wy ote th ‘4 +e hy Je ean sd aS ig % — SA aan ee cs eRe Kf Aoetcngnh of I ‘ y) of = eed fe SOs ae dtaae Gas sont ie A Oy DEC erg wean eae Pave (aE ttAY ‘ re a Yee Ue re cn VePamy om S pes : Bape oe | Sa = Lea Pus EROS sep pate Tews =e — ee aed oy Seen papel aye re —eN Shae OAS — : =. ape eeel aA: ‘eyed we Dh > WES Vatite mys AIST oN tat ae eae oe ae = S > SR aan nw °. > re Sse xs ers oe ae es z oscars Wea irs 4 ie si i Pan h\ Pt ee The Lion in His Den By the Same Author Livinc-Book in A Lavina AGE The Lion in His Den Books and Life BY LYNN HAROLD HOUGH W ASSOCIATION PRESS New York: 347 Mapison AVENUE 1925 Corrricut, 1925 THE INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE OF Youne MeEn’s CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS Printed in the United States of America by J. J. LITTLE AND IVES COMPANY, NEW YORK DEDICATED TO Tue Reverenp Frepertck Wituiam Norwoop, D.D. WHOSE MINISTRY AT THE CITY TEMPLE IN LONDON GIVES JOY AND PRIDE TO ALL HIS FRIENDS, AND INSPIRATION TO MULTITUDES OF MEN AND WOMEN ALL OVER THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING WORLD Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2022 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/lioninhisdenseri00houg CONTENTS CHAPTER INTRODUCING THE LION SIMPLIFICATION AND SINCERITY Tue GREEK SPIRIT A Minn Wuauicu Prosers A ScHOLAR AND A MAN or LETTERS . Mysticism AND CRITICISM . In Tueste Unitrep States A SrvENTEENTH CENTURY WorTHY . FAGB A PropHuet or Topay Wuo Has Nor ForGoTrEN YESTERDAY . AMERICAT AGAIN |) 05016), ou te A PRoPpHET AND AN ARTIST . A True Portrair. . . . One American MIND. . . CoMPLACENT CYNICISM . . SpraKING oF Mirrors. . . Tue Great ITALIAN .. . Tur CoRRELATION OF THE ARTS . Vil 1 : 8 . 11 . 15 18 23 26 31 ° 34 ° 38 ° 42 AU ° 51 . 55 . 58 62 66 Vill CHAPTER XVITI XIX XX XXI XXII XXIII XXIV XXV XXVI XXVII XXVIII XXIX XXX XXXI XXXII XXXIII XXXIV XXXV XXXVI XXXVII XXXVIII ConTENTS CHRISTIANITY AND THE ARISTOCRACY or LETTERS . ReaDING PHILosoPpuHy . An AMERICAN IN LonDON A Great ScortisH PREACHER An American Nove.isr Tue Way or THE PREACHERS “THe Hieo Way” CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIETY Tue Romance or Maps Turee Litrte Books . SHERMAN OF ILLINOIs . A Brirp’s-Eve View or LITERATURE . Tue Girts oF THE CHURCH TO THE WorLp TastE AND DrmMocrRAcY MaAcHINES AND THE Man . SoNNETS OF THE Cross Tue Marrer or CHoice InrRopUCING THE WorRLD oF LETTERS More Asovut GREECE . Axsout Dr. Fospick Axsovut THE New PsycuHoroGcy PAGE CHAPTER XXXIX XL XLI XLII XLII XLIV XLV XLVI XLVII XLVIII XLIX L CONTENTS Tue Quest ror Unity AND Proaress Tue Leapersuip or Dr. CapMAN THe CHRISTIAN CHURCHES SPIRIT IN THE Tue Messaces oF THE CHURCHES FOR THE CHURCHES Mr. J. Sr. Lor Srracuery’s MIND at Pray . An Acutety Criticat Minp . Pau, THrovuecH CoNnTEMPORARY EYES A Great ORGAN oF CRITICISM A Boox or Far-ReacuHine SIGNIFI- CANCE A ViraL PERSONALITY Aero shane) CoNSCIENCE AND TASTE GETTING ACQUAINTED WITH THE RE- PUBLIC History As INTERPRETATION. . AL QUInp LVENING( cies) oil isi iintsraare 164 169 173 176 179}: 183 186 190 193 196 200 203 WITH THE READER The Lion first appeared in The Christian Cen- tury. And it has been a great happiness to know that he made friends all about the United States. Many of the chapters herewith published, how- ever, see the light for the first time in this book. The discerning reader will not be misled by the brevity of the conversations. What is really at- — tempted is of course a criticism of life expressed in epigrams and not in weighty and sententious dissertations. And now that it is all done the Lion looks at one wistfully and makes his own the words of the little girl in Sir James Barrie’s “Dear Brutus”’—‘I don’t want to be a might have been.” And I reply in all seriousness, “My dear Lion, the best I can do for my children is to let them live in books.” 1 D5 Geel THE LION IN HIS DEN CHAPTER I IntTRopucING THE Lion HE Lion was just saying—but I am for- 4h getting that you do not know the Lion. He went to the college of liberal arts of a certain great university as John Melton Harper. His career as an athlete every college man knows. His brilliant work in his classes is remembered a bit wistfully by many a quiet pro- fessor who is giving his life to the tasks of tech- nical scholarship. THis social charm swept every- thing before it. And it was about the beginning of his junior year that he received the name by which all his friends know him. From that time he was “The Lion.” And so it has been ever since. The one football game of his senior year which marks the climax of his athletic achievement is still the subject of yarns which old grads tell, and no freshman with a body as well as a mind is allowed to forget it. He used to slip away in 1 9 Tuer Lion 1x His DEn the summer with great bundles of books and so in vigorous outdoor life and in wide reading his vacations were passed. After his graduation he was at Oxford for a year. Then he matriculated im the graduate school of the American Institution which does most notable work in research and in due time received his doctor’s degree, majoring in history. A month after that the accident occurred. And in a few weeks his friends knew that all his life he would be an invalid with no hope of recovery. The time might come when he could sit up occa- sionally in an easy chair. But he would never walk again and he would never be capable of work which taxed the little remnant of vitality which was left to him. The first months were full of rebellion and terrible struggle. He said no hard or bitter word. But you could see that the fight was raging as you looked into his eyes. Then came the first indications that he had won his big- gest battle. The old light gradually came back to his eyes. The shrewd whimsical mirth played about his speech and the day came when this help- less invalid gave you the impression of being more virile than most of the men you meet upon the street. ‘The vigor and masterful energy of his mind seemed to grow rather than to decrease. More and more he was able to read the books INTRODUCING THE LIon 3 for which he cared, and that meant a range as wide as human interest goes. And gradually it became possible for him to write a little and to talk with some of his friends every day. Every few years a book has come from his pen. And the world of scholarship has recognized, their technical adequacy and their ripe human charm. But his talk has not been recorded. And it is here that he is really revealed. He sits, as it were, a little apart from life with the perspective of struggle, the insight of suffering, and the outlook which moral and spiritual victory give. But he keeps all his hearty zest for every gripping vigor- ous activity. He admits he still plays football. Only now he plays football with his mind. He lives at the heart of the world. Yet he has a poise and spiritual serenity of which this tense and overwrought age knows all too little. Well, as I began, the Lion was saying: “I'd like to take H. G. Wells and Paul Shorey and rub them together until I made one man out of the two.” “They would both resist the process,” I laughed. “That’s just the point,” chuckled the Lion, “Of course they would both resist it and yet it is pre- cisely what each one of them needs. If Wells had the high humanistic spirit of fifth century 4A Tue Lion 1n His Den Athens it would make a new man of him. He misses every defining thing in the treatment of the fifth century in his Outline. And if Professor Shorey could look out on the world with eyes which glowed with the dreams of Wells it would be like Athens and New York joining in a promis- ing and noble wedlock.” “That’s just the trouble with you, Old Man,” I broke in, “you are all the while trying to join things which cannot be united. I believe if you had been Noah you would have tried to bring each beast into the ark in the particular company of its most deadly antipathy.” The Lion was suddenly serious. “Don’t take the wrong train out of the big station,” he said, “you are heading for the wrong destination. If you stop to think for a moment you will see that as a rule every man’s interpreta- tion of life needs to be supplemented by some element in the view which he dislikes the most. It is only when we learn from our foes that we become really good fighters.” ‘“There’s a difference between learning from our foes and becoming our foes,” I objected. “I don’t want to be rubbed into the man who is my favorite aversion until I become a part of him.” “You are forgetting that in the meantime he will become a part of you,” replied my friend. INTRODUCING THE LIoN 5 “And perhaps each of us will surrender the best instead of the worst of ourselves. Then how will you like the combination?” “T hope you won’t do that,” said the Lion, “but if you do, the result will be a man who has at least ceased to be plausible. As it is, each of you capi- talizes his insights m getting a hearing for his mistakes. If only the worst of both survive it will stand out for exactly what it is. And there is always the possibility that the best will unite and neutralize the worst and in that case you have done something for your country. You had better go and look up your favorite antipathy. He can do more for you than your best friend.” “But about Wells—” I interjected. “Wells,” said my friend oracularly, “Wells is mind divorced from moral struggle. He would be the greatest possible teacher for a world of clear and easy intellectual levels. There are no heights of awful aspiration. There are no terrible depths