が
​23
30
29
B 1,333,574

THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
GRADUATE LIBRARY
NOV 26
DATE DUE
828
T30
C29

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN LIBRARIES
THE
MESSAGE OF TENNYSON

THE
MESSAGE OF TENNYSON
A SERMON
44640
IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY, APRIL 30, 1893
BY
WILLIAM BOYD CARPENTER, D.D.
BISHOP OF RIPON, HON. D.C.L. OXON
Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus
Tam cari capitis?
•
Cui liquidam pater
Vocem cum cithara dedit.
PREACHED AND PUBlished BY REQUEST
London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
AND NEW YORK
1893
The Rights of Translation and Reproduction are Reserved
167 7 9
RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, Limited,
LONDON AND BUNGAY.
1-13-45 NGF
THE MESSAGE OF TENNYSON
“It came even to pass, as the trumpeters and singers were as
one, to make one sound to be heard in praising and thanking
the Lord . . . . that then the house was filled with a cloud,
even the house of the Lord.”—2 CHRONICLES V. 13.
THE words record a striking and suggestive
incident. A great festival was being held. The
one great object, on the part of those responsible
for the musical part of the festival was to produce
that unity of sound which gives such impressiveness
to the rendering of all musical work. And the
historian tells us that when all the various
instruments and voices were made to unite in
one splendid utterance; when singers and musicians
were as one, bringing their various gifts and
various powers so completely into harmony that
it seemed as though that vast number sang with
but one voice, and as from
from one heart-then
the sign of the glory of their nation, the symbol
of the presence of God, was revealed among
6
THE MESSAGE OF TENNYSON
them, the Shechinah, the mysterious token which
had guided their forefathers through the wilderness
was seen, then the cloud filled the house, even the
House of the Lord.
The incident has a significance beyond its bearing
on the circumstances of the moment. I imagine
that in the writer's mind it carried a far deeper
meaning than a mere passing approval of the
wonderful unison of praise which found expression
in the worship of that day; for him the incident
was a crowning point in the story of the growing
greatness of Israel. The past had been a past of
division, of doubt, and of danger. Enemies from
without had threatened the frontier of Israel; rival
jealousies had divided and undermined her power.
But at length, under the military genius of David,
and afterwards under the vigorous statesmanship of
Solomon, the consolidated kingdom realised the
benefits of union among the tribes. And on the day
of thanksgiving the religious service expressed not
merely the harmony of voices and instruments,
but the great spirit of union which pervaded
the whole people. And when at length the
great and wide federation of hearts was realised,
then the nation was fit to go forward upon its
path of progress and achieve its destiny. In
that hour the true climax of Israel's glory
seemed to the historian to be reached, and the
THE MESSAGE OF TENNYSON
7
symbol of the Divine presence, which had for
long been withdrawn, appeared in his eyes to visit
the land once more. He saw in the spirit of
union which filled all hearts and inspired all voices
for common worship an augury of advancing
prosperity. He saw that with such a people God
could dwell. He saw the cloud which betokened
the Divine presence.
"The House of the Lord
was filled with the glory."
An
Take, for instance, the
We cannot limit the thoughts thus suggested to
the history of Israel only. In such incidents there
may be found some guiding principle. And the
principle which this incident suggests is one
which if I mistake not covers all life. It is this:
You cannot expect to find the true power, the
highest ripening of capacity, the full glory of
any organised society or organic life save in the
unification of the powers of that organism.
illustration may help us.
artistic life. The putting of colours on the canvas
might be described as part of the function of the
artist, but his true function goes far beyond this,
and demands more than mere hand-work. He
must be able to blend colours together into a
harmony which brings pleasure to the eye and
inspiring thoughts to the heart. Glory rests upon
his work in proportion as he realises on his
canvas this double harmony of thought and form.
