True Manliness

It happened to be a volume of Plato, and opened of its own accord in the “Apology.” He glanced at a few lines. What a flood of memories they called up! This was almost the last book he had read at school; and teacher, and friends, and lofty oak-shelved library stood out before him at once. Then the blunders that he himself and others had made rushed through his mind, and he almost burst into a laugh as he wheeled his chair round to the window, and began reading where he had opened, encouraging every thought of the old times when he first read that marvellous defence, and throwing himself back into them with all his might. And still, as he read, forgotten words of wise comment, and strange thoughts of wonder and longing, came back to him. The great truth which he had been led to the brink of in those early days rose in all its awe and all its attractiveness before him. He leant back in his chair, and gave himself up to his thought; and how strangely that thought bore on the struggle which had been raging in him of late; how an answer seemed to be trembling to come out of it to all the cries, now defiant, now plaintive, which had gone out of his heart in this time of trouble! For his thought was of that spirit, distinct from himself, and yet communing with his inmost soul, always dwelling in him, knowing him better than he knew himself, never misleading him, always leading him to light and truth, of which the old philosopher spoke. “The old heathen, Socrates, did actually believe that – there can be no question about it;” he thought, “Has not the testimony of the best men through these two thousand years borne witness that he was right – that he did not believe a lie! That was what we were told. Surely I don’t mistake! Were we not told, too, or did I dream it, that what was true for him is true for every man – for me? That there is a spirit dwelling in me, striving with me, ready to lead me into all truth if I will submit to his guidance?

“Ah! submit, submit, there’s the rub! Give yourself up to his guidance! Throw up the reins, and say you’ve made a mess of it. Well, why not? Haven’t I made a mess of it? Am I fit to hold the reins?

“Not I,” – he got up and began walking about his rooms – “I give it up.”

“Give it up!” he went on presently; “yes, but to whom? Not to the dæmon, spirit, whatever it was, who took up his abode in the old Athenian – at least, so he said, and so I believe. No, no! Two thousand years and all that they have seen have not passed over the world to leave us just where he was left. We want no dæmons or spirits. And yet the old heathen was guided right, and what can a man want more? and who ever wanted guidance more than I now – here – in this room – at this minute? I give up the reins; who will take them?” And so there came on him one of those seasons when a man’s thoughts cannot be followed in words. A sense of awe came upon him, and over him, and wrapped him round; awe at a presence of which he was becoming suddenly conscious, into which he seemed to have wandered, and yet which he felt must have been there, around him, in his own heart and soul, though he knew it not. There was hope and longing in his heart mingling with the fear of that presence, but withal the old reckless and daring feeling which he knew so well, still bubbling up untamed, untamable it seemed to him.

CVIII

Men and women occupied with the common work of life – who are earning their bread in the sweat of their brows, and marrying, and bringing up children, and struggling, and sinning, and repenting – feel that certain questions which school-men are discussing are somehow their questions. Not indeed in form, for not one in a thousand of the persons whose minds are thus disturbed care to make themselves acquainted with the forms and modes of theological controversies. If they try to do so, they soon throw them aside with impatience. They feel, “No, it is not this. We care not what may be said about ideology, or multitudinism, or evidential views, or cogenogonies. At the bottom of all this we suspect – nay, we know – there is a deeper strife, a strife about the very foundations of faith and human life. We want to know from you learned persons, whether (as we have been told from our infancy) there is a faith for mankind, for us as well as for you, for the millions of our own countrymen, and in all Christian and heathen lands, who find living their lives a sore business, and have need of all the light they can get to help them.”

It cannot be denied. The sooner we face the fact, the better. This is the question, and it has to be answered now, by us living Englishmen and Englishwomen; the deepest question which man has to do with, and yet – or rather, therefore – one which every toiling man must grapple with, for the sake of his own honesty, of his own life.

CIX

For many years I have been thrown very much into the society of young men of all ranks. I spend a great part of my time with them, I like being with them, and I think they like being with me. I know well, therefore, how rare anything like a living faith – a faith in and by which you can live, and for which you would die – is amongst them. I know that it is becoming rarer every day. I find it every day more difficult to get them to speak on the subject: they will not do so unless you drive them to it.

I feel deeply that for the sake of England they must be driven to it, and therefore that it is the bounden duty of every man who has any faith himself, and who has a chance of being listened to by them, to speak out manfully what he has to say, concealing nothing, disguising nothing, and leaving the issue to God.

CX

That which has been called the “negative theology,” has been spreading rapidly these last few years, though for the most part silently. In the first instance it may have been simply “a recoil from some of the doctrines which are to be heard at church and chapel; a distrust of the old arguments for, or proofs of, a miraculous revelation; and a misgiving as to the authority, or extent of the authority of the Scriptures.” But as was sure to be the case, the “negative theology” could not stop, and has not stopped here. Men who have come across these recoils, distrusts, misgivings, will soon find, if they are honest and resolute with themselves, that there is another doubt underlying all these, a doubt which they may turn from in horror when it is first whispered in their hearts, but which will come back again and again. That doubt is whether there is a God at all, or rather, whether a living, personal God, thinking, acting, and ruling in this world in which we are, has ever revealed Himself to man.

