{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_20560/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_20560","id":"gutenberg_20560","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20560","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Biographies","Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Category: Teaching & Education","Church of England -- Clergy -- Correspondence","Clergy -- England -- Correspondence","Robinson, Forbes, 1867-1904 -- Correspondence"],"text":"Produced by Al Haines\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n[Frontispiece: Forbes Robinson]\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS\n\n\nBY\n\nFORBES ROBINSON\n\n\n  LATE FELLOW OF CHRIST'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE\n  AND EXAMINING CHAPLAIN TO THE BISHOP OF SOUTHWELL\n\n\n\n  EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTORY NOTICE\n  BY HIS BROTHER CHARLES\n\n\n\nSECOND EDITION\n\n\n\nPRINTED FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION BY\n\nSPOTTISWOODE & CO. LTD., LONDON. 1904\n\n\n\n\nNOTE\n\n\nThis volume has been printed for private circulation at the request of\nmany of Forbes Robinson's personal friends.  The first edition having\nbeen exhausted, a second has been prepared, in which are included six\nadditional letters (cf. pp. 151, 154, 164, 166, 167, 182).  Copies of\nthis volume will be supplied (price 2s. 6d. post free) to all who\ndesire to obtain them, on application to the Rev. Canon Charles H.\nRobinson, Hill Brow, Woking.  The volume of College and Ordination\nAddresses which will be published by Longmans in about two months' time\ncan be ordered through any bookseller.\n\n_October_ 1904.\n\n\n\n\n[Transcriber's note: The book contains a number of short Greek phrases,\nall of which have been transliterated according to Project Gutenberg's\n\"Greek How-To\".  A more detailed transliteration note follows each\nparagraph or article where the Greek phrase occurs.]\n\n[Transcriber's note: Page numbers in this book are indicated by numbers\nenclosed in curly braces, e.g. {99}.  They have been located where page\nbreaks occurred in the original book, in accordance with Project\nGutenberg's FAQ-V-99.  For its Index, a page number has been placed\nonly at the start of that section.  In the HTML version of this book,\npage numbers are placed in the left margin.]\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\nINTRODUCTORY SKETCH\n\nCHAPTER.                                            PAGE\n\n   I. SCHOOLDAYS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   1\n  II. LIFE AS AN UNDERGRADUATE AT CAMBRIDGE  . . . .  10\n III. WORK AT CAMBRIDGE  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  21\n  IV. THE LAST FEW MONTHS  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  32\n   V. TWO APPRECIATIONS  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  36\n\nLETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS   . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  54\n\nAPPENDIX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193\n\nINDEX  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199\n\n\n\n\nILLUSTRATIONS\n\nForbes Robinson . . . . . . . . . . Frontispiece\n\nForbes Robinson (1880)\n\nForbes Robinson (1887)\n\n\n\n\n{1}\n\nINTRODUCTORY SKETCH\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nSCHOOLDAYS\n\nForbes Robinson was born on November 13, 1867, in the vicarage of\nKeynsham, a village in Somerset lying between Bristol and Bath.  He was\nthe eleventh child in a family of thirteen, of whom eight were sons and\nfive daughters.  His parents were both from the north of Ireland, and\nhis Christian name had been his mother's surname.  The motto attached\nto his father's family crest was 'Non nobis solum sed toti mundo nati.'\nBefore he was three years old his father moved to Liverpool and became\nincumbent of St. Augustine's, Everton.  He died before Forbes was\nthirteen, but the memory of his holy life remained as an abiding\ninfluence.  Thus he writes of him in 1903:\n\n'The old memories form a kind of sacred history urging me onwards and\nupwards.  I like to feel that I reap the prayers and thanksgivings of\nmy father, that God blesses the son of such a father.  The same work,\nthe same God, the same promises, the same hope, the same sure and\ncertain reward.  I thank God and take courage.'\n\n{2} As a boy he was never robust and might even be regarded as\ndelicate.  After attending one or two private schools he was entered,\nat the age of twelve, at Liverpool College, where five of his brothers\nhad been.  When his father died in February 1881, the house in\nLiverpool was given up and Forbes was sent to Rossall.  He continued at\nRossall till he entered Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1887.\n\nThe photograph which is inserted on p. 4 was taken just before he went\nto Rossall.  He was then a shy retiring boy, fonder of reading than of\nathletic exercise.  One who was in the same house with him at Rossall,\nand who is now vicar of a parish in Lancashire, writes:\n\n'His life at Rossall was not an outwardly eventful one.  Not being\nathletic, he lived rather apart from and above the rest of us in a\nworld of books.  The walls of his study used to be almost covered with\nextracts, largely, I think, from the poets, copied on to scraps of\npaper and pinned up all round, partly to be learnt by heart and partly,\nI think, for companionship.  He was much older than the rest of us\nwhose years were the same as his.  His school life was a time of\nretirement and preparation for the wider life among men at Cambridge.\nThough my memory of him as a quiet studious member of the house, more\noften alone than not, and quite happy to be alone so long as his books\nwere near him, is very distinct, I can recall almost nothing of the\nnature of incident or about which one can write.'\n\nThe present headmaster of Marlborough, who was {3} also a contemporary\nat Rossall, writes in a letter to the editor of this memoir:\n\n'Your brother was a great recluse at Rossall, and I much doubt whether\nyou would get any great amount of information about him from\nRossallians.  I knew him because we were both interested in reading,\nand I owed a good deal to his influence. . . .  You will find, I\nbelieve, that his Cambridge days show him in a far clearer light than\nhis school days.  I know that when I saw him at Cambridge I realised\nwith pleasure that he was a welcomed visitor in the rooms of very\nvarious types of undergraduates, whereas his circle at school had been\nvery limited, and most boys no doubt regarded him as quite \"out of it.\"\nThis is of course to some extent the fault of the athletic standards of\nour schools, but I also think that he himself developed a great deal\nsocially at Cambridge.'\n\nA sketch of Forbes, by Dr. James, written for 'The Rossallian,' will be\nfound at the close of this chapter.  Dr. Tancock, who succeeded Dr.\nJames as headmaster of Rossall a year before Forbes left, writes:\n\n'When I was appointed to Rossall in 1886, I found him a member of the\nupper sixth form. . . .  He always gave me the impression of an\nearnest-minded, hard-working boy, with a deep sense of duty.  It was\nrather suggested to my mind sometimes, possibly erroneously, that as a\nyounger boy he had felt himself misunderstood, and a certain reserve\nwas the consequence, not perhaps unnaturally.  He was already much\ninterested in theological work. . . .  It {4} has been a great pleasure\nto me in later years to hear of his excellent work at Christ's and the\nstrong influence he exerted over undergraduates.  It was quite the\nnatural result of the qualities I saw in him at school, provided once\nhis reserve could be broken.'\n\n[Illustration: Forbes Robinson (1880)]\n\nThough of Irish descent he only once visited Ireland.  This was during\nhis summer holidays in 1884, when he travelled round a good part of the\nnorth and west coasts.  The only adventure of special interest was his\nunintended voyage across the Bay of Donegal, which was nearly attended\nwith fatal consequences.  He and his brother, the editor of this\nmemoir, started in a small open sailing boat from the harbour of\nKillybegs, intending to return within a few minutes; but no sooner had\nthey got outside the harbour than they were caught in a squall, which\nrapidly developed into a gale, and made it impossible to turn the boat\nor head it for the shore, owing to the immediate risk of swamping.  The\nonly means of securing momentary safety was to head the boat out into\nthe Atlantic, but as the nearest land in this direction was the coast\nof America, the prospect was far from cheerful.  Eventually the boat\nwas turned a few points further south, in the direction of land which\ncould not be seen, but which was known to lie about fifteen miles away\non the other side of the Bay of Donegal.  After having been nearly\nswamped many times, and running with bare poles, owing to the violence\nof the gale, the boat arrived at length at Bundoran.  As this place was\ndistant some sixty miles from Killybegs, {5} it seemed wearisome to\nreturn by land, and a return by sea was out of the question.\nAccordingly, Forbes and the writer, drenched to the skin and without a\nvestige of baggage, started forthwith on a walking tour along the west\ncoast of Ireland, arriving at Connemara in the course of the following\nweek.  Forbes's dislike of sea voyages in after years may in part be\ntraced to this experience.  During the greater part of the voyage\nacross Donegal Bay he was helpless from sea-sickness; his companion was\nbusily occupied in baling out the water to prevent the boat from\nsinking.\n\nThe letters which Forbes wrote from school to members of his family are\na curious mixture of humour and religion.  It was his keen sense of\nhumour which preserved him from becoming morbid.  It was this same\nsense of humour which helped to attract to him at the University men on\nwhom he eventually exercised a strong religious influence, but whom\nreligious conversation would have inevitably repelled.\n\nIn two letters written to one of his sisters from Rossall in 1886, the\nfollowing sentences occur.  They show that he found time while at\nschool for a considerable amount of reading which was not connected\nwith his school work:\n\n'You ask me to tell you what books I have been reading.  Among others,\nLongfellow's \"Hiawatha\" and \"Evangeline,\" both exquisite; continually\nthe \"In Memoriam,\" \"Idylls of the King\"; some of Buchanan, which I\nscarcely recommend; M. Arnold, which I do most heartily recommend; and\nWalt Whitman, the {6} great poet of democracy; \"Confessions of an\nEnglish Opium Eater,\" by De Quincey, good in its way; G. Eliot and Mrs.\nBrowning, &c., &c.  Perhaps you would like some of those.  I read Chas.\nKingsley's \"Andromeda\"--it is really a splendid rhythmical piece of\nhexameter--and some of his Life.  I rather like pieces of his poetry,\nand the one you sent me I liked.\n\n'My only birthday advice is: Read more Longfellow.  If you have any\nwriters, send me word, though I am sorry to say I can appreciate but\nfew. . . .'\n\nAnother letter, written the same year, is entirely composed of\nselections from Tennyson's 'Princess,' which, he says, 'I have just\nread through.'  He ends, 'Mind you send me gleanings of Milton if you\nhave time.'  In another, 'I have been reading a fair amount of Carlyle\nat present, as we had an essay on \"The influence of individuals on\ngreat movements of religion, politics, and thought,\" for which I read\nespecially Carlyle's \"Heroes and Hero Worship,\" and Emerson's\n\"Representative Men,\" and for which, I am glad to say, I not only got\nfull marks, but the highest maximum possible.  Have read Tennyson's\n\"Queen Mary.\"  Am reading \"Harold.\"  I liked the first very much, but\nthe latter a great deal more.  The scene where Harold debates about\ntelling a lie or the truth is very fine. . . .'  The rest of the letter\nis composed of quotations from 'Harold.'  In other letters he says,\n'Get Emerson's \"Essays\" for me.'  'I send you \"Aurora Leigh.\" . . .'\n\nHe left Rossall in the summer of 1887, when he {7} was nearly twenty,\nand entered Christ's College, Cambridge, in the following October.  His\nbrother Armitage, now Dean of Westminster, was then fellow and dean of\nChrist's College, and Forbes occupied the attic rooms over his.\n\n\nThe following notice by Dr. James, now headmaster of Rugby and formerly\nheadmaster of Rossall, appeared in 'The Rossallian' and is reprinted\nhere at his suggestion:\n\n'Forbes Robinson came to Rossall in 1881.  He was a member of a very\nable family; an elder brother is Dean of Westminster; another is\nCharles H. Robinson, Editorial Secretary of the S.P.G. and translator\nof part of the Gospels into Hausa.  He was a delicate boy, and lived\nfor a year or two in the headmaster's private house, from which he\npassed on into Mr. Batson's.  Rather shy and retiring in disposition,\nand unable to take much part in games, he was not conspicuous in the\nSchool until he reached the Sixth, and did not make friends as easily\nas some boys do.  But the few who knew him well recognised in him a\ndeeply affectionate if very sensitive nature, and saw how the religious\nside of it, afterwards so conspicuous, was even then developing.  His\npowers as a classical scholar, though considerable, were not\nexceptional; they enabled him to reach the Upper Sixth, but not to win\na scholarship at his entrance to the university, and I well remember\nadvising him to make theology, to which his inclinations were already\ndrawing him, his special subject at Cambridge.  To this I knew he would\nbring not only interest but power of reasoning and literary culture.\nHe had won the Divinity Prize of the School in 1885 and again in 1886,\nand the English Essay Prize (for an essay on \"The relative value of\nart, science, and literature in education\") in the latter year.\n\n{8}\n\n'He went up to Christ's, Cambridge, in 1887, and at once addressed\nhimself to his favourite study.  What strides he was making in it were\napparent at once from the extraordinary series of distinctions which he\nwon--a scholarship at the college, the Carus Greek Testament Prize for\nundergraduates, the Jeremie Septuagint Prize, a first class in the\nTheological Tripos, the Burney Theological Essay Prize, the Carus Prize\nfor Bachelors, the Crosse Divinity Scholarship, and the Hulsean Prize\nall fell to him between 1888 and 1893, and finally in 1896 he was\nelected to a Fellowship at Christ's, where he had already been\nTheological Lecturer for a year.\n\n'His essay which gained the Burney Prize in 1891 was on \"The Authority\nof our Lord in its bearing upon the Interpretation of the Old\nTestament.\"  He printed it in 1893 under the title of \"The\nSelf-limitation of the Word of God as manifested in the Incarnation.\"\nWith characteristic modesty he says in his preface: \"I can claim but\nlittle of the work as strictly original.\"  This is far too deprecatory;\nthe essay is a singularly lucid statement and attempted solution of a\nmost difficult theological problem, in which all who believe in the\nDeity of Christ must be deeply interested, and I can bear personal\ntestimony to its helpfulness.  It was only the other day that I was\nreading it afresh, for I had just recovered it, when I feared that the\ncopy he gave me was hopelessly lost and irreplaceable, from South\nAfrica, where a friend to whom I had lent it had taken it among his\nbooks.  Among Forbes Robinson's later activities were a work on the\nCoptic Apocryphal Gospels (\"the subject,\" he wrote to me, \"was so\ntechnical and uninteresting that I did not send you a copy\"), and the\nediting of a Sahidic fragment of the Gospels.\n\n'But his value to Cambridge and to his college lay mainly in the\ninfluence for good which he was able to exert over undergraduates.\nAgain and again I have been told {9} there how great this was; and it\nwas no little achievement for one whose very modesty and\nhumble-mindedness must have made it difficult.  But his heart was in\nthe work, and in the maintaining of Christian influences in university\nlife.  It is hard to over-estimate the loss which his death at so early\nan age implies alike to students of theology and to those among whom he\nwas more immediately working.  But he has left us the example of a\nsimple and devoted life and the consecration of great and growing\npowers to his Master's service.  \"God buries His workmen, but carries\non His work.\"'\n\n\n\n\n{10}\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nLIFE AS AN UNDERGRADUATE AT CAMBRIDGE\n\nFrom this point forward the sketch of Forbes's life can be given almost\nentirely in the words of those who knew him at Cambridge.\n\nA writer in the Christ's College Magazine for the Lent term 1904 says:\n'Many older friends will always think of him in his attic rooms, where\nhe began to make his mark in our College society upon his first coming\nup.  Only two other Freshmen had rooms in College, and Robinson's rooms\nbecame at once a centre for his year, and later a meeting-place where\nthe gulfs between higher and lower years were bridged over.  A little\nolder than most men of his year, he was considerably their senior in\ncharacter and in intellect.  He showed at once the qualities which he\nretained to such a unique degree in later years--an inexhaustible power\nof making friends with all sorts and conditions of men, and an\ninsatiable interest in all sides of College life; the most serious\nthings were from the first not beyond his comprehension, and the most\ntrivial did not appear to bore him, even when their freshness had worn\noff.  His love of books was catholic; he possessed a great many and\nread them {11} to his friends.  At the College Debate, of which he\nbecame secretary and president in his second year, he was a frequent\nand fluent speaker, with a remarkable command of language, though\nsometimes his eloquence was more than half burlesque.  His powers of\nthought and real strength in argument were more often displayed in\nprivate discussions, where irony and humour hardly veiled the depth of\nearnestness below.'\n\n[Illustration: Forbes Robinson (1887)]\n\nDuring his first three years at Cambridge he read for the Theological\nTripos.  In the course of his first year he was elected a scholar of\nhis College.  At the beginning of his second year he won his first\nUniversity distinction, the Carus prize for the Greek Testament.  The\nother University prizes which he gained were the Jeremie prize for the\nSeptuagint in 1889, the Burney prize essay in 1891, the Carus prize for\nBachelors, the Hulsean prize essay, and the Crosse University\nScholarship in 1892.  He took his degree in the first class of the\nTheological Tripos in 1890, and obtained a second class in the Moral\nScience Tripos of 1891.  The year which he spent in reading moral\nscience he afterwards looked back upon as one of the most useful in his\nlife.  After he had been reading for some time in view of this Tripos,\nhe wrote to a friend: 'I have come to the conclusion that I know\nnothing, and am an awful fool into the bargain. . . .  The subject is\nso utterly fresh to me, so completely unlike theology of any sort at\nCambridge, that I find it hard to do anything at it.  In fact, I\nchucked it up for about ten days in the middle of the term, and\ndetermined to have nothing more to {12} do with it; but after that rest\nI thought better and renewed the study.  It is an excellent training\nfor the mind.  I never distinctly remember thinking at all before this\nterm.'\n\nHaving learnt to _think_ himself, his desire was to help others by\nteaching them to think.  One who came under his influence several years\nlater says of him: 'I owe so much to him in every way.  Above\neverything else he taught me to _think_.  I remember so well the first\ntime I went to him with a difficulty.  I expected him to solve it for\nme, instead of which, at the end of half an hour, I still found that I\nhad to think it out for myself.  It was a revelation to me, and has\nhelped me in my dealings with men.'  The same friend writes: 'I may\nmention a conversation I once had with him.  He had in front of him the\nanswers to some Theological Tripos papers.  He took up two of them and\ncompared the answers given to the same question by the two men.  The\nanswer required was a translation of a passage of Greek with notes.\nAnd, as far as I can remember, his words were these: \"Now, W----, this\nman has passed over the real difficulty.  As far as I can tell, he has\nnot even noticed that there is a difficulty.  I have given him two\nmarks out of a possible ten.  This other man has seen the difficulty\nand grappled with it.  His solution is without doubt incorrect, but\nthat is quite immaterial.  Result, eight marks out of ten.\"  I cannot\nbut think that this attitude of mind was largely the secret of his\ninfluence.'  In another case, when urging a man to attempt some\nindependent investigation of the Synoptic problem, he said; {13} 'Your\nconclusions may be wrong, but you can correct them, and it will teach\nyou to think.'\n\nOne who was an undergraduate with Forbes says of him: He 'did not take\na prominent part in religious movements in the College, such as the\nCollege prayer meeting or Bible readings, though he was occasionally\npresent at them.  In chapel his reverence was quiet, though in no way\nobtrusive.  I think that by not identifying himself with any particular\nreligious party he had greater influence with those men whose minds ran\nin very different grooves.  I always felt when in his company that I\nwas conversing with one vastly superior to myself in intellectual\npowers, and yet he never appeared conscious of it himself.  It is\nsurprising how considerate he was of the feelings of others.  I\nremember a large print of Pope Leo XIII. which used to hang in his\nrooms as an undergraduate, which delighted his gyp, who was a Romanist,\nbut scandalised his Protestant friends.  I begged earnestly for a copy\nof one of his prize essays, which had been printed though not\npublished.  He at first consented, but almost immediately asked me to\nreturn it, saying that he did not wish it to go out to the world as\nexpressing his matured views.  He then asked me to accept instead a\nsmall booklet, which he said I should find useful to have in visiting.\nIt contained the verses called \"The Old, Old Story.\"  He also gave me a\ncopy of the \"Practice of the Presence of God,\" by Brother Lawrence.'\n\nBefore he decided to read for the Moral Science Tripos he had thought\nof going in for the Semitic Languages Tripos.  With this object in view\nhe {14} commenced the study of Syriac.  Finding that the best Syriac\ngrammar was written in German and had not been translated, he decided\nto learn German also.  He was advised that Switzerland was a suitable\nplace in which to study German, and accordingly, after taking his\ndegree, he started in the summer of 1890 for Switzerland.  The two\nfollowing letters are inserted in order to illustrate his sense of\nhumour, as well as to describe the way in which he spent this summer.\nHe eventually returned from Switzerland, having made more progress in\nSyriac than in German, but without having obtained any great knowledge\nof either language.  Soon after his return he decided to commence the\nstudy of Moral Science instead of the Semitic languages.\n\n\n_To H. M. S._\n\n'Habkern: July 1890.\n\n'A few days after I got to Switzerland, by dint of incessant inquiries\nand correspondence I found out the name of a pastor who lived in a\nsufficiently healthy place and who talked German.  So I girded up my\nloins and went to visit him.  \"Sprechen Sie Englisch, mein Herr?\" I\nasked.  \"Nein\" was the reply.  As I scarcely knew a word of German I\nwas in a considerable fix.  But I found out that the Pfarrer spoke\n\"Lateinisch\" and could read English a little when it was written.  So I\nwent up to his study and we got paper and pencil and began.  I tried to\ntell him in a mixture of broken English and dog-Latin that I intended\nto give him the honour of my company.  He said he would be pleased to\ntake me \"en pension.\"  He then {15} asked how much I wished to pay.  I\nhadn't for the life of me an idea of what I ought to pay.  \"Ut tibi\noptimum videtur,\" I said.  But he made me fix my price.  Then, when I\nhad fixed it, I had to turn it into Swiss money.  The good Pfarrer was\nso pleased with the honour of my company that he took me for less than\nI asked.  Our greatest difficulty next arose: How was my luggage to be\nconveyed the five miles from the nearest town up a steep hill?  Latin,\nFrench, English, German, failed to make me understand the situation.\nAt last I took in the Pfarrer's meaning.  I was to send it by the\nmilkman after leaving it at a certain hotel.  \"Ja,\" I cried in an\necstasy of joy, at last grasping his meaning, \"Ja, ich mittam der\nGepaeck von der milkman.\"  I arrived the next day.  I found the Pfarrer\nknew Latin, Greek (but he pronounces both quite differently from me),\nGerman, French, Russian, Syriac, Hebrew, and a little English.  His\nusual custom is to address me in German.  If I fail to understand, he\ntries Latin and intersperses his remarks with Greek and Hebrew.  So my\ngreat difficulty is first of all to find out what language he thinks he\nis speaking in.\n\n'Yesterday we were sitting, smoking and drinking, in the village\n\"Wirthshaus\" among the natives of the place, the Pfarrer addressing me\nin Latin, the villagers staring at his learning in adoration and\nastonishment, and laughing at my attempts at German.  The landlord came\nup to me when I arrived and sent in a bottle of wine for me, refusing\nto be paid for it, for he said that the natives of Interlaken fleeced\nthe English; but when Habkern was for once honoured by the {16}\npresence of one, the people were not going to treat him in the same way.\n\n'It is curious how the Pfarrer goes and sits and drinks and gossips in\nthe \"Wirthshaus,\" even on Sunday, I think.  Last Sunday they had a\ncountry dance, and very curious and pretty was the scene--the\nold-fashioned wooden room--the odd national dress of the women--the\ncuriously cut brown clothes of the men--the thick boots--the fiddlers\nraised above the rest--the quaint urn with its inscriptions above--the\ngaping crowd of villagers.  Then the church is strange--very rude and\nsimple, all whitewashed.  The women sit on one side, the men on the\nother.  They stand to pray and hear the text, and sit to sing and hear\nthe sermon.  The organ and font are placed at one end.  The elders\nstand below the organ, the Pfarrer is lost in the far distance, right\nup in a big pulpit.  The \"Predigt\" or sermon is everything.  They have\none written prayer before and one after the \"Predigt.\"  The people\nnever say \"Amen\" or anything--only sing.  They sing so slowly that,\nalthough I had only been with the Pfarrer three days, I could almost\nsing and look out the words in the dictionary at the same time!  I talk\nGerman with every one who will talk with me.  So well did I spin yarns\nwhen I had been in the country three or four days, that with a mixture\nof Latin and German I managed to make a German use strong language at\nsome of my tales, which he was pleased to think were not exactly true.\nReflecting on the situation afterwards, I remembered that I had told\nhim, among other things, that I had walked nearly fifty \"stunden\" {17}\nin a day.  His language was awful.  I found afterwards that \"stunde\"\nwas not, as I had supposed, an English \"mile,\" but an English \"hour.\"\nBut I keep on talking.  I have come to the conclusion that the way to\nlearn a language is to argue in it.  Accordingly I do so.  I have tried\nto convince them that the order of bishops is semi-apostolic, and that\nif St. Paul did not actually wear a surplice himself, his successors\nshortly afterwards did.\n\n'One other thing, if you ever reply to this letter: would you copy out\na few of the most thickly marked lines in the \"Grammarian's Funeral\" in\nmy edition of Browning?  They are always in my mind, but I can't quite\nrecollect how they go.  There is no poem I like so much as that.  I\nwould send you some butterflies, but I daren't kill them.  Some of us\nmay have once been butterflies: as M. Arnold says,\n\n  'What was before us we know not,\n  And we know not what shall succeed.'\n\n\n_To H. M. S._\n\n'Habkern: August 1890.\n\n'There is a French pensionnaire staying here, the same as I am.  He is\nvery polite, but his tastes are diametrically opposite to mine.  He\nlikes wine, walking, women, smoking, painting, violin and piano\nplaying, dogs, and the like.\n\n'He asked me whether I liked the French.  I told him \"No,\" and gave him\na good many reasons.  He abhors the Germans.  I told him I thought the\nGermans were a fine race.  I'm occupying my time {18} in sleeping,\narguing, observing the natives, and reading a Tauchnitz edition of\n\"Martin Chuzzlewit,\" which is good, though already a young girl of\nseventeen has been introduced, very beautiful and all the rest, and I'm\nafraid she won't be poisoned, but marry a certain young man already\nintroduced.  I'd give a good deal to be able to write a novel in which\nall the young ladies tumbled out of windows, six stories high, and were\npicked up dead.  I think I must try and write one.  Shall I dedicate it\nto you?  The heroine will be a plain old lady with white curls, close\non sixty-five, without any money, but with a certain amount of\nintellect.  There will be no marriages, but suicides and murders if\nnecessary.\n\n'I'm inventing a German word of 1,000 letters.  It is to be divided\ninto some 150 or 200 compartments.  After each compartment there is\nfive minutes for refreshments.  After about the 500th letter there will\nbe half an hour allowed for dinner.  After the 600th letter or so there\nwill be a notice to the effect that no person with a weak heart may\nproceed further without consulting a medical man.  After about the\n980th there will be a notice forbidding any one to go further until\ntheir family doctor is in attendance.  I have thought of the groundwork\nof the word--the finished word I'm going to send to M----, as he has\nthe strongest constitution of any one I know.  Then I shall get Duke\nBismarck to patent it; after which I shall take out a professorship on\nthe strength of it at Berne.  It will, of course, be the \"Hauptsache\"\nof my existence.'\n\n{19}\n\nForbes was far from being an athlete, but in 1891, shortly before his\nordination, he accomplished the feat of walking with two athletic\nfriends from London to Cambridge in a day, a distance of more than\nfifty miles.  The following description is by Mr. A. N. C.\nKittermaster, who was one of his companions.\n\n\n_Walk from London to Cambridge._\n\nSome of us had read that Charles Kingsley had walked from London to\nCambridge; so we determined to follow in his footsteps.  We were a\nparty of three--Forbes Robinson, D. D. Robertson, and myself.  We spent\nthe previous day at the Naval Exhibition, the night at the Liverpool\nStreet Hotel, and at 4.30 A.M. of Tuesday, August 25, 1891, we started\non our fifty-mile trudge.  We walked steadily, at first over immense\nstretches of pavement, till we reached Ware, twenty-one miles out.\nThere we had breakfast or lunch of huge chops at 10.15.  After that we\ntook the road again, and did not call a halt of any length till we had\nput another twenty miles behind us.  The day was fine but dull, and we\nwere not troubled by the heat.  At the fortieth milestone it began to\nappear doubtful whether we should all reach the journey's end.  I have\nan entry in my diary: 'At 40 Robertson bad, I worse, Deanlet (_i.e._\nForbes) quite fit.'  So at Foulmire, nine miles from Cambridge, we\nstopped for tea.  By this time I was in a state of temporary collapse,\nbut I remember the other two during tea carried on an animated\ndiscussion upon the creation as described in Genesis.  We all felt\nbetter after the {20} rest and covered the last stage fairly easily,\narriving at Christ's at 9.30 P.M.  We had a meal in Forbes's rooms,\nfought our battles over again, and retired to rest about midnight.\n\nThe thing which remains with me best is the amazing ease with which\nForbes accomplished the journey.  It is a matter of common experience\nthat prolonged physical effort reacts on the mind; conversation becomes\ndifficult, and cheerfulness forced.  I must say that in my case the\nthought which for a considerable period occupied my mind was how I was\nto get to the end.  But it was not so with Forbes.  He travelled\nlightly, talking happily on all subjects the whole day.  It seemed to\nmake little difference to him whether he took food or no, and he was as\nwilling to stop at every place of refreshment we suggested as to march\nthe whole day without a meal.\n\n\n\n\n{21}\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nWORK AT CAMBRIDGE\n\nIn September 1891 Forbes was ordained as curate to his brother\nArmitage, who was at that time vicar of All Saints', Cambridge.\nSeveral of the letters which are given later refer to his thoughts and\nfeelings at the time of his ordination.  His connection with All\nSaints' did not last more than a year, as his brother resigned in the\nfollowing spring.  Forbes had already been licensed as chaplain to\nEmmanuel College.  He received priest's orders in 1892.  In 1895 he was\nappointed theological lecturer at Christ's College, and in the\nfollowing year, May 30, 1896, was elected a fellow.  During the same\nyear he was appointed an examining chaplain to the Bishop of Southwell.\n\nOne who knew him well, soon after the time of his ordination, writes:\n'I cannot remember how we first became acquainted, beyond the fact that\nI used to meet him in the rooms of some prominent members of the\nCollege Football XV.  All I know is that several of our year got to\nknow him quite well, and the friendship grew with time.  The fact that\nhe had distinguished himself in the Moral Science Tripos at {22} first\nrather awed me, a freshman.  But I soon got over that feeling, for he\nwas the last person in the world to trouble any one with a sense of\nintellectual inferiority.\n\n'I am sure the private business hours of the Debating Society were some\nof his happiest moments.  His magnificent assumption of wrath on the\nmost absurd grounds; his vast intensity over trivialities; his love for\nthe heat and play of debate, would have made a stranger believe he\nlived for nothing else.\n\n'Physical strength and virtue seemed to have a strange attraction for\nhim.  His assortment of athlete friends was peculiarly wide, and his\nfrank admiration of their qualities gave them a pleasant feeling that\nin some way he looked up to them--a feeling which I am sure\nstrengthened the hold he had over them.\n\n'He was a tireless walker, and could go far on very little.  A party of\nus used to take long walks, often on a Sunday, to various places in the\ncountry.  There was generally a volume of Burke or Emerson in his\npocket, whose sonorous periods filled the interval when we lunched\nfrugally or rested.  I have never known him anything but good-humoured\nunder any conditions.  His enthusiasm for our most commonplace jests\nwas unfailing--perhaps one of the surest ways of getting to a man's\nheart and staying there--and he had a wide tolerance for the minor\noffences of undergraduate thought and deed.  