8
со
THE MESSAGE OF TENNYSON
Take another illustration. What is the glory of
light? It is seen most clearly when the harmony of
the various prismatic hues are wrought into one
pure beam of dazzling light. Or again, a cracked
mirror gives back only scattered and inhar-
monious beams, but when the mirror is whole
it gives back no broken image,
clear and faithful representation.
then the purpose of its existence.
harmony with which the parts are set together
it can fulfil its object; and herein lies its
glory.
but reflects a
It accomplishes
In the unbroken
This principle applies to all life. Let us notice it
in individual life. Is it not one of the complaints
which we often hear made that there is an enormous
amount of waste power amongst human lives? It
is a sad and true complaint. But what are the
causes of this waste? It will be said, and rightly
said, that vice is one of the great causes of this
waste. For what is vice if it be not the
drawing of the energy of a man's nature in some
unworthy direction? Vice is of the nature of
a disorder in the harmony of man's being. It
withdraws some of man's energy from the true
purpose of life.
The powers of the vicious man
are not as the powers of the chorus here, where
the instruments of music and the voices, were
all drawn together so as to seem like one voice.
•
THE MESSAGE OF TENNYSON
9
The life of the vicious man becomes a discord and
not a song.
But it is not only vice that thus breaks up human
life. There is another cause of waste perhaps more
common than positive vice, and that is the lack
of a harmonious purpose prevailing over desire and
thought. There are many lives that have never yet
been dominated by any clear, distinct, recognised pur-
pose. Many people go through the world and only
drift from boyhood through manhood unto death.
There is nothing in such lives that you can specify
as having damaged or tarnished them with any
special vice, but they are lives which have been
simply useless and inglorious, and the reason is that
they have never been knit into one by the govern-
ing ascendency of some great master passion or
purpose. But whenever a human life has been
directed by some great purpose, then what I may
describe as the highest range of that life is reached
and the glory of such an one's manhood is seen.
Even in the case of men whose lives you could not
describe as lives of perfect harmony, that is to say,
men whose lives are not governed by the loftiest pur-
pose, but in whom nevertheless some one great pur-
pose rules, drawing even their lower powers under
its direction, a kind of transient glory is attained!
A man like Napoleon gathering together the strong
forces of his intellect, his marvellous military gifts,
Dorm
IO
THE MESSAGE OF TENNYSON
his wonderful energy, his persistence of purpose,
notwithstanding his disregard of the higher moral
impulses, still stands as one whose life was not
wasted in half-hearted schemes, and vacillating and
hesitating resolves. The life of such a man may be
a ruin, but it is a ruin in which the master hand of
the architect is seen. It is like the fragment of a
broken song, whose very incompleteness makes us
wish that the melody were wrought into complete-
ness.
But when all the powers are drawn together,
when the moral force and the intellectual force and
the emotional force are dominated by some master-
passion, then how bright and glorious may men's lives
become! Men of high and lofty moral purpose, like
Howard, devoting themselves to the welfare of their
fellows; like Wilberforce, seeking out the cause of
the oppressed; like the apostle (shall I say?) con-
secrating all his powers, his moral energies and his
spiritual aspirations under the direction of one great
purpose; men whose watchword has been hoc unum,
this one thing I do-stand out among their fellows
as men who have lived strong and memorable lives.
These are the rare and noble men who have lived
for one great purpose. Theirs are the lives that
are filled with glory. Their powers being har-
moniously devoted to one noble and high purpose,
they have seemed to draw down the light and the
Moll
THE MESSAGE OF TENNYSON
II
glory of heaven round about them, and their lives
have been harmonious as "one grand sweet song!'
And it was so, I think, with him of whom I am
bidden specially to speak to-day-of whom, had
I been left to myself, I should hardly have dared to
speak, for he stood upon his own lofty heights, and
he was to us a great name and an inspiring influ-
ence, and to have known him and to have felt
his influence was enough. But the harmony of
which I have spoken was, I think, expressed in
the life of Tennyson. Let me ask you to see
how he gathered together his powers, concentrated
them to one great, clear, and definite purpose,
expanded the range of his sympathies, and drew
into them the interests of the nation in which
he lived, and the experiences of the age in which
he was born, grasping firmly those great eternal
verities, without which all the changes and chances
of this mortal life are but a dumb, meaningless
show. Guiding his powers by one steady purpose,
he consecrated his gifts to the good of his genera-
tion, mindful of Him who had dowered him so
highly, and in whom his faith remained unshaken
till the last.
