedfattly Ion the end of that which was passing away: but their I minds were hardened: for until this very day at the read- I ing of the oi4 -ovenant the same veil remaineth unlifted; I which veil lone away in Christ. But unto this day, I whensoeve: ^' oses is read, a veil lieth upon their heart. I But whensoe\ - it shall turn to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now «. Lord is the Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with un- veiled face reflecting as a mirror" the glory of the Lord, I are transformed into the same imrge from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit.— II Cor. 3: ia-i8. The peculiar value of the prophet's and the poet's vision of Jesus lies in its spontaneity. Each from his own angle and with his special gift of insight looks upon Him and tells us what he sees. Very often he does not do so intentionally; he does not set out to tell us what he sees. The judgment is implied rather than deliberately stated; and the richest clues are frequently those which are dropped incidentally here and there. There is no suspicion that someone is trying to prove a case or to defend an opinion about Jesus. We have an unstrained reaction to ' Mirgin, ^'beholding as in a mirror." II i li-s] THAT ONE FACE tl^ personal.ty of Jesus; and this should prove the best kmd of mateml for a study of the significance of JeSs We ought to find more truth about Jesus here thin • the creeds For the creeds are the records of mJlttual vttf of {rfe"" ^""^'^'^ ^"^ ^'^ - shall STe' But wlien we speak of the cpontaneity of the poet and the prophet we must be careful to observe that their .mpress.on of Jesus was not received on a dean canJa VVe have already observed that a man's view of Jesulfs affected by h.s mental background. It has, however to be noted that a man's mental background is comS of two elements-that which he has put into it hTS by h.s own thought and self-discipline; and that which Ee has .nher,ted Sometimes what he has put in himself has largely obliterated what he found there when t began to look into it; sometimes his own cortributon has been wholly determined by what was there before ft"t ne,ther of these extremes describes the case of the grea majonty of men. Most of us endeavor to harmf^ize our .nhenance with the things we subsequently lea „ rebels "'"" *"'^°"'^"^'^ conservatives nor incorrigtwe When we speak of inheritance here, we are thinking not of any b.as of physical heredity, bu of what Mr R^ jamin Kidd calls "cultural" or "soc al hered tv " u "' not what is born in us that matters so much' "^wha we determine the .fof our life n.nt: T""' '=''''«>' *° what the resuh would have been if Dante L 1 rT„ • could have brought their minds in a k nd of virg rn"e7 ness to the contemplation of Jesus; but that was^no more VISION AND REVELATION (I-Sl possible to them than it is to us. Wt have to acknowledge that they approached Jesus with a certain inherited bias; and for that we must make what allowance we can in our study of them. But there is an important distinction to be drawn here. While we are inevitably children of our social and reli- gious environment and never quite outgrow the kind of mental habit which it induces in us, yet it does not follow that we shall adhere to all the ideas and doctrines which our fathers held. Dante inherited and retained a Catholic habit of nind, but this did not prevent his repudiating a part of the current Catholic teaching; Browning inherited and retained a Protestant habit of mind, but he cannot be cited as an orthodox Protestant. They exercised the right to form independent personal judgments. They did not accept their view of Jesus from the creeds ; the view we find in them is their own, and the fact that Dante's view was that of a pious medieval Catholic does not alter this fact. We have to do with the judgments of men who were free to make up their own minds. This raises a question for ourselves. Not one of us has a right to take his view of Jesus ready-made. He has to reach his own conclusion. The outlook and work- ing of our minds are profoundly and in most cases perma- nently affected by the tradition we were born into. At the same time we must not blindly accept the body of doctrines and formulae in which our fathers cast their faith and their sp'ritual experience. For faith and ex- perience, being living things, should also be growing things; and they require to be continually embodied in new forms and new statements more consistent with their expanding life. So that it is not wrong to sit lightly to past traditions. We must, of course, respect the past, but we must -not be bound by it. Tradition is a good thing when it is kept in its proper place ; but that place is behind us and not ahead of us. And generally there is as much of tradition embodied in the stuff of our minds 13 fI-6J THAT ONE FACE I as we need, without our carrying over tl,. t of doctrine in which it exp?e"sed il f ^/""' '^'"="' gam a personal impression or/esus that .■" *' f"= '° own, we must not start out with » fi J •?°'"S '° •>« °"'- fcular dogma concerning Himlst hrfi If" "'"' ^ P"" true, as though the Spirit ofTnH^ f """^ ^"'l f°«ver about Him. We musfaonrL ^ r^""^ "° ""''^ '° '«» «s dice and preconceSl X ^s ^X ''"' '^°'" P^^J"' Poets did; they went out to export hL °"'' ^'°^^''' ^"'^ being bound by pa,r interDret^f; «.= meaning without What St. Pau/ca'i.s ■•^Z^^::^. ^^Sd f^^"'^ ^^ First Week, Sixth Day "nfo"U'iroJ5'the''rtf,°er'"vi:.?h°'"5' •'•''°'» ^ ''"I send P^^^edeth from the FaS'er he sSalfS'"* "*."•«>', which and ye also bear witness her,..! ^^" witness of me • from the beginning.llT/o^gl.'j'/^'^'^'^ye have been with me Jp'el w:s\°:erd':ChaTr'''%^'"^-- *''- I"^e's to teach; from wh ch i Z^ilr,'"^''" ^'^ '° do and believed that the Acts of the Ann^H "'"'" *^' "^^ writer of the deeds and words o Jet ILTf.' "^""''""^tion fh.ng at all, it means that Je us sSl . " ""'""^ ^"y m every enterprise and i, nr. f "^ontmues to work which is in line' whh the rec'ordT t'h"e TV'f''"'''''' ence and teaching And so i^f f ■ ^P°st'«' experi- that men's experience of Chr. / '° '"^" °"" "^ore Apostles contilnsmLeral"^ which r'' "''' °' '^^ adequate judgment upon Jesus Vt L ^''"^ '° ^" whether we have not come o a better ^ ■ '^'" "^"^^'^ an understanding of Jesus than .n ^°"'"°" *° '•«=^=h since the days of the^ Apostl" /hi'T'""^ ^'^""^"°" qualification for understanding r ^P°'"" ''^d one and for the lack of whicf n^oth n"' "^^'"^ ^' ^^^' "°t They had lived with H m bT^ "!? "^""^P^n^ate us. W more about wha^J^.t'sr: fnTtSo.Ta^: 14 VISION AND REVELATION [1-6] better placed for an understanding of Jesus than any who have gone before us. This is borne out by the history of the creeds. The creeds were an attempt to capture the meaning of Jesus into a phrase. The attempt could not succeed in so far as it was meant to fix the doctrine concerning Jesus permanently. For one thing, words, being only symbols, cannot gather into themselves the whole reality of spirit- ual experience. Som^ hing is left out ; and that the most important thing of all, the life itself. You cannot com- press life into a form of words. It "breaks through language and escapes." But further, a form of words which may satisfy one generation cannot satisfy another, if the spiritual experience has gone on growing. And so the creeds have had to be patched up and extended, in order to try to include new apprehensions of truth con- tained in the growing experience. For instance, before it reached its present form in 740 A. D., the Apostles' Creed, between 150 A. D. and that year, had passed through at least twenty phases. The importance of the creeds is that they are landmarks in the history of the growth of human thought about Jesus. They have no finality; they register the general impressic of Jesus in the age in which they were formulated. e stand on them, but we ought to go beyond them. And, indeed, if our spiritual life is a reality we are bound to go beyond them. As Bradford the Puritan said— God has still more light and truth to break forth from His holy Word; and the Fourth Gospel suggests that there is more truth into which the Spirit of God is yet to guide us. The value of our prophets and poets in this connection is that we may learn from them how the Spirit of God is still testifying to men concerning Jesus; and it would require a good deal of hardihood to say that He has finished His work. Our study will show us something of the peculiar wealth of the personality of Jesus; and it will suggest to us that the treasure house is not yet IS 11-7] THAI ONE FACU ouSro^ thTcS tTj? T '° '^"^ °- view of accepting the view ^ a pro "h' ° "'°'^ "'^ ''^"^^^ take their views as materiaKh ,' T '' ^' *""'' own; and if we seeic a true v ion n ."'• '°. *°™ °"^ and hu^iiit, and diligence! 7Z":j, brdln^^dTr^ First Week, Seventh Day Whence hath this man iesirtI"%'"*^""''et .s true? °'^°'='^ 'nat vve may know that a CHAPTER II A General Survey We have already observed that if we could send a man o^he n'iVrT ''""^'^dge to examine the literature would be that at a certam pomt, a personality altouether un.que jn wealth and power impinged on the life of man gradually changmg the tone and stress of literature and' sTnt Ihfn' r™""!,"' '"""'"" °" ''• " 'hat man were ol nf ?f ' """^"" '" gallery, where he might sec some of the great masterpieces of painting, equally he would discover that the supreme interest has Vthered around th.s same person, who is represented in an endless number of aspects, yet is always easily recognizable The absolute preemmence of Jesus Christ in the essential art and hterature of nineteen centuries is beyond seriots fiuesfon He has had no competitor. At the same t^bie .t should be remarked that the growth of Jesus' bflun^e upon Literature and Art has not been a constant quantity There have been periods of strange sterility in both loma,ns durmg the Christian era. For one period of a housand years, indeed. Art has practically noth ng and L.terature very little that is new to tell us of the' sTg nificance of Jesus. ^ It was not that men did not think much of Jesus that the art and hterature of that period say so little ha |s new concernmg Him. That there was no such growth m mens understanding of Him during that period as n the three previous and the six subsequent centuries, seems o be due ,n the ma.n to the tendency to place the thurch at the center of interest rather than Jesus. It was the 19 (II-IJ THAT ONE FACE fdVil°/Sr--' °^ 'he elaboration of .he Catholic ceSd E t 'z ptf St "r '° "« -- - about its Lord's is a Z^Z and «n *"' ,°^"^'"^^ '"=>" summar ly here It hi.o.inc "1^ "" ""'^ be told very of Consta^ti^ea iV' f he'oIrS'rr"''' "--ersron^ the Church became^o™aV alciatef'-,.'^!''^''' '™"' state; hitherto the Church had btnl ^'^} ""« "^^u'sr now it became an officia corpor^t " ! "."'' '"'^'P'ndent ; with official corporations, Zeean to t ' '' '' ""= ^^^ -n .ts status than in its mission i° v ."'°"= '""^'^^'^d next eight or nine centuri«wac Uriel ''It'"^^ during the for su y ^.^^ the St^te "A l;'°f a struggle "fed, ,n the spirit it showed fh! • ,"'f "'^^P°ns it difference between i and the St?. "' '"'^ P""Ptible largely external; its concept on o^ n J-' "^"^ '^^""■^ "lined by the ordinary stanZd^nru-''""^ ^'^ deter- fame largely despiritualized and ?o°i^' ''°"''- ^' be- 't is significant that thrfirst 1° °'''" ^'''°"- ^'"^ apprehension of Jesus after '°."'P'<^«°"s sign of a new Dante,whowas.aswesha se V'""'^•'"'■°'^ -^= in of the doctrine of thTsepara ,0; °r J'"''"'^"' P^^acher Vet during this period .her °^ ^''"'"'^b and State, flame of spifituali.y'Tvt The'm" '""^ "''° ''^P' 'be ■n .ts origin a protest against the «"'•/", '"°"'"'^"' ^as the official church; and in he !'""."• "'""'^^"P'^y °f rocks, in remote cloisters men ruY'' '" "^« °f the Martin of Tours. J rome ,„, t ^"''°7' ^"^ustine, founder of the Benedict ^eO.de"^'."^.''""^ ("^e burnmg. And we may presume th,t^h ""= """"fi^" a succession of faithful sof.kr^ """^ ^as always recorded lives i„ the commn ' "'"^^ °^'^''"^ and un- on the hving word i^ h~v a"nr-°' '"^"' "'^^ P^-d t|on to generation. Prof™ o? Lr,,/'"""'/ ^'°"' S<^"^'^' the Reformation" has shown u^htThe"r '" "'?/^'°^^ °' ^-'. rehgion in numberless"Getl:'^hrri„ thfS ao ^ GENERAL .W/fyp.y ,„ , It is, indeed n uch 1^7^'^ 7'«.-s.icaI syLn,' tentious saintliness hat weTre L^^ 'L"'^ '"'' ""P^«- by which the Christian l^e hi, ^ ""= "''' channels this period whi^h we ar. nn a- '"""^ ''°*" "><= ^ges. ]„ tian hope does fLuentlv bre-.^"'??^' '"^ ''^'"^ ^hris- ing darkness, as 7t S for Tn,,^ "''°"«.'' ""^ ^""°""d- Cynewulf who sang o '""" '" "'«= English poet who "The great Leader, the Prince Majestic," " ;Twixt God and .an placed a ghostly pledge of ,ove." Ihis was in 800 A. D abnnt .h« j • millennium. With Da^e hlt.r"' t'll ''^ ^'"'"^ new age of faith and spiritual Tn,iUT , '"^^'""'"S » task will deal with some "f C I '"^°"^ P'««t period. But it may be worth ^m ^"■"^ °^ '^"'^ '"ter of the prophets and poet^by a Trief '° "■''^"f °"^ ""^y of the treatment of Ss in Lt '"'"''^ °' "«= "'^""-y a ve;; :aTp^^?JdrT;"res:rav!:^' ^r =°"^''' - symbol, there by a more deHh.ro. ' ''"'' "^^ ^ -*™ple Whether these "^arirporiliu "%'''"''' "' P°"raiture. 'ikeness of Him is dXfu "'si Vr BaT^^' ^ ^"' do; Dean Farrar denies it. Bu it reaflv Hn!"' '"^^ '^'^ very much. One thing, however h^'T T "'''''" namely, that from the hemnnt^^V ' ^n.ficant enough, picture what is virtually a conf/ ^fT" P"' '"'° his in the portrait all that he kne °"u°^ ^'""^^ '° i"^<"de not the aureole fn ended to \TZ r"^"" *° ^ *'^"<=- Was painter felt to be there but^ wr h" T"""""^ ^^ich the pencil or pigment? ' "''""'' ''^"^*^'' t° ^"bmit to 4"'orctfs:ian:rrrth^'^''T' """^ °f ="' i" 'he over the concep^on ^f 'Jet Tt^l^Z SitfX 2J THAT OK' FACE (II-il prolific in their idws asXir i^ ?"'"""' " ^^^^ ""'5 been sterile and SspLeS ' ^"'"""^ Predecessor, had DAILY READINGS Second Week, First Day doln'^i.Vfor'tMe%'^= h! tC"- "'•£^"0 ''Veth not a ihepherd, whose own Vh-.i,*''"* " " hireling, and the wolf comii^g, aSd Cv" th th« .? '" '"'}' behSldeth the wolf snatchlth them .m? .7.»'''"P' ?"«* "eeth, and because he i, a h reli„g";„'S'l "«"«n^ Vhem: he ^eeth am the good shepherd- and rlno "°? *°'' *•"• »heep. J own know me, even as the F-^h^ T*"' °"'"' ""^ "ine know the Father; "d I Uy Zv^l """""th me. and I And other sheep I have wh?^ ""^ ''^« *«"" *e sheep, them also I must bring?'a„d SL l[S.n°£ °* ">" f°'d and^th^. Shall become^"n:%*o^?. ^ sfeeTJI}!?,^ second and third centurier doubftc '-"'^'^°!"'^^' >" 'he still older trad.-tion. He is freouen '^°''""«^ "P°" « good Shepherd"_"a beautiful^^r V.T''"'"'' ^■"' "'he Stanley has said. This fa " 'is^^^L". ''^"'■'•" '' °"" the freshness and bloom wh ch SeZZ' cZ^T'^'' ,°' cerned in the world after th„ V • K '-""^"ans dis- He came the w^ld haJtotn o d'a"n^d°.V""% ^''"'^ the pallor of death was u?onTs face Lfn^ '"'' ^"■'^^ last gasp; Greek philosophy was no ^nr Tu""^'"' ''' of its great past- Pan o-r^ff p ""^^ '*'^" ^ "•">" But th! coming of Tesusr. v'r' 7' ''"^ ""'° death, world; and a new jorand ,11 ''', ''^°''' ''^""^"^ exuberance and s^r ng oflfjT"^ '"'° ■'• The world in Which Hoje ha^d t rrL^LTe'S f^^ J 22 ^ GENEHAI. SURyEY wcTc laid to rcJ So stron? / *^' '"'"■''■'= "^ '"='">•" had awakened .ha.'tir'Kn. of t'e C T '""^ '""' J""' tl'eir memorials of bitter pcT^ecutfon f^T''"' ^^•'"' ^" And on those walk i " i^ "°"' '"''*'' '» d'spcl it. a witness °o i "wn fahh ' '."."/ ''""'"^^ "^ •)""=•. this day. ''""' ""'' ''^e which remains to of'^rJ^dTheptr; wW^h :' '!"= ^'"'•"=°'"'' P-'-" and wh^-h is iSh recll J he'r'eTn °'''" ."'1"''°"^'' trinal controversies in wh ch thTr., u"' °' ""^ ''°'=- tlic "fierce Tertullian" A .-, £^"''^'' ^"^ ^n^olvti, '•The sheep He sis th^g„,f; jif-f) had asserted. perhaps in conscious protesfalainst ,h w"- '""'• ""''' severity, the artists of th« r^. .""^ '■^*""" Father's a» carr'y'in, on Htfshou de^s n r^T ^l 7^^.'' J"- s^^hed," .san, Matthew Ar^o^dT^ L^'of S^ne'ts "'"^ "The infant Church ! of love she felt .h. ,m On those wa Is subterranean, where she hid ^ne her Good Shepherd's hasty imaee drew— And on h,s shoulders, not a Iamb, a kid " o'utL";^ erem^rsl'^lTHV' "f^^^"'-'"^'^ ^^ ^-^^ early centuries Ind it „ ^hns ,an experience of the the draw ™;„ the r!T I ""' "P'-^^ed itself in Joyous "good Shepherd" tr "' ''• '"''^' ^''^'''f"'- our undefstandingof Jesu "^°"""' contribution to Second Week, Second Day 83 |ll-2| THAT ONE FACE in the mldit of th« cindlcitickt ont like unto a ion of man, clotlitd witli a garmtnt down to tlia foot, and girt about at ttw braaita witli a goldtn girdit. And liit liead and liii liair ware whit* at wiiita wooi, wiiita ai anow; and liit ayea war* a* a flam* of firs; and Ilia fact lili* unto burniahed braaa, a* if it had b««n rafinad in a furnac*; and hi* voic* a* th* voic* of many watar*. And h* had in hia right hand acvcn atara: and out of hia mouth proce*d«d a aharp two-edged aword: and hii countenance waa aa the aun ahineth in hi* atrength. And when I law him, I fell at hii feet at one dead. And he laid hia right hand upon me, laying. Fear not ; I am the firat and the laat, and the Living one ; and I wai dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore, and I have the key* of death and of Hade*.— Rev. i: ia-i8. Look now at the othri end of that sterile middle period. "During the early and middle periods of Christian art," says Sir Wyke Bayliss, "we look in vain for expression on the face of Christ." It was this — exfression — which the great painters of the Awakening added to the por- traiture of Jesus. But does not this imply a deeper understanding of Jesus? The painter executes not the mere likeness of a man — the camera can do that — but "So paints him that his face The shape, the colour of a mind and life Lives for his children, ever at its best." In some respects the Renascence painters follow tradition, but in their own distinctive contribution to the portraiture of Jesus, it was this further thing indicated by Tennyson that they introduced. The awakening began in the fourteenth century, and it gave us Dante, Petrarch, and Langland in Literature, as it began a new era in Christian art. Art, like Literature, had its morning stars; but the great dawn began with Giotto and Cimabue; then Fra Angelico in Italy and the van Eyck brothers in Flanders took up the tale, until we reach the great age of Michelangelo, Titian, Raphael, 24 A GENERAL SURl'EY rii-»i CorrcKio, and da Vinci. "From this quintet," lays one Kfcat authority, "have come the finest interpretation* of the face of Christ the world has ever seen." And this happened because these men came to their work with a reverent insight borne on a surging new life. A friend who had come to see da Vinci's great picture "The Last Supper" remarked first of all the brilliancy of the silver cup; da Vinci took his brush and painted the cup out —he would have nothing in his picture which drew atten- tion away from its central Figure. That was the spirit of the time within this particular region. Unfortunately da Vinci's picture has all but perished; but the original sketch of the face of Jesus made for "The Last Supper" still exists. In that study, da Vinci has embodied in undying beauty the sad, tender grace which he read in the countenance of Jesus. And as da Vinci has given us a picture of the tender, gracious, comforting Jesus, so Michelangelo has in his "Dies Irjc" depicted Christ's hatred of the sin which rejects His grace. Raphael, in his picture of the Transfiguration, leads us into the secret places of Jesus' power. His intense communion with God; Titian, in his picture of the incident of the Tribute Money, has shown us the perfectly balanced, strong character! the quiet reserve of which only revealed its great strength^ and which is to be explained only on the ground of that rapt communion with God which Raphael depicts. Cor- reggio's 'Hicce Homo" is a representation of the suflfering Saviour. All these have something of their own to tell us about Jesus— they bear witness to the grace and gentleness, the blazing purity and holiness, the quiet strength and suffering of Him who they believed had bought them with a price. It is impossible for us now to follow the further course of Christian art; but in the main it has been true to the great Renascence tradition. Velasquez, in his picture ot the Crucifixion, gives us the merest glimpse of the Saviour's face, leaving us to read into it what unutterable 25 I in-3l THAT ONE FACE depths of sorrowing love we may. Rembrandt's picture of Jesus blessing little children is in the true succession of the larger conception which came with the Renascence. In our own time, Burne-Jones and Holman Hunt have given no unworthy expression to their sense of the sig- nificance of Jesus. The well-known "The Light of the World," by the latter, is perhaps the most moving Chris- tian appeal ever uttered. You have the whole Gospel in the attitude and gesture of the knocking, waiting Christ. Second Week, Third Day Who hath believed our report? and to whom hath the arm of the Lord be«n revealed? For he grew up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we see hira, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised, and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and as one from whom men hide their face he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sor- rows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgres- sions, he was bruised for our iniquities :_ the chastise- ment of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.— Isaiah 53: 1-6. And yet, "what painter ever yet produced a wholly satisfactory face of Christ?'" When Leon Bonnat, the modern French realist, took a dead body from the Morgue and hung it up on a cross and then, having painted it, called the result, "The Crucifixion," we do not wonder that he failed to do a convincing work. At least some degree of sympathetic imagination is a prerequisite of such a task. Dr. Peabody has pointed out that "with but few ex- ceptions, the Christ of the Masters is the Man of Sorrows, •J. C. Van Dyke, "The Meaning of Pictures," p. 28. a6 A GENERAL SURVEY [11-31 whom it pleased the Lord to bruise and who is stricken for the transgressions of His peop!"" ird it is a fair question whether in all this there ii not ai; '"'Anient of misrepresentation or at least of j::.-".!; aeration. The in- terpretation of Jesus as the "si.fftring ser ant," the despised and rejected of men, has, it u sai'l, caused a wholly inordinate interest to be attached to the darker and more tragic aspects of His history. Renan, for instance, accounts for the influence of Jesus by saying that "he was entranced by the vision of the divine life and gave himself with delight to its expression"; while Zangwill speaks of Him as "not the tortured God but the joyous comrade . . . the lover of warm life and warm sunlight, and all that is simple and fresh and pure and beautiful." In that case, of course, we must admit that the joyous young Shepherr! '^f the Catacombs is a more faithful repre- sentation of Jesus than the tragic grandeurs of the Renascence Christ. But it may be doubted whether this contrast is real. Why may not both views be essentially true and indeed mutually fulfilling? The revolt from the stress on the "suffering servant" interpretation of Jesus is of course largely due to the feeling that the traditional view of the Christian life as an afifair of austere self-renunciation is hostile to the appreciation of beauty and to the joy of life. In point of fact, this is not true. "When a man begins to appreciate scenery," wrote a missionary in Africa some time ago, "it shows that our efforts are begin- ning to take effect."' It is also worth recalling that the earliest known landscape, painted in 1432 on the altarpiece of the Cathedral of St. Bavon at Ghent, in the famous "Adoration of the Mystical Lamb" by the brothers van Eyck already referred to, belongs to this period when men's eyes were chiefly turned to the Man of Sorrows. May we not infer from this that with a recovered sense of the redeeming grace of Jesus there came a new feeling • "The E»st and the West," vol. IV, p. 82. 87 111-4] THAT ONE FACE for the beauty of the world in which He had delighted? Perhaps this is the real commentary on that deep word — "By his stripes we are healed." "Medieval Art," says Sir Wyke Bayliss, "in its first splendour was art trans- figured by contact with the divine character and person of Christ." It was not until the sixth century that Chris- tian art ventured on an attempt to paint the Crucifixion; but that was in the gloomy millennium and it came to nothing. With the Renascence came a fuller and deeper appreciation of the significance of the Son of Man, who came to give His life a ransom for many and by that act to give men "life more abundant"; and out of that new abundance of life came first a revitalized art and then a revitalized religion. The great discovery of that period was assuredly this — that suffering is the price of re- demption, that "without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins," nor anything else worth while. The Man of Sorrows turned out to be the author of true joy. "The one central figure that in the splendour of His divine beauty consecrated Art for ever was that of Jesus."' Second Week, Fourth Day And it came to pass, as he sat at meat in the house, behold, many publicans and sinners came and sat down with Jesus and his disciples. And when the Pharisees saw it, they said tinto his disciples. Why eateth your Master with the publicans and sinners? But when he heard it, he said, They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick. But go ye and learn what this meaneth, I desire mercy, and not sacrifice: for I came not to call the righteotts, but siimers. — Matt, g: 10-13. We have seen how Art has in the main fastened on and perpetuated two elements in the personality of Jesus, the joyous simplicity of His bearing and the tragic grandeur of His passion. This is not unnatural; for Art tends to * "Christ and the Christian Character," p. 46. 28 A GENERA '. SURVEY [II-4] seek its chief sustenance in the contemplation of the beauty and the tragedy of life. This serves to illustrate a point which we shall en- counter several times in the course of our study — namely, the almost inevitable way in which forward-looking men have found a "kindred spirit" in Jesus Another and the best example of this tendency is to be found in the fact that the Carpenter of Nazareth has been as rich a source of inspiration and courage as the Good Shepherd or the Suffering Saviour. There has hardly been a great "rebel" from John Ball to John Brown who has not sought and found his justification in Jesus; and every man who has had a feeling for the "common people," the great human mass in all its need and its possibilities, has found strength and courage in the story and example of Jesus. Dr. Peabody has put on record a number of statements made by German working men about Jesus.* "Christ was a true friend of the working people," said one of thera (and we need not quote any other), "not in His words alone but in His deeds." And when Dr. Abbott longed that the working men of England should say: "We used to think that Christ was a fiction of the priests ... but now we find that He was a man, after all, like us, a poor working man who had a heart for the poor . . . now we understand this, we say, though we do not understand it all or anything like it. He is the man for us," he was only anticipating a day when a meeting of workers in Hyde Park in London gave "three cheers for Jesus Christ." The sense of this broad fundamental human appeal of Jesus is, of course, no new thing. When Wyclif's "poor priests" were impregnating the peasantry of England with those social ideals which led up to the Peasants' Revolt, when John Ball the "mad priest of Kent" led the men of Kent to fight the social oppression of the time, William 'In "Jesus Christ and the Social Problem." 29 [II-S] THAT ONE FACE Langland gave expression in verse to the spirit which in- spired this insurgency: "For our joy and our health, Jesus Christ of heaven In pooi man's apparel pursueth us ever ; . . . For -ill we are Christ's creatures, and of His' coffers rich And brethren of one blood, as well beggars as earls." Langland's great poem "Piers Plowman" is the poor man's Odyssey. Piers Plowman, the "hero" of the poem, is indeed no other than Jesus Himself— "the people's man[ the people's Christ, poor humanity adorned with love, hardworking humanity armed with indignation, sym- pathetic humanity clad in the intelligence that knows all —and makes allowances; at one time s.