down which you gaze with shuddering awe. If you try to read Wells after reading Dante or even after reading Carlyle you know well what I mean. He is crisp and nimble and he has the cool audacity of a mathematical mind. He has his own fine eloquence. But his Utopia would be the urbane home of depleted personalities. ‘The Greek tragedies gave you abysmal gloom. But they 6 Tue Lron 1n His Den gave you life infinitely rich in the experience which bends the personality to great issues. There is a mathematical modern Heaven where you have to pay for happiness by being eternally common- place.” “But surely you don’t mean to accuse Wells of that sort of thing?” I enquired. “Of just that,” said the Lion. “His bright originality has all its quality of agile energy be- cause you see it against the background of a richer world which he assumes but which he could not keep alive. If you think your way into a world dominated only by the principles and the relationships which belong to his mind in the messianic period of his writing you will see that such a world would be unthinkably dull. His dream of brotherhood is a great dream. But it must be realized along the path of a personal life whose moral and spiritual richness he does not even suspect. Now the fifth century Greek trage- dies could teach him—” “Why not the first century Prophet?” I broke in. “As for that,” said my friend, “Wells is too busy with one or two principles of the first cen- tury Prophet ever to have seen his life or his teachings as a whole. He is so busy with a couple of leaves that he has never seen the tree. And INTRODUCING THE LION 4 the two or three leaves he knows are not enough for the healing of the nations.” Then I had to go. And the Lion lay back quietly in bed. I wondered if I had allowed him to talk too much. You never can remember that he is ill. CHAPTER II SIMPLIFICATION AND SINCERITY ** & RE you not sometimes baffied by politics,” A asked the Lion. “I am sometimes baffled by politicians,” I threw back at him. “Oh, they are not bafflmg,” said the Lion. “They are keeping in office by shrewdly studying their constituency. They are big boys who want to speak at the school exhibition and carefully cultivate those who will select the speakers. Poli- ticlans are rather simple and primitive people. It is only politics which are really complex.” “Do you think they are really as simple as that?” I asked, trying to bring my friend from banter to seriousness. “Oh, not quite so simple as that. But quite truly the politician is not an intellectual problem. He is a psychological problem. Sometimes he is a psychopathic problem. On the other hand poli- tics is one of the most searching forms of mental discipline of which quite often the politician knows just nothing at all.” 8 SIMPLIFICATION AND SINCERITY 9 ‘And what baffles you at the moment in the life of this robust young Republic?” “The battle between simplification and sincer- ity,” replied the Lion sententiously. “Well, that is rather a mouthful,” I retorted. “Suppose you illumine my dull mind by giving me a hint as to what you may possibly mean.” “It’s this way,” said the Lion, with a fascinat- ing little pucker on his brow. “In the days when a great issue arises everything tends to simplifica- tion. ‘The whole country takes sides. You are for or against. And the subject can be discerned in clear, large ways. There are two great parties. And each amply develops and urges one of the two possible positions. The fighting may wax very hot. There may be much bitter feeling. But there is a certain intellectual satisfaction in a survey of the relatively simple way in which the lines are drawn.” The Lion rubbed his hands together for a mo- ment as if he generated ideas by a process of fric- tion. Then he went on. “But in a great country like ours with its vast stretches of territory and its varieties of race and interest and occupation, the actual division becomes infinitely complex. And except in an hour of crisis in relation to some commanding issue all these interests begin to clamor for poli- 10 Tuer Lion 1n His Dew tical expression. The labor group, the agricul- tural group, the native group, the newly natura- lized group, the black group, the group of a particular religious affiliation—all these become articulate. The politician tears his hair in frenzy. How is he to get all these people divided into two parties in such a way that his own will win? Every plank in his platform is in danger of alienating three groups for every two it wins. Simplifica- tion fights sincerity. For if by an artificial pro- cess you can simplify the issues you can perfect your party organization and get through an elec- tion even if you do not succeed in doing any- thing else.” “Do you think that 1t would be good for these United States to have as many parties as there are diverse groups?” I asked. The Lion looked up whimsically. “T began this conversation by asking you if you did not find politics baffling,” he said. CHAPTER III Tue GREEK SPIRIT HE Lion was in one of his restlessly con- tented moods. I know the phrase seems the most definite sort of contradiction. But there is a certain mood of restless energy of thought and feeling which gives the Lion such satisfaction that any one of his friends would recognize just what I mean by calling it a mood of restless content. “T have just been talking with a boy who wanted to know something about the Greek spirit,” he said. It was clear that something lay behind the remark and so I waited. My friend smiled whimsically. “He has just graduated from one of those green-apple colleges which give a man a certain amount of mental discipline and leave him woe- fully ignorant of most of the mighty adventures of the spirit of man. He made a flippant remark about the Greeks. It was all so characteristic of the omniscience of the empty mind that I turned 11 12 Tuer Lion 1n His Den upon him wrathfully. I hurled facts at him like bullets. He stood beside me a little dazed while the onslaught was going on. At last he said, ‘I never knew the Greeks were that sort of people. Where can I find out more about them?’ ” I laughed aloud at that. “It must have been a case of very sudden con- version,” I said. ‘And what did you tell him to read?” The Lion chuckled a little. “It wasn’t really so sudden. This chap knows a good deal about certain aspects of modern science. So I began by telling him what the scientific mind owes to Greece. It was all per- fectly new to him. And he has at least the respect for facts which scientific training gives to a student. What did I tell him to read? Well, of course there was only one book with which to begin. That is that fine collection of studies on “The Legacy of Greece,” edited by R. W. Living- stone. That will put him right about the relation of the Greeks to science and will start him with a number of other things. Then I told him to read Livingstone’s book, “The Greek Genius and Its Meaning for Us,” and that memorable volume of lectures by Professor Butcher, “The Original- ity of Greece.” When he has read those books, if he has it in him to suspect what they are about, he Tur GREEK SPIRIT 13 will go on until he really discovers the meaning of Greece for the life of the world.” We were silent for a moment. Then my friend went on. “Really I am fairly startled by the illiteracy of a good many college graduates. The abysmal ignorance of the fashion in which the human spirit has moved out on its long journey among the forces of nature and among the possibilities of human relationships and in the vast quest for God fairly astounds me. Even in scientific mat- ters our typical college boy hasn’t a glimmer of the history of scientific achievement. He does not know science as a human adventure. And that is the knowledge without which all other scientific attaimment is incapable of becoming fully fruitful. A large proportion of these fine lads just out of college who come to see me do not even know what sort of thing it would be to enter upon the cultivation of the intellectual life. I wonder sometimes what would happen if the in- tellectual life should be made a student activity upon the campus of one of our universities.” The Lion looked at me with a sort of humorous defiance in his eye. “You are still wanting to transplant Oxford to America,” I suggested. “No, I do not want to transplant Oxford. I 14 Tuer Lion 1n His DEN want to see America develop the equivalent of Oxford in the terms of its own experience and life.” “Perhaps that is just what it is doing,” I re- plied. “What it is doing,” declared the Lion, “is to substitute technical knowledge for erudition and the capacity to classify materials for the power to appreciate which is the product of ripe and mellow culture. It is falling a victim to the age of machinery. It is producing a good many graduates who are not only innocent of culture but who are incapable of culture.” “And so you are going to send your friends back to Athens. What do you expect them to carry into America when they return?” The eyes of my friend kindled. “IT expect them to bring the wide moving curio- sity of a really awakened mind. I expect them to know the difference between facts and living knowledge. I expect them to have a dawning sense of harmony and proportion. I expect them to be able to distinguish between machinery and personality. I expect—” But just here I was called to the telephone and so the conversation ended for the day. CHAPTER IV A Minn Wuicu Propes HE other afternoon I ran in to say ““sood-by” to my friend before starting off for Europe. ‘There was a touch of wist- fulness in his steady eyes as we talked of the ocean and the old world, and I turned the conver- sation into other channels as quickly as I could make the change without arousing his suspicion. Two books were lying beside him on the bed. Both were by Bishop Francis J. McConnell. One was “Living Together.” 