Letters to His Friends Part 16

I think you are right, that education must now include instruction in imperial ideas--in our relations with that larger social life which is dawning upon us--a step towards a still larger social life to be realised in the brotherhood of nations.

_To F. J. C._

Christ's College, Cambridge: February 1, 1903.

I am slow to suggest to another man that what seems bad luck is in reality the voice of G.o.d making itself felt in his busy life, calling him to fuller sacrifice. But I am sure that we are right when we interpret it {180} thus for ourselves. I share your wish for 'some really strong man' to come as a prophet and read the writing on the wall, and tell us 'what it all means.' Yet the absence of human help is not accidental.

It must be designed, in order that we may learn to fall back on the everlasting arms--to find by experience that the unseen is more real than the seen.

There is an arm that never tires When human strength gives way.

I like that phrase, 'worthy to suffer.' It is to those whom G.o.d loves best and most that He gives--as He gave to His Son--the chance of suffering. Sympathy, strength, reality--these are some of its fruits for those who allow them to grow. 'He cannot be My disciple.' I can't help sometimes thinking of these words. Unless the man is prepared to make sacrifice the basis of his life, he _cannot_ be Christ's disciple. I don't think we always realise the 'trans-valuation of values' found in Christ's teaching. 'Blessed are the poor--the hungry. He that would save his life shall lose it. He that loseth, saveth. He that would be greatest shall be least. It is more blessed to give than to receive.'

As I think over such statements as these, I find that I have again and again to revise, as it were, my moral arithmetic--to change my standards, to revise my ideas of great and little, happiness and misery, importance and insignificance.

I am sure that nothing but the highest will satisfy you. G.o.d has given you singular powers of influence and of attracting others. He will demand an account {181} of those powers. You know Matthew Arnold's lines on his father. I believe the day will come when men will say like words of you.

But thou would'st not _alone_ Be saved, my father! alone Conquer and come to thy goal, Leaving the rest in the wild. . . .

Therefore to thee it was given Many to save with thyself.

That is what I want you to be--a tower of strength--strength perfected, it may be, in weakness--weakness forcing you to despair of self, and find the Rock of Ages. You have been so much to me, and helped me so often, that I feel you must be born to help others as well. And this quiet time, it may be that G.o.d is using it to call you closer to Himself, to teach you to revise your 'values,' to show you a new fund of strength.

Our wills are ours, we know not how, Our wills are ours, to make them Thine.

You must--literally must--let His will overpower your will. Nothing but complete sacrifice will satisfy you or Him, and I believe in you profoundly. I am sure that, whatever be the ghastly struggle, you will go through with it, and find your strength in Him. I pray for you.

_To his mother._

Cambridge; March 15, 1903.

The term is almost over . . . I am enjoying a quiet Sunday. What a blessing these Sundays are {182} to us--a foretaste of a fuller life of service and wors.h.i.+p hereafter! I have been thinking lately with comfort of the quiet perpetual work of the Holy Spirit, silently but surely leading us on to higher things--comforting, correcting, guiding. It gives ground for hope in dealing with men, this knowledge that there is One who perfects what we feebly struggle to begin, who watches over men with a love that will not let them go. We are not alone in our work; we have omnipotence and illimitable wisdom on our side, forwarding our efforts. When I consider what the Spirit has accomplished in my own life, I have large hope for others. The argument from personal experience is singularly convincing. 'The fellows.h.i.+p of the Holy Ghost'--it is He who unites men and interprets them one to the other. It is He who gives spirit and life to our words.

_To H. J. B._

Bexley House, Cromer: March 31, 1903.

It was good of you to send me that card from Florence. You don't know how glad it made me. To know that you were thinking of me was a strength to me. Your love for me comes as a perpetual surprise and inspiration.

I feel a brute compared with you, but the knowledge that you care for me more than you do for most men makes me feel that I must try to be good.

'In Italy of the fifteenth century renaissance we see in strange confusion all that we love in art, and all that we loathe in man!' Greek history was short compared {183} with the Hebrew: I suppose because intellectual and artistic ideals are more easily realised than ethical and religious. It takes time to make a saint. It is part of the discipline of life to find the two sets of ideas apparently antagonistic.

There is a higher unity in which they are blended--in G.o.d Himself. It must be right to follow the dictates of conscience when it bids us lose our soul if we would gain it. We cannot trust G.o.d too much. If we forget our self, He will see that our truest self is ultimately realised.

I can't express myself well, for I have just finished a spell of hard work. I have sent away my tripos papers to-night. I am going up to Edinburgh on Friday or Sat.u.r.day. I fear I shall not see you until April 21. Will you tell Armitage that I will, if convenient to him, sleep at Westminster that night instead of going straight to Cambridge? The hopelessness of ever showing my grat.i.tude to you or of ever making you realise how much I love you oppresses me. I don't know what I should do if I had not One Higher than I am to confide in--if I could not leave you in His hands--if I could not gain strength and life for you by appealing to Him.

O brother, if my faith is vain, If hopes like these betray, Pray for me, that I too may gain The sure and safer way.