Yet, as for the tone of\nconversation when he was near, I need scarcely say that one simply did\nnot think of anything unpleasant or vulgar, much less say it.\n\n'I used to admire his immense power of putting {23} his thoughts into\nwords, but he could be silent too.  Sometimes he would come to my rooms\nwhen I was working, throw himself into an arm-chair, and absolutely\nrefuse to speak.  After a considerable interval perhaps he would\nconsider I had worked long enough, and cocoa and conversation would\nfollow.  But it was when I visited him in his own rooms that I remember\nthings most vividly.\n\n'I can still see that little room under the roof; the picture on the\nwall of the dead saint floating on the dark water; the well-filled\nbookcase; the table piled with volumes; himself throwing everything\naside to greet one.  It was almost with a feeling of awe that I\nsometimes climbed those stairs and entered into his presence.  Perhaps\nit would be for a lesson on the New Testament--for when I was reading\nfor a Theological Tripos he was generous, even prodigal, of help.  The\nlesson over--and there are many who know what a goodly thing a lesson\nfrom him on the New Testament was--he would open a volume of\nTennyson--\"In Memoriam\" most likely--read a few stanzas, and begin to\ntalk about them.  Gradually, it would seem, the things of the world\nwould fade from him.  He forgot the hour and my presence as his\nthoughts poured out.  I sat and listened, generally silent, sometimes\nhazarding a question.  Presently--it was often late--I would rise to\nleave.  Rapt from his surroundings, he seemed scarcely conscious of my\ndeparture; and I would go quietly out, almost as though I had been on\nholy ground, where not once nor twice the dweller had seen God face to\nface.'\n\nHis power of helping men by silent sympathy is {24} referred to by one\nwho writes: 'The many words of kindness, but more particularly the\nsilent sympathy he conveyed in some mysterious manner, will ever keep\nhim present with us.'\n\nAnother, who had known him in his early days at Christ's, and again in\nlater years, writes: 'When I was up he was a nervous retiring man, at\nhis best when one found him alone in his own room.  Even then he would\nsometimes talk little.  Since my return from South Africa I have found\nhim much more at home with men and much more ready to talk, but\nretaining his old power of sympathy without words.'  His own faith was\nbased rather upon intuitive perception of the Divine love than upon\nargument.  On one occasion, quite towards the end of his life, he said\nto one with whom he was staying, 'Sometimes I sit and think, till I can\nfind no reason for the existence of God; and then there rises up in me\nsomething which is stronger than the love I have for those who are dear\nto me--and they are very dear--the love of God.  It seems to smile at\nmy doubts.'\n\nSeveral of his friends have referred to Forbes's influence as a power\nwhich helped to develop their own sympathy towards others.  Thus one\nwrites:\n\n'I think perhaps it was my intercourse with him that first taught me to\nlook out for and appreciate the real goodness--or, better,\nChristlikeness--of others from whom one differed in important matters\nand with whom one seemed perhaps to have little in common.'\n\nIn some instances friendship between Forbes and an acquaintance seems\nto have arisen where very {25} little direct intercourse had taken\nplace.  One who was greatly his senior says of him, 'I have never known\nany one with whom there was so strong a sense of intimacy founded on so\nlittle positive intercourse.'\n\nIn July 1892--_i.e._ about nine months after his ordination as\ndeacon--he took part in a kind of peregrinating mission tour through\npart of South Cornwall.  Dressed simply in cassock and cape, and\ncarrying a small brown paper parcel containing necessary luggage, he\nand his brother (the compiler of this book) walked from village to\nvillage, preaching afternoon and evening in the open air.  At the end\nof the evening service an appeal was made to the people.  It was\nexplained to them that the preachers had come without provision or\nmoney, and hoped to receive hospitality from those to whom they\nministered.  Night after night Forbes and his companion were taken in\nand entertained, often by very poor people.  A unique opportunity was\nthus afforded of getting to know something of the home life as well as\nof the religious beliefs of the poor.  As a rule, those who acted as\nhosts were Nonconformists.  Forbes spoke once or twice each day to the\npeople who gathered, and his addresses, which were generally based on\nthe words 'Our Father,' were admirably suited to the comprehension and\nneeds of the simple country people.\n\nFor several months during 1895 he took charge of a small country parish\nnear Cambridge, called Toft.  While staying at Toft he wrote to a\nfriend, 'I like living among country folk and talking with {26} and\nvisiting them.  I want to get out of my life into their lives.  This\nparish work humiliates if it does not humble one. . . .  The smallest\nparish is a tremendous responsibility.'\n\n\nThe following are a few additional notes contributed by others who knew\nForbes at Christ's: 'His broad sympathies, his unfailing efforts to\nfind out the good in persons and systems--the rays of truth which each\npossessed--combined with the rare faculty of going deep down beneath\nvexed questions, and thus lifting controversies to a higher and serener\natmosphere: these were qualities in him which were known especially by\nthose privileged to have more intimate knowledge of him than that\nvouchsafed by formal lectures or social gatherings. . . .  He is now\nanother link with the life beyond these conflicting voices, one \"who\nloved Heaven's silence more than fame.\"'\n\nThe same writer says of him in another letter: 'His extreme fairness\nand toleration, which at first seemed to me to reduce half one's\ncherished beliefs to open questions, was of the greatest value in\ndispelling ignorance and prejudice, and in promoting true charity and a\nmore intelligent faith.  He delighted to call attention to the fact\nthat our Lord found something commendable and exemplary in the serpent.\nAnd so, in dealing with those with whom he most disagreed, he tried to\nfix attention on that portion of truth which lay behind their opinions,\nor on those real difficulties, to be slighted only by {27} the\nsuperficial, with which they were grappling.  Tertullian, with his love\nof scoring off opponents, fared badly at his hands, and he used to\ntreat Clement of Alexandria more sympathetically than Irenaeus.\n\n'It was striking to find a mind so evenly balanced and philosophical\nbecome fired with enthusiasm as he spoke in simplest language, in\nchapel or elsewhere, of great Christian truths or the victories of\nfaith.  His sermons influenced, I believe, many of the naturally\ncareless.  Simple, impartial, earnest and sympathetic, he won, I know,\nthe deepest affection and respect of many.'\n\nAnother writes: 'Bright, pure, and strong--this was the impression he\ngave me . . . .  Many men will be very sorry that he is not here any\nmore, but every one who _knew_ him will be very thankful that he was\nhere, and that they had an opportunity of hearing him \"think\"\nsometimes.  I recall him most in his own rooms, beginning to talk on\nsome small matter, and gradually lifting us higher and still higher,\nuntil we all silently listened, following as best we, with our muddier\nminds, could; and even when he got beyond us there were still\ninspiration and strength to be got from his flashing eyes and\non-rushing earnestness; but if some smaller mind broke in, in a moment\nhe was down at the level of that mind, half bantering and wholly\nsympathising.  Nevertheless, some of us have never forgotten the things\nhe showed us as he led us up, and the possibility of soaring very high\nwithout losing touch with those whose levels are pathetically\nhuman. . . .  I do know that he helped {28} me much, and that many\nthings he said I shall never forget, and thank God for still.'\n\nA Cambridge and international athlete, an intimate friend of Forbes,\nwrites: 'Though I have lost your brother Forbes, and life will be for\never poorer to me, I can't thank God enough that I ever knew him and\nloved him, and that he called himself my friend.  He was so dear to\nme--my greatest friend in the world.  His goodness and his help to me\nin my Cambridge days were wonderful.  He altered my life.  God has\ncalled him home and to the blessed rest of the children of God, and we\nare rich still with his memory and the influence of his beautiful,\npatient, Christlike life.'\n\nIn another letter he writes: 'The death, or, as I like to think of it,\nthe passing of Forbes into the Great Beyond has been such a grief to\nme.  You have no idea what he was to me--a real man \"sent from God\"\ninto my life.  I could do nothing when I heard the sad, and to me\nutterly unexpected, news, but kneel down by my bedside, and weep till I\ncould weep no more for my beloved friend.  I feel so rich and proud to\nhave had him for my friend, and to have had his love; and so do many\nCambridge men.  Oh, but I did so love him! and my prayer now is that\nthe memory of him with me always may strengthen my weak and feeble\nlife, and help me to live somewhat more as he lived, very near the\nMaster.'\n\nHe obtained but little help from self-introspection or\nself-examination.  Thus he writes in one of the letters given later on:\n'I am not sure that we cannot learn more about others than we can about\nourselves.  {29} I never think it is profitable to study oneself too\nclosely.  I never could meditate with any profit on my sins.  But\nthere, I dare say I differ from many others.'\n\nTo very intimate friends he would in rare instances admit that the\nsecret of any influence which he possessed over men was the outcome of\nhis efforts to pray for them.  One who had known him intimately at\nChrist's writes in 1904:\n\n'About eighteen months ago I had the privilege of spending a night with\nhim, and then for the first time I realised how much of his spiritual\npower was the outcome of prayer.  He told me that in his younger days\nhe had taken every opportunity of personally appealing to men to come\nto Christ.  \"But,\" he went on, \"as I grow older I become more\ndiffident, and now often, when I desire to see the Truth come home to\nany man, I say to myself, 'If I have him here he will spend half an\nhour with me.  Instead, I will spend that half-hour in prayer for\nhim.'\"  Later on, when I had retired for the night, he came to me again\nand said, \"W----, what I have said to you is in the strictest\nconfidence: don't mention it to any one.\"  And this revelation of his\ninner life is my last memory of him.'\n\nOn another occasion he said to one with whom he was staying, when\nspeaking of the little that men could do for each other, 'I think that\nI should go mad were it not for prayer.'\n\nAs an instance of his common sense in a matter in which as a bachelor\nhe could have had no personal experience, he strongly urged a married\nman, before {30} deciding to accept a curacy which had been offered to\nhim, to let his wife see the vicar's wife or women-folk.  'She will\nknow intuitively,' he said, 'whether she can get on with them and they\nwith her, and it will make all the difference to your work and\nhappiness.'  The man to whom this advice was offered writes: 'The\nadvice was given seriously, but with that bright twinkle of his; and I\nowe much to it, for we have been here since . . . and I don't want to\ngo.'\n\n\nThe following is an extract from a notice which appeared in the\n'Guardian '!\n\n'By his published work he is best known to the outer world as one of\nthe few English scholars who have given attention to Coptic.  In 1896\nhe edited \"The Coptic Apocryphal Gospels\" in the \"Cambridge Texts and\nStudies.\"  The important article on the Coptic Version in Hastings's\n\"Bible Dictionary\" came also from his pen, and he was engaged on an\nedition of the Sahidic fragments of St. Luke's Gospel.  His deepest\ninterest, however, lay not in these subsidiary studies, but in the\nfundamental problems of theology proper.  His Burney Prize essay,\nprinted at the University Press in 1893 under the title of \"The\nSelf-limitation of the Word of God as manifested in the Incarnation,\"\nis no doubt comparatively slight, and in some respects immature; but\nits reverent and fearless treatment of the difficulties of his great\ntheme gave promise of work of permanent value in this field.  His\ninterest in the great problems never flagged, and his sympathetic touch\nwith the life and thought of the younger men in his college kept him\nconstantly {31} engaged on the task of putting into clear and ever\nclearer expression such solutions as he was able to attain.  His\nsermons in College Chapel were singularly effective, because he never\nwasted a word, and because every sentence was felt to be the outcome of\nstrenuous thought tested by living experience.\n\n'It is not surprising, therefore, that he exercised an unusual\ninfluence upon younger students.  His friends were very closely bound\nto him indeed, in bonds which death can consecrate but cannot sever.\nThey can never cease to thank God for the pure, bright, tender, utterly\nsincere, fearless, and faithful spirit He has given them to love.'\n\n\n\n\n{32}\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nTHE LAST FEW MONTHS\n\nFrom the time that Forbes took his degree at Cambridge his health was\nfar from strong.  He suffered from time to time from a form of eczema\nwhich caused him a good deal of discomfort and pain.  Many of his\nletters contain references to the fact that he had been unwell and had\nbeen unable to do as much work as he had hoped.  In September 1897 he\nwent with his brother Armitage on a visit to St. Petersburg and Moscow.\nHe stayed in the house of a Russian priest at St. Petersburg, and was\nmuch interested in the work of Father John of Kronstadt, with whom an\ninterview was arranged which unfortunately fell through at the last\nmoment.  Towards the end of 1897 he developed a bad cough and was\nthreatened with phthisis.  He accordingly spent Christmas and the first\ntwo or three months of 1898 at St. Moritz in Switzerland.  His health\nthen seemed to be much improved.  For several years he went back to St.\nMoritz to spend the greater part of the Christmas vacation.  He took\ngreat delight in tobogganing, and on one occasion was awarded a prize\nfor a race in which he took part.  In the summer of 1899 he went out to\nSouth Africa {33} during the Long Vacation.  He visited Pretoria and\nhad an interview with President Kruger and his wife.  One of his\nletters records his impressions of the President.  He was for some time\ndisposed to believe that the war, which broke out soon after his\nreturn, could and should have been avoided, but he subsequently\nmodified his views on this point.\n\nTowards the end of August 1903 the pain from which he had suffered\nintermittently for years became so much worse that he came up to\nconsult a London doctor, and by his advice remained in town as a\npatient at St. Thomas's Home.  When he entered the home he fully\nexpected to undergo an operation within a fortnight; but the doctor who\nhad suggested it declared, after further examination, that no operation\nwas necessary.  Meanwhile Forbes lingered on in the home week after\nweek.  Eventually a partial operation was performed, and after he had\nspent thirteen weeks in the home the surgeon suggested his removal to a\nprivate nursing home, where he could keep him under closer observation.\nHere he performed a second operation.  This seemed at first to have\nbeen a success, and after a fortnight in this private home he was well\nenough to start for Switzerland again.  He went at first to St. Moritz,\nwhere he had been so often before; but, finding that the pain returned\nand that he could not sleep, he went down to Alassio on the Riviera.\nHere he was for several weeks till his return to England.  He reached\nWestminster on January 13 and went up to Cambridge on the following\nday.  For a few days he was well enough to lecture, and it seemed as\nthough he might be able to {34} resume his old work.  On Sunday\nevening, January 17, he was 'at home' in his rooms and received over\nsixty undergraduates who came to welcome him back.  Soon the old\ntrouble returned, and he rapidly grew worse.  His pain became almost\nconstant, and he was removed with great difficulty to another London\nnursing home on January 29.  It was then proposed that the original\noperation which had been suggested, but had never been performed,\nshould take place, and he fully expected that this would result in his\nrestoration to health and to work.  A few days later he was threatened\nwith blood-poisoning, and it became obvious that the operation must be\ndelayed.  On Saturday evening, February 6, he seemed fairly cheerful.\nNeither he nor his doctors had any idea that he was in an extremely\ncritical state.  About midnight, as the pain had become worse, his\ndoctor was sent for, and he gave him an injection of morphia.  Soon\nafter this he asked his nurse to turn the light down and said to her,\n'If I am asleep in the morning do not wake me.'  She looked in about\n3.30 A.M. to see if he was asleep, and, finding him awake, inquired if\nhe would like a drink of champagne.  He said yes, and asked her first\nof all to help him turn over to the other side.  As she was in the act\nof assisting him, he passed away, without a movement of any kind.  A\nhappy smile lingered long on his face after the end had come.\n\nHis body was removed the same evening to St. Faith's Chapel, in\nWestminster Abbey.  Here on the following Thursday morning, February\n11, at 9 A.M., the funeral service was said.  The chapel {35} was\nfilled with his friends, who had come from Cambridge and elsewhere.\nHis body was buried the same afternoon at Eastbourne in the same grave\nwith that of his sister, the Deaconess Cecilia, who had passed away\nfive months before.\n\nThe inscription on the memorial card issued to his friends was:\n\n  CUM CHRISTO VICTURUS\n  DE MORTE AD VITAM MIGRAVIT\n  DOMINICA IN SEXAGESIMA\n  ANNO SALUTIS MCMIV\n  AETATIS SUAE XXXVII.\n\n\n  And, doubtless, unto thee is given\n    A life that bears immortal fruit\n    In those great offices that suit\n  The full-grown energies of heaven.\n\n\n\n\n{36}\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nTWO APPRECIATIONS\n\nThe two following sketches of Forbes Robinson's life at Cambridge have\nbeen contributed, the first by the Rev. T. C. Fitzpatrick, Fellow and\nDean of Christ's College, and the second by the Rev. Digby B.\nKittermaster, of Clare College, now Head of the Shrewsbury School\nMission in Liverpool.\n\n\nMr. Fitzpatrick writes:\n\n'College life has changed a good deal since the days when a young\ngraduate, on his election to a fellowship, was advised not to see too\nmuch of the undergraduate members of the College, that the division\nbetween the senior and junior members of the College might be\npreserved.  A custom of that kind, once established, is not easy to\nbreak, for traditions of all sorts, good and bad, live long in College.\n\n'Fortunately, the relations between the undergraduates and the fellows\nof the College are gradually becoming more natural, to the benefit of\nthe whole body.  Forbes Robinson will be long remembered for the\ninfluence that he exerted in this {37} direction, and what he has\neffected it will be comparatively easy for others to carry on.\n\n'It is my desire to give some slight impression of his life in College,\nand I do not wish to say much about his teaching work.  I must mention,\nhowever, what frequently struck me, the great joy he had in teaching;\nhis success was not surprising.  When he found (in January last) that\nhe could not take up all his lecture work he would not allow another to\ngive in his place the course of lectures on Church History.  \"I want,\"\nhe said to me, \"to give them myself in my own way,\" and he hoped to\nhave given them this Easter term.  I was not surprised to hear from a\npupil of the interest that he and others found in a similar course of\nlectures which he had given the previous year.  \"He put things so,\" the\npupil told me, \"that you could not forget what he had said.\"\n\n'My last recollection of him as a teacher bears witness to his interest\nand purpose.  Word was brought me before morning chapel that he had\nbeen obliged to call in the doctor in the middle of the night.  I went\nto his rooms after chapel and found that he was asleep, I put up a\nnotice that he would be unable to lecture.  He awoke soon after I had\nleft his rooms; he had another notice put up that he would lecture in\nhis rooms.  When I came back to College later in the morning I looked\nin and found him lying on his sofa with the room full of men, sitting\nwhere they could.  The class will not forget that lecture, nor shall I\nforget the sight.\n\n'When two men have lived a number of years within the same College, it\nis difficult for them to {38} realise the change in their relationship\nthat has come with time.  There is a comradeship that comes through the\ninfluence of circumstances rather than from that personal attraction\nwhich two men feel for one another, and which arose they don't remember\nwhen or how.  It was this comradeship of work and the sharing of\nresponsibilities that led me to know Forbes Robinson.  We had lived\nsome years in College before I knew much of him; I was some years his\nsenior, and our lines of work were very different.  As far as I know,\nhe never talked to older men in that frank way which was his custom\nwith those of his own age, and still more with men younger than\nhimself.  Some weeks ago I was staying at the hotel on the Riviera\nwhere he had been at Christmas time.  The English lady, whose husband\nkeeps the house, told me that with them Forbes Robinson hardly talked\nat all, but that he took their boy out for long walks and talked to\nhim; and the boy's face lit up as I spoke to him of Forbes.\n\n'There is still the recollection in College, handed on from year to\nyear, of the walk which he took at the end of a Long Vacation from\nLondon to Cambridge with two other men, and how he talked all the way.\nIt was these conversations, often prolonged for two or three hours,\nthat impressed those to whom he opened out his thoughts, and who in\nturn let him see something of their inner life.\n\n'Forbes always had one or two special friends among the younger men,\nwhom he seemed to me to look upon as heroes; he always yearned for\nsympathy, and he was prepared to give to others all that {39} he had\ngot.  This closer relationship with a few men did not in the least\nnarrow his interest in the life of the College.  He gained, I cannot\nbelieve that it can have been without an effort long and hard, the\npower of taking an interest in all sorts of things that form no small\npart of the life of the average man.  There was nothing strained or\nexaggerated in his relations with other men; he was at all times just\nhimself.\n\n'When he was elected a Fellow, being also Theological Lecturer, he was\nanxious to do something to interest and help those who were not\ntheological students, and he had, first on Sunday mornings after\nChapel, and afterwards in the latter part of the afternoons, Greek\nTestament readings for non-theological men, and some terms he took up\nsome of the problems that present themselves as difficulties to the\nthoughtful man.  These papers were prepared with great care, and, as I\nknow, at no small cost of time and energy.\n\n'On Sunday evenings he was \"at home\" from 9 to 11 to any members of the\nCollege who cared to come.  On those occasions it was a curious sight\nthat met the eyes of any late comer as he opened the door and saw men\nin groups sitting on the floor, as chairs were insufficient; as a rule\nthere was no general subject of conversation--numbers made that\nimpossible.  Most Sunday evenings there was music, but not always, and\nit was difficult at the end of the evening to say what could have\nbrought so many men together.  It was a common ground of meeting for\ndifferent kinds of men.  Forbes Robinson was often at his best on these\noccasions; he would join {40} first one group and then another, and\ntake part in the subject which was being discussed.  Generally one or\ntwo would remain when the others left, and deeper problems would then\nbe talked over.  Only on one Sunday of last term was Forbes Robinson\nwell enough to be \"at home.\"  The room was more crowded than I had ever\nseen it.  It was a sort of welcome back after his absence the previous\nterm.  It was evident that it gave him pleasure, and evident, too, that\nhe was all the time in pain.  Yet with a brightness, which must have\ncost him much, he talked with one and another of simple daily interests\nin the way that showed his sympathy with life, and gained for him the\npower of saying on other occasions deeper things.\n\n'Nothing could have been simpler than the character of these\ngatherings.  Simplicity was the secret of his power.\n\n'I find it impossible to write of my own conversations with him; they\ndealt chiefly with the difficulties of Cambridge, of College life, and\nof the lives of those in our College for whom we felt we had a\nresponsibility.  Talking of the difficulties of belief, I was struck by\nhis quiet answer: \"I do not believe some things which I did when I was\nyounger; but those which I believe, I believe more firmly.\"  Forbes\nRobinson had a great belief in the power of intercession.  Quite\nrecently a man in his year told me that when Forbes Robinson was an\nundergraduate he had known him spend two hours during the afternoon in\nintercession for his friends.  One is not surprised that prayer was a\nsubject on which he {41} thought much.  He was to have written an\nimportant article on it.\n\n'As we talked together of different men, I remember being struck with\nthe desire he expressed that men should be good and strong, and not of\nany one type.  He had a great confidence in the essential goodness that\nthere is in men, and he always formed a high estimate of another.\n\n'His letters will indicate how deeply he entered into the lives of\nothers, and how wide were his sympathies.  A member of another College\ntold me that the news of the death of Forbes Robinson reached him just\nafter the close of their evening chapel, and he had not long returned\nto his rooms when an Indian gentleman called, an undergraduate of this\nCollege, who almost in tears told him of all that Forbes had done for\nhim, and how he had learnt in Hall at Christ's from the strange silence\nthat something must have happened, and was told of the loss that came\nso unexpectedly upon us on Sunday, February 7.\n\n'I close this short account of my friend with extracts from three\nletters casually taken from those which have reached me.  A young\nclergyman writes: \"I feel I owe a very great debt to him, both as a\nlecturer and as a friend.  His clearness of mind and power of thought\nwere such as I have never seen in any other man.  But far more precious\nthan these intellectual gifts was the inspiration of his personal\ncharacter.  His ideals were so high, and he lived so close to them.\nFew lives have better expressed the truth of the words of which he was\nso fond: 'He that {42} loseth his life shall find it.'\"  A schoolmaster\nwrites: \"The last talk I had with him was a month before my ordination,\nand I remember the emphasis that he laid on the praying side of a\nclergyman's life.\"  A doctor writes: \"Looking back upon my time at\nChrist's, I think that of all the influences which helped me, the most\npotent was my friendship with Forbes Robinson. . . .  I came to know\nhim somewhat intimately by spending an Easter vacation with him, and\nseveral of our conversations then have left a lasting impression on my\nmind. . . .  I suppose, as one gets older and sees so much more of\ndeath, that a deepening faith takes away that sense of personal loss\nand leaves behind a feeling of gladness that yet another friend has\npassed to the Communion of Saints.\"\n\n'Of his life we may use the motto of his College:\n\n'AD HONOREM CHRISTI JESU ET FIDEI EJUS INCREMENTUM.'\n\n\nMr. Kittermaster writes:\n\n'Forbes Robinson did not regard any one of us as a \"mere\nundergraduate,\" one of a mass; that was the first thing which those of\nus who knew him as undergraduates learnt.  He was genuinely interested\nfrom the first in his undergraduate acquaintances; interested in them\nas men, not as promising pupils, not as likely scholars, not as\nathletes, not as material for \"improving\" influence, but as\nmen--individuals, each possessing a separate and distinct human {43}\npersonality, and therefore of the truest and deepest interest to him.\n\n'Our public schools taught us (and for most of us Cambridge continued\nthe teaching) that to be of any real importance and consequence among\nhis fellows a man must be \"good at games,\" or perhaps--but this more\nrarely--\"good at work.\"  Such is the simple creed of the undergraduate.\nIf he satisfies neither of the above requirements, then he recognises,\nwith greater or less sadness, that he is an ordinary man, the \"average\nundergraduate.\"  He is one of the crowd if he has no athletic powers to\ncommend him to the notice of his fellows _in statu pupillari_; he is\none of the crowd if he has no slightest hope of making for himself any\nname in the intellectual world, to commend him to the leaders of\nthought at Cambridge.  And this knowledge is to many a Cambridge boy,\nplaying at being a man, a matter of real, if unconfessed, grief.\n\n'But \"there is no such thing as the average man, or at least as the\naverage undergraduate.\"  This was the belief which Forbes Robinson held\nwith increasing conviction as his life went on.  And it was this belief\nwhich accounted to some extent for the very large part which his\nfriendship undoubtedly played in the life of many a Cambridge\nundergraduate.\n\n'For a man condemned by his fellows and himself to the position of the\n\"ordinary man\" found himself in the presence of Forbes (as all of us\nuniversally called him) to be no such thing.  Gradually and with\ngenuine surprise he learned from him--not by any definite {44} word of\nteaching--that though it might cost him efforts painful and many to get\nthe better of his \"special,\" and though athletic fame knew him not at\nall, yet the possibilities of his own peculiar personal life were\nwonderful and great.  For here was one who compelled men by his genuine\nunaffected interest in their lives and work to be themselves genuinely\ninterested in them too.  A man could not know Forbes for long and not\nbe quickly conscious of a new sense of the value of himself, which made\nhim believe that his own personality and life were things of great\nimportance.  For \"He is interested in me\" is what almost every man felt\nfrom the start of his acquaintance with Forbes.  \"He is interested in\nme\" we felt when he passed us in the street with his quaint humorous\nsmile of recognition; we felt the same when we entered his room, to be\nreceived often without a word but with the same half smile: we felt the\nsame again if we knew that he was watching the progress of a football\nmatch or boat race in which we were taking part.  And \"he is interested\nin me\"--most wonderful of all--we felt as we listened to him in the\nlecture room, and were compelled to attention; for his interest in the\nmen in front of him, coupled with his interest in his subject, forced\nus all--pass men and honours men alike--to listen to the history of\nChurch and Doctrine and Creeds.  It was this unfeigned interest in men,\nsimply as men, that in the first instance gave him the influence which\nhe certainly exercised over all sorts of men, including the kind of men\nwhom the majority of their fellows disregarded, {45} or perhaps\ndespised; \"the babes and sucklings of the undergraduate world,\" to\nquote another.  Such men, in whom most of us could find little to\nattract us, were to him vastly interesting--interesting for their\nsimple human personality.\n\n'Some men perhaps never discovered from what source his interest in\nthem sprang.  They knew that their views of the possibilities of their\nown life were enlarged, that they believed in themselves more for\nhaving been with him; but it was not all at once that they discovered\nthe reason of his interest and belief in them.  It was due to the\nChrist.  With each new friendship and acquaintance which Forbes\nmade--and this is especially true of young men--he saw deeper into the\nmeaning of the Incarnation of Christ.  This was the secret of his\nextraordinary interest and amazing belief in nearly every one of us.\nHe saw in us all, however ordinary, however commonplace--yes, however\nunlovely were our lives--something somewhere of Jesus Christ.\n\n'Then some of us were privileged to discover that what he felt for us\nwas something far deeper and holier than is expressed by the word\n\"interest.\"  It was love.  In every fullest sense he understood the\ngrand full meaning of the word.  His love for his friends was something\naltogether larger and deeper and truer than is generally understood by\nthe word.  It was so holy a thing that it is hard to write of it.  He\nknew, and the knowledge is perhaps rarer than is supposed, what in all\nits fulness was the meaning of the love of one man for another.  This\nis why he could enter into the spirit of Tennyson's \"In {46} Memoriam\"\nas almost no one else could.  Tennyson's experience might have been so\nentirely his own.  His love for his friends was indeed a wonderful,\nsacred thing, beautiful to see.  With Henry Drummond he felt that it\nwas better not to live than not to love.  Love was to him a part of all\nhis being: for in him dwelt \"the strong Son of God, Immortal Love,\"\ncompelling him to love his fellow-men.\n\n'It was to him a real grief that (as he often quite wrongly supposed)\none or two of those, for whom he would quite willingly have cut off his\nright hand if in any way it could have advantaged them, cared not at\nall for him, nor ever understood how he cared for them.  But he found\nrelief from the strange unsatisfied longing, engendered in him by this\nbelief, in intense continuous prayer for those whom he loved.  He\nprayed, it is certain, as few men pray.  Prayer was to him the very\nbreath of life.  And his prayers, like his life, must have been utterly\nselfless.  Many do not understand the amount they owe to his prayers.\nSome of us may some day realise the magnitude of the debt; at present\nit is not seen.  But he prayed with all the effort of his being for his\nfriends: eagerly, passionately, unceasingly he prayed.  \"Pray for him,\nbelieve in him; believe in him, pray for him,\" he was never tired of\nsaying to those who spoke to him of some disappointing friend.  And his\nown life was a proof of the power which lay behind such prayer.\n\n'To those reading this who did not know Forbes Robinson it may seem\nthat a man of such intensity of feeling and holiness of life would be\nmore likely {47} to frighten away than to attract to close quarters the\n\"average undergraduate\" (whose existence he denied).  