os 4EoLocica sew BR 1702 ,B673 1926 Boreham, Frank, 1871-1959. A faggot of torches Digitized by the Internet Archive In 2022 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library httos://archive.org/details/faggotoftorchestOObore Wastes, ' he ' Pt 8 5 ry wy Ae Sa Rants bee OTHER BOOKS BY MR. BOREHAM A BUNCH OF EVERLASTINGS A CASKET OF CAMEOS A HANDFUL OF STARS A REEL OF RAINBOW FACES IN THE FIRE THE CRYSTAL POINTERS THE GOLDEN MILESTONE THE HOME OF THE ECHOES THE LUGGAGE OF LIFE THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HILL > MOUNTAINS IN THE MIST MUSHROOMS ON THE MOOR: RUBBLE AND ROSELEAVES SHADOWS ON THE WALL THE SILVER SHADOW THE UTTERMOST STAR WISPS OF WILDFIRE A FAGGOT OF TORCHES TEXTS THAT MADE HISTORY “By F. W. BOREHAM THE ABINGDON PRESS NEW YORK CINCINNATI Copyright, 1926, by F. W. BOREHAM All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian Printed in the United States of America CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. 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JOHN NELSON'S “Deere arn. etl 247 XXIL Harrier BEEcHER STOWE’S TEXT....... 257 |/ BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION WE need a new Plulosophy of Words. It has been the fashion, of late years, to belittle their value. “Words! Words! Words!’ we say, impatiently, with Hamlet; and certainly they do at times grow wearisome. They seem so pitifully futile, so ridic- ulously cheap! And yet ! Words represent a vital element in history. Is there no subtle significance in the record that teils how, when God created the heaven and the earth, He employed words as the tools best suited to His task? ‘Let there be light!’ He said, and there was light. He spake and it was done. In this book and in its three predecessors—A Bunch of Everlastings, A Handful of Stars, and A Casket of Cameos—I have endeavoured to show that the principle has never ceased to operate. Through the agency of words—words as divine and as imperative as the awful fiat that, on earth’s primal morning, broke the silence of eter- nity—darkness is being continually dispelled and new worlds called into being. By means of some sublime word—startling, piercing, convincing, al- luring—a new man is made, and the new man ushers in a new age. Were it not for those words —words of pity and grace and life everlasting— the world would still be without form and void and 7 8 By Way of Introduction darkness would be upon the face of the deep. But because of those words—those “Texts That Made History’—there is sunlight on every shore! And thus, before the wondering eyes of each successive generation, the ancient drama of Creation is re- peated on a really imposing and majestic scale. FRANK W. BOREHAM. ARMADALE, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA. Christmas, 1925. I ALLEN GARDINER’S TEXT I ALLEN GARDINER never hesitated for a moment as to the choice of a profession. In those anxious and perilous days, with the country threatened by the horrors of a Napoleonic invasion, Lord Nelson was the idol and the hope of the nation. At that great sailor’s shrine, Allen offered the boyish hero-wor- ship of an intense and passionate nature. He was only eleven when England was stirred, as she had never been stirred before, by the news of Trafalgar —the dramatic victory of the fleet, the deliverance of the nation, and the hero’s glorious death. Every chord of the boy’s soul vibrated with the tense emo- tion of that tremendous day; and, within three years, he himself had entered the Navy. And here he is on H.M.S. Fortune! He has been a year at sea and has to-day received the heavy tid- ings of the death of his mother. The flood of recol- lection that surges through his mind on receipt of the news serves to emphasize the immensity of the chasm that yawns between the new life and the old one. In the early part of the nineteenth century the Navy was a brutalizing and demoralizing school 9 10 A Faggot of Torches for boys. But the black-edged letter sends Allen’s memory flying back across the years. He thinks of the quiet home in Berkshire; the walks in the woods by his father’s side and the evenings at the fireside with his mother. He is ashamed of the impatience with which he fretted to leave it all and get away to sea. But such sentiments quickly evaporate. The death of his mother makes him feel that the strong- » est tie that bound him to purity and goodness has now snapped: he is free to obey his wildest impulses and to follow the dictates of his own sweet will. II To the end of his life Commander Gardiner never cared to speak of the years that intervened between his fifteenth and his twenty-fifth. And yet some things happened in those days which his father re- counted to the neighbours with obvious pride. In > 1814, at the age of twenty, Allen had distinguished himself in action and had been sent home in charge of a prize-ship. A few months later he was pro- moted to the rank of lieutenant; and other honours _ fell quickly upon him. But, when reminded of these achievements, the Captain used to shake his head. ‘I spent those years,’ he would say, ‘amidst the headstrong excitements of youth’; and, although he believed himself to have been greatly forgiven, he could not find it in his heart to forgive himself. During those bitter years he heaped scorn and Allen Gardiner’s Text II derision on the faith of his childhood: with a gay and careless laugh he cut himself adrift from all the old moorings. To read the Bible, he averred, was an act of senseless folly. And yet, as his biographer is careful to point out, there are times in the midst of his gaiety when his better nature asserts itself. He himself has told us how, on one occasion, he re- solved to give the Bible another chance. But how is he to get one? With great trepidation he