'The other was “Is God Limited?” ‘The Lion followed my eyes as they rested upon these books. “Yes, I have been back with Bishop McConnell again,’ he said. “Do you know I have read every one of his books? And for years I have followed his more incidental writings with the greatest interest. ‘There is a world of remorseless honesty always, and there is a power of analysis which fairly startles one at times. And back of it all there is a wealth of simple, true feeling which simply will not be shut up in the forms of 15 16 Tue Lion 1n His DEN logic. But the feeling never gets into the saddle. The shrewd sense of life’s incongruities and of the inconsistencies of thought and action always pre- vents that. But back of the most cutting sar- casm, the wells of feeling remain and they enrich every activity of this able and dauntless Bishop.” “I remember that you were very keen about his leadership in the Inter-Church imvestigation of the Steel Trust,” I remarked. The face of the Lion brightened at the memory. “Yes it was a great thing to have his sort of man at the head of it. He is a veritable incarna- tion of poise and brain power, a man with capa- city for infinite care in investigation and a man who simply cannot be stampeded. “And how he keeps his eyes on the important problem. Take this book ‘Living Together.’? You face the problems of church unity, of the church and labor, of the saving of patriotism, of better terms with science, and of the rising tides of color. The very subjects give you a picture of our contemporary situation. And with what trenchant power the questions are discussed.” The Lion picked up the volume, “Is God Limited?” “Under everything else Bishop McConnell has the mind of a philosopher. And it is good to have him lifting philosophical issues again. Re- A Minn Wuicu Prospes ty lativity, Law, Evolution, and searching meta- physical matters are discussed by a mind which flashes like a sharp sword. Then from philoso- phical principles you are led into the discussion of prayer, immortality, racial antipathy, and a world of current matters. ‘Then this virile thinker leads you to a final consideration of the divine personality and the ultimate place of Christ. It is a great thing to get a sound metaphysical basis under the social passion.” I hurried off soon after that but I thought of a number of good books which are somehow thin for all their goodness and I repeated the Lion’s phrase “a sound metaphysical basis for the social passion.” CHAPTER VY A ScHOLAR AND A Man or Lerrers HE Lion was holding a book in his hand. a Bending over beside him I read the title: “Letters of Principal James Denney to W. Robertson Nicoll 1893-1917.” My friend was gazing at the portrait of Dr. Denney opposite the title page of the book. It revealed a strong, severe face, the face of a student and scholar. But it did not tell the secret of the vital tang of the author’s style nor did it hint the presence of a low-burning humor or the play of dark-gleaming wit. “Tt was easy to misunderstand Denney. And it was easy to underestimate him,” began the Lion. “Think of a theologian who was able to say that if the historical plays of Shakespeare were lost he could repeat them from memory. Think of a stern Scottish professor replying to a friend who had suggested that you must be under twenty to get a real taste of Byron, by saying ‘Yes, but, Byron has something for us even in the sixties,’ and then humorously refusing to state what it was. 18 A ScHouarR AND A Man or Letters 19 Men were likely to get a sense from afar of Dr. Denney’s extremely conservative theological posi- tion and then never come to appreciate the ripe- ness of his scholarship of the keenness and elasti- city of his mind.” My friend looked across the room to where several volumes of Principal Denney’s stood on one of the shelves. “YT began with ‘Studies in Theology,’ ” he said. “And oddly enough it was the standing ground they gave for a man who wanted to accept the general position of modern critical scholarship which first gripped me. Then the clear and cogent way in which the author made a way for the understanding of how men who had never heard of Christ met in their own fashion an opportunity for moral and spiritual decision greatly helped me as to a matter which had caused me some burnings of heart. The publication of ‘The Death of Christ’ found me in a receptive mood. Some par- ticularly searching experience of struggle and defeat had made me ready for the almost terrible moral realism which gives tone to this New Testa- ment study. Frankly, I accepted Dr. Denney’s interpretation the more readily because the Christ who speaks from the cross had come to have in my own life just the sort of place which the au- thor was so sure critical study would reveal as 20 Tue Lion 1x His DEn belonging to Him in the New Testament and in His own consciousness. I dipped into his other books and read carefully his posthumous volume of lectures. His daring criticism always roused and stimulated me. His literary style with all its pungent energy held my mind at sharp attention. And his central message as to the meaning of the cross has always spoken deeply to me.” “A good many men have found Denney the author of hard sayings,” I interjected. “TY do not mean at all that he seems to me a complete and well-rounded Christian thinker,” replied the Lion. ‘Occasionally one finds a metal- lic quality in his thinking which hardly suggests that he is in contact with reality. He never speaks of the mystical side of Christianity in words which satisfy me. And I am afraid he was so much taken up with the thought of the madequa- cies of some men’s presentation of the social aspects of Christianity that the great tidal move- ment of our time in Christian things was never viewed by him with understanding sympathy. He had one great and mastering word to say and he said it with memorable power. And while I must go to many other men for many other things I think I must say quite simply that I think his fundamental word was a true word.” A ScHOLAR AND A Man or Letters 21 I was by this time holding the volume of letters in my hand, “What about these?” I asked. “T have read them with constant relish,” re- plied my friend. “There are pages of good talk about books and Dr. Denney writes more freely or at least with an easier frankness of expression in his letters than would be possible in a more formal statement. All sorts of books on the New Testament and in respect of the interpretation of Christianity pass before our notice. There is many a glimpse into the study of a busy scholar and in spite of the reticence there is many a quick revelation of a very noble and responsive heart. It is good writing and there are very telling bits of criticism and very discriminating bits of com- ment. Take this (the book was now again in the hands of the Lion) : ‘Most people will agree with what you say about theological colleges making believers uncomfortable, but I am not sure that burning is the cure. I fancy it must be establish- ing a more intimate connection between them and the life and work of the church.’ Or at a deeper level take this: ‘It needs the whole of the New Testament to show what Christ is, and the man only deceives himself when he goes behind Chris- tianity, and exhibits the historical Jesus as a figure which could never have created Christianity at all.’ Or in an entirely different vein take this: aed Tue Lion 1n His Den ‘The only man of whom Wesley reminds me is B. Franklin. They have the same relentless prac- ticality and effectiveness in their minds and some- thing of the same kind of limitation.2 To me one of the most interesting things in the whole volume of letters was this: ‘I had (Kirsopp) Lake staying with me, and much as I dislike his opinions I took to the man very much. He said my review in the British Weekly was the only serious review his book had.’ It is wonderfully interesting to think of Dr. Denney and Professor Lake talking together in this intimate and friendly way. Al- together I like the letters so well that I shall read them again. And that means more than adjec- tives. Sometimes you throw an author an adjec- tive in order to get rid of him. If you go back to his book for a second reading it means that it really has something for you.” CHAPTER VI Mysticism AND CRITICISM T was at the close of a busy day. I dropped I in upon the Lion hoping for an evening of gay and merry talk about the light and inci- dental matters of literature. But I found my friend’s mind full of thoughts about Old Testa- ment history and criticism. And concerning these things he would talk. “Tt seems a good many years now,” he began, “since I first became interested in Old Testament scholarship. I think the death of Professor A. B. Davidson, of Edinburgh, in 1902, was really the beginning. The British Weekly contained an astonishing series of articles of appreciation of the great teacher. And from these articles I went on to read the writings of Davidson and W. Robertson Smith and Driver and George Adam Smith and the others. It opened up a new world to me. The chapter on ‘The Sin Against Love,’ in George Adam Smith’s interpretation of Hosea in “The Book cf the Twelve,’ was almost an epoch in my life.” 23 24 Tuer Lion 1x His DEN The Lion lay quite still for a moment. Then, with a deep and shining light in his eye, he said, “Do you remember the sentence Sir George Adam Smith flashed out in one of his lectures on Jere- miah delivered in America years ago—the sen- tence, ‘Jeremiah reminds you of one of those shells whose shriek is heard above the noise of battle and whose very mission is performed in its explosion.” That sort of thing brings the dead past to life, doesn’t it?” My friend put his hand on some books which lay within reach. “YT went through the volumes of Kent’s ‘Histori- cal Bible’ recently with constant appreciation of their industrious scholarship, their sympathy, and their daring treatment of the materials. Then I fell to wanting to go through a new ‘Old Testa- ment Introduction.’ Driver’s treatment of that task had been my last experience. I chanced to read an announcement that the last two volumes of Professor Frederick Carl LEiselen’s four- volume ‘Old Testament Introduction’ had just come from the press. I ordered the four, and what a good time I have been having! Professor Eiselen has considered all the problems. He marshals all the authorities. He is open minded, but he is never easily swept off his feet. He has a really judicial mind. And he writes in a fashion MystTIicisM AND CRITICISM 95 which disarms prejudice and must appeal even to the reader who approaches modern methods with hesitation and dislike. He carries a vast amount of scholarship without self-consciousness and with a certain simplicity of mind in which I found much pleasure. He clears the field and a man is ready to go on thinking and brooding and appropriating the old Testament’s inspira- tions feeling that all his work is done in the light of what is really going on in Old Testament Scholarship.” “There you have let out the secret of your method,” I broke in. ‘You will have your hours of brooding appropriation of the great words of the Bible. But you must think as a scholar before you brood as a mystic.” “Why not?” asked the Lion. “We shall attend the nuptials of mysticism and criticism one of these days. And a great wedding it will be.” The Lion is always bringing together things people have kept in different compartments of their minds, and when he does, I go off to think it over by myself. as I. did the other night. CHAPTER VII In Turse Unirep States HE Lion owned a comfortable cottage by the sea and here he spent most of his sum- mers. The matter of travel was always a painful and trying experience, but this virile in- valid insisted upon taking certain journeys in spite of the suffering they involved. He was al- ways particularly bright and keen when traveling. Then you were sure to see what I once called his “‘soldier’s smile.” He flushed a little angrily when I used this phrase and I never brought it out in his presence again. This particular afternoon he was lying on a couch by an open window overlooking the Atlantic. Beside him was a table with the usual assortment of books and papers and magazines. There was a little sparkle in my friend’s eye as I entered the room. He went at once to the subject in his mind, as was his way. “T’ve just finished reading William E. Dodd’s book on Woodrow Wilson,” he began. ‘This professor in the University of Chicago has done a notable piece of work.” 26 In THest Unirep STATEs Ot He held the book in his hand, turning the pages easily for a moment. Then he went on. “Professor Dodd is a man of the South with the instincts and attitude of a southern gentleman. He is a democrat whose democracy is deep in his blood. He is a man of social enthusiasm, awake to all the fresher currents of contemporary life and thought. His style is direct and energetic. There is very little charm of phrase, and there is no subtle or delicate coloring in the writing of paragraphs. But he has a story to tell. He has made a long and careful and industrious and scientific investigation. And he tells the story with conviction and with power.” Once again my friend waited a moment. Then his voice became a bit more vibrant. “What a story it is!” he said. “This tale of a man who dared to take the ideals of a Presbyterian parsonage into the councils of the nation. It is the story of the greatest dream which has been dreamed in our time, and he found the dream in the New Testament.” “*One man with a dream at pleasure, Can go forth to conquer a crown, And two with a new made measure, Can trample an empire down.’ ” I quoted. The Lion listened with friendly sym- pathy to the familiar words. 98 Tue Lion 1x His Den “But he didn’t conquer a crown, unless it was a crown of thorns,” he said. “And why did everything go wrong at last?” I asked. “That’s what Professor Dodd’s book tells you,” replied the Lion. “At least he tells you a part of it. And you have a better understanding of the story of our own times in America, and of many a subtle relationship of European politics when you have finished the book. Against what odds Wilson fought! He was crushed between the partisan politicians at home and the sordid diplomats of Europe. But it was a magnificent failure. It was the sort of failure men cannot forget. Wilson will capture men’s imaginations. He will haunt their consciences. He will keep coming into their minds. And because they can- not forget, some day they will set about doing the thing for which he gave his health and almost gave his life.” Fresh breezes were blowing in from the ocean while we talked. I picked another volume from the table. It was Paul Haworth’s “History of the United States in Our Own Times.” ‘You are going in for contemporary America rather vigorously,” I observed. “It’s a good piece of writing,” replied the Lion. In Tuese Unirep STATES 29 “You get a very intimate view of the development of the United States from the close of the Civil War to the close of the European conflict. There is a particularly clear and cogent account of the social and economic development through which we have been passing. There is more to be said. But this book gives you more than most Ameri- ‘cans have clearly in their minds. Id like to have every leader of men and of movements in this country read it. And if people on the other side of the sea could be persuaded to read it they would understand us better?” The Lion moved his head a little impatiently on his pillow. “Most Americans know very little about Amer1- can history,” he said. ‘A man ought to read Wilson’s exquisitely written ‘History of the American People,’ with its clear and luminous picture of Europe in the background all the while. He ought to read Rhodes’ volumes about the period when we approached our greatest conflict, the period of its waging, and the period of its aftermath. Then he ought to read Haworth’s book to see the rise of new problems, and Dodd’s biography for the stage setting of our own day.” As I walked away from the house along the shore I thought a little wistfully of this meditative 30: Tue Lion 1xn His DEN invalid living over the past of our nation and peering forward to decipher its future. After all, a busy, active man could also find time to read and to think if he really set himself about it, CHAPTER VIII A SEVENTEENTH CENTURY WorTHY HE Lion is very proud of his Scottish blood. Not that he talks about it. He is too proud to talk about it. It is probably true that all profound natures find it a baffling thing to make connections between their deepest feelings and their words. At any rate if you want to know how the Lion feels about Scotland you must watch his eyes. I told him this once and he replied that he kept Scotland not on the tip of his tongue but in the bottom of his heart. The other day I came upon him with the second series of that fine work “The Evangelical Succes- sion” in his hand. You may remember that in the years from 1882 to 1884 that powerful minister Alexander Whyte secured the services of many men eminent in scholarship and theology to dis- cuss each one figure belong to that stately line of Christian leaders denominated the Evangelical Succession. This notable series is out of print but the Lion found them in a second-hand book store on one of his trips to London before his dark day, and now he goes back to the series 31 32 Tue Lion 1s His Den once in a while with a relish which never seems to fail. “T have been reading about Alexander Hender- son,” he declared, holding the open book toward my outstretched hand. I saw by the light in his eye that his mind and his heart were in the land of the heather and that he was marching in spirit to the music of its heroic days. “TI can hear the bagpipes playing,” I said whim- sically, as I held the book quietly in my hand. ‘“Man, but Henderson was a leader!” the Lion was saying enthusiastically. ‘“‘Poised and urbane, with a heart of fire under his quiet exterior. A great master of assemblies in the literal sense of the word. A keen mind united to a dauntless loyalty. You could trust him to see through the cleverest bit of subterfuge. A diplomat who could meet Charles the First on his own ground, playing his sincerity against the King’s duplicity and insincerity. A scholar whose years in a country parish had ripened a pastor’s heart while they had burnished the mind of a man of learning. A nation is safe if its country churches hide some- where men of the kidney of Henderson. And all the while he moved without dizziness or confusion in the high places of the earth because his heart was not in them but in the invisible court of the King of Kings.” A SEVENTEENTH