This most\ncertainly was not the case.  For, if there was in him something utterly\ndivine, he was also human as ever man could be.  He admired, like the\nveriest freshman, the physical strength and powers of the athlete.  In\nhis presence the man of bodily attainments and strength of limb\nexperienced the strange sensation of being looked up to by one whom he\nknew to be utterly superior to him.  But perhaps nearly all who knew\nhim experienced this at one time or another; for he must have been one\nof the most humble men that have ever lived.  His humility was almost a\nfault.  It led him to depreciate himself so far.  And yet how beautiful\na thing it was!  He did indeed count all men better than himself.\n\n'He easily condoned offences which in some eyes, and especially the\neyes of dons, loom as a general rule heinous and large.  And the\nriotous undergraduate, who cuts chapels and lectures, found that a\ndon--yes, and a junior dean--could be a friend of his.\n\n'He possessed too a keen and real sense of humour.  He could, and often\ndid, laugh with all his heart.  He chaffed continuously his large\ncircle of undergraduate friends.  When he was questioning a man in the\nlecture-room, you felt that all the time he was half chaffing him.  He\naddressed us all in lectures as \"Mr.,\" in a half serious, half amused\nstyle.  \"It is the only chance for some men to retain any\nself-respect--to address them as 'Mr.'\"--he would say, after the\ndiscovery of some more than usual piece of {48} ignorance in his class\nof \"special\" men; \"for how can a man have any self-respect unless\naddressed as 'Mr.' who does not know which are the Pastoral Epistles,\nor who is the Bishop of Durham (then Bishop Westcott)?\"\n\n'He could not remember the name of his best friend on occasions, and he\nwould recount with real glee how he had been known successfully to\nintroduce two men, not knowing the name of either.  On one occasion it\nfell to him to introduce to each other a low-caste West African native\nand a particularly high-caste Brahmin rejoicing in a lofty sounding\npolysyllabic title: of course he transposed the names--with results, so\nhe declared, almost fatal to himself.\n\n'He would display with humorous pride to his athletic friends a\nphotograph of himself coming in second in a toboggan handicap race at\nSt. Moritz, which he always maintained he morally won.  He was full of\nspontaneous humour.  When he greeted you, when he looked at you, when\nhe talked with you, it was always with a half smile on his face.  It\nwas his sense of humour which procured him a quick entrance into many a\nman's life and heart.  It was his sense of humour which made the\nhostile undergraduate, hauled for cutting lectures or chapels, forget\nhis hostility and the presence of the don; though at the end of the\ninterview he, probably for the first time, began to think whether\nchapel-going had any meaning, whether a lecture, if listened to, might\nconceivably profit the listener.  It was his sense of humour which made\nall feel at home with him, which at the first attracted the most\nunlikely men, {49} which inspired with confidence the shyest, and made\nthe most frivolous and thoughtless not afraid of him.  Yet while he\nwould laugh, and make us laugh, for as long as ever any one wished,\nthrough all his unaffected merriment he made men feel the strange\nearnestness of his life.  And all knew that, while he never obtruded on\nus religious or even serious matters, he was ready at a moment's notice\nto speak with us of spiritual things.  And most men felt something of\nwhat a friend of his wrote of him after his death: \"He understood of\n'the things that matter' more than any man that I shall ever meet.\"\nAnd many men who owe to Forbes Robinson their first serious thoughts of\nand their first insight into \"the things that matter\" must feel the\nsame.  It is this fact that makes it impossible to measure the\nfar-reaching deep influence of his life.  For the greatness of that\nlife lay not in any large influence on any large body of\nundergraduates, though the undergraduate life of Christ's College must,\nas a whole, have felt his real influence; nor was his life great simply\nbecause he was a scholar and a thinker.  But his life was great, and\nwill for all time remain great, because it was an inspiration--there is\nno other word: it was, and is, a lasting, vivid, real inspiration to a\nfew.  What Bishop Westcott did on a large scale, Forbes Robinson did on\na small.  He inspired men--inspired them to search for and hold to the\nrealities of life.\n\n'To sum up: a man admitted into the inner chamber of his life learnt\nthere something of these three things: (_a_) The value of his own\npersonality, (_b_) the meaning of love, (_c_) the power of prayer.\n\n{50}\n\n'_a. The value of his own personality._--A man, as he talked with\nForbes, was taught with increasing clearness the amazing possibilities\nof life for any one who has tried to think what it means to say that\n\"this is I.\"  Many of us, conscious in ourselves only of very ordinary\nattainments, of no very high ideals, of weaknesses of character, learnt\nfrom our friend that in spite of all this, our own personality was\nGod's greatest gift to us.  We learnt from him that our own particular\ncommonplace life was, with all its failures and inconsistencies, a\ntremendous enterprise, big with opportunities.  He taught us this by\nhis belief in us.  He held (again like Bishop Westcott) through\neverything to the faith of \"man naturally Christian.\" By his belief in\na man he forced him at last to believe in himself.  For he taught us\nthat we were, each one, two men--the real \"Ego\" and the false--and that\nthe real self must in the end have the mastery over the false, because\nthat real self was the Christ.\n\n'_b. The meaning of love._--It is impossible for lesser natures to\nenter into all that the word \"love\" meant to Forbes.  His love for his\nfriends was \"wonderful, passing the love of women.\"  He loved some men\nwith an intensity of feeling impossible to describe.  It was almost\npain to him.  If he loved a man he loved him with a passionate love (no\nweaker expression will do).  We undergraduates found our natures too\nsmall to understand it.  Yet, as we learnt to know him more and more,\nwe began too to learn a little of what real love is--we began to learn\nwhat can be the meaning and the wonder and the power {51} and the depth\nof the love of man for man.  And we understood in time that his love\nfor us and his belief in us sprang from the same high source--from the\nChrist in him, in us.\n\n'_c. The power of prayer._--This last lesson explained the other two.\nPerhaps only a few of those who knew Forbes as undergraduates learnt\nit.  Yet an intimate knowledge of him must have forced almost any man\nto the belief that 'more things are wrought by prayer than this world\ndreams of.'  He prayed for those he loved, it is certain, for hours at\na time.  All his thoughts about some men gradually became prayers.  He\ncould not teach us everything that prayer meant to him; he could not\nteach us to pray as he prayed.  Yet through him one or two at least of\nhis undergraduate friends saw a little further into the eternal mystery\nof prayer.  And men must sometimes--with all reverence be it said--have\nexperienced in his presence the same kind of a feeling of some great\nunseen influence at work as that which the disciples must have\nexperienced in the presence of Christ after He, apart and alone, had\nwatched through the night with God in prayer.  For many an hour of his\nlife did Forbes spend like that, striving with God for those he loved.\nHe believed--he knew (this was his own testimony)--that he could in\nthis way bring to bear upon a man's life more real effective influence\nthan by any word of direct personal teaching or advice.  So did he\nprove once more that the man of power in the spiritual world is the man\nof prayer.\n\n'These are the great lessons of Forbes Robinson's {52} life--lessons\nwhich many a careless undergraduate learnt in a greater or less degree,\nand, learning, caught from the teacher something of his passion for\nlife and love and prayer, for service of God and man.\n\n'There must be many who will not soon forget the lessons; there must be\nmany in whose lives the influence and inspiration of that saintly life\nwill be for ever a power making for holiness and high ideals of living;\nthere are, it is certain, very many who will thank God continually that\nthey were, in their undergraduate days, allowed to call Forbes Robinson\nfriend.\n\n'How many of us, when we heard with a shock of almost horror that he\nhad passed from us, conjured up before us the picture we shall never\nsee again--the picture of our friend sitting any evening at his table\nin Darwin's historic rooms at Christ's, dimly lighted with candles!  We\nshall remember long the quick look up at our entrance, the half-smile\non his face, the welcome of a man's love in his eyes, however busy and\ntired he might be.  Then, though it cost him later hours out of bed,\nthe invitation to sit down, followed quickly by an indignant\nremonstrance as we ousted his cat from the best arm-chair.  And then\nthe talk that followed: sometimes almost trivial; sometimes (but only\nif we wished it) deeply serious; sometimes--and these occasions were\nprecious--a kind of soliloquy on his part, as he spoke of God, of the\nrealities of life, of love, of prayer.  Then, with still the same\nhalf-smile, he would bid us \"Good night,\" and watch us out of the room\nwith the same look of love in his eyes with which he welcomed us, {53}\nas he turned back to his table to work and think and pray far into the\nnight.\n\n'So many a one of us has left him again and again, to return to the\nmerry, careless, selfish undergraduate world a nobler, better man.  And\nnow he has passed from us--\"dead ere his prime\" we should say, did we\nnot understand that somewhere the faithful, hopeful, loving soul has\nbetter work to do.  He is, as he ever was, \"in Christ.\"  He lives.  His\nlife remains here and beyond.  His faith in God, in prayer; his hope\nfor every man; his utterly wonderful, amazing love,--they still remain.\nFor _nuni menei_ (nothing can rob us of the word) _pistis, elpis,\nagape, ta tria tauta; meizpon de touton he agape_.'\n\n\n[Transcriber's note: The above Greek phrases were transliterated as\nfollows: _nuni_--nu, upsilon, nu, iota; _menei_--mu, epsilon, nu,\nepsilon, iota; _pistis_--pi, iota, sigma, tau, iota, final sigma;\n_elpis_--epsilon, lambda, pi, iota, final sigma; _agape_--alpha (soft\nbreathing mark), gamma, alpha, pi, eta; _ta_--tau, alpha; _tria_--tau,\nrho, iota, alpha; _tauta_--tau, alpha, upsilon, tau, alpha;\n_meizpon_--mu, epsilon, iota, zeta, omega, nu; _de_--delta, epsilon;\n_touton_--tau, omicron, upsilon, tau, omega, nu; _he_--(rough breathing\nmark) epsilon; _agape_--alpha (soft breathing mark), gamma, alpha, pi,\neta]\n\n\n\n{54}\n\nLETTERS\n\n\n_To A. V. R._\n\nBrislington Hill, Bristol: September 24, 1890.\n\n. . .  I have been persuaded to try the Semitic Languages Tripos.  I\nhave been learning German and Syriac a little this Long with that aim\nin view. . . .  I don't really know what to do.  I am trying to do what\nwill best fit me for my future work.  It is hard to know what is right.\n\n. . .  The only thing I want is not to develop into a mere\nbookworm. . . .  The atmosphere of Cambridge so tends to deaden one,\nand to make one unsympathetic with humanity; and yet the Church today\ndoes so need men who know something, men who can express with no\nuncertain sound the truth of Old Testament and New Testament criticism.\nI want so to find out what the Old Testament is, and how far we can\nbelieve in it, in its essential truth, in its historical accuracy.  The\nquestion can only be settled by scholars--by scholars filled with the\nspirit of humility and understanding.  It cannot be settled by the\nso-called spiritual faculty alone, but only by the intellect guided by\nthe Spirit of Truth.\n\nI have been reading St. John's Gospel in Greek and Syriac, and more and\nmore I become convinced {55} that what it says is truth:\n_zoe_--life--anything worth calling life--anything that can\nlast--anything that is of use here and hereafter--is to be gained alone\nby actually eating and drinking the Body of the Son of Man.  The\nexpression is awfully strong--the expression in itself.  I am not\ntalking of all sorts of modern explanations of the expression.  Take it\nas it stands in the original: 'You have no life, unless you eat and\ndrink. . . .'\n\n[Transcriber's note: The word _zoe_ in the above paragraph was\ntransliterated from the Greek letters zeta, omega, eta.]\n\nI wish there could be a small Greek Testament reading in the College\nfor considering what the New Testament really means, apart from modern\ninterpretations.  Is it possible to find out the true, original meaning\nof that book, and to understand its problems a little and its\nsolutions?  'Quid importat scientia sine timore Dei?'\n\n\n\n_To T. H. M._\n\nAldeburgh House, Blackheath: March 20, 1891.\n\nI am gradually finding out how ignorant I am of the meaning of the New\nTestament, and how miserably I have read my own miserable notions and\nglosses into the words of St. Paul.  I am sure that the solution of the\ngreatest problems which concern humanity is to be found in his\nEpistles, if we could only approach them without bias and with more\nchildishness.  I feel certain that the Incarnation is the great fact of\nthe world's, and probably of the universe's, history.  'The Word was\nmade flesh.'\n\n  And so the Word had breath, and wrought\n    With human hands the creed of creeds\n    In loveliness of perfect deeds,\n  More strong than all poetic thought.\n\n\n{56}\n\nThe death on Calvary must have had effects far beyond this particular\nworld.  'He descended into hell.'  He claimed His power over all parts\nof His universe.  The Good _has_ conquered.  The Bad _is_ defeated.\n\n\n\n_To T. H. M._\n\nChrist's College, Cambridge: July 18, 1891.\n\nWe have but lately heard that my missionary brother[1] has passed away\ninto the eternal world.  He died in Africa.  He gave up all, he gave up\nhis life for Christ.  Terribly as we feel the loss, and shall feel it\nstill more, I cannot help thanking the Eternal Father that He has\naccepted the life-sacrifice, and feeling that He calls upon us here and\nnow, each day and moment of our lives, to offer up ourselves on the\naltar of universal thanksgiving.  Life is sacrifice, renunciation: true\nlife is dependence on God.  Sin is isolation, death--a failure to\nrecognise and act on our dependence.  I do feel as I seldom felt before\nsomething of the love of the Father, the grace of the Son, the\ncommunion of the Spirit.  We _must_ learn that an individual hope,\naspiration, ambition, is against the law of the universe--the law of\nself-sacrifice.  We _must_ learn that our wills are ours to make them\nGod's; that if we have a single hope or thought which He does not\ninspire, which true humanity cannot share, the hope and thought are\nwrong.  God grant that you and I may renounce {57} our individual\nlives, and become truly ourselves by martyrdom, by allowing the Christ\nin us to live.\n\nI am to be ordained in September.  Pray for me.  There is no power like\nprayer.  Let us pray for one another.  The great Father longs for\nsimple lives, simple piety, perpetual thanksgiving.  And we have so\nmuch to be thankful for--so much here and now.  I do long to offer\nbody, mind, soul, affections, will, hope, to Him as a thanksgiving.\nSelf-renunciation, life in a Church, a Body, is the only life.  God\ngrant we may live it!\n\n\n[1] John Alfred Robinson, formerly a scholar of Christ's College, who\ndied at Lokoja on the River Niger, on June 25, 1891.\n\n\n\n_To T. H. M._\n\nChrist's College, Cambridge: November 17, 1891.\n\nDo you know that it isn't a bad thing to feel a babe?  We must all\nbecome simple little children before we enter the kingdom of heaven,\nbecause God, who lives in that kingdom, has the simplest heart in all\nthe wide universe--the most childlike, for God is Love.  He has no\ncross purposes.  Though He is stronger and better and bigger than we\nare, He is simpler.  He will love a poor, simple old woman in His\nsimple way with a wonderful affection.  He is so simple, because He\ndoes not know what sin is.  God never sins.  God is Light, and in Him\nis no darkness at all.\n\nIt is this simplicity, this love of One who is omnipotent, uncreate,\nillimitable, eternal, that makes me reverence Him, adore Him, live for\nHim, love Him.\n\nSimplicity is wonderfully attractive.  The man who knows least of sin\nis most helpful to me, because {58} he is most simple and Godlike.  The\n'man of the world' is most repulsive, because he is most like the Devil.\n\n\n\n_To E. N. L., on the occasion of his ordination._\n\nCambridge: March 10, 1892.\n\nIt gives me great pleasure to think that on Sunday next you will be\nmade a Deacon in God's Church.  I thank God that He has called you to\none of the highest offices on earth, that henceforth you will be 'in'\nor (shall we say?) 'under' orders--God's orders--that you willingly\nrenounce your life, your thoughts, your hopes, your ambitions to Him.\nYou will probably hear much and be told much at this time.  I have\nnothing to say that you have not heard and will not hear said far\nbetter by others.  Our Church gives the keynote in the collect for\nSunday: 'We have no power.'  I never realised my weakness, my pride, my\nhollowness so much as I did at my ordination.  God has been teaching\nme, even in the short time since I was ordained, wonderful\nlessons--lessons of strength being perfected in weakness.  He alone\nknows the depths of our hypocrisy, our vanity, our atheism, and He\nalone can help us.  To get nearer to Him, to know Him better--this is\nwhat I want, this is eternal life.  As we believe in a Person who is by\nour side, who is helping us, training us, we shall be able to proclaim\nHim to others.  Do not mind about feelings.  You may have beautiful\nfeelings at your ordination time.  Thank God if you have.  He sends\nthem.  You may have none.  Thank God if you have not, for He has kept\nthem back.  We do {59} not want to _feel_ better and stronger; we want\nto _be_ better and stronger.  And He _has_ made us better and stronger.\nHe has given us His Spirit as we knelt before the bishop.  We must go\nforth in that strength.  We must use it, live on it, and it will be\nours.  _Kata ten pistin humon genetheto humin_.  When we feel most\nhopeless, most wretched, most distant from God, remember 'feelings\ndon't matter.'  Remember that God's Son felt the same temptation,\nremember that He too was forsaken by His God.  And when all seems lost,\nSatan seems master, we are misunderstood; remember that 'I believe in\nthe Holy Ghost,' who is stronger than separation or death, than\nfeelings, than our hearts.  All our feelings and thoughts and wishes\nare nothing.  God is everything and in all.  All our conceptions will\nbe shattered, all our schemes overthrown, that a Great Person behind\nmay be revealed.  To know, to love, to make known, to make men love\nthat Person is our work in life . . . .\n\n[Transcriber's note: The Greek words in the above paragraph were\ntransliterated as follows: _Kata_--Kappa, alpha, tau, alpha;\n_ten_--tau, eta, nu; _pistin_--pi, iota, sigma, tau, iota, nu;\n_humon_--(rough breathing mark) upsilon, mu, omega, nu;\n_genetheto_--gamma, epsilon, nu, eta, theta, eta, tau, omega;\n_humin_--(rough breathing mark) upsilon, mu, iota, nu]\n\nWe are men sent from God.  We come to bear witness of a Light.  Do not\nlet us confuse ourselves with our message.  The message is everything;\nwe are nothing.  The Light simply shines through us.  We must be glad\nto be shattered, rejected, if so be that the Light shining through us\nmay be manifested.\n\nOne suggestion I make: that you do what I believe you are expected by\nthe words of the Prayer-book to do--say the Morning and Evening Prayer\ndaily _always_, unless you are ill, at home or in church, and the\nLitany on Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday.  You will find this a greater\nhelp than almost anything else--a help against superstition,\nnarrowness, bigotry, {60} heartlessness.  If you decide not to do so,\ndo it with some _really_ good reason, and not because others do the\nsame, or because it is a bother.\n\nAnd now good-bye.  And may God grant us to know Him on earth, so that\nwe may together know Him better hereafter.\n\n\n\n_To W. A. B._\n\nBlackheath: April 30, 1892.\n\n. . .  No amount of philosophical theories are worth much compared with\na simple picture of home life.  It is these common relations of life\nwhich are most awful and sacred.  The highest life we know is, I think\nI may say with reverence, family life--life of Father and Son; family\nlife on earth is a faint picture of something better in heaven.  We\nshall be surprised some day to find that, while we have been searching\nfor the noble and divine, we have it all the while at home.  The\nrelations of brother and brother, son and father, are eternal\nrealities, which we shall never fathom, for God Himself is below them.\n'Omnia exeunt in mysterium,' as Kingsley says in 'Yeast.'  I am very\npleased with that novel.  The description he gives of the sufferings\nand squalor of villages is positively awful.  We do want men who\nbelieve that self-sacrifice, not selfishness, is at the top of all, who\nare sure that family life is made in heaven and is made in the image of\nGod's life, who know that in the present is the eternal, to go and live\nand work and die in our villages.  But Kingsley shows it is not enough\nto give alms or other social benefits--we must do more than that, we\nmust raise their whole {61} life and condition.  I believe myself that\nthis can only be done from inside.  Thus, when God wished to redeem\nman, He did it from inside.  Man himself fought and conquered.  Deity\nentered into humanity.  It is not merely that we must live simply,\nthink simply, work, as they do.  That is well, but we must do more.  If\nwe want to look at them from the inside, I know only one way--the old,\nold way which God Himself adopts.  We must love them, love the Christ,\nthe Spirit in them--not the beast, the devil in them.  Like attracts\nlike.  To love and to detect that, we must have some of that Spirit,\nthat Christ.\n\nThat means to say that to help others from the inside, we must be right\ninside ourselves.  And yet none of us are right inside.  But there is\nthat in us which is right, that in us which is not ourselves, but is\ndeeper than ourselves.  A Son who will make us true sons, a Brother who\nwill teach us how to be brothers, a Human Being who will show us what\nis in all human beings; a Love who will teach us what we always fancy\nwe know, but what we don't know (else we should be divine)--how to\nlove; a Man who will make us saints and gentlemen--the Man Christ\nJesus.  Yes, and there is in us a Great Spirit who is uniting us by\ninvisible bonds to all that is good and healthy and Godlike, a Spirit\nwho disciplines our will when it is weakest and most self-indulgent,\nwho trains our spirit and fights our battles against the evil spirit, a\nPerson who makes us persons.  How then do men differ?  If in every man\nthere is the Light which lightens him, the Christ, the Spirit, what is\nthe difference between good and bad men?  Does {62} a good man possess\nreligion, or faith, or love?  No, the best men would tell you they were\npossessed by faith and love, rather than that they possessed them.\nWhat faith or love they have is not a possession--it is in them, not of\nthem, not belonging to them.  It comes from the Christ in them.  The\ndifference between men is not that one is inspired and another is not,\nbut that one yields to the Spirit, another does not.  We begin to obey\nwhen we lose ourselves in that Spirit and forget all but God.  We ought\nnever to settle any detail in life without taking Him into account: we\nare fools if we do.  How can we be logical?  For He is in that detail,\nand not to think of Him is not to understand that detail.  For every\ndetail is more than a detail--it is the expression of a Person.\n\nI have wandered into a train of thought suggested by 'Yeast,' and in\npart copied directly from it.  Forgive me.  I was half thinking aloud.\nThat is my one excuse for saying what I am trying to think.\n\nI never played golf.  I do that sort of thing by deputy.  K---- is the\nsort of man to do it for me.  At any rate, I trust him with my football\nand rowing.  It doesn't tire you so much if you do it that way.  Only\nlet me give you one piece of advice, which I only wish I acted upon:\n'Don't do your thinking by deputy:' do your rowing, golf, football,\ncricket, skittles, talking if you like, but not your thinking.\n\n\n{63}\n\n_To D. D. R; written apropos of a discussion on St. Paul's idea of the\nrelation between Sin and the Law._\n\n2 New Square, Cambridge; Monday before Easter, 1892.\n\nI cannot but help feeling that part of your difficulties are self-made.\nIs there such a difference between Jewish law and law in general?  What\nis law--law in the abstract?  What do you mean when you talk about laws\nof science or morality?  Surely there is no such thing as law in the\nabstract.  You really mean God's thought.  All law existed long before\nthis world existed, as the thought of God.  This thought expresses\nitself, when the world is actually made, in animals, nature, man.  But\nthis thought is somewhat long before it expresses itself, because it is\nGod's thought.  With Him 'to think' is 'to do.'  Before you and I were\nborn, before men were made, man exists in God as a thought.  Each of us\nis an expression of part of that thought.  The whole thought is the\nimage of God, not any one part.  Now, when I speak of man as something\nin contra-distinction to men, I mean the thought of God in\ncontradistinction to its individual realisation.  So when I speak of\nlaw as distinct from special laws, I mean a thought of God as distinct\nfrom its special expressions.  Otherwise 'man' and 'law' are\nabstractions and nonentities.\n\nThe nominalist is right in so far as he denies that law as an abstract\nthing (considered apart from a person--as his thought) is anything: the\nrealist is right in so far as he affirms that law, apart from {64} any\nparticular manifestation, is an eternal reality.  The reconciliation of\nnominalism and realism is found in God.  Applying this to the case in\nhand--you admit that the Ten Commandments are the ground of morality;\ntherefore, I say, they must be an expression of a thought of God, the\nAuthor of morality.  But you are puzzled to find that the most trivial\nsanitary arrangements are considered by the Jew as equally a\nmanifestation of God.  Need we be?  In every little sanitary precaution\nI recognise, or ought to recognise, an expression of that same mind as\nI see it in the Ten Commandments.  God is Light, therefore the clean,\nthe healthy, the decent is an expression of Him.  God is Love,\ntherefore the social, the self-sacrificing, is an expression of Him as\nwell.  But sanitary arrangements and the like, though an expression of\nan unchanging principle, change according to state of civilisation,\nclimate, country.  Therefore we take the principle, not the expression,\nas the ultimate reality in the case of these sanitary laws.\n\nI am afraid I am rather stupid, and cannot make my meaning plain.  I\nwant to show you that the Jewish law only differs from English law as\nbeing in some ways a more complete expression of God's nature.  But in\nall sanitary law, &c., _now_ we have God's nature expressed.  And it\nwould be true to say, 'God spake unto England, saying'--_e.g._ in a\nright decision in court; it would be true to say, 'God spake unto the\njudge, saying.'  Therefore, what holds good of Moses' law holds good of\nall law, because all law is a thought of God.  {65} Therefore St. Paul\nuses indifferently _nomos_ and _ho nomos_, for what is true of God's\nthought is true of every expression of it.  In fact, he more often\nperhaps argues about one particular expression of it.  Why?  Because we\ncan only tell what the thought is by studying the expression.\n\n[Transcriber's note: The Greek words in the above paragraph were\ntransliterated as follows: _nomos_--nu, omicron, mu, omicron, final\nsigma; _ho_--(rough breathing mark), omicron]\n\nDon't be taken in by abstractions.  An ideal is nothing--worse than\nnothing--unless our ideal is God's idea.  Then it is the only reality,\nbecause God's idea will take effect.  His idea is to make man in His\nimage, and be sure it will take effect.  Commandments, judgments,\nstatutes, mean much the same in the Old Testament, I conceive, as we\nmean when we use them.  The Ten Commandments are not so called in the\nBible, I think.  They are called 'words,' I think.\n\nI do not think St. Paul at all restricted _nomos_ to the Ten\nCommandments.  In fact, I don't know that he ever very clearly\nseparated those off from all the rest.\n\nDo not in your essay make the same mistake as many of the Jews in St.\nPaul's time.  Do not try to consider law apart from the Law-giver.\nThey looked upon law as a dead thing by itself, not as an expression of\nthe character of a person.\n\nThus the Commandment about resting on the Sabbath day was considered by\nthem as an order as though from a tyrant.  But God, when He gave it,\ndid not simply say, 'Here it is: do it'--but 'Do it because,' and He\ngives the reason why.  The reason is different in Exodus and\nDeuteronomy, because the books were, to a certain degree perhaps,\nwritten to {66} illustrate different aspects of God's character.\nExodus says: 'Work and rest, because God's life is work and rest.\nTherefore human life made in His image is work and rest.'  Deuteronomy\nsays: 'Work and rest.  God has emancipated you from slavery.  He bids\nyou rest.'  In both cases God is the ground of the law.  Study law--any\nlaw--English law--and in so far as it is law, and not lawlessness under\nguise of law, you will be studying God Himself; for if St. Paul's\nprinciples are true at all, they must be true of all law.  But, oh!\ndon't deal with abstractions, which sound well, but mean little.  Let\nus use what we have.  It is a grand thing to know that the highest\nideal we can conceive must be realised, for the highest ideal must be\npart of God's idea.\n\nDon't try to look at moral law apart from national life.  St. Paul did\nnot.  Law is seen in national life.  A nation is a better expression of\nGod than an individual, because God is three, not simply one.  He is a\nsocial Being, a Being of relations.  And nations will last for ever.\nLaw will always be seen worked out in national life.  God has more\nworlds than one.  Each nation is a thought of God worked out in human\nclay (cf. Jeremiah xviii. 1-6).  Human clay lasts for ever ('I believe\nin the resurrection of the body').  Law will always be worked out thus.\nWe are part of a thought of God--part of an English nation--little\nfragments of a huge whole.  Our immortality depends on the fact that we\nare parts of a nation, parts of a Divine idea, which lasts for ever.\nLaw is more completely seen in conscious than unconscious life, because\nGod's life is conscious.  Law is more completely seen {67} in family\nand national than individual life, because in God Himself are seen the\narchetypes of human relations.\n\nThis letter is disjointed, but contains a few thoughts which may prove\nhelpful--thoughts I have been learning from others of late.\n\nWe are having lovely weather.\n\nThe buds 'feeling' after each other--new life and resurrection life--a\ntype, a pledge of fuller resurrection, of Easter life--nay, the same\nLife--'I am the Resurrection and the Life'--working in trees and\nflowers and man.  What a glorious thing to live in a world which has\nbeen united with its Maker--a world of perfect law and order--a world\nwhere every infraction of law must and will be punished--a world where\nLove is Law and Law is Love--a world where a great thought is being\nrealised, and will be realised in and for us!  You use 'Theology'\nloosely--'Theology' is _the_ thing and 'Religion' is not, I think,\nnearly such a fine word.  Theology is the Learning, Knowing, Studying\nGod.  I am sorry I have said nothing about Jewish sacrificial law.  I\nmeant to.  That expresses a great fact.  It dimly hints (as sacrificial\nlaw in other nations does) at the fact that the ground of the universe\nis self-sacrifice--that the ground of all human, whether family or\nnational, life is a filial sacrifice.  I think other nations besides\nJews regarded _all_ law as coming from God; nay, I think all nations\ndid in part at least.\n\n\n\n{68}\n\n_To E. N. L., on the occasion of the death of his brother, who was\nkilled by lightning at Cambridge._[1]\n\nJune 18, 1892.\n\n. . .  I do feel for you, and could do a great deal to help you.  I can\nonly tell you what I have felt to be the only thing which makes life\nendurable at a time of real sorrow--God Himself.  He comes unutterably\nnear in trouble.  In fact, one scarcely knows He exists until one loves\nor sorrows.  There is no 'getting over' sorrow.  I hate the idea.  But\nthere is a 'getting into' sorrow, and finding right in the heart of it\nthe dearest of all human beings--the Man of Sorrows, a God.  This may\nsound as commonplace, but it is awfully real to me.  I cling to God.  I\nbelieve He exists.  If He does not, I can explain nothing.  If He does,\nall whom we love are safer with Him than with us.  If we can only get\nnearer ourselves to God, we shall get nearer to those whom we love, for\nthey too are in God.\n\nWe shall be one, ever more and more really one, the nearer and the\nliker we get to God. . . .  My dear friend, words are poor comfort at a\ntime like this, when we see into eternity.  A Person is our only hope,\nand that Person is God.  God often takes those whom He loves best home\nto Himself as soon as He can.  In the process of their development they\nbreak through the bonds of space and time.  He has taken your brother,\nbut not taken him away from you.  We are {69} all in the same\nhome--praying for, knowing, loving each other. . .  I believe in the\ncommunion of saints--I believe that those who began to know God here,\nand whom we call dead, are not dead.  They are just beginning to live,\nbecause they are finding out God: they are just beginning to know us,\nbecause they see us as we are--they see us in God.  They are with\nJesus, and Jesus is a human being.  Because they are with a human\nbeing, a man, _the_ man, the Son of man, they must, they do, take a\ndeep interest in the affairs of the sons of men, and--may we not\nbelieve?--in us, whom they knew below. . . .  These are truths which\nsorrow helps me to make my own.  I pray that you may never, never 'get\nover' the sorrow, but get through it, into it, into the very heart of\nGod.\n\n\n[1] Writing to another friend at this time he says, 'He was walking\nwith a friend, and in a moment, without any apparent pain, \"God's\nfinger touched him and he slept.\"'\n\n\n\n_To A. W. G._\n\nBlackheath: June 27, 1892.