-tting highborn ladies to work, at nnother attacking the insolent priest, at another calling upon Famine to help him against the' loafing growling wastrel of the streets; but always en- couraging the penitent sinful, helping the weak, leading the way in the great journey, a strange figure, Christ in humanity, humanity Christ-clothed, neither all a poor man, nor all a ploughman, nor all a Jesus, but fading and vanishing and reappearing in al! forms of Kis humanized divinity and ending as the Christ-conqueror that from the Cross went down and burst the doors and defied the brazen guns of hell.'" Second Week, Fifth Day Since then the children are sharers in flesh and blood, he also himself in like manner partook of the same; that through death he might bring to nought him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and might deliver all them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. For verily not of angels doth he take hold, but he taketh hold of the seed of Abraham. Wherefore it behoved him in all things to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faith- tul high priest in things pertaining to God, to make minV'ubr I*")''''"' '""'oduclion to "Piers Plowman," p. x, (Every- 30 A GENERAL SURVEY III-Sl propitiation for the sins of the people. For in that he himself hath suSFered being tempted, Se is able To succour them that are tempted.— Heb. a: 14.18. succour The identification of Jesus with humanity which we have seen 'n 'Piers Plowman" is not confined to William rff,n fi^\- Z?,"^? ?""* '° ''"*'y ^"^i"' i" detail, we shall find him full of the same thought. Nor is it in the least a forced or arbitrary interpretation, for it is in a very real sense what Jesus Himself meant when He called Himself the Son of Man," the typical, representative, ordmary man-not merely one of us, but all of us. And It may be questioned whether if an instinctive human response to an idea is a guarantee of its truth, any idea is more completely validated than this. Is there any one who can fail to feel the essential truth of the vision re- corded by the great Russian Turgeniev? "I saw myself, a youth, almost a boy, in a lowpitched wooden church. The slim wax-candles gleamed, spots of red, before the old pictures of the Saints. There stood before me many people, all fair-haired peasant heads. l• of white mankind has picked out Jesus of Nazareth as //ii? fj! Christ, and attributed all the Christian doctrines to him." rf For some reason, observe, which Mr. Shaw does not 35 I ill-.] THAT ONE FACE specify. It might be worth Mr. Shaw's while — and ours — to try to discover that reason. A company of English literary men, including Charles Lamb, Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, and others, one day fell to discussing persons they would like to have met, and after naming every possible name in the gallery of fame, whether worthy or unworthy, Charles Lamb said in his stuttering way to the company : "There is only one person I can ever think of after this. ... If Shakespeare was to come into this room, we should all rise up to meet him; but if that Person was to come into it we should all f^U and try to kiss the hem of His garment." Why should they? That is the question which somehow or another must be answered. Even "when the door was shut, Jesus came and stood in the midst"; !>.id we have to qj some- thing about it. To help us \k ''.'/e this great variety of impressions and judgments concernint Him; and in the detailed study of some of these we have more to learn. SUGGESTIONS FOR THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION "When the Son of Man shall come in His glory, it may turn out that His Glory consists in a suit of workingman's overalls." Discuss this statement. It might be of interest if small copies of the pictures referred to in the reading for this week could be secured and studied. Some of them at least are sure to be pro- curable at a good art dealer's store. Consider some of the passages in the gospels in which Jesus is spoken of as the "Son of Man" and test the accuracy of the interpretation of the phrase given in the fifth day's reading. What do you think is the real point of the "kid" in the Catacomb pictures? CHAPTER HI The Poet of the Awakening — Dante (1265—1321) Most people would agree that the world's three greatest poets are Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare. But Dante differs from his two great peers in that he might also be included in the category of the world's greatest prophets, both Homer and Shakespeare have a message to men; but they deliver it only indirectly, without meaning or appearing to do so. But Dante has a gospel to preach and he never forgets it. It is the proof of the unique quality of his poetic genius that not all his preaching interferes with the purely poetic greatness of his work. To say that "The Divine Comedy" was written with a moral purpose is, however, to make a broad statement which covers a complex of elements, each of which has to be disentangled from the central mass and properly appreciated before the huge and many-sided significance of the poem can be apprehended. For one thing, Dante had vowed that he would, when he could discourse worthily concerning Beatrice— which skill he says he labored all he could to attain — write "concerning her what hath not before been written of any woman." This vow he discharged in "The Divine Comedy." It is Beatrice who befriends and gfuides him in his strange journey through Paradise, and, though in his scheme she is the personification of divine philosophy, she never ceases to be that Beatrice Portinarj of Florence in whom 37 Illl-I] THAT ONE FACE the flaming love of the poet discovered everythitig that was lovely and pure and of good report. So it comes to pass that "The Divine Comedy" is the most pure and exalted memorial of a human love in all literature. But the poem is not only a love song; it is also a political tract, like some Old Testament prophecies. Italy, as Dante saw it, was in a state of unspeakable confusion. The Guelphs and Ghibellines were at each other's throats ; and the issue between the factions was complicated by an incredible mass of treason and corruption, feud and hate. Not only was this internal trouble devastating the country, but Dante saw with great misgiving how French princes were watching their ppportunity to serve their own ends at tha expense of Italy. The Church, moreover, was corrupt; it had allowed its spiritual office to be obscured anc' enfeebled by papal lust of temporal power. The Popes were "laying waste the vineyard for which Peter and Paul died." They were using their spiritual pre- rogatives for material ends. But Dante, by the love he bore Italy and the Church, rose above this welter of intrigue and corruption, and, though himself a Guelph, understood that there was no hope for Italy except in "a firm hand which would repress the turbulent factions which rent her bosom." Out of this grew the poet's hope of a political Messiah — a hope which survived many a bitter disappointment. And Dante did not cease to preach in season and out of season the gospel of a spiritual church unfettered by temporal entanglements and of a united Italy freed from feud within and interference from with- out. Of this political gospel "The Divine Comedy" was the supreme expression. It would be interesting to follow out in more detail these and other elements which go to make up the extraordinary historical and human interest of the poem ; but our present purpose confines us to what may seem a narrower inquiry, though in point of fact our quest will lead us to what is the central and controlling thought of the whole book. 38 THE POUT OF THE AWAKENING |III-i | I The quotations in verse are from Cary's translation; those in prose from the translations in the Temple Classics. For anyone who desires to study "The Divine Comedy," a useful introduction may he found in P. H. Wicksteed's "Dante."] DAILY READINGS Third Week, First Day John to the seven churches which are in Asi* : Orace to you and peace, from him which is and which was and which ts to come; and from the seven Spirits which are before his throne; and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loveth us. and loosed us from our sins by his blood; and he ma'o*her and partaker with you in the tribulation and kirt ("e-n and patience which are in Jesus, was in the i. 1 1. 1 i, -ailed Patmos, for the word of God and the r .. d :■ , y o Jesus. I was in the Spirit on the Lords day, ana i heard behind mi a great voice, as of a trumpet saying. What thou seest, write in a book, and send it to the seven churches. — Rev. 1:4-11. Dante was born in Florence in 1265; and he is by far the greatest figure we see in the ruddy dawn of the human mind's awakening after the torpor of the sterile mil- lennium. His education seems to have endowed him with a clearness and breadth of vision beyond his con- temporaries. Walter Bagehot says of Milton that he had "an ascetic nature in a sheath of beauty"; and this is equally true of Dante. Austerity and a keen warm sense of beauty were wedded in his nature with a perfect con- 39 [III-I] THAT ONE FACE gruity. His pure love for Beatrice made his moral sense a burning passion, and his strong religious feeling made him such a prophet as the world had not seen since John the Baptist and Paul the Apostle. In that wilderness of feud and faction and intrigue, he lifted his voice not un- certainly and without ceasing, plunging into the political vortex in which he saw Florence and Italy involved, in the hope that he might bring something of order out of the confusion. But the enemy prevailed, and in 1300 Dante was banished from his own fair city of Florence. In the nineteen years that followed, he composed "The Divine Comedy." Three great Christian scriptures were composed during enforced seclusion; and they are all records of visions. From lonely Patmos came the Apocalypse ; from Bedford Jail came "The Pilgrim's Progress"; and Dante produced "The Divine Comedy" in exile. The poem is in three parts — the visions of Hell, Purga- tory, and Paradise. Through Hell and Purgatory the poet is guided by Virgil, the personification of human philosophy, while Beatrice, the personification of divine philosophy, leads him through the ascending cycles of Paradise. The poem is an account of what the poet saw on this strange journey. Interpolated here and there are philosophical and theological discussions, which are inserted with so much skill that they rarely seem in- congruous. Contemporary allusions, which might con- ceivably have seemed inapposite in an imaginative work of this character, nevertheless take their place quite easily. So complete was Dante's vision of past, present, and future, so deeply was he sensible of the intimate rela- tions of the material and spiritual worlds, so vast and so exceedingly exact was his survey of the sweep of the moral order, so profound his insight into human history and his reading of human life, that he was able to weld into one organic whole all the facts of his knowledge and experience, the conclusions of his philosophy and his 40 THE POET OF THE AWAKENING [111-2] theology. So true was his sense of the fitness of things so keen was hi .netration through the form to the abid- ing reality, thai his poem has never lost its bloom and the freshness of its youth. It still remains, in spite of much that was purely local and temporary in its reference, a human document of universal and inexhaustible &\e- nificance. Third Week, Second Day «*^f^*^ /■*"'' !S?*° t™ '=':'"*"'° °f *e Pharisees and of the Herodians, that they might catch him in talk. And when they were come, they say unto him. Master, we know that thou art true, and carest not for ^y\a. '*''""°" °^ ">« that He dwelt in ""'"«• Y" there was a feeling "Heavens too high for our aspiring " .^"'nlSrVra^ot wL'^XT t '^^ ^""''' «"--" 3^£er^"-"^--"--"h?s ''^Krr^^-o:^^c:^-^.,pd. and that is even now "beating hot with love of me "• Church has exated ChrU ^a'"^ ""= '''""^''t of the Third Week, Sixth Day But betag witae«KX"YaVL^°?h''"'' ''l'" manifested, r|ghteo„„„, of d^d through faith in''T?''"'A«r«n the all them that believe- for «.-,-• '" J*??* Christ unto j^^^fe •,«-?«>. »|fth 'sS;r?oTth'.' Ji° JLn*?f i'-j fo' -" uacin uiat believe- fni- n.— » • — ^ .." ^'"^'st unto «U have sinned. Md fail shor?« J V* "J" "^"ttaction: for justified freely'b^his irl^e th?ou«h fi"''' 2* ^'^■' ^eing •» m Christ Jesus- whMGn?^^*r^ '.• '■exemption that tion, througfi fai?h. by his blooS to"? *° ^« « Propitia- :!!!!:^.-.e of thi ^X'oTet o*f%'hVri.li"ao'^''& 49 IIII-6] THAT ONE FACE time, in the forbMrance o{ Ood; for the thewinc, I Mjr, of hli righteouineH at this present leaion: thmt he might bimeelf oe Jutt, end the juitifier of him that hath faith in Jeioa. — Rom. 3:31-36. The main concern of "The Divine Comedy" is with the vast and perplexing problem of sin. Christian the- ology has always regarded the fact of sin as the starting point of all doctrinal discussion ; and Dante states the case in all its bearings as he sees it. In the "Inferno" he shows the nature and consequences of sin. "The wages of sin is death" and this living death descends in cycle below cycle to ever more unspeakable depths of utter ruin. The "Purgatorio" begins to proclaim a message of grace and hope. Repented and renounced sin is seen bearing the full measure of its consequences — no longer as a punish- ment, however, but as a discipline. The doctrine of the intermediate state is one upon which Scripture gives us no certain light; but the other element in the thought of Purgatory is, of course, one of the commonplaces of ex- perience. The sins we commit against God may be for- given, but the "deeds done in the body" follow us. Their significance is, however, changed by our repentance. In the "Inferno" they are a punishment ; in the "Purgatorio" they constitute a process of chastening, by which the sin- ful disposition is eradicated and perfect holiness and fit- ness for Paradise attained. Yet this, says our poet, is possible only on the ground of Christ's sacrifice. That which cleanses from all sin is the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ; and so when a soul is_ exalted into Paradise, it i' another witness to the triumph of redeeming love. Da...e sees Christ surrounded by a countless multitude of such souls, the petals of the white rose, each a seal of his victory. The unspeakable glory of the triumphant Redeemer is Dante's contribution to our thought of Christ. But the glory is the conse- quence of the humiliation. Paradise stands on Calvary. SO THE POET OF THE AWAKENING [III.7J It is a thought of some pertinence to us today whether we do not need to recover something of Danteriark moral reahsm. Sir Oliver Lodge some time before the War told us that "the higher man of today'! d d not" 1 ?! about h.s sms but now after the War, when we have seen the awful certainty and scale of the retrlSutTon tha! follows a breach of the moral order, it is inconceivable ha we shall not once more take the fact of sin more seriousfy than we have done m the past. If this is a moral unilerse .f «s ground plan is a righteousness in which there is no InddV'.^H-'' "",1°" °^ '"^"'"«' "-«" indeed obed nee and disobedience become matters of life and death. It is ?f°we d"i:nr''r f7 °* ?,"' '*""'''"^ " '"'''y '° be sound If we do not start from Dante's assumption that there is order' L^d '^^ ^ »""=" ""' "*''°"'- " """^^ ""'imate mori! followed h„^ transgression of this order is inevitably followed by due recompense of reward. Certainly we shall miss much m our thought of Jesus if we fail to approach Him in this spirit of moral realism. Third Week, Seventh Day Then Mid Jesui unto hii diiciplei. If anv n»n -«..i^ «o".: '/^rf",?' '«' "im deny hiS„"if."ai3^.k^up hU We .h.n I<,«"?»T "5- ?" whosoever would ,.vS h U mv Mka .h^li 1;*^ "i"* 'r''°»°'»««' 'hall lose his life for ^'hi^Tif.ii ■"• ^t "• J^." "'»' 'hall a man be profited Te :24.a6 "■" *"« '" "Change for hi. HfeJ-Matt The foundation of the whole process by which a sinful "■/l//'""-?' ".J"'"' "} '^ '°'^ ''-°" 'he human side Zttv ^ ■ "^l'"' '''y^ °^"'«' ""«^er rose one who believed not in Christ." an^,rl nf"* r °f ''"' "j"'^ "^^^ something more than an act of emotional surrender. Evangelicalism has tended taith, the whole man is engaged, in every part of him. SJ (111-7) THAT ONE PACE Faith, according to Dr. Du Bose, U "the entire disposition of our entire selves God-ward, holiness-ward." In any case, whatever else it may be, faith involves • definite moral decision; and it certainly contained that in Dants's view of it. In the third canto of the "Inferno," our poet tells ut how he is overwhelmed by dismal sounds as he ente-. . the gate of Hell. These •■■"^nds, Virgil informs him, come from people whom neither Heaven nor Hell will receive. "This miserable mode the dreary souls of those sustain, who lived without blame and without praise ; They are mixed with th?t caitiff choir of the angels WmO were not rebellio'-t nor were faithful to God; out were for themselves; Heaven chased tliem forth to keep its beauty from impaii ; ana th. Jeep Hell received them not, for the wicked would hi.ve some glory over them." These luckless people, who "have no hope of death, whose blind life is so mean that they are envious of every other let," are just those who sat on the fence and did not make the decisive moral surrender which gives ooint and meaning to life. They could not die, becau; they had never lived. So we may fairly infer that faith in Dante's view is in the first instance not emotional, as the evangelical is apt to conceive of it, nor intellectual, as the oflicial Catholic view appears to regard it, but an act of moral decision. It is the movement of the will toward the Will of God. Human faith in divine love — this is the pivot of the Gospel as Dante saw it ; and this is the way by which men come to be planted in "the fair garden which flowereth be- neath the rays of Christ." The real message of Dante to us today is the need of recovering a plain and forthright ethical outlook upon the world and all that is in it, and an ethical approach to Jesus. Whether we, following Dante's road, shall see the THE PORT OF THE AWAKENING [IH-s] precise vision he saw, is of course another question. We have a different inheritance; but we may be quite sure that the road does lea ' to a vision. To take up the Cross and to follow Christ is the passport into His presence. SU00E8TI0NS FOR THOUGHT ANO DISCUSSION "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." What light does this cast upon the nature of the Church? Compare it with the Catholic idea. Collect the references in the New Testament to the Church a.s "the body of Christ" and "the bride of Christ," and discuss what each figure means. Do you think that a recovery of the sense of sin is essential to a true understanding of Jesus? How far do you suppose that Dante's division of the after-world into Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven is true? Is there any warrant for it in Scripture? How does it bear upon Omar Khayyam's saying, "I myself am heaven and hell"? S3 CHAPTER IV The Poet as Reformer — Shelley (1792—1822) It is a far cry from Dante to Shelley. Nor is it only the distance of time which separates them: they differ profoundly from one another in their inherited back- ground, in education, and in temperament. Moreover Dante, in spite of his independence of mind, was a devout believer; Shelley, on the other hand, professed to be an atheist. It may seem a somewhat unpromising adventure to in- quire of an atheist concerning Jesus. But two things may be said upon this point: First, it is not merely interesting but important for our purpose to find out how Jesus would strike an atheist, a person who had deliberately thrown overboard all the beliefs in which he had been reared. This is, indeed, as near as we can get to such a picture of Jesus as would be impressed upon a virgin mind, and inasmuch as Shelley did not have "a grievance against Jesus," as some skeptical and unorthodox people are sometimes alleged to have, we ought to discover some material of value in his estimate of Jesus. Second, it is really very questionable how far Shelley was what we nowadays would call an atheist. In his day any man who repudiated the orthodox tradition might have been called and might even call himself an atheist. To deny the commonly accepted idea of God is not neces- sarily to deny God. Indeed, the question may be fairly raised whether a poet can be an atheist at all. Certainly, 54 THE POET AS REFORMER [IV-i] he cannot be a pure rationalist or a pure materialist. It is the distinction of the poet that his very work is, so far as it goes, a spiritual interpretation of life; and this pre- supposes some kind and some measure of faith, that is, of belief in unseen reality. He may not give this unseen reality the name of God, but that does not matter so much as his assumption that there is an unseen reality. Now, no one who is acquainted with Shelley's work can wholly accept his own description of himself as an atheist. He was, it is true, in open and vehement: revolt against the orthodoxy of his time; he was frankly con- temptuous of tradition. But it is quite plain to the care- ful student of Shelley that his mind was steadily moving onward to something like a real faith. He died when he was only thirty years of age ; ha..! !.e lived another thirty years, who knows whither his restless mind might not have led him? Inviting as such a speculation is, we must not here enter upon it. What we do know is that there is a discernible enlargement of view concerning man and life and the ultimate realities in Shelley's later thought, and that this development comes to an abrupt end. What might have been can never be written ; but it may be worth while to record Browning's opinion: "I shall say what I think ; had Shelley lived, he woulf! finally have ranged himself with the Christians 1" DAILY KEADINOS Fourth Week, First Day Then saith Jesus unto them, All ye shall be offended in me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shep- herd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad. But after I am raised up, I will go before you into Qalilce. But Peter answered and said unto him, If all shall be offended in thee, I will never be offended. Jesus said unto him. Verily I say unto thee, that this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. Peter saith unto him. Even if I must die with thee, yet will 55 [IV-i] THAT ONE FACE I not deny thee. Likewise also said all the disciples. — Matt. 36:3i-3S- Shelley was peculiarly constituted. He had much more than the average endowment of natural human insubordi- nation. His chief characteristic appears to have been an instinctive hatred of restraint; he was essentially a crea- ture of impulse. "Shelley," says one of his critics, "was probably the most remarkable instance of a purely im- pulsive character." The conduct of most men is governed chiefly by impulse; but we recognize that impulse should be subject to the discipline of reason and conscience. Shelley's impulses, however, were but indifferently re- strained; and when an impulse is aroused to movement in such a personality, "it cramps the intellect, it pushes aside the faculties, it constrains the nature, it bolts for- ward into action." But in the case of most men of impulse, tliere is a certain inevitable inconsistency which arises from the number and variety of impulses which are latent in human nature. On the other hand, the man of impulse may be a man of one idea; and his impulses may all emanate from a single universe of thought. The result is that such a man will possess a character of some con- sistency and strength. Having a common origin in a single supreme passion, his impulses will naturally have also a common direction. This was the case with our poet. The supreme passion of Shelley was for reforming mankind; and it was from this spring that his impulses habitually proceeded.' It is clear that, admirable as such a character may be, it lacks the balance necessary to accomplish results pro- portionate to the energy which it expends. There is al- ■We are now concerned, of courie, only with Shelle/l nature M it has affected his literary work. If we were engapd m a complett analysis ol Shelley, we should have to note such 'tii"!?!. .,.i.l? «rrt sensitiveness which sent him on sudden and inexplicable travela, first all over Great Britain and afterwards on the continent of turope, and aecounu largely for his vagrant and itonny life. 56 THE POET AS REFORMER [IV-2I ways a wide margin of distortion and exaggeration, both in word and in deed, which is sheer waste of power. One of the first conditions of substantial and effective service in reform is a patient study of all the relevant facts. From things as they are to things as they should be is a journey which no man can help the race to accomplish who does not quite frankly face the things that are just as they are. No strong language, no volume of emphatic statements, can make up for this elementary defect. It was at this point that Shelley failed. He had the type of mind that runs instinctively to generalizations. He had none of the patience which seeks out diligently the data necessary to reform or to sound judgment. This gave him something of the character of a firebrand; and firebrands are apt to give out more smoke than light. At the same time it must be remembered that Shelley's exaggerations and distortions are due to a quick sympathy with the suffering and the oppressed and ^ hot passion for liberty. "It was," says Professor Dowden, "the sufferings of the industrious poor that specially claimed his sympathy ; and he thought of publishing for them a series of popular songs which should inspire them with heart and hope." These songs appeared after Shelley's death ; and, like other of his songs, they were wrung out of him by his poignant sense of "man's inhumanity to man." Fourth Week, Second Day Whence then cometh wisdom? And where is the place of understanding? Seeing it is hid from the eyes of all living. And kept close from the fowls of the air. Destruction and Death say. We have heard a rumour thereof with our ears. bod understandeth the way thereof. And he knoweth the place thereof. For he looketb to the ends of the earth. And seeth under the whole heaven ; To make a weight for the wind; Yea, he meteth out the waters by measure. •>7 IIV-2] THAT ONE FACE When he made a decree for the rain, And a way for the lightning of the thunder: Then did he lee it, and declare it; He eiUblitbed it, yea. and searched it out. And unto man he laid, Behold, the fear of the Lord, that ii wisdom; And to depart from evil is understanding. — ^Job a>: 90-aS. A modern novelist has told the world that the writer of drama and romance finds his characters in himself. The persons who move across the stage are at bottom in- carnations of some aspect of the writer's self, colored and shaped to some extent by his observation of other folk; and a play or a' story written under these conditions be- comes a mirror of the writer's own soul. Most first- class fiction carries between the lines large elements of autobiography and self-revelation. But there is in all this a very real danger. The writer may present as a complete philosophy what is after all only a private view of life. He may suppose that his own soul is a full clue to the whole of experience; and consequently he may become contemptuous and impatient of views that are in- congruous with his own. This was peculiarly the case with Shelley. He thought that he read the heart of humanity in his own hei^rt. "The characters which he delineates have all this kind of pure impulse. The reforming impulse is especially felt. In almost every one of his works there is some character of whon all we know is i .lat he or she had a passionate disposition to reform mankind. We know nothing else about them and they are all the same.'" Browning makes the same point concerning Shelley: "Not with the com- bination of humanity in action, but with the primal ele- ments of humanity, he has to do; and he digs where he stands, preferring to seek them in his own soul as the •Walter Bagehot, "Literary Studin," Vol. S8 I. p. 8i. THE POET AS REFORMER [IV-3I Mankiad was just nearest reflex of the absolute mind." Shelley writ large. This quality of our poet has two consequences of im- portance. The first is that Shelley's whole view of life, and therefore the whole complexion of his work, was colored by the feeling that the great evil which poisoned life was the restraining influence of established institu- tions. These stood in the way of reforming impulse ; and whether religious, political, or social, they all came under his lash. And over against them he raised the standard of what he called liberty. In his mind, liberty consisted in the removal of these cramping institutions; and the true man was he who, like himself, had revolted against them. This is the theme of the two great poems, "The Revolt of Islam" and "Prometheus Unbound." It is pertinent to observe that the established religion of his time was included by Shelley in his denunciations, and no man was free until he had broken with it. Second, since he tended to regard himself as the mirror of humanity, he would naturally tend to seek himself in Jesus, to find in Jesus that which he chiefly felt himself to be. We shall find that this is the case. Indeed, it is more so with Shelley than with most men, because of his very