In a noisy and confused time like ours, it does seem to me that most of us have need to be reminded of, and will be the better for bearing in mind, the reserve of strength and power which lies quietly at the nation’s call, outside the whirl and din of public and fashionable life, and entirely ignored in the columns of the daily press. There are thousands of Englishmen of high culture, high courage, high principle, who are living their own quiet lives in every corner of the kingdom, from John o’ Groat’s to the Land’s-End, bringing up their families in the love of God and their neighbor, and keeping the atmosphere around them clean, and pure, and strong, by their example – men who would come to the front, and might be relied on, in any serious national crisis.

One is too apt to fancy, from the photographs of the nation’s life which one gets day by day, that the old ship has lost the ballast which has stood her in such good stead for a thousand years, and is rolling more and more helplessly, in a gale which shows no sign of abating, for her or any other national vessel, until at last she must roll over and founder. But it is not so. England is in less stress, and in better trim, than she has been in many a stiffer gale.

The real fact is, that nations, and the families of which nations are composed, make no parade or fuss over that part of their affairs which is going right. National life depends on home life, and foreign critics are inclined to take the chronicles of our Divorce Court as a test by which to judge the standard of our home-life, like the old gentleman who always spelt through the police reports to see “what people were about.” An acquaintance, however, with any average English neighborhood, or any dozen English families taken at random, ought to be sufficient to re-assure the faint-hearted, and to satisfy them that (to use the good old formula) the Lord has much work yet for the nation to do, and the national manliness and godliness left to do it all, notwithstanding superficial appearances.

LXIV

If the angel Gabriel were to come down from heaven, and head a successful rise against the most abominable and unrighteous vested interest which this poor world groans under, he would most certainly lose his character for many years, probably for centuries, not only with upholders of said vested interest, but with the respectable mass of the people whom he had delivered. They wouldn’t ask him to dinner, or let their names appear with his in the papers; they would be very careful how they spoke of him in the Palaver, or at their clubs. What can we expect, then, when we have only poor, gallant, blundering men like Kossuth, Garibaldi, Mazzini, and righteous causes do not always triumph in their hands; men who have holes enough in their armor, God knows, easy to be hit by respectabilities sitting in their lounging-chairs, and having large balances at their bankers?

But you who only want to have your heads set straight to take the right side, bear in mind that majorities, especially respectable ones, are nine times out of ten in the wrong; and that if you see a man or boy striving earnestly on the weak side, however wrong-headed or blundering he may be, you are not to go and join the cry against him. If you can’t join him and help him, and make him wiser, at any rate remember that he has found something in the world which he will fight and suffer for, which is just what you have got to do for yourselves; and so think and speak of him tenderly.

LXV

If you have not already felt it, you will assuredly feel, that your lot is cast in a world which longs for nothing so much as to succeed in shaking off all belief in anything which cannot be tested by the senses, and gauged and measured by the intellect, as the trappings of a worn-out superstition. Men have been trying, so runs the new gospel, to live by faith, and not by sight, ever since there is any record at all of their lives; and so they have had to manufacture for themselves the faiths they were to live by. What is called the life of the soul or spirit, and the life of the understanding, have been in conflict all this time, and the one has always been gaining on the other. Stronghold after stronghold has fallen till it is clear almost to demonstration that there will soon be no place left for that which was once deemed all-powerful. The spiritual life can no longer be led honestly. Man has no knowledge of the invisible on which he can build. Let him own the truth and turn to that upon which he can build safely – the world of matter, his knowledge of which is always growing; and be content with the things he can see and taste and handle. Those who are telling you still in this time that your life can and ought to be lived in daily communion with the unseen – that so only you can loyally control the visible – are either wilfully deceiving you or are dreamers and visionaries.

So the high priests of the new gospel teach, and their teaching echoes through our literature, and colors the life of the streets and markets in a thousand ways; and a mammon-ridden generation, longing to be rid of what they hope are only certain old and clumsy superstitions – which they try to believe injurious to others, and are quite sure make them uneasy in their own efforts to eat, drink, and be merry – applauds as openly as it dare, and hopes soon to see the millennium of the flesh-pots publicly declared and recognized.

Against which, wherever you may encounter them, that you may be ready and able to stand fast, is the hope and prayer of many anxious hearts; in a time, charged on every side with signs of the passing away of old things, such as have not been seen above the horizon in Christendom since Luther nailed his protest on the church-door of a German village.