\n\nI have more and more come to the conclusion for some time past that the\nonly reality underlying and explaining the world must be personal.  I\nknow that I am a person, and that it is persons--especially a few\nparticular persons--not things, who have influenced me and had a power\nin my life.  All my ideas of justice and purity and goodness are\ninseparably bound up with persons.  At last I have come to the\nconclusion that nothing exists except the personal, and that below all\nis One who is personal.  That means to say that the world and things in\nit are only real in so far as they are thoughts of God.  We are real\nonly in so far as we are thoughts of God.  A {70} Roman Catholic poet,\nspeaking of the Virgin Mary, says:\n\n  If Mary is so beautiful,\n  What must her Maker be?\n\n\nI look round the world and I see persons who attract me in a wonderful\nway--persons who are more gracious and simple than I am; and then I\ncannot help feeling that they all are a kind of faint picture of One\nwho is better than all of them, One in whose image they are made.  I\nlike, I cannot help liking, intensely some of them; and from them I am\nled on to Him who made them and who therefore must--if I only knew\nHim--be more attractive even than they are.  I believe that we are\nintended to rise from them to Him who made them, that if we stop short\nwith the creature, we lower ourselves--we become idolaters.  We worship\nbeauty or intellect or goodness as though they belonged to the\ncreature; we thereby lower ourselves and the persons whom we worship.\nIf, on the contrary, we rise from them to the Personal Being, we see\nmore in them than we ever saw before, and we get nearer to them than we\never got before.  For life is a circle whose centre is God.  Each of us\nis unconnected with his neighbour, but connected with the centre from\nwhom he comes.  The nearer the centre, the nearer we get to each other.\nWhen we get to the centre, we really become united with each other.  To\ndie is to get a step nearer the centre.  The closer we are connected\nwith the centre, the nearer we are to those whom we call dead.  Our\ncommunion with them is spiritual, because 'God is spirit' and they are\nin Him.  But the {71} spiritual is not the unsubstantial, the nebulous,\nthe gaseous; it is the personal--to my mind the awful--reality.  The\nmore truly we understand persons, the more we shall find they are\nspirits.\n\nI tell you what has been the greatest possible strength to me of late.\nGod is not merely a Person, He is Three Persons in One.  I am always\ntrying to get closer to those whom I love best, to know them more, to\nserve them better.  Yet something is ever keeping us apart.  I said\n'something,' I mean 'some one,' for only a person can keep a person\nfrom another--only a malicious, a devilish person--yet I feel that some\nday I shall be able to love, and know them better.  Then I look out on\nlife and I see how again and again death, and some one worse than\ndeath, is separating us, misinterpreting motives, keeping men apart;\nmen are struggling to be one, and cannot be; on earth persons long to\nbe one, persons who love feel they ought to be, they must be one.  In\nheaven Three Persons are really, perfectly, quite One.  What we are\ntrying to do has been done there.  Men try to be one.  God is One.  And\nthe comfort comes in when one knows that 'in the image of God made He\nman.'  Our life is a copy; God's life is the original.  Because God is\nOne, we, whose life is a picture of His, shall some day be one, as He\nis.  The unity of Deity is a pledge of the unity of humanity.\n\nThe more we make our life like the original the more shall we realise\nwhat we long to realise--truer, deeper, more eternal unity.  But we are\nnot simply _trying_ to be, we _are_ one.  All we have to do, I believe,\nis to act as though we were one.  We have {72} proofs of this unity.\nWe find ourselves doing an action which we should never have done\nunless we had known some one.  That one lives over his life, or part of\nhis life, again in us.  So too we are living over our lives in other\npeople, perhaps in some who have passed into other worlds of fuller\nactivity than this.  In living our lives over in each other, we show\nthat we are more than we thought; and it is grand to think how big our\nlives may become in this way, for those whom we _influence_--into whom\nour life _flows in_--in turn may influence others.  When I get quite\nquiet, and my mind is sane, and my conscience at rest, when I almost\nstop thinking, and listen, I am quite sure that a Personal Being comes\nto me, and, as He comes, brings some of His own life to flow into my\nlife.  I am also sure that with Him come those who live in Him, that\nall whom I have known or know, and longed or long to know better, who\nwere _worth_ knowing, are near me, are, if I let them, living their\nlives in my life, making me what I should not be without them.  (These\nare facts, of which I think I may say I have more certainty in the best\nmoments of my life than I have now that Switzerland exists.  But I may\nbe exaggerating.  Perhaps as regards the second fact--of the other\npersons with Him--I may have spoken too strongly as regards my\ncertainty.  It is so hard to say _exactly_ what one means.)\n\nI don't know that these thoughts will be of much use to you.  They may\nsound somewhat too philosophical.  But I have more or less purposely\nput them in a philosophical form, because we are not thus so {73}\neasily led astray into vague pleasant feelings, which we sometimes get\nfrom rhetoric.  But I do wish I could put a little more of my feelings\ninto this cold paper, and cruel, unsympathetic ink.  For what I have\nwritten is not a mere philosophy of life; it is the only thing that\nmakes life tolerable for a moment to me; it is the one thing which I\nintensely long to realise.  To my mind life is love, and love is life.\nLove is not sentimental affection, simply the readiness to die for a\nperson.  But love is the laying down of life for a person, absolutely\nrenouncing your life for another.  It means living the best life you\ncan conceive of for the sake of one you love; knowing for certain that\nyour life is flowing into that other person, though you may never see\nhim again in this world.  Love is purifying yourself that another may\nbe pure.  Love for one person, if it be true love, leads you at once to\nGod, for 'God is Love.'  I do not know what that means, but I do know\nthat the little meaning I can see in it explains everything.  As we\nlove, God is there; we see God, we are in God.  So we are led on from\nunselfish love on earth to that unselfish family life of Three in One\nin heaven; we are led on to Him in whose image we are made, and whose\nimage we never so clearly reflect as when we love most.  I could go on\ntalking on this subject almost for ever, but I think I had better not\ntax your patience.\n\n\n\n{74}\n\n_To W. A. B._\n\nChrist's College, Cambridge: July 5, 1892.\n\nHow very jolly for you to get out right away into the country!  I hope\nsome day to be able to do the same.  But I think, on the whole, _I_ am\nbetter suited for retiring from the world than you are!  If it were right\nto wish it, I might almost wish to exchange places with you.  But yet I\ndon't.  It is very curious--I dare say you have thought of it--how very,\nvery few people, if any, you would deliberately wish to change into, if\nyou could.  One admires many people, and would like to have their\ngoodness, their intellect, or their beauty or strength--but how few of\nthem one would really be: to cease at once to be yourself, and suddenly\nto be some one else--to look at life with _their_ eyes, to have _their_\npast, _their_ hopes for the future, _their_ sins, _their_ inmost\nthoughts, _their_ anxieties.  There is only about one man in the world,\nwhom I know, whom I would like to be--and even of that I am not sure.  It\nis the wonderful sense of personality.  We abuse 'me'; we often vaguely\nsay we would rather be some one else; yet very few of us wish to lose\n'me': and most of us perhaps never will.\n\nLiddon is, I should think, somewhat stiff and uninteresting.  Gore's\nBampton Lectures on much the same subject are far more interesting to my\nmind, far more human.  Lectures IV, V, VI of Gore would perhaps interest\nand educate you on the subject.\n\nAre you so sure that your course at Cambridge is 'over'?\n\n  I looked behind to find my past,\n    And lo, it had gone before.\n\n{75}\n\nYou will find traces of that course, before you have done, in yourself\nand in others for good or for evil.  It is a good thing to think that\nnothing good is ever 'over'--that whatever we do is done for eternity, is\npart of ourselves and of others--that we live on in others, live on a\nnobler life than we lived in ourselves.  When we _influence_ another, our\nlife _flows into_ another: we live our life over again in him.  The day\nwill come when we shall see more clearly into what we have been doing.\nAs yet we are like children playing with knives: they little know how\nnear they are to killing themselves at times.  So we are playing with big\nissues: we call them small and secular, we treat them as such--yet every\nspeck of dust is big with infinity.  Would that we could see the Infinite\nBeing at every turn, then we should begin to live.  You will get wrong in\nall your plans unless you see them in Him, and Him in them, and correct\nthem as you see them thus--correct your thoughts to fit in with His\nthoughts, not His thoughts to fit in with your thoughts.\n\nBut you'll learn it is true.  You'll understand later on why I am always\ntalking about a Person; why to know that Personal Being is life.\nMeanwhile, thank you very, _very_ much for what you have taught me.  I\nfeel I am down in the bottom class of that school, but I am glad that I\nhave got into the school at all.  Later on I may reach a higher standard,\nand know the Teacher better.  In that school the lesson each of us is set\nto learn is love, and the name we are all trying to spell out is the name\nof the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Some of us,\nperhaps, have learnt to spell one part of the name, {76} some of us\nanother.  But none of us have properly learnt to love one single person\nas we ought; and few of us have learnt to see the Father's love in all,\nthe Son's grace in all, and the Spirit's fellowship in all.  But patience\nmust have her perfect work: and if we work hard at our lessons, we shall\nknow more, love more, think in a simple way, and _do_ more.  But we must\nnot be learning merely from each other; the pupils must look away to the\nMaster of all in the centre, and as we all learn from Him and love Him,\nwe shall be more modest, there will be no competition--save who can love\nmost and sacrifice most--and do most for Him who has done all for us.\n\nThis letter is hurried.  Forgive it.  Write again.  Accept the will for\nthe deed.  Think, think, think!\n\n\n\n_To T. H. M._\n\nIvy House, Holkham: September 1, 1892.\n\nThe sacraments are tremendous realities to me, just because they are a\nliving protest against all Popish, High Church, Low Church schemes of\nthought--because they are a protest that man does nothing, God does\nall--that everything is a sacrament of the grace of God.  They explain\nall life to me.  They teach me what love means, for when man might least\nexpect it, love comes deluging in, and the outward and visible is\noverwhelmed with the inward and spiritual.  Oh, if bread and wine and\nwater are capable of being transformed into the highest means of grace\nand hopes of glory; may not living, human, breathing persons--may not\nthose {77} I love--be sacraments as well?  When we come near human beings\nwe love, we should come with the same feelings of reverence as when we\nkneel at that altar, for we are coming to that which is part of God's\nimage--made in His likeness.  And as we speak to them, when they answer\npurely and simply, the Word of God speaks through them.  This is not\ndegrading the sacraments--nay, but raising all human life--nay, raising\nthe sacraments as well, for it brings them into relation with real life,\nand transforms the poor magical abstractions into eternal realities.\n\n\n\n_To W. A. B., who had told him that he had made up his mind to take up\nschool work till he was old enough to be ordained._\n\nHolkham: September 3, 1892.\n\nA home circle reminds me, I think, more than anything else of that other\nhome, that other family--the home of a Father and of a Son, the family\ncircle of the Three who live in one unity.  We should thank God for every\nfamily circle on earth into which we are allowed to enter, and in whose\nlife He allows us to share--for any true family on earth--yes, and every\nlittle child who is born into this strange world of ours is a sure and\ncertain pledge--a real sacrament--that God loves us still, has not\nforgotten us, is giving us little glimpses into His own family life, is\nmaking existence here a more perfect image of life in heaven.  We should\ncome into such a family circle with the same feelings of awe as when we\nbend on our knees to receive the Holy Communion.  For here, too, we enter\ninto Holy Communion--the {78} communion of simple, human, happy family\nlife; here, too, we approach a sacrament, outward and visible signs of\nhappy, quiet, home life--the signs of an inward and spiritual grace--the\ngrace which lies below and interprets all human grace in man and\nwoman--the grace of our dear Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.  True, that\ngrace is but little realised in the best of families--little consciously\nrealised in the noblest life.  But, oh! surely a human family--brothers\nand sisters in a home on earth--are a sure and certain pledge that this\ngrace does exist--that God is--for here we have an exquisite though\nimperfect copy of the family life of God.  Thank God when you see a good\nor a beautiful man or woman, a pure and a simple family--thank God,\nbecause it is a revelation, a manifestation, an unveiling, a copy, a\nlikeness of Himself.  For though beauty often is proud and trivial, yet\nit is a manifestation of Him from whom all beauty comes, in whom all\nbeauty dwells, by whom all beauty exists.  And so not only thank--pray.\nPray to Him that the outward and visible may be ever more and more but an\nexpression of something inward and unseen and spiritual.  For beauty,\ngrace, intellect, everything is doomed, unless it is sacramental--unless\nit draws its life from God below, unless it lives but to testify of Him\nwho is.\n\nIt is an awful problem--a beautiful face with no true moral beauty\nbelow--splendid physical grace with no deeper grace beneath--a strong,\ncapable intellect which is not the expression of a noble soul.  What does\nit all mean?  How in a world, where the outward and visible is but a\nmanifestation of the {79} good God, can such awful anomalies exist?\nPartly it is due to the law that goodness is rewarded to a thousand\ngenerations (Exodus xx. 6. R.V. margin, cf. Deut. vii. 9), while\nwickedness is visited upon the third and fourth--that is, that one who is\nbeautiful in body or intellect, and who knows God, leaves the blessing of\nsuch beauty long after him to descendants who are little conscious of the\nreason of its origin, and who have little thought of God.\n\nBeautiful eyes, where there is no beauty of soul beneath, are the eyes of\nothers, long since dead, looking at us still--men who served God in their\ngeneration.  An exquisitely touching voice, where there is no music in\nthe life of the one who possesses it, may be the voice of one who knew\nGod, and left his legacy for a thousand generations.  But still the\nproblem remains.  In many cases the outward and inward seem divorced.\nNow let us not try rashly to solve the problem ourselves.  We are\ninclined when we see such beauty to say, 'It is no use talking.  I am\nquite sure, whatever you say, that there must be some fine traits in the\ncharacter of one whose face is like the face of an angel, whose voice is\nsweeter than that of the sons of men.'  We may be, I believe we are,\npartly right--at least in many cases, for the spiritual powers of those\nwho are gone may still in part live on in their descendants.  But often,\nif we are candid, we must admit that apparently the outward and visible\nare separated from the inward and spiritual, that we have outward beauty\nand grace which is no sign at all of anything deeper--nay, that the very\nspiritual qualities, of which it is the sign, {80} and which may once\nhave existed in the person, have been used for the vilest ends.  This\nbeing the case, we are still left with the problem, Is the outward and\nvisible not intended to be a sign of something deeper?  Here it is not a\nsign.  Why not?  Will it ever be so?  To put the case in its short,\nsimple, concrete form, how can a 'flirt' exist when by all the laws of\nthe universe beauty should surely be a sign not of instability,\ninsipidity, unspirituality, worldliness, shallowness, hypocrisy, but of\nthe Supreme?\n\nI cannot answer this question.  I doubt whether any man can.  But I can\nshow you where its ultimate solution must lie.  It lies in the\nsacraments.  Yes, they are the answer to the whole problem.  They tell us\nthat the outward and visible--the commonest objects, water, wine,\nbread--may be the signs of something which is deeper than anything we\nknow.  And they tell us more.  They are to my mind a sure and certain\npledge that some day the outward and visible shall really correspond to\nthe inward and invisible.  For, remember, this world lasts for ever.  The\ngood lasts, and is purified by fire.  The evil alone is consumed.  The\nsacraments are a pledge to me that some day upon this world our longings\nafter a correspondence of the inward with the outward will be\nfulfilled--how, God only knows--probably not in the way we expect, but in\na way far, far better.  For His thoughts are not our thoughts, and His\nways are not our ways.  When therefore you are utterly bewildered and\nperplexed by finding so much that is attractive which seems utterly\ndivorced from God's life; when you find yourself that the outward and\n{81} visible in your own life--the words you say, the actions you do,\ntend to become absolutely different from your real inward life; when you\nfeel that every one is a hypocrite, and you are the worst of all, kneel\ndown at that wonderful service, and take what is the one power of making\noutward and inward correspond, of making our words a true index of our\nthoughts, our actions a true presentation of our lives; kneel down and\npray that all you love may enter more and more into the meaning of that\nservice, that they too may flee from self to One who is stronger than\nself--to the power which is capable of transforming our actions--to the\npower which raised Christ from the dead, and is capable of raising us up\nalso.  Then you will gradually be taught that all life is of the nature\nof a sacrament--that all food is to be taken because thereby we have\nhealth and strength to manifest forth the grace of God in a too often\ngraceless world--you will be taught lessons which I cannot even suggest;\nfor God knows so much more than any of us what unsearchable riches He has\nas an inheritance for us.  Let us enter upon that inheritance.  God has\ncalled us to be saints, called us, chosen us--chosen us before the world\nwas made--He has chosen us that in us, through us, He might manifest\nHimself.  It is not humility that prevents us recognising the fact.  It\nis our selfishness and stupidity.  For the very fact that He has called\nand chosen you and me and all His Church before we were born shows that\neverything comes from Him.  _We_ are utterly worthless and vile, but when\nunited, as we _are_ united to God, we are transformed into His {82}\nimage, we partake of His life.  Only let us be what we are--sons of God.\n\nIn regard to those words, 'I looked behind to find my past, and lo it had\ngone before,' I do not know whether you are right or wrong about the\nGreek idea.  The past _has_ gone before us, we are always coming upon it.\nSome day we shall be confronted with it.  Every day that we live we are\nmaking something that we shall meet again.  The only way to get unity\ninto our lives--to make it possible to look back without sentimental\nrepining or an awful sense of dread--is to get God as the centre, God as\nthe foundation.  As we look back then we shall find days 'linked each to\neach by natural piety'--we shall see that our life forms a connected\nwhole a real progress, something worth calling life.\n\n. . .  Do you know that the best way to strengthen your best thoughts is\nto try and express them?  Get them out; you help others, you help\nyourself.  Don't be careful of the grammatical accuracy and the finish of\nyour sentences; I don't think St. Paul was.  I was thinking to-day that\nperhaps a man who never wrote letters never could appreciate St. Paul.\nHe was a great letter-writer.  Copy him.  Read him.  Read him fairly\nquickly.  Get into him.  Find out his motive power, his real meaning.\nRead the Greek, not from a critical point of view only, but read the\nGreek.  Do not trouble too much about the dictionary and accurate\ntranslations, but keep reading and perhaps saying aloud the Greek.  St.\nPaul knew so much of God.  Read him, and as you read, a greater than St.\nPaul will come into you, interpret {83} him, explain him.  St. Paul\nhimself will be with you, I think, trying to show you what he meant, and\nwhat he has found out that he means now.\n\nBut do write me a proper letter.  We are just beginning life, and we have\nso much to learn from and to teach each other.  Everything is new to us.\nEverything is strange.  Already it seems to me I have been trained in a\nhard school--harder, I hope, than you will ever need to be trained in--to\nunderstand what God and love mean.  I seem to have had a rough time of\nit, perhaps rougher than most; and even now I am trained in a way which\nis not attractive to me, trained to throw myself not on any merely human\nlove, but on Him who is perfectly human and perfectly divine.  May God\ntrain you in a less rough school, if possible!  But at any rate, may He\ntrain you--train you to get out of self, bring you into deeper\nsympathies, stronger attachments, simpler earnestness!  He alone can give\nunity to all our thoughts and desires.  He alone can give stability.  And\nwe poor little creatures, who seem to have twice as much affection as we\nhave mind, how we do need that stability!  We want not to be blown hither\nand thither by every manifestation of strength, beauty, brain--we want to\nbe able to enter into the meaning of what we see and cannot help\nadmiring, without becoming the slaves of the visible and the finite.  We\nmust build on the one foundation that is laid.  We must lay our\naffections deep down in the man Christ Jesus.  As we see Him in men--and,\nwhen we cannot see that, see men in Him--we shall be more stable, less\nchildish, less fickle.  We never go deep enough.  We skim over {84} life.\nWe must get into its heart.  We must never begin an affection which can\nhave an end.  For all affection must draw us into God, and God has no\nend.  The moment we see any one whose strength, grace, goodness, beauty,\nor simplicity attracts us, we have deathless duties by that person.  For\nthe attraction is the outward sign of a spiritual connection--a sign that\nwe ought to pray for that person, to thank God for the manifestation of\nHis character, which we see in a riddle, through a glass in that life,\nthat human life.\n\nAnd then we shall be prepared to realise deeper relationships, more\nwonderful mysteries of love--to see with clearer eyes the heart of the\nSupreme.  We cannot make relationships too spiritual.  We cannot be too\ncareful to see them in God and God in them.  Think what it is to see a\nrelationship _in God_, to see it existing there in His life, as His\nthought, long, long before we were born, long before we had an idea that\nwe were intended to realise it.  What a new light on old\nrelationships--brother and brother, brother and sister, father and child,\nhusband and wife, all thoughts of God, all being gradually entered into,\nappropriated, realised, understood, worked out by us.  They seem so\ncommon and natural, and yet they are intensely awful and sacred and\nmysterious.  And then think what it is to see _God in them_--to see One\nfrom whom all family life flows, penetrating those whom we have never\nproperly learnt to love and those whom we love as much as we can.  God in\nthem--all that is good and attractive--not their own, but God's.  The\neyes which seem to be {85} contemplating something which we cannot see,\nthe face which lights up at times with another than human light; the\neyes, the face, a realisation and expression of that Being who is at once\nhuman and divine, God and man.  Why, this is bringing heaven down to\nearth, this is a realisation in part of the holy city coming down from\nheaven.  For as we think of them, above all as we pray for them, we are\nled beyond them, we forget our own selfish interests in them, we are\nbrought out from the 'garden' life of individual souls into the 'city'\ncorporate life of a great human society, a family, the Church of God.  We\nshould live, we should die for Christ and His Body--the Church--the\nfulness of His life, who is filling all in all.  We must cease thinking\nand praying for ourselves and for others, as though we were alone.  We\nare all part of one great society.  Around us--nay, in us--are others,\nsome whom we can see, some who in the course of development have burst\nthe bonds of space and time and matter, all one, one, for ever one.  We\nall have one common Lord, one common hope, one common life, one common\nenemy, one common Saviour, who is working through us, in us, in those\nwhom we least understand, in those in whom we should least expect it, in\nthose who are almost repulsive to us, in all--working out one big purpose\nthrough the ages, the purpose of the Eternal.\n\nRemember me at my ordination as priest, please.  Remember me, for I need\nit so much, you do not know how much.  It is such an important time, and\nI cannot understand or enter into its significance, as I long to do.\nDiscipline, discipline, discipline, {86} self-discipline--obedience to\n'orders.'  Oh! how I long to have the power to realise these!  Pray for\nme that I may; that you may, pray also.  Be very strict with yourself.\nCompel yourself to obey rules.  You are hurting so many besides yourself\nwhen you are not strict with yourself.  For we are 'one body.'  You are\ninjuring those whom you like best, for you have less power over them,\nwhen you have less power over yourself--less power to influence, to pray,\nto thank for them.\n\nDo remember how marvellously sacred a schoolmaster's work is: it is not\nenough to be able to play games--how I sometimes wish I could!--it is not\nenough to be able to teach Latin and Greek: a schoolmaster should be so\nmuch more.  He represents the authority of God.  He can be _so_ much, he\nmay be _so_ little to boys.  We can never enter into a boy's life, into\nhis deepest thoughts, his 'long, long thoughts,' unless we too become\nlittle children, unless we become young and fresh and simple--and all\nyoung life comes from Him, who makes all the little children who ever\ncome into this big world.  Let us enter into His life.  Do not become a\nschoolmaster simply to fill up time, to have something to do.\n\n\n\n_To W. A. B._\n\nChrist's College, Cambridge: November 20, 1902.\n\n. . .  I am glad that you like your school, that you like your\nboys. . . .  Think of the weak chaps, those who are 'out of the way,'\nthose who are not naturally {87} attractive, those who positively repel\nyou.  They often most need your sympathy, your prayers.\n\nAnd now about your ordination.  Do you know I am doubtful whether it\nwould be a good thing for you to be ordained to a school chaplaincy.  I\nam almost more than doubtful.  You would, I suppose, have no parish work,\nnor anything to do with poor folk.  Your work would be reading prayers,\nand preaching about three times a year, I suppose.  You would scarcely\ncare to be a curate in a country or poor town parish later on, would you,\nif you began thus?  But, after all, I must not, I dare not, advise you.\nI can only point you to the Being who alone can advise us.  The great\nthing is to renounce all plans, all thoughts of self, to give up all we\nare and expect to be, to come into His presence, and then to ask His\nadvice.  Or rather we must come to Him like little helpless children and\nask Him to _help_ us to renounce planning and arranging with _self_ as\ngoal--to beg Him to give us strength to give up all.\n\nThe great thing is to get the life where we shall develop best all our\npowers--viz. the life in which we shall have most opportunities of\nsacrifice.  Can you get, can you _use_, opportunities of self-sacrifice\nin your school life?  Can you get fuller and better elsewhere? . . .  Of\ncourse, if you find that you have more influence over boys than you would\nbe likely to have over other folk, that might alter the case.  Have you\nfound that you can influence them more for good than you would be likely\nto influence others?\n\nOur one work in life must be to advance God's glory, God's kingdom.  The\ntime is short.  The night {88} soon comes.  The great problem is how to\ndo most in that short time; how we ourselves can best lose ourselves in\nthe little time that we have for losing ourselves.  'He that loseth\nhimself, findeth himself.'\n\n\n\n_To D. D. R._\n\n14 St. Margaret's Road, St. Leonards; January 10, 1893.\n\nI have been thinking to-day of that strange statement 'I no longer call\nyou slaves . . . but I have called you friends.'  To understand any one\nyou must be their friend: you are able then to judge their life from the\ninside, to see why and how they do what they do; all their actions which\nseemed disconnected and purposeless before are seen to be part of a plan,\nto have an end, a goal.  We cannot understand the riddle of life, the\nnecessity of all the details in the great scheme of redemption, the\nreason for certain means of grace, the real significance of the hope of\nglory, while we are slaves.  The whole appears so purposeless, such waste\nof energy, such unintelligible and irrational self-sacrifice.  Why must\nthe Christ suffer?  Why could not sin be overcome in a less costly way?\nWhy is the victory of the Christ so incomplete?  Why do some, who are\nbetter than we, take so little interest in the eternal?  We cannot answer\nthese and a thousand other questions while we are slaves.  All is a\nhopeless enigma, a play without a plot, a novel with no plan.  But become\na friend of a man and all is changed.  Each act in his life, each thought\nin his life, each word from his lips--they have not ceased to be a\nproblem, {89} they are ten thousandfold more wonderful than they ever\nwere before: they are still a problem; but there is, there must be, we\nfeel, a purpose running through the whole.  We have but one object--to\nunderstand him more, to see what divine ideal he is trying to work out in\nall the details of his common life.  Each detail is important; each\nthought, however wayward, must be recognised and understood.  All are\nseen in the clear, dry light of eternity; each is seen in something like\nits right proportion.  We feel that his life is our life--nay, more\ninteresting than our own miserable life--that if we are ever to know\nourselves we must know him first.  So, too, become a friend of Him who\nalone is, and all is changed.  Gradually, perhaps painfully, yet surely,\nas we become like very little children, the meaning of the whole dawns\nupon us.  We see it all: we see that it could not be otherwise: we cannot\nsay why, but we are quite sure that we see it--at least, we see a little\nway, and where the light ends and it begins to get dark, we feel that it\nis all right beyond--that He who is with us in the light will be with us\nin the darkness.  We are no longer slaves, doing His will because we\nmust.  We are friends, and we cannot help taking deep interest in all\nthat He does.  His acts, His thoughts, His words, they are still a\nproblem--we cannot make them all out.  But they are the same kind of\nproblem as a friend is--a strange exquisite torture.  We do not know what\nthe whole of his life means; he can do things which we cannot, and which\nwe rejoice to know that we can never do.  We only see one side of him\never, and the rest is only known to God.  {90} And yet we _do_ know part\nof his life, and we are content to know no more; what we know is good,\nand what we do not know or understand must also be good.  We judge from\nwhat we see what that must be which we cannot see.  We do not wish it\notherwise.  We feel that it would be impious to try and understand him\nfully, for is he not connected with God Himself?  So we see one side of\nthe life of the Eternal; but we are friends; we do not wish it otherwise.\nWe cannot understand Him--we never can.  And yet 'I have called you\nfriends.'  His main purposes we see: the plan by which He realises them\nwe see in part.  And as we know Him better, we shall be able to track His\nfootsteps even where we did not expect to find Him.  We shall learn that\nHis methods are simpler and better than ours, that His thoughts are\nsurer, deeper, higher than all our schemes and plans.  I am constantly\nfinding that ordinances, customs, beliefs, which I used to despise as\nstrange, antiquated, or useless, are yet the very ones which I need, that\nmy fathers knew better than I my needs, that above all God Himself had\nprovided institutions and customs, and had waited until I was old enough\nto learn their use and to bless Him as I used them.  So, as we know a man\nbetter, we feel that we must pray for him and his the more.  As we become\nthe friends of the Word, we feel we must pray that His will may be done\never more and more--His purposes realised by us and ours.  Let us then\nnot begin by criticising the world and God; let us first be the friends\nof God, and then in the light of undying friendship and prayer begin to\ncriticise.  {91} We must be the friend of a man before we understand his\nlife; we must be the friends of Jesus Christ before we understand His\nlife now upon earth.\n\nI used to skate: I don't now.  I obey herein one of the great maxims of\nmy life: 'If you want to get a thing well done, _don't_ do it yourself.'\nI consider that K----, in this as in other similar pursuits, performs the\nancient and 'sacred duty of delegation.'  I have no doubt that he does it\nadmirably.  Why must people try what they can't do well?  Why not leave\nit to those who like it and can do it well?  The wretched\npublic-school-boy conception of dull uniformity is an abomination to me!\nIf K---- does the walking, you do the thinking; G---- does the dandy,\nM---- the grumbling, S---- the jack-in-the-box, G---- the running, M----\nthe philosopher, and D---- the little vulgar boy--allow me to do what\nafter all is the hardest of all tasks, 'to do nothing gracefully.'  (I am\nafraid that I begin by trying 'to do nothing--gracefully,' but end by\n'doing nothing gracefully.'  You see the difference!)  