CENTURY WortTHy 33 “Seventeenth Century Scotland and England have been living in your mind today,” I said, when the Lion paused for a moment. His eyes were shining as he went on. ‘You should watch Henderson in the day of the great Covenant in 1637. You should watch the overthrow of a tyrannical church which had been forced upon the nation by tyrannical Kings. You should sense the quiet dignity and the power of it. And Henderson stands at the very centre of those great achievements.” “Do you suppose there are great men of Hen- derson’s spirit in country churches in this Repub- lic?” I asked. The Lion was silent for a while. Then he said slowly, “That question makes me want to ask a great many others.” CHAPTER IX A Propnet or Topay Wuo Has Nor For- GOTTEN YESTERDAY us HY did we let him go?” asked the Lion. “Do you think we were really ready for him?” I countered. We were speaking of Dr. John Kelman who had resigned the pastorate of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City to accept the pastorate of Saint Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Frognal, a part of that fine suburb of London, which in general knows the name Hamp- stead. The Lion was lying quietly in what I could sur- mise was a mood of memories. And soon my guess was verified. “IT remember how I began with Dr. Kelman,” he said, “Somehow I came across his book on Robert Louis Stevenson. Later I learned that a great authority had called it the first book in which Stevenson really lived. I read the book with a kind of bright happiness. It kept saying 34 A Propuet Wuo Has Not Forcotten 35 those things about Stevenson which indicated un- derstanding, insight, and sympathy. You felt that it was the sort of book Stevenson himself would have been glad to have someone write about him. Then I picked up “Among Famous Books.” It had all the marks of the true book lover. There was ardor, there was comprehension, there was individual taste. And there was not a little criti- cal ability. I was in Edinburgh and heard Dr. Kelman at Free Saint George’s when he was first colleague then successor of that mighty man Dr. Alexander Whyte. I also heard him at one of those meetings to which he drew Edinburgh’s young men, speaking to them with an allurement and a potency not matched since the days of Henry Drummond. His two volumes interpreting ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ were a revelation to me. I had not supposed that Bunyan could be translated into the language of Matthew Arnold. But here it was done. Dr. Kelman set the great Evangelical talking Greek. The book “Things Eternal” gave me a new definition of devotional writing. 'The Yale lectures on preaching combined the passion of the war with many a bit of wise and effective suggestion about preaching spoken out of the mind and heart of a man to whom the university of experience had given a higher degree than any he had received in the schools. The book dealing 36 Tue Lion 1n His DEN with international Christianity reminded me of the varied experience which had make Dr. Kel- man a cosmopolitan in sympathy as well as a proud citizen of the British Empire. ‘Three Prophets of Yesterday and their Message for 'To- day’ came from the very centre of his own life. For in him the Hebrew and the Greek had con- tended. And in him too there had been wrought out a synthesis—even as in the Victorian age he saw a literary example of Hegelian dialectic: Thomas Carlyle—Hebrew,—the Thesis; Matthew Arnold—Greek, the Antithesis; Robert Browning —Christian, the Synthesis. For deeper than any- thing else to Dr. Kelman is the fact that Chris- tianity reconciles the Hebrew and the Greek ele- ments in a higher unity. When Jesus said ‘Ye are the salt of the earth,’ He was a Hebrew think- ing of preservation from moral decay. When He said ‘Ye are the light of the world,’ He was a Greek thinking of moral and spiritual illumina- tion. But He said both. And He transcended both in the very moment when He included the deepest message of each. Something like that is the gospel of John Kelman. Once again I ask, ‘Why did we let him go?’ “Well, to use your own figure,” I replied, “‘we know something of the Hebrew note. I am afraid we know all too little of the Greek note. Do you A ProrpHet Wuo Has Not Forcotrren 37 think we are really ready for the prophet of the higher unity ?”—and without waiting for the Lion to reply, I added the last word of this particular conversation. “At any rate I am glad to think of him at the centre of the English-speaking world speaking his great word of interpretation. Hampstead 1s not really far from anywhere in London if you are really hungry for Dr. Kelman’s message. The people who are ready for him will find their way to Frognal. And the lines of his influence will continue to move quietly but surely out to the very ends of the earth?” CHAPTER X AMERICA AGAIN HERE were two books beside my friend’s bed on the little table the other day when I entered his room. One was Paul L. Haworth’s “United States in Our Own Times.” The other was Frederic L. Paxson’s ““Recent His- tory of the United States.” I picked them up rather idly but soon became interested following the individual markings which showed the trail of the mind of the Lion as he had gone through these books. “Better fifty years of America—” I began to paraphrase with scant regard to accent or rhythm, when the Lion interrupted me. “Tt really is better,” he declared. ‘“‘You read the story with a good deal of amazement even though you have lived through it. The terrific speed of the thing fairly startles you. Every- thing seems to be trying to happen all at once. Events seem too big for the men who take part in them. You feel as if you are watching a crowd of boys taking a joy ride on an elephant. You 38 America AGAIN 39 feel as if you are watching a crowd of precocious children let loose in a laboratory and playing with forces mighty enough to blow up a town. But there is a purpose in it all. And there is mind in it too. These children are wonderfully mature and able as organizers if they are innocent of many of the things which have given richness and ripeness to the world. They see clearly and they think directly and they have a sort of clean vigor in spite of their vices. They have the promise of youth and once and again you see a light in their eye which in its own tell-tale fashion reveals what a wealth of noble idealism they will produce when once they grow out of the day of irresponsible childhood into the day of maturity.” “Do you get all that from Haworth and Pax- son or do you plow it up out of your own mind?” I asked when the Lion paused for breath. “They give me the raw material,” he laughed back. “I will confess that I hand it on to you worked up a bit.” He waited a moment. Then he continued: “The amazing thing about all these wonderful and able Americans is their invincible habit of youth. They keep believing things about which most of the world has become cynical. They keep doing things most of the world has given up as im- possible. You feel as if you have been living in 40 Tue Lion 1n His DEN the twilight in Europe and now for the first time you come out into clear and hopeful day with the sun shining and the most wonderful and in- spiring air blowing all about you. Of course the twilight has some*fine things in it we haven’t managed to get into our sunlit days. But at least we are witnessing the adolescence of a race that is coming and not the decadence mellow and autumnal of a race which is going.” “As a matter of fact, I have read both these books,” I said at length. “I lked them immensely. The fact that I read most of Professor Paxson’s book in a steamer coming home from Europe made it all the more interesting. But it did leave some long and serious thoughts as well as some proud and happy ones.” “You felt that the epitomizer of the ages hadn’t epitomized sufficiently?” asked the Lion. “Not quite that,” I replied. “But I was struck by the omissions in both books. I was immensely impressed by the fact that men could write a his- tory of the last fifty years and have so little to say about some things. ‘The study of the sub- jects not discussed in these volumes would be an interesting commentary on American life during the period.” “I am not sure that it would be just one,” re- plied the Lion. “You have to read a large num- AmeErica AGAIN AY ber of biographies of scholars and the men of letters and statesmen and preachers if you want to get a composite picture of the life of the mind in America during the last fifty years. And when you put it all together you will find that the period has been more rich and fruitful than you might suppose.” “There have been no end of rare flowers,” I argued back, “but I am talking of the flowers in all the gardens.” The Lion smiled one of his happy inscrutable smiles. “The rare flowers are getting in numberless gardens,” he said. “By and by they will be bloom- ing in all our hearts and then it will be possible to save America from the leaders without vision and the men without citizenship in the great human world.” “Precisely,” I flashed back. But just then I was called to the telephone and so did not have an opportunity to follow up my advantage. CHAPTER XI A ProPHer AND AN ARTIST HERE was a particularly easy chair beside the couch upon which the Lion lay. I dropped into it a little weary after a full day’s work. On the little table within easy reach of my friend lay the usual assortment of books. I picked up two of them. On each I read the name of Dr. J. H. Jowett. One was “The