LXVI

The gospel of work is a true gospel, though not the only one, or the highest, and has been preached in our day by great teachers. Listen, for instance, to the ring of it in the rugged and incisive words of one of our strongest poets:

“That low man seeks a little thing to do,
Sees it and does it.
This high man, with a great thing to pursue,
Dies ere he knows it.
That low man goes on adding one to one,
His hundreds soon hit.
This high man aiming at a million,
Misses a unit.”

This sounds like a deliberate attack on the idealist, a direct preference of low to high aims and standards, of the seen to the unseen. It is in reality only a wholesome warning against aiming at any ideal by wrong methods, though the use of the words “low” and “high” is no doubt likely to mislead. The true idealist has no quarrel with the lesson of these lines; indeed, he would be glad to see them written on one of the door-posts of every great school, if only they were ballasted on the other by George Herbert’s quaint and deeper wisdom:

“Pitch thy behavior low, thy projects high,
So shalt thou humble and magnanimous be.
Sink not in spirit: who aimeth at the sky
Shoots higher much than he that means a tree.”

Both sayings are true, and worth carrying in your minds as part of their permanent furniture, and you will find that they will live there very peaceably side by side.

LXVII

The consciousness of the darkness in one and around one brings the longing for light. And then the light dawns; through mist and fog, perhaps, but enough to pick one’s way by.

LXVIII

It is a strange, blind sort of world we are in, with lots of blind alleys, down which we go blundering in the fog after some seedy gaslight, which we take for the sun till we run against the wall at the end, and find out that the light is a gaslight, and that there’s no thoroughfare. But for all that, one does get on. You get to know the sun’s light better and better, and to keep out of the blind alleys; and I am surer and surer every day that there’s always sunlight enough for every honest fellow, and a good sound road under his feet, if he will only step out on it.

LXIX

We all have to learn, in one way or another, that neither men nor boys get second chances in this world. We all get new chances till the end of our lives, but not second chances in the same set of circumstances; and the great difference between one person and another is, how he takes hold of and uses his first chance, and how he takes his fall if it is scored against him.

LXX

You will all find, if you haven’t found it out already, that a time comes in every human friendship when you must go down into the depths of yourself, and lay bare what is there to your friend, and wait in fear for his answer. A few moments may do it; and it may be that you never do it but once. But done it must be, if the friendship is to be worth the name. You must find out what is there, at the very root and bottom of one another’s hearts; and if you are at one there, nothing on earth can, or at least ought, to sunder you.

LXXI

It is only through our mysterious human relationships – through the love and tenderness and purity of mothers and sisters and wives – through the strength and courage and wisdom of fathers and brothers and teachers – that we can come to the knowledge of Him in whom alone the love, and the tenderness, and the purity, and the strength, and the courage, and the wisdom of all these dwell for ever and ever in perfect fulness.

LXXII

Almost nightly, for years, Tom and Arthur, and by degrees East occasionally, and sometimes one, sometimes another of their friends, read a chapter of the Bible together, and talked it over afterwards. Tom was at first utterly astonished, and almost shocked, at the sort of way in which Arthur read the book and talked about the men and women whose lives are there told. The first night they happened to fall on the chapters about the famine in Egypt, and Arthur began talking about Joseph as if he were a living statesman; just as he might have talked about Lord Grey and the Reform Bill; only that they were much more living realities to him. The book was to him, Tom saw, the most vivid and delightful history of real people, who might do right or wrong, just like any one who was walking about Rugby – the doctor, or the masters, or the sixth-form boys. But the atmosphere soon passed off, the scales seemed to drop from his eyes, and the book became at once and forever to him the great human and divine book, and the men and women, whom he had looked upon as something quite different from himself, became his friends and counsellors.

Arthur, Tom, and East were together one night, and read the story of Naaman coming to Elisha to be cured of his leprosy. When the chapter was finished, Tom shut his Bible with a slap.

“I can’t stand that fellow Naaman,” said he, “after what he’d seen and felt, going back again and bowing himself down in the house of Rimmon, because his effeminate scoundrel of a master did it. I wonder Elisha took the trouble to heal him. How he must have despised him.”