I believe in\ndivision of labour--let each man do what he is made to do best--and those\nwho feel their vocation to be nothing but receiving the results of the\nlabour of others--why, let them try to do it with the best grace they\ncan!  Forgive me if such be my case.\n\n\n\n_To J. L. D._\n\nChrist's College, Cambridge: May 15, 1893.\n\nI think you are right in believing in the intense worth of sympathy.  But\n'sympathy' is the Greek {92} as 'compassion' is the Latin form of\n'suffering together with.'  He who has suffered most has perhaps the most\npower to sympathise; not simply to pity or console, but to go right out\nof self and to get right into another, to see life with his eyes, to feel\nas he feels.  If, then, you find many of those among whom your lot is\ncast almost incapable of sympathy, may it not be that they have not yet\nlearned the meaning of suffering?  They may not have had so many\nopportunities of suffering as you, or, if they have had as many, they may\nnot have found any one to interpret to them what it all meant.  Thank Him\nfrom whom all sympathy comes if you have known anything of the sufferings\nof life, anything of the worries and disappointments and delays and\nunsatisfied ambitions which so many have; if you have known these--known\ntheir inner meaning, and have been led out and beyond your own into that\nwider life of suffering, and have learned what it is to fill up in your\nturn _ta husteremata ton thlipseon tou Christou_.\n\n[Transcriber's note: The above Greek phrase was transliterated as\nfollows: _ta_--tau, alpha; _husteremata_--(rough breathing mark) upsilon,\nsigma, tau, epsilon, rho, eta, mu, alpha, tau, alpha; _ton_--tau, omega,\nnu; _thlipseon_--theta, lambda, iota, psi, epsilon, omega, nu;\n_tou_--tau, omicron, upsilon; _Christou_--Chi, rho, iota, sigma, tau,\nomicron, upsilon]\n\nOne hates to see others whose centre is self.  Their whole life looks so\nmean and low.  Life over, the Ego alone left; and what a poor, wretched,\nsnivelling creature after all--this what we pampered, this what we thrust\nforward for others to admire and flatter!  If we were not in much the\nsame case, we might be able to view it in others with somewhat different\neyes.  And yet do you know that, as a matter of fact, our Ego is\ndead--self is not--and the devil's greatest lie is to make us believe in\nthis self?  For do not you and I belong to One stronger than {93}\nself--One whose own self may live in us--does live in us--whether we\nrecognise the fact or not?  We died years ago to self when He claimed us\nfor Himself, and we rose again to a selfless life in Him: _zo de ouketi\nego, ze de en emoi Christos_.\n\n[Transcriber's note: The above Greek phrase was transliterated as\nfollows: _zo_--zeta, omega; _de_--delta, epsilon; _ouketi_--omicron,\nupsilon, kappa, epsilon, tau, iota; _ego_--epsilon, gamma, omega;\n_ze_--zeta, eta; _de_--delta, epsilon; _en_--epsilon, nu;\n_emoi_--epsilon, mu, omicron, iota; _Christos_--Chi, rho, iota, sigma,\ntau, omicron, final sigma]\n\nWe act a lie whenever we make our Ego instead of His Ego the centre.  If\nHe is our centre and our goal, then be sure our Ego will begin to live,\nbecause it is 'grounded' and rooted in His.  Any trouble and anxiety that\nleads you out of self to the Infinite Ego, that makes you feel helpless\nand lonely and in need of a Human Helper and a Human Comforter, thank God\nfor it.  He is teaching you to cast yourself upon One who is perfectly\nhuman because perfectly divine.  He is teaching you that you are not your\nown; that long, long ago yourself died: _ei oun sunegerthete to Christo,\nta ano zeteite_.\n\n[Transcriber's note: The above Greek phrase was transliterated as\nfollows: _ei_--epsilon, iota; _oun_--omicron, upsilon, nu;\n_sunegerthete_--sigma, upsilon, nu, eta, gamma, epsilon, rho, theta, eta,\ntau, epsilon; _to_--tau, omega; _Christo_--chi, rho, iota, sigma, tau,\nomega; _ta_--tau, alpha; _ano_--alpha, nu, omega; _zeteite_--zeta, eta,\ntau, epsilon, iota, tau, epsilon]\n\nThus we are led to understand something of the meaning of our Christian\nnames--to see that they are living pledges to us, whatever we do,\nwherever we go--that Christ's name is called upon us--that when tiny\nlittle children we were brought home to the Great Ego in whom alone our\nEgo can ever find satisfaction--to feel that we are His and He is ours.\n\n\n\n_To J. L. D._\n\nChrist's College, Cambridge: October 9, 1893.\n\nThe step which you contemplate taking is one with far-reaching\nissues--reaching away through time and beyond it.  I advise you to try\nand gain a general idea of the meaning of the first half of St. Paul's\n{94} second letter to the Corinthian Church--to try and enter into its\ngeneral spirit.  Few things will humble you more: you will see something\nof the unspeakable dignity of the office of him who represents God to his\nfellow-men, and of the tremendous enthusiasm and love which a man must\nhave if he would be the minister that St. Paul would have him be.  I do\nnot know what St. Paul means when he says that we are ambassadors on\nbehalf of Christ: but the more I think of what the words seem to mean,\nthe more I am startled at the awful responsibility that we have laid upon\nus.  To represent Christ, to treat with men, to attempt to arrange--if\none may so speak--terms, to use all our powers in performing the work of\nthe embassy--this at least is involved in the words.  What strikes me so\nmuch in the letter is the manner in which St. Paul literally loves the\nChurch; how he longs to communicate his own enthusiasm to it; how he\nwould die, almost does die, himself to bring life to them.  All his hopes\nare bound up with theirs--his salvation with their salvation.  He seems\nto 'fail from out his blood, and grow incorporate' into them.  We are\ncalled to the same office as St. Paul, we have the same power working in\nus as he had working in him: we too shall have success in so far as we\nlove--as we identify ourselves with those whom God has given us to take\ncare of.  The more we are disciplined and yet enthusiastic, the more\ncapable shall we be of love--of getting out of self--of working our way\ninto others--of representing the Christ to them--of understanding and\nmaking allowances for them--of seeing them in the ideal, the only real,\nlight in {95} which God sees them--seeing them in the Christ, in whom we\nlive--mind that, with all your intellectual training, you don't forget\nthe other.  Now is the time to learn, to force yourself to learn, to\npray--to pray not for a few minutes at a time, but to pray for an hour at\na time--to get alone with yourself--to get alone with your Maker.  We\nshall not have to talk so much to others if we pray more for them.  We\ntalk and we do not influence, or we influence only for a time, because\nour lives are not more prayer-full.\n\n\n\n_To J. L. D._\n\nAldeburgh House, Blackheath, S.E.: December 16, 1893.\n\nI cannot help thinking of you both at this time.  It means so much to you\nboth--more than either of you dreams that it means.  The issues of your\nOrdination day are very far reaching indeed.  They stretch away and\nbeyond this world in which we now are.  The rush of school work and of\npreparation for examination has probably not left you as much time as you\ncould have wished for thinking over what it all means.  I hope you will\nhave more time after the service is over.  But you may be comforted in\nthe thought that the last few years have been a definite preparation for\nyour life-work.  Though you must regret, as you never regretted before,\nmisuse of time and powers in the past, yet you have had an education\nwhich has in some degree prepared you for this time, an education for\nwhich you may thank our common Master.  But this {96} thought by itself\nwould be but a small comfort.  For you must feel, if you are the man I\ntake you for, how unworthy you are to be what you are called to be.  Now\nthere are two ways of dealing with this feeling.  You may say, 'I am not\ncalled to be an absolute saint; but I will try to reach a fairly high\nstandard;' or you may say, 'Yes, I am called to be an absolute saint.  I\nwill not lower my ideal.  I will comfort myself with that single word\n\"called.\"  If He has called me, He will do in me and for me what He\nwills.'  This second way is the true way of dealing with feelings of\nunworthiness and unfitness.  You and I are utterly unfit.  But we are\nboth called--called from our mother's womb--called to be saints and to be\nministers.  He who called us will help us.  With man the call seems\nquixotic, impossible; with Him all things are possible.  At times when\nthe call is loudest we can but reply, 'Ah! Lord, I am but a little\nchild.'  We are intensely conscious of feebleness and, what is worse, of\ntreachery and meanness within; we half love what we are called upon to\ndenounce; we play with the sin we are to teach men to abhor.  Yet the\ncall is sure, is definite, is perpetual, and again and again you will in\nall probability find what a help it is to look back to that day in which\nthe call took formal shape.  You have that as a definite fact to rest\nupon, to reprove, to encourage, to urge to renewed effort, to force you\nto be true and energetic.\n\nOne thing you must learn to do.  Whatever you leave undone you must not\nleave this undone.  Your work will be stunted and half developed unless\nyou {97} attend to it.  You must force yourself to be alone and to pray.\nDo make a point of this.  You may be eloquent and attractive in your\nlife, but your real effectiveness depends on your communion with the\neternal world.  You will easily find excuses.  Work is so pressing, and\nwork is necessary.  Other engagements take time.  You are tired.  You\nwant to go to bed.  You go to bed late and want to get up late.  So\nsimple prayer and devotion are crowded out.  And yet, T----, the\nnecessity is paramount, is inexorable.  If you and I are ever to be of\nany good, if we are to be a blessing, not a curse, to those with whom we\nare connected, we must enter into ourselves, we must be alone with the\nonly source of unselfishness.  If we are of use to others, it will\nchiefly be because we are simple, pure, unselfish.  If we are to be\nsimple, pure, unselfish, it will not be by reading books or talking or\nworking primarily, it will be by coming in continual contact with the\nground of simplicity, purity, selfishness.  Heaven is the possibility of\nfresh acts of self-sacrifice, of a fuller life of unselfishness.  You are\na man and a minister in so far as you are unselfish.  You cannot learn\nunselfishness save from the one Source.  Definite habits of real\ndevotion--these we must make and keep to and renew and increase.  Then we\nshall gradually find that we are less dependent on self--that even in the\nbusiest scenes we dare not act on our own responsibility--that, be the\nact ever so small and trifling, when we are in difficulty we shall\nnaturally, inevitably, spontaneously turn to that place whence help alone\ncan come.  But it is a wonderful help again and again to feel that we\nhave been {98} alone with Him, that we are not working on our own\nresponsibility, that He is the 'Living Will' that rises and flows\n'through our deeds and makes them pure.'\n\n\n\n_To D. D. R._\n\n8 Alexandra Gardens, Ventnor: Jan. 2, 1894.\n\nWhile holding as firmly and unreservedly to the belief that a revelation\nis a possibility that has actually been realised, I am becoming more\naware of the partial and limited view which any single individual can\nhave of the significance of such a revelation; and with this conviction\ncomes a desire not to hinder by any words or prejudices of mine the\neducation of one to whom I owe more than I at present know.  Yet, as I\nbelieve that no individual life is beyond the wise ordering of a Divine\neconomy, I am sure that he must have lessons to learn from me as well as\nI to learn from him.  Hence I dare not refrain from suggesting to\nhim--often in answer to questions that he puts to me--sides of truth\nwhich, as I believe, I have been allowed to apprehend.  The knowledge of\ntruth (in however small a degree) is a trust that we hold for the sake of\nothers.  What I fear for him and for you--for you even more than for\nhim--is not that you will form wrong opinions on religious or ethical\nsubjects, but that you will lack that moral earnestness that forces a\nman, whether he will or not, to look the facts of life in the face, that\ndeadly earnestness that refuses to allow us to contemplate creeds as\nworks of art, but forces us to ask whether these things be so.  Life as a\nwhole must be faced.  What has induced men to {99} believe this and that\ntenet?  Why have men craved for a knowledge of an unseen Being?  Why have\nsystems of priestcraft arisen?  How is it that those who most revolt\nagainst such systems are slaves to other systems bearing different names,\nbut in substance the same?  Is there a Deliverer?  Is there a unity\nbeneath all this confusion?  Can man know such a unity if there be one?\nCan such a unity be revealed?  Has it been revealed?  Why do men think it\nhas been revealed if it has not?  While I am slow to force upon those\nwhom I most respect and love lessons which I believe that I have slowly\nlearnt in a school in which perhaps they have not been, and never will\nbe, educated, yet I am sure that I cannot be wrong in praying for them\nand in urging them to be increasingly earnest in the search for and the\npractice of truth.  You are a man in so far as you live.  You live in so\nfar as you are self-sacrificing.  You are self-sacrificing in so far as\nyou unswervingly practise the truth you know and follow after that which\nyou do not yet apprehend.  And I am sure, if there be a unity beneath our\nlives, if there be One who is educating us when we are most wayward, we\nshall eventually be led by, it may be, very different paths to a single\ngoal.  Meanwhile each failure to be earnest, each relapse into\nsentimentality, unmanliness, morbidness, despair, unreality, laziness,\npassiveness, may itself be a discipline, making us utterly mistrust\nourselves, whether at our worst or at our best, and forcing us to inquire\nwhether there be any help elsewhere, any power that can sweep through our\nlives and force us to be human.\n\nFor this reason I would impress on you the {100} necessity of trying to\nthink out your position, of asking yourself how you may be most human and\nbest serve God (if, indeed, you believe that this is possible) and your\ngeneration.  There are around you social forces making for good.  Ought\nyou to be--nay, can you be--isolated?  Does isolation give greater\nstrength?  Does it enable you to do more or to be better?  These\nquestions are not merely suggested by me.  They have already suggested\nthemselves in one form or another to you.  I am frightened of their not\nreceiving the attention they merit.\n\n\n\n_To T. H. M._\n\n8 Alexandra Gardens, Ventnor: January 3, 1894.\n\nThe fact that you have not all the sympathy and manly help and advice\nthat you could wish for from those around you will, I trust, force you to\ndepend with simpler confidence upon the unchanging Ground of all human\nsympathy.  You will, I hope, take all these experiences without grumbling\nas a real and necessary stage in your education; remembering that if you\nfind yourself repining at the distressful circumstances in which you are\nplaced, you may be dishonouring Him who has placed you where you are.  I\ndo not, of course, mean that such reflection will make you condone and\nexcuse the lukewarmness of others, but you will grasp the truth that God\nuses even the sin of this world as an instrument in the education of His\npeople, and that you yourself may have your character formed partly\nthrough the faults of others, for whom you are still bound to pray.\n{101} This great Christmas festival that is past must be a power to us in\nthe year that is coming on.  We must enter into and be penetrated by the\nLife that has been manifested.  For it is life that you and I need.  Our\nown puny individualistic life of morbid self-consciousness and\nsensibility must be transformed by the fuller Life in which all may have\na share; and thus we shall come to think less of ourselves, our\nsuccesses, our failures, what others think about us and what others ought\nto think about us--we shall forget all this because we shall share in the\nUniversal Life, which penetrates through all and which makes men forget\nthemselves and their ills, and be pure, simple, healthy, unselfish.  And\nthis life has been realised and men have seen it, and it is still with us\nto-day.  In so far as we share in it we shall become natural, unaffected,\nhuman.  Nay, more.  Because the life there manifested is divine as well\nas human, we shall realise also with fuller force what it is to be a\nchild of a Father who is in heaven.  It is life, not a system, that we\nneed.  It is life which is given us when we are adopted as sons; it is\nlife that we receive when the Source of all life gives us Himself to feed\nupon; it is life that Christ bestows upon us when we gradually realise\nour position as members of a society in which no man can live for himself\nalone.  Life is life in so far as it is unselfish.  May He who has called\nus and given to us all our privileges teach us to live out that which we\nknow and believe!\n\n\n\n{102}\n\n_To F. S. H._\n\nCambridge: August 4, 1895.\n\nLife will not be the same without having you up here.  I am very\ndependent upon others, and I soon begin to be downcast if I have not\nsome one to help or to be helped by.  But happily He who takes away is\nthe same as He who gives, and His great heart of affection understands\nour manifold and seemingly contradictory needs.  Life would be\nintolerable if we had no one who knew us perfectly, not simply the\noutside part of our life, but that inside and apparently incommunicable\npart.  Those who are least able to express themselves in words, or who\n(if they did express themselves) fear that they would be misunderstood,\nfind in Him an unspeakable consolation.  But I must not look at things\nfrom the individualistic standpoint.  No problem can ever be solved\nuntil we have in some measure realised that the Life which flows\nthrough us is larger than our own individual life.  We get morbid, and\nour reason becomes warped, when we think of our own future alone.\nEvery obstacle in our path, every interruption to the course which we\nhave planned for ourselves, every rough discipline, tells us that our\nlife and future are not our own, that they are intimately connected\nwith a larger life, a greater future.  I have been thinking of those\nwords--so like Jesus Christ to have uttered them--_me merimnesete_.  We\nare always anxious about a set of circumstances which will soon be upon\nus--engagements which we tremble to meet.  Jesus Christ tells us, _me\nmerimnesete_.  I believe that work in the {103} present world would be\nfar more free and effective if we would obey the command.  We cannot\nenter into life as it comes, because we are living in an imaginary\nfuture.  The man of God lives in the present; he leaves the future to\nGod, _me merimnesete_.  If God has conducted us so far, He will not\nleave us.  It is easy to talk, hard to act.  I think we gain the power\nto act, we gain the calm peace of God, by compelling ourselves to\nremain at certain times in His presence.  Habits of prayer are slowly\nformed, but when formed are hard to break.  Talking may be a great\nsnare when it takes the place of prayer--and how easily it does!  It is\neasier to talk with a man than to pray for him--in many cases.\n\n[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrases in the above paragraph were\ntransliterated as follows: _me_--mu, eta; _merimnesete_--mu, epsilon,\nrho, iota, mu, nu, eta, sigma, eta, tau, epsilon]\n\n\n\n_To F. S. H._\n\nClovelly: September 11, 1895.\n\nI am reading 'The Newcomes': have you ever read it?  I find it hard to\nappreciate Thackeray as much as some people do.  Occasionally he says\nsome very true things and shows that he is acquainted with human nature\nin its brighter and darker aspects.  But, on the whole, the story of\nmarriage and giving in marriage--selling your daughter for money or a\ntitle--the picture of young men who sow their wild oats and then repent\nand marry innocent ladies and live virtuously and die in the odour of\nsanctity--on the whole the story does not seem to correspond to the\nideals which haunt me, even though I do not act up to them.  Surely\nlife is something utterly different from all this.  Surely somewhere\nthere is a picture of {104} human life, somewhere in the mind of God\nHimself, where the young man grows up without any harvest of wild oats,\nwith clear and unselfish ideals, with a longing to make the world purer\nand diviner than he found it, a picture which is in some measure\nrealised around us to-day.  May God deliver us not only from vicious\nbut from selfish thoughts!  I believe Thackeray saw something of that\npicture, but he didn't draw it with the colours I could have wished.\nThere is a solemn text in Ezekiel, which came in the lesson lately,\n'The righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him in the day of\nhis transgression.'  Past religious experiences are of little value\nwithout present righteousness.\n\n\n\n_To his cousin G. F._\n\nClovelly, N. Devon: September 12, 1895.\n\nI am in perhaps the quaintest and one of the loveliest villages in\nEngland, just doing nothing, and enjoying the simple life around me.\nYou would like this village, with its one steep, narrow, picturesque\nstreet, the great sea far down below, the little stone pier jutting out\nand helping to form a small harbour.  Then on either side of the\nvillage are woods reaching down to the cliffs--beautiful woods, where\noaks, and in places heather, are glad to grow.  St. Paul says in the\nlesson to-day that the things which are seen are temporal, but the\nthings which are not seen are eternal.  And one feels how true are his\nwords--how the trees, woods, flowers fade and die; how the old sea\nwears slowly away the cliffs; how men and {105} their dwellings pass\naway; how all these things which are seen are temporal; and yet the\nbeauty, the love, the joy, the purity, are more permanent than the\nparticular manifestations of them are.  The beauty which is manifested\nin the country around is eternal.  The life which is seen in man has a\nfuture beyond this world.\n\nAs we enter in behind the veil, as we see that life and love which are\nexpressing themselves in objects around us, we are already in the\neternal, in that which endures.\n\nIt is not, as we are constantly thinking, the things that are _present_\nwhich are temporal, and the things that are _future_ which are eternal.\nNo; the things which are present have an eternal side to them--the\nunseen side.\n\nThe man who is a slave to the seen has least of the eternal about him:\nthe man who despises not the seen, but who through the seen rises to\nthe unseen, is partaking of eternal life. . . .\n\n\n\n_To F. S. H._\n\nCambridge: October 23, 1895.\n\nLet me congratulate you on the way you ran against Yale.[1]  I was\ndelighted to read of your 'romping' home!! . . . .  It seems to me that\nevery unfulfilled longing is no accidental part of life.  The longing,\nin so far as it is genuinely human, is derived from Him in whose image\nman is made.  When it is hard to see why it is not gratified, yet we\n{106} may confidently believe that this is part of our training.  Is it\nnot a noble work to enter into and, in some measure, bear the burdens\nof other men's lives, even if they have only imperfect sympathy with\nours?  May we not sometimes even learn more in this way--or at least\nlearn different lessons--than if they were so similar to ourselves that\nthey could at once understand us?  I am afraid that you have a hard\nstruggle before you.  You must take care not to act upon first\nimpressions, or impulse--not even if those impressions are\nfavourable . . . your best 'pearls' must be used carefully.\n\n\n[1] In the international athletic sports in U.S.A.\n\n\n\n_To F. S. H. on his going to a curacy in Liverpool._\n\nCambridge: October 18, 1896.\n\nIn some respects I am glad to hear of your change of plans.  I think\nyou will be more in your element working in a poor part of a large\ntown. . . .  Our dean has just been preaching on the words 'One soweth,\nand another reapeth.'  It is a help to realise the continuity of work.\nWe enter into the work of many a man who has passed away, and who,\nwhile he worked, often despaired and thought that he was achieving\nnothing.  No work is lost.  The obscure and petty--these are relative\nterms.  We use them, but we are told on the best authority that there\nis nothing secret which shall not be made manifest.  The consciousness\nof the continuity and perpetuity of work quiets and calms us; we need\nnot hurry over anything.  When we have left off sowing, others will\nreap.  God give us grace to work, for the night {107} cometh when no\nman can work.  I am so sorry that I have not been able to come up and\nsee you.  But we are working in the same field, though it is too large\nacross to see one another!\n\n\n\n_To C. T. W._\n\nSt. Moritz: February 1898.\n\nTwo new toboggan runs have been opened: one is a Canadian run on soft\nsnow without turns, short and sweet; the other is part of the Crista\nrun, an ice run, which I suppose is quite the finest in the world, with\nsplendid corners.  When it is all made it will be about a mile in\nlength. . . .  In a noisy salon it is difficult to collect my scattered\nthoughts.  Music and other atrocities are in full swing; and as I\nseldom use my brain now, the works are rusty.  I wish you could see\nthis country in winter. . . .  A male rival of The Brook has appeared.\nHe is impressed with the dust and dampness of the atmosphere--takes out\ntrays to toboggan on into Italy--sprinkles water on his bedroom floor,\nbecause he considers a damp atmosphere conducive to sleep.  So far we\nhave not fallen out altogether with one another; some of us are on\nspeaking terms.  We only confidentially discuss whether so-and-so has\ncome here for his mind.  We have an archdeacon, a canon, a curate, two\ncaptains; one Plymouth-brother-like, who takes most gloomy views about\nthe future of us, or most of us, including the parsons; the other very\nnoisy, who attempted the Canadian toboggan run which is supposed to be\nsafe for ladies and {108} children, and swears that he almost broke his\nneck.  He had an upset and went head foremost into the snow, and,\naccording to his own account, had to be dug out.  If he had been a\nheavier man, I understand that he would have broken his neck.  As two\naccidents have occurred there, it is not absolutely safe. . . .  This\nplace is a splendid pick-me-up.  I am a reformed character--go to bed\nbetween 6 and 10.30 P.M.  I was detected last night cheating at cards.\nBut reformation to be effective requires time.  Give up, I say, one bad\nhabit at a time, and then tackle the next.  I have given up early\nrising as being the most patent of my evil practices.\n\n\n\n_To J. K._\n\nChrist's College, Cambridge: August 19, 1898.\n\n. . . .  I am sure that we have need to learn not only in the school of\nhealth but also in the school of sickness.  These breaks in life, and\nthe sense of helplessness and weakness which attend them, are not\nsimply periods to be 'got over'--to be made the best of till we can\n'start again'--but they have a meaning which we can find, if we only\nlook with the eye of faith.  It is strange how, although God sees the\nwhole way in which we ought to go, He leaves us in comparative\ndarkness.  We need, I am sure, _revelation_.  'Lord, open the young\nman's eyes, that he may see.'  We shall take the wrong turning if we\ntrust to our ordinary eyes; we shall find the path if we have the eye\nof faith to see what God is revealing. . . .  And now at this time I\nneed your prayers.  I have--and {109} this, I need hardly say, is\nprivate--an invitation from the Bishop of ---- to come and lecture to\ntheological students, whom he hopes to gather round him.  Of course the\nscheme is rather in the air so far.  He has not yet got the men.  But\nhe has an attractive power, and he might on a smaller scale do some\nsuch work as Vaughan used to do for men who did not go to definite\ntheological colleges.  Will you pray for me that I may go if I ought,\nand not go if I ought not, please?\n\n    Our wills are ours, we know not how,\n  Our wills are ours, to make them Thine.\n\n\n\n_To J. L. D._\n\nCliff Dale, Cromer: October 3, 1898.\n\nI do not belong and I never have belonged to any of the societies or\nguilds which you mention.  I am a member of a Church.  For that reason\nI dare not join any party.  In fact, I cannot understand what 'parties'\nhave to do with a Church.  The Church by its very existence is a\nwitness against parties and divisions.  It will take me more than a\nlifetime to learn what it is to be a member of a Church; and no one can\nlearn the lesson while he persists in clinging to a party.  He must be\na member not of a _part_ but of a _whole_.  I therefore have no time to\nwaste in joining a party.\n\nI feel strongly that the various societies and guilds, based upon\n_party_ life, are eating away the very life of the Church.  But I am\nslow in condemning my neighbour for conscientiously joining any such\n{110} society.  He may only be able to see one side of truth, and it is\nbetter--far better--that he should see that side than nothing at all.\n\n\n\n_To the mother of his godchild, Margaret Forbes._\n\nApril 12, 1899.\n\nIt is such a joy to me to be allowed to be her godparent, and I shall\nremember her often in my prayers.  What a wonderful revelation she must\nbe to you both--making the Heavenly Home a fuller reality than ever\nbefore!  It is through earthly relationships that we realise the\nmeaning of the unseen world.  I like those lines of Faber:\n\n  All fathers learn their craft from Thee:\n    All loves are shadows cast\n  By the beautiful eternal hills\n    Of Thine unbeginning past.\n\n\n\n_To his mother._\n\nRouxville, Orange Free State; July 8, 1899.\n\nIt is a strange and somewhat terrible study in religion--this Boer\nreligion.  It seems to have little or no connection with morality.\nKruger seems to have amassed great wealth by doubtful means.  A man\ncomes to him and offers him, say, 8,000_l._ on condition that he may\nhave the right to sell mineral waters.  Mrs. Kruger comes in and counts\nthe money; and if it is right, the concession is granted.  Yet he is\nreligious, very religious.  A short time ago they wanted to fire shells\ninto the low-lying clouds during a time {111} of drought.  The clouds\ngather, but they will not break.  Firing shells was found to have a\ngood effect in bringing the rain.  But Kruger stopped it because it was\nwrong to 'fire shells at the Almighty.'  You would think that a little\nstate like this might be an ideal one with its simple scattered\npopulation of farmers.  But it is by no means so.  Corruption and\ninjustice are only too prevalent.  At the start off they were\nunfortunate in their choice of President.  The state was at war with\nthe Basutos at the time when he was elected; and three months after he\nwas made President he had to be deposed, because he was discovered\nselling arms to the Basutos.\n\nThe Dutch don't treat the natives as well as we do.  Yet in some\nrespects their laws are wise.  A native may not live in the Free State\nwithout doing some definite work, unless he pays a tax of 5_s._ a\nmonth: this is, I think, a wise rule.\n\nWe had two very nice services last Sunday at the English church; I\npreach twice to-morrow.\n\n\n\n_To C. T. W._\n\nDurban; July 1899.\n\nI write to congratulate you most heartily on your First Class. . . .  I\nbelieve you will find in a year's time that whatever your work may be,\ncontact with others--the necessity of influencing and guiding\nthem--will be a tremendous help to you in your own life. . . .\n\nGood man!  I am delighted to think that you may see the Bishop of\nDurham.  Prophets' eyes are {112} needed out here to catch the glory\nwhich must be slowly--so slowly--gaining on the shade.  There is so\nmuch materialism, so little refinement and spirituality.\n\nI had a grand voyage: only three people rescued from drowning before I\ngot on board, and two stowaways after we left Madeira, and two or three\ndays of rough weather.  I enjoyed it. . . .\n\nI had afternoon tea, or rather coffee, with Uncle Paul.  He is a\nstrong, fine old man.  He was sitting puffing away at his large pipe.\nIt was after a long day's work in the secret Volksraad.  He was tired.\n'It is hard work,' he said, 'for the head.'  The State attorney, a\nyoung Christ's man, explained to him that 'we were both at the same\nschool in England.'  Kruger was eloquent on the subject of the\nPetition.  He told me that some of the 21,000 had died three years\nbefore they signed it, and some had signed it owing to a bottle of\nwhisky.  'And I want you to let that be known in England' (I know\nanything said to you will circulate--by experience).  He said, did the\nsubtle old man, that he wanted to do what was right and fair\nirrespective of nationality.\n\nThis Transvaal question is complicated.  I thought it easy at first.\nBut now I can see no moral grounds of any sort for a war with the\nBoers, in spite of their iniquities.  There is a great deal to be said\non their side, and much iniquity concealed under such specious phrases\nas 'Imperialism,' 'Supremacy of Great Britain in South Africa.'  I\ncannot see that we have a real cause for war, but it is a big question\nwith many sides.  If England goes to war and wins, she {113} will have\nher work cut out.  'Can she afford,' said the Attorney of the Transvaal\nto me, 'to have a second Ireland at the distance of some 5,000 or 6,000\nmiles from home?  What if she had war in India?\n\n\n\n_To W. A. B._\n\nLucknow Lodge, Berea, Durban: August 22, 1899.\n\nI thank my God in my prayers on your behalf for His goodness in\ngranting you His best gift--a human soul to love and to inspire.\nTogether you will be able to know and love Him better than either of\nyou could alone.  You cannot make your love too sacred; as you know God\nyou will learn to know one another.\n\nWe are inclined to think that we know all that love means.  The truth\nis, we are only beginners.  Thank God that we are in the school,\nalthough only in one of the lowest forms.  He will teach us, as years\ngo by, to sanctify ourselves for the sake of another.  We have not\nlearned to love until we are living the highest possible life, in order\nthat the object of our affection may become a saint.  God is giving you\na present, the value of which you see in part now, you will realise\nfully hereafter.  You must wrestle with God for her and for yourself.\nIf you are true to the highest, both of you will rise together and see\nGod.  If you are not, she may not be able to mount alone.\n\nI am filled with joy and hope as I think of you both.  I believe that\nyou will live for God more completely now than ever before, and that\nyou will be a fuller blessing to your people.  You have my prayers.\n{114} I want you to make your ideals higher and higher.  Then, when you\nhave gained one height, you will find that what you took for the summit\nfrom the plain was not really so: there were further peaks beyond.\n\nIt is the beginning of an endless life.  