There are indeed other aspects of his life-the
loyal friendship, the large generosity, the rare affec-
tion which must be a reverent memory to those who
knew him personally. Admiration summoned love
B 2
12
THE MESSAGE OF TENNYSON
to her side in those who in personal friendship
learned something of his earnestness, his simplicity,
and his tenderness of heart. But these are sacred
things, and of these I do not speak; I speak rather
of that high and lofty purpose which animated his
life, and gave force and harmony to his work.
And here I speak first of his life-purpose in re-
lation to his art. His life was a life devoted to his
art! The gift of poetry is often thought to be
a casual and erratic power needing no industrious
culture, and coming resistless and unsought, in
moments of transient inspiration; but, in the case
of Tennyson you have a life wholly and deliber-
ately and unwearyingly given to the cultivation
of his art. Byron used to say that his genius was
like a tiger, which leaped upon its prey, but, when
baffled, turned growling back to the jungle. "It
is," he said, "as if, once my purpose is baffled,
the power and the will seem to forsake me." But
with Tennyson there was no such easy surrender.
Hoc unum-this one thing I do. Through years—
mark those silent years when, having published
one volume, he remained so long voiceless that
people wondered-through those long years he
ripened and perfected his powers. He was as one
who, by stern determination and untiring purpose,
at last "beat his music out."
We can carry this thought still further, we can
THE MESSAGE OF TENNYSON
13
observe his spirit in the manipulation of his craft,
and we feel how intense was his concentration of
purpose. There are two ways in which the poet
may be betrayed; he may be betrayed by the facility
of his power of versification, or he may be betrayed
by the multitude of the thoughts which teem within
his brain. We know how often this has been the case.
We know, for example, how Moore was often be-
trayed by the very slippery facility of his verse into
empty sounds from which the sense seemed to have
evaporated. Shenstone, sweet singer as he was, fell
sometimes a victim to the same vice. We know,
on the other hand, that a man, strongly moved by
high and noble thoughts, and ardent to set them
before men, may become more eager to give forth
his thoughts than anxious to cultivate niceties
and beauties of expression. We can reverence
the strong and the glowing genius of Browning,
who was ready to forego-shall we say ?-the form
of his art, if he could only reach the heart of those
to whom he sang. But with Tennyson there was
a marvellous combination of these powers; with
freedom of verse there was also a determination to
maintain the substance of his thoughts, and he
combined them together with that determined and
happy art which made his song sweet to the ear,
and helpful to the mind.
There are some who have said that in his case
é
14
THE MESSAGE OF TENNYSON
I
overcarefulness was mistaken for perfection.
know not it may be true that a conscientious worker
may be betrayed into over-carefulness, but I would
rather honour my art by over-carefulness than dis-
honour it by slovenliness! Surely it is one
of the things which we, in this hurried generation,
need to learn that if we would do a thing we
must strive to do it nobly and well and with
all our might; and that, at least, Tennyson has
taught us. Dante used to say that he never once
made use of a single word which did not express
his thought, even though it was a word which
would serve his rhyme. Tennyson said he never
employed a single word, even though it expressed
his thought, unless he had weighed it for its
musical power, and its fitness in the line where it
was to take its place. There is in this not merely
the carefulness, but the conscientiousness of the
artist, and the result of it is that in his work
there is vitality. His words are like hands which
grasp the thoughts, and give them to you clearly
and without mistake; his words are like stones,
not merely chosen for their size and fitness,
but also for the harmony of their hue, and of
their relation to the other stones in which they are
to be fitted. And thus he is the pattern of one
who loved the truth he had to tell and would
not send her forth in mean and slovenly array;
THE MESSAGE OF TENNYSON
15
but he arrayed her right royally, and apparelled her
with splendour because he reverenced her so well.
Like the knight, Gareth, of whom he sang,
he bowed himself
With all obedience—
(if I may alter the line)-
to his art, and wrought
All kind of service with such noble ease
As graced the lowliest act in doing it.