ap- proaches a bookseller’s shop. When he reaches the door, however, he sees other customers at the coun- ter. He cannot bear to be overheard asking for a Bible! He therefore paces the street, waiting for the shop to empty. But, as soon as one customer comes out, another goes in! At length he sees his chance; rushes in; buys the book; and spends the rest of the day wondering what the bookseller must think of him! Like the straw that tells which way the waters are moving, the incident is just enough to show that his father’s fervent petitions and his mother’s gentle entreaties are never quite at rest in the young sailor’s soul. But that is as far as it goes. For, away down in Berkshire, the old man hears of his son’s wayward and impetuous be- haviour; and hangs his head. Is thts the boy with whom, hand in hand, he walked across the fields? Is this the boy with whom he had so often kneeled in family worship? Such things are hard to under- stand. But, just as the mystery is deepening into impenetrable gloom, a letter arrives from Penang 12 A Faggot of Torches which floods the old man’s path with sunshine. It is the letter in which Allen tells his father of his conversion! III . That conversion came about—as most conver- sions do—in the most unlikely and surprising way. Whilst H.M.S. Leander lies at anchor in the Straits of Malacca in 1820, a mail arrives from England which brings two letters for Lieut. Allen Gardiner. One, full of grave reproof, is from his father: it tells of the extreme anxiety that his son’s conduct is causing him. The other is from/an old lady, an intimate friend of his mother’s. Strange as it must seem, it is this letter that transforms everything. There is such a thing as Conversion by Corres- pondence: Bishop Hannington entered the King- dom of Heaven that way. So does Allen Gardiner. ‘Nothing,’ as Miss Charlotte M. Yonge observes, ‘nothing would have seemed more hopeless than the chance that a letter from a religious old lady would make an impression on a dashing young naval of- ficer; yet Allen Gardiner always considered the re- ceipt of that letter as the turning-point of his life.’ The letter begins apologetically: the writer cannot bear to seem censorious: not for worlds would she presume to lecture our young lieutenant. Yet, for his mother’s sake, she begs him to read with patience her earnest plea. She warns him of the deadening consequences of sin: she reminds him that it was to save man from sin that the Son of God lived and Allen Gardiner’s Text 13 died: and she tells him that what he needs, above all else, is @ new heart. ‘Remember,’ she says, ‘this is not my phrase; it is the very word of Scripture. And unless we have this new heart, this clean heart, this heart of flesh given in exchange for a heart of stone, we cannot believe effectually.’ She quotes from David: Create in me a clean heart, O Lord, and from Ezekiel: A new heart will I give you. ‘You will perhaps ask,’ she continues, ‘how this new heart can be obtained? It is the gift of God ex- clusively: none but He can create it.’ The letter throbs with the note of urgency. ‘Nothing that is unholy or impure,’ she says, ‘can enter heaven. The change spoken of by the Saviour: Ye must be born again, must take place while we live; for, as we are found in death, we shall for ever be: there is no repentance in the grave nor pardon offered to the dead.’ And she closes, as she began, on a per- sonal note. ‘It is probable, dear Allen, that you and I will never meet again on earth; and, if not, let me hope that we shall meet in that place where all must hope to be, clothed in the Saviour’s perfect righteousness.’ | Allen Gardiner reads the letter again and again and again. It seems more impressive and appealing with each perusal. He makes copies of it, one of which—together with a Bible that he bought at the time—he carries with him in all his subsequent voyages. 4 A Faggot of Torches IV ,A new heart! A new heart! A new heart will I give you! Create m me a clean heart, O God! Allen Gardiner’s new heart is no less high and no less brave than the old one; but it is more lowly, more penitent. As a light-hearted boy he longed to follow in the glorious footsteps of Lord Nelson; as a devout Christian he still aspires to serve where the perils are the thickest, where the hazards are the greatest and where the obstacles are most insuper- able. He will consecrate his nauti¢al skill to’ the most sublime ends! He will be the pioneer of the missionary! He will penetrate earth’s darkest con- tinents—Africa and South America—in order to open up a way for the Cross! He will be a har- binger and a pathfinder among the most barbarous and degraded races of mankind! And yet, whilst cherishing this audacious dream —a dream that ultimately cost him his life—he car- ries in his breast a very lowly and a very contrite heart. ‘The last time I visited this colony,’ he writes from South Africa, ‘I was walking in the broad way and hastening, by rapid strides, to the brink of eternal ruin. Blessed be His name who loved me and gave Himself for me, a great change has been wrought in my heart.’ And, at sea, a month later, he asks: ‘What return shall I make to the Lord for so unmerited a display of His good- ~~ ~*~, Allen Gardiner’s Text 5 ness? After years of ingratitude, blasphemy, and rebellion, I have at last been melted! Alas, how slow and reluctant have I been to admit the heav- enly Guest who stood knocking without! Nor had He ever been received had not He Himself pre- pared the way!’ A new heart! A new heart! Was ever heart so high, so dauntless, so destitute of fear? Was ever heart so humble, so tender, so penitent? Vv A new heart! A new heart! Create mm me a clean heart, O God! Allen Gardiner’s new heart is no less stout, and no less stalwart, than the old one; but it is more unselfish, more pure. Jesus said that it is the pure in heart who see God; and certainly Allen Gardiner caught that beatific vision. As a small boy, eager to follow Nelson, he taught himself to endure hardship. Before retiring one night, his mother came, candle in hand, to Allen’s room to give her sleeping boy his good-night kiss. To her astonishment she found the bed undisturbed : it had not been occupied. Glancing round the room in alarm, she discovered Allen fast asleep on the floor. He explained next morning that he expected to live a rough life, with constant privations, and he wanted to get ready for it! In those early days he toughened his young sinews and accustomed his body to hardship in the 16 A Faggot of Torches hope that, later on, he might win for himselt swift promotion, cover his name with the lustre of a fair renown, and, perhaps, die, like Nelson, in a blaze of glory. Later on, he is just as willing to endure hunger and thirst, discomfort and fatigue; but he is eager to suffer in silence and, if needs be, to die in obscurity. He thirsts neither for reward nor for fame. He endures as seeing Him who 1s invisible —the sublime prerogative of the pure-hearted. Taking the whole world as the sphere of his activ- ities, he pierces the interior of Africa and dares a thousand deaths among Hottentots, Kaffirs, Zulus, and Bushmen. We catch fitful glimpses of him, now intervening between hostile tribes; now under- taking a perilous march among mountains reputed to be impassable; and anon lying at the point of starvation among the reeds of the swampy river- bed, listening to the snorting and grunting of the hippopotami around him. At different stages of his adventurous career we find him at Tahiti, at Borneo, at Papua, at the most outlandish places; but ever with one end in view—to blaze a trail along which the missionary may bring to the most benighted the light of the everlasting gospel. He makes his way to the Falkland Islands, and, from that chilly outpost, looks wistfully across at the snow-capped and storm-swept coasts of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. ‘The Falkland Islands,’ says Miss Charlotte M. Yonge, ‘are dreary enough; Allen Gardiner’s Text 17 but they are a paradise compared with that desolate fag-end of the Western world towards which Allen Gardiner now turned his face. Moreover, the Fuegians are as degraded a people as any on the face of the earth and are churlishly inhospitable to strangers. Still, to seek the most hopeless and un- cultivated was always Commander Gardiner’s ob- ject.” And so he sails into the blizzard; crosses the narrow stretch of snow-swept sea; and, with a smile on his fine face, goes to his tragic death! A new heart! A new heart! Was ever heart so valiant, so indomitable, so stout? Was ever heart so disinterested, so unselfish, so pure? vi A new heart ! A new heart! A new heart will I give you! Create in me a clean heart, O God! Allen Gardiner’s new heart is no less blithe, no less gay, than the old one; but it is more persistent, more patient. He literally died singing. The annals of adven- ture contain few records more pathetic than the story of those last dreadful weeks on the cruel coast. The heroes are seven in number. Their ship is disabled ; their powder is wet; their nets are torn to tatters by floating ice; their stores are ex- hausted. They are starving. John Badcock is the first to die; and he begs his companions to sing as his soul passes. One by one the others close their 18 A Faggot of Torches eyes and yield their spirits back to God. Two only are left—Maidment and Gardiner. For a few days the captain is able to hobble, on a pair of roughly- fashioned crutches, to the cavern in which his com- rade lies: he himself is occupying an open boat on the beach. And then ! Nobody will ever know which of the two died first. The relief expedition found the two unburied bodies: Maidment’s in the cavern and Gardiner’s beside the boat: he was evidently too weak to clam- ber back into it. On the rocks, Gardiner—anxious that his friend should be found—had painted a hand pointing to the mouth of the cavern; and underneath, ‘Psalm Ixii, 5-8.’ The words are these: My soul, wait thou only upon God: for my expectation 1s from Him... . Trust in Him at all times, ye people; pour out your heart be- fore Him; God ts a refuge for us. Near by, the relief expedition found the priceless records that Allen Gardiner had written as he slowly died. As Mr. J. W. Marsh—the Command- er’s biographer—has pointed out, it is amazing that these precious relics still remained. “The tide ebbed and flowed, but it did no injury to those fragmentary memorials of these Christian martyrs. The spray dashed over them and left indelible stains; the rain poured down from above; the winds blew loud and strong; but a sleepless eye watched over them, an almighty hand protected them; and, in almost every case, the handwriting is still plain.’ Allen Gardiner’s Text 19 Were ever such memorials? Every sentence vi- brates with jubilant triumph. Again and again he breaks into poetry. ‘Although,’ he sings, Although my daily bread has failed, I know from whence it came; And still His faithful promises Are every day the same; His words the same for evermore As when they first were given; Yea, blessed thought! they cannot fail Though earth dissolve and heaven! On the day that precedes his death, he assures us that, though four days without food, he has no sensation of hunger. And here are the last sen- tences he ever penned: Yet a little while, and through grace we shall join that blessed throng to sing the praises of Christ throughout eternity. I neither hunger nor thirst though five days without food! Marvellous kind- ness to me—a sinner! A new heart! A new heart! Was ever heart so joyful, so blithe, so invincibly gay? Was ever heart so unconquerable, so unrepining, so patient ? VII In all his last writings, he begs, with pathetic reit- eration, that the work may be vigilantly prosecuted until Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego have been completely won for Christ. His wish was respected. Years afterwards Charles Darwin—most dispas- sionate of witnesses—declared that the transfor- 20 A Faggot of Torches mation effected in Tierra del Fuego was the bright- est trophy that Christianity had won, and he liber- ally supported the continuance of the work. The letter that an old lady wrote to a young lieutenant at Penang led, not only to the salvation of his own soul, but to the illumination of half a continent. II AUGUSTUS TOPLADY’S TEXT I ENGLISH soil is haunted. Go where you will, the most glorious ghosts glide out from the silences and startle you. In visiting the Homeland recently, I vaguely expected to confront these splendid spectres in the cities: but I was scarcely prepared to find them moving in broad daylight among the ploughed fields, the fragrant hedgerows and the drowsy ham- lets of the countryside. Yet there they were! I met them on the Essex wolds; on the Norfolk broads; on the Salisbury plains; on the Sussex downs; on the Devonshire moors; and on the village greens of Kent. I met them among the picturesque peaks and the idyllic waters of Cumberland and Westmorland; among the Surrey hills; among the Yorkshire fells, and among the lochs and tros- sachs of Scotland. I came upon them everywhere. One such experience holds my memory in thrall to-day. It was a beautiful morning in August; we were staying at a little town in Devonshire; and, after breakfast, our host made a suggestion which was altogether to our taste. 21 22 A Faggot of Torches ‘It’s a shame to stay indoors,’ he observed; ‘how would you like to see some of our Devonshire lanes and perhaps look round a village or two?’ And so it came about that, an hour later, we were making our way up hill and down dale through scenery of the most bewitching loveliness. The lanes are so narrow that we speculate as to what will happen if we chance to meet another car; and so tortuous that we spend half our time tooting for the admonition of drivers who never appear. At times the little car seems buried in mountains of hedgerow. Then, as we emerge from the dense se- clusion of a noble avenue of beeches, or reach the summit of some gentle knoll, we pause to survey the panorama of field and farm, woodland and stream, spread out before us, and inquire the names of the sequestered villages nestling in the hollows. The red kine, standing amidst the rich grass that rises to their dewlaps, stare lazily round at us as we drink in the beauty of the landscape. All at once, at a lonely spot where two roads meet, we come upon a wayside memorial. We alight to read the inscription. To our astonishment we discover that this tall column—rising from the grass of the roadside—is a monument to John Coleridge Patteson, the martyr-Bishop of the South Seas! And why should the memorial to so heroic a soul, with whose text I have dealt in a later chapter of ‘this book, stand in this charming but outlandish spot? The question is soon answered. For, in his Augustus Toplady’s Text 23 early days, Patteson lived here! In this delightful district some of the happiest hours of his childhood were spent. Before we returned from that memor- able drive, we inspected the home of his boyhood; and, a day or two later, we motored along this self- same road as far as Exeter Cathedral—in which he was ordained—and admired the handsome Mar- tyr’s Pulpit which has been placed there to his illus- trious memory. But we have wandered from the wayside column at which we alighted. Reentering the car, we slip along the lane to Ottery St. Mary, the home of Coleridge, and glance at Hayes Farm, the birthplace of Sir Walter Raleigh. John Coleridge Patteson! Samuel Taylor Coleridge! Sir Walter Raleigh! What glorious ghosts are we meeting in the course of this casual drive of ours! Yet it was of none of these that I set out to write. For, in the course of that morning spin, we came upon the pretty little village of Broadhembury. A photograph of the dreamy old hamlet lies before me at this moment. If, on the face of God’s earth, there is anywhere a more peaceful and picturesque place than Broad- hembury, I should dearly love to be taken to it. A single street of little thatched cottages; none of the walls quite upright; none of the thatched roofs quite regular; none of the eaves quite level. Each cot- tage has its porch; each porch juts out on to the roadway (for Broadhembury would regard foot- 24 A Faggot of Torches paths or pavements as a newfangled and senseless affectation); and each porch and cottage-wall is splashed with irregular and straggling patches of ivy, rambler roses, and sweet briar. I almost apol- ogized to Broadhembury for bursting upon its tran- quillity in a motor-car. A motor-car in Broadhem- bury is an anachronism, almost a sacrilege. It is the clashing of two separate ages: it is the invasion of the world of repose by the world of hustle and noise. At the end of this cluster of old-fashioned habitations stands the village church, its noble tower rising grandly above its ancestral yews. And it was when we entered the church that we discov- ered that, like all the other villages, Broadhembury is haunted. The radiant spirit that we there en- countered shed a new glory on the village we had just explored. II For, on the church wall, we found a tablet. How little we dreamed, when we set out on our morning | drive, to find this stately phantom along one of these Devonshire lanes! Yet here it is! And here it is, too, in the actual setting with which, in other days, it