If God Himself be the centre\nof all, the nearer we are to Him, the nearer we are to one another.  I\n_am_ glad that your wife is one who shares in your ideals, who lives\nfor the highest.  What a life in store for you here!  And there--\n\n          Before the judgment seat,\n    Though changed and glorified each face,\n  Not unremembered you will meet\n    For endless ages to embrace.\n\nYou will be nearer the centre then, and nearer to one another.\n\nMay God Himself bless you, dear old fellow!  Forgive this poor attempt\nat a letter.  I share in your joy, although I am not actually with you.\nI never remember any wedding outside my own family which has given me\ngreater pleasure.  It was good of you to ask me to be present--very\ngood.\n\nB----, I _am_ glad.  You must thank God and ask Him to tell you what it\nall means, and for her sake live as good a life as you possibly can.\n\nWith best love I am your friend,\n\nFORBES.\n\n\n\n_To a Friend after hearing of his intended ordination._\n\nDurban: August 1899.\n\nYour ordination will be like my own over again.  It is unutterably good\nof God . . . to put it into {115} your heart to live the life which I\nhad prayed might be yours.  _Meizoteran touton ouk charin, hina akouo\nta ema tekna en te aletheia peripatounta_ . . .\n\n[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrases in the above paragraph were\ntransliterated as follows: _Meizoteran_--Mu, epsilon, iota, zeta,\nomicron, tau, epsilon, rho, alpha, nu; _touton_--tau, omicron, upsilon,\ntau, omega, nu; _ouk_--omicron, upsilon, kappa; _charin_--chi, alpha,\nrho, iota, nu; _hina_--(rough breathing mark) iota, nu, alpha;\n_akouo_--alpha, kappa, omicron, upsilon, omega; _ta_--tau, alpha;\n_ema_--epsilon, mu, alpha; _tekna_--tau, epsilon, kappa, nu, alpha;\n_en_--epsilon, nu; _te_--tau, eta; _aletheia_--alpha, lambda, eta,\ntheta, epsilon, iota, alpha; _peripatounta_--pi, epsilon, rho, iota,\npi, alpha, tau, omicron, upsilon, nu, tau, alpha]\n\n. . .  If your temptations are great it is because your nature is rich\nand noble; and when it is disciplined you will have tremendous power.\nI shall not be content until your every thought is led captive to 'the\nobedience of the Christ.'  You are born to be a saint, and you will be\nwretched until you are one.  You are not the kind of man who can do\nthings by halves.\n\nI think I have told you of my father's words spoken during his last\nillness: 'If I had a thousand lives, I would give them all--all to the\nministry.'  You will not regret your decision.  If angels could envy,\nhow they would envy us our splendid chance--to be able, in a world\nwhere everything unseen must be taken on sheer faith, in a world where\nthe contest between the flesh and the spirit is being decided for the\nuniverse, not only to win the battle ourselves but also to win it for\nothers!  To help a brother up the mountain while you yourself are only\njust able to keep your foothold, to struggle through the mist\ntogether--that surely is better than to stand at the summit and beckon.\nYou will have a hard time of it, I know; and I would like to make it\nsmoother and to 'let you down' easier; but I am sure that God, who\nloves you even more than I do, and has absolute wisdom, will not tax\nyou beyond your strength. . . .  I'll pray for you, like the widow in\nthe parable, and I have immense belief in prayer. . . .  You remember\nwhat was said of Maurice, 'He {116} always impressed me as a man who\nwas naturally weak in his will; but an iron will seemed to work through\nhim.'  That Will can work through you and transform you, but for God's\nsake don't trust to your own will. . . .\n\nIf you are ordained it will be because there is one who in St. Paul's\nwords--_ho aphorisas me ek koilias metros mou_--was separating you from\nbirth and educating you with a view to the Gospel of Christ. . . .\n\n  Tasks in hours of insight willed\n  Can be through hours of gloom fulfilled.[1]\n\n\n[1] Matthew Arnold, _Morality_.\n\n[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrases in the above paragraph were\ntransliterated as follows: _ho_--(rough breathing mark) omicron;\n_aphorisas_--alpha, phi, omicron, rho, iota, sigma, alpha, final sigma;\n_me_--mu, epsilon; _ek_--epsilon, kappa; _koilias_--kappa, omicron,\niota, lambda, iota, alpha, final sigma; _metros_--mu, eta, tau, rho,\nomicron, final sigma; _mou_--mu, omicron, upsilon]\n\n\n\nTo his mother.\n\nEstcourt, Natal; August 18, 1899.\n\nGeneral Gordon came to Kokstad on his way to Basutoland.  When he\narrived he went to the Royal Hotel, ordered a room, threw open the\nwindow, and spent two hours in prayer and meditation.  The next day was\nSunday.  He asked Mr. Adkin what was being done for 1,000 Cape Mounted\nInfantry then stationed there, and when he learnt that nothing was\nbeing done for their spiritual food, he burst into tears.  On Monday\nmorning the first telegram which he sent off to the Cape Government was\na request that a chaplain should be appointed.  Mr. Adkin was appointed\nand remained chaplain until the force was disbanded.  General Gordon\nwent on to Basutoland, and had wonderful power over the natives.  He\ntold them that no force would be brought against {117} them; he himself\nwas without weapons.  He was settling the country, when news came to\nhim that the Cape Government was, contrary to stipulation, sending an\narmed force against them; so he left the country in twenty-four hours.\n\nCecil Rhodes was once at Kokstad.  When he was near the place, he lay\ndown on the hillside and exclaimed: 'Oh, how I wish they would let me\nalone--let me stay here!'  However, he had to go down to be feted.  He\nwas listless, and bored by the banquet, until the present mayor began\nto attack him violently in his speech, and to complain about the Cape\nGovernment, and to express a desire that Natal would take them over.\nThen Rhodes woke up with a vengeance and gave them a great speech.\nIxopo is where Rhodes started out in South Africa.  His name still\nfigures on the magistrates' books--fined 10_l._, for selling a gun to a\nnative.\n\n\n\n_To his cousin, J. C. H; on the occasion of the death of his brother._\n\nDecember 7, 1899.\n\nYou know, without my saying it, that you have my deep sympathy and\nprayers at this time. . . .  We dare not and cannot sorrow as do others\nwho have no certain hope.  Our sorrow is of another kind.  For I am\nquite sure that\n\n      In His vast world above,\n      A world of broader love,\n  God hath some grand employment for His son.[1]\n\n{118} How real it all makes that other world, to have our own brothers\nthere!  It makes it in a deeper sense our home.\n\n[1] Faber, _The Old Labourer_.\n\n\n\n_To the mother of his godchild, Margaret Forbes._\n\nDore House, St. Leonards: January 10, 1900.\n\nI am so glad to feel that my little godchild will have real training.\nI don't know how far I received such a training myself at an early\nage . . .  I came towards the end of a large family.  The only\npermanent instruction which I can remember imparted to me by my nursery\nmaid was a caution not to look behind me when I passed people in the\nstreet, enforced by the biblical precept, 'Remember Lot's wife.'  I\nknow what a fascination I had to look behind, accompanied by a terrible\ndread of the consequences.\n\nI have always felt that Faber's 'God of my Childhood' describes the\nnormal and true development of a child's life.  I am sure that,\nalthough the gravity of sin should be early recognised, greater stress\nshould be laid upon the Fatherhood and kindness of God.  I was noticing\nto-day, when reading the second lesson, how Westcott and Hort have\nplaced the clause in the Lord's Prayer which speaks of the Fatherhood\nof God in a line by itself as a heading to the whole prayer, putting a\ncolon after the clause, and beginning the first petition with a capital\nletter.  The prayer begins with 'Fatherhood' and ends with a reference\nto 'Sinfulness.'  I think this fact is significant.  We may not all be\nintended to come to {119} know religious truth in that order.  But I\nthink we are intended, when we do know it, to lay even more stress on\nthe Fatherhood of God than on our own imperfections.  It is a wonderful\nand terrible thing to watch the development of a human spirit.  We can\nunderstand so little about any life, even when it is near and dear to\nus.  But I am not sure that we cannot learn more about others than we\ncan about ourselves.  I never think it is profitable to study oneself\ntoo closely!  I never could meditate with any profit on my sins.  But\nthere, I dare say, I differ from many others.\n\nWell, I hope that the hair of my godchild is growing, and that she has\nnow more than her god-father.  His is coming to an untimely end.\n\n\n\n_To F. S. H; who had recently become a chaplain in the Navy._\n\nSt. Leonards: January 11, 1900.\n\nI am thinking of you in your new, difficult, and interesting life, and\nwondering how you like it.  Or, rather, I am sure that you like it in\nits main features.  There are in every life drawbacks and\ndiscouragements, for we live by faith and not by sight, and faith must\nbe perfected in the midst of perplexities and contradictions.  The\nmists are useful.  It would not do to have brilliant sunshine all the\ntime.  For in that case, where would faith come in?  Steering towards\nour port in the fog means trusting the Pilot.  'Mercifully grant that\nwe, which know Thee now by faith, may after this life have the fruition\nof Thy glorious Godhead.'  I suppose that none of us fully {120} knows\nwhat this prayer means.  I think that there will be more need of faith\nhereafter than we usually think.  Can we ever apprehend the Father or\nthe Son without faith?  The deepest truths are grasped by faith not\nsight.  The man who has learned to exercise faith here will have fuller\nscope for his faith hereafter.  What a shock to wake up in the next\nworld and to find that the riddles of life still need faith for their\nsolution!  Yet I imagine that it will be so.  Only faith will be able\nto go deeper than here.  The faith perfected in the mists of life will,\nin the sunshine of eternity, see deeper into the meaning of events.  I\nwish I had more faith.  Not sudden flights of faith annihilating time\nand space and rising up to the throne of heaven.  But I wish I could\nground all my actions on faith, and regularly see the invisible and\nlive as one who could see always and everywhere the Unseen.  We are\nschooled in different ways.  We cannot attain to perfection in a night.\nAs we advance in the Christian life progress seems slower.  In some\nsense it is so.  It is easier to cast off a number of definite bad\nhabits clearly inconsistent with the ideal just at first, than to\nperfect self-sacrifice, humility, and self-discipline.  But we are\nadvancing, though we know it not.  If the engines are always kept\nworking, we shall reach our goal!\n\n\n\n_To C. N. W; who had recently been ordained._\n\nSt. Leonards-on-Sea: January 12, 1900.\n\nYou must remember how much your future efficiency is dependent upon a\njudicious use of your {121} strength during the next two or three\nyears.  I am sure you are right in looking back upon your life and\ntracing in its developments a higher than human guidance.  It is a\nhelpful thing to trace now and anon God's hand in our individual life.\nIt brings Him nearer to us, and it is an awful thought that He is\nactually working within us.  It makes us trust Him for time to come\neven when the prospect is gloomy.  I think that we do well to spend\nsome time in trying to interpret details of our past life.  As years go\non, we should have such a firm faith founded on the rock of experience\nthat we will not be lightly shaken.  Peace should be a characteristic\nof our life--the joy and peace which come from a certainty that there\nis a Purpose in all events.  The sense that God has been with us in the\npast is a help in interpreting the history of our nation.  Even our\ntroubles are a proof that He is disciplining us.  For the service of\nIntercession, which my brother uses in Westminster Abbey at the time of\nthis war, the opening sentence is 'The Lord our God be with us,' and\nthe answer is, 'As He was with our fathers.'\n\nThe College is getting on well.  You must come up and see me this year,\nwhile you still know a number of men.  I have now a little evening\nservice--compline--in my rooms at 10 o'clock; Masterman asked me to\nhave it.  He asked men to come, and they asked others.  I purposely\nrefrained from asking any one.  We are sometimes a goodly number.  I\nthink it is helpful to those who come.  It is, I know, to me.  We have\na hymn when we have sufficient musical talent!\n\n\n\n{122}\n\n_To G. J. C._\n\nChrist's College, Cambridge: 1900.\n\nGwatkin has exploded Anthony, 'who never existed.'  But for all that I\nthink Anthony is much like Adam and Eve.  The originals may 'never have\nexisted.'  Yet their story belongs to all time.  And there will be\nAnthonies and Adams and Eves to the end of time.  It comforts me to\nfeel that that which makes for evil is not my true self, but a\nwretched, cunning animal existence independent of me, existing before I\ncame into being, although capable of appealing to me--a serpent.\n\nI am half glad and half sorry to hear of your harmonium.  Public\nworship is a terribly difficult thing, and it is well at times that we\nshould realise its difficulties, and have it stripped bare of many\nhelpful accessories.  Yet worship in a village church impresses me.  As\nin a college chapel, I realise then the continuity of the race.  An old\nchurch tells me of generations of men who lived my life, to whom the\npresent was everything, and the dead almost nothing, who never could\nseriously believe that some day the world would whirl and follow the\nsun without them.  It tells me more than most things of what St. Paul\nmeans when he said that we were all making one perfect man.  And I am\nhumbled and thankful to know that I in my generation can do something\ntowards the Christ 'that is to be.'\n\nRead the Old Testament itself.  Nothing will {123} atone for lack of\nknowledge of the Bible.  Robertson Smith's and Adam Smith's books\n(especially the latter's) on the Old Testament Prophets ought to prove\nuseful. . . .  When I call a man by his Christian name, I usually make\nit a rule to pray for him.  I shall do so in your case.  I will try to\npray every day.  I wonder whether you would sometimes pray for me: I\nbelieve immensely in the power of prayer.  It is the greatest favour I\ncan ask of you, and I know I have no right to prefer the request; but\nit would be kind of you if you could occasionally.  One needs all the\nhelp one can get in this strange life up here.  Now I will end.  I have\nwritten you a strange, unreserved letter.  Forgive me.  How I wish this\ndreadful war was at an end!  U----'s going was a blow to me; but I am\nsure he did the right thing.  I admire and love that man. . . .\n\n\n\n_To G. J. C._\n\nCastleton, Swanage: 1900.\n\n. . .  You will not have misinterpreted my silence.  I could not answer\nyour letter until I had secured a time for quiet thought and for\nprayer.  When I try to write, I feel the uselessness of words.  I am\ndoing better when I am praying for you than when I am writing to you.\nYet I must write. . . .  It is strange that God should have made us\nthus.  To those whom He honours most He gives largest capacity for\nlove, and therefore largest capacity for suffering.  It is still more\nstrange that we would not wish to be {124} without the love in spite of\nthe agony which it brings.  It must be because\n\n    All loves are shadows cast\n  By the beautiful eternal hills\n    Of Thine unbeginning past.\n\nI feel this truth 'in seasons of calm weather.'  But at other times I\nask myself, I ask God, angrily, Why should some men have no obstacle to\ntheir love?  Why should another suffer more than any one can tell--more\nthan, it sometimes seems to me, can ever be requited?  I cannot answer\nthe question.  But I often think of the great unsatisfied heart of God,\nand then I think of this poor unsatisfied heart made in His image, and\nI feel that He understands me, and that I understand Him better than I\nused to do, before this terrible hunger of love began.\n\nI pray God that He will deal tenderly with you, G----, and I am sure\nthat He will.  It cuts me to the heart to think of your suffering, and\nI would stop it this moment if I could.  So would God--for He loves you\nmore than I do--unless it were the best thing for you.  It is written\nof the Son of man, _emathen aph on epathen_.  May the same words be\ntrue of you and of me!  God bless you and give you Light and Peace!\n\n  Peace is something more than joy,\n    Even the joys above;\n  For peace, of all created things,\n    Is likest Him we love.\n\n[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrase in the above paragraph was\ntransliterated as follows: _emathen_--epsilon, mu, alpha, theta,\nepsilon, nu; _aph_--alpha, phi; _on_--emega, nu; _epathen_--epsilon,\npi, alpha, theta, epsilon, nu]\n\n\nThis letter may appear cold to you.  It is not.  I feel more deeply\nthan I write. . . .  Some day, if {125} you care to hear, I will tell\nyou something about my own imperfect life.  I can't write it down.\nLater the day will dawn.  But God sends the darkness that we may learn\nto trust Him, I have never yet found Him to fail.  We cannot trust Him\ntoo much.\n\n\n\n_To the mother of a friend, after having been present at his funeral._\n\nCambridge: April 22, 1900.\n\nI feel I must write and tell you how grateful I am to you for your\nkindness in allowing me to be present on Thursday.  Whenever I think of\nyour son who has passed away, that text comes into my mind: 'Blessed\nare the pure in heart, for they shall see God.'  He was pure in heart,\nand I cannot think of him as lifeless, but as actually seeing\nGod. . . .  I am thankful to have been allowed to be his friend.  I\nshall never forget him; his life remains a source of strength and\ninspiration to me.  It comforts me now to know that he is sinking\ndeeper and deeper into the peace of God, which passeth all\nunderstanding.  You were talking to me about W----; I could not say all\nthat I wished to say. . . .  I am very, very slow to suggest ordination\nto a man.  I realise the responsibility of doing so, but there is no\nman whom I desire to see ordained more than W----; he has been to me\nmore help than I can possibly say.  I dare not try to tell you all that\nhe has done for me, because you would think I was exaggerating.  I\ncannot help feeling that, if he helps me so much, he might help others\nalso, and that, if he were ordained, {126} he would have singular\nopportunities for rendering such help.  But I do not press him in the\nmatter, because I might do wrong; but I pray again and again that, if\nGod wishes him to be ordained, He will make His purpose clear, and I am\nquite sure that He will not leave us in the dark.\n\n\n\n_To C. T. W._\n\nCambridge: July 1900.\n\nI was delighted to read in the paper yesterday of your election to a\nfellowship. . . .  The life will be a harder one than that of an\nordinary parish clergyman; it will be easier to lose sight of ideals.\nBut the importance of the work is in proportion to its difficulty.\nBlessed is the man who finds his work, and does it; and you will be\nblessed. . . .\n\nYou should read St. Patrick's 'Confession,' a genuine work of my\ndistinguished countryman.  It is full of humility and zeal.  I give you\na quotation: 'After I had come to Ireland I used daily to feed cattle,\nand I often prayed during the day.  More and more did the love of God\nand the fear of Him increase, and faith became stronger and the spirit\nwas moved; so that in one day I said as many as a hundred prayers, and\nin the night nearly the same. . . .  And there was no sluggishness in\nme, as I now see there is, for at that time the spirit was fervent\nwithin me.'  Pathetic--that last part.  He might have been living at\nCambridge!  But I hope better things for you.\n\n{127}\n\n_To C. T. W._\n\nThirlmere: September 1900.\n\nMy thoughts are with you now--and my prayers.  'He had seven stars--in\nHis right hand,' was the thought which comforted me at my own\nordination, when I felt, as seldom before, my own hollowness and\nincapacity.  We can shed light--we are safe--because we are 'in His\nright hand.'  'The eternal God is our refuge, and underneath are the\neverlasting arms.'  We can never go beyond His love and care.  In\nmoments of perplexity and uncertainty, although we cannot feel His\npresence, He is there.  'In His right hand.'  'They that turn many to\nrighteousness shall shine as the stars for ever and ever.'\n\nMay God give you the power to love and the power to pray!  Much prayer\nand much love are needed for a successful ministry.  Good-bye, and God\nbless you and make you a true and faithful pastor!  Remember St. Paul's\nwords: _he dunamis en astheneia teleitai.  edista oun mallon\nkauchesomai en tais astheneiais, hina episkenose ep eme he dunamis tou\nChristou; hotan gar artheno, tote dunatos eimi_.\n\n\n[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrases above were transliterated as\nfollows: _he_--(rough breathing mark) eta; _dunamis_--delta, upsilon,\nnu, alpha, mu, iota, final sigma; _en_--epsilon, nu;\n_astheneia_--alpha, sigma, theta, epsilon, nu, epsilon, iota, alpha;\n_teleitai_--tau, epsilon, lambda, epsilon, iota, tau, alpha, iota;\n_edista_--eta, delta, iota, sigma, tau, alpha; _oun_--omicron, upsilon,\nnu; _mallon_--mu, alpha, lambda, lambda, omicron, nu;\n_kauchesomai_--kappa, alpha, upsilon, chi, eta, sigma, omicron, mu,\nalpha, iota; _en_--epsilon, nu; _tais_--tau, alpha, iota, final sigma;\n_astheneiais_--alpha, sigma, theta, epsilon, nu, epsilon, iota, alpha,\niota, final sigma; _hina_--(rough breathing mark) iota, nu, alpha;\n_episkenose_--epsilon, pi, iota, sigma, kappa, eta, nu, omega, sigma,\neta; _ep_--epsilon, pi; _eme_--epsilon, mu, epsilon; _he_--(rough\nbreathing mark) eta; _dunamis_--delta, upsilon, nu, alpha, mu, iota,\nfinal sigma; _tou_--tau, omicron, upsilon; _Christou_--Chi, rho, iota,\nsigma, tau, omicron, upsilon; _hotan_--(rough breathing mark) omicron,\ntau, alpha, nu; _gar_--gamma, alpha, rho; _artheno_--alpha, rho, theta,\nepsilon, nu, omega; _tote_--tau, omicron, tau, epsilon;\n_dunatos_--delta, upsilon, nu, alpha, tau, omicron, final sigma;\n_eimi_--epsilon, iota, mu, iota]\n\n\n\n_To W. D. H._\n\nDale Head Post Office, Thirlmere, September 20, 1900.\n\nMy thoughts and my prayers are with you at this time.  I remember how\nat my own ordination, when I felt as never before my own utter weakness\nand incapacity, the thoughts in the first chapter of the Revelation, of\nChristian ministers as 'stars in His {128} right hand' comforted and\nsupported me.  In His right hand--with His power we can do all things.\nAs the lesson for to-day says, _he dunamis en astheneia teleitai_,\nstrength is perfected in weakness.  _hotan astheno tote dunatos eimi_.\n\n[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrases above were transliterated as\nfollows: _he_--(rough breathing mark) eta; _dunamis_--delta, upsilon,\nnu, alpha, mu, iota, final sigma; _en_--epsilon, nu;\n_astheneia_--alpha, sigma, theta, epsilon, nu, epsilon, iota, alpha;\n_teleitai_--tau, epsilon, lambda, epsilon, iota, tau, alpha, iota;\n_hotan_--(rough breathing mark) omicron, tau, alpha, nu;\n_astheno_--alpha, sigma, theta, epsilon, nu, omega; _tote_--tau,\nomicron, tau, epsilon; _dunatos_--delta, upsilon, nu, alpha, tau,\nomicron, final sigma; _eimi_--epsilon, iota, mu, iota]\n\nYou will feel more, as years go on, the greatness of the task which you\nare undertaking--the overwhelming responsibility--the dread lest\nthrough any carelessness on your part one of the least of the sheep may\nbe lost.  But you will also feel more and more that you are 'in His\nright hand.'  And if the eternal God is your refuge and underneath are\nthe everlasting arms, you need not fear what the devil or man can do\nunto you.  I pray that God may be with you and give you the spirit of\nprayer and the spirit of love.  Your ministry will only be effective if\nyou pray much and love much.  And if you make mistakes, yet if you love\nmuch your sins will be forgiven.\n\n\n\n_To his brother, a doctor in South Africa._\n\nSeptember 1900.\n\nWhen I feel what the grace of God has done for my life, what it is\ndoing, what it will do, I can despair of no one else.  I am filled with\nwonder and amazement and thanksgivings and hopes.  I am sometimes so\nthankful that I still live, that in a world of light and dark shadows I\ncan show my faith in God, before the other world dawns with its full\nday and unclouded brightness--and most of all that I can here and now\npray for those whom He has taught me to love.  I cannot conceive this\nworld without prayer.  It is {129} worth while making any efforts,\nhowever desperate, to learn to pray.  When the Day dawns, how wonderful\nit will be to look back and trace the path through which He has led us\nin the Twilight!\n\n\n\n_To F. J. C._\n\nChrist's College, Cambridge: 1900.\n\nThe more He tries you by His silence, the greater to my mind is the\nproof that He believes in you.  He knows you will come through.  He has\ngreat work for you to do, and therefore you need a strong perfected\nfaith, and He is trying to give you it.\n\nI am so sorry at what you tell me about prayer.  But do go on.  When\nthings are at their darkest light comes.  After all God knows how much\nyou can bear, and He will not, if you will only persevere, allow you to\nbe utterly confounded.  Don't be in the least discouraged at your\ninability to concentrate your attention.  Even a man who had lived in\nthe presence of God for years has told us that\n\n  The world that looks so dull all day\n    Glows bright on me at prayer,\n  And plans that ask no thought but these,\n    Wake up and meet me there.\n  My very flesh has restless fits;\n    My changeful limbs conspire\n  With all these phantoms of the mind\n    My inner self to tire.\n\n\nDo you expect to fare better, when you are exercising faculties which\nhave been for long more or less dormant?  The same man goes on to\nsay--and I {130} think it is a comforting truth--that God sees further\nthan we do, sees what we mean:\n\n  These surface troubles come and go,\n    Like rufflings of the sea;\n  The deeper depth is out of reach\n    To all, my God, but Thee.\n\n\nEven if your conscience condemns you, remember that God is greater than\nyour conscience.  He sees that you _want_ to pray, and the battle is\nhalf won when there is even the want.  I like these old words of the\nhymn:\n\n  Satan trembles when he sees\n    The weakest saint upon his knees,\n\neven if he can't collect his thoughts.  I find it usually easier to\npray for others than for myself.  I believe in beginning by praying for\nwhat is easiest.  I don't kneel down.  I find it more possible to\nconcentrate my attention when I am walking about or sitting down.  And\nI tell God what I know about a man, and how I want him to live a better\nlife.  Sometimes I seem to struggle for him as though for very life.  I\ngo on and on and on--sometimes repeating the same request.  I try to\ncopy the poor widow who wearied out the dishonest judge.  I am not\ndistressed when my thoughts wander, I know that they will always wander\nwithout God's help.  The distress occasioned by wandering thoughts, and\nthe attempt to trace the stages by which they wandered, I regard as\ntemptations of the devil. . . .  I go back as calmly as possible to the\nmatter in hand.\n\nExcuse my 'egoism.'  I put it in the first person, {131} because I\nbelieve my own experience will help you more than rules derived from\nthe experience of others.\n\nSuppose you spend half an hour in this way, and only really pray for\nthree or four minutes, your efforts will be more than rewarded.  You\nwill have done more than you know for the person for whom you have\nprayed.  And the next half-hour you will find that you can concentrate\nyour attention for a minute or two longer.  Don't think too much about\nyourself when you pray.  You must lose your soul if you would save it.\n\nThere is probably some one thing or some one person easier than others\nfor you to pray for.  Begin with that.\n\nI never try, as some people do, to classify and enter into details\nabout my sins.  I bring the whole contradictory, weary, and\nunintelligible mass of them to God, and leave them with Him.  I am\nquite sure I shall never do better without Him.  But I know that He\nbelieves in me, and will help me in spite of myself.  He believes in\nyou too, dear old fellow!  May God bless you for your kindness to me!\nWrite me just a short note to tell me that you don't despise me in\nspite of what must seem to you rather unintelligible and ridiculous\nconfessions.\n\nI can't help it.  And if you can bring yourself to do it, call me too\nby my Christian name.\n\n\n\n_To the same._\n\nChrist's College, Cambridge: September 28, 1900.\n\nI feel more and more the necessity of being alone occasionally for some\ntime--to get time enough to {132} pray.  I think my supreme desire is\nto be a man of prayer.  You must help me to accomplish the desire:\n'Gutta cavat lapidem non vi, sed saepe cadendo.'\n\nSo it is with prayer.  As the stone gets worn away, not by the force of\nthe drop of water but by its constant trickling, so prayer often\nrenewed must at length attain its end.  It is a wonderful privilege to\nbe able to state all one's wishes and hopes for others in prayer--to\nknow that there can be there no possibility of misunderstanding--to\ntell to God the incomprehensible depth of one's love, and to feel that\nHe knows what it means, because He Himself is love.  It is glorious to\nbe made in His image, and to be sure that all one's highest yearnings\nare a reflection--however broken, partial, and unsightly--of His own\nmarvellous life.  We have indeed cause to be grateful for our\n'creation.'  I often look at the poor dumb creatures, and thank God\nthat He has given me such full powers of love, which they cannot\nunderstand: for I would rather have the pains of love than any other\npleasure.\n\n\n\n_To F. S. H., a chaplain in the Navy._\n\nCambridge: November 4, 1900.\n\nI ought to have written before this.  The fact that I did not answer at\nonce is partly accounted for by my having a good deal of work to do,\nand partly by physical weakness.  I have not been very well this term.\nIt is cruel of you to suspect me of having forgotten all about you.  I\nam not that sort.  I owe too much to you in the past ever to forget\nyou.  {133} I don't think that you really suspected me of inconstancy.\nI am so sorry that you are sometimes lonely and very miserable.  I feel\nat times weak, physically weak.  I think that at such times one can\nlean back, as it were, on the Divine arms.  He understands our weakness\nand weariness.  He knows what loneliness and sadness mean.  And He is\nnot extreme to mark what we do amiss.  He knows that we are but flesh.\nAnd He 'dwells not in the light alone, but in the darkness and the\nlight.'  Even when the darkness hides Him and we cannot find where He\nis, we can, as it were, reach out our hands to Him, and we are safe.\nGod has much to teach us while we are teaching others.  And life is not\nexactly the same as we thought at the beginning.  He teaches us by\nunexpected experiences.  But the comfort is that He never changes; we\nmay be weary, but He never slumbers nor sleeps.  Sometimes we feel very\nfit and capable.  Then is the time to pray and to rise to the heights.\nLater, when we are incapable, although it is hard to rise, we need not\nfall.  When the mist clears we can go on again, and it may be that we\nshall find that even in the mist we had gone further than we thought.\nThe deep snow and the long dark rainy days are necessary for the\nperfecting of the fruit, as well as the sunshine.  And we do need\nsunshine.  I feel more and more grateful and thankful to God for His\ngoodness.  He has been so good to me, and I don't deserve it.  And I\nthink that if you look back and look forward you will feel more and\nmore His marvellous sympathy and affection.  I am glad you have been\nreading Robertson's Life.  Though he {134} may have been almost morbid\nat times, he was a great man and did a great work. . . .  You will find\nlater that your work has been far more effective than you expected.\nDon't try to rush it.  You can't help men much until you know them very\nwell; and when you know them you find how utterly different they are\nfrom what you had expected them to be.  At least I do.  No two men are\nalike.  Each man that you come really to know is utterly different from\nany man you have ever met or will meet.\n\n\n\n_To F. J. C._\n\nChrist's College, Cambridge: November 5, 1900.\n\nIt is good of you to think of me and above all to pray for me.  I need\nyour prayers--and most of all when I am run down and unable to pray\nmyself.  I can see the mountain top at times: then the mist comes down,\nand I cannot see the way; I try to keep where I am, though I may not be\nable to advance; and when the mist clears I go on again.  Possibly,\nsometimes, we may be going forward even in the mist, although we seem\nto be making no progress, or going backward.\n\n  God judges by a light\n  Which baffles mortal sight.\n\nI often wish I had more physical strength and was able to do what other\nmen can do; but I can't.  And I have no doubt that all is well--that I\nam made to do one particular piece of work, and that I have strength\nenough for that--and thank God for that.\n\n{135}\n\n_To a brother in South Africa._\n\nDecember 1900.\n\nIt is a marvellous thought that God can reveal Himself to man--even\nprimitive man.  In those stories Jehovah is very near to man.  He walks\nin the garden at nightfall.  He shuts Noah into the Ark.  He comes down\nto see the city and the tower 'which the children of men builded.'  He\ntalks with Moses face to face as a man speaketh to his friend--and a\nladder connects heaven and earth, and the angels, instead of using\nwings, walk up and down the ladder--and, behold, Jehovah stood above\nit.  At any moment you might meet Jehovah Himself.  Three men come to\nsee Abraham--and Jehovah has appeared to him.  A man wrestles with\nJacob, and he has seen God face to face.  They were right when they\nthought of God as very near to man, of man as capable of reflecting\nGod's likeness.  Ye too shall see heaven opened and the angels of God\nascending and descending upon--the Son of man.  It is good for us as\nchildren to read these stories to realise that heaven is very near to\nearth.  It is good for us as men to read them again to realise that\nheaven is even nearer earth than we thought as children.  As I said\nbefore, how marvellous it is that God can reveal Himself to man and\nthrough man, that He has revealed Himself entirely, 'the perfect man,'\nas Maurice says, reflecting the perfect God--God and man so near one to\nthe other that men can look upon the Son of man and see God--see Him in\nHis perfection!  Our years ought to be bound each to {136} each by\nnatural piety.  The child should surely be the father of the man.\n\n  With age Thou growest more divine,\n    More glorious than before;\n  I fear Thee with a deeper fear\n    Because--I love Thee more.\n\nI have been reading Moody's Life.  