“Yes, there you go off as usual, with a shell on your head,” struck in East, who always took the opposite side to Tom: half from love of argument, half from conviction. “How do you know he didn’t think better of it? how do you know his master was a scoundrel? His letter don’t look like it, and the book don’t say so.”

“I don’t care,” rejoined Tom; “why did Naaman talk about bowing down, then, if he didn’t mean to do it? He wasn’t likely to get more in earnest when he got back to Court, and away from the Prophet.”

“Well, but, Tom,” said Arthur, “look what Elisha says to him, ‘Go in peace.’ He wouldn’t have said that if Naaman had been in the wrong.”

“I don’t see that that means more than saying, ‘You’re not the man I took you for.’”

“No, no, that won’t do at all,” said East; “read the words fairly, and take men as you find them. I like Naaman, and think he was a very fine fellow.”

“I don’t,” said Tom, positively.

“Well, I think East is right,” said Arthur; “I can’t see but what it’s right to do the best you can, though it mayn’t be the best absolutely. Every man isn’t born to be a martyr.”

“Of course, of course,” said East; “but he’s on one of his pet hobbies. How often have I told you, Tom, that you must drive a nail where it’ll go?”

“And how often have I told you,” rejoined Tom, “that it’ll always go where you want, if you only stick to it and hit hard enough? I hate half-measures and compromises.”

“Yes, he’s a whole-hog man, is Tom. Must have the whole animal, hair and teeth, claws and tail,” laughed East. “Sooner have no bread any day than half a loaf.”

“I don’t know,” said Arthur, “it’s rather puzzling; but ain’t most right things got by proper compromises, I mean where the principle isn’t given up?”

“That’s not the point,” said Tom; “I don’t object to a compromise, where you don’t give up your principle.”

“Not you,” said East laughingly. “I know him of old, Arthur, and you’ll find him out some day. There isn’t such a reasonable fellow in the world to hear him talk. He never wants anything but what’s right and fair; only when you come to settle what’s right and fair, it’s everything that he wants, and nothing that you want. Give me the Brown compromise when I’m on his side.”

“Now, Harry,” said Tom, “no more chaff – I’m serious. Look here – this is what makes my blood tingle;” and he turned over the pages of his Bible and read: “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, ‘O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning, fiery furnace, and He will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.’” He read the last verse twice, emphasizing the nots, and dwelling on them as if they gave him actual pleasure and were hard to part with.

They were silent a minute, and then Arthur said, “Yes, that’s a glorious story, but it don’t prove your point, Tom, I think. There are times when there is only one way, and that the highest, and then the men are found to stand in the breach.”

“There’s always a highest way, and it’s always the right one,” said Tom. “How many times has the Doctor told us that in his sermons in the last year I should like to know!”

“Well, you ain’t going to convince us – is he Arthur? No Brown compromise to-night,” said East, looking at his watch. “But it’s past eight, and we must go to first lesson.”

So they took down their books and fell to work; but Arthur didn’t forget, and thought long and often over the conversation.

LXXIII

“Tom,” said Arthur, “I’ve had such strange thoughts about death lately. I’ve never told a soul of them, not even my mother. Sometimes, I think they’re wrong, but, do you know I don’t think in my heart I could be sorry at the death of any of my friends.”

Tom was taken quite aback.

“What in the world is the young un after now?” thought he; “I’ve swallowed a good many of his crotchets, but this altogether beats me. He can’t be quite right in his head.”

He didn’t want to say a word, and shifted about uneasily in the dark; however, Arthur seemed to be waiting for an answer, so at last he said, “I don’t think I quite see what you mean, Geordie. One’s told so often to think about death, that I’ve tried it on sometimes, especially this last week. But we won’t talk of it now. I’d better go – you’re getting tired, and I shall do you harm.”

“No, no, indeed – I ain’t Tom; you must stop till nine, there’s only twenty minutes. I’ve settled you must stop till nine. And oh! do let me talk to you – I must talk to you. I see it’s just as I feared. You think I’m half-mad – don’t you now?”

“Well, I did think it odd what you said, Geordie, as you ask me.”