This is the one question of our time, and of all times; upon the answer which nations or men can give to it hang life and death… One cannot stand upon a simple negation. The world is going on turning as it used to do, night succeeding day and generation generation; nations are waking into life, or falling into bondage; there is a deal of wonderful work of one sort or another going on in it, and you and I in our little corner have our own share of work to get done as well as we can. If you put out my old light, some light or other I must have, and you would wish me to have. What is it to be?

You will answer, probably, that I have touched the heart of the matter in putting my question. Night follows day, and generation, generation. All things are founded on a “permanent order,” “self-sustaining and self-evolving powers pervade all nature.” Of this order and these powers we are getting to know more every day; when we know them perfectly, man, the colossal man, will have reached the highest development of which he is capable. We need not trouble ourselves about breaking them, or submitting to them; some of you would add, for we cannot either break them or submit to them. They will fulfil themselves. It is they, these great generalizations, which are alone acting in, and ruling the world. We, however eccentric our actions may be, however we may pride ourselves on willing and working, are only simple links in the chain. A general law of average orders the unruly wills and affections of sinful men.

But here I must ask, on what is this permanent order, on what are these laws which you tell me of, founded? I acknowledge a permanent order, physical laws, as fully as you can, but believe them to be expressions of a living and a righteous will; I believe a holy and true God to be behind them, therefore I can sit down humbly, and try to understand them, and when I understand, to obey. Are the permanent order, the laws you speak of, founded on a will? If so, on whose will? If on the will of a God, of what God? Of a God who has revealed His character, His purpose, Himself, to you? If so, where, how, when?

But if you tell me that these laws, this order, are not founded on any living will, or that you do not know that they are, then I say you are holding out to me “an iron rule which guides to nothing and ends in nothing – which may be possible to the logical understanding, but is not possible to the spirit of man” – and you are telling me, since worship is a necessity of my being, to worship that. In the name and in the strength of a man, and a man’s will I utterly reject and defy your dead laws, for dead they must be. They may grind me to powder, but I have that in me which is above them, which will own no obedience to them. Dead laws are, so far as I can see, just what you and I and all mankind have been put into this world to fight against. Call them laws of nature if you will, I do not care. Take the commonest, the most universal; is it or is it not by the law of nature that the ground brings forth briers and all sorts of noxious and useless weeds if you let it alone? If it is by the law of nature, am I to obey the law, or to dig my garden and root out the weeds? Doubtless I shall get too old to dig, and shall die, and the law will remain, and the weeds grow over my garden and over my grave, but for all that I decline to obey the law.

I see a law of death working all around me; I feel it in my own members. Is this one of your laws, a part of the “permanent order,” which is to serve me instead of the God of my fathers? If it be I mean to resist it to the last gasp. I utterly hate it. No noble or true work is done in this world except in direct defiance of it. What is to become of the physician’s work, of every effort at sanitary reform, of every attempt at civilizing and raising the poor and the degraded, if we are to sit down and submit ourselves to this law?

Am I never to build a house, out of respect to the law of gravitation? Sooner or later the law will assert itself, and my house will tumble down. Nevertheless I will conquer the law for such space as I can. In short, I will own no dead law as my master. Dead laws I will hate always, and in all places, with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my mind, and with all my strength.

CXI

We ought to welcome with all our hearts the searching scrutiny, which students and philosophers of all Christian nations, and of all shades of belief, whether Christian or not, are engaged upon, as to the facts on which our faith rests. The more thorough that scrutiny is the better should we be pleased. We may not wholly agree with the last position which the ablest investigators have laid down, that unless the truth of the history of our Lord – the facts of his life, death, resurrection, and ascension – can be proved by ordinary historical evidence, applied according to the most approved and latest methods, Christianity must be given up as not true. We know that our own certainty as to these facts does not rest on a critical historical investigation, while we rejoice that such an investigation should be made by those who have leisure, and who are competent for it. At the same time, as we also know that the methods and principles of historical investigation are constantly improving and being better understood, and that the critics of the next generation will work, in all human likelihood, at as great an advantage in this inquiry over those who are now engaged in it, as our astronomers and natural philosophers enjoy over Newton and Franklin – and as new evidence may turn up any day which may greatly modify their conclusions – we cannot suppose that there is the least chance of their settling the controversy in our time. Nor, even if we thought them likely to arrive at definite conclusions, can we consent to wait the results of their investigations, important and interesting as these will be. Granting then cheerfully, that if these facts on the study of which they are engaged are not facts – if Christ was not crucified, and did not rise from the dead, and ascend to God his father – there has been no revelation, and Christianity will infallibly go the way of all lies, either under their assaults or those of their successors – they must pardon us if even at the cost of being thought and called fools for our pains, we deliberately elect to live our lives on the contrary assumption. It is useless to tell us that we know nothing of these things, that we can know nothing until their critical examination is over; we can only say: “Examine away; but we do know something of this matter, whatever you may assert to the contrary, and, mean to live on the knowledge.”