It has much the same effect as\nFinney's used to have in days gone by--it creates a longing to work and\nlive for God, to bring men nearer to Him, to come nearer to Him myself.\nWhom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth that I\ndesire in comparison of Thee.\n\nWhat a wonderful thing that we, as a family, are so united--that our\nIdeal is so much the same--isn't it?\n\n\n\n_To F. S. H._\n\nSt. Moritz: January 6, 1901.\n\nI have succeeded in unfreezing my ink, so I can write and--although it\nis late to do so--wish you a happy new century.  It is only once in a\nlifetime that one can do that sort of thing!  I am out here for my\nhealth.  I wasn't up to much last term.  However, I am as fit as a lord\nnow, and return to Cambridge this week.  I have been reading out here\ntwo very different kinds of books.  One is Wellhausen's 'History of\nIsrael,' the other Moody's Life by his son.  Wellhausen's book gives\nyou in outline the position of modern advanced criticism of the Old\nTestament.  I have never before studied the history from the critical\npoint of view really seriously.  The study has proved extraordinarily\ninteresting, and I {137} must say that in the main I agree thoroughly\nwith Wellhausen's position.  You will see it more or less clearly put\nin that 'History of the Hebrew People' in two small volumes by Kent\nwhich I recommended to you before.  The history of the gradual progress\nof the divine revelation to the human race is a marvellous study: the\nway in which that people were educated to become the teachers of the\nworld is utterly different from anything which we should have devised.\nI am struck more and more by the marvellous fact that God can and does\nreveal Himself--in His essential moral nature--to man; that we are so\nmade that we can apprehend the revelation; nay, that we in turn can in\nmeasure reveal Him to men!\n\nMoody's Life stirs me up to realise more the worth of the individual,\nthe surpassing value of man's moral and spiritual nature.  I long to\nhelp men to see what I see, to love Him whom I love, and the failure of\nmy efforts is largely, I feel, due to defects in myself.  Still I do\nnot despair of doing something.\n\n\n\n_To his brother Edward in South Africa._\n\nBrislington, Bristol; April 10, 1901.\n\nI was much interested in . . . (your letter) and in seeing a little\ninto your life.  There is a strange family reserve among us which I\nsometimes deplore.  Perhaps it must always be so, that we can tell most\nreadily to strangers our deepest thoughts and feelings.  Yet I feel\nthat we ought, as far as we can in this short life, to understand one\nanother.  We have been led by different paths to understand different\naspects {138} of Truth.  Yet, when we have climbed to the top of the\nhill, I dare say we shall find that our paths were nearer to one\nanother than we ever realised.  At any rate, we shall meet on the top.\nI often think that your whole method of gaining truth must be unlike\nmine.  I use my reason, but I am more than half affection, and it is\nthat which helps me most.  My strange love for some men makes me seek\nto live their lives, to see the world as they see it; above all, it\nforces me to pray.  Prayer never seems to me irrational; yet I do not\npray so much because my reason bids me as because my affection forces\nme.  I sometimes feel that I should go mad if I didn't or couldn't.\nAnd then, again, I am incapable of telling them all I feel, and I have\nto find some one to tell it to, and I feel forced back on One who knows\nme through and through, and I find comfort in pouring out my soul to\nHim--in telling Him all, much that I dare say to no one else--in\nletting Him sift the good and evil--in asking Him to develop and\nsatisfy the good, and to exterminate the evil.  I cannot help trusting\nHim.\n\n  I know not where His islands lift\n    Their fronded palms in air;\n  I only know I cannot drift\n    Beyond His love and care.\n\n\nYou will tell me perhaps that I am too much like a woman in matters of\nfaith.  Yet so I am made.  I must follow the lead of my whole\nbeing--not of my mind alone.  I often wonder how it is that I love with\nsuch a strange, passionate, unutterable affection, and whether many men\nare like me.  {139} I am most pleased to hear of your doings,\nespecially of your whist parties.\n\n\n\n_To F. S. H., chaplain on board H.M.S. Canopus._\n\nBrislington; April 10, 1901.\n\nI am glad that you like your 'parish.'  I feel more and more that I\nshould prefer being among sailors to being among soldiers.  I am afraid\nthat I should do little good among either.  Still I like, or think that\nI should like, naval officers even more than army officers.  If they do\ntalk a great deal of 'shop,' that is a healthy sign.  I only wish our\nofficers in the army were--I will not say more proud of their\nprofession (for they have, I dare say, sufficient pride)--but more\nanxious to learn and to think out matters connected with it.  I dare\nsay the naval officer is obliged to act more independently and to think\nfor himself in an emergency; for the army discipline is carried to such\nan extreme that the man for some years has seldom any occasion to act\non his own initiative--to rise to an occasion.  He simply has to ask a\nsuperior what to do next.  He tends to resemble the Hindu\nstation-master who telegraphed 'Tiger on platform; please wire\ninstructions.'  If their talking shop is worrying occasionally, yet be\nof good comfort, it is on the whole a good sign.  It is better than\ntalking golf or polo all day, and better far than loose and unmanly\nconversation.  The more you are interested in the matters yourself, not\nsimply because you want to be all things to all men, if by any means\nyou may gain one or two, but because you are a man {140} and a\nChristian, and therefore all things human have an interest to you, the\nmore you will enjoy such 'shop.'  We want not only to affect an\ninterest in what is of vital concern to our neighbours, but to feel it.\nI begin to realise more now than I used to that I must not simply watch\nfootball matches, or run with the boats, because I want to show\ninterest, but because I am learning--however late in the day and\nhowever imperfectly--to feel a real concern for such matters.  And,\nstrange to say, I am more interested in them than I used to be.  Since\nthe Lord took human flesh and interested Himself in all human life, He\nhas left us an example that we may follow in His steps.  We must call\nnothing, and no man, common or unclean.  My own life and my own\ninterests are terribly contracted.  Sometimes I have been foolish\nenough to glory in the fact, and to think that I honour God in caring\nonly for my brother's soul and not for his whole life.  But love has\ntaught me that this is a low and incomplete view.  God numbers the very\nhairs of our head, and he who loves and tries to help another must\nenter into his life and care for all that he cares for.  I hope that\nGod will spare me a little longer to work in College, and to learn to\nbecome one with others--to see life with their eyes, to let them teach\nme--that so, if it please Him, I may gain some of them for His service.\n\nThe disciple cannot expect to be above the Master.  The Master was not\npopular.  He explained His deepest teaching to a few--a very few.  If\nyou have one or two to whom you can explain part of your being, thank\nGod.  You will find that {141} one man understands one side, another\nappreciates another side.  It is a comfort that there is One who knows\nus through and through.  What a terrible blank life would be if we had\nno God to whom to pour out our whole soul!  There are sides of our\nbeing which no one but God seems to be able to apprehend.  I am feeling\nnow comfort at nights in simply telling Him all--feelings which I\ncannot explain to any one else, asking Him to interpret, to sift, to\nallow the better to live, to annihilate the untrue.  I do not cease to\nexpect great things from Him, to expect that He will do for my 'parish'\nas a whole more than I have dreamed of or wished for.  But then I am\ncontent if He works slowly, and does what I did not wish or expect to\nhappen.  He works slowly in nature, and I am not surprised if human\nnature is still more stubborn material for Him to work upon.  But what\na joy it is when one character in which we are interested, for which we\nhave prayed and wrestled in prayer, shows slight but sure signs of\nhealthy development!  I feel inclined to shout for joy at the\nmiracle--for it is a miracle--and I thank God and take courage.  He\ndoes not let us see many results, but He lets us see just enough to\nhelp us to go forward.  It is a help when what is clear and true to us\nbegins to dawn upon another.  'My belief gains infinitely,' says\nNovalis, 'when it is shared by any human soul.'\n\nLet your 'parish' clearly see that 'it is one thing to be tempted,\nanother thing to fall.'  Vile, foul thoughts which come to us are not\nin themselves a sign that we are falling.  They are first of all from\n{142} outside, and are suggestions entirely alien in origin from\nourselves; they are from the devil.  They only become wrong when\nentertained, when welcomed in the least degree as guests and allowed to\nstay.  Our aim is to bring every thought at once into captivity.\n\nI have just come back from the seaside, and as I looked at the sea I\nthought more than once of 'the ocean of Thy love.'  The waves of the\nsea beat against a stubborn rock and seem to make no impression.  But\nin a few years' time the rock begins to yield.  The constant wash of\nthe waves wears it away.  So with our hard, stubborn wills.  The ocean\nof His love will reduce them slowly but surely, and likewise the\nstubborn wills of men around us, thank God!  When you are tired and\nhuman strength gives way, remember 'the best of all is--God is with\nus.'  I often feel worn out, and then I love, as it were, to lean back\nupon Him--without speaking--as a child on its mother's arms.\n\n  I know not where His islands lift\n    Their fronded palms in air;\n  I only know I cannot drift\n    Beyond His love and care.\n\n  O brother! if my faith is vain,\n    If hopes like these betray,\n  Pray for me that I too may gain\n    The sure and safer way.\n\n  And Thou, O God, by whom are seen\n    Thy creatures as they be,\n  Forgive me if too close I lean\n    My human heart on Thee.[1]\n\n{143}\n\nI am, I fear, but a poor friend.  I wish you had some one who loved you\nas well as I did, and who was less weak and selfish.  You must not give\nme up in spite of my defects.  I love you and am proud of you--proud to\nthink that you are doing work among men whom I should be powerless to\ninfluence.  Easter once more brings new life and hope.  May the God of\nall life, of all peace, of all hope, be with you and all your flock!\nMay He guide pastor and sheep!  Don't despair; go on manfully; you are\ndoing greater work than you know, and if your eyes were open that you\ncould see, you would find that the host that was with you was more than\nall that were against you.  Into His keeping I commit you.  Good-bye.\nYour friend\n\nFORBES.\n\n\n[1] Whittier.\n\n\n\n_To W. O._\n\nBrislington: April 1901.\n\nI am glad that the lot has fallen to you in fair places.  'It has been\nsaid with true wisdom that God means man not only to work but to be\nhappy in his work. . . .  Without some sunshine we can never ripen into\nwhat we are meant to be.'  So writes Dr. Hort.  I am reading his Life\nwith great joy.  He drank deep of life, and I want to do so also.  I\nwant to live in the present--in the sunshine of eternity.  I feel more\nand more inclined to thank God for life and all the good things it\nbrings, and for the friends He has given me, and the measure of\nstrength and health to use in the service of man.\n\nI had no idea where that Essay had gone.  I {144} suppose it is most\nimmature and unsatisfactory; yet the central idea, however imperfectly\nexpressed, must surely be true.  He took Manhood--in its weakness and\nstrength--up into God.  He was tempted.  That thought helps me\nimmensely.  'It is one thing to be tempted, another thing to fall.'  We\noften accuse ourselves wrongly when foul thoughts spring up within us.\nThey are temptations from without--from the devil.  They only become\nsins when entertained as welcome guests.  I have lately thought that\nChrist's life, like ours, was a life of faith, that it needed a real\nand constant effort of faith for Him to realise His relationship with\nthe unseen Father.  Here and hereafter human life is based on faith.\nIf we get this idea into our minds, Christ's temptations become more\nreal.  They are temptations to faithlessness.  I like your idea that\nChrist has entered into our manhood, into the phases (if there be such)\n'of the life to come.'\n\nRest in the Lord.  This thought comes home to me more than it used to\ndo.  I like to bring all the perplexities of life--the thoughts and\nfeelings which I can explain to no one--of some of which I cannot say\nwhether they are right or wrong, or where the right shades into\nwrong--and to leave them with Him to develop (if right), to sift, to\ncorrect.  What a blank life would be without God! . . .\n\nEaster brings fresh hope and life.  It is glorious to begin existence\nin a world which has been redeemed.  I am sure--since He rose and\ndefeated death--we ought to trust to life, to delight in it.  'I am the\nLife.'\n\n{145}\n\nBreathe in the fresh air.  It is one of the best gifts that the good\nGod has bestowed upon us.  We want fresh air not only in our lungs but\nall through, if I may say so, our being.  I long to be more natural and\nhappy--not that I wish for 'religious happiness,' but something quite\ndifferent--the happiness which comes in the right exercise of power and\nin conscious dependence upon Him in whom we live.\n\n\n\n_In reply to a letter from H. P., a master at Clifton College, who was\nin doubt whether he ought to resign his mastership and go down to the\nCollege Mission in Bristol._\n\nChrist's College, Cambridge: May 1, 1901.\n\nI have not had time to think over the matter yet, but my first feeling\nis that you ought to be very slow to move.  If men in your position,\nwho feel keenly interested in the highest welfare of their pupils and\nlong to influence them in spiritual matters, all go away to parish\nwork, what is to become of our public school boys?  Masters are only\ntoo anxious to leave for more 'directly spiritual' work, as they say.\nBut in doing so they leave a work of exceptional difficulty and\nimportance behind, and who is to take their place?  I understand and\nappreciate your feelings, but I am not at all sure that you have any\ncall to go.\n\nHow much directly 'spiritual' work have you with the boys?  Could you,\nif you desired, get more?\n\nI will pray over the matter.  Do be slow before you decide to leave.  I\nbelieve you ought to stay, {146} although it may be more difficult to\nmaintain your own spiritual life and ideals in a school than in a\nparish.  You may be doing more good than you know.  It is easier to\nfind men to do parish work than to do school work of the highest kind.\n\nThere is a sermon of Lightfoot's in which he urges clergymen at the\nUniversity not to go away, because it is hard to maintain their\nspiritual ideals at Cambridge, and because they seem to have so little\ndirect spiritual influence.  May not this apply to your work also?\n\n\n\n_To one about to be ordained._\n\nCambridge: May 1901.\n\nIt seems so clear to us that you have a call, that I find it hard to\nrealise that you yourself are uncertain.  But the very fact that you\nhave been 'counting the cost,' and that you have no ecstatic joy at the\nprospect before you, encourages me.  I am glad you realise the\ndifficulties beforehand.  What you don't fully see is the strength upon\nwhich you will be able to draw.  I often think of those lines of\nTennyson:--\n\n  O living Will that shalt endure\n    When all that seems shall suffer shock,\n    Rise in the spiritual rock,\n  Flow through our deeds and make them pure.[1]\n\nThat Will can transform our will, and the very weakness of our natural\nwill is then a help.  The strength {147} is seen and felt to come from\nan invisible source: 'Thy will, not my will.'\n\nThe terrible need of men to fight against the forces of evil impresses\nme.  The call is so loud on every side.  And if men like you cannot\nhear it, I am driven almost to despair. . . .  I often think of my\nfather's words on his deathbed: 'If I had a thousand lives I would give\nthem all--all to the ministry.'\n\nThe thought that gave me comfort at my own ordination was a text\nsuggested to me by my brother: 'He had in His right hand seven stars.'\nIn His right hand--we are safe there.  I felt such a worm as I had\nnever felt before.  'But fear not, thou worm Jacob.' . . .  Don't look\nfor happiness or peace at this time, but for the presence and power\n(whether felt or unfelt) of that God whom we both love and try to love\nbetter.  Do not persuade yourself that you do not love God.  You do,\nmore than you have any idea of.  The part of your 'Ego' which you would\nleast wish to lose is not even your love for men--but for God.  If you\nhad your choice now, and had to decide what part of your being you\nwould retain for eternity, it would be the latter.  Beloved, if our\nheart condemn us, God is greater than our heart. . . .  'He who loves\nmakes his own the grandeur that he loves.'\n\n_He had in His right hand seven stars_.  He is the Judge, but He also\nis our refuge and strength and hope.\n\n\n[1] _In Memoriam_, cxxi.\n\n\n{148}\n\n_To D. B. K._\n\nCambridge: July 1901.\n\nWhen we set to work to help others we discover something of our own\nweakness.  But along with that discovery comes the realisation of an\ninexhaustible fund of strength outside ourselves.  We are fighting on\nthe winning side.  God must be stronger than all that opposes.  It is\nuphill work, especially at first.  But just as in learning a language\nor learning how to swim, after toiling on with no apparent result,\nthere comes a day when suddenly we realise that we can do it--how we\nknow not: so it is in spiritual matters.  There is effort still,\nsometimes gruesome effort; but it is all different from what it was.\nWe find the meaning of the paradox, 'Whose service is perfect freedom.'\nLove takes the place of law, and, although it is hard at times to serve\nGod, it is still harder to be the permanent servant of Satan.\n\nYour enthusiasm ought to increase, the more you look life in the face\nand see its sin and misery.  'God,' said Moody, 'can do nothing with a\nman who has ceased to hope.'  Our hope in the possibilities of the\nindividual and of society ought to grow brighter and saner as time goes\non. . . .  Missionary work--I have often wished to do it myself, but\nhave been 'let hitherto.' . . .  It is a tremendous help to me to know\nthat we are both serving the same Master and that I can trust you to\nHis love.\n\n{149}\n\n_To an Auckland 'brother' after Bishop Westcott's Death._\n\nCambridge: August 1901.\n\nMy thoughts are with you at this time.  I am most thankful that you\nhave been a year with that man of God, and have gained ideals and\ninspiration for work which will haunt you all your life long.  In\nmoments of weakness, at times 'when your light is low,' the memory of\nhis strenuous, holy life will be a power making for self-discipline and\nrighteousness.  And it is more than a memory.  For he taught us by word\nand deed that we are all one man, that those who have realised what it\nis to belong to the body here will enter more fully into its life\nthere.  'We feebly struggle, they in glory shine'--yet we are verily\nand indeed one.  That thought is often a comfort to me.  When I feel\nthe contradictions and perplexities and weaknesses of my own life, I\nlove to think that I am part of a whole--that I belong to the same body\nand share in the same spirit as some other man who is immeasurably my\nsuperior.\n\nWhen one whom we have known and venerated on earth passes to the\neternal home, it seems more like home than it was before.  It is\npeopled not only with countless saints of whom I have heard, but with\none whom I have known and seen, and hope to see again.  His prayers for\nus, his influence upon us there are more effective than they could have\nbeen here.\n\nThe great triumph of Christianity is to produce a few saints.  They\nraise our ideal of humanity.  They {150} make us restless and\ndiscontented with our own lives, as long as they are lived on a lower\nplane.  They speak to us in language more eloquent than words: 'Come up\nhigher.'\n\n\n\n_To F. J. C._\n\n_Belvedere Hotel, St. Moritz: Sunday, December 15, 1901._\n\nI feel more and more thankful that I have not had to wait till the next\nworld to know God's true nature and character and will.  It is passing\nstrange that He should love us so much, and wish to unveil Himself to\nus, 'that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures.'  But\nthat phrase 'stewards of His mysteries' almost appals me.  A steward\nmust be faithful, and must render an account of the way in which he has\nused his master's goods.  God grant that at the final reckoning we may\nnot be found unprofitable servants.\n\nHow those simple words in the twenty-third Psalm satisfy us more and\nmore as life advances, and as we realise that He is not our Shepherd\nonly, but the chief Shepherd of the whole flock, and that He has yet\nother sheep whom He is looking for, and whom He will teach to hear His\nvoice amid the babel tongues of the world.  It is a comfort to me to\nfeel that He has no private blessings for me apart from the rest of the\nfamily--that we are one in Him, and that each blessing unites us not\nonly to the Head of the family, but to all the brothers within it.\n\nI suppose at first it is hard to realise the unseen world for long\ntogether.  But gradually that world {151} dominates our being, and\ninterprets the world we see, and makes all life intelligible and well\nworth the living.\n\n\n\n_To H. J. B._\n\nHotel Belvedere, St. Moritz: December 16, 1901.\n\nI feel a new man now in this fresh mountain air.  If I always lived\nhere I might be good for something.  What a parable of life!  If we\ncould live in the higher world and breathe in its air, what strong,\nhealthy men we should be!  I stayed a night once with Westcott, and it\nseemed to me that he lived and moved and had his being in a higher\nregion, to which I now and then came as a stranger, and he could see\nhabitually, what I sometimes saw, the way of God in human life.  I am\nsure we are meant to have our home in that higher world, and that we\nonly see life sanely, steadily, and in its true proportions, when we\nview it from that vantage ground.  I have always been thankful that I\nspent that night with Westcott, and thereby gained, not simply fresh\ninspiration, but a radically new revelation of human life and its\npossibilities.  It gave me an insight into the dignity and the destiny\nof our common human nature.\n\nYou have never been long absent from my thoughts, and at last I have\nhad time and strength to begin to pray for you as I could wish.  It is\nthe only way in which I can show my gratitude to you.  I don't\nunderstand much about prayer, but I think of that strange, bold parable\nof the unrighteous judge and the widow, and I take my stand on that.  I\nshall {152} not be content until your true self is formed; and I think\nthat God must be very ready to answer the prayer, however imperfect its\nform may be, of one who loves another more than he can understand.  I\nlike St Paul's words: _teknia mou ous odino mechris ou morphothe\nChristos en humin_.  Only I wish I were not such a worm myself.\nHowever, the thought of you compels me to live a better life.  If I\ncould only make all my thoughts of you into prayers and actions for you\nI should be more content.\n\n[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrase in the above paragraph was\ntransliterated as follows: _teknia_--tau, epsilon, kappa, nu, iota,\nalpha; _mou_--mu, omicron, upsilon; _ous_--omicron, upsilon, final\nsigma; _odino_--omega, delta, iota, nu, omega; _mechris_--mu, epsilon,\nchi, rho, iota, final sigma; _ou_--omicron, upsilon; _morphothe_--mu,\nomicron, rho, phi, omega, theta, eta; _Christos_--Chi, rho, iota,\nsigma, tau, omicron, final sigma; _en_--epsilon, nu; _humin_--(rough\nbreathing mark) upsilon, mu, iota, nu]\n\nDon't imitate Uriah Heep with 'Yours most humbly.'  I won't stand that\nnonsense! and you give yourself away just a few lines above, when you\nassert that you are too proud to confer a favour on me, and read Greek\nTestament with me.  What a funny chap you are!  Can't you see, you\nidiot, what a pleasure you give me?  We shall have to compromise, and\nI'll have to make some concession to your pride.  Neither ---- nor I\nknow much about your section, but we could help you in your first part\npapers.  Of course, he could do it miles better than I can; but, all\nthe same, you are going to be my pupil.  Promise me that you won't make\nany arrangement with him until you have talked the matter over with me.\nI'll make some compromise for the sake of your miserable pride, you\nwretched creature.\n\nWrite to me soon again, if it isn't a great bore.  I can't recall as\nmuch as I could wish of your conversations with me.  In fact, I have\nthe unpleasant feeling sometimes that I did too much of the talking!\nBut one or two things that you said to me live in {153} my memory, and\nmake me wish to be more fit to talk to you.\n\nSt. Moritz is much as usual.  It is a strange little world in itself.\nThe comic and the tragic are blended weirdly together, and nature is\nunimaginably beautiful.  I wish you could see this snow.  It has an\nattraction for me, and I am sure it would have for you.  I think you\nunderstand more about the meaning of beauty than I do.  When I see a\nmagnificent landscape, I want to share the sight with some one else.  I\nfeel quite lonely when I am interpreting it alone.  I wonder why that\nis?\n\n\n\n_To F. J. C._\n\nHotel Belvedere, St. Moritz: December 21, 1901.\n\nChristmas seems to mean more to me, the longer that I live.  I gaze\nwith bewilderment on that stupendous mystery of love--the very God\nentering into and raising our human nature.  My whole conception of the\nmeaning, the possibilities of our common human nature is transformed,\nas I see that it can become a perfect reflection and manifestation of\nthe Divine nature.  'The Word became flesh, and lodged _in us_.'  The\nmanger at Bethlehem reverses all our human conceptions of dignity and\ngreatness.  'The folly of God is wiser than men.'  It is to the\nhumble--to babes--that God can reveal Himself.  In them He can find His\nhome.\n\n    O Father, touch the East and light\n  The light that shone when Hope was born.\n\nIt is in Christmas that Tennyson found the birth of {154} Hope.  It is\nChristmas that, as life goes on, bids us never despair--of our own or\nof human nature around us.\n\n\n\n_To a friend at Cambridge._\n\nHotel Belvedere, St. Moritz: December 30, 1901.\n\nI shall never forget this last Christmas Day, for your letter came in\nthe evening.  I read it again and again, and wonder at it more each\ntime I read it.  I can't tell you what I feel about it.  I knew that\nyou more or less liked and respected me, but I didn't know that you\nloved me.  I've got what I wanted.  When you merely respected me, I\ndreaded the day when you would find that I was different to what you\nthought I was.  But now I feel I am safe _phobos ouk estin en te\nagape_, however imperfect you find me.  I know now that I can trust you\nnot to throw me off.  And love is not extreme to mark what is amiss,\n_hoti agape kaluptei plethos amartion_.  I can't thank you for your\nkindness, but I thank God for giving me the most precious gift in the\nworld, a human soul 'to love and be loved by for ever.'  As I look at\nyour letter I feel a mere worm, and my one wonder is how on earth a man\nlike you can call me your friend.  I can't thank you; but I'll do my\nbest to live up to the standard you expect of me, and to be a true\nfriend to you.  And my idea of friendship is, as you know, prayer.  I\ncan't, worse luck, do much for you, but I do pray for you, and\n'whatever ye ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.'  It has been\ntruly said that the _how_, the _where_, and the _when_ are not told us,\nbut only the {155} _what_.  And I am quite certain that every prayer I\noffer for you is heard and answered, when I believe what I say; but the\nmanner, the place, and the occasion of the answer--of these things I\nknow nothing.  I am sure that God loves to see us happy, and the pure\njoy of the knowledge that such a man as you loves me is almost more\nthan I can bear.  It throws a new light on life here, and on that\nfuller life to which God is leading us hereafter; like you, thank God,\nI cannot complain of lack of friends, but I have never had one who has\nwritten me such a letter, full of an affection for which I crave.  The\nworst is, I can't repay your kindness.  You bring me nearer to God, you\nmake me realise in the strangest way His affection, you make me feel\nthe worth and mystery of a human soul.  I wish I could return your help\nsomehow or other.  Do show me the way.  I wish you did not find it so\ndifficult to pray for me.  I am sure you are right in going back to\nsuch a man as St. Paul for subjects of prayer.  The opening chapters of\nhis letters to the Ephesians and Colossians give the kinds of requests\nwhich it is worth making on behalf of any one.  There is surely no harm\nin finding that, as you pray for another, your own faith is growing.\nThere is nothing selfish in that.  It is rather the result of the law\n_didote kai dothesetai humin_.\n\n[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrases in the above paragraph were\ntransliterated as follows: _phobos_--phi, omicron, beta, omicron, final\nsigma; _ouk_--omicron, upsilon, kappa; _estin_--epsilon, sigma, tau,\niota, nu; _en_--epsilon, nu; _te_--tau, eta; _agape_--alpha, gamma,\nalpha, pi, eta; _hoti_--(rough breathing mark) omicron, tau, iota;\n_agape_--alpha, gamma, alpha, pi, eta; _kaluptei_--kappa, alpha,\nlambda, upsilon, pi, tau, epsilon, iota; _plethos_--pi, lambda, eta,\ntheta, omicron, final sigma; _amartion_--alpha, mu, alpha, rho, tau,\niota, omega, nu; _didote_--delta, iota, delta, omicron, tau, epsilon;\n_kai_--kappa, alpha, iota; _dothesetai_--delta, omicron, theta, eta,\nsigma, eta, tai, alpha, iota; _humin_--(rough breathing mark) upsilon,\nmu, iota, nu]\n\nYour faith can only grow with exercise, and you exercise it by praying\nfor others.  You would only be selfish if you prayed for some one else\n_in order that_ your own soul might be benefited.\n\nBut don't think too much of selfishness.  Bring {156} all your half\nselfish desires to Him who knows us through and through; and in His\npresence, almost unconsciously, your motives will gradually be\npurified.  You will learn to walk in the light as He Himself is in the\nlight.  As I look back on this letter, a large part of it seems\nselfish.  I expect much is; but, even in the selfish parts, there is\nsomething more besides.  I can only just say what I feel, and ask God\ngradually to eliminate what is wrong.  In His light I shall see light.\n\nLife is large, and I am fearful lest, in attempting a rough and ready\nasceticism, I should exclude as wrong some elements which are in\nreality God-given.  I feel that in the case of our affections and our\nlonging for beauty.  They are implanted in us, and tended and watered\nby One who is perfect Love and perfect Beauty.  They easily lead us\ninto sin, but that fact does not imply that they are wrong in\nthemselves.  We have to bring them to their source that He may\ninterpret them, 'Too late have I sought thee,' said Augustine, 'thou\nBeauty, so ancient and so new, too late have I sought thee.'  I cannot\nunderstand the mystery of your life, dearest, but I feel that all that\ncraving for beauty is in some kind of way a craving for God.  Only God\ndemands the first place in your life before He will give you any\nsatisfying interpretation of that aspect of His life.  You must love\nHim for what He is--not simply because He is Beauty.\n\n  I slept and dreamed that life was Beauty,\n  I woke and found that life is Duty.\n\n{157}\n\nThey are not really contradictory conceptions.  Nay, Duty has a\nspiritual beauty of her own.  But sometimes they seem for a moment\ndivergent, and then you must at all costs choose the latter, and you\nwill find that\n\n  The topmost crags of Duty scaled,\n  Are close upon that shining tableland\n  To which God Himself is shield and sun.\n\nAnd, if I am not mistaken, that land will be utterly full of an\nabsolutely satisfying beauty.\n\nBut I feel that I scarcely yet understand anything about the meaning of\nBeauty.  All I can do is to relate it immediately to God.  If I see\nbeautiful scenery, I am usually thinking of God and thanking Him.  If I\nsee human beauty, I feel that I am on holy ground, and I always try to\npray for a face that attracts me.  I feel that I have a duty in return\nfor the revelation that has been given.  But, as you see, I can explain\nbut little.  These are merely rules of practical life which we very\nimperfectly carry out.  I cannot explain the relation of physical and\nspiritual beauty in human beings.  I feel, of course, that there ought\nto be, there very often is, some such relation.  But sometimes there is\nsomething utterly wrong, and apparently no such connective.  The\nconnection, I take it, is more perfect in nature; but in man, why,\nsomething has occurred, something anomalous, which mars the whole.  Sin\nhas come in somewhere, I suppose.\n\nI can't express on paper what I feel, or give you any real conception\nof what you are to me.  You {158} would be startled if you knew.  God\nbless you, and work out in you, not my miserable ideal of what I think\nyou ought to be, but His own ideal, which exceeds all our thoughts and\nimagination, of what you are to be.\n\n\n\n_To G. J. C._\n\nChrist's College: 1901.\n\n. . .  I was never so pleased to hear of any engagement as of yours.  I\nthank God with all my heart.  I cannot put my joy into words, but\nsomehow or other it seems to bring me nearer to the source of all joy.\nI feel more than ever that He cares for us and is educating us, and I\nfeel that He has been so good to you, because He loves you.  The older\nI grow the more I am impressed by His infinite sympathy and concern for\nus.  And when He gives us not only love but a return of love, it seems\nto me that He is giving us the very best thing that He has--a part, as\nit were, of Himself.  'The merciful and gracious Lord hath so done His\nmarvellous works, that they ought to be had in remembrance.'\n\nI cannot tell you how glad I am.  But I thank God in my prayers for\nyou; and I am sure that if He has been so good to you in the past, He\nwill not forget you in the future.\n\n\n\n_To the same when he had just accepted a mastership at Eton._\n\nBrislington, Bristol: 1901.\n\n. . . .  How good of you to write and tell me of your future\nwork! . . .  The responsibility of such a {159} life is to my mind\nalmost overwhelming.  'Who is sufficient for these things?  Our\nsufficiency is of God.'