pronounced and self-conscious individuality. Just as he read himself into other men and created his charac- ters on his own image, so when he comes to contemplate Jesus, it is himself that he finds there, and he gives us a picture of Jesus which is a refined and sublimated version of himself. Fourth Week. Third Day To whom then will ye liken Qodf or what UkeneH will jre compare unto him? The (raven image, a work- man melted it, and the (oldimith ipreadeth it over with gold, and eatteth for it silver chaini. He that is too impoverished for such an oblation chooseth a tree that will not rot; he leeketh unto him a cunning workman to ■et up a graven image, that shall not be moved. Have yt 59 lIV-31 THAT ONE FACE not known? have ye not heard? hath it not been told you from the beginning? have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a cur- tain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in: that bringeth princes to nothing; he maketh the judges of the earth as vanity. Yea, they have not been planted; yea, they have not been sown; yea, their stock hath not taken root in the earth: moreover he bloweth upon them, and they wither, and the whirlwind taketh them away as stubble. To whom then will ye liken me, that I should be equal to him? saith the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high, and see who hath created these, that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by name; by the greatness of his might, and for that he is strong in power, not one is lacking. — Isa. 40 : i8-a6. We must first consider Shelley's revolt from religion and just what it amounted to. His attitude to the con- ventional religion of his time is one of uncompromising antagonism; and as soon as he became independent, he embraced atheism. But though he professed to be an atheist, as we have already seen, it is not safe to take the description as entirely accurate. He began by believing that there was nothing but matter; but his poet's soul could find no resting-place in the desert of materialism; and, characteristically, he swung to the extreme opposite pole and began to question whether there was matter. After all, might not everything be spirit ? And might not these things we see and touch and handle be just parts and manifestations of some great unseen spiritual reality? Shelley came to believe, as his great critic, Walter Bage- hot, observes, that "passing phenomena were imperfect types and resemblances, imperfect incarnations, so to speak, of certain immovable, eternal, archetypal realities." But these realities had a common basis in the ultimate One. And "The One remains, the many change and pass. Heaven's light for ever shines, Earth's shadows fly; 60 THE POET AS REFORMER [IV-4] Life like a dome of many-coloured glass Stains the white radiance of Eternity, Until Death tramples it to fragments." It seems but a step from this to a belief in God; and to this One Shelley does indeed give the name of God. But Shelley's God, though he speaks of him in terms a Christian might accept, is very far from being the Chris- tian God. For the One of whom Shelley sings is in no sense personal; and consequently he cannot be regarded as possessing moral qualities. In his famous letter to Lord Ellenborough,' Shelley says: "Moral qualities are such as only a human being can possess. To attribute them to the spirit of the Universe, or to suppose it is capable of altering them, is to degrade God into man, and to annex to this incomprehensible being qualities in- compatible with any possible definition of its nature." But where God is conceived of as devoid of moral quali- ties, there cannot be any deep religious feeling, at least in the sense in which these words are commonly under- stood; and if God is impersonrl or unmoral, the question of any relation of personal dependence upon Him or communion with Him, which is the very essence of reli- gion, cannot possibly arise. Shelley's God is therefore just x, the unknown quantity, who is there, but of whom we cannot gain any knowledge. This at least was his intellectual judgment upon the matter; but it is plain that this did not satisfy Shelley's whole man. Fourth Week, Fourth Day As the hart panteth after the water brooks, So panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: When sh all I come and appear before God? ;t the punishment of a London !or alleged blasphemy in 1813 judge. '^<^ttcr to ^Lord ElIenborouKh £"Oll8lld , tij iiiipi lauiiiiiciil Kfiu piliuijr, ord Ellenborough was the condemning ---"T- was written on the occasion mblisher, by imprisonment and pillory. [IV-41 THAT ONE FACE lljr tean have been my meat day and ni^t, While they continually lay unto me, Where it thy Oed7 Theae things I remember, and pour out my toul within me. How I went with the throng, and led them to the house of Ood, With the voice of joy and praise, a multitude keeping holyday. Why art thou cast down, O ray soul? And why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in Ood: for I shall yet praise him For the health of his countenance— Psalm 4a; 1-5. Martensen, the Scandinavian theologian, speaking of certain thinkers whose intellectual attitude was similar to Shelley's, says: "We think we can discern in them a yearning and a striving, of which they ihemselves are unconscious, after an ethical personal God such as their system denies. In their moments of greatest enthusiasm, they have experienced a need of holding intercourse with that highest Idea as though it were a personal being. Even in Spinoza a certain bent towards personality is discernible; for example, where he speaks of intellectual love to God and styles it a part of that infinite love with which God loves Himself. Schiller, Fichte, and Hegel were, too, stirred by a religious, an ethical mysticism which contained the germs of a personal relation to God." What this means is that men, though their intellects deny a personal God, yet in their hearts seek after Him. This same tendency is to be seen in Shelley. In "Alastor," he addresses the "Mother of this unfathomable World" and asks her to "Favour my solemn song; for I have loved Thee ever and Thee only. I have watched Thy shadow and the darkness of thy steps. And my heart ever gazes on the depth Of thy deep mysteries." 62 THE POET AS REFORMER [IV-sl It IS true that Shelley puts these words in Alastor's mouth; but if Alastor was not Shelley, then there never was a bhelley. This same craving manifests itself in a tendency to "personify isolated qualities or impulses- equahty, liberty, revenge, and so on." This may be to some extent merely a poetic device; still it reflects the yearning of the soul for the over-soul. And the im- plications of this instinctive feeling have been stated by a modern scientist: "If the religious instincts of the human race point out to no reality as their object, then they are out of analogy with other instinctive endowments. Elsewhere in the animal world, we never meet with such a thing as an instinct pointing aimlessly."* That is to say. It is a fair assumption, on the analogy of nature that the human craving for God means that there is a' God to be craved for. These then are the two elements in Shelley's mental badcground— his conception of the oneness of the ultimate reality and the real though unrecognized tendency to seek some kind of fellowship with the Unseen. Shelley might call himself an atheist; but it is plain at least that he had the substantial beginnings of a robust religious sense. Fourth Week, Fifth Day irlVJSSt^T"*^^ l^ *• "■"»" *• *» *•>•" that are perish- in« foolishneu; but unto us which are beins MTed it U the power of God. For it ii written, 1 ^". ^••*'°y the wisdom of the wise. And the prudence of the prudent will I reject. dT V '*„.*'Vl.^''*',7i"J* J* *• »«"•>«' "here «» the * of tWi world? hath not God made foolish the rf r~?A *' .'S'fi'*' f"»f ••••»? t*"*' ™ *»>« wisdom -.. SL** world through its wisdom knew not God, it r*.?i "/*^ pleasure through the foolishneu of the preaching to .ave them that believe. Seeing that Jew. "k for signs, and Greeks seek after wlsdmn: but we 'Ronunci, "Tboughls on Relision," p. 82. 63 [IV-sJ THAT ONE FACE prMch Chriit crucified, unto J«wi a ■tumbliagblock, and unto Qcntilei fooliihneu; out unto them that are called, both Jewa and Oreeki, Chriit the power of Ood, and the wiidom of Ood. Becauee the foolfihnesi of Ood it wieer than men; and the weakneii of Ood ii itronger than men.— I Cor. i : iS-ij. It will now be quite clear that in approaching Jesus, Shelley would exclude most of the conventional teaching about Him from his mind. The idea of incarnation was unthinkable to him, save only as the impersonal essence which stood for God in his mind is, as it were, incarnate in all things. That Jesus should be regarded as in any special or unique way the Incarnation of God, appeared to our poet a m^re superstition, and the traditional view of redemption through the incarnate Son of God seemed the wildest foolishness. In "Queen Mab" (1813), one of his early poems, he assails the conception of the Atone- ment in a tone of bitter satire. After laying the re- sponsibility for human sin at God's door, he goes on tn describe the divine provision for dealing with sin. "One way remains, I will beget a Son, and he shall bear The sins of all the world. He shall arise In an unnoticed corner of the earth, And there shall die upon a cross, and purge The universal crime ; so that the few On whom my grace descends, those who are marked As vessels to the honour of their God May credit this strange sacrifice and save Their souls alive ; millions shall live and die Who ne'er shall call upon their Saviour's name, But unredeemed go to the gaping grave." It is possible that we have become so habituated to the New Testament teaching of redemption that we have lost the sense of its staggering strangeness. Shelley stood re- mote from it and saw much of that uniqueness and un- familiarity to which habit blinds us; but it was so com- 64 THE POET AS REFORMER IIV-6J pletely foreign to his univcse that in his impulsive way he wrote it all off as an absurdity. This is one of those cases where Shelley's disinclination to master the sig- nificance of all the facts of the case led him irto a position from which a little more patience would have saved him as indeed a maturer judgment uhimately did. "Queen Mab" was the product of youthful and rather aggressive atheism; and it is not difficult to believe that, in spite of the great genius displayed by the poem, his wife was right in saying that she thought his mature taste would have condemned it. As a matter of fact, in 1821 he him- self described it as "villainous trash." To Shelley, then, Jesus would rank simply as a man; and from what we know of Shelley's habit of mind, we should be able to anticipate without much difficultv the kind of character with which he would invest Him. Of his admiration for Jesus there can be no question; but it was inevitable that he should class Him among the goodly company of reformers. "Jesus Christ was crucified," he had written to Lord Ellenborough, before "Queen Mab" had appeared, "because He attempted to supersede the ritual of Moses with regulations more moral and hun.ane ; his very judge made public acknowledgment of His inno- cence, but an ignorant and bigoted mob demanded the deed of horror— Barabbas the traitor and murderer was released. The meek reformer Jesus was immolated to the sanguinary deity of the Jews." This passage shows a characteristic misreading of the facts, but it shows clearly the category in which Shelley placed Jesus. But the ascription to Him of any character transcending that of a reformer, Shelley put down as a superstition. It should, however, be remembered that the role of reformer was the highest and noblest in Shelley's scheme of things. Fourth Week, Sixth Day Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt love thy neigbbour, and hate thine enemy: but I uy unto you, 6S IIV-6J THAT ONE fACE Lor* your raMiii**, and pray for th«m that Mrttcutt you: that ya may bt mm of your Father whIchMt in haavan: for h« makath hit aua to riaa on tha avil and tha good, uid amdath rain on tha juat and tha unjuat. For If ya loTo tliam tlut Io»a tou, what raward hava yaf do not avan tha publicana tha aama? And if ya aaluta yow l5r**ftL*^«"''lJ''"' do ya mora than othara7 do not iran tha Oantile* tha aama? Ya tharafore ahall ba parfact. aa your haavcnly Father ia perfect.— Matt. 5: 43.48. In his "Essay on Christianity" (1816), Shelley makes a serious attempt to estin- ' the significance of Jesus and His teaching. At th« utset, he acknowledges "his extraordinary genius, the *ide and rapid effect of his unexampled doctrines, his invincible gentleness and be- nignity, the devoted love borp- to him by his adherents." "We discover," he says later in the essay, "that he is the enemy of oppression and of falsehood ; that he is an advo- cate of equal justice, that he is neither disposed to sanction bloodshed nor deceit, under whatsoever pretences their practice may be vindicated. We discover that he was a man of meek and majestic demeanour, calm in danger, of natural and simple thoughts and habits, beloved to adora- tion by his adherents, unmoved, solemn, severe." Shelley had evidently read the gospels to some purpose; and the picture he draws is open to no criticism. But one peculiar- ity Shelley's portrait of Jesus has which 3 very luminous. He finds it impossible to draw a picture to his own liking without excising from the gospel narratives certain pas- sages which appeared to be inconsistent with the charac- ter of Jesus— a proceeding neither scientific nor just. But It shows that, to Shelley, Jesus seemed so altogether ad- mirable that he would not allow the records of His life (as he understood or misunderstood them) to cast an inadvertent shadow upon His stainless beauty. In his account of Jesus' teachings, Shelley makes a brave attempt to reconcile it with his own view of things. God IS represented by Jesus Christ as the power from which and through which the streams of all that is delight- 66 THE POET AS KEFOKMER W-i] ful and excellent flow, the power which molds as they pass all the elements of this mixed universe to the purest and most perfect shape which it belongs to their nature to assume. Jesus Christ attributes to this power the (acuity of Will. How far such a doctrine in its ordinary sense may be philosophically true or how far Jesus Chriv mtentionally availed himself of a metaphor easily under- stood, It IS foreign to the subject to consider. This ii.lk'i IS certain, that Jesus Christ represents God as the i-nxum of all goodness, the eternal enemy of all evil, the .ml form and unchanging motive of the salutary operations of iMo material world." This sounds very lik>^ Matthew Arnolds definition of God as "that stream of tendency, not oir.- selves, that makes for righteousness," but it is very remote from Jesus' own words: "After this manner, pny ye. Our Father, who art in heaven." or "I know that Thou hearest me always." Though Shelley saw the beauty of Jesus, It IS plain that he has not properly understood His mind. Our poet, however, sees that Jesus' ethical teaching rests upon His conception of the moral nature of God; but it is quite in keeping with Shelley's habit of mind that he should find the distinctive element of the teaching to be the injunctions against revenge. "Jesus Christ instructed his disciples to be perfect as their Father in heaven is perfect, declaring at the same time his belief that this perfection requires the refraining from revenge and retribution in its various shapes." This is hardly a com- plete account of what Jesus meant by "perfection." That quality is no negative thing; it consists in love, a love that IS, as Dr. Forsyth says, true to itself through everything even to the loving of enemies. Of the way in which Jesus thought about human nature, Shelley gives an account which is just enough. "He simply exposes with the pas- sionate rhetoric of enthusiastic love towards all human Mings the misery and the mischiefs of that system which makes all things subservient to the subsistence of the 67 lIV-7] THAT ONE FACE material frame of man. He warns them that no man can serve two masters, God and mammon, that it is impossible at once to be highminded and just and wise and to comply with the accustomed forms of human society, seek power, wealth, or empire, from idolatry of habit, or as the direct instruments of sensual gratification." All of this, after all, is only an extended way of saying an ancient word which Jesus repeated at a memorable moment, and in which He expressed the fundamental distinctiveness of the nature of man — "Man shall not live by bread alone." Fourth Week, Seventh Day And they come unto Bethsaida. And they bring to him a blind man, and beseech him to touch him. And he took hold o£ the blind man by the hand, and bronght him out of the village ; and when he had apit on his eyes, and laid his hands upon him, he asked him, Seest thou aught? And he looked up, and said, I see men; for I be- hold them as trees, walking. Then again he laid hii hands upon his eyes; and he looked stedfastly, :.1 was restored, and saw all things clearly. And he b-...t him away to bis home, saying. Do not even enter into the village. — Mark 8: 32-a6. It is clear that Shelley has nothing particularly new to ttll us about Jesus. Indirectly, however, he has a good deal to teach us. To begin with, we have in Shelley a mind entirely emptied of all prepossessions in favor of religion and altogether at enmity with all forms of orga- nized religion; and it is plainly of some importance to have seen how Jesus impresses such a mind. That there was a certain change of intellectual position in the interval between "Queen Mab" and the "Essay on Christianity" is scarcely open to question. But this change is in no wise comparable to the complete revolution of temper which has taken place in the same interval. In the "Essay" there is nothing of the bitter satire of "Queen Mab"; on the contrary, there i.s a sensible atmosphere of sym- pathy. The care alluded to already that nothing in the 68 THE POET AS REFORMER [IV-7] i gospel records themselves should sully the fame of Jesus not even the supposed extravagances of the evangelists' 1 shows how the figure of Jesus has influenced the poet's \ temper. Yet his vision yields him no adequate vision of Jesus. The disparity between the Christ of Shelley's "Essay" and the Jesus of the gospels is considerable But is the story not told of one who, as sight came to him saw men as trees walking? And the unclear vision of Shelley seems to be not so much the result of defective .■sight as the premonition of a growing and clearing sight As he settled down to study Jesus, his eyes began to be opened. Who can tell, had not the angel of death come .so early, but that Shelley might yet have seen vastly more m the face of Jesus? He had already traveled far from the days of "Queen Mab" by the time he came to write the "Essay." Whether he would have reached the tra- ditional view of Jesus as we find it in the creeds, may be open to question ; but he was beyond peradventure on the road to a larger and fuller vision. We have seen how Shelley read his own passion for reform into Jesus, and in the same manner, he finds Jesus to be, like himself, a poet. Shelley, like all men of his temperament, believed intensely in himself and in his mission. That one should be a poet and a reformer was to attain the summit of manhood; and so Jesus ap- peared to Shelley. He was the "sublimest and most holy poet"; and also, "he tramples upon all received opinions, on all cherished luxuries and superstitions of mankind. He bids them cast aside the claims of custom and blind taith by which they have been encompassed from the very cradle of their being." Shelley tended o-ermuch to identify reform with mere iconoclasm; and in this passage, he was merely executing a portrait of himself. Vet does not all this illustrate the truth that the measure of our sympathy with a person is the measure of our understanding of him? This is true of Jesus, as of all other men. The kinship of poetic spirit and humane 6g [IV-s] THAT ONE FACE aspiration which Shelley found in Jesus became the meas- ure of his understanding of Jesus. This, so far as it goes, is good and true ; but it is not a sufficient ground for a complete judgment upon Jesus. SUOOESTIONS FOR THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION Look up in a good dictionary these terms: Atheist, Agnostic, Skeptic, Pantheist, Deist ; and consider to what class Shelley belongs. In what sense was Jesus a reformer? What did He reform? Sometimes He has been called a "revolution- ary." Is this true ? If so, in what sense ? What was Shelley thinking about when he said Jesus ' was a poet? Can you find any poetry in the gospels? Remember that you may have poetry without rhyme or meter. Consider how much you can know of a man from— (a) reading his life and (b) reading his books or study- ing his pictures. What is it that you do not discover from these sources; and how or where can you discover this thing? Apply this to our knowledge of Jesus. Consider the Seventh Day's Scripture reading as an in- terpretation of Shelley's spiritual life. H 70 CHAPTER V The Poet as Rebel— William Blake (1757—1827) a retl TK .7" !"'"" ='"'^' °'- !««». Blake was a rebel. The student of Blake will finH\!,,„ • , Blake, however, was much more of a rebel than Shin' No man ever loved liberty with , ^L ■ ^"«"«y- |h«r fetters. Blake drdn^h^itaeo^r a^cSr' T' ■n. the days of the French RevoLrrhrlV^t Zl 71 IV-i] THAT ONE FACE London wearing a red cap; and whether it was authority in rehgion, or convention in art, tradition in literature or absolutism in politics, in so far as Blake believed it to hinder mens freedom, he assailed it with a vehemence that never relented. Naturally it was in the region of Art that his protest was loudest and his rebellion most un- yielding; but he sang the praises of Wesley and Whitfield because they had dared to break through the dry formal- ism of the conventional religion of their own time • and he was one of that farsecing and courageous company of Englishmen who had the hardihood to side with the thirteen American colonies in their struggle for inde- pendence. He was the consistent devotee of libertv throughout his life. ' But whereas Shelley was an intellectualist and a poet of Ideas, Blake was a seer and a poet of visions. He professed to see visions in which he talked with the Old Testament prophets and some of the great personalities of history; and these visions were more real and im- mediate to him than the actualities of life. Whether we accept Blake's own view of these visions or not it is beyond question that he was a seer of quite extraordinary power and originality. What seems to be true of him is that he lived consistently upon that shadowy border line which separates the waking world from the world of dreams. The fantastic results, both in his conversation and written work and, indeed, in his drawings have tempted some to believe that Blake was mad. But two such formidable critics as Algernon Swinburne and G. K. t-hesterton have finally dispelled the myth of Blake's insanity. Perhaps it is the case that Blake was, after all, wholly sane ; and that we who live so exclusively in the world of sense are not altogether sane. But the fact remains that Blake's writing and drawing are to a great extent obscure and difficult of interpreta- tion. He invented a wild and staggering symbolism in order to convey his ideas; and since he left no clue t,- 72 THE POET AS REBEL (v.,j his symbolism, i( is certain that larte tnru „f i,- lines of what h'^h^t^sJ/rr woI'^^bS",""'; to ours. ^ '"'""'' '^ "°' ^^'thout its pertinence po«v;'irobsrure''°or:h;?or''''°"'' '"^^ ^^ «'«'«•« I that that to me who wo,3rdo good evil i.^*^ **"" *« '«^. delight in the law of God ffter th. ii' P«ient. For I fee a different law in nuTm.IfL * •""•'<« man: but I •w of mv mind! and KSg me"' i„7o"'"« ■"•?•""♦ «»« the law of sin which i. iA ™„ * t '"'° ««Ptivity under that I am , who sSal delive"^ me"!',"- . °. ""t'hed rS." feath? I thank God through j";u^"chH.V" ^°P °J *^^» 71 '^m IV-i] THAT ONE FACE creative imagination expressed in any medium, whether of substance or of sound, by which the human spirit may make itself articulate. Blake's God is the supreme artist ; Jesus was the incarnation of the poetic or creative genius. "Prayer," inscribed Blake on one of his engravings, "is the study of Art. Praise is the practice of Art." "A Poet, a Painter, a Musician, an Architect— the man or woman who is not one of these is not a Christian." "The eternal body of man," he says in the same place, "is the imagination, that is, God himself, the divine body, Jesus. We are His members. It manifests itself in His works of Art ; in eternity all is vision." The point here is that God is the creator, but as God is immanent in all men, then men, too, are creative beings; and only as they are creative are they real men. The emphasis upon the divine indwelling is constant through- out Blake: "Go tell them that worshipping God is honouring His gifts In other men; and loving the greatest men best; each according To his power, which is the Holy Ghost in man ; there is no other God than that God, who is the intellectual fountain of humanity." But Blake is well aware that this doctrine does not cover all the facts of life. Man does not live up to this view of him; and Blake has to take account of that fact which William James has called the "divided self." This fact Blake meets by enunciating a doctrine of conversion: "Man is born a spectre or Satan and is altogether an evil and requires a new self-hood continually, and must be changed into his direct contrary." This is a doctrine of original sin and conversion definite and clear enough to satisfy the most conservative Christian. But it does not follow that the new nature as Blake sees it will behave itself in the same manner as the converted person of the 74 THE POET AS REBEL fV-i] common tradition. According tn ♦!,. u.. . ■ . are transformed into saintf i^cordilr.o'm'.V"*' ^' are soundly converted, we are trln/f„, *^ J • ''•": '* *" poets. That u f transformed mto artists and The trouble with man is twofold. First of >ll i,. i. trouble within himself. The poet c otrr^,- ' *"" through which manhood i.T„ •/ creative energy onlyTngredient ThSSn 1^"""^;'"!' ::f "?' l^ composition the two Dowerrnf n. .^''*'^« "^ also in his is right only when dS« ,„rf^ ' ?".'' ^*"°"- ^an andlo enabk the crea We ener^'t"" ''"*"" ""='' °*" equable and unstrained fasHon^ut ?'"'>r '■^'.^ '" *" Reason are apt to be at rr„« '""^">' ^"^ and inward chaos "oss-purposes and the result is equ^H; iH^trbiTiidier A° £ '"r"'^= •>- for those who restrai^ Desire 7h ? " ^"^ ""'<""?» their desire is weScen^'Lh '''''J: ""'^ ='".««^<1 "because same time he UtanKnllXKn ^' ''' B.r'caiis'i!r/:Lrr"^' '■'••^ -^^^^^^^^^^ "s-'a-: wa7n,n„ J •.? ^ ^'' *" ^"'°" is denied. But Blake IV-aJ THAT ONE FACE Fifth Week, Second Day But when it wai now the midit of the leait Jetut went up into the temple, and taught. The Jewi therefore nurvellcd, saying, How knoweth tbii man letteri, having never learned? Jeiua therefore answered them, and said. My teaching is not mine, but hi.' that sent me. If any man willeth to do his will, he sb^^l know of the teaching, whether it be of Ood, or whcuti-.^ I speak from myself. He that speaketh from himac\r seeketh his own glory: bnt he that seeketh the glory of him that sent him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is ia him. Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you doeth the law? Why seek ye to kill me? The multitude an- swered. Thou hast k devil: who seeketh to kill thee? Jesus answered and said unto them, I did one work, and ye all marvel. For this cause hath Moses given you circumcision (not that it is of Moses, but of the fathers) ; and on the sabbath ye circumcise a man. If a man re- ceiveth circumcision on the sabbath, that the law of Moses may not be broken ; are ye wroth with me, because I made a man every whit whole on the sabbath? Judge not according to appearance, but judge righteous judge- ment.— Joim 7: 14-34. It is said that "the goal of thought is one," and the task to which the human Reason sets itself is that of finding the "one," the underlying unity of things. It goes about this task first by studying things and grouping them according to their similarities. Then it tries to find a general statement, on the basis of the similarity, that is explanatory and true of each of these groups. After- wards, it proceeds to compare and group these general statements, and to discover still longer generalizations which will cover and explain the first groups of general statements. It hopes some time to evolve one supreme general statement which will cover all the facts of life, and when it does that there will be no more need to think. But it is not likely to do so. Life is, after all, a greater thing than thought; and thought is never able to keep pace with life. As a matter of fact, our generalizations 76 THE POET AS REBEL ,v-aj that .,rea. .rSlu.eJirn.'th^" h'' wt^.n^J'"" '^^ atomic theory it was .i,nn«. j » u ^ known as the the constitutfon of "atterNow w^ i"' '"'l'^'"'' »»«"' ^«itvjst.rthr^'^--"--^^^-^ ,e;9;u^:r:araU,rt::hVrn:Jt^"r r sin to doubt their truth !nH '"''.P^"^""^ i' becomes a the light of the L tTnow.ed« r^h^-'"^ ""=■"• '" Sieved that the sun = 3"ai ^^e ":r^^^ ""=•= t>on the truth of this view was a ,in , J ; '.'