But while we cannot suspend our judgment on the question until we know how the critics and scholars have settled it, we must do justice, before passing on, to the single-mindedness, the reverence, the resolute desire for the truth before all things, wherever the search for it may land them which characterizes many of those who are no longer of our faith, and are engaged in this inquiry, or have set it aside as hopeless, and are working at other tasks. The great advance of natural science within the last few years, and the devotion with which many of our ablest and best men are throwing themselves into this study, are clearing the air in all the higher branches of human thought and making possible a nation, and in the end a world, of truthful men – that blessedest result of all the strange conflicts and problems of the age, which the wisest men have foreseen in their most hopeful moods. In this grand movement even those who are nominally, and believe themselves to be really, against us, are for us: all at least who are truthful and patient workers. For them, too, the spirit of all truth, and patience, and wisdom is leading; and their strivings and victories – aye, and their backslidings and reverses – are making clearer day by day that revelation of the kingdom of God in nature, through which it would seem that our generation, and those which are to follow us, will be led back again to that higher revelation of the kingdom of God in man.

The ideal American, as he has been painted for us of late, is a man who has shaken off the yoke of definite creeds, while retaining their moral essence, and finds the highest sanctions needed for the conduct of human life in experience tempered by common sense. Franklin, for instance, is generally supposed to have reached this ideal by anticipation, and there is a half-truth in the supposition. But whoever will study this great master of practical life will acknowledge that it is only superficially true, and that if he never lifts us above the earth or beyond the dominion of experience and common sense, he retained himself a strong hold on the invisible which underlies it, and would have been the first to acknowledge that it was this which enabled him to control the accidents of birth, education, and position, and to earn the eternal gratitude and reverence of the great nation over whose birth he watched so wisely, and whose character he did so much to form.

CXII

“From one thing to another,” said Tom, “they got to cathedrals, and one of them called St. Paul’s ‘a disgrace to a Christian city.’ I couldn’t stand that, you know. I was always bred to respect St. Paul’s; weren’t you?”

“My education in that line was neglected,” said Hardy, gravely. “And so you took up the cudgels for St. Paul’s?”

“Yes, I plumped out that St. Paul’s was the finest cathedral in England. You’d have thought I had said that lying was one of the cardinal virtues – one or two just treated me to a sort of pitying sneer, but my neighbors were down upon me with a vengeance. I stuck to my text though, and they drove me into saying I liked the Ratcliffe more than any building in Oxford; which I don’t believe I do, now I come to think of it. So when they couldn’t get me to budge for their talk, they took to telling me that everybody who knew anything about church architecture was against me – of course meaning that I knew nothing about it – for the matter of that, I don’t mean to say that I do.” Tom paused; it had suddenly occurred to him that there might be some reason in the rough handling he had got.

“But what did you say to the authorities?” said Hardy, who was greatly amused.

“Said I didn’t care a straw for them,” said Tom; “there was no right or wrong in the matter, and I had as good a right to my opinion as Pugin – or whatever his name is – and the rest.”

“What heresy!” said Hardy, laughing; “you caught it for that, I suppose?”

“Didn’t I! They made such a noise over it, that the men at the other end of the table stopped talking (they were all freshmen at our end), and when they found what was up, one of the older ones took me in hand, and I got a lecture about the middle ages, and the monks. I said I thought England was well rid of the monks; and then we got on to Protestantism, and fasting, and apostolic succession, and passive obedience, and I don’t know what all! I only know I was tired enough of it before coffee came; but I couldn’t go, you know, with all of them on me at once, could I?”

“Of course not; you were like the six thousand unconquerable British infantry at Albuera. You held your position by sheer fighting, suffering fearful loss.”

“Well,” said Tom, laughing, for he had talked himself into good humor again. “I dare say I talked a deal of nonsense; and, when I come to think it over, a good deal of what some of them said had something in it. I should like to hear it again quietly; but there were others sneering and giving themselves airs, and that puts a fellow’s back up.”

“Yes,” said Hardy, “a good many of the weakest and vainest men who come up take to this sort of thing now. They can do nothing themselves, and get a sort of platform by going in for the High Church business from which to look down on their neighbors.”