was familiar—and this is the inscription that we read : Augustus Toplady’s Text 25 IN GRATEFUL MEMORY OF AUGUSTUS MONTAGU TOPLADY, B.A., VICAR.OF THIS PARISH FROM 1768 To 1778, AND AUTHOR OF THE IMMORTAL HYMN: Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in Thee; Let the water and the blood, From Thy riven side which flowed, Be of sin the double cure— Cleanse me from its guilt and power. TO WHOSE PERSONAL PIETY, BRILLIANT GIFTS, SANCTIFIED LEARNING AND UNCOMPROMISING ADVOCACY OF THE GOSPEL OF THE SOVEREIGN GRACE OF GOD, HIS WRITINGS BEAR ABUNDANT TESTIMONY THIS: TABLET IS ERECTED A.D. 1898, BEING I20 YEARS AFTER HE ENTERED INTO THE JOY OF HIS LORD ON THE IITH AUGUST, 1778, IN THE THIRTY-EIGHTH YEAR OF HIS AGE. For by grace are ye saved through faith: not of works, lest any man should boast. In the course of a century and a half, the rest of the world may have changed; but Broadhembury has made no effort to keep pace with those feverish fluctuations. ‘If,’ says Mr. Thomas Wright, Top- lady’s biographer, ‘if Toplady could revisit the vil- lage, he would recognize the cottages with their white cob walls and mouse-coloured thatch roofs; the churchyard wall—also of cob and also mouse- coloured; and the immemorial*yew that casts its shadows over mounds and tombstones.’ 26 A Faggot of Torches Leaving the church—a little regretfully—we saunter once more through the village, trying to conjure up the figure of Augustus Toplady visiting from door to door—always with the priceless words of life everlasting upon his earnest lips; and then, re-entering the car, we set out over the hills for home. The outline of that exquisite slice of coun- tryside is easily remembered. For, as Mr. Wright says again, “whatever pictures fade from the mind of the visitor to Broadhembury, he will not lose the recollection of that great rounded height—Blackbutt Hill, a bastion of Blackdown—which, in Toplady’s mind, blazed with the yellow of the gorse and the amethyst of the heather, and on which, even to-day, although parts of the upland have been planted, wild Nature gorgeously asserts herself.’ Amidst such natural and historic enchantments we returned from an outing that had taught us that even the sticks and stones along the hedgerows of England are saturated with the most golden and the most sacred romance. III Memory strings her pearls upon a chain. One pleasing recollection swiftly summons another to the mind. The story of our drive in Devonshire re- minds me of another drive—in Surrey this time. For, in the course of that tour over the Surrey hills, we visited Farnham; and it was at Farnham that Augustus Toplady was born. Farnham commem- Augustus Toplady’s Text 247 orates that interesting circumstance by singing a verse of Rock of Ages at the Parish Church every Sunday evening. Six months before Augustus Top- lady came into the world, his father left it; and the boy was therefore reared entirely by his mother. Gentle, unselfish, and devout, the good woman made the training of her boy the supreme business of her life; and he—frail, thoughtful, and plastic —responded to every uplifting influence that she brought to bear upon him. Yet, during his quiet and uneventful boyhood his faith consisted in a placid assent to the truths that his mother taught him rather than in any profound and attached con- victions of his own. Then comes a sudden change! At the age of six- teen he goes with his mother to visit her estate at Codymain, Wexford, Ireland. Near to the place at which they are staying, a man named James Mor- ris is preaching in a barn. Augustus Toplady is captivated by the novelty of so irregular a proceed- ing; and, prompted mainly by curiosity, resolves to give the missioner a hearing. He goes. That night, the record says, the preacher seemed inspired. He took for his text the words: Ye who sometimes were far off were made nigh by the blood of Christ. Top- lady—young and impressionable—was transported, carried beyond himself. ‘Under that sermon,’ he himself tells us, ‘under that sermon I was, I trust, brought nigh by the blood of Christ. Strange that I, who had so long sat under the means of grace in 28 A Faggot of Torches England, should be brought nigh by the blood of Chnst in an obscure part of Ireland, amidst a hand- ful of God’s people met together in a barn, and under the ministry of one who could hardly spell his own name. I shall. remember that day to all eternity.’ This was in August, 1756. I like to shut my eyes and recall those two drives —the visit to Farnham in Surrey and the visit to Broadhembury in Devonshire. For here, at Farn- ham, I seem to see the fountainhead of that ever- broadening stream which, at the close of his min- istry at Broadhembury poured itself into the infi- nite sea. It was in his Farnham days that Augustus Toplady strode out upon that spiritual pilgrimage which, lasting only two and twenty years, made him one of the most potent and effective forces in the evangelization of England. But, midway between his Surrey days and his Devonshire days, an experience befell him that the world will remember long after his connexion with Farnham and Broadhembury is forgotten. And that reminds me of another drive. IV We were at Wells in Somerset; and, after visit- _ ing the Cathedral, we set out for Cheddar, motor- ing some distance up the George. Now it was in this charming and romantic Mendip country—at Burrington Combe—that the greatest of all our hymns was born in the soul of Augustus Toplady. Augustus Toplady’s Text 29 Was there ever such a storm? How the light-_ ning rent the skies! How the thunder rolled and reverberated along those wild and rocky combes, defiles, and gorges! The whole valley is a place of solemn grandeur. The hills tower to a consider- able height on either side, and out from their grassy