° '""■ Galileo was imprisoned bj'he Inqui ti;n When'n"^ ?° enunciated the evolutinn m.„ u "^"^" Darwin atheist because he hid dared ?' ^^ *" ""''^'^"^ « «" -heory of creatii And'y\7 o ^^Vrow^hf^^^^^^ was rijht. This doe« n/t .^- u *""' Darwin -^aid tC- last word uoorthr K- °*'^"' '*''" ^*^^'"" «l.at the- theory of evoTu"ionh«^'"'/"u'' '' '' P""'"' dogma which all r„'°"/^' '''''"^'^y ''"''^"'d into a noUikely to bu „ or ,o c llo^r^"'"- f'^Z'"'''' *« ''^'^ evolution; but perhaps a' t^ late"r '°' '"^'^"^ving in gone beyond Da'llin'^^J Seatticked asT"' "'"' "''? youth. And so it goes on *"**='"•' *' " corrupter of abo':.t^fm%:^ief:, 'ii°:, '"'"^ ^°'"« - ■•-"'' philosophy, renin Lnt csart I '''''""' "^ ^ogma-in imprison men'sSs fe ..n' Ir <=^"ywhere-which which bind and cn„h ^ ' '*""* 'y*'*"^ "wheels." ni.ions and laws of the "h.:: PY«>nality; and the defi- of opaquene s " a laS „f H ?" '" ^-^ ""^ "'^'^ "">" mind's leh:pelesC^:i'tr T^ -|--h men's f J t.igca. -.aeon, ^.ewton. I^ocfce, and 77 THAT ONE FACE IV-3J ''''".e?ro«"h.'„"J ''•'^'"' •"«"''«' '» "'-.I ...el th.ir ^*.'..^°nt,*""''^' °^" ^">'°"! R"-ni„g. iike v..t Kvy'Vr«tE'fLu''r'' °' ^«-'°"' bUck the Qo.h 0.^=7 ^^^-eJ^actJ..^^ Movin^^^by compulsion each Cher; not « those in Eden Wh«I within wheel in freedom revolve in harmony and to doctrhes and law« wh.Vi, i. i j\^ , ^ "^ "*" *'°*'" .thrall and forbade Xir^S't'ee ^* J^" "' "'? '" in the bondage of reaaon Zh* ?" *" '*'*' » '"a*" in order to !ha«er fh«;T^ -. ^'".'"' '' ""*• S'"''' «ved .lave. "•"' '^"'^ *"<^ »° emancipate the Fifth Week, Third Day |..^.n'.^V."S:t «Vth".«'*iil? '"^•- '«' *. fir.t !• no more. And I mw the h^ ol^"'^' •^«' *• ••• coming down out of hwtr^tr^f^' ""T J«n«alem. bride .domed for her husbMiX^i: ""/* "•''y " • out of the throne ..yitJL SlLl^? ^ '"f'* * «»■•■' ^"i" i. with men. «.d l«X"g'd*w«itk^^h:^^-'/5j//^^^^ THE POET AS REBEL thtir part ihall b« in th. uw?! ™l'"""*' •»«» •" llari brlnuton.; which i^^^'^'^A^^^,,^^^.^^'^ remember that, though he s~nr ^"'"i ** "^'^"' '» ^'tacking exist „g infti.u.lonraL'"";'' °'.'''' '""^y "" '^ith large and wonderful rn. •"'*'"' •« *»» » man •feed a, f 801,'.:°^ t SdTl't"''- '' **» -" significant of the iudemenV n?.- ''"°'^": »"<• it » b^'t known line, a« C :^ 1"?^ T" ''''» ">at hi, «If in the role of a builder! "^ •" ''"'="'*» ««- "n*'" "°f ««e from mental fight In England s green and pleasant land " The stones are Pitv and th. k.- 1 "'^°' tions ^ '"'* "'« '>"':''s well wrought Affec- E«db, Love and Kindness; and the tiles engraven For^teS'"' "'""'■ ^"^ •*»- "d rafter, an. MICROCOI>Y RfSOlUTION TBT CHART (ANSI ond ISO TEST CHfKJ No, 21 ^ /APPLIED IIVHGE Inc ^^ 1653 Eost Main Street f,iS: Rochester, New York 1*609 USA '-^ (716) 682 - 0300 - Phooe ^^ (716) 288 - 5989 - Fox [V-3l THAT ONE FACE The mortar and cement of the work, tears of Honesty; the nails And the screws and the iron braces well-wrought Blan- dishments, And well contrived words, firm-fixing, never forgotten. Always comforting the remembrance; the floors. Humility; The ceilings. Devotion; the hearths, Thanksgivmg. It was '-Jst because the "systems" of his day prevented at every point the building of his ideal city that he at- tacked them. His destructive criticism was simply an incident in what was to him a great, pressing, positive task. And wheresoever in the wide world he heard of men breaking the bonds of systems— political, religious, or other— he lifted up his voice in exultation : "He sent his two Servants, Whitfield and Wesley; were they Prophets, Or were they Idiots or Madmen ? Show us miracles ! Can you have greater Miracles than these? Men who devote . . Their life's whole comfort to entire scorn and injury and death?" Rebellion against outworn authority was to him one of the credentials of holiness; and his heart warmed to any man who, like Jesus, "suffered without the gate." When the American colonies broke loose from the tyrannous absolutism of Georgian England, Blake greatly rejoiced and sang one of his great "prophecies." In "America" is a song which is one of the classics of the literature of liberty : "The morning comes, the night decays, the watchmen leave their station, The grave is burst, the spices shed, the linen wrapped up; The bones of death, the. cov'ring clay, the sinews shrunk and dried So THE POET AS REBEL [V-4] Reviving shake, inspiring move, breathing, awakening. Spring like redeemed captives, when their bonds and bars are burst. Let the slave grinding at the mill run out into the field, Let him look up into the heavens and laugh in the' bright air; Let the enchained soul, shut up in darkness and in sieh- ing * Whose face has never seen a smile in thirty weary years, Rise and look out ; his chains arc loose, his dungeon doors are open. And let his wife and children return from the oppressor's scourge. They look behind at every step, and believe it is a dream Smging, 'The Sun has left his blackness and has found a fresher morning And the fair Moon rejoices in the clear and cloudless night ; For Empire is no more, and now the Lion and the Wolf shall cease.' " This kind of man, then, was William Blake. His passion was to set men free from all hard and fast systems of thought and conduct, so that the creative urge of per- sonality, the divine in man, should express itself freely and fully. Shelley pleaded for freedom because he had a tender heart for suffering humanity; Blake fought for freedom in order that every man might have the chance to rise to the full stature of his manhood. Fifth Week, Fourth Day [And they went every man unto his own house: but Jesus went unto the mount of Olives. And early in the mornrng he came again into the temple, and all the peo- ple came unto him; and he sat down, and taught them And the scribes and the Pharisees bring a woman taken in adiUtery; and having set her in the midst, they say unto him, Master, this woman hath been taken in adultery in the very act. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such: what then sayest thou of her? And this mey said, tempting him, that they might have whereof 8l IV-41 THAT ONE FACE to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground. But when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. And again he stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground. And they, when they heard it, went out one by one, beginning from the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman, where she was, in the midst. And Jesus lifted up him- self, and said unto her. Woman, where are they? did no man condemn thee? And she said, No man. Lord. And Jesus said. Neither do I condemn thee: go thy way; from henceforth sin no more.] — ^John 8: i-ii. Perhaps the best instance we have of Blake's violent assaults upon binding convention is to be found in his poem called "The Everlasting Gospel." Here, in his own characteristic way, he sets out to deny one by one the characteristic features of the pulpit Christ of his day. His exordium is a promise of stormy times to follow: ■ "The vision of Christ that thou dost see Is my vision's greatest enemy . . . Thi'ne is the friend of all mankind, Mine speaks in parables to the blind ; Thine loves the same world that mine hates. Thy heaven doors are my hell-gates. Socrates taught what iileletus Loathed as a nation's bitterest curse ; And Caiaphas was in his own mind A benefactor to mankind. Both read the Bible day and night, But thou read'st black where I read white." Blake's vehemence often leads him, as it does here, to indefensible and confusing extremes of statement. When he assailed the conventional view of Jesus as "the friend of all mankind," he was probably recalling the cleansing of the temple and the denunciation of the Pharisees. The "gentle Jesus, meek and mild," of current religion seemed to Blake a mere caricature. He perceived that an undis- & i THE POET AS REBEL [V-jj criminating lenity was not a genuine feature of the eosoel ^rtra.t; yet Jesus was "the friend of all manWnd^and Blake seems not to have perceived that Jesus lovid th, very men he chastised. ^ ^ '"* In this forthright way, Blake proceeds to attack the outstanding characteristics of the popular Christ Was & M "^'^ '^ '='^^^''- WashehumWe? And serv'ile Te.V V"\'^''"'' '^' pusillanimous, decorous! servile Jesus whom he supposed the contemporary pulpi r J^'1: IV' '■'" '''^' ">«* adjectives, gentle Se A«mW. had for Blake an offensive meaning.^else he S hardy have used them in his attack ui^n the current rehg.on. Yet Jesus was gentle, chaste, and humble in the strictest sense. But properly understood, in thfchrist an vocabulary gentleness does not mean W/L« and selUbL'"' rl "T ^-''"*«-- while hutflj'is not This undiscriminating vehemence of Blake robs his he^H t A ,! "'''^' ^^ ■"""=: ''"' 'he people whom matter ^ft- "'°"'\"''"':'"y "=^ '^'^ manner^nd th^ matter of h.s speech against him; and would indeed be ab e to do so wUh a tolerable show of plausibility. Never! theless he understood the essemial quality of Jesus far more cle,rly and told it far more vividly than the con .7,nn- "'' ^u-'f'H °' *"'^ "'^y- H^ «««^hed through the esus "fd?'^- °''r'f '^' P'"°"*' °"'""" °f the man Jve h,„ f^'';°,r'' !, ^^.'' '""^^ convincing and attrac- ;h/JiXl"ntu"y.""'"'"^^''"« "'•=°'°^'=^' '^^-^ "^ Fifth Week, Fifth Day 83 IV-sJ THAT ONE FACE law, till all things be accomplished. Whosoever there- fore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say unto you, that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.— Matt. 5: 1 7-30. In that extraordinary production, "The Marriage ot Heaven and Hell," Blake says, "Jesus was all virtue, and acted from impulse, not from rules." Here we have a clue to Blake's criticism of the conventional picture of Jesus. In the fifth chapter of Matthe\ Jesus, in quoting tht commandment "Thou shalt not murder," goes on to point out that the spirit of this commandment forbade the anger which leads to murder, and the offense which leads to the anger. Similarly, He says that the commandment which forbade the adulterous act also forbade the adul- terous thought. Now, men are apt to fall into the habit of supposing that the provisions of law define their moral obligations. They come to think that the whole duty of man is c.iclosed within the letter of the law and this habit of emphasizing the letter of the law is what we call legalism. The classic representatives of this spirit were the Pharisees and Scribes of the New Testament; and what Jesus does in the fifth of Matthew is to show that the spirit of the law must and does go far beyond the letter. But the letter of the law acts as a curb upon the true spirit of moral goodness. This spirit is essentially an original and crea- tive thing. It is, to use Blake's word, an impulse. It is something which is forever trying to outdo its own best. It recognizes no limits to its scope. It does not break the law, but transcends it, though to a narrow mind it sometimes seems to break the law, as Jesus seemed to do when He. healed on the Sabbath Day. THE POUT AS REBEL lV-51 I his was what Blake pcrcdved. He said that men supposed moral goodness to be an affair of observinir a code of rijles; and he said that .esus insisted that the code of rules was a smaller thing than the inward spirit mpulse. The aw is good so far as it goes, it shows the way; but when we regard it as a terminal/as /com! plete summary of moral right, then it becomes an evil But Blake saw more than this. He saw that just as the Scribes and Pharisees exalted the letter of the law of Moses, so the preachers and teachers of his time treated the words of Jesus with a literalism which converted them Jr L*,"'''J'"'= "'^' ''' J""^ """"^-^'f •'="» ^-"'"e to be reated in the very way against which He protested in he case of Moses A Christian legalism hau superseded the Jewish, with the same results. The Gospel of grace had become a hard system of law, with prohibitions and punishments. In the Fourth Book of "Jerusalem," he sees U ! A °1 ■ "^^'^^ 'levoured "all things in its loud fury and devouring course" and was told it was "the wheel of religion." "I wept and said,— is tnis the law of Jesus, Ihis terrible devouring sword turned every way' He answered: Jesus died because He strove Ag:amst the current of this Wheel: its name is Caiaphas, the dark Preacher of Death Of sin, of sorrow, and of punishment •' Opposing Nature! It is Natural Religion:' But Jesus IS the bright Preacher of Life treating Nature from this fiery Law Oy self-denial and Forgiveness of Sin. Oo therefore, cast out devils in Christ's name Heal the sick of spiritual disease, __^ity the evil ; for thou art not sent ! luf reme 8s III If'" 1*, [V-6] THAT ONE FACE To smite with terror and with punishments Those who are sick, like to the Pharisees, Crucifying and encompassing sea and land For proselytes to tyranny and wrath. But to the publicans and harlots go. Teach them true happiness, but let no curse Go out of thy mouth to blight their peace. For Hell is opened to Heaven ; thine eyes behold The dungeons burst, and the prisoners set free." Law works through judgment and punishment; Blake saw that the Gospel worked through judgment and mercy. It does not condone sin ; but its remedy for it is forgiveness It allows moral evil to reap its harvest of sorrow; but It conquers it by mercy. And it was to restore to Chris- tianity its true character as the Gospel of grace and mercy that Blake labored so passionately, in contrast to ths arid and respectable legalism that passed for Christianity in his day. Fifth Week, Sixth Day And he (aid unto his disciples, It is impossible but that fhr'i^.^Lt"'' Z^ "umbUng should come: bat woe unto him, ttrough whom they com* I It were well for him if a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were thrown into the sea, rather than that he should cause one of these little ones to stumble. Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother sin, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him. And if he sm against thee seven times in the day, JUrn'V*": "u* t»™ »?»in *<> thee, saying, I repent; thou shall forgive him. — Liie 17: 1-4. "Let men be free to be their own true selves" is Blake's version of the Gospel. Emancipate them from the tyranny of Reason and Desire within and from legalism and dogmatism without. Let the creative impulse go free, creating what it will. And one thing it will create is a society. Free men will instinctively swing to the pole of brotherhood. It was as the embodiment of this society-creating impulse 86 I THE POET AS REBEL • And if God dirfh 'ot t °Ma„"and^'- T "''' '<" ">ec? E ernally for Man, Man could „o"ex^'?.'5 not himself As God^.s Love: every kind's To'^L-i^l^a fe In t|.Divine Image, nor can Man exist but by Brother- £ i^tliLT "'^" '^^•^'■"'- "* ■•» '"« Hvin, core of ■'"VhtereT" "^ '"^ °'-"''^ "-' see Him i„ His ^"^-^ll; t^Sf^^ -<^ '-= 'Hen a Divine Pami,y ^"rScTKe!"' '° "' -"^ -"es to see a Vision. Must see it in its Minute Particulars " ^?b;^/r m:;;rt^''S:"«:He .^i„.e Particular-, saw men engaged in ml n/ ^"''.""^ ""'' °^ '»e. He and calling Ihfm aw™ tuf 1'' /'''t''=' ^^"--«"tion: matter but men. Every "^'' ^' '^ "« '''vvs that "ParticuUr is a Man. a Divine Member of the Divine And he goes on : •Xa^ur^well the Minute Particulars; attend to the Little and here is the heart of his ethics- ^^rticr^ '° ^-'^ - another must do it in Minute flatted is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and k ■:ti [V-7l THAT ONE FACE This is surilv licdr.K-k, a real fixed point for thought and conduct. True reverence for and a right relation to tlic living man, ni> iicighl)or— here is the law and the prophets For Blake, then, morality is the art .f fellowship; and the virtues he extols are the society-making graces. It is from this that his continual emphasis on forgiveness comes. "The Spirit of Jesus," he say^ "is continual forgiveness of sins." And again, |jThe Glory of Chris- tianity is to conquer by forgiveness." "Why should punishment weave the veil with iron wheels °f war . . . ■ J (-i,«r„ When forgiveness might weave it with wings ot t-tieru- bim?" The law of God for human life is reciprocity, mutuality —call it what you will. In a world where men need and cannot do without each other, where separation spells starvati'-- of spirit, the tempers and policies which sunder men spring from a kind of atheism. Instead of the heal- it'g and unitive influences which should produce the so- ciety of his dreams, Blake saw tie world overrun with passions of vengeance, doctrines uf purishment, which, while they were supposed to repress the evil in the world, deepened and widened the gulf which dividi i man from his fellow. Our human frailty makes it impossible for us to live together except upon a basis of mutual for- bearance and forgiveness. The true life is that which makes for human brotherhood. That man has found him- self who has learned to bind his brother-man to his heart in healing, forgiving, long-sufifering love. Fifth Week, Seventh Day And 1 lifted up mine eyes, and saw, and behoW « "»» with a measuring line in his hand. Then said I, Whither To^t thoS? ASd he said unto me. To measure Jeru- salem, to see what is the breadth thereof .and what is the length thereof. And. behold, the angel that talked with THE POET AS REBEL [V.7J mt went forth, and another angel went out to meet him and laid unto him. Run. apeak to this young man aayinT' lerui-lem ahall be inhabited ^s viU.iea without" an5' For"l"«ith'.h''*T'""i"*"^,1 Z "*" •"«» "ttU hS I'or I. laith the Lord, will be unto her a waii of fire -zth.Tl:t ""' "' *• """' '" *"• ""^^^ °"'" To Blake then, Jesus was the core, the heart of an ..xpanding fellowship ot redeemed men. Dante saw Him as the central plory of ti.e host of the redeemed in heaven; l.iit makes vision is f.i an earthly setting. He sees Jeru- salem arising in England, in the world; and it is to be a Jerusalem like Zcchariah's, a Jerusalem without walls— so full of life, so irresistibly expanding that no walls can contain it: "In my Exchanges every land Shall walk; and mine in every land Mutual shall build Jerusalem Both heart in heart and hand in hand." This is assuredly the "League of Nations." But Blake sees that it k only to be realized as nations as well as in- dividuals practice fdlowship. The old doctrines of sove- reignty and tmpi.e must give way to an ideal of reciprocity and cooperation. To the jingo patriotism of his own country, Blake addressed a pointed c estion : "Is this thy soft family love, Thy cruel patriarchal pride, Plantii.^ thy family alone, Destroying all the world beside ?" The question has not lost its pertinence; indeed it has loday a wider challenge. Imperialism, Chauvinism, Pan- t-ermanism— all these things and such as these are of their '.ifher the devil. Naturally Blake detested all forms of milicarism. 89 .■■11 m if JV.71 THAT ONE FACE "The strongest poison ever known Came from Casars royal crown ; Noueht can deform the human race Like to the armour's iron brace. When gold and grms adorn the plough To peaceful arts shall Envy bow. AnH ho has much to say on this subject in the same spJit But thirat'tude in Blake's mu.d was the very -eve rse of a soft passivity. He was a fighung man; h.^ i~ are chiefly borrowed from the battlefield. To hm , righting instinct was a priceless g.ft of t.od; and , , rLedv as he saw it was that it had been m.sd.rected. Greedy men had exploited it for selfish ends. It wa. m .ddied Td soiled by the spirit of hate, of revenge or TeSction. But to suppose that there «-'' -^.^^ - fying the fighting mstmct save ^y the^ ^^^^^^^^^ -J Hi««truction of men was, to oiaKt, mciv wa no pacifist in the sense of desiring peace above al Thtncs else- what he wanted and was ready to fight for was'not pekce, but fellowship. But that sort of fightmg requires peculiar weapons. slf^et^rrJ^r^Scr^^^^ 'v^ behold muUi'tude ; or expanding we behold as One. ^;'Su:::"tr^;:r:^i^^"^ur l^nriirHin,, S:eh perfect harmony in. Eden the land ? 'f^.^^, •■ Giving, receiving, and forgiving each other s trespasser. Here then, it is that Blake places Jesus. H!=/V]'llnt carnation and Embodiment of the Divine Spirit of fello.- hp he source and the channel of the d.v.ne-human n> pX that makes for fellowshn-. He is t >e Soul "J - Universal Family, He is the supreme manifestation of the 90 THE POET AS REBEL [V.,1 .rcative urge of C.od which expresses itself in many wavN l.ut L-h.eHy and ini.st gloriously In :l,c creative cvoluli.M,' of that society of man which is also the Kingdom of (Jod. SUOOESTIONS FOR THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION Can you distinguish between Religion and Theolojry an-i between Morality and Law? Which do you think mo, important, a living religion or a sound theology? What IS meant by the statement that "the maximum of leeal «!)ligation IS the minimum of moral obligation"' IJo you think William Blake was right in insisting that tlie chief end of man was to be creative? What is William Blake's message to our time? It has been said that salvation meant to Zaccha;us beine made a member of a family, his inclusion in a society • and Zacchaus himself felt it to be so, for he began at once to do certain social acts. Read the story of Zacchaius and consider it in the light of Blake's view of Jesus. What are the "society-making virtues"? II £«. !> CHAPTER VI The Poet as Philosopher- Browning (1812— 1889) We saw that it was Browning's view that if Shelley had lived he would have become a Christian It may be fFl?.f ^tr /n'st,^; r.",:-.s r ss Tn^s thoueh into the faith of his poetry; m any ca c, Eits::ir^Trs?-=ofthi my soul to its depths." That is to say, things cam. to h.n. Se did not indeed despise reasoning processes; nor w he like Blake in his fear of reason; but he knew the e wer other avenues into truth than those of accurate \nlic Browning's faith does, however, stand out as a coherenfwhole.'of which it is possible to g.ve a fa.rl, complete account within narrow limits. Shelley and Blake were products of an age of evoU tion, and we have seen the emphasis they laid on liberty. THE POET AS rillLOSOPHER [VI-i] Browning, like his contemporary Tennyson, also reflects an age of revolution, but of a different kind. It was revolution in the region of thought. The great advance of scientific knowledge had disintegrated many of the accepted beliefs; and it seemed as if the very foundations of life itself had been unsettled. Some idea of the char- acter of the age in which Browning and Tennyson lived can be gathered from the circumstance that Charles Dar- win was a contemporary of both ; and that "The Origin of Species," Darwin's great epoch-making work, appeared in 1859, thirty years before Browning's death and thirty- three before Tennyson's. It was also the age of the great agnostics, Huxley, Spencer, and Tyndall. who declared that no knowledge was reliable except that reached by the scientific method, and since God could not be reached in that way, it was useless and futile to suppose that any- thing could be known about Him It was a period of great intellectual uncertainty and unrest; but Browning and Tennyson weathered the gale and reached the port of a living faith. Tennyson presents us with the figure of a sad but eager seeker, winning his way into faith with somewhat hesitating steps; but Browning seems rather the strong man fighting his own way through the smoke and tumult of battle into the clear air beyond. i? £1 - il DAILY READINGS Sixth Week, First Day For this commandment which I command thee this day. It is not too hard for thee, neither is it far off. It is not m heaven, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, and make us to hear It, that we may do it? Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto us, and make us to hear it, that we may do It? But the word is very nigh »mto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it. — Deut. 30: 11-14. Like Shelley, Browning sees that behind all things there 93 ^. IVI-iJ THAT ONE FACE is some one ultimate Reality of which they are but the manifestations. This is God, "From whom all being emanates ; all power Praceeds ; in whom is life for evermore, Yet whom existence in its lowest form Includes He dwells mall From life's minute begmmngs, up at last To man— the consummation of this scheme Of being; the completion of this sphere Of life.''^ This language is capable of a pantheistic interpretation —pantheism being the view that there is no other God than the totality of all things. But Brownmg was not a pantheist. For though he was a strong believer in the divine immanence, he did not '-ientify God with the uni- verse as the pantheists did. The pantheists said, God is everything that is; but Browning said, God is »» every- thing that is. And this did not prevent him from believ- ing that God was also above and independent of the universe. "Choice of the world, choice of the thing 1 am, Both emanate alike from Thy dread play Of operation outside this our sphere, says the Pope in "The Ring and the Book"; and the view is Browning's own. God immanent— that is, God m us- and God transcendent— that is, God over us-hoth these ideas are necessary to a full doctrine of God. It may not be easy to harmonize these two thoughts into a single conception; but that is simply because our minds are not capable of enclosing within themselves realities which arc in their nature infinite. We cannot comprehend God; the best we can do is to apprehend Him dimly, and the forms under which we express our thought of God are only approximations. They are the best we can do; and they are never complete, never final. 94 THE POET AS PHILOSOPHER [VI-2] Man was, however, made in the divine image • and that imphes a sufficiently close kinship between the divine nature and the human to make it possible for man to apprehend in some degree the self-revelation of God. "O Thou as represented here to nie In such conception as my soul allows, Under thy measureless, my atom width. Existent, somewhere, somehow, as a whole;' Here, as a whole proportioned to our sense- There (which- is nowhere, speech nmst babble thus!) In the absolute mimensity, the whole Appreciable solely by Thyself, — Here, by the little mind of man, reduced To littleness that suits his faculty." Sixth Week, Second Day ■^^^5^}^""^°" justified by faith, let us have Deace w.th God through our Lord Jesus Christ; through whorS also we have had our access by faith into tWs gra« of God. And not only so, but let us also rejoice in ou> tribulations: knowing that tribulation worketh patience- Snffiih „'"»"»• PT°''"'°"; ^"d probation, hope: and hope putteth not to shame; because the love of God hath bein shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Ghost which was given unto us. For while we were yet weak, in due season Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: for peradventure for the good man some one would even dare to die. But God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.— Rom. 5: 1-8. Man then can only apprehend God in "littleness that suits his faculty"; yet he need never know less of God than what he needs to live by. Something of God he may discover in himself, and something in nature; and this is a good deal. "Conjecture of the Worker by the work? Is there strength there? Enough. Intelligence? 95 ^■i flw [VI-2] THAT ONE FACE H AmolL ; but goodness in a like degree? _ Mot to the human eye in the present state. And Browning goes on to compare the revelation of God in the uni^vefse to an isosceles triangle, the wo e^mal sides of which, strength and mlclUgcncc. are clear enouU but the base of which, goodness, .s not n, sight. Nothing did more to unsettle man's faUh n. Cod than the revdation of the fierce and bloody struggle for surv.va which Science had discovered in its study of nature; and ThiU what Browning is referring to here when he says S goodness is less 'apparent in nature th: , mte.hgemc and power. We know now, as the contemporaries of Dar- win dilnot, that survival in nature is at least as mud r matter of cooperation as of struggle; but B^ownrng ha to seek evidence of the divine goodness elsewhere. V h.rt is the base of the triangle to be found? Brownin- finds it in Jesus. The story of Jesus con - pletes God's revelation of Himself. This "tale of God "in the world's mouth" supplies the "mstance "Of love without a limit. So is strength, So is intelligence ; let love be so, Unlimited in its self-sacrifice. Then is the tale true and God shows complete. This in Browning's view, is the meaning of Jesus. He supremely the manifestation of the d v.ne love a because He'is this. He is the key to all the perp W problems which the universe presents. Our poet bel.evea what he makes the dying apostle say : "I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee _ All questions in the earth and out of it. To Browning, therefore, Jesus is the clue ♦" /he universe and to life. He is the base of the triangle, H'e rove at o of that infinite love upon which all things rest, bhclle; 96 THE POET AS PHILOSOPHER [VI-3] had to believe in an almightiness of love as the basis of all life; but in his case, it was a blind act of faith required by his philosophy. In B-ownings case, however this faith rests upon a reading of the story of Jesus. Sixth Week, Third Day Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you- for I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and pre- pare a place for you, I come again, and will receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also And whither I go, ye know the way. Thomas saith unto him. Lord, we know not whither thou goest; how know we the way? Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, and tne truth, and the life: no one cometh unto the Father, ™l w .iT'' 1" ''? l'a'l,.'"<'wn me, ye would have known my Father also: from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him. — John 14: 1-7. We should do Browning less than justice, however, if we supposed that he regarded Jesus merely as a factor which helped him to work out his philosophy. The figure of Jesus had to our poet a very definite personal sig- nificance. He has no patience with the critics who seek to whittle Jesus down so as to make Him fit into their own private categories; or those whose methods of analysis prevent them from seeing the wood fo' the trees, who lose the figure of Jesus in the details of analysis.' He expressLS some considerable impatience with the tend- ency in the study of the gospels to lay too heavy an emphasis on "the ineptitude of the time And the penman's prejudice," a process which having "strained and abated" the story "Of foreign matter, left, for residuum A Man ! — a right true man, however. Whose work was worthy a man's endeavour." 97 X *?';i |£| ^ I t [VI-41 THAT ONE FACE • It To leave a "man" in the story is indeed more than some critics have done ; but even this, says Browning, "leaves you — vacuity. Thus much of Christ does he reject? And what retain? His intellect? What is it I must reverence duly? Poor intellect for worship truly, Which leaves me simply what was told (If mere morality, bereft Of the God in Christ, be all that's left) Elsewhere by voices manifold. . . . Christ's goodness, then — does that fare better? Strange goodness, which upon the score Of being goodness, the mere due Of man to fellow-man, much more To God — should take another view Of its possessor's privilege And bid him rule his race !" The poet does not believe that the supremacy of Jesus could rest on His morality, though "Morality to the uttermost Supreme in Christ, we all confess." It rests upon His own person, as He himself claimed: "Does the precept run — 'Believe in good. In justice, truth, now understood For the first time'? or — 'Bf.ievc in me Who lived and died, yet essentially Am Lord of Life' ?" Browning was ready to accept Jesus at His own estimate of Himself. Jesus is not only the clue to a true view of the universe; He is the Christ, who enters into personal relations with men and brings them to fulness of life. Sixth Week, Fourth Day He that receiveth you receiveth me, and he that re- ceiveth me receiveth him that sent me. He that receiveth 98 THE POET AS PHILOSOPHER [VI-4] a prophet in the name of a prophet shall r.r.i„. prophet's reward; and ho that receiveth » riJK. " "'^ " in the name of a rghteousr^an shallJeceivl^a rfX^S^ A faith is known by its fruits; and if a faith is validated hed. Brownmg had too true an eye not to recosnizc the rageay of which our life is so full; but his fairenab les frnoVan;" '"^''-f— -'l imperfection of 1™ ife not a reason for despair, hut the very ground of hone or men s future. Man is not n, a state of^eing so much as of becoming. Progress is Mnf r,.,v 1 "^''"''s distinctive mark alone, Not Gods and not the beasts': God is, they are Man partly is and wholly hopes to be." des^L'"\"nVf''^ '"?;,' ''"'/'"= '=^''^="" °f his unrealized destiny and if he falls and stumbles on the upward wav what of that? Of the failures and brokenn'^r of We Browning has two important things to tell us- i-irst, that we are judged not by what we achieve but by what we mean and try to achieve. The great olssa^e from "Rabbi B.n Ezra ' is well known: ^ ^ ^ "Not on the vulgar mass Called 'work' must sentence pass, Things done, that took the eye and had the price But all, the world's coarse thumb And finger failed to plumb, i>o passed in making up the main account; All instincts immature. All purposes unsure, amfunt ""' "' ^'' ^°^''' ^^^ ^*«"^d 'he man's I 99 (VI-41 THAT ONE FACE Thoughts hardly to be packed Into a narrow act, Fancies that broke through language and escaped; All 1 could never be, All, men ignored in me, . , . , l j •• This I was worth to God whose wheel the pitcher shaped. And in "Saul" he puts the same thing in another way: " 'Tis not what man does which exalts him, but what man would do." This is, of course, only the doctrine of justification by faith put in a inoden. idiom. For faith is at bottom an attitude of the soul, or, to quote Dr. Du Bose once more, "the entire disposition of our entire selves God-ward, holiness-ward." We are set right before God when «e set ourselves Godward. Justification is by attitude and not by achieven-tnt. God accepts us for what we desire and long to be. He judges us not by what we accomplish, but by what we would accomplish. Of course He can know what we would accomplish, only by what we try to accomplish; and even if we fail, even then failure is as good is success so far as our relation to God is con- cerned. It is not the deed that God looks upon, but tlie intention and the motive. The workmen who went into the vineyard at the eleventh hour got a whole day's pav, because they had been willing to work all day if someone had hired them. He who receives a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward. He may have no prophetic gift and may never utter a prophetic word but just because he gives bed and board to a prophet simply because he is a prophet, he shows the kind of company he wishes to keep. That is where he desires to belong; and God counts him as belonging there. \\e nre judged not !>v the great things we say or do, hut liy che company we keep, the purposes we cherish, the kin( of universe in which we desire to live. That is a comfort. 100 THE POET AS PIIILOSOPIIEK (VI-sJ Sixth Week, Fifth Day But we have thii treaiure in earthen veiieli, that the exceeding sreatness of the power may be of God. md not from ourselves; we are pressed on every side yet not straitened; perplexed, yet not unto despair ; pursued yet not forsaken; smitten down, yet not destroyed: al- ways bearmg about in the body the dying of Jesus, that ttie life also of Jesus may be manifested in our body For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus sake, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested m our mortal flesh. So then death worketh in us but life m you. But having the same spirit of faith, accord- ing to that which is written, L believed, and therefore did 1 speak; we also believe, and therefore also we speak- knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also with Jesus, and shall present us with you u?i- 5'"#^ are fcr your sakes, that the grace, being multiplied through th many, may cause the thanksgiving to abound unto the glory of God. Wherefore we faint not; but though our outward man 18 decaying, yet our inward man is renewed day by day For our light aflliction, which is for the moment, worketh tor us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal ; but the things which are not seen are eternal. — II Cor. 4: 7-18. The second important thing Browning has to tell us of our human failures is the sequel of the first. It is that our honest failures are really guarantees of final success. "And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence For the fulness of the days? Have we withered or agonised ? Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence? Why rushed the discords in but that harmony should be prized ?" This is the tricme of the great poem called "Abt Vogler." Yet though Browning is so sure of our ultimate triumph, he does not see us achieving it wholly in the world of lOI ± I ■If • i lVl-61 THAT ONE FACE time. Wc are moving onward ; of this our falls ami {.tilurc ttf ! urc us. But the goal is 1 iL- not here. A.\. 1 ,;t "Life is a probation and the earth no goal But starting point of man." Our perfect destiny lies beyond the veil. The poet's faith ill the future life was due to his sense of the sheer in- destructibility of that strange and wonderful thing, per- sonality; arid since personality may not achieve its fulness here, well then, it is awaiting it over there. "There shall never be one lost good I What was, shall live as before, The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound; What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more ; On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round." This sane, unyielding optimism Browning derived from his sense of the meaning of Jcsjs. (jod revealed in Christ is essential Love ; and that meant that, as Pippa sang, "God's in his h;:aven — Air's right with the world I" but it meant no less that "The mightiness of love was curled Inextricably round about" all the life and process of the world. Love underlies and governs the movement of all things; and in a world thus governed, it is always the best that ultimately happens. Sixth Week, Sixth Day God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners, hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in his Sot^.. whom 103 THE POET AS PIULOSOPHER ivi-b) M.jeity on high.-keb. , f HJ. °" *'" "«''t hand o™h. »."pmL?'„;li" „?r\;!;='\-;|f««'cf !° B-wning this answer to this .juesfion n ost ro l' ° "^'^ ''''"°^" "'e IJavid in this poem ''is occupied ^i/h '" "" P""^"' '"S''""-" t'on, but with the I.rlc3 ll 1 '"J ^"'^'••"'"tive qucs- ^"ul." He sweeps the univ' J , ,"J .°^ "=>•■"■*.' ^ ru'ncd of heahng for th'e kC B it"?s ir °"" •^''"' "' "--^^ lurns to God. He had him, .tJ i '" ''*'""• Then •-; soul for Sanl-s redemmion wl ^^'" T"""^ '° ^'^e his Hi™ to this wi„i„, sXTcrifi^elels'^h'rilr'^'"^'''' ^-^^■Hi°-K-^---u,ti^ .^^iS'^th'J^^rr.'Bt; Sd'h'adr.:^''^'' ^- ^-''- •>- the love. ' ^°'' ^^^ 'he power as well as ■""■-iirsfoir «™ "" ■ I""' So „„„„ ,»„, " ?>ves. What man's love would do ^P?" *"h ^hat "suredly do-and more. WhL T M p. '°ve would God that little boys sav their nr, ."^ '^^^ '"'^t the '""ch like their mo he% he s^„T" '° ^^' ^ ^^« very ^^ent in another way David 1"^ P""'"^ ^^^^i^'^ "gu- 'he Godhead. -^^ "* '"''" ''"^ fi"ds his flesh in I, IQ3 lVI-71 THAT ONE FACE "O Saul, il shall be A Face like my face that receives thee ; a Man like to mc Thou Shalt love and be loved by, for ever: a Hand like this hand . i e u Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee I Se"! the Christ stand!" David apprehends the eternal humanity of God; and it was this etcrn;i' humanity that, according to Browning, came into the . Ul in the person of Jesus. The Incarna- tion is the ncce>-ary se 107 :!! 1^ I N IVII-i] THAT ONE FACE Some of his great contemporaries, however, came tc profess agnosticism. Since, they argued, it is impossible to demonstrate scientifically anything about God, or even to prove His existence, let us say frankly that we do not know. To many people this appeared to be the only honest way out of the difficulty; and so set in the age of agnosticism. But Tennyson did not succumb to this pressure, though he felt the weight of it. "If e'er when faith had fallen asleep _ I heard a voice 'Believe no more,' And heard an ever-breaking shore That tumbled iti the godless deep, A warmth within the breast would melt The freezing reason's colder part, And like a man in wrath the heart Stood up and answered, I have felt." Tennyson would not have feeling usurp the place of reason, as reason tended to usurp the legitimate place of feeling. He would have each be in its own place doing its own work. Tennyson, therefore, stands between the old faith and the new knowledge ; and he is peculiarly the poet of recon- ciliation. He tries to bind the old and the new in a fresh, living whole. He does not, indeed, succeed; but this is a task in which no man has ever succeeded. It is a task which has to be carried on all the time ; we have to do it in our own day. And Tennyson supplies us with the figure of the patient seeker, which is a true type of the living Christian thinker. When inquiries were addressed to Tennyson concernmg his view of Jesus, the poet would say to his son, "Answer them that I have given my belief in 'In Memoriam.' "In Memoriam" was Tennyson's elegy upon the death o his friend, Arthur Hallam, and is his best known and io3 THE POET AS SEEKER [VII-i] DAILY READINGS Seventh Week, First Day JeX: wfth"hrs'dis°ciilct!:°^ a'"^r//t '' T"*. °"' *""> of Timaeus, Bartimaus I blinH ^K * multitude, the son the way side. A'id'whVhe"h«rd'fh^"'it''wa/'r'"« "^ Nazareth, he began to crv it an^ I t "' J"^"^ of of David have mercv on m. ' 1 j "''• J*="*> *hou son that he shoi^d h"d hfs pea«- b,ft"h, """^^^ "'""""^ '''™. a great deal. Thou son of oltid hi!? "'"* °"* **" "O" Jesus stood still, and said Call ,/l !""=>; °? "e. And the blind man, sayiSg unto him b! ^T' ^"Ithey call he calleth thee And he castW'aS! °f «°°d '^eer: rise, up, and came to Tesus' An^^ ^'^ *"* K^^ment, sprang ?sMr -"^/- t^at t^hfcrr^^^^^^ ^1 the blind man said unto him Rahhnnf tw ? ^° Sfth«m^d"e^hJ:e-4h#Sr.|° t^^^^^^^^ his sight, and follo';."dt^ iX";Ty«!llffi\-7'-<^ Tennyson was largely moved by the evidence which science had produced of the contradiction between the whom hrh:r,' '° '*= '^r''^ '" "=>'"- «"d thTGodt Whom he had been taught to believe THp T^h t," youth was kindly, frien'dly; and "not a 'pL^ow tell t h new"?.hr'"'r^ ^=""^'--" ^-' -•"- -emeS n he new hght so callous, so careless of life, whether of hakeThe' '■%°'- °V'^ ''''■' «"'' '" P-ticuhr did this slSjeringr '"'' '" ''"'"-'-"ty- The blow left him "I falter where I firmly trod And falling with my weight of cares Upon the great world's altar-stairs Ihat slope through darkness up to God 109 ii [VII-i] THAT ONE FACE IS I Stretch lame hands of faith, and grope, AnH. gather dust and chaflf, and call To what I feel is Lord of all, And faintly trust the larger hope." This is the point from which we start out with Tenny- son. He fully accepted the scientific view of the world. "The physical world," says Professor Sedgwick, speaking of the poet, "is always the world as known to us through physical senses; the scientific view of it dominates his thought about it; and his general acceptance of this view is real and sincere, even when he utters the intensest feeling of its inadequacy to satisfy our deepest needs." He saw, as his scientific contemporaries saw, "Nature, red in tooth and claw With ravine," shrieking against the belief that God is love. The "strug- gle for existence" and the "survival of the fittest," then the new scientific catchwords, had drenched nature in red blood. All this naturally led to the conclusion in some minds that no moral quality could belong to God. He was at the best a non-moral artificer, who had set this scheme of things at work and was indifferent to the cost of its working. But Tennyson refused to settle down to this stoical indifference, which seemed to many to be the only possible logical temper under the circumstancei. "Behold," he cries, "Behold, we know not anything; I can but trust that good shall fall At last— far off— at last to all. And every winter change to spring." Science should not and could not extinguish the poet's hope; and this hope sprang from the faith he clung to, that even yet the goodness of the spirit of the universe would be shown. THE POET AS SEEKER '"^"^" [Vir-2] About the future'abouf Goj bom'h?; "^ °/ P"""^ ='^''="-- 'ells us nothing that is cert'a.n Thl"'" ''"""^' '^^'^'^ choose trust '-cnain. ihe scientist may if he Will K "''''".^"'"'^''ow good Will be the final goal of ill," but further than this, by the he'n of v he cannot go. ' ^ "^'P °^ his science alone, Seventh Week, Second Day no?'o?^nrp^ *-/-,2j 'iy-i!»-^ o^ our Lord t™.'^""'' us with a holy calling f^' ^^^o saved us works but accordinK to his o»*' "°' ^"ording to our *" Riven us i„ ChUt JesuT b^?;^?°'f- ^""^ «««. wh?ch S^l^ ""^u*!"" manifested bvth? *""" «*"nal, but j^?:'""^. Christ Jesus, who aboLhed /''?u"'"8 °^ °ur T^ra^r""""- *° "«^° ttou^h"?heX\Wl* -Srca7nU":oTttretnti;" '"^ '^°"^^' °^ ">e were studying nature, they did '"f' """"■^- ^hile they '0 the fact that man was al^ a n f ''^ "'°"«^'' *««"'ion human intuitions and Tnsti^ ts are ' °^ "^"'^•^' ^""^ 'hat S«?^S°^ "----^^af ;=--;;- ^o'hL^h^>;rinS::?iS:s^,;;'n^'"^od;a„d ''^^'-f ? And. indeed Eellef „ ." ''",! '° «" °"' 'he sonalitv of God" cam . """ self-conscin,,, ner- — that cod cou^;^rr!-,-^-^^j;e III (VU-2] THAT ONE FACE V i world-self and all in all"; yet "I believe," he said, "that God reveals Himself in each individual soul." And here, in the witness of our highest intuitions to God, Tennysnn found a range of facts which helped him to reconstruct his faith in the face of the destructive witness of science. That God is love is a belief which, according to our poet, we get "from ourselves, from the highest within us," Observe here the diiTcrence between Tennyson and Browning. Tennyson recovers his faith from an inquiry into his own soul; Browning has to recover it from something outside himself — in the witness of the story of Jesus to the love of God. From this point we shall be led to another of importance in comparing these two poets. It was, however, in his thought about immortality that Tennyson found his master-key. He held that the wish to live, the desire for immortality, springs "from wh„t we have The likest God within the soul"; and this seemed to the poet good presumptive evidence of the fact of immortality. "If," he once said, "you allow a God and God allows this strong instinct and universal yearning for another life, surely that is in a measure a presumption of its truth — we cannot give up the mighty hopes that make us men." To Bishop Lightfoot, on one occasion, he remarked that "the cardinal point of Christianity is the life after death"; certainly this is true of Tennysoti's own Christianity. Like Browning, he believes that death could not dissolve human personality. "I can hardly understand" (to quote the poet's conversation once more) "how any great imagina- tive man who has deeply loved, suffered, thought, and wrought, can doubt of the soul's continuous progress in the after-life." Tennyson is specially the poet of im- mortality and the "intimations of immortality" are ever with him. This was his master-thought; and no word 113 THE POET AS SEEKER [yil-jj i.fe and incorrup.ion to .ighVtSuS .ilrg'per "■""^"^ Seventh Week, Third Day righteousness, is-acceptable to hta "tV™' "2"^ '""•^^"h sent unto the children of IsrLl^r-Jt' "°'''* ''''•=»> he of peace by Jesus Chris? (he" Lo^^dof'"'?f^ «°e'' *''1'"KS ye yourselves know, which w« nnh.ifu 5"?u~*''** «»yw« Jud»a, beginning from GaliTee after th"* throughout all John preached; even Jesus of' iSf ii.' J^Pt'sm which anointed him with the HoW Ghn^^'i*'- t"" ^at Ood went about doing good and healin"'' !?'*>? power: who pressed of t|.e dfvi!; tr'^i.^^^:'%-^ ^^J'j:^^ op- ■n the Gospel man finds •* "^ ^''^^ '^at "A new truth; no conviction gains Ofanoldoneonly.madeintfnse «y a fresh appeal to his faded sense." But Tennyson found his clue in himself ;„ i- intuitions; and what Te,i„ ^Ll "™^^'f' '" '"s own "Though truths in manhood darkly join Deep-seated m our mystic frame, <; Of garrulous tongue, the warm retreat Within the village and the town; Not from the lands where |i^n brown A thousand thousand hills oi .vheat; Not from the long Burgundian line The southward, sunward range of vine. Hunted, He never will escape The fles*!, the blood, the sheaf, the grape, That feed His man — the bread, the wine." When we allow for the Catholic presuppositions of the poet, what remains is this — that "His secret presence in creation's veins" is universal, and more, it is redemptive in all its reactions. This is the Immanent Christ, who ^ cannot be driven from His world, who is in and through everything that is in it in order that He may redeem it, and this is peculiarly the Christ of Francis Thompson. ' Eighth Week, Third Day iO Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, Thou understandest my thought afar off. ■Thou searchest out my path and my lying down, And art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue. But, lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether. 130 THE POET AS MYSTIC [Vin-3] Thou hatt beiet mc behind and before. And laid thine hand upon me. f«»el> Joiowledge ii too wonderful for me: J.%'? ?'•''• * e«nnot attain unto it. Wuither shall I go from thy apirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy pretence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, thou art there If I Uke the wings of the morning, And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea: Even there shall thy hand lead me, ^d thy right hand shall hold me. 1 i ff''',?^*'y *•"• darkness shall overwhelm me, And the light about me shall be night ; Even the darkness hideth not from thee. But the night shineth as the day: The darkness and the light are both alike to thee. — Psalm 139: i-is. It is probable that Francis Thompson will be best known by "The Hound of Heaven." It is one of those utterances which, by their authentic and self-verifying note of reality, fix the meaning and the truth of the eternal Gospel in men's minds forever. That which can be so sung must be everlastingly real and true. Fictions and illusions evoke no such mighty music. There is a poetry of the imagination which has its own peculiar immortality; its subject matter and end is beauty; its reaction is purely emotional and esthetic. But there is also a poetry of experience; and its theme is life, reality, the deep things of God; and its reaction is to change men's lives. The one pleases— even to the point of ecstasy; the other sweeps you oft your feet or cuts down to the marrow of your soul ; and once you have heard its great searching tones, you can never be quite the same man any more. This is the class to which "The Hound of Heaven" belongs. Not that it lacks beauty; it is extraordinarily beautiful. But here beauty was Thompson's handmaid rather than his mistress. His great personal (li--covery was the mysterious. relentless love of God; and in "The Hound of Heaven," It IS this deepest ihing of God that he has sun^' in undying 131 1VII1-4J THAT ONE hMCJi song. He has set the ultimate word of God to the rarest human music. In dull prose the argument ot the poem is this: The spirit of man is beset by an insatiable hunger; and it is dimly aware of a satisfaction adequate to the hunger. But it is also aware that this supreme satisfaction is unavailable except at the price of a full self-surrender. But the soul shrinks from this surrender, because it fears that it entails the loss of all the joyous and beautiful things of the world. Unwilling to pay this price of per- fect satisfaction, it turns to seek it in those fair things that are nearer and less exacting— in human love, in the spacious wonder of the universe, in the innocent company of little children, in intimate communion with nature. All these give promise, but deny the substance of satisfaction and fail the spirit in its sore need. At last the soul gives up the search in despair, and all it has to show for its long quest is a wasted, charred, broken life. Yet all this time its patient Pursuer has been at its heels; and now at last the shattered and disillusioned soul waits helplessly for the coming of this unyielding and inevasible "hound." In its extremity, the Pursuer finds it, and the chase is over. The spirit surrenders to its captor, and in its cap- ture finds the fulness it longed for in the everlasting mercy from which it was so long a fugitive. Eighth Week, Fourth Day O Lord, our Lord, How excellent is thy name in all the earth I Who hast set thy glory upon the heavens. Out of the mouth of bab;s and sucklings hast thou estsb- lished strength, Becatue of thine adversaries. That thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger. When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, The moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained ; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? And the son of man, that thou visitest him? THE /'OUT AS MYSTIC IVlll-tl For thou bait midc him but little lower than Ood And crowneit him with glory and honour. Tbou madeit him to have dominion over the worka ol thy handi; Thou haat put all thinga under hia feet: All iheep and oxen. Yea, and the beaita of the field; The fowl of the air, and the fiih of the tea, Whatsoever paiteth through the patha of the seat. Lord, our Lord, How excellent is thy name in all the earth I —Psalm 8. When the poet tells of his failure to find self-fulfilment in human love, we are reminded of how a greater than he, Dante, cheated of the love of Beatrice Portinari, set out to sing a more wondrous love. It was a thwarted love that gave the world "The Divine Comedy," because it threw Dante bacli on his search for God; but it is the vanity of human love for the ultimate human need that drives the fugitive of our poem away from it. And when he tells us how he sought peace "across the margent of the world . , . And troubled the uolH j-jteways of the stars," we recall what Kant ii- ,,: i:.at, next to the moral consciousness of man, the thing that moved him most was the starry firmament of heaven. Here our poet treads ancient and obvious ground. From the beginning n»an has looked in the eyes of man and in the face of heaven for the word and the bread of life— yet ever in vain. Thompson strikes a new note when he tells how he sought the joy he lacked in the innocence of little children : "I sought no more that, after which I strayed In face of man or maid; But still within the little children's eyes Seems something, something that replies, They at least are for me, surely for me I I.T3 Hr [VIII-5] THAT ONE FACE And indeed here the poet was not far from the Kingdom of God — not far, yet "Just as their young eyes grew sudden fair With dawning answers there. Their angel plucked them from me by the hair." Denied by the children, he turns to nature. He "Drew the belt of Nature's secrecies. I knew all the swift importings On the wilful face of skies ; I knew how the clouds arise Spumed of the wild sea-snortings ; All that's born or dies, Rose and drooped with — made them shapers Of mine own moods, or wailful or divine. Yet nature proves like the rest a broken reed. "But not by that, by that was eased my human smart. In vain my tears were wet on Heaven's grey cheek, For ah, we know not what each other says. These things and I ; in sound / speak, Their sound is but their stir ; they speak by silences. Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake my drouth ; . . . Never did any milk of hers once bless My thirsting mouth." He had knocked at every door; and none had opened to let him in. Eighth Week, Fifth Day And he spake unto them this parable, saying. What man of you, having a hundred sheep, and havinKlost one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilder- ness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it? And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when be cometh home, he calleth together his friends and his neighbours, saying unto them. Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost. I say unto you, that even so there shall be joy in heaven 134 THE POET AS MYSTIC [VIII-5] over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine righteoos persons, which need no repentance. — Luke 15: 3-7. After nature fails him, the fugitive gives up the quest. In his frustration and despair he reviews his life. "In the rash lustihood of my young powers I shook the pillaring hours And pulled my life upon me ; grimed with smears I stand amid the dust of the mounded years — My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap, My days have crackled and gone up in smoke, Have puiifed and burnt as sun-starts on a stream." This is all he has to show for all his feverish quest — the smoking ruins of his life. He wonders what is yet to come; and looking into the mists of the future, he sees no goal or end but the darkness of death. It is to be observed that this is the story of a soul which sought the ends of life along paths in themselves fair and lovely. It is not the story of the roui or the sensualist. John Masefield, in his poem "The Everlasting Mercy," has transcribed the theme of "The Hound of Heaven" to the key of low life. There the Hound pursues its quarry through the gutter and the mire; but Francis Thompson is singing of a soul that had not willingly been stained with vice and had not haunted the gaily-lit high- ways of gross sin. He had turned to fill the unfilled spaces of his soul with love and beauty ; but he came away from the altars where he had worshiped empty-handed. For whatever he found there, he knew he had not found the one thing needful. It is just that insatiable hunger still unsatisfied, that unredeemed misery which Francis Thompson has put into poignant verse in the first part of the poem. The last stanza of the poem tells of the capture and the surrender. The spirit hears the footfall of the Pursuer; the Hound has found its quarry. 