And in this he set the example to us to reverence
the work we have to do. In an age in which we
are often content with things which we admit to be
shabby and shoddy, when there is abroad an eager
spirit that seeks to give the least and gain the most,
when we are tempted to say that because of the
over-pressure of our tasks anything will do for the
purpose, it is a great and stimulating influence to
have had one living among us who showed, down to
the minutest details and departments of his craft,
that high conscientiousness, that reverence for his
art, which like wisdom is justified of her children.
He dwelt apart, believing that he could thus the
more thoroughly devote himself to the art which
was his mistress. In that devoted life there came
moments when bard-like he descended amongst us
with his harp in hand, and whenever he came we
gathered round him to hear the songs which he
sung, for we knew that he had brooded over his
16
THE MESSAGE OF TENNYSON
song, and weighed well his words, and therefore,
when he sang, men listened. Thus did he bring
the powers of his life and the gifts of his craft into
wondrous harmony; heart and voice broke forth in
such sweet unison, that he fitly set forth the glory of
his art.
""
But, again, I ask you to look at him in relation
to his nation and his age. It was a saying of
Schiller's that "a poet must be the son of his age,
but woe to him if he be its pupil or its favourite.
The meaning is clear: the poet must be the son of
his age-that is to say he must have real kinship
and sympathy with the thoughts, the emotions, the
stirring desires, and the rising aspirations which are
round about him. Many a man is content to live a
hundred years behind his time. Many a teacher so
confines his studies to the past, that although what
he has to say is true enough, it is not a truth which is
spoken in the language of the age in which he lives.
And thus, if a poet is to sing at all to the men to
whom God has sent him to sing, he must be in that
sense the child of his age.
Tennyson lived apart, but that living apart was
no sign of his either being unappreciative of his
age or discontented with it. He showed no bour-
geois indifference to the great movements of the
day. He knew well that provincialism was a narrow
and destructive thing, prone to check the life
THE MESSAGE OF TENNYSON
17
which should be left free to ripen to fitness and
fulness. If it be a mistake, as unquestionably it is,
to import larger
larger considerations into the lesser
squabbles, and to make the quality of village water
to be a matter of dispute between rival parties of
blue and buff, it is no less an error to imagine that
the lesser interests of our small corner of the earth
are of co-equal importance with the great events
which are moving nations and stirring the hearts of
men all over the world. Tennyson knew that well,
and he had a scorn for those who
take the rustic murmur of their bourg
For the great wave that echoes round the world.
Therefore, when he separated himself from men he
did not banish himself from their interests.
It was
an isolation for the purposes of his craft; it was not
an alienation from the thoughts and movements of
his day. He still kept a keen eye and ready heart
for the stirring interests of his time. You have
only to recall how he sang, in his earliest songs
warning men not to fall into subjection to the
tyranny of the past. He was no vassal of the past,
but the child of his age,
his face was set forward.
ripened with the ripening thoughts of the men and
women round about him; he realised that whatever
the lavish inheritance of the past was, the future
and as a child of his age
As a child of his age he
18
THE MESSAGE OF TENNYSON
was before us, and in reverent mindfulness of it
we must do our present work. If the past was
behind us the future was before us,
For we are Ancients of the Earth,
And in the morning of the Times.
And so hope rose within him, and his early
poems gave expression to the aspirations which
lived in the hearts of men. Sixty odd years ago,
when men dreamed that wealth would no longer lie
in unused heaps, and when upon the moving spirits
of the time there dawned the hope of a coming age
of peace, then his hope rose that
Human things returning on themselves
Move onward, leading up the golden year,
and he sang:
Fly, happy, happy sails and bear the press;
Fly happy with the Mission of the Cross;
Knit land to land, and blowing heavenward,
With silks, and fruits, and spices, clear of toll,
Enrich the markets of the golden year!
So in his young life he sang, as though he
were, as he himself expressed it,
A maiden knight, to whom is given
Such hope, I know not fear.
He could sing for his age.