Arthur paused a moment, and then said quickly, “I’ll tell you how it all happened. At first, when I was sent to the sick-room, and found I had really got the fever, I was terribly frightened. I thought I should die, and I could not face it for a moment. I don’t think it was sheer cowardice at first, but I thought how hard it was to be taken away from my mother and sisters, and you all, just as I was beginning to see my way to many things, and to feel that I might be a man and do a man’s work. To die without having fought and worked, and given one’s life away, was too hard to bear. I got terribly impatient, and accused God of injustice, and strove to justify myself; and the harder I strove, the deeper I sank. Then the image of my dear father often came across me, but I turned from it. Whenever it came, a heavy numbing throb seemed to take hold of my heart, and say ‘Dead – dead, dead.’ And I cried out, ‘The living, the living shall praise thee O God; the dead cannot praise Thee. There is no work in the grave; in the night no man can work. But I can work. I can do great things. I will do great things. Why wilt Thou slay me.’ And so I struggled and plunged, deeper and deeper, and went down into a living black tomb. I was alone there, with no power to stir or think; along with myself; beyond the reach of all human fellowship; beyond Christ’s reach, I thought, in my nightmare. You who are brave and bright and strong, can have no idea of that agony. Pray to God you never may. Pray as for your life.”

Arthur stopped – from exhaustion, Tom thought; but what between his fear lest Arthur should hurt himself, his awe, and longing for him to go on, he couldn’t ask, or stir to help him. Presently he went on, but quite calm and slow:

“I don’t know how long I was in that state. For more than a day, I know; for I was quite conscious, and lived my outer life all the time, and took my medicines, and spoke to my mother, and heard what they said. But I didn’t take much note of time; I thought time was over for me, and that that tomb was what was beyond. Well, on last Sunday morning, as I seemed to lie in that tomb, alone, as I thought, for ever and ever, the black, dead wall was cleft in two, and I was caught up and borne through into the light by some great power, some living, mighty spirit. Tom, do you remember the living creatures and the wheels in Ezekiel? It was just like that: ‘when they went I heard the noise of their wings, like the noise of great waters, as the voice of the Almighty, the voice of speech, as the noise of an host; when they stood they let down their wings’ – ‘and they went every one straight forward; whither the spirit was to go they went, and they turned not when they went.’ And we rushed through the bright air, which was full of myriads of living creatures, and paused on the brink of a great river. And the power held me up, and I knew that great river was the grave, and death dwelt there; but not the death I had met in the black tomb – that I felt was gone forever. For on the other bank of the great river I saw men and women and children rising up pure and bright, and the tears were wiped from their eyes, and they put on glory and strength, and all weariness and pain fell away. And beyond were a multitude which no man could number, and they worked at some great work; and they who rose from the river went on and joined them in the work. They all worked, and each worked in a different way, but all at the same work. And I saw there my father, and the men in the old town whom I knew when I was a child; many a hard, stern man, who never came to church, and whom they called atheist and infidel. There they were, side by side with my father, whom I had seen toil and die for them, and women and little children, and the seal was on the foreheads of all. And I longed to see what the work was, and could not; so I tried to plunge in the river, for I thought I would join them, but I could not. Then I looked about to see how they got into the river. And this I could not see, but I saw myriads on this side, and they too worked, and I knew that it was the same work; and the same seal was on their foreheads. And though I saw there was toil and anguish in the work of these, and that most that were working were blind and feeble, yet I longed no more to plunge into the river, but more and more to know what the work was. And as I looked I saw my mother and my sisters, and I saw the Doctor, and you, Tom, and hundreds more whom I knew; and at last I saw myself, too, and I was toiling and doing ever so little a piece of the great work. Then it all melted away, and the power left me, and as it left me I thought I heard a voice say, ‘The vision is for an appointed time; though it tarry, wait for it, for in the end it shall speak and not lie, it shall surely come, it shall not tarry.’ It was early morning I know, then, it was so quiet and cool, and my mother was fast asleep in the chair by my bedside; but it wasn’t only a dream of mine. I know it wasn’t a dream. Then I fell into a deep sleep, and only woke after afternoon chapel; and the Doctor came and gave me the sacrament. I told him and my mother I should get well – I knew I should; but I couldn’t tell them why. Tom,” said Arthur, gently, after another minute, “do you see why I could not grieve now to see my dearest friend die? It can’t be – it isn’t, all fever or illness. God would never have let me see it so clear if it wasn’t true. I don’t understand it all yet – it will take me my life and longer to do that – to find out what the work is.”