13s ./ lVIII-6] THAT ONE FACE ■>^i "That Voice is round me like a bursting sea : 'And is thy earth so marred, Shattered in shard on shard? Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me.' . . . All which I took from thee, I did but take Not for thy harms. But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms. All which thy child's mistake Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home ; Rise, clasp My hand, and come." "He goeth forth into the wilderness . . . until he find it." And so this troubled soul was found at last. Eighth Week, Six^th Day At that season Jesus answered and saici, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes: yea, Father, for so it was well- pleasing in thy sight. All things have been delivered unto me of my Father : and no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him. 'Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. — Matt, ii: 35-30. "Thou madest us for Thyself," said Augustine, "and our heart is never at rest until it rest in Thee." But more than this is true — God is forever seeking to bring us to Himself, that we may have rest in His love. Ajid this is the moral of "The Hound of Heaven" : "Halts by me that footfall: Is my gloom, after all. Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly? 'Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest, I am He whom thou seekest! Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.' " 136 THE POET AS MYSTIC [VIII-6] The lineaments of this "tremendous Lover" are plain to see; and it is Francis Thompson's gift to us that he enables us to realize that the Incarnation is the great symbol of God's search for us. We bid men seek God ; and it is right and needful so to do; but that is only one half of the truth. The other half is that God is forever seeking us. And we may even say that when men set out in search of God, God (as Pascal said long ago) has already found them. All through the poem, the fugitive is aware that the Pursuer is close on to him, coming "With unhurrying chase And unperturbed pace, Deliberate speed, majestic instancy," and all the time sure of his quarry. It is that divine love "that will not let me go," and pursues me, into the dese rt o f my self-sufficiency, in the" wilderness of my sin, among the mountains of my ignorance — until He find me. And God sent His Son into the world to show us plainly what He is about, at what infinite cost He is pursuing us. His Son went out into the wilderness before our eyes, and "None of the ransomed ever knew How deep were the waters crossed," that He might bring us back to God. That, surely, is the heart and pith of the Good News. There is no escape from this Lover. At least, Francis TiiOmpson could not escape Him. He found Him at every turn. He says that everything in God's universe speaks of Christ. "When I with winged feet had run Through all the windy earth about. Quested its secret of the sun And heard what thing the stars together shout," it was this that he heard from every voice : 137 [vin-7l THAT ONE FACE m ' ,,-s- "By this, O singer, know we if thou see. When men shall say to thee : Lo, Christ is here ; When men shall say to thee : Lo, Christ is there ; Believe them : yea, and this — then art thou seer — When all thy crying clear Is but : Lo here, lo there I ah me, lo everywhere I" "Ah me, lo everywhere I" It is the Christ who is every- where that Francis Thompson sees and sings. Eighth Week, Seventh Day And straightway he constrained the disciples to enter into the boat, and to go before him unto the other side, till he should sen^ the multitudes away. And after he had sent the multit loes away, he went up into the moun- tain apart to pray, and when even was come, he was there alone. But >XLti boat was now in the midst of the sea, distressed by the waves; for the wind was contrary. And in the fourth watch of the night he came unto them, walking upon the sea. And whon the disciples saw him walking on tiie sea, they were troubled, saying. It is an apparition ; and they cried out for fear. But straightway Jesus spake unto Uiem, saying. Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid. — Matt. 14:23-37. The omnipresent, ubiquitous Christ, to whom all things bear witness, the immanent Christ whose glory breaks through the crust of things upon those who have eyes to see — this, then, is Francis Thompson's Christ. We may recall that Dante found Christ in the midst of the host of the redeemed in heaven; and we traced that to the logic of medieval Catholicism. Yet even in that day there were those who found Christ "closer than breathing, nearer than hands or feet." In Thomas a Kempis's "Imitation of Christ," we find an intimate, pres- ent Christ, and, while Francis Thompson is essentially true to the Catholic tradition, he brings Christ down to earth and finds Him always very ar. It may be that Thompson had ceased to think in purely spatial terms; it would be natural for the mystic to find the veil between 138 THE POET AS MYSTIC [VIII-s] heaven and earth so very thin that he would be hard put to It to say where the one ended and the other began Ihompson was very greatly influenced by W^.liara Blake- and in Blake's prophecies it is very difficult sometimes to say whether we are in the city of his dreams or in the bnck-and-mortar suburbs of London. His passage from Hie one to the other is swift and bewildering. And in Thompson's verse, heaven and earth jostle each other with a strange intimacy. "O world invisible, w-. view thee O world intangible, we touch thee p world unknowable, we know thee Inapprehensible, we clutch thee I . . . Not where the wheeling systems darken, And our benumbed conceiving soars I— The drift of pinions, would we hearken Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors. The angels keep their ancient places Turn but a stone and start a wing 1 Tis ye, 'tis your estranged faces That miss the many-splendoured thing. But when so sad, thou canst not sadder Cry; and upon thy so sore loss Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder Pitched betwixt heaven and Charing Cross. Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter C'7--clinging Heaven by the hems And lo, Christ walkini^ on the water Not of Gennesareth but Thames!" "^'''. L "*" ""'* y°" alway, even unto the end of the world." ' SUOOE8TIONS FOR THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION How would you describe the child mind? What did Jesus mean by saying that except we turn and become as little children we cannot enter into the Kingdom of God? I3Q [VIII-s] THAT ONE FACE Some adverse criticism has been made of the title "The Hound of Heaven." Do you think this criticism justified in view of the theme of the poem ? Jesus once said that when men said of the Kingdom of Cod, "Lo, here" or "Lo, there," we were not to believe them. Is there any inconsistency between this and Francis Thompson's "Lo here, lo there, lo everywhere" ? 140 CHAPTER IX The Prophet of Righteousness- Savonarola (1452— 1498) A hundred and eighty years after Dante had been exiled from Florence, there came thither a young I^m.nTcan monk whose name was destined to be associfted^ Sthe cuy as mt.mately as Dante's own. Dante and Savo^rola had much in common. Both possessed the deep historical msjght and the passion for righteousness that markld the Hebrew prophets. Both plunged fearlessly into that vor! iTfe nf R?"^"" ^"•'^ ^t'"°" ^^'""^ constituted the political i tv f om the"h' H *'; '"P".'"^* "''y ™eht deliver the city from the hands of greedy princes and their greedier fne^s. Both at length suffered the penalty of the^rophe -ex. e for Dante, a martyr's death for Savonarola. In the period between Dante and Savonarola much had theTame' Th"' --"characteristics had remained much the same. The same dissension and jealousy were tearing had 1"J°T'' "'/"• ^'^ ""''^** ^'^'y °f -hich Dantf had v.ft^l''T ""* !!'""■= ^"'' '"''"'^ '"^"y =«"»""« true aI i^n ^r?^^''«= S^"' Florentine's dream came dan<;.rlA . f'^\'"".=' ?° '" Savonarola's, there was danger to Italy from the designs of French princes, though Savonarola and his contemporaries, reading history less deeply than their great precursor, were indined a'^ one time to hail the coming of a French King to Italy as a great deliverance. And the greatest trouble of all was Ml [IX-il THAT ONE FACE certainly the greed of the Papacy. The vicars of Christ were conspicuous by their lack of the spirit of Christ ; and that great gulf which yawned between the temper of Rome in Dante's day and the spirit of the Gospel had become none the narrower at the end of the fifteenth century. Dante's denunciations of the avarice and the excesses of the Pope might have been repeated with equal emphasis in the Italy of Savonarola. The great happening of the period between Dante and Savonarola was the rebirth of learning, commonly known as the Renascence. It does not belong to our present purpose to tell the story of the strange rediscovery of the treasures of antiquity, with its profound effect upon thought, literature, and art. The ancient world seemed to be brought to life again. But in the clash of old with new, there was of necessity much confusion of thought. The impact of the philosophy of Greece upon the beliefs of medieval Catholicism brought about an intellectual twilight in which many strange things were said and done; and it is full of interest to observe men in that day, as in the case of Browning and Tennyson we saw men doing the same thing in a later day, seeking to work out an intelligible position between the old light and the new. DAILY READINGS Ninth Week, First Day Woe to them that are at ease in Zion, and to them that are secure in tiie mountain of Samaria, the notable men of the chief of the nations, to whom the house of Israel comet Pass ye unto Calneh, and see; and from thence fo ye to Hamath the great : then go down to Gath of the 'hilistines: be they better than these kingdoms? or is their border greater than your border? Ye that put far away the evil day, and cause the seat of violence to come near; that lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch them- selves upon their couches, and eat the lambs out of the flock, and the calves out of the midst of the stall; that 143 THE PROPHET OF RIGHTEOUSNESS [IX-i] ling idle ion(s to the sound o£ the viol; that deviie for thenuelvee initrumenti of muiic, lilce D.vid; Sm drink min't.'f K°r'!i'"'* "-•'" themeelve. with the' chfeV otat- jiX-i£n*.'S:::S."*" '"•'••• "" *• •«'«"»» «* It was, then in the midst of political, ecclesiastical, and intellectual confusion that Savonarola came to Florence The city was renowned for the zeal with which it had fostered the new knowledge. Under Lorenzo de' Medici known as the Magnificent, literature and art had been greatly encouraged. Lorenzo himself was a very complex ch, racter. A sincere friend of the arts, his personal life was of no high order. His government of Florence was harsh and unscrupulous; he resorted to many questionable means to secure his authority and to increase his wealth. Savonarola s early years in Florence coincided with the later years of Lorenzo's reign. The monk, with his stern uncompromising demand for purity of life, had scant respect for the evil-living prince and made little effort to disguise his feeling. Lorenzo in his turn disliked Savonarola exceedingly. After a time of quiet service in training novitiates at the convent of St. Mark Savon- arola's great preaching gift asserted itself, and before long his name was known throughout Italy. Feeling with some- thing like agony the corruption in Church and State he condemned it unsparingly in both places, and it took the people no long time to recognize that a prophet had arisen, to whom they listened gladly. Utterly fearless, altogether sure of his message, wielding a unique spirit- ual power, he soon became the most considerable fieure in Florence. One incident shows the stuff of which he was made. Lorenzo on his deathbed sent for Savonarola to give him absolution. Savonarola laid down as a condition of abso- lution that he should restore the liberties of Florence. Lorenzo refused and Savonarola went away, leaving the dying prince unabsolved. M3 11X-«1 THAT ONE FACE m w Ninth Week, Second Day Then went I up in the nifht by the brook, and viewed the w"u; Vnd I turned b«cV «»d entered by the vjlley Ste end lo returned. And the ruleri knew not whither f wen^or what I did; neither h.d I .■ yet told it to the Jewf, nor to the priettt, nor to the noblei, nor to the rukri. nor to the reit that did the work. Then Mid I LSto them. Ye tee the evil ceie that we are in. how Jerutalem lieth waste, and the gatet thereof are burned with fire: come and let ua build up the wall of Jeruaalem. that we be no more a reproach. And I told them ot tne hand of my Ood which waa good upon me ; ai alto of the kinc'a words that he had spoken unto me. And they said. Let us rise up and build. So they strengthened their hands for the good work.— Nth. a: 15-18. Piero, Lorenzo's son, succeeded him. Possessing nona of his father's good qualities, he had all his worst ones in an aggravated form. He was a weak profligate, and the new life then stirring in Florence made his rule im- possible. Some intrigue with Charles VIII of France, who was then invading Italy, was made the occasion for deposing him. In the events which followed Savonarola was virtually governor of Florence. The new government which was established was devised and secured by hnn. The people accepted his counsel unquestioningly. A great reformation of morals and manners coincided with the political revolution, and Florence seemed to be at length emerging into a new, vigorous, corporate life, based upon righteousness and justice. _ Of the political side of Savonarola's work, this is not the place to write. That is a matter for the expert in political science. But it belongs to our present inquiry to observe that Savonarola establ ned the principle that no stable political institutions coulu ever be reared except upon a definitely moral foundation. All political problems are at bottom moral problems, and no amount of states- manship or management can avail to secure the stability of a political structure which is not first of all solidly laid on the rock of morality. J44 THE PROPHET OF RIGHTEOUSNESS IIX-3) In the central lobby of the British Houses o( Parlia- ment, there is inlaid in the tiled floor a Latin inscription. It is the scripture, "Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain who build it." That is a good word for statesmen and for all who have building operations of any kind on hand. It is the acknowledgment that the statesmanship which i.s not foursquare with the will of God is doomed to failure ; and this was the first article of Savonarola's faith. And it was plain to the great preacher that morality itself must rest upon religion. The place of the prophet in the community is to teach and to evoke that genuine religious devotion upon which all stable institutions must be founded. Savonarola entered into the tumult of politics only unwillingly, for he conceived his peculiar office to be that of quickening the spirit and conscience necessary to good government. The business of the Church is not primarily with political ways and means, but with the creation of a public conscience which will determine the methods and ends of government in accordance with moral principles. fith Week, Third Day The word of Ood came unto John the son of Zacharias in the wildemeu. And he came into all the region round about Jordan, preachins the baptism of repentance unto remission of sins; as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make ve ready the way of the Lord, Make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, And every mountain and hill shall be brought low; And the crooked shall become straight. And the rough ways smooth ; And all flesh shall see the salvation of Cod. He said therefore to the multitudes that went out to be baptized of him. Ye offspring of vipers, who warned 14.=; (IX-31 THAT ONE FACE vou to fltc from th« wrath to com* 7 Bring forth tiitrt- fort fruitt worthy of rtptnttnce.— Lok* 3: a-S. The first word of a prophet's message is R*penl; and this was Savonarola's first word to the people of Florence. He had all the prophet's freedom from the trammels of convention and tradition; but the intellectual twilight of his time made it impossible for him to establish himsel' in a clear, self-consistent position of thought. At one moment, for instance, he scciied to accept wi'.bout ques- tion the authority of the Church as expressed .Krough the Pope. At another, he insisted with the passion of a Luther on the absolute supremacy of ttc Scriptures ; and he does not appear to have been a wave of any conflict between the two positions. But a rophet is the last person in the world from whom to expect a logical consistency. The force of ci-cums'a.ices, however, led Savonarola, as time went on, to j.i-;ribe less authority to the Pope and to make his appei! more and more to the Scriptures. But outside the region of doctrine, Savonarola showed no uncertainty of thought. He knew what religion was and what conduct should be; and his call to his feliow- tow smen to repent was uttered in tones that carried their own authority with them. It should, however, not ' t thought that Savonarola's call to repentance was a dei..il of the joy of life or, as has been the case with some prophets of a mere austere turn, a disparagement of beauty. It has been sometimes held that the Italian Renascence was a resurrection of paganism; and no doubt the dis- covery of the wisdom and beauty of Greek antiquity did foi a moment and to some extent tend to dim the riches of the Gospel. It is, indeed, no wonder that it should be so. The interpretation of the Gospel that then held the field was the dry and formal theology of the School- men; and it was bound to suffer from the impact upon it of the rediscovery of the undying "glory that was 146 THE PROPHET OF KICHTKOUSNESS IIX-4I Greece." Art and Literature flourished greatly under the influence of the Greek spirit. It has been assumed that because Savonarola withstood the undoubted paganism of Lorenzo's reign, he wai an enemy of the arts and a hindrance to the new spirit. So far from this being true, Savonarola was, perhaps unconsciously, one of the means by which the Renascence came to flow mi Christian channels. In his own convent of St. Mark, he encouraged the fine arts; and Michael Angelo and Botticelli, to name only two of the great Renascence artists, derived their inspiration very largely from Savonarola. Repentance to Savonarola meant a change of heart that brought, not a narrower life, but a life more abundant. Ninth Week, Fourth Day Now I Paul myielf intreat you by the meeknesi and gentleneii of Christ, I who in your presence am lowly amonf you, but being absent am of good courage toward you: yea, I beseech you, that I may not when present f u ,'?'"■** *''*•' "" confidence wherewith I count to be bold against some, which count of us as if we walked according to the flesh. For though we walk in the flesh we do not war according to the flesh (for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but mighty before pod to the casting down of strong holds; ; casting down imagiaationi, and evenr high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God, and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.— II Cor. 10: J-S- It was, however, only as Savonarola broke away from the accepted theology and teaching of medieval Catholi- cism that he was able to give to artists, and to the common people as well, that enlarged liberal spirit in which the glories of the ancient world and the grace of Jesus Christ were to find a common meeting-ground, and in which the true proportions of both would appear. The utter and absolute supremacy of Jesus Christ, everywhere, in philoso- phy, in art, in statesmanship — this wai the body of "47 lix-s] THAT ONE FACE Savonarola's message, as the call to repentance was its beginning. In theory, Savonarola's attitude to the Church was correct enough. The Church Militant on earth was the other self of the Church Triumphant in heaven; and as the head of the latter was Jesus Christ, so was the Pope the head of the former. "Wherefore," he says in a little tractate called "The Triumph of the Cross," "it is manifest that all the faithful should be united under the Pope as the supreme head of the Roman Church, the mother of all other churches, and that whosoever departs from the unity of the Roman Church departs from the Church." But whatever Savonarola's theory may have been, in practice he considers that his own supreme head is not the Pope but Jesus Christ. It may have been that he regarded the Pope of his own day as a usurper who had no right to the office he held; but Savonarola clearly regarded his own commission as held directly from Christ. When the Pope excommunicated him, he said, "For me, it is enough not to be interdicted by Christ." So lightly did he hold the excommunication that he went on to say, "O my Lord, if I should seek to be absolved from this excommunication, let me be sent to hell." So impossible is it to hold new wine in old wineskins. * 4.1 Ninth Week. Fifth Day What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not also with him freely give us all things? Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth; who is he that shall condemn? It is Christ Jesus that died, yea rather, that was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who also maketh in- tercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Even as it is written, 148 THE PROP II ET OF RIGHTEOUSNESS (IX-s] For thy sake we are killed all the day long; We were accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor prmcipalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. — Rom. 8: 31-39. We may fairly trace in Savonarola the foreshadowing of that coming revolt from papal authority and that grow- ing consciousness of the true relation of the Church, whether in heaven or in earth, to its only Head, which led to the Protestant Reformation. This tendency is quite evident throughout Savonarola's teaching. The complex machinery of the Roman system for t^i spiritual develop- ment of its children, he views with increasing distrust and he insists that the increase of ceremonies mc is a de- crease of real spirituality. "Wherefore," he says, "we are come to declare to the world that outward worship must give way to inward, and that ceremonies are naught save as a means of stirring the spirit." The essence of the Christian religion is the love of Christ, "that lively affection which inspires the faithful with the desire to bring his soul to unity, as it were, with that of Christ" and live the life of the Lord not by external imitatio:i but by inward and divine inspiration." In this love is the power to raise man "from humanity to divinity" and to unite "the finite creature to the infinite Creator." This love is the keynote of Savonarola's preaching. "Take the example of Christ," he says, in one of his sermons, "who came to us as a little child, in all things like unto the sons of men, submitting to hunger and thirst, to heat and cold and discomfort. What hath urged Him to do this? He spoke now with just men. now with publicans and sinners, and He led a life that all men and all women, small and great, rich and poor, may imitate, all after their 149 [IX-6] THAT ONE FACE t own way and according to their condition, and thus un- doubtedly win their salvation. And what made Him live so poor and so marvellous a life? It was undoubtedly Lx)ve. Love bound Him to the pillar, led Him to the Cross, raised Him from the dead, and made Him ascend into heaven and thus accomplish the mysteries of our redemption." Savonarola's sense of personal union with Jesus was so intimate that when the tide turned and a fickle people turned against him, he declared, "They may kill me as they please, but they will never tear Christ from my heart." When at last Florence did come to kill him, a priest asked him, "In what spirit dost thou face this martyrdom?" the monk answered, "The Lord hath suf- fered so much for me." And as they fixed the halter around his neck, he said, "Into thv hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit." Ninth Week, Sixth Day Now when they had passed through AmpbipolU and ApoUonia, they came to Thesaalonica, where was a syna- gogue of the Jews: and Paul, as his custom was, went in unto them, and for three sabbath days reasoned with them from the scriptures, opening and alleging, that it behoved the Christ to suffer, and to rise again from the dead; and that this Jesus, whom, said he, I proclaim unto you, is the Christ. And some o£ them were per- suaded, and consorted with Paul and Silas; and of the devout Greeks a great multitude, and of the chief women not a few. But the Jews, being moved with jealousy, took unto them certam vile fellows of the rabble, and gathering a crowd, set the city on an uproar ; and assault- mg the house of Jason, they sought to bring them forth to the people. And when they found them not, they dragged Jason and certain brethren before the rulers of the city, crying, These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also; whom Jason hath received: and these all act contrary to the decrees of Cesar, saying that there is another king, one Jesus. And they troubled the multitude and the rulers of the city, when they heard ISO THE PROPHET OF RIGHTEOUSNESS [IX-;] theie things. And when they had taken security from Jason and the rest, they let them go Acts 17: 1.9. "That Christ is our ultimate end, and that only through Him can we attain salvation"— in these words Savonarola summed up his own faith. But it was not the saviour- hood of Christ so much as His kingship that Savonarola emphasized most deeply in his dealings with the Floren- tines. However he might have placed Christ in his the- ology, the more important matter is the part which he assigned to Christ in the practical aflfairs and the common life of Florence. We cannot but be impressed by the very direct way in which he sought to reestablish Christ in a definite relation to the city and its people. In a sermon which he preached in 1494, after the establishment of the new government, he announced that "it is the Lord's will to give a new head to the city of Florence"; and after keeping the people in suspense for some time, he cried, "The new head is Jesus Christ. He seeks to become your king." The idea caught the Imagination of the Flo'entines and they went out into 'he streets shouting, "Long live Christ our king." In a poem written by Savonarola, he speaks of "Jesus, King of Florence," and it was around this point that his thought at the time chiefly moved. On a certain Palm Sunday, a service for children was held in the Cathedral prior to a procession; and after speaking to the children awhile, Savonarola turned to the men and women present and cried, "Florence, behold I This is the Lord of the Universe and would fain be thine. Wilt thou have Him for thy king?" And the multitude answered, "Long live Christ our king I" Ninth Week, Seventh Day I£ there is therefore any comfort in Christ, if any coniolation of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if [IX-7] THAT ONE FACE any tender mercies and compassions, fulfil ye my joy, that ye be of the same mind, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind; doing nothing through faction or through vainglory, but in lowlinesi of mind each counting other better than himself; not looking each of you to his own things, but each of you alio to the things of others. Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of Qod, counted it not a prize to be on an equality with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross. Wherefore also God highly exalted him, and gave unto him the name which is above every name; that in the name of Jssus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and tilings under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. — Phil, a: i-ii. This, then, is the crowning thought of Savonarola — the absolute and unquestioned sovereignty of Jesus in the heart of the individual and the community. We can afford to pass by our prophet's theology. The intellectual con- fusion of iiis time, the conflict of tradition and liberty in his own mind, the tremendous and unbroken whirl into which circumstances forced him in his later years in Florence — these things make it impossible for him to evolve a self-consistent philosophy. But as we follow the man through the fever of those tumultuous years, as we see him essaying statecraft, there emerges a great principle which was never for a moment clouded or ob- scured — the supreme lordship of Christ over soul and city. Though schooled in an tmosphere of tradition, a child of the middle ages, yet the stirring events of Florentine history call him away from the doctrinal baggage of the schools and the exaggerated ceremonialism of the Church to the central spiritual reality of the Gospel. He was "a reformer before the Reformation." Not yet sufficiently inaiure to break away formally from the Roman system, nevertheless he heralded not uncertainly 152 THE PROPHET OF RIGHTEOUSNESS (IX-s] that great movement which a generation after his death was to revolutionize western Europe. Martin Luther was fifteen years of age at the time of Savonarola's death- and It v/as the tattered banner of revolt that the Florentine prophet had laid down too prematurely in 1498 which Luther raised in 1517, when he nailed his "theses" to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, the first act in the drama of the Reformation. Savonarola has left us for his monument the thought of Jesus as the great overlord of our corporate life. In these democratic days there is a growing sense of the incongruity of conceiving Jesus under terms of secular monarchy. But what was in Savonarola's mind is plain. He meant that our legislation shall be conceived in His spirit, that it shall be enacted and administered along the lines of His will, and that our public bodies, from Parliament and Congress down to the veriest subcommittee of parish councillors or selectmen, shall sit as it were in His presence. Let His will be the touchstone of our enactments, let His principles become the fundamentals of civic and national life, let His character become the citizen's ideal. Thus Savonarola, though he be dead, yet speaketh ; and this generation, God knows, needs to listen to him. SUGGESTIONS FOR THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION It would be worth while to test the statement that the prophet's first word is "Repent." by reference to Isaiah, Amos, Rosea, and John the Baptist. Repentance and penitence are often supposed to be the same thing; they are, however, different. How are we to distinguish between them? Why is the term King somewhat unconvincing when we apply it to Jesus ? Can you suggest any other term which will retain the spiritual idea implied in kingship, but which is devoid of the notion of authority imposed from without.' 153 •t , CHAPTER X The Prophet of Humanity — Mazzini (1805— 1872) The prophet has almost always been a patriot; but his patriotism has been oi a distinct order. The blatant assumption of superiority over other peoples, an inflated national pride — these things and such as these which sometimes pass for patriotism bear the name falsely. The true patriotism has other attributes. In its essence it is a passionate love for one's nation, its traditions, and its institutions, joined to a profound faith in its possibilities and in its specific mission in the plan of history. It is not at all akin to that selfish and exclusive temper which regards the securing of certain material goods for a peo- ple as a worthy end in itself; on the contrary, it seeks such advantages as will enable the nation to fill its own place in the larger life of the race. The patriot-prophet always appears at a time when his own country is degenerating and becoming incapable of making its own contribution to the life of the world. He starts by seeing what Jesus once saw and feeling as He then felt — "when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion for them, because they were distressed and scattered, as sheep not having a shepherd." The putrescence of national life, the disintegration of its social bonds — these things weigh heavily on his soul, and he emerges out of the wilderness or the cloister into the high- 154 THE I'KOPfinr OF HUMANITY fX-.| ways and the c.ty streets with a great call to repentance His one passion is to stay the degeneracy, to snatch his people from the perilous incline down which they are sliding to destruction, and to set them again upon the path which they have forsaken and which alone can lead of God '° "'^''" °'^" •''""'' '" ^'^^ manifold economy The Italy of Mazzini's youth was no less broken and distressed than that of Dante or Savonarola. Metternich the Austrian statesman, had sneered at Italy as merely a geographical expression," and the description was in DaurhL""."""'; "^^^ '"■'=''" °^ ^ united Italy which s^n in .t r'i '° T**'""' ^"^ ^'"''^""^ y*^" before was ^Zaw k°"u-; ^' ^^^ '° '^'^ '^"' 'hat Mazzini de- voted himself while yet a young man; for it he lived and suffered and wrought Though the republic in which he had hoped to see Italy united was never established, he nevertheless lived to see Italy a nation, settling down to order its new-found life on lines which would enable it to stand unashamed in the councils of Europe and to make Its own contribution to the enrichment of the com- mon life of man. Mazzini, unlike his friend Ruffini was not permitted to die for Italy; he was compelled to do that more difficult thing-to live for his country. In one of his es.^ays he quotes Lamennais, that great French lover of liberty; "Faith demands Action, not tears" h demands of us the power of sacrifice, sole origin of our salvation. It seeks Christians capable of looking down upon the world from on high and facing its fatigues with- out fear; Christians capable of saying. We will die for tus ; alwve all, Christians capable of saying, 'We will live for this.' " Such an one was Mazzini himself. . [A good collection of Mazzini's essays mav be obtained n a volunie ca ed by the title of his greatest essay, "The Duties of Man, in Everyman's Library. The volume also contains an excellent biographical introduction.] 155 [X-1] THAT ONE FACE DAILY READINGS Tenth Week, First Day And what .h.n I more say? For *e time will fail me if I tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David IL Samuel and the prophets: who through faith subdued WnJoS" wrought righteousness, obtained Promises. .,^5neHhe mouths of Uons, quenched the power of fire, stopped the raomat ox ^^ £„„ weakness were.made escaped the «°««,°L*^'i*^.r tu™ed *" *>'«''* »"""' °* :i[e«'' Xme^feceived their d«d by .'resurrection: H£^iHSoS:is^>^s^^ should not be made perfect.— Heb. ii. a' 4o- It was no inspiring spectacle that Italy presented to the e^es of the youni Mazzini. There was no national vitality The people were plunged into a gross material- Um where the? were not wholly buried in a Profound - difference. The revolutionary society «« ^he Carbonar^ which Mazzini joined, was zealous enough f°r ^ aUan rndependence; but its spirit was utihtarian and 'ts methods altoeether opportunist. But Mazzini himself was neither the one nor the other. "I believed," he says of himself, •■that the great problem of the day was a re igious prob- lem, to which all other questions were secondary. 1 he people," he wrote in his great "'anifesto, Fa.th and the Future" (183S). "lack faith . . . the faith 'ha a °u^^^ the multitudes, faith in .heir own destiny, m the r own mission and in the mission of the epoch; the faith that fights and prays; the faith that enlightens and bids men IS6 THE PROPHET OF HUMANITY [X-2] advance fearlessly in the ways of God and humanity, with the sword of the people in their hand, the religion of the people in their heart, and the future of the people in their soul." Faith, in Mazzini's view, was essentially the power of "seeing the invisible," of deriving inspiration from its eternal sources in the unseen. He had little patience with the devious ways and the compromising spirit of the con- ventional statecraft: the redemption of Italy must be sought along other lines. Her soul must be raised from the dead. This was possible only by calling upon her people as another prophet had done before him, to a nation equally apathetic, to "lift up their eyes on high." Mazzini broke away from the revolutionary spirit which cherished no ideals higher than that of the pocket or the stomach, and preached to a people held in the deadly grip of an arid materialism, the old gospel that "man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God" — by which he proved himself to belong to "the goodly fellowship of the prophets." Tenth Week, Second Day The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. And it shall come to pass in the latter days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many peoples shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go for-', he law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. A' - shall judge between the nations, and shall reprove m leoples: and they shall beat their swords into pluwonares, and their spears into pruninghooks : nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. — Isa. a: 1-4. Mazzini's early agitations ended disastrously for him; he suffered a long exile full of strange vicissitudes. JS7 IX-aJ THAT ONE FACE Nevertheless, he preached his gospel in season and out of season; and by many devices he secured its propa- gation in Italy. His exile, however, served him in good stea-l. It was not Italy alone that was beginning to be restless under chains. Europe was seething with the spirit of revolution ; and both England and France became sanctuaries for many, like Mazzini himself, who were fugitive from their own countries. In France that brave priest, Lamennais, was preaching revolutionary doctrine with the same religious passion as Mazzini, and the European ferment opened Mazzini's eyes to the true nature of his problem. It gave him a truer perspective than he would otherwise have had ; so that he became the prophet not of a nation only but of a whole continent. He saw on the broad plain of European history what he saw in little in Italy. This did not in the least weaken the intensity of his feeling for Italy. On the contrary, it deepened it, for it was in and through Italy that he hoped to see accomplished that synthesis of the European peoples which would be the new birth of man. It is a commonplace of history and biography that Rome has a glamor which profoundly affects all minds that are sensi- tive to its atmosphere and its traditions. Lord Morley has told us how great a revolution was wrought in Gladstone's mind and religious outlook by his first visit to Rome. The same spell was upon Mazzini. "God chose Rome," he says, "as the interpreter of His design among the nations. Twice she has given unity to the world ; she will bestow it a third time and forever." The course of history seems to have drifted away from the channel of Mazzini's anticipations; but it is none the less important for our understanding of Mazzini that we should remember that he looked to Rome for the enunciation of the new idea, the message of the new epoch, which was to transform the European jungle into a vast commonwealth bound together by a common reli- gious ideal. ISS THE PROPHET OF HUMANITY (X-3l The Old Testament prophet looked forward to the day when "the mountain of the housi of Jehovah" should be exalted above all the mountains and when the nations would pour into it as their common world-metropolis But upon neither Jerusalem nor Rome has th.t distinc- tion yet fallen : and it does not appear likely thit it ever will. Still, we are plainly drawing nearer the day when the substance if not the form of these prophetic dreams IS coming within hail of realization. The League of Nations may be but the framework of that new unity of man for which Mazzini looked. Tenth Week, Third Day For as the body is one. and hath many members, and all the members of the body, being many, are one body: so also IS Christ. For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or tree; and were all made to drink of one Spirit. For tue body is not one member, but many. If the foot shall say. Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body: It IS not therefore not of the body. And if the ew body; It IS not therefore not of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the w£ rr^f' i"!?""*' 1''*" "'" the smelling? But now hath God set the members each one of them in the body, even as it pleased him. And if they were all one mem- ber, where were the body? — I Cor. la: ia-19. The message of the nineteenth century, according to Mazzini, was to be "synthesis" or "association." He held that the Protestant Reformation had estab- lished finally the principle of individual rights. It was the revolt of the individual mind and conscience against the tyranny of a corrupt and materi.ilistic ecclesiastical system. He further believed that the French Revolution was the "political translation" of the Protestant Reforma- tion; yet he was not inclined to regard the French Revolu- tion with the hot approval that was common among the 159 im I lX-31 THAT ONE FACE revolutionary mind* of his time. For he »aid that its exaggerated emphasis upon the principle of individualism had led to its inevitable conclusion in the Empire and the despotism of Napoleon. It is right, he mainUined, that all persons should be free; but if you have only freedom, then you have competition and strife. The prin- ciple of individual liberty must be balanced by another; and to this other, Maziini gave the name of "association or "synthesis," which, of course, means just "getting together." This is the reason why Mazzini emphasized not personal rights but pers al duties; and it were al- ways well for us to hear n. e of duties than of rights. Emphasis on our rights tends to separate us, to set us against one another; but emphasis on duties will help to unite us, to bind us togethe.. It was Mazzini's belief and hope that the mission ot the nineteenth century was to establish this principle of association in national and international life. The pre vious epoch had shown what society owed to the in- dividual; the nineteenth century would show what the individual owed to society. Up to a certain point, Maz- zini's foresight was justified. While, in England at least, the trend of legislation in the first half of the nineteenth century had been individualistic, a process of securing individual rights, in the latter half the tend- ency was coUectivistic, that is to say, .t expressed the collective action of the community in defense of its members against exploitation, by means of Factory Acts, Truck Acts, and the like. Still better evidence of the truth of Mazzini's prediction is to be found in the ap- pearance and growth of what we call "the social con- sciousness" and the sense of corporate duty and service. Says Lowell, "Slowly the Bible of the race is writ," and every age adds its own chapter. i6o The nineteenth ecu THE PROPHET OF HUhlANlTY (X-4] tury did not write out this chapter as fully as Mazzini had anticipated; but it at least began it. And the social movement is ttxlay tin; most significant fact of our com- mon life. In prcailnng this doctrine of association, Mazzini was, of course, ^nly amplifying that old word, "Ye are mem- bers one of another." Tenth Week, Fourth Day Behold, ■ king ihall reign in righteouineii, and prmcrt ihall rule in iudgement. And ■ man thall be ai a.n hu'itiir place from the wmd, and a covert from the tempest; a^ rivers of water in a dry place, ai the ihadow oi a greit rock in a weary land. And the eyes of them that see shall not be dim. and the ears of them that hear sl.all hearken. The heart also of the rash shall understand knowledge, and the tongue of the stammerers shall be ready to speak plainly. The vile person shall be no more called liberal, nor the churl said to be bountiful. For the vile person will speak viUany, and his heart will work iniquity, to practise profaneness, and to utter error against the Lord, to make empty the soul of the hungry, and to cause the drink of the thirsty to fail. The instru- ments also of the churl are evil: he deviseth wicked devices to destroy the meek with lying words, even when the needy speaketh right. But the liberal deviseth """■iUL """■"• *"'' '" •'beral things shall he continue. . . . Then judgement shall dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness shall abide in the fruitful field. And the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and conHdence for ever.— Isa. 3a: 1-8, 16, 17. "For God and Humanity"— these were the words which Mazzini inscribed on the banner which he carried so long and so bravely. He believed, in spite of all appearance to the contrary, that the passing of time meant surely and certainly the unfolding of the divine purpose in man. The cause of God and man are one. "Man," says Dr. Garvie, "must be conceived as a means towards God's 161 -:ir~^::;H:S5IMES« done unto you. Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; ard so shall ye be my disciples ^joBn 15: 1-8. It would be idle to pretend that Mazzini's view of .Tcsus and the Cross can be squared with the traditional doctrines of the Church ; but here is a frank recognition of the unique place which Jesus fills in human history. I here is, however, something more. Properly under- stood, the passage quoted in yesterday's reading suggests the conception of Jesus as "the representative man." It is not very important that Mazzini does not speak theologically; but it is plain that to him Jesus is the -■pitome of humanity, and Calvary a summary of history. (X-7l THAT ONE FACIi That linking of God and man which Jesus in life, supremely in death, accomplished, was not alone the promise but the sure guarantee of human fulfilment— for man's end is in God. In what Jesus has done we see the pledge of what man will be, and by that same path of love and sacrifice which led Christ to Calvary shall humanity at least reach God. Christ is the captain of the salvation not alone of men but of Man. The path He trod is the highway of the eternal purpose. "We advance," says Mazzini, "encouragec' by the sacred prom- ise of Jesus"— the promise not only spoken in words but explicit in His life and work; and this promise was the sure destiny of man in God. He "bestowed upon the human race that sublime formula of brotherhood," but, in Mazzini's view, brotherhood was not an end but a means to an end. He believed that men cannot relate them- selves rightly to God save through "collective humanity." We shall see the glory of God when we see it together. This is the truth that Christianity recognizes in its emphasis upon "the communion of saints"; man realizes himself only in fellowship, and it is therefore only so far as he consciously participates in the forward move- ment of the race towards the widest possible fellowship, that he can bring himself fully into union with God. Mazzini did not at any time deny the possibility of personal communion with God; indeed, more than once, he bade men pray: but personal religion was not his peculiar message. He was charged to declare to men that it is only through conscious and deliberate identifica- tion of oneself with the body of mankind that the union of God and man — man's chief end and God's chief aim — can in the end be secured. Tenth Week, Seventh Day But now put ye also away all these; anger, wrath, malice, railing, shameful speaking out of your mouth; lie not one to another; seeing that ye have put off the i66 THE PROPHET OF HUMANITY [X-j] old man with his doing*, and have put on the new m>n which IS being renewed unto knowledge after the im...' of him that created.him: where there' cannot be G?Jfk l2^hI.T'hS'H'*™"V°" ""<* ""'*«"n,ci.ion? bMb«iiSC SCTthian, bondman, freeman: but Christ is all amS in ^^ h«r?„°f" *"«*°r«. ".God's elect, hoy and belovSd a" heart of compassion, kindness, humility meekne.«Ion not with hii tongue. Tn LJ!. •* "P ■ reproach aninit his neirtbonr — Psalm 15. hi/n°'!L^r'''" *'.' ",^""="'y a "ligious soul, and to S rl °^ •'"''^'°" ^''^ '^on'munion w th God. But communion with God requires two conditions The first IS that man shall possess moral qualitie c",: says Rusk.n to a nature capable ot truth, desirous of .t. distinguishing it, feeding upon it. that revelation is 171 |XI-iI THAT ONE FACE IMjssiblc. There can l)c nmic to a brute or to a fiend. In so far, therefore, as you love truth and live therein, in so far revelation can exist for you; and in so far, your mind is the image of God." This is simply an expansion of an older word— "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." It is in the measure that truth and justice and love are our own personal quali- ties that we shall be able to receive and apprehend the word in which God reveals Himself. The image of God within is "defiled, if you will; broken, if you will; all but effaced, if you will, by death and the shadow of it." For all that it is "a mirror wherein may be seen darkly the image of the mind of God." The second condition of communion with God is that God's mind should be expressed in terms that our finite minds can grasp. "In order to make this communion possible, the Deity has stooped from His throne and has not only in the person of the Son taken upon Him the veil of our human flesh, but in the person of the Father taken upon Him the veil of our human thoughts and permitted us to conceive Him simply and clearly as a loving Father and Friend, a Being to be walked with and reasoned with, to be moved by our entreaties, to be angered by our rebellion, alienated by our coldness, pleased by our love, and glorified by our labour, and finally to be beheld in immediate and active presence in all the powers and changes ol creation. This conception of God, which is the child's, is evidently the only one which can be universal, and therefore the only one which for us can be true." It is clear that Ruskin accepted the truth of the Iti- carnation fully; and again and again he insists upon it as the central fact of the Gospel. Sometimes he dis- covers a meaning in it which may not commend itself to us ; but, taking it altogether, there is a wealth and variety in Ruskin's interpretation of Jesus which may not easily be fully expressed in a small compass. 173 THE PROPHET OF SERVICE (Xl-a] Eleventh Week, Second Day If then ye were raited together with Chriet, icek the thingi that are above, where Christ if, seated on the right hand u£ Ood. Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are upon the errth. „?l ye^died, and your life is hid with Christ in Ood. When Christ, who is our life, shall be manifested, then shall ye also with him be manifested in glory,— Col. 3:1-4- Ruskin had been brought up in the straitcst evangelical- ism — a phase of Christian thought which, because it was a protest against both the dry liberalism and the formal High-Churchmanship of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, cast itself into forms more rigid than a larger outlook could possibly consent to. While Ruskin deplored the narrowness which this type of Christianity had induced in him, and he had in many respects departed from it, yet he remained true to its essential features to the eml. We have seen his confes- sion that while he was writing "Modern I'ainters," he was still under the influence of the older ideas; but he shows in "Praeterita" that even at the end of his life what was fundamental in his early inheritance was still with him. "What a child," he says, "cannot understand of Christianity no man need try to. . . . The total mean- ing was and is that God who made earth and its crea- tures took at a certain time on the earth the flesh and the form of man; in that flesh sustained the pain and died the death of the creature He had made; rose after death into glorious human life; and when the date of the human race is ended, will return in visible human form and render to every man according to his work. Chris- tianity is the belief in and love of God thus manifested." There is no great disparity betwen this and his earlier view. Vet in one important respect Ruskin departed materially from his first faith. The evangelicalism in which he had been bred had chiefly emphasized the death 173 MICROCOPY DESOIUTION TEST CHART (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No 2) ^ /APPLIED IIVMGE Inc ^^ 1653 Eost Moin Street ^^ Roctiester. New York 14609 USA '■^S (716) 482 - 0300 - Phone ^= (716) 288- 5989 - Fo* (XI-3] THAT ONE FACE of Jesus. Ruskin shifts he larger emphasis to the riV.'ii Christ. This does not mean that he did not attach great significance to the death of Jesus, but he felt rather the immense and wonderful signiiicance of the thought that Jesus lives today, and that the chief busi- ness of His disciples is to be in a living and immediate obedience to Him. In the "Lectures on Art," he deplores the wasted time and the wasted emotion of the tender and delicate women of Christendom, when they have been called "through the four arts of eloquence, music, painting, and sculpture," to contemplate "the bodily pain, long passed" of "the Master who is not dead and who is not now fainting under His Cross, but requiring us to take up ours." Speaking of ihe sculpture on the great central porch of Amiens Cathedral, he says, "Christ never appears, or is for a moment thought of, as the crucified or the dead; but as the Incarnate Word, as the present Friend, as the Prince of Peace on earth, and as the Everlasting King in heaven. What His life i'.!, what His commands an; and what His judgment tt'i// be, are the things taught here; not what He once did, or what He once suffered, but what He is now doing and what He requires us to do. That is the pure joyful les- son of Christianity, and the fall from that faith and the corruption of its abortive practice may be summed up briefly as the habitual contemplation of Christ's death instead of His life: the substitution of His past suffering for our present duty." But is this, after all, anything different from St. Paul's thought: "For if . . . we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by his life " ? Eleventh Week, Third Day Wherefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new crea- ture: the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new. But all things are of God, who reconciled 174 THE PROPHET OF SERVICE [XI-J] us to himself through Christ, and gave unto us the ministry of reconciliation; to wit, that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not reckon- Im^„"V?.*°n, ^a"1 trespasses, and having committed unto us the word of reconciliation. We are ambassadors therefore on behalf of Christ, kIi* if"5f ^u^'!"^^ intreating by us: we beseech you on behalf of Christ, be ye reconciled to God. Him who knew no sm he made to be sin on our behalf: that we might become the righteousness of God in him.