yet precipitous slopes there project vast masses of jagged rock. In this weird place, Augustus Top- lady—then curate-in-charge at Blagdon—was caught that stormy afternoon. As the black clouds gathered in preparation for the impending deluge, he cast his eyes anxiously about him and noticed a pair of huge limestone crags that, leaning against each other, seemed to have become one. In the cav- ity between them, Toplady took refuge; and, shel- tering there, watched the violence of the elements. His thoughts wandered back to that unforgetta- ble experience in Ireland—the cavernous barn—the uncouth preacher—and the text! Ye who some- times were far off were made nigh by the blood of Christ. Far off! It seemed to him that, in those days, he was far off, a long way from home, lost in the storm! Made nigh! It seemed to him that, as a result of that memorable transformation, he had been drawn near, gathered in, and given shelter from the wrath that threatened. Made migh by the blood of Christ! The rock in which he had found refuge was a cleft rock! It was only in the breaking of that holy Body, and 30 A Faggot of Torches the shedding of that sacred Blood, that he had found shelter and satisfaction. The thought captivated him: he could not shake it off. All the way home he thought of the rock— the rock in which he had sheltered in Burrington Combe—the Rock in which his soul had found ref- uge ten years earlier, And, sitting down, he wrote: Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in Thee! Let the water and the blood From Thy wounded side which flowed, Be of sin the double cure; Cleanse me from its guilt and power. Mr. Gladstone thought it the greatest hymn ever written in any language, and he translated it into Latin, Greek, and Italian. No other hymn has taken so firm a hold of the hearts of men. In the sweep of its melody, thousands of storm-tossed hearts have found refuge in the Rock of Ages. Vv Professor George Jackson wishes that poor old Dr. Samuel Johnson could have sat at the feet of Augustus Toplady. The Professor is dealing with a stupendous problem. ‘Was John Ruskin wrong,’ he asks, “when he said that “the root of almost every schism and heresy from which the Christian Church has ever suffered has been the effort of man to earn rather than receive his salvation?’ Once you take that view,’ Professor Jackson continues, ‘you are back again in the old, dreary mill-horse Augustus Toplady’s Text 31 round against which Luther’s Reformation and Wesley’s Revival were the protest, the protest of souls that knew themselves defrauded of their in- heritance in Christ.’ By way of illustration, the Professor cites Dr. Johnson. He has been reading Johnson’s Prayers and Meditations. ‘It is,’ he says, ‘a strangely moving little book. Can anyone read it and not be touched to the quick by the great, sad sincerity of soul which breathes through its every page, and at the same time without a sigh of regret that there was not some one at hand who could have shown to Johnson a more excellent way? If only Toplady could have taught him to sing Nothing in my hand I bring, Simply to Thy cross I cling, what a difference it might have made! Religion would have been a bridge instead of a burden, some- thing to carry him instead of something for him to carry.’ This, as the tablet at Broadhembury testi- fies, was Toplady’s gospel; and, by means of his hymn, he still preaches that gospel to the hearts of millions. VI Toplady was only thirty-seven when he died. He called for his Bible and himself selected the verses that were to be read to him. J am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principal- ities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other crea- 32 A Faggot of Torches ture, shall be able to separate us from the love. of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. He was still sheltering in the rock—the Rock of Ages— and even in that last fierce storm—the storm in the Vale that is lonelier than Burrington Combe—his soul’s sure refuge did not fail him. Ill THOMAS CARLYLE’S* TEXT I THE interest that we feel in Carlyle is the interest that we feel in Vesuvius. Other great men are like great mountains; they leap from the common plane and stand out with grandeur and ruggedness against the horizon; but Carlyle is essentially volcanic. His personality is awe-inspiring; his temperament is fiery; his utterance is like a turgid flow of lava. He holds for us the fascination that attaches to all things that are terrible, weird, explosive. He takes knowing. The reader who picks up Sartor Resartus or The French Revolution for the first time feels that he is crossing a ploughed field in silk slippers. The going is hard and the gait ungraceful; but there is novelty in it; and, after a while, he gets accustomed to the rough track and begins to enjoy the smell of the upturned soil and the tang of the bracing air. The geologists have taught us that the world is all the better and the safer for having a few volcanoes; and it is certainly the better for having men of the type of Thomas Carlyle. Carlyle stands, and stands conspicuously, among the prophets of the ages. He was, as Edmond Scherer, the French scholar, declares, the Prophet of Sincerity. Truth was his passion. He was tre- 33 34 A Faggot of Torches mendously in earnest. ‘Carlyle is no homceopath- ist,’ said Mazzini, the Italian patriot; “he never ad- ministers remedies for evil in infinitesimal doses; he never pollutes the sacredness of thought by out- ward concesson or compromise with error. Like Luther, he hurls his inkstand at the devil without looking to the consequences; but he does it with such sincerity that the devil himself could not be displeased at it were the moment not critical and every blow of the inkstand a serious thing to him.’ There, then, stands your nineteenth-century prophet, not greatly dissimilar from the prophets of an earlier age—Elijah, Jeremiah, John the Baptist! ‘No prophet,’ says Mr. Maclean Watt, ‘ever gripped and shook his generation with such a horny hand and such a grasp invincible.’ Mr. Watt contrasts Car- lyle with Ruskin. ‘Ruskin approaches all his themes as if in broadcloth and with his gloves on; but the rugged Scotsman walks out with his budget of kingly truths, and, no matter what clothing he wears, you feel the homespun and naked grip of a strong man’s influence.’ When Carlyle was an old man of eighty, Lord Beaconsfield, in the Queen’s name, offered him a peerage and an income capable of maintaining its rank and dignity. Such a distinction had never before been offered to any man of letters, and Carlyle was not unmindful of the honour done him. But he shook his shaggy old head. A prophet with a peerage and a lordly pension! Thomas Carlyle’s Text 35 “Very proper of the Queen to offer it,’ observed a London bus-conductor to James Anthony Froude next day, “and more proper of he to say that he would have nothing to do with it. ’Tain’t the likes of they who can do honour to the likes of he!’ Froude agreed with the conductor. ‘Yet,’ he adds, ‘the country was saved by that offer from the reproach of coming centuries, when Carlyle will stand among his contemporaries as Socrates stands among the Athenians, the one pre-eminently wise man to whom all the rest are nothing.’ Lord Mor- ley goes a step further. ‘He is,’ that eminent au- thority declares, ‘not only one of the foremost lit- erary figures of his own time, which is a compara- tively small thing, but one of the greatest moral forces of all time.’ The Prophet of Sincerity! says Scherer. The most powerful teacher of righteousness and truth that his generation knew, says Mr. Maclean Watt. The one pre-eminenily wise man of his time, says Froude. One of the greatest moral forces of all time, says Lord Morley. How, I wonder, and when, and where was that stupendous power generated? By what agency and instrumentality was our Prophet of Sincerity called to his prophetic office? The matter is worth inves- tigating. 36 A Faggot of Torches II When he died, a grave in Westminster Abbey was offered, and, like the peerage and the pension, de- clined. He had begged that he might be buried be- side his father and mother in the old churchyard at Ecclefechan by the Solway. Those who know the story of his life know why. Beneath that stern and rugged surface, there was a deep, rich vein of hu- man tenderness. All through the years it found ex- pression in his letters to his father and mother. He felt that he owed everything to them. Was he the prophet of honesty, sincerity, truth? It was his father who made him so. His father was a stone- mason. He built the house in which his famous son was born, and many of the other dwellings along that Scottish countryside. ‘Nothing that he undertook to do but he did it faithfully and like a true man,’ says the sage. ‘I still look on the houses that he built with a certain proud interest. They stand firm and sound to the heart all over his little district. No one that comes after him will ever be able to sneer at them as the handiwork of a hollow eye-servant.’ At the height of his fame, Carlyle loved to recall the simple but stately phrases that he had heard his father use at evening worship in the old Dumfries- shire cottage. The majestic music of those prayers haunted his ear to his dying day. The honest stone- mason had very little money and very many children, 7 Thomas Carlyle’s Text 37 but it was his dream that Thomas should go to the university and be a minister. So, very early, one cold November morning, Thomas set out on his long eighty-mile trudge to Edinburgh. His father and mother walked a mile or two with him. To the end of his days there was always a moistening of the eyes when he spoke of two things. The first was his father’s eagerness to work early and late, to pinch and stint and save, in order that Thomas might enjoy advantages to which his father had never aspired. ‘With a noble faith,’ says Thomas, ‘he launched me forth into a world which himself had never been permitted to visit.’ The second was the dumb, unmurmuring but bitter disappointment of the father when the son told him that he had resolved, after all, not to become a minister. ‘Car- lyle never forgot his father’s respectful acceptance of his decision, and he knew, too, that the disap- pointment was an abiding sorrow to his mother.’ His mother! The most beautiful things that Car- lyle ever wrote, were the letters that he addressed to that mother of his. ‘I have shifted my writing- table,’ he says, in one of them, ‘and now, every time I look up, your affectionate, sorrowing face looks down on me from the picture-frame above the man- telpiece. It has a sorrow in it, that face, which goes to my very heart. But it is not to be called a mere sorrow either; it is a noble weariness rather, as of much work done. I will wish all men and all women such a sorrow.’ 38 A Faggot of Torches “Good Mother!’ he says, in writing to his brother ; ‘she is quite cheery yet; looks back with still resig- nation on many a sorrow and forward with humble pious trust. It is beautiful to see how, in the grad- ual decay of all other strength, the strength of her heart and affection still survives fresher than ever. The soul refuses to grow old with the body—one of the most affecting sights.’ It was from his mother’s lips that he learned his text. It was first of all her text. I seem to see the barefooted, tousle-headed Scottish laddie sitting on the little stool before the crackling fire in that mod- est little cottage in the Vale of Arran whilst the good woman spells the great words out to him: We know that all things work together for good to them that love God. She tells him how, not once nor twice, but over and over again, she has tested them and found them true. That golden word became the one serene confidence of his stormy heart; and, in his works and correspondence, it occurs repeatedly. The early years of his literary life were all spent among the mosshags of Craigenputtock. Oh, those weary years at Craigenputtock! The house on the moorland—which Froude describes as the dreariest spot in the British dominions—became to him a place of ‘lying draggletails of byre-woman; peat- moss and isolation; exasperation and confusion.’ He wrote on and on, but to no apparent purpose, only one voice—a woman’s—constantly encourag- ing him. ‘It is twenty-three months,’ he complains, Thomas Carlyle’s Text 39 ‘since I earned a penny by the craft of literature. Providence warns me to have done with it. I have failed in the Divine Eternal Universe.’ Yet, all the while, he was writing what he knew the world needed to read. The prophet soul blazed within him. Sartor Resartus had gone off like a damp squib, and been ridiculed as clotted nonsense. The French Revolution was ready for the printer. ‘What they will do with this book, no one knows, my Jeanie lass, but they have not had for two hundred years any book that came more truly from a man’s very heart, so let them trample it under foot and hoof as they see best!’ Then he made his big plunge— ‘one of the biggest plunges that a man can take.’ He felt the lure of London and resolved to fling him- self into its tumult. In that hour of crises he threw all his weight on his mother’s text, the text that he had made his own. We know that all things work to- gether for good to them that love God. He quotes the text—his mother’s text and his—in a letter to his brother. And when he heard that his mother was in deep distress because one of her boys, Mick, had emigrated and settled across the Atlantic, he sent her her own text to comfort her. He tried to pour back into her heavy heart the solace which she had, first of all, communicated to his. “You have had much to suffer, dear mother,’ he writes, ‘and are grown old in the Valley of Tears; but you always say, as all of us should say, “Have we not many mercies, too?” Is there not above all, and in 40 A Faggot of Torches all, a Father watching over us, through whom all sorrows shall yet work together for good? Yes, it is even so. Let us try to hold by that as an anchor most sure and stead fast!’ When Carlyle’s father died, the daughter wrote letters in which the other members of the family were acquainted with their loss. But the mother in- sisted on adding a postscript. ‘It is God that has done it; be still, my dear children! There was the fountainhead of Carlyle’s faith—a faith that he propagated in every page that he penned. ‘Man 1s- sues from Eternity,’ he writes, ‘is encompassed by Eternity, and again in Eternity disappears. It is fearful and wonderful. This only we know, that God is above it, that God made it, and that God rules it for good.’ For we know that all things work together for ‘good. to them that love God. It was Bernard Gilpin’s text. Bernard Gilpin was sentenced, under Queen Mary, to die for his faith. During his imprisonment he repeated the text morn- ing, noon and night. We know that all things work together for good to them that love God. On his way to execution he fell and broke his leg. He was ordered back to prison, and, whilst he moaned in pain, the gaoler twitted him with his text. ‘Ah,’ the good man replied, ‘but it’s true all the same! It’s all working together for good! And it was, for whilst he lay there, Mary died, Elizabeth ascended the throne, and Bernard Gilpin was set at liberty. Thomas Carlyle’s Text 4I Il We know! Carlyle found rare music in those two syllables. By a skilful operation, Lord Lister once saved the life of W. E. Henley. In expressing his gratitude to the great surgeon, Henley says that ‘his wise, rare smile is sweet with certainties.’ ‘I heard,’ says another poet, I heard a bird at break of day, Sing from the autumn trees A song so mystical and calm, ’Twas full of certainties! Lister’s smile was sweet with certainties; the bird’s song was full of certainties; so was the soul of Thomas Carlyle. We know, he said, we know! Thomas Carlyle was very sure of God. He was never in his life more hurt than when Sir James Stephen charged him with unbelief. It was in 1853. ‘You must have the goodness to expunge the phrase,’ he retorted. ‘I have merely said that no man ought to affirm what he does not himself completely be- lieve. My own creed is not one of scepticism or doubt; but, for these thirty years, it has been a cer- tainty with me, for which I am, ang ought to be, for ever thankful to the Maker of me.’ And the source of that certainty? Carlyle thought of the old scenes by the Solway fireside. “In the poorest cottages,’ he said, ‘are books—is one book, a noble book, wherein for several thousands of years, the spirit of man has found light and nourishment 42 A Faggot of Torches and an interpreting response to whatever is deepest in him; wherein still, to this day, for the eye that will look well, the Mystery of Existence reflects itself, if not to the satisfying of the outward sense, yet to the opening of the inward sense, which is the far grander result.’ We know!—‘my creed is a certainty with me.’ We know that all things work together for good to them that love God. IV If ever a man’s text was put to the test, Carlyle’s was. He devoted his life to the study of history. He saw all things working. But he saw a harmony in their working: he was convinced that all things were working together. And he saw an aim, a pur- pose, a goal in their working: history was not the chance product of blind forces.