He could also sing
in sympathy with the national life. Look, for
THE MESSAGE OF TENNYSON
19
example, when that great event-for it was a great
event-occurred, and the youngest of us felt that
the shield had dropped from Britannia's arm for
we learned that the great duke was dead, then he
gave voice to our emotions, and the thunder of the
street and the echoes of the crying crowd were all
heard in his ode; but stern and strong above it all
was voiced the leading thought of the iron life:
Not once or twice in our rough island-story,
The path of duty was the way to glory.
Or, still later, when we knew that the blundering
at home and the blundering abroad had placed our
arms in jeopardy in the far-off cholera-stricken
Crimea, and in the midst of it our men, gallant in
the poverty of their resources, could yet strike a
blow and make it known to the world that English.
valour was not dead, then he gave voice to that
thrill of joy and that thrill of sorrow and that thrill
of triumph which ran through England when the
six hundred leaped "into the jaws of death," and
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them,
Volley'd and thunder'd.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs but to do and die!
And later, when the storm-clouds seemed to
hover round the horizon, and men's hearts were
20
THE MESSAGE OF TENNYSON
failing them for fear, and when doubt and uncer-
tainty-the worst heritage which can come into
national life-fell upon us, and in answer to the
gathering war clouds, the volunteer movement
showed that English patriotism was not dead, and
that the nation of shopkeepers could prove them-
selves worthy of their ancestors, then his song
cheered on the hundred thousand volunteers who
leaped to arms.
changes of the
to those great
But whilst thus reflecting the
national life, he was always true
and dominant traditions of English life, the love of
freedom and the reverence for order. Passionate
in their attachment to liberty, the English people
are no less passionately devoted to the spirit of
order. They combine a strong instinct for freedom
with a reverent attachment to the past, and they
can pause even in the midst of their ardours to
weigh and to judge before they act. This spirit he
reflected.
Of old sat Freedom on the heights,
The thunders breaking at her feet ;
Above her shook the starry lights,
She heard the torrents meet.
Her open eyes desire the truth
1;
The wisdom of a thousand years
Is in them. May perpetual youth
Keep dry their light from tears.
He rejoiced in all those movements which enlarge
THE MESSAGE OF TENNYSON
21
the area of English freedom, and maintain the
stability of national life,
By shaping some august decree
Which kept her throne unshaken still,
Broad-based upon her people's will,
And compass'd by the inviolate sea.
In all these things he was English with Englishmen.
But he could look beyond one land. He could
take the deepest interest in the intellectual move-
ments which were everywhere abroad,
When Science reaches forth her arms
To feel from world to world, and charms
Her secret from the latest moon.
And with all this wide-hearted sympathy he kept
alive a devotion for the domestic elements which
give grace, strength, and constancy to life, and he
showed, as you know if you have read those touch-
ing lines-some of his last-to the very end his
devotion to the pure home life of England. In his
old age he could cherish the love and renew the joy
of his youth. In his home at Aldworth the roses on
the terrace bloomed, and in their beauty and fragrance,
renewed from year to year, he saw the emblem of
the home love which dies not with the years. Thus
he was truly one with all English life, in its traditions
and its aspirations, its reverence for order, and its
passion for liberty, its sturdy industry and its love of
home; and when he sang, he gave voice to what
22
THE MESSAGE OF TENNYSON
had been already in our hearts. His muse was for
us an Æolian harp, and every movement in English
life thrilled music from his life, and we understood
that he was with us as we thought, as we fought,
and as we aspired.
But that was not all. If the poet is to be
the child of his age, it is indispensable, as Schiller
said, "that he should not be its pupil nor its
favourite," that is to say, if a man has a song to
sing at all, and it is only a song to his age, then
it will be a dying song at the best. It is not
the part of the poet to be merely the Æolian
harp, that sings only in obedience to the passing
breeze of popular feeling, and gives back there-
fore changeful and uncertain music.
The poet
must be one who descends from his height,
and his harp must be within his grasp; his fingers
must strike the strings, and his own hand must
bring forth the music. He must not only give voice
to a people's thoughts: he must have a message
for their hearts. If he is to sing to any high
and holy purpose his song must not merely
be the song of to-day, but the touch of eter-
nity must be in it. It is not enough for a man
to stand and listen to the babbles of the present,
which float up more or less melodiously to his ears,
and weave these into song, and give them
back to his contemporaries. The poet, if he is
THE MESSAGE OF TENNYSON
23
to stand in the higher rank of poets, must always
have a touch of the prophet in him; and those great
and eternal realities which are the background of
all human life, which are indispensable to it as the
source of its interpretation and its fruitfulness, must
have some place and portion in his life and in his
genius. Only the song which is consecrated by
these can attain a deathless strain.