Eagle Life.” The other was “The Friend on the Road.” My friend watched me silently as I fingered the pages of the two books. I was picking out a phrase and a sentence and a paragraph here and there and so we sat until the quiet of the room and the gentle friendliness of the books and Dr. Jowett’s writing had wrought their own magic and the wheels of my mind began to move with easy energy. “Well?” I said at last looking up. “Well?” the Lion enquired with a quizzical smile. “No, I don’t intend to talk today,” I insisted. “Here you have been with these two books all 42 A PROPHET AND AN ARTIST 43 day, and you are full of thoughts and feelings all ready to creep into words. Let me have some of them.” The Lion moved a little as he prepared to speak. “Dr. Jowett keeps growing for me as the years go by,” he began. “I heard him first years ago when he was at Carr’s Lane in Birmingham. One felt at once the delicacy and grace of his mind and the subtle spiritual charm of his preaching. Dale has always seemed to me like a great cathe- dral. Jowett seemed like the marvelously em- broidered communion cloth upon its altar. I was interested in the rare art which hid from sight the fact that it was art at all. I never forgot the sermon. But Dr. Jowett did not become one of my preachers. I was in all the hot enthusiasm of athletic activities. I had just been going back to Kingsley and my own mind responded to the yeast of a new restless social passion. I wanted a rugged voice all full of the sense of the thrust of verbal swords. Once in a while I would find a quiet mood when I would read a book by the minister of Carr’s Lane with the feeling that I was listening to the horns of some wonderful spiritual elfland. But it all seemed remote from the world where I was living.” AA Tue Lion 1x His DEN My friend lay very still for a moment. I was half afraid he would not go on. ‘Then came the day when I was put out of the fight. And a good many other days followed after. Gradually I came to read many things and I found that I was asking new things of books and receiving new things from them. One day I picked up Dr. Jowett’s ‘Brooks by the Traveler’s Way.’ In a page or two I found its author all over again. Of course the change was not in him. It was in me. I knew now by a curious insight with what hard training in the gymnasium of the spirit it had become possible for this man to write with his gentle serene understanding of the evasive secrets of the soul which so easily elude the seeker that they can hardly be put into words. I found the virility back of all his gentleness and the strength back of all his fineness. It was as if a man who had only cared for a brass band had learned to love a violin. I had found a new instru- ment and I had found a master who knew deep and wonderful secrets of the music of the spirit.” The evening sun came through the western windows as the Lion spoke. Then when he was silent the colors out on the sky had their own words to speak and we sat there together in the companionship of the swan song of color as the day bade the world farewell. At last the greys A PropHET AND AN ARTIST 45 began to take the place of the reds and the purples and in the growing shadows my friend spoke again: “These two books keep up the high tradition. ‘The Eagle Life’ is a series of meditations, brood- ing, and understanding and rewarding upon many a seminal sentence—these sentences gathered like flowers from the Old Testament. ‘The Friend on | the Road?’ is a similar collection based upon lumi- nous words which glow in the heart of the New Testament. ‘The marks of the passing years are upon these volumes. ‘There is many a line now upon the face of Dr. Jowett’s art, worn there by the cruel anxieties of the years of the war. There is many a phrase the cut of whose insight comes from the searching experiences of the difficult days through which we are passing. There is a new sweep of the mind. There is a deep response to the perplexities of this bewildered age. But under all and through all there is the same sure music of the eternal verities. The tone of the music has deepened. Its minor is more poignant. The hand which holds the bow can draw more mellow meaning from the strings. But rising from the human sympathy, high above the voices of this troubled age as they speak in this understand- ing interpretation, is the authentic voice of per- AG Tue Lion 1x His Den fect peace and everlasting serenity which is the voice of God. So Dr. Jowett has become one of my preachers. And now I go back to him day after day.” CHAPTER XII A True Porrrarr HE Lion was holding in his hand the new life of Dr. Jowett by that keen and under- standing journalist Mr. Arthur Porritt. “John Henry Jowett, C.H., M.A., D.D. by Arthur Porritt with a foreword by The Archbishop of Canterbury.” I read as my friend held the book open at the title page before my eye. “You have read it?” I asked. “Every word of it,” replied the Lion. “And what is your verdict?” I enquired, in eager pursuit of my friend’s mind. He waited a little turning the leaves with a deli- cate and affectionate touch. Then he spoke. “Do you know I was almost afraid to read it?” he began. “Of course I knew from Mr. Porritt’s bright and clever book, ‘The Best I Remember,’ how wide ranging a mind and what a wealth of 47 48 Tue Lion 1x His DEN human sympathy he would bring to any task. But after all that was not enough. For Jowett was not as other men. ‘There was an extreme delicacy of texture about him which reminds one of the loveliest lace. ‘There was something like an evanescent moment as the sunset reveals itself in one flame of softened and yet glowing radiance just before the coming of the darkness. ‘To pic- ture Jowett all this must be brought to light. If the colors are too strong it is not Jowett at all. If they fade away and lack firmness it is no more a picture of the great preacher than if the pig- ments are too heavily laid upon the canvas. I am afraid I opened the book expecting to find a great wealth of material about Jowett, all set forth with a certain bright skill, but after all not a full-length portrait of the elusive, mysterious personality which captured and yet in a sense baffied the English-speaking world.” Once more my friend was quite silent turning the pages slowly. Then he went on: “The facts are here. It does not seem that anything that really matters is omitted. With a patient industry Mr. Porritt has gathered from varied sources just those things which we want to know. He lets Jowett speak for himself. Mul- tiplied letters are quoted each just at the right moment and each with its new revelation of the A True Porrrair 49 mind and the heart of the author. You know the history of his ministry. You know his public work. You know his methods of study and of sermon preparation. You have just the right background for all this in the life of the time. All Mr. Porritt’s years in Fleet Street have given him the seeing eye. And the tale he tells unfolds a panorama which in its general features he has watched for many years. You are led to know something of Jowett’s habits of devotion, and you get hints of his wonderful home life, though here, as is fitting, Mr. Porritt speaks with a re- serve which Jowett himself would have approved. But it is really of none of these details that I am thinking. The real achievement comes to this. Out of all the facts and interpretations the figure of Jowett himself arises, with that impalpable charm that gracious fragrance of the spirit, that combination of a shy and a sensitive nature with the firmness of tempered steel, that living in the light of the eternal, and that perpetual mas- tery of all the artistry of subtly woven words to tell the experience, which first captured the ima- gination and then won the heart of those who care for the things of the spirit in Birmingham, and New York, and London. There are a great many other things one wants to say, but first of all I should like to break into Mr. Porritt’s office in 50 Tue Lion 1x His Den Fleet Street and thank him for capturing and giving permanent expression to the quality of so elusive a personality. ‘The reader of Jowett’s sermons will come to them with a new understand- ing after he has closed this book. And he will understand what exquisite and delicate flowers of the spirit can bloom amidst the smoke and the buzzing wheels of this age of whirring machines.” CHAPTER XIII Ont American Minp HE Lion was not reading. He was think- ing. But it was not hard to see where he found inspiration for his thought. Beside him lay four books by that minister of subtly dis- tinguished style, Dr. Gaius Glen Atkins. The books were these: “‘Pilgrims of the Lonely Road,” “The Undiscovered Country,” “Jerusalem Past and Present,” and ‘‘Modern Religious Cults and Movements.” I stood looking at the books for a moment or two and waiting for the Lion to speak. After a little he looked up. **As you see, I’ve been spending the afternoon with your friend Dr. Gaius Glenn Atkins. And a tremendously good afternoon it has been.” He moved a little on the bed to find a more comfortable position. ‘Then he went on: “About three years ago I first discovered Dr. Atkins. By the merest chance I saw a reference to “The Pil- grims of the Lonely Road.’ I had known the name of its author before, but he had been just a name and nothing more. But this title held my atten- 51 52 Tue Lion 1n His Den tion. I thought I knew something about the lonely road, and I felt a sudden curiosity to see if the man who had constructed this title also knew. Well, I hadn’t gotten far into it until my questions were all answered, but better than that I had found a new friend. It didn’t in the slight- est matter whether I should ever see Dr. Atkins in the flesh. The important thing was that I had made friends with his mind.” The Lion held the “Pilgrims of the Lonely Road” in his hand, touching the volume with a kind of quiet affection. “Tt isn’t simply that this book tells about peo- ple who have walked in the solitary way. You very soon know that he too has been a pilgrim or he would never know in such a fashion the secrets of the Road. And what a style he has! It re- quired years to achieve that vehicle of expres- sion. The gentleness, the grace, the steady strength, the penetrating phrase, and the slow and patient distillation of the music of the mind— all this I welcomed with a sort of rapture. It seemed almost too good to be true—perhaps it was too good to be false—that in the midst of America’s most characteristically vigorous ex- pression of the new industry, this mind pursued its ripe and gracious way. It requires some mental effort to think of the automatic machine OnE American Minp ) 53 and of Gaius Glenn Atkins at the same moment. But of course he is much more than a man who has opened mystic portals and after walking within has come back with a strange and haunting grace hanging about his words. He is a man of his own time who loves a farm and _ possesses a truly scientific knowledge of nature and de- lights in a rugged word and an incisive and honest phrase. It is this combination of the scientific mind and the mystical insight which perhaps ap- peals most to one. You feel that in ‘The Undis- covered Country,’ and it gives its own definition to that very notable book ‘Modern Religious Cults and Movements.’ Whatever a man has read about Christian Science and other such move- ments he has left a great empty place in his under- standing until he reads Dr. Atkins’s book. It is far and away the most significant of recent studies of religious phenomena written—well, I should be inclined to go so far as to say—of those written in the English-speaking world. Sympathy and criti- cism, appraisal and understanding, are all here. There is an adequate historical perspective, and so you have more than a study. You have a mag- num opus.” We were silent a little while. “You find the historical perspective in ‘Jerusa- lem Past and Present.’ ” I ventured. 54 Tue Lion in His DEn ‘“Yes, you see the city of the Ages come right into this age,” said the Lion. But it was of “Modern Religious Cults and Movements” that I was thinking as I walked away. CHAPTER XIV CoMPLACENT CYNICISM HE two of us had been quite silent for a half hour. The twilight had deepened into darkness and the moon was peering with a sort of insistent questioning through the window. And in the stillness there was a sense of compan- ionship to which neither of us was insensible. “The best thing about life is that the stars may keep their brightness,” said my friend at last. “Your stars keep learning new secrets of radi- ance,” I replied quietly. There was no direct reply from the man lying on the bed, but after a little he spoke again. “Joe Newton was here, today,” he said, and there was a certain suggestion of significance in his tone. “TI haven’t seen Joe for a good many years,” I replied, “but I hear he is the pastor of a great church in the West.” “Yes, he is still preaching,” said the Lion. Then with a touch of very unusual bitterness he added, ‘“‘I wonder what he preaches about?” 55 56 Tue Lion in His Den His tone arrested me. ‘‘What’s got the matter with Joe?” I asked. “T don’t know at all,” said the Lion, “except that for shrewd and cynical disillusionment I haven’t met his equal in many a day. He thinks of people as pawns in a game. And he knows how to handle them right well. That is evident. He has a rather ugly complacency. You can see him moving about with adroit flatteries and subtle ministries to human vanity as he talks. He knows the right people, he says. He knows what buttons to press. He admits that he doesn’t need a pub- licity expert. He knows the game better than any of them. It’s all a matter of passwords, he says, and he doesn’t need a notebook for the pass- words, though there are a good many of them. He is full of health and energy and exuberant bodily life. He has a flashing eye, with a keen- edged mirth touched by something a bit sardonic. He is like a price list not very closely connected with actual values. And he is a preacher!’ The emphasis on the words of the last sentence I can- not reproduce and I scarcely know how to sug- gest it. We were still in the darkness and once more fell into silence. After a while I emerged. “Is it as bad as that with Joe,” I asked. “It’s fairly bad,” replied the Lion. “I tried CoMPLACENT CYNICISM 5Y a good many approaches. You can’t always judge a man by his surfaces. And perhaps I failed to touch the right spring. At all events I could find nothing but hard glitter, and there was a strange depression in the atmosphere when the chap we knew so many years ago had gone. It was as if one had been looking for sunlight and a glare of electricity had been turned on instead.” “And you have come to the conclusion that if the church is to be saved from futility the preachers must be saved from contentment with superficial success,” I said, a bit too sententiously I fear. “Oh, I’m not attacking preachers as a class, though I admit the principle ‘like people, like priest,’ ’ said the Lion. “And since there is no sun at the moment turn on the electric light, and read ‘Bishop Blougram’s Apology.’ ” CHAPTER XV SpEakinc oF Mirrors HE Lion was holding a book in his hand. He was making little inarticulate sounds of mirth as he read. I stood beside him waiting. He turned the book toward me and I caught its title, “The Mirrors of Washington.” ‘““Have you read it?” he asked. “T finished it last night,” was my reply. “And what do you think of it?” “A clever bit of cynicism now and then is relished by the best of men,” I paraphrased. “Tt is all that,”? admitted the Lion, “‘and more, the way in which the author uses that sharp, thin blade of his. Listen to this: ‘After his election he (President Harding) took Senators Freylinghuy- sen, Hale, and Elkins with him on his trip to Texas. Senator Knox, observing his choice, is reported to have said, ‘I think he is taking those three along because he wanted complete mental relaxation.’ ” Or take this: ‘It is characteristic of certain temperaments that when they first face life they should run away from it, as Mr. Wilson did, when, having studied law and having been 58 SPEAKING oF Mrrrors 59 admitted to the bar, he abandoned practice and went to teach in a girls’ school.’? And here are two other morsels: ‘Washington gossip credits him (Woodrow Wilson) with inventing the phrase, “the bungalow mind,” to describe the present oc- cupant of the White House.’ Another remark of his anent the new President is said to have been, ‘I look forward to the new administration with no unpleasant anticipations except those caused by Mr. Harding’s literary style.’ There is a good deal of wicked malice in this sort of thing. But it is done with a flash and energy and often with a penetration which makes you see to the heart of a man’s inadequacy even while you laugh.” My friend kept turning over the pages of the book. He came to the discussion of Senator Lodge: “This is a work of art,” he declared, “black art perhaps, but wonderfully effective. It is as if some mischievous demon had told all of Senator Lodge’s dark secrets before the day of judgment. Some times you feel that the worst you can say of a certain type of man is that he has to live with himself.” The Lion mused for a moment. ‘Then he went on: ‘This book is a gal- lery of petty men seen against the background of great issues. He makes you see Lansing as a study m timorous futility. Colonel House is a pleased spectator, quite out of place when he finds 60 Tue Lion in His Den that by some queer magic his box at the opera has been flung into the centre of the stage. Hoover is a man who knows how to deal with facts and forces but is curiously ill at ease with people. Hughes is a man-whose gift of lucid exposition makes things seem simpler than they really are. Hiram Johnson is a phonograph with the Ameri- can people themselves as a record. ‘The Mirrors of Washington’ is the work of a diagnostician. And like that sort of work it is much keener in the presence of disease than in the presence of health.” ‘You pay rather a large price for such a book,” I ventured. “TI finished it feeling that I had been in a hospital. I wanted to get out of doors. After all there are things besides germs. I wanted to give the work a subtitle. I wanted to call it, ‘Pathological Studies of American Public Men?’ ” The Lion smiled a little soberly. ‘To be sure, you never go to such a book for information. The author has the easy objectivity of a man without conviction. He has the easy merciless gaiety of a man without ideals. He has the bright and cut- ting urbanity of a man who does not care deeply about anything. For all that, it’s an extremely stimulating book he has written. Many a man of greater depth and seriousness could learn much from the author of these stinging sketches.” SPEAKING oF Mrrrors 61 The Lion was fingering the book as he spoke. Then there was a quiet fire in his eyes as he ut- tered the last word of all conversation that day: ‘The man who wrote “The Mirrors of Washing- ton’ has missed one thing for all his cleverness. He has not discovered that America has a soul!” CHAPTER XVI Tur Great Irattan DS PEAKING of Dante—” began the Lion. I leaned back in my chair and waited in quiet expectancy. My friend was very much at home in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. And I knew that the six-hundredth an- niversary of the death of the great Florentine poet had found him renewing many an intimate con- tact with the period and writing of Dante. ‘A man of our time ought really to begin with ‘De Monarchia,’ ” said the Lion. “What about all the curious top-heavy argu- ments and all the involved unrealities of dialectic?” I asked. “I’m not thinking of them,” replied the Lion, “I am thinkmg of the commanding ideas of this Latin work of Dante’s. I am thinking of his pas- sionate conviction that the world must be one world. I am thinking of his clear vision of the ugly futility of endless wars fought about mean- ingless issues. I am thinking of his hope for a world held in stable peace, by a unity which em- braces all mankind.’’ 62 Tue Great [Taian 63 “But was not his unified world an autocracy?” I asked. “Ym not claiming that he had a formula for the bringing in of the new day,” retorted my friend. “It was the Holy Roman Empire first and last with Dante. But I am claiming that in the terms of the political world-view possible to a man of his time he saw and expressed things of permanent significance and value. We will not use his methods. But we do need his passionate insight into the meaning of a stable peace. And we do need his unhesitating devotion to the strug- gle for the unity of the world.” ‘You prize him more as a political philosopher than as a poet,” I remarked, making my sentence half a statement, half a question. “You can’t make that sharp contrast,” replied the Lion. ‘The man who wrote ‘De Monarchia’ also wrote the ‘Divina Commedia.’ One had to do with a unified world. The other had to do with a unified universe. One saw peace triumphant on this planet. The other saw peace triumphant among all the stars. There is exhaustless music in Dante. But it is the keenest of thought turned into asong. The thinker and the singer are joined in holy wedlock in the writings of the great Florentine.” “Do you think it is possible to get a sharp 64 Tue Lion in His DEN sense of reality from writing which is so completely saturated with the superstition of the Middle Ages as the ‘Divine Comedy?’ ” I asked. My friend mused a moment. “After all,” he said, “the things of which you are thinking only belong to the wrappings of the poem. ‘The essential matters are eternal in their significance and in their appeal. Perhaps I can put it in this way. A modern man will under- stand Dante’s poem best if he forgets about the literal hell and purgatory and paradise and thinks of three characteristics of the life of the soul as it is found in this world. For that is the endless appeal of the poem. Everything Dante found in hell you can find in London and New York. The same inevitable punishments are working them- selves out in human lives in all our towns. And everything which Dante found in purgatory you can find in your own city. Whenever a man takes pain as discipline he enters into that realm of. creative suffering which is the real meaning of purgatory. For be sure of it, my friend, purga- tory is all about you. It is the secret of those who take every terrible experience as a method by which they are being prepared for some great and noble thing which is to follow. There was awful suffering in Dante’s Purgatory. But there THe Great ITALIAN 65 was no unhappiness. You cannot be unhappy when your heart is alive with hope.” I looked at the bed upon which my friend was lying and thought of all his helpless years. I knew that he was talking of the Italian poet. I knew also that his own experience and his own vic- tory were unconsciously becoming articulate in his speech. But he was going on. **And, strange as it seems to say it, what Dante found in heaven may be found right in this life. Gleams of it come to all of us in our best moments. And it is the light which shines from the rarest and brightest spirits in the world. For even here the rose of love and fire has bloomed.” As I walked away I was repeating the last words my friend spoke that day: “As long as men have hell in their hearts, as long as they wrest character from bitter pain, and as long as a deathless ideal haunts their noblest hours, they will go back to Dante. It was after all his chief glory that he saw eternity in the human spirit.” CHAPTER XVII Tur CorRELATION OF THE ARTS NE of the Lion’s musical friends was () staying in the house at the time. From the music-room down stairs came the sound of the piano. First there was the exquisite, dreamlike beauty of the Moonlight Sonata. Then came all the vigor and climbing energy of the Pilgrims Chorus. After that there was silence and we knew that the man of music having tuned his mind was applying himself to some work of his own. “Tt comes to about the same thing whether it’s music or poetry, doesn’t it?” inquired the Lion. “Probably it does,” I replied, “but I wont en- tirely commit myself until I have a suspicion of what you are talking about.” My friend lay musing for a little while. Then he said: “Put Tennyson in the place of Beethoven, and put Browning in the place of Wagner and you have it.” “You mean that just as Wagner used disson- 66 Tue CorRELATION OF THE ARTS 67 ance skilfully in musical composition, so Brown- ing used dissonance skilfully in poetry?” I ven- tured. “IT mean that every movement in one art can be paralleled in the other,” replied the Lion. “You can carry it as far as you like. Whitman has his musical kin. And syncopated composi- tions are of a close kin to some very characteristic aspects of the most emancipated writing which is willing to call itself poetry.” There was a little wrinkle on the Lion’s brow. He leaned toward me as he continued: “There is a wonderful correlation between all the arts and all the movements of the mind. Take a great springtime of the human spirit like the Renaissance. There is the brilliancy and beauty of new life everywhere. ‘There is motion and energy and adventure in the very air you breathe. Then all this uprush of new vitality subsides and you have the creaking of the hard bones of a new scholasticism. You can find just that thing once and again in the history of music. There are the times when the very secrets of the soul seem whis- pered in haunting and glorious sound. Then there are the periods of correct and unilluminated dullness, the periods of barren scholasticism in the musical world.” “How do you account for it? Why do all the 68 Tuer Lion 1n His Den arts tell the same story in their own individual way?” “That is just because they are all the expres- sion of the same struggling, aspiring human spirit. The one vital energy moves through them all.” Now the musician below began to play one of Chopin’s Nocturnes. And we sat quite silent let- ting it speak to us. Then the Lion went on and it seemed as if his speaking was actual thinking aloud. “There really isn’t much place for scorn,” he said. “Even the movements which seem most bizarre and barbaric come from some actual thing in human nature. They need to be understood and disciplined and then bent to some fine artistic and human purpose. The great builders of the early thirteenth century understood it. Think of how they used gargoyles. There does not seem to be anything very prepossessing about these grinning, leering devils. But the architects of the middle ages understood them and used them. They put them into the beauty and serene joyful- ness of their great cathedrals in such a fashion that the total effect of perfect and aspiring beauty was enhanced by their presence. The petty mind despises the new and raw and crude thing. The wise and understanding mind takes it up with a certain masterful sympathy and includes it in a Tre CorRRELATION OF THE ARTS 69 total work in which all the raw crudity is lost in the ample fullness and maturity of the completed work.” ‘“There’s something like a philosophy of art in that attitude,” I remarked while the Lion puck- ered his brow in further thought. He went on quite as if I had not spoken: “You cannot go back to Athens. You cannot go back to Florence. You cannot go back to anything. You must al- ways go on. But you can carry. on the rarest beauty of Greece and the ripest charm of [taly. Only to keep it all alive you must be uniting it with something deep and characteristic and vital which comes out of your own age and your own land.” “Then you see more hope for the future in Vachel Lindsay than in Alfred Noyes?” I en- quired as I rose to go. “T know what you mean. But you must not forget that Noyes wrote “The Flower of Old Japan,” the Lion threw after me as I passed out of the door. ' CHAPTER XVIII CHRISTIANITY AND THE ARISTOCRACY OF LETTERS HE Lion had just come out of a bad night. The traces of pain were still upon his face. After a word of greeting I was about to leave him. But the decisive pressure of his hand upon my arm detained me. I stood looking down into his face with its fine lines and all the delicate tracery of brooding thought and all the subtle marks of spiritual victory upon it. Just then it seemed a long distance to the day when I had watched his greatest achievement in football. And yet the tragic experience which had cut his life in two had made him a greater man. I was begin- ning to realize that it had also made his life a more productive force in the world.