— II cor, 5: 17-ai. Ruskin's emphasis on the living Christ does not lead Jiim to undervalue the gospel history. He speaks of three facts, without assurance of which all faith is vain— namely, that Christ died, that He rose again, and that He ascended into heaven, there to prepare a place for His elect." Indeed, it is only from what we know of the historical Jesus that we can gain any confident knowledge of the living Christ; and in this connection Ruskin insists strongly upon the real and eternal manhood of Christ. The glorified Christ is no other than the man Jesus— the same yesterday, today, and forever. "Our preachers," he complains, "are continually trying in all manner of subtle ways to explain the union of the Divinity with the Manhood, -in explanation which cer- tainly involves first their being able to describe the nature of the Deity itself or, in plain words, to appre- hend God. They never can explain, in any one particular, the union of the natures; they only succeed in weaken- ing the faith of their hearers as to the entireness of either. The thing they have to do is precisely the con- trary to this— to insist upon the entireness of both. We never think of Christ enough as God, never enough as Man : the instinctive habit of our minds bein<;- always to miss of the divinity, and the reasoning and enforced habit to miss of the humanity. We are afraid to har- bour in our own hearts, or to utter in the hearing of others, any thought of our Lord as hungering, tired, I7S [XI-41 THAT ONE I- ACE sorrowful, having a human soul, a human will, and affected by events of human life, as a finite creature is; and yet one half of the efficiency of His atonement and the whole of the efficiency of His example depend upon His having been this to the full"— which is, of course, uncommonly good sense. Eleventh Week, Fourth Day And they constrained hira, saying, Abide with us : for ;t :s toward evening, and the day is now far spent. And he went in to abide with them. And it came to pass, when he had sat down with them to meat, he took the bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight. And they said one to another, Was not ova heart burning within us, while he spake to us in the way, while he opened to us the scriptures? And they rose up that very hour, and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven gathered together, and them that were with them, saying. The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon. And they rehearsed the things that happened in the way, and how he was known of them in the breaking of the bread. — Luke 34: 39-35- The example of the Jesus of history is for His disciples the law of the Christ of glory. And the commandments of this law are not merely the words of an ancient record, but words which come to us straight from the high throne cm which the Living Lord is set. In His Law is our life. Jesus revealed not only God but man, and by His life He has shown wherein our life consists. And just as the Son of Man came to minister, and as He ministered above all, to the poor, the outcast, and the broken, so also is our life to consist in such lowli- ness of service. "Could we," asks our author, "possibly have had more distinct indication of the purpose of the Master, first borne by the witness of the shepherds in a cattle-shed, then by the witness of the person for whom He had done most and who loved Him best, in the 176 THE PROPHET OF SERVICE [Xl-Sl garden and in gardener's guise, and not known by His familiar friends till He gave them bread— could it be told us, I repeat, more definitely by any sign or indica- tion whatsoever that the noblest human life was appointed to be by the cattle-fold and in the garden, and to be known as noble in the breaking of bread?" This ex- pression "the breaking of bread" is symbolical through- out Ruskin's works of lowly deeds of mercy, of loving care for the poor and the spent; and the reward of those who break bread is that it brings them the vision of Christ. This conception of life and discipleship as service is Ruskin's real gospel and he expands it in various forms. In "Unto This Last" he says that in every community there are four great intellectual professions — the sol- dier's, to defend it; the lawyer's, to secure justice in ^t; the pastor's, to teach it; and the merchant's, to provide for it. And it is the duty of each of these, he says, "on due occasion to die for it." This requirement of an absolute devotion of service, stated so uncompromisingly, is the logic of Ruskin's own view of Christianity and of Jesus. He who was obedient unto death requires the same quality of obedience in His followers. Kleventh Week, Fifth Day But Mary was standing without at the tomb weeping- so, as she wept, she stooped and looked into the tomb; and she beholdeth two angels in white sitting, oni at the head, and one at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain. And they say unto her. Woman, why weepest thou? She saith unto them, Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him. When she had thus said, she turned herself back, and beholdeth Jesus standing, and knew not that it was' Jesus. Jesus saith unto her. Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him. Sir, if thou hast borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away. Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She tumeth 177 IXI-SJ THAT ONE FACE herself, and saith unto him in Hebrew, Rabboni; which is to say. Master. Jesus saith to her. Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended nto the Father: but go imto my brethren, and say to them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and my God and your God. — John ao: 11-17. This life of service has its own peculiar rc-vards ; re- fusal of it, its peculiar penalties. "Take Christ at His literal word, and so sure as His word is true, He will be known of you in tne breaking of bread. Refuse that servant's duty because it is plain, seek cither to serve God or know Him in any other way, your service will become mockery of Him and your knowledge darkness." Ruskin is here simply enforcing the principle which we have already found in a previous passage: the measure of our likeness to God is the measure of our apprehension of Him. It is the same with the understanding of Christ. "There is only one light by which you can read the life of Christ— the light of the life which you now lead in the flesh; and that not the natural life, but the won life. 'Nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.' " But the indwelling Christ will through us do the works of Christ; and in that service is vision. In a passage in "Sesame and Lilies," where he speaks of the poor and helpless children of England, "the feeble florets, with all their fresh leaves torn and their stems broken," he asks, "will you not go down among them nor set them in order in their little fragrant beds, nor fence them, in their trembling, from the fierce wind?" And after quoting Tennyson's lines, "Come into the garden, Maud, I am here at the gate alone," he goes on: "who is it, think you, who stands at the gate of the .sweeter garden, alone, waitinr: for you? Did you ever hear not of a Maude but a Madeleine, who went down to her garden in the dawn and found One 178 THE PROPHET OF SERVICE lXI-6) waiting at the gate whom she supp,;sed to be the gar- dener? Have you not sought Him often; s..-.ight Him 11 vain, all through the night; sought Him in vain at the gate of that old garden wlicre the fiery swqrd is sot' He IS never there, but at the gate of this gnrdni He is waiting always— waiting to take your hand— ready to sec the fruits of the valley, to see whether the vine has flourished and the pomegranate budded." Eleventh Week, Sixth Day But when the Son of man shall com- in his glory, and all the angels with him, then shall he sit on the throne of his glory: and before him shall be gathered all the !!f l.?,"'"u""'l''j "''*" "partite them one from another, Xau ^'Ifi;*'"''* separateth the sheep from the goats and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the Sn^K- ""■ *^f u'"j J*"" *•"" t*"* King say unto ther^ h^ri^'^/'l*?* ^""''' Come, ye blessed of m/ Father, in- hent the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in; naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye «^n.""T° T- J^"" '''"" "?« "Bhteous answer him, llJ^'r}'°lu' "•'"^sa* *e thee an hungred, and fed thee? or athirst, and gave thee drink? And when saw dothed'th*,-V"r*S'' S"** ^°°^ **"u« '"' °' ""'''d, and Clothed thee? And when saw we thee sick, or in prison sa"v «l?r^.r'° v"- T*""^ *••« K'"« =hall answer and say unto tfcBm, Verily I say unto you. Inasmuch as ye „. /-4'^*° °."' °^ *''il' "y brethren, even these least, on %i LTILTt, Then shall he say also unto them ^t., 1 I hand. Depart from me, ye cursed, into the !!l^ t " which IS prepared for the devil and his \l}^iJ^\^ "^^ ^" hungred, and ye gave me no meat: 1 was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a straneer and ye took me not in; naked, and ye clothed me not; sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. Then shall they also answer, saying. Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inas- much as ye did it not unto one of these least, ye did it lXI-61 THAT ONE FACE "0 ' I not unto me. And these ihall go away into eternal punishment: but the righteous into eternal life. — Matt. a5:3»-46. This thought of meeting Jesus in the service of the brolcen is, of course, common enough in literature. It is the subject of two of James Russell Lowell's poems, "The Vision of Sir Launfal" and "The Search." In the latter, the poet tells us how he had sought Christ in nature, in the halls of the rich, and in the houses of worship, and, turning from his vain quest into the streets of the city, he saw the prints of bleeding feet: "I followed where they led. And in a hovel rude, W'>h naught to fence the weather from his head, » he King I sought for meekly stood ; A naked hungry child Clung round his gracious knee. And a poor hunted slave looked up and smiled To bless the smile that set him free; New miracles I saw his presence do, No more I knew the hovel bare and poor, The gathered chips into a woodpile grew, The broken morsel swelled to goodly store. I knelt and wept : my Christ no more I seek. His throne is with the outcast and the wck." "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these ye have done it unto me." The service of Jesus is the scrvjte of the broken and the speni.; and for no service is there ampler recompense. "Obey the word (of Christ) in its simplicity, in wholeness of purpose, and serenity of sacrifice . . . and truly you shall receive sevenfold into your bosom in this present life and in the world to come life everlasting. All your knowledge will be- come to you clear and sure, all your footsteps safe: in the present brightness of domestic life you will foretaste the joy of Paradise, and to your children's children bequeath not only noble fame but endless virt'.e." i8o THn PRorrrr.T of service (xi-71 Eleventh Week, Seventh Day For behold your calling, brethren, how that not many w.se atter the flesh, not many mifhty, not many noble, are called: but God chose the foolish things of the world, that he might put to shame them that are wise: and God chose the weak things of the world, that he might put to shame the things that are strong; and the base thinRs of the world, and the things that are despised, did God choose, yea and the things that are not, that he might brmg to nought the things that are: that no flesh should glory before God. But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who was made unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption: that according as it is written. He that glorieth. let him glory in the Lord. — I Cor. i ; 36-31. Upon this loyal obedience all the good of life hangs "The strength and joy and height of achievement of any group or race of mankind has, from the day of Christ's nativity to this hour, been in exact proportion to their power of apprehending and honesty in obeying the truth of His Gospel." And the moral obviously is: "Be sure that you are serving Christ, till you are tired and can do no more for that time; and then, even if you have not breath enough left to say '.Master, Master,' with. He will not mind. Begin therefore 'today' ... to do good for Him— whether you live or die." And to those who thus obey Him, he becomes "all in all." "The early believers knew that the believer who had Christ had all Did he need fortitude? Christ was his rock. Equity' Christ was his righteousness. Holiness? Christ was his sanctification. Liberty? Christ was his redemption. Temperance? Christ was his ruler. Wisdom? Christ was his light. Truthfulness? Christ was the truth Charity? Christ was love." Throughout his life he is sustained by Christ, and in that sustenance is perfect satisfaction. "It is enough for Christ's sheep that they find tlieinselves on Christ's shoulders.'' Ruskin's Clnisi is the living and ever sufficient Mas- 181 (Xl->i THAT ONE FACE ter, who in grace governs and sustains His servants, ".hose life is their pattc'i. whose indwelling is their strength. It is the Christ i whom St. Pai , in Frederic Myers's poem, says: "Yea, thiough life, death, through sorrow and through sinning, Christ shall sufRre me, for he hath sufficed; Christ is the end, for Christ is the beginning, Christ the beginning, for the end is Christ." SUGOEfiTICNS FOR THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION IS Ruskin right in saying that the sufferings and death of Jesus have been over-emphasized in the past? "What a child cannot understand of Christianity no man need try to." Discuss this statement. What are the "due occasions" on which the lawyer and the merchant should die for their country? at CHAPTER XII The Universal Jesus The inqufry upon which we have been engaged could of course, be continued indefinitely; and some of those who have gone thus far may desire to go yet farther There .s much territory still to be explored in this matter of the personal witness of great souls— more detailed .nquiry for mstance, into the witness of the mystics. John Taulcr. Brol.ier Lawrence, Thomas a Kempis Henry Suso, Miguel de >folinos, Richard Rolle of Ham- pole, and others of this gentle compan; , \Ve might also exam.ne more closely the place of Jesus in philosophy and there .s a rich vein to be worked out in the region of the social and political consequencfs ci His appear- ance. StUl another approach m^jht be n,.-K!c fron the side of specialist" interpretations of Jesus— , ,r e» ,ole the mystical interpretation ■?( the life of Jc.us bv VIis« welyn Underbill, the economic imerpretation by D, iiernard Shaw, the psychological interpretation * h Manley Hall, and the like. Even the lure met these possibilities goes to show the singula- dis- of Jesus. In our present inquiry we have seen from how m ny •lifferent angles men have looked upon Jesus, and unr - now many .ispects men have seen Him. To Dante was the glorified Redeemer; to Shelley, the supreme po. and reformer; to William Blake, the incarnation of Thai clivino energy which is for ever creating life and beaufv and fellowship; to Browning, the clue to the mystery ot the universe; to Tennyson, the divine revealer and 183 IXII-ij THAT ONE FACE .^J *' interpreter of (io figure with so nmch life that he has imposed himself in this royal and various way upon the generations of men. You are confronted with a choice of two miracles, the miracle of Jesus or the miracle of art. In either case, you have a miracle. Criticism has its place and office in religion; and it is stupid ignorance that cries out against it. But the danger of criticism is to suppose that its own method covers the whole field. Now the fact is that, because criticism is so preoccupied with the examination of texts 184 riiH rxin-Ks u. Ji srs anil the m-i itiiiy i)f ditaiN tllf wood for the trit I' i-' SOmtllllil'- !!■ ^ ' M iiiiirsc, w: THUS IXIl. to SCO a VI lift the other (lanp'r of u„\ scviriK ilic tree, for ihc wood and missing tho real siBnificain.f of the exact and scientific- study of the gospels. What we have to remember is that when criticism and cxe'T'isis have done their work, thev have yet to be si.b.nil •.,) to the test of the whol liutiian impression of Jesus, 'r'.e study of the total impact o! iIm person of Jesus upon the whole man is as necessary for the purpose of securing a just proiwrtion in our thought of Jesus, as is the minute and rnicrosc .pic ex- amination of records. It is this study upon which we have been engaged. DAILY KBADINOS Twelfth Week, First Day -Jil"" '■"" '° •'''" *.he mother of the ions of Zebedec Jliil " u°"'' 'y°"'»PPin|[ him. and asking a certain thL/p h^"" ••»u*"'l ^l '»':J ""»» her. Whft wouldest thou? ,he saith unto him. Command that these my two .!1j VI. "'>' """Bdom. But Jesus answered and said, Ye know not what ye ask. Are ye able to drink }y 11 ?• u 'V "• "'•*'' ""'° 'hem. My cup indeed ye left ha;!r''i.''"V°'"' °" ^y ■".'«•" hand, and on my »hlJ^ u ".,..1,"^' """' *° «."•; hut it is for them for ^-*T„ 1 i^ ■?*!{? P^P*""! °f my Father. And when the ten heard it. they were moved with indignation con- wXr'",L*'"-5"l.'","*'""v ^"* J""» ""« By "race" here is not meant a difference of physical inheritance. Nowadays we know that racial and national differences are born chiefly of cultural and social heredity- 190 THE UNIVERSAL JESVS (XII-4] But what is true of the understanding of Oliver Crom- well is not true of the understanding of Jesus of Nazareth. He was a Jew, in everything, yet this is almost the last thing we think of concerning Him. He appeals to every race of men without distinction; and our missionary records tell us how the Mongol finds as easy and as many points of contact with Him as a Latin or a Celt. It is probably true that He does not appear quite the same to the Eastern as to the Western eye; but that is due not to any difference in Him, but to the difference in those who look at Him. In His own day, the foreigner found easy access to Him. A Samaritan woman was surprised to find herself speaking intimately with Him. A Roman officer found it easy to approach Him; a Syrophenician woman could not be driven away from Him. Yet the very gait of a Jew of any consequence in those days bade the foreigner keep his distance. When in later days His story went abroad among the nations, first the Greek, then the Roman, then the Teuton and the Celt all capitulated to Him. He appealed to them all — in different ways and at different points, no doubt — but so effectively that they all responded. Compare this with the story of Muhammad. Muhammad has never touched the outer west or the outer east, the farther north or the farther south. His appeal, powerful as in many ways it has been, ha? nevertheless been comparatively restricted and narrov/ 3ut east and west, north and south, Jesus has touch, the minds and hearts of men. Even the Muhammadans have made a Muhammadan of Him. He is the one person who seems to be at home anywhere in the world. Twelfth Week, Fourth Day Now when Jesus was bom in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he that is bom King of the Jews? for we saw his star in the 191 lXII-4] THAT UKli FACE h east, and are co.ne to worship him . . . and lo, the star which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was. And when they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. And they came into the house and saw the young child with Mary his mother; and they fell down and worshipped tiim; and opening their treasures they offered unto him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. — Matt. 3:1, 3, 9-1 1. And it came to pass, when the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let js now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing that is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us. And they came with haste, and found both Mary and Joseph, and the babe lying in the manger. And when they saw it, they made known concerning the saying which was spoken to them about this child. And all that heard it wondered at the things which were spoken unto them by the shophe:_s. But Mary kept all these sayings, pondering them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, even as it was spoken unto them. — Luke a: 15-20. We have seen the super-national appeal of Jesus. The same quality of universality is to be observed in the matter of temperament. Men of reflection and men of action have sjught and found their highest inspiration in Him. The phi'osopher and the moralist have been compelled to take account of Him. No other single in- dividual has so stimulated the artistic powers — whether in music or in painting; the poet and the social reformer have sat at His feet. He inspires the massive thought of an Augustine and the power of a Luther, the en- durance of a Hus and the heroism of a Gordon. The nobleman and the peasant both have bowed to Hi.n. So in His own day, Joseph of .A.rimathea and Matthew the publican — men at extreme opposite poles of social status — followed Him. The calm, reflective Nathanacl and the impetuous Peter found themselves at His feet. All men who came within touching distance of Him found points of contact with Him. 192 THE UNIVERSAL JESUS [XII-S) Nor has the appeal of Jesus been confined to a par- ticular age. The whole course of Christian history is studded with those martyrdoms which show how, not only among all races but in all ages, men have been bound to Him by indissoluble ties of loyalty and love. Krom the Christian slaves who were martyred "to make a Roman holiday" to the Chinese Christians of our day who died rather than repudiate Him, there has been no decline in His personal power over men. He belongs not to one age but to every age. The change which time brings may alter the exact incidence of His appeal, but it abates none of its force. Jesus has never yet been out of date. The universality of His person is reflected in His out- look upon life and in His teaching. Look, for instance, at His illustrations. The prodigal son is a perennially universal type. The stories of the lost coin, the good Samaritan, the Pharisee and the publican, are for ever true. We know the prodigal and the Samaritan the Pharisee and the publican, perfectly well. They are here with us today. G. K. Chesterton said a very fine and a very true thing not long ago. Speaking of the princi- ple that self-sacr= :e is the way of self-realization, he added, "Jesus sa' *hat long ago, as He said almost everything." Twelfth Week, Fifth Day Therefore seeing we have this ministry, even as we obtained mercy, we faint not: but we have renounced the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by the manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. But and if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled in them that are perishing: in whom the ^od of this world hath blinded the minds of the unbelievmg, that the tight of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not dawn upon them. For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your servants 193 [XII-51 THAT ONE FACE if! for Jetui' Mke. Seeing it ii Qod, that Mid, Light ihaU ihine out of darkneti, who ahined in our hearti, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of Ood ir the face of Jeau* Chriat. — II Cor. 4: i-e. In one of his letters Dostoievsky speaks of "the inmost essence and the ultimate destiny of the Russian nation — namely, that Russia must reveal to the world her own Russian Christ, whom as yet the people know not." And he adds: "There ties, I believe, the inmost essence of our vast impending contribution to civilization, where- by we shall awaken the European people; there lies the inmost core of our exuberant and intense existence that is to be." It may be that, when the present confusion and unrest have b^en allayed and Russia is once more at peace with herse ( and with mankind, she will achieve her own vision of Christ and reveal it to the world. But it is not Russ-a alone which has a Christ to reveal. We have seen how Jesus has appealed to the nations of men; and Russia and all the other nations will each see Him in their own way. And it is when He is seen of all the nations, and every nation in the light of its own peculiar history and discipline and genius shows its own Christ to the world, that we shall have the finished picture of "the Christ that is to be." That is, of course, if the picture can ever be finished. St. Paul speaks of "the unsearchable riches of Christ"; and if it be true that in Him "are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden," then it may well be that the picture of Christ will never be quite complete until we see Him as He is. Some new phase of His signifi- cance, some unsuspected element in His personality, will be continually revealed to us; and, indeed, as "knowledge grows from more to more," it would be strange if we did not identify in Him some new treasure of "the manifold wisdom ot God." But shall we ever outgrow Jesus? Will there ever be a time when the revelation of God in Jesus will be itself 194 THE UNIVERSAL JESUS (XII-6] transcen.' u, as it transcended Judaism? He would in- deed be a ras'n person who presumed that he knew the whole counsel ot God so well as to say that God has no resources of revelation beyond those He has given u> in Jesus. At the same time, a question of this kind is nov particularly useful. When mankind has reached the moral plane of Jesus, it will be time enough to look out for fresh revelations. The exhaustion of the significance of Jesus is yet a very remote possibility; and it is our business to explore the continent which lies at our feet, rather than speculate about the probabilities on the other side of it. In the present state of human development, Jes'rld, the clue to the mys- tery of the univers;, the kev to the problems of life — the symbol of illumination. Fourth, as tho Carpenter of Nazareth, who shared the common lot and toil of men, who was made in all things like unto His brethren — the symbol of common humanity. Between these aspects under which men have seen Jesus there is no contradiction, for each of them cor- responds to a definite human need. There are times when, in its loneliness and bewilderment, the soul cries out for the Good Shepherd who will go out to it into the wilderness and carry it home on His shoulders rejoic- inff. There are other times when the soul, distracted and desperate by reason of its moral defeats and fail- ures, calls out for a Redeemer who will deliver it from its body of death. There are also times when the mind is perplexed and overwhelmed by the mystery of things, by the contradictions of life, by the vexing challenge of thought and knowledge; and then it asks for light. And in the long historic struggle for the great human sancti- ties and liberties, men have turned for endorsement, courage, and inspiration to the Carpenter of Nazareth. And all these various aspects must be gathered up into a complete picture of Jesus. St. Paul speaks of "the manifold wisdom of God"; and this word manifold may be translated "many-colored." He is speaking of God's self-revelation in Jesus Christ, and when the white light of this revelation is refracted by the prism of human need it breaks up into these various ministries of de- liverance and enlightenment, providence and inspiration. It is only as we rightly appraise all these ministries and J96 THE UNIVERSAL JESUS (XII 71 try to unify lliem in a single picture, that wc shall be- hold that glory which was "as of the only begotten from the Father." Twelfth WfiV, Seventh Dty My ioul doth m-jnify the Lord, And my ipirit hith . sjoiced In Ood my Savioiir. For he hath looked upon the low eatate of hia h«ad- nui'den: .... ^. .. h „ For behold, from henceforth all generationa ahall call me bleaaed. . , For he that ia mighty hath done to me great thinga; And holy ia hia name. And hia mercy ia unto generationa and generationa On them that fear him. He hath ahewed atrength with hia arm; He hath acattered the proud in the imagination of their heart. , ^ , , He hath put down prmcea from their ti:ronea. And hath exnlted them of low degrte. The hungry he hath filled with good thinga; And the rich he hath aent empty away. He hath holpen larael hia aervant. That he might remember mercy (Aa he apake unto our fathera) , . - Toward Abraham and hia aeed for ever.— Luke i : 4«-55- It is not only the need of the single soul that changes with the passing of time, but the need of the collective soul— the need of the age ; and every age will tend to give prominence to that aspect of Christ that fits its own peculiar need. We have seen how the painters of the Renascence emphasized the redeeming grace of Jesus, and this was the ruling element in the spiritual experi- ence of the Reformation period. This was, no doubt, due to the circumstance that the soul, having emancipated itself from its subjection to an all-embracing spiritual authority, became aware in a new, vivid way of its own direct moral responsibility and of its incapacity to dis- charge this responsibility in its own strength. Being thus acutely conscious of the meaning of its moral defeats 197 lXlI-71 THAT ONE FACE h and falls, It l)egan tr> crave a redeemer, and this redeemer it found ill Jesus. Every age will see Jesus in terms of its own peculiar need. And so must ours. What is the need of our age? Truly our age gathers up into its own need the whole manifold need of all the ages; and it will need a whole Christ to see it through its troubles. But, specially, the task of our age is the fulfilment of the democratic ideal. The democratic principle rests upon the doctrine of the infinite and therefore the equal worth of every living soul, and, though we may not say that this doctrine originated with Christianity, it is true that it has derived its most powerful impulse from Christianity; and it is not alone a political ta;k but a definitely Christian task to carry out " : logic of this principle — which is to establish within the commonwealth those conditions of equal opportunity which are within human control. We have passed from that state of the world when the divine rif' )f kings kept common men out of their inheritance o life and liberty, and we are going to build a new woria oon the principle that every man is a king by divine righ. But we learned that principle from the vision of the Carpenter of Nazareth. We sometimes describe the Incarnation as God coming down to our human level. That, however, is only half the tiuth. The other half is that God raised our humanity up to His own plane. One of the old Fathers speaks of our flesh being gathered up into ttie Godhead. And we shall create a democratic world only as we learn to con- ceive and to interpret humanity in this way — as we realize that, when God took upon Him the flesh of a common man. He touched the common man with divinity for evermore. Somewhere within this cycle there is a vision of Jesus awaiting this generation; and, when wc see it, v/e shall understand how inevitable it was that the Son of God should be also the Son of Man. 198 THE USIVERSAL JESUS (XIU) StIOOBSTIONS FOR THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION Doci the fact that the appeal of Jesut ii so univerial luneit that human nature is always and eveiy where the same? What light does this week's reading throw upon the missionary and social obligation of the Church? It has been said that "democracy is Christianity in public affairs." Is this true? Is democracy as we know it truly Christian? If not, what does it need in order to make it so? X99