It has been said that Tennyson was half a Pagan.
I know not how it may strike you, but any such utter-
ance appears to me unseemly. It is not wise or
right that we should imagine a man's past, allow our
fancy to probe into the depths of his own personal
convictions, and put our own interpretation upon
his utterances, and then declare to the public our
doubts. There is a reverence which is due to all
men, and not least due to those who were great and
serviceable amongst us. But what does the accusa-
tion mean? If it means that Tennyson could not
always utter his thoughts in the language which was
pleasing to some who profess and call themselves
Christians, it probably means that he did not use
the shibboleth of their sect. Further, I would
ask, does any man expect that a poet should
clothe his verses in theological form? But if some-
thing more is meant, if it is meant that there was
an aversion on his part to all dogmatic statements
of truth, then I ask you to remember that there
2.4
THE MESSAGE OF TENNYSON
are two attitudes of mind with respect to forms
of faith, which may easily be confused. It is
true that you will find phrases in Tennyson's
poems which express a distrust of strong dog-
matic forms. He loved to speak of our little
systems as being "the broken lights" of God, and
he loved to believe that God was more than they.
He was impatient, if you will, of these forms; but
there are two kinds of impatience in such matters—
and these we must distinguish. There is an im-
patience of the form of truth which is derived from
an impatience of the truth itself. There are some
men who would be impatient of any attempt to
define our spiritual or moral conceptions, for their
impatience is an impatience of all moral and spiritual
truth. But there is another impatience, and that is
the impatience of definition on the part of a man
who feels that such truths must transcend our efforts
to define them. It is the difference between your
impatience of the thing I want to say and your
impatience of the way in which I say it. They are
two distinct things. With those who are impatient
of all spiritual truth Tennyson had no sympathy
whatever; but he had a sympathy with those who
were impatient of the formal statement of truth,
only because they felt that all formal statements of
truth must of necessity fall below the greatness and
the grandeur of the truth itself. There is a reverent
THE MESSAGE OF TENNYSON
25
impatience of forms, and there is an irreverent
impatience of them. An irreverent impatience of
formal dogma means impatience of all spiritual truth;
but a reverent impatience of formal dogma may be
but the expression of the feeling that the truth must
be larger, purer, nobler than any mere human
expression or definition of it. With this latter
attitude of mind he had sympathy. He had sym-
pathy with it, and he expressed that sympathy in
song: he could understand those who seemed
to have reach'd a purer air,
Whose faith has centre everywhere,
Nor cares to fix itself to form.
He urged men to "cling to faith, beyond the forms
of faith." But while he did this he also recognised
clearly the importance and the value of definitions
of truth, and his counsel to the very man who
prided himself upon his emancipation from forms
was:
Leave thou thy sister when she prays,
Her early Heaven, her happy views;
Nor thou with shadow'd hint confuse
A life that leads melodious days.
Her faith thro' form is pure as thine,
Her hands are quicker unto good:
Oh, sacred be the flesh and blood
To which she links a truth divine!
He warned the man proud of his emancipation from
26
THE MESSAGE OF TENNYSON
formal faith, that in a world of so many confusions
he might meet with ruin,
Ev'n for want of such a type.
And we are not surprised that he should say, know-
ing how insidious are the evil influences which
gather round us,
Hold thou the good; define it well,
For fear Divine Philosophy
Should push beyond her mark and be
Procuress to the Lords of Hell.
And thus he had sympathy with those who feel
that faith is larger and nobler than form, and at
the same time he had tenderness and apprecia-
tion for those who find their faith helped by form.
