We had to face the trials of our friends, and we had to face death. I do not say for an instant that we had any effectual reply to these great arguments against us. We never so much as sought for one, knowing how all men had sought and failed. But we were able to say there is some compensation, that there is another side, and this is all that man can say. No theory of the world is possible. The storm, the rain slowly rotting the harvest, children sickening in cellars are obvious; but equally obvious are an evening in June, the delight of men and women in one another, in music, and in the exercise of thought. There can surely be no question that the sum of satisfaction is increasing, not merely in the gross but for each human being, as the earth from which we sprang is being worked out of the race, and a higher type is being developed. I may observe, too, that although it is usually supposed, it is erroneously supposed, that it is pure doubt which disturbs or depresses us. Simple suspense is in fact very rare, for there are few persons so constituted as to be able to remain in it. It is dogmatism under the cloak of doubt which pulls us down. It is the dogmatism of death, for example, which we have to avoid. The open grave is dogmatic, and we say “that man has gone,” but this is as much a transgression of the limits of certitude as if we were to say “he is an angel in bliss.” The proper attitude, the attitude enjoined by the severest exercise of the reason is, I do not know; and in this there is an element of hope, now rising and now falling, but always sufficient to prevent that blank despair which we must feel if we consider it as settled that when we lie down under the grass there is an absolute end.
The provision in nature of infinity ever present to us is an immense help. No man can look up to the stars at night and reflect upon what lies behind them without feeling that the tyranny of the senses is loosened, and the tyranny, too, of the conclusions of his logic. The beyond and the beyond, let us turn it over as we may, let us consider it as a child considers it, or by the light of the newest philosophy, is a constant, visible warning not to make our minds the measure of the universe. Underneath the stars what dreams, what conjectures arise, shadowy enough, it is true; but one thing we cannot help believing as irresistibly as if by geometrical deduction—that the sphere of that understanding of ours, whose function it seems to be to imprison us, is limited.
Going through a churchyard one afternoon I noticed that nearly all the people who were buried there, if the inscriptions on the tombstones might be taken to represent the thoughts of the departed when they were alive, had been intent solely on their own personal salvation. The question with them all seemed to have been, shall I go to heaven? Considering the tremendous difference between heaven and hell in the popular imagination, it was very natural that these poor creatures should be anxious above everything to know whether they would be in hell or heaven forever. Surely, however, this is not the highest frame of mind, nor is it one to be encouraged. I would rather do all I can to get out of it, and to draw others out of it too. Our aim ought not so much to be the salvation of this poor petty self, but of that in me which alone makes it worth while to save me; of that alone which I hope will be saved, immortal truth. The very centre of the existence of the ordinary chapel-goer and churchgoer needs to be shifted from self to what is outside self, and yet is truly self, and the sole truth of self. If the truth lives, we live, and if it dies, we are dead. Our theology stands in need of a reformation greater than that of Luther’s. It may be said that the attempt to replace the care for self in us by a care for the universal is ridiculous. Man cannot rise to that height. I do not believe it. I believe we can rise to it. Every ordinary unselfish act is a proof of the capacity to rise to it; and the mother’s denial of all care for her own happiness, if she can but make her child happy, is a sublime anticipation. It may be called an instinct, but in the course of time it will be possible to develop a wider instinct in us, so that our love for the truth shall be even maternally passionate and self-forgetting.
After all our searching it was difficult to find anything which, in the case of a man like John the waiter, for example, could be of any service to him. At his age efficient help was beyond us, and in his case the problem presented itself in its simple nakedness. What comfort is there discoverable for the wretched which is not based upon illusion? We could not tell him that all he endured was right and proper. But even to him we were able to offer something. We did all we could to soothe him. On the Sunday, at least, he was able to find some relief from his labours, and he entered into a different region. He came to see us in the afternoon and evening occasionally, and brought his boy. Father and son were pulled up out of the