And Thou, O G.o.d, by whom are seen Thy creatures as they be, Forgive me if too close I lean My human heart on Thee!

{184} I lean closer and closer as life goes on. I feel that our hope lies in despair--despair of self. The vessels which contain the treasure are, as to-night's lesson says, earthen, 'that the excess of the power may be G.o.d's and not from us.' And there is a power, there is a life working in us. It is the quiet, sane, constant work of the Spirit in and upon our spirit, that never hastes and never tires: which gives me comfort for you, for myself, for all of us. The same life that is at work in the hedge across the road is in us, only in us it attains full self-consciousness and freedom. We can deliberately use it or refuse it.

Forgive the length of the letter. But I felt so tired that I thought it would do me good to write to you, selfish brute that I am.

I expect you enjoyed your time in Italy immensely. I should have liked to be with you. I wonder if ever we shall be there together? Some day we shall be in a world where the barriers of s.p.a.ce are broken down: 'There shall be no more sea.' Yet it seems to me that we have not altogether to wait for that other world. They are half broken down already; and if we had faith as a grain of mustard seed, we should realise the meaning of a unity deeper than any special or temporal bond.

If we fail to realise its meaning now, shall we realise it then? Is not life here a training for life hereafter? If we learn nothing in this school, we shall not be able to take our places in that school of 'broader love.' The best part in me does not complain. I thank G.o.d for His thoughtful goodness in bringing you near to me. I thank Him for the mystery of life, which enables me to realise that {185} Power 'which lives not in the light alone, But in the darkness and the light.' I become more and more inclined to thank Him as I see Him more clearly.

_To F. S. H. on his accepting the post of chaplain at the Royal Naval College, Osborne._

Cambridge: April 30, 1903.

I am satisfied with your decision. I thought over the matter, but I could not see my way quite clearly to say anything more definite, so I did not write again. Don't think that my silence was due to slackness.

I did what I thought was better than writing. I spent an hour in praying over the matter. Now that the matter is settled I can tell you what a keen pleasure it is to me to have my dear old ---- near me in England,[1]

and doing a piece of work which is full of hope and joy. I would not say this before, because I did not wish to influence your decision by private considerations. Get some quiet time for prayer before September 1, that when you go to Osborne you may go _en pleromati eulogias Christou_ ('filled full with the blessing of Christ'). I feel increasingly the need of such times to learn to walk by faith without stumbling, and to accustom myself to the atmosphere of faith, to see things as they appear to a man who has faith 'as a grain of mustard seed.'

[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrases in the above paragraph were transliterated as follows: _en_--epsilon, nu; _pleromati_--pi, lambda, eta, rho, omega, mu, alpha, tau, iota; _eulogias_--epsilon, upsilon, lambda, omicron, gamma, iota, alpha, final sigma; _Christou_--Chi, rho, iota, sigma, tau, omicron, upsilon]

Westcott records a visit (see 'Life,' i. 249) to his old schoolmaster, Bishop Prince Lee. '"People quote various words of the Lord," said the Bishop, "as containing the sum of the Gospel--the Lord's Prayer, {186} the Sermon on the Mount, and the like; to me the essence of the Gospel is in simpler and shorter terms: _me phobou, monon pisteue_.[2] Ah!

Westcott, mark that _monon_," and his eyes were filled with tears as he spoke.' Ah! S----, mark that _monon_! . . . G.o.d bless you in your new work and make you a blessing to others as you have been to me.

[1] He had been offered work in South Africa.

[2] 'Be not afraid, only believe.'

[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrases in the above paragraph were transliterated as follows: _me_--mu, eta; _phobou_--phi, omicron, beta, omicron, upsilon; _monon_--mu, omicron, nu, omicron, nu; _pisteue_--pi, iota, sigma, tau, epsilon, upsilon, epsilon]

_To J. K._

_St. Thomas's Home, St. Thomas's Hospital: August 28, 1903._

. . . I am most grateful for your kind words, though I know full well how little it is that I have done for you. We clergymen so often seem to be working in the dark. There are no clear results to show, as _e.g._ a doctor can comfort himself with, when he has visibly cured a patient.

And I for one am too easily inclined to despair, and to wonder whether the work is not in vain. But 'trust is truer than our fears.' Yet it does me good when I feel I have done anything, however tiny, for a man.

After all, results are best left in G.o.d's hand. He gives us enough to help us the next step onward, but not enough to exalt us, and to make us think we can do anything without His a.s.sistance. Work 'in the Lord'

cannot be in vain.

I am glad you have been reading Bishop Westcott's life. He was a man of G.o.d, and his life is an inspiration, and a prophecy of what our life may--nay, some day--will be. . . . I like that pa.s.sage {187} when he goes to see his old schoolmaster, Bishop Prince Lee, who tells him with tears in his eyes that to his mind the whole Gospel message is summed up in the words '_me phobou, monon pisteue_.'

[Transcriber's note: see the previous letter for transliteration notes on the above Greek phrase.]

_To a friend who had been an international athlete._

St. Thomas's Home: September 5, 1903.