May I give one illustration which comes to my
memory? On one occasion I asked him the
question; whether the three ladies whom he re-
presented as accompanying King Arthur on his
voyage were rightly interpreted to be Faith, Hope
and Charity. He answered, with a sort of touch of
natural, intellectual impatience, "They are and they
are not; I hate to be limited to these interpretations,
for the thought is always greater than this or that
immediate or special interpretation." To him, as
to so many, truth is so infinitely great that all we
can do with our poor human utterances is to try
and clothe it in such language as will make it clear
THE MESSAGE OF TENNYSON
27
to ourselves, and clear to those to whom God sends
us with a message, but meanwhile, above us and
our thoughts—above our broken lights-God in
His mercy, God in His love, God in His infinite
nature, is greater than all.
But though the Divine Power which rules us all
was to him greater than our poor thoughts, it was
no mere abstraction: it was to him an intimate near
reality—more real than the shadowy things we call
real. Nothing in his view had life or meaning apart
from God. In God alone all things and all beings
exist." The grasp of his spirit on Him was firm.
God to him was the wise and tender source of life,
the brotherly sympathy and love, the revered and
supporting power of life" My Father, and my
Brother, and my God." Prayer to him was a deep
and great reality.
More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of.
In short, if it be given to us in Christianity to be-
lieve that this world, with all its changes and
chances, its sorrows and perplexities, is yet ruled
over by fatherly love, then it was a Christian spirit
which sang a faith above sight and
trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law-
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed.
Uorm
28
THE MESSAGE OF TENNYSON
If it be given to us in Christianity to believe that in
Christ there is to those who surrender themselves
to Him a redeeming love and influencing force, then
it was a Christian spirit which sang to the "Strong
Son of God, immortal Love":
Thou seemest human and divine,
The highest, holiest manhood, thou :
Our wills are ours, we know not how;
Our wills are ours, to make them thine.
If it be given to us in Christianity to believe that
always there is a Divine spirit which can soothe our
sorrows, stimulate our energies, and by inward help
lift us above the shocks of chance, the changes of
circumstance, and the depressions of temperament,
then it is a Christian spirit which sang :
Be near me when my light is low,
When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick
And tingle; and the heart is sick,
And all the wheels of Being slow.
There is another aspect of religious life on which
I would touch, viz., its inward spiritual struggle.
What message has Tennyson concerning that side
of religion, in which man is to be considered as
a being struggling towards a better and nobler
sort of life? He shows us how intensely he realized
the significance of the spiritual conflict which goes
on in human hearts. He expressed a noble scorn
THE MESSAGE OF TENNYSON
29
of those who let themselves be swept away by the
wild impulses of their baser nature.
I envy not the beast that takes
His license in the field of time,
Unfetter'd by the sense of crime,
To whom a conscience never wakes.
His conception was that our natures were capable
of elevation and purification: the body was given to
us by God to be made a pure and a nobler habitation
-a temple meet for Him; the body is the instru-
ment which represents us here in Time, but is
destined to be, after all, mastered by the power of
the Spirit within us, and
The poor rib-grated dungeon of the holy human ghost
Will vanish and give place to the beauty which endures.
The purpose of our life is achieved in the victory
over the lower nature, the emancipation of the
higher, and the spiritualisation of all the powers of
life! This finds expression in one of his latest.
poems. He pictures old age with its infirmities:
the slow creeping years have brought their portion
of pain: life seems to be going out in needless tor-
ment. Age cries out against the bitterness of a lot
which after the experience of the capacity for joy
has brought man so low; and the answer comes :
Done for thee! Starved the wild beast that was linked to thee
eighty years back.
30
THE MESSAGE OF TENNYSON
The voice cries courage-
Hold the sceptre, human soul, and rule thy province of
the brute.
The struggle has been a struggle upwards; the
purpose of life and its pains was the spiritualisation
of man's thoughts and powers. It led to a state
which man would acknowledge was rest, but not the
rest of stagnation. The voice of complaint would
realise and rejoice in peace when the former things
were passed away:
I hear no yelp of the beast, and man is quiet at last,
As he stands on the heights of his life with a glimpse of the
height that is higher.
of
But this elevation is not reached without the help
of One greater than ourselves. The progress
spiritual life is not by solitary human effort, nor
by the blind force of mere material nature: it is by
the distinct, consciously-recognised help of Him
who is not far from any one of us. It is a help to
which faith can guide us; for in the conflict of life
faith is essential :
We have but faith, we cannot know.