“That’s just what I thought,” said Tom; “they tried to push mother Church, mother Church, down my throat at every turn. I’m as fond of the Church as any of them, but I don’t want to be jumping up on her back every minute, like a sickly chicken getting on the old hen’s back to warm its feet whenever the ground is cold, and fancying himself taller than all the rest of the brood.”

CXIII

I have spoken of that which I cannot believe; let me speak to you now of that which I do believe, of that which I hold to be a faith, the faith, the only faith for mankind. Do not turn from it because it seems to be egotistic. I can only speak for myself, for what I know in my own heart and conscience. While I keep to this, I can speak positively, and I wish above all things to speak positively.

I was bred as a child and as a boy to look upon Christ as the true and rightful King and Head of our race, the Son of God and the Son of man. When I came to think for myself I found the want, the longing for a perfectly righteous king and head, the deepest of which I was conscious – for a being in whom I could rest, who was in perfect sympathy with me and all men. “Like as the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so longeth my soul after thee, O God. My soul is athirst for God, yea, even for the living God,” – these, and the like sayings of the Psalmist, began to have a meaning for me.

Then the teaching which had sunk into me unconsciously rose up and seemed to meet this longing. If that teaching were true, here was He for whom I was in search. I turned to the records of His life and death. I read and considered as well as I could, the character of Christ, what he said of himself and his work; his teachings, his acts, his sufferings. Then I found that this was indeed He. Here was the Head, the King, for whom I had longed. The more I read and thought the more absolutely sure I became of it. This is He. I wanted no other then, I have never wanted another since. Him I can look up to and acknowledge with the most perfect loyalty. He satisfies me wholly. There is no recorded thought, word or deed of his that I would wish to change – that I do not recognize and rejoice in as those of my rightful and righteous King and Head. He has claimed for me, for you, for every man, all that we can ask for or dream of, for He has claimed every one of us for his soldiers and brethren, the acknowledged children of his and our Father and God.

But this loyalty I could never have rendered, no man can ever render, I believe, except to a Son of man. He must be perfect man as well as perfect God to satisfy us – must have dwelt in a body like ours, have felt our sorrows, pains, temptations, weaknesses. He was incarnate by the Spirit of God of the Virgin. In this way I can see how he was indeed perfect God and perfect Man. I can conceive of no other in which he could have been so. The Incarnation is for me the support of all personal holiness, and the key to human history.

What was Christ’s work on earth? He came to make manifest, to make clear to us, the will and nature of this Father, our God. He made that will and nature clear to us as the perfectly loving and long-suffering and righteous will and nature. He came to lead us men, his brethren, back into perfect understanding of and submission to that will – to make us at one with it; and this he did triumphantly by his own perfect obedience to that will, by sacrificing himself even to death for us, because it was the will of his and our Father that he should give himself up wholly and unreservedly; thus, by his one sacrifice, redeeming us and leaving us an example that we too should sacrifice ourselves to Him for our brethren. Thus I believe in the Atonement.

CXIV

Christ was not only revealed to those who saw him here. He did not only go about doing his Father’s will here on earth for thirty-three years, eighteen hundred years ago, and then leave us. Had this been so, he would certainly in one sense have been revealed, in the only sense in which some orthodox writers seem to teach that he has been revealed. He would have been revealed to certain men, at a certain time, in history, and to us in the accounts which we have of him in the Gospels, through which accounts only we should have had to gain our knowledge of him, judging of such accounts by our own fallible understandings. But He said, “I will be with you always, even to the end of the world.” “I will send my Spirit into your hearts to testify of me;” and He has fulfilled his promise. He is revealed, not in the Bible, not in history, not in or to some men at a certain time, or to a man here and there, but in the heart of you, and of me, and of every man and woman who is now, or ever has been, on this earth. His Spirit is in each of us, striving with us, cheering us, guiding us, strengthening us. At any moment in the lives of any one of us we may prove the fact for ourselves; we may give ourselves up to his guidance, and He will accept the trust, and guide us into the knowledge of God, and of all truth. From this knowledge, (more certain to me than any other, of which I am ten thousand times more sure than I am that Queen Victoria is reigning in England, that I am writing with this pen at this table,) if I could see no other manifestation of Christ in creation, I believe in the Trinity in Unity, the name on which all things in heaven and earth stand, which meets and satisfies the deepest needs and longings of my soul.

The knowledge of this name, of these truths, has come to me, and to all men, in one sense, specially and directly through the Scriptures. I believe that God has given us these Scriptures, this Bible, to instruct us in these the highest of all truths. Therefore I reverence this Bible as I reverence no other book; but I reverence it because it speaks of him, and his dealings with us. The Bible has no charm or power of its own. It may become a chain round men’s necks, an idol in the throne of God, to men who will worship the book, and not Him of whom the book speaks. There are many signs that this is, or is fast becoming, the case with us; but it is our fault, and not the Bible’s fault. We persist in reading our own narrowness and idolatry into it, instead of hearing what it really is saying to us.