Once when walking and speaking of some of the
dark things of life, he suddenly stopped and said.
"After all, the strongest thing is Faith." Faith
THE MESSAGE OF TENNYSON
31
bids us look upward and lay hold of the power which
is helping us, Faith can
reach a hand through time and catch
The far off interest of tears.
Faith can transmute the pain of life into profit.
The circumstances of life may be made a ministry
of moral good; so he prayed
Steel me with patience, soften me with grief.
He knew that the forces which seemed adverse to
man might yet be cooperant to his higher good by
moulding him to nobler and godlike character.
And chiefest then he prayed for faith, that power
of spiritual alchemy which can turn life's most
unpromising things to gold.
Let blow the trumpet strongly while I pray
Till this embattled wall of unbelief,
My prison, not my fortress, fall away.
He might be called to face dark things, and
to set forth at last upon the great unknown and
untravelled sea beyond, but the Eternal Love
is near at all times, and however shadowy it
may be to us in the darkness, it would not always
be in shadow. Somewhere hereafter it would
greet him with a smile. So he looked forward
to death as bringing the revelation of the love
which guided in all the difficult ways of life;
and in the poem which he desired should always
32
THE MESSAGE OF TENNYSON
be printed as the last in his works, he sang-surely
it is impossible to mistake his meaning-
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.
One word, and I have done. I have tried to
speak of the harmony of his life, the harmony which
drew his great energy, his great gifts, his intellectual
powers to one great object. The sympathies of
his nature responded to the movements of his day
and the feelings of his countrymen. With him also
was the larger thought of that Divine life in which
we all live. All these-his personal endowments,
his sympathetic and patriotic heart, his profound
recognition of the spiritual and eternal powers of
existence blended together and found expression in
his magic gift of song, and ever he strove that the
song which he sang should be sweet and pure,
strong and ennobling to the minds of men! The
lesson is clear. Our lives-how many of them!—
are but as scattered, ineffective things; our passions
carry us one way, our wills another, our moral sense
grows enfeebled, we hesitate, we vacillate, and then
our life, which might have been filled with some
hints of a Divine glory, becomes strengthless
and inglorious. Gather all your powers together!
-this is the lesson-discipline and harmonise
them! Do not let your intellect be, as it were,
given up to
to one thing, your moral
moral sense to
THE MESSAGE OF TENNYSON
33
another, your emotions to another! Bring them all
into harmony. Consecrate all to some worthy
aim. Without this, intellectual effort is a barren
pastime, moral power useless as a rudder in a
motionless ship, emotional force but the tedious beat
of the dull waves of a tideless sea. But when one
great and noble purpose dominates the life, then all
powers find their fitting use and fall into their proper
place. Take up your life, and exert the privilege
and power of manhood, and rule in the kingdom
of your own being. Let your mind be occupied
with what is noble and true. Let your will be
consecrated to what is right and good. Let
your passions and your emotions be under the
guidance of what is pure.
And that this may be
so, dedicate your life to the duty which God sets
before you; then your life will not give forth doubt-
ful and discordant notes; but
mind and soul according well
May make one music!
What we need is the inspiration of some fresh and
masterful devotion. Where shall we find such an
inspiration, unless it be in the spirit of Christ?
Where His spirit dwells there comes the inspiration
of a nobler ambition for the use of life, and desires
of a purer character take possession of the soul. We
desire to be like to Him, and to serve man in our
34
THE MESSAGE OF TENNYSON
day and generation. Let this spirit have sway,
and your life, if not your muse, will give forth song.
In your home, in your business, in your civic
duties, there will be a harmony and a consecrating
presence, and
God shall strike a glory through your days.
RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BUNGAY

Gaylord
SPEEDY BINDER
Syracuse, N. Y.
Stockton, Calif.

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
3 9015 01126 8409
DO NOT REMOVE
OR
MUTILATE CARD
•

:
}