\n\nI am thankful that the offer came as it did--unsought by you.  You will\nfeel happier in accepting it.  'Infinite sympathy is needed for the\ninfinite pathos of human life'--more especially of a boy's life.  The\nfirst, second, third, requisite for a master is, in my judgment,\nsympathy.  As I look back on my own school days, I cannot help feeling\nthat most of my masters were either lacking in it or else strangely\nincapable of manifesting it in a form which I could understand.\nSympathy with the dull, unpromising boy is a divine gift, and I trust\nthat Holy Orders will confer upon you this grace also.  I thank God\nthat you are taking orders, and finding your work in teaching.  Forgive\nthis lecture from one who has no right to speak, and who is himself\nstrangely deficient in sympathy.\n\n\n\n_To D. B. K._\n\nEastbourne: September 1901.\n\nI am glad that you have been home.  I feel that home is a revelation--a\nmeans whereby the Eternal Father shows us Himself and His purposes, a\nstrengthening and refreshing of our tired souls. . . .  I have prayed\nearnestly for you that your faith and love may not fail.  I feel\nintensely the same difficulty as you, and I am only slowly learning to\novercome it.  I do not think we can learn to love people who are\naltogether different from us in many respects, all at once.  I love\nsome men with a strange, unsatisfied affection.  All my thoughts about\nthem I am {160} gradually learning to resolve into prayers for them,\nand I want to live longer that I may pray for them more.\n\nWell, it seems to me that God gives us this affection that we may learn\nto do to others as we would do to these.  I cannot pretend to care for\nmany with whom I come into contact as much as I do for the few.  But I\ncan pray for them, and the feeling will more or less come in time.\nJust try to pray for some one person committed to your charge--say for\nhalf an hour or an hour--and you will begin really to love him.  As you\nlay his life before God, as you think of his needs and hopes, and\nfailings and possibilities, as you pray earnestly for him as you would\nfor some one whom you feel intense affection for; at the end of the\ntime you will feel more interested in him, you will think of him not as\none of a class but as a separate, mysterious person.  You will not, it\nmay be, have time to pray for many in this way, but you will learn\nimperceptibly to extend your sympathy--to feel real love for many more.\nI advise you to keep a record of these prayers.  It is quite worth your\nwhile to take practically a day off sometimes, and to force yourself to\npray.  It will be the best day's work you have ever done in your life.\nRemember that!\n\nDon't be troubled by comparing yourself with other clergymen.  I think\nyou are like me--not ecclesiastically minded.  I don't have the sort of\nfeelings which a large number of persons have about their work and\ntheir preaching.  I can't put the difference into words, yet I feel it.\nBut I must serve God in my own way, and I am sure that He will use me\nto do the work for which I am best fitted.  And the {161} same is true\nof you.  Try to refer all your actions to His standard; and test your\nwork in His presence; and don't ask what So-and-so thinks of it.\n\nI very much wish you had some gentlemen to associate with besides\nparsons.  You must keep up as much as possible with your college\nfriends; and use every opportunity which reasonably presents itself of\nseeing some 'society.'  God knows what is best for you at present.\n\n  God nothing does or suffers to be done\n  But thou wouldest do thyself, couldest thou but see\n  The end of all events as well as He.\n\nI am sure that He will not forget you.  He knows what is best for your\ndevelopment.  It may be that He takes you away from friends that you\nmay learn to pray for them more and to see Him more clearly.\n\nI think you will influence many men whom a more ordinary parson would\nnot touch. . . .  I am quite certain that if you have infinite\nhope--hope against hope--you will be a tremendous power in the place\nwhere God has put you.\n\nGet as much exercise as you can, and always get a clear day off in the\nweek, and don't give up any of your old interests.  Don't always read\n'religious' literature. . . .  When the long day is done and we stand\nbefore the judgment seat, I believe that many will rise up and call you\nblessed.  Only pray for individuals--for a long time together.  To\ninfluence, you must love; to love, you must pray.\n\n\n\n{162}\n\n_To one about to be ordained._\n\nEastbourne: September 1901.\n\nI shall indeed remember you on Sunday next.  The words of the lesson come\nhome to me to-day--_kai eireken moi Arkei soi he chariu mou; he gar\ndunamis en astheneia teleitai_.\n\nWe are poor creatures, but there is Grace--and we can come into contact\nwith it--and that is all we need.  We may have failed in the past, but\nChrist offers a new childlike life and endless hope.\n\nI am glad to think that you will be returning to your difficult post at\nCambridge.  I am sure that you will return to it with fresh humility and\ncourage--_en pleromati eulogias Christou_.\n\n[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrases in the above paragraphs were\ntransliterated as follows: _kai_--kappa, alpha, iota; _eireken_--epsilon,\niota, rho, eta, kappa, epsilon, nu; _moi_--mu, omicron, iota;\n_Arkei_--Alpha, rho, kappa, epsilon, iota; _soi_--sigma, omicron, iota;\n_he_--(rough breating mark) eta; _chariu_--chi, alpha, rho, iota, final\nsigma; _mou_--mu, omicron, upsilon; _he_--(rough breathing mark) eta;\n_gar_--gamma, alpha, rho; _dunamis_--delta, upsilon; nu, alpha, mu, iota,\nfinal sigma; _en_--epsilon, nu; _astheneia_--alpha, sigma, theta,\nepsilon, nu, epsilon, iota, alpha; _teleitai_--tau, epsilon, lambda,\nepsilon, iota, tau, alpha, iota; _en_--_en_--epsilon, nu;\n_pleromati_--pi, lambda, eta, rho, omega, mu, alpha, tau, iota;\n_eulogias_--epsilon, upsilon, lambda, omicron, gamma, iota alpha, final\nsigma; _Christou_--Chi, rho, iota, sigma, tau, omicron, upsilon]\n\n\n\n_To W. D. H._\n\nSt. Moritz: January 4, 1902.\n\nI hope that you are now less overworked than you were in October.  You\nmust at all costs make quiet time.  Give up work, if need be.  Your\ninfluence finally depends upon your own first-hand knowledge of the\nunseen world, and on your experience of prayer.  Love and sympathy and\ntact and insight are born of prayer.  I am glad you have a Junior Clergy\nS. P. G. Association.  Try to take an intelligent interest in it, and\nmind you read a paper before long.\n\n\n\n_To his brother Edward in South Africa._\n\nHotel Belvedere, St. Moritz: January 7, 1902.\n\nI am glad to think that we are now in many respects agreed about the\ngeneral question of the {163} war.  I suppose in any great historical\nupheaval there are at the time a number of people who are attempting to\nmake capital for themselves out of the misfortunes of others; there are\nmany who are working for their own hand; and yet, when we look back on\nthe crisis and judge it as a whole in the calm light of history, we see\nthat a large and rational purpose has been worked out.  At the time of\nthe English Reformation--as some one was saying to me lately, pointing\nthe parallel which I am working out--there must have been a number of\nhonest and pure souls who held aloof from the whole of what appeared to\nbe political jobbery and fortune-making at the expense of religious\nsentiment.  Yet now most of us feel that the movement could not have had\nthe effects that it had, unless down below all there was a strong\nupheaval of the national conscience.  You will no doubt see many defects\nin this historical parallel; but the thought is at any rate suggestive,\nand full of what we require in these latter days--hope.  Of course I feel\nthat injustice, dishonesty, cruelty, selfishness are in no way palliated\nbecause they take cover and occasion in a real movement of national\nfeeling.\n\nI feel for you much in your work for examinations.  It must come very\nhard with ill health and in a hot climate, with the freshness of youth to\nsome extent passed.  But\n\n  O well for him whose will is strong,\n  He suffers, but he shall not suffer long;\n  He suffers, but he cannot suffer wrong\n\n{164} It needs more courage than you were required to show on the field\nof battle.  But the reward is sure.  I feel strongly that this life is\nbut the prelude to a larger life, when each faculty will have its full\nexercise.\n\n  Ah yet, when all is thought and said,\n  The heart still overrules the head;\n  Still what we hope we must believe,\n  And what is given us receive;\n  Must still believe, for still we hope,\n  That in a world of larger scope,\n  What here is faithfully begun\n  Will be completed, not undone.\n\nThese words come from dough--the soul of honesty.\n\n\n\n_To H. J. B._\n\nDerwent Hill, Ebchester, Durham: April 14, 1902.\n\nIt seems to me a truism to say that we ought to look at life in the light\nof eternity.  Only then does the true significance of the meanest action\nin life appear.  Life is redeemed from triviality and vulgarity.  So far\nfrom worldly possessions losing their value, and ordinary occupations\nappearing insignificant, their importance is realised as never before.\nIf man does not live for ever, his character and actions seem of\ncomparative unimportance.  If he does live for ever, it is rational for\nhim to look at each action in the light of that larger life which he\ninherits.  If something like class distinctions are eternal, it is an\ninducement so to use your distinctive privileges here in a worthy manner,\nthat hereafter you may use them for nobler ends.\n\n{165}\n\nI have expressed myself badly, but you will see what I want to say.  My\nrelations to you surely become not less, but more important, when I\nrealise that I am only beginning to know and love you here.  The eternal\nelement in them--the knowledge that there is throughout an implicit\nreference to a Third and Unseen Person in all that I say to you or think\nof you--fills me with a sense of awe, and makes the relations more real\nbecause more spiritual.\n\n\n\n_To the mother of his godchild, Margaret Forbes._\n\nJuly 6, 1902.\n\nI cannot tell you what a pleasure it was to see my godchild. . . .  I\nfeel she has a strength of purpose and a desire to know the truth which\nwill fit her for high service in God's kingdom on earth.  I pray for her,\nand I shall do so in the future with fuller understanding and with great\nhope.  What God hath begun He will assuredly bring to perfection.  I hope\nthat some day she will learn to pray for Uncle Forbes.  I should value\nher prayers.  It is good to feel that in the midst of your weary time of\nweakness God has given you such a child as a pledge of His affection for\nyou, as an assurance that He believes in you.  To give you a little child\nto train for Himself is a proof that He trusts you very much.  I do not\nknow that He could have given a greater proof of His confidence in you.\nAnd it is God's implicit trust in us that draws out our trust in turn.\nWe trust and love Him, because He first trusted and loved us.  I wonder\nmore and more at the way in which He trusts us.  To allow us to suffer\nwithout {166} telling us the reason, when He knows that we shall be\ninclined to think harshly of Him--that is, perhaps, the greatest proof\nthat He believes in us.  He can try our faith and perfect it by\nlong-continued trial, because He knows that we shall respond, that we\nshall prove 'worthy to suffer.'\n\n\n\n_To H. J. B._\n\nChrist's College, Cambridge: August 26, 1902.\n\nThe worst of seeing you for some time is that I feel it all the more\nimpossible to live without you.  I realise now as never before that you\nare out and away before me, and better than I am; and yet I feel that you\nare part and parcel of my life.  You mustn't be too hard on me if I can't\ncome up to your ideal.\n\nIntellectually the Hebrew and Greek ideals may be irreconcilable.  Yet\n'life is larger than logic;' and practically we may become heirs of both\nideals.  The man who loses the world, who gives up all without any desire\nfor gain, is often given the whole back again transfigured, glorified by\nsacrifice.  To get you must forget.  If you love God absolutely with all\nyour being, you inherit the life that is as well as that which is to\ncome.  If all is not given you, yet enough is given for the development\nof character.  But there must, it seems to me, be an absolute\nsacrifice--a surrender of your whole being--whatever the result may be.\nThere must be no calculation.\n\n  High Heaven rejects the lore\n  Of nicely calculated less and more.\n\n{167}\n\nYou must love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind:\nyou must trust Him to do the best by you.  You say the Hebrew ideal does\nnot appeal to you.  But I know better; for you half like me, and I am a\nHebrew of the Hebrews!  There must be a dash of recklessness about the\nman who gains the other world.  'All or nothing' is the requirement of\nthe kingdom of Heaven.  To gain yourself you must throw yourself\naway--'lose your soul.'  You must have faith.  'He who loves makes his\nown the grandeur that he loves' is a sentence of Emerson which consoles\nme when I think of my love for you.\n\n\n\n_To a friend at Cambridge._\n\n40 Upperton Gardens, Eastbourne: September 8, 1902.\n\nI have been thinking of you.  I keep myself from becoming morbid by\nmaking most of my thoughts into prayers for you.  The\nglory--wonder--strangeness of being loved by a man from another and a\nbetter world fills me with gratitude to God.  Sometimes it seems a dream,\nand I half dread that I shall wake up and find that you have ceased to\ncare for a worthless creature.  But _phobos ouk estin en te agape, all he\nteleia agape exo ballei ton phobon_.  I need not fear.  I know that you\nwill love me, whatever happens.\n\n[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrases in the above paragraph were\ntransliterated as follows: _phobos_--phi, omicron, beta, omicron, final\nsigma; _ouk_--omicron, upsilon, kappa; _estin_--epsilon, sigma, tau,\niota, nu; _en_--epsilon, nu; _te_--tau, eta; _agape_--alpha, gamma,\nalpha, pi, eta; _all_--alpha, lambda, lambda; _he_--(rough breathing\nmark) eta; _teleia_--tau, epsilon, lambda, epsilon, iota, alpha;\n_agape_--alpha, gamma, alpha, pi, eta; _exo_--epsilon, xi, omega;\n_ballei_--beta, alpha, lambda, lambda, epsilon, iota; _ton_--tau,\nomicron, nu; _phobon_--phi, omicron, beta, omicron, nu]\n\nI want you to be one of the best men that ever lived--to see God and to\nreveal Him to men.  This is the burden of my prayers.  My whole being\ngoes out in passionate entreaty to God that He will give me what I ask.\nI am sure He will, for the request {168} is after His own heart.  I do\nnot pray that you may 'succeed in life' or 'get on' in the world.  I\nseldom even pray that you may love me better, or that I may see you\noftener in this or any other world--much as I crave for this.  But I ask,\nI implore, that Christ may be formed in you, that you may be made not in\na likeness suggested by my imagination, but in the image of God--that you\nmay realise, not mine, but His ideal, however much that ideal may\nbewilder me, however little I may fail to recognise it when it is\ncreated.  I hate the thought that out of love for me you should accept my\npresentation--my feeble idea--of the Christ.  I want God to reveal His\nSon in you independently of me--to give you a first-hand knowledge of Him\nwhom I am only beginning to see.  Sometimes more selfish thoughts will\nintrude, but this represents the main current of my prayers; and if the\nideal is to be won from heaven by importunity, by ceaseless begging, I\nthink I shall get it for you.  But it grieves me to think that I can do\nnothing else for you.  To receive so many favours from you, and to be\nincapable of doing more in return--this is what saddens me.  I feel an\nungrateful brute.  You have brought new joy, hope, power into my life,\nand I want to show my gratitude.  You would be doing me a real kindness\nif you would tell me how I could show it.\n\nDon't think by what I have said that I simply care--as an 'Evangelical'\nwould say--for your 'soul.'  Every part of your being--everything you do\nor say--all that you are--has a strange fascination for me.  Only I feel\nthat the whole of it is a revelation of {169} God; and I want that\nrevelation to be clearer, truer, simpler.  I am sure God does not only\ncare for our souls.  It is every part of our complicated being--all sides\nof our manifold life--that attracts Him.  He loves our home life, our\naffection for the dear old Mother Earth which He made, our interest in\nthe men and women whom He formed in His own image.  He longs that all\nthose interests should be developed--that we should live genuine, sane\nhuman lives.  But true development here or elsewhere--the law of\nexistence in heaven or on earth--is life through death.  'Verily, verily,\nI say unto you, Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it\nabideth by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit.'  You must\ngive up all.  As I think of you, those words keep ringing in my ears: 'If\nany one cometh to Me, and hateth not his own father and mother, yea, and\nhis own self also, he cannot be My disciple.'\n\nI cannot tell you what they mean.  You must find them out for yourself.\n\nIf I were a true disciple of Christ, you could see what they mean by\nlooking at me.  But I am not.  You must learn their meaning for yourself.\nYour mother's life will speak louder than words of mine.  Only I know\nthey are true.  Christ will recreate the world, recreate the home, human\nbeings, dear Mother Earth; but He cannot do so until you have been\nwilling to give up all--until He has caused you to be 'born again.'  When\nthe ruler asked how these things could be, Christ could only repeat His\nwords.  The man must work it out for himself.\n\nBut I am sure that he that willeth to do the will {170} shall know\nwhether the teaching be true.  There are no doubt some mere intellectual\nobscurities in the ideal which I might make simpler if I were not such a\nduffer.  But finally a paradox would be left--a paradox which can only be\nsolved by living the ideal out, and finding it work.  It is the pathos of\nour love, of God's love for us, that each man, however much he is loved,\nmust work out the ideal for himself.  No man can save his brother's soul.\n\nI do not like to weaken the paradoxes of the Gospel.  I think there is\nmore in Christ's words concerning 'loving one's life' or 'self' than you\nsuggest.  You say it means 'self-denial.'  Yes, that is true, but what a\ntremendous meaning 'deny one's self' has!  To disown your identity, that\nis not much easier when you come to think of it than to lose your life.\nI know you will find out what it all means, and that human love, beauty,\nhome, social service, will be more real than ever before, because you\nwill see the eternal reality underneath.  You will be a 'new creation.'\n\nNow I must stop without satisfactorily answering your question, without\nentering into any casuistical questions concerning conformity such as you\nsuggest.  I should like you to think out that problem in casuistry more\nfor yourself, before I attempt to answer it.  Forgive me for talking so\nmuch about myself.  When all is said and done, words fail me.  I can only\nthank God that you exist, and that you let me love you.\n\n{171}\n\n_To H. P., a Clifton College master who had given up school work in order\nto devote himself to the School Mission in Bristol._\n\n40 Upperton Gardens, Eastbourne: September 30, 1902.\n\n. . .  I am glad that you feel you have done right in giving up your\nschool work.  I am sorry that you left Clifton, but you thought you\n_ought_ to go, and that is an end of the matter.  I can only hope that\nyou are in some measure a connecting-link between the school and its\nmission. . . .  Don't forget me in my very different work--and yet work\nfor the same Master--at college.  I have need of your prayers.  It is so\neasy to blunder, and to drive a man further from the kingdom by lack of\nsympathy and love.  I feel more than I used to my weakness, and my\nabsolute need of prayer.\n\n\n\n_To his brother Edward in South Africa._\n\n40 Upperton Gardens, Eastbourne: October 1, 1902.\n\nThe October term has an interest of its own, bringing, as it does, a\nbatch of freshmen.  I try more and more not simply to impose my ideals\nupon them, but to find out their ideals and to quicken them with all my\npower.  But assuredly 'infinite sympathy is needed for the infinite\npathos of human life;' and my sympathies are as yet imperfectly developed.\n\nStill, as years go by, I think I can sympathise more with those who have\nbeen trained up in other schools of thought and experience.  I was\nreading in a book lately that we are largely responsible for our {172}\nown experiences, that we have a duty to get them of the right kind.  The\nbook was by an American lady on social questions.  I think there is truth\nin her words.\n\n\n\n_To D. B. K., head of a Public School Mission._\n\nEastbourne: October 1902.\n\nI delight to know men better, because I find so much more in them than I\nhad expected.  They differ from me, and I try to get out of the habit of\nmaking them in my own image, and try to find the image in which God is\nmaking them.  I have been praying for you.  I want a spirit of sanity and\nsacrifice to possess you, that you may be able to see the good works\nwhich God has prepared beforehand that you should walk in them. . . .\n\nI am struck by the sacrifice which Christ demands.  Unless the man hates\nfather, mother, family, friends, yea, and himself also, he 'cannot be'\nHis disciple, Christ gives them all back again--only 'with persecutions.'\nWe find more in the world, when we are 'crucified to it,' than ever\nbefore; but there is a something added.  We have a deeper joy in home\nties, in human love, in social life, in the changing seasons, in the dear\nold earth.  Only the joy has a note of sorrow, a pathos, which Christ\ncalls 'persecutions.'  We see more in life, and yet we are in a measure\nout of sympathy with our surroundings.  We have heard and we can never\nforget the sorrows of those who are 'one man' with us.  There is more in\nthat word 'persecutions' than this, as no doubt {173} you have found.\nBut this, I think, is part of its signification, isn't it? . . .\n\nI believe in your 'mission' even more than you do.  It is men like you,\nwho through great tribulations strive to enter the Kingdom, that God\nuses.  The fact that you are two men, and that the true man--the\nChrist--is painfully yet surely being 'formed' in you, means that you\nwill be able to appeal to others who are painfully conscious of their\ndouble consciousness and are often the slaves of the lower, inhuman self.\nYour wealth of affection will make you feel as St. Paul did--_teknia mou,\nous palin mechris ou morphothe Christos en humin_.\n\n[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrases in the above paragraph were\ntransliterated as follows: _teknia_--tau, epsilon, kappa, nu, iota,\nalpha; _mou_--mu, omicron, upsilon; _ous_--omicron, upsilon, final sigma;\n_palin_--pi, alpha, lambda, iota, nu; _mechris_--mu, epsilon, ch, rho,\niota, final sigma; _ou_--omicron, upsilon; _morphothe_--mu, omicron, rho,\nphi, omega, theta, eta; _Christos_--Chi, rho, iota, sigma, tau, omicron,\nfinal sigma; _en_--epsilon, nu; _humin_--(rough breathing mark) upsilon,\nmu, iota, nu]\n\nThese words sum up for me, better than any others, my deepest wish for my\nfriends.  I fall back with desperate energy upon prayer, as the one power\nby which my wish can be realised.\n\nYou seem to look ahead almost more than is necessary.  I delight in the\nfeeling that I am in eternity, that I can serve God now fully and\neffectively, that the next piece of the road will come in sight when I am\nready to walk on it 'I do not ask to see the distant scene.'  I hate the\nunsettled feeling that I have not yet begun my main work.\n\nDon't measure work by human standards of greatness.  Your present\noccupation might well be the envy of angels--if they could envy.\n\nBut now I am lecturing.  So it is time to shut up. . . .\n\nI fear that the origin of evil is more of a mystery to me now than when I\nwrote that essay!  But I still think that we are fighting a real being,\none whom {174} we can best describe as personal.  His will, it seems to\nme, must be given to him by God.  He has identified it with a hitherto\nunrealised potentiality for disobedience.  In plain language, his will is\nfree, and therefore capable of resisting God.  I should like to have a\ntalk with you some day about it.  But, as you see, the problem is beyond\nme. . . .\n\nIt is a strength to me to feel that you are fighting the devil in\nyourself and others up in ----, and that I am 'one man' with you.\n\n\n\n_To D. B. K._\n\nSt. Moritz: January 1903.\n\nIt is getting on for your birthday, isn't it?  Congratulations.  I wish I\nknew the exact day.  I think more and more that a birthday is a subject\nnot--as poor Job thought--for anathemas, but for congratulations.  To be\na reasonable human being--with capacity for seeing something of God's\npurposes for the race--with power to forward them--with opportunities for\nlove and sacrifice and prayer--oh!  I am so glad that I was not a mere\nanimal.  And to be born at the end of the nineteenth century--I prefer\nthat period even to Apostolic times.  We can know more of God's purposes,\nenter more deeply into His mind and even His heart, than primitive\nChristians.\n\nI have been reading to-day Temple's essay on 'The Education of the World'\nin 'Essays and Reviews.'  Get hold of an old copy of that book, and read\nit.  It is strong and manly, and rings true.  I {175} love that old man\nwith his tenderness, simplicity, thoughtfulness, and will of steel.  I\nthank God for him.  There is something about utter goodness which makes\nme worship, and fills me with the challenge, 'Go and do thou likewise.'\nGoodness is as infectious as any disease.\n\nI have been thinking lately of the self-sacrifice of God's life.  I\nsuppose that is the reason why He can enter into our lives--see them from\nthe inside.\n\n  Thou canst conceive our highest and our lowest,\n  Pulses of nobleness and aches of shame.\n\nIt must have been the wealth of His self-sacrifice which made Him give us\nselves--wills--of our own.  Then He makes them His own by more\nself-sacrifice.  We are made in His image--made to go out of self, and\nfind our self by losing it.  Other men at first seem to limit our\nfreedom, but later we find that the apparent limitations are only just\nscope for realising our true self.  Each time we go out of self, and\nenter into another 'ego,' we return the richer for our sacrifice.  We\ntake up other lives into our own, and are richer than a millionaire.\n\nI think that when the other 'ego' is most unlike our own--when at first\nsight the man is repulsive, and (worse still) uninteresting to us--when\nthe sacrifice is great, if we would see life through his eyes, share his\nambitions, fears, longings, and mental outlook, then is the time when we\nare peculiarly rewarded for our pains.  Our consciousness is larger, more\nhuman, more divine than before.\n\n'By feeblest agents doth our God fulfil His {176} righteous will' is the\nthought suggested by some of our brother-clergy.  God does not choose the\nagents we should choose.  Or perhaps the latter do not respond to His\nchoice.  Yet I feel that I am one of them, and that it is my faults writ\nlarge which I detest in them.  I feel that, with all the riches of the\nrevelation which I possess, I have that same self-satisfaction and lack\nof sympathy which I loathe in others.  It is my life which is the\nstumbling-block to my message.  They have often far less light than I\nhave, but walk in it more simply than I do.  The rafter in my own eye\ntroubles me even more than the speck in theirs.  But it is hard, God\nknows, sometimes to feel His presence in their presence.  But the forces\nof good must be united ('Keep, ah! keep them combined.  Else . . .'), and\nif by any effort we can enter into their lives, and transcend the\nbarriers between us, we are not only enriching our own life, but we are\ndoing our best to show a combined front against the almost overwhelming\nforces of evil.\n\nEven the Apostles must have found it hard to work together.  We know they\ndid.  Look at Peter and Paul.  Yet the spirit of unity was stronger than\nall that opposed Him, and the One Body was in some measure realised.\nWhat was difficult in the childhood of the Body is still more difficult\nin its manhood.  And Englishmen, with their strong sense of\nindividuality, find it a terrible lesson to learn.\n\nBut pray.  You enter then into another man's 'ego.'  You see him in God.\nYou see him as an end in himself.  Remember Kant's maxim--a wonderful\nmaxim from one who would not, I suppose, be {177} technically called a\nChristian--'Treat humanity, whether in thyself or in another, always as\nan end, not simply as a means.'  Put aside a certain amount of time, and\npray for one man.  If your thoughts wander, do not be disturbed, do not\ntry to find when they began or how they began to wander; do not despair,\ngo back to the subject in hand.  And God will have mercy.  Your\ninfluence, your life, your all, depends on prayer.\n\nWe must faint sometimes.  But let your saddest times, your deepest\nstruggles be known to God.  Gain there the strength and quietness which\nyou need for life.  But don't let men see the agony--let them see the\npeace which comes from wrestling alone with God--wrestling for them.\n\nYou are not one man, but two or three.  Thank God for that.  It means\nthat you will have a hard life--an awful struggle with self or selves:\nbut it also means more influence, more power to enter into man's life.\nSo many of the finest men owe their attractiveness to their diverse,\nmany-sided nature.  You will be able to feel for such, and perhaps to\nhelp them.  You are half a Greek with your yearning for beauty and\nknowledge, half a Hebrew with your loathing for sin and love of God.  The\nGreek in you must not be annihilated, but it must be subordinated to the\nHebrew.  Conscience must be absolute master.  You must sacrifice the\n'Greek' to Christ; but He will give you back what is best in the Greek\nideal, all the better for the mark of the Cross on it.  He will give it\nyou back partly in this world, partly in the next, when you have learnt\nto renounce it--if need {178} were, for ever--for His sake.  But you must\ngive up all for Him without thought of reward.  He can give no reward to\nthe man who is looking for it.  The thought of your life helps me.  Go\non, for the night cometh when no man can work.  Thank God it is yet day.\n\n\n\n_To his brother Edward in South Africa._\n\nMuehlen, Switzerland: January 11, 1903.\n\nI found walking a pleasant change after reading philosophy, which I have\nbeen doing during my holidays.  I seem to have been getting my ideas a\nlittle clearer, and am no longer as content as I was with the Kantian\ndoctrine, that our knowledge in speculative matters never gets beyond\n'appearances.'  I feel that at every turn we do get to that which\n_is_--to an underlying reality.  I cannot feel that Kant's hard and fast\ndivision between 'speculative' and 'moral' reason holds good.  The\nexternal world, because it is intelligible, must be akin to us; there\nmust be an intelligence in it, otherwise it would never become an object\nof knowledge to our intelligence.  It is not only in our ethical life\nthat we come across the absolute consciousness.  I feel now more than\never how we cannot divide up ourselves into water-tight compartments, and\nthink of reason, will, and feeling as separate things, lying side by\nside.  They can be separated--abstracted--in thought, but in actual life\nyou never find one without the other.  We cannot think without some\ndegree of attention, and attention involves an exercise of will, and will\ncannot {179} be exercised without desire, and desire involves feeling.\n\nI think faith also cannot be regarded as a separate faculty.  Reason,\nwill, and feeling are all involved even in the faith of a poor cottager;\nmuch more does reason enter into the faith of a thoughtful man.\n\nI have been reading Butler, and hope when I go back to study Hume.  What\na wealth of light the conception of 'Development' has shed upon the\nproblems which exercised the eighteenth century!  I have read half\nthrough Leslie Stephen's 'Thought in the Eighteenth Century,' and I have\nbeen struck again and again at the new aspect that the old questions take\nwhen looked at from the standpoint of Evolution.\n\nI feel also that we need to study more the evolution of _thought_--the\nnecessary phases that reason (like man's physical life) must pass through\nbefore perfection. . . .\n\nI think you are right, that education must now include instruction in\nimperial ideas--in our relations with that larger social life which is\ndawning upon us--a step towards a still larger social life to be realised\nin the brotherhood of nations.\n\n\n\n_To F. J. C._\n\nChrist's College, Cambridge: February 1, 1903.\n\nI am slow to suggest to another man that what seems bad luck is in\nreality the voice of God making itself felt in his busy life, calling him\nto fuller sacrifice.  But I am sure that we are right when we interpret\nit {180} thus for ourselves.  I share your wish for 'some really strong\nman' to come as a prophet and read the writing on the wall, and tell us\n'what it all means.'  Yet the absence of human help is not accidental.\nIt must be designed, in order that we may learn to fall back on the\neverlasting arms--to find by experience that the unseen is more real than\nthe seen.\n\n  There is an arm that never tires\n  When human strength gives way.\n\nI like that phrase, 'worthy to suffer.'  It is to those whom God loves\nbest and most that He gives--as He gave to His Son--the chance of\nsuffering.  Sympathy, strength, reality--these are some of its fruits for\nthose who allow them to grow.  'He cannot be My disciple.'  I can't help\nsometimes thinking of these words.  Unless the man is prepared to make\nsacrifice the basis of his life, he _cannot_ be Christ's disciple.  I\ndon't think we always realise the 'trans-valuation of values' found in\nChrist's teaching.  'Blessed are the poor--the hungry.  He that would\nsave his life shall lose it.  He that loseth, saveth.  He that would be\ngreatest shall be least.  It is more blessed to give than to receive.'\nAs I think over such statements as these, I find that I have again and\nagain to revise, as it were, my moral arithmetic--to change my standards,\nto revise my ideas of great and little, happiness and misery, importance\nand insignificance.\n\nI am sure that nothing but the highest will satisfy you.  God has given\nyou singular powers of influence and of attracting others.  He will\ndemand an account {181} of those powers.  You know Matthew Arnold's lines\non his father.  I believe the day will come when men will say like words\nof you.\n\n  But thou would'st not _alone_\n  Be saved, my father! alone\n  Conquer and come to thy goal,\n  Leaving the rest in the wild. . . .\n  Therefore to thee it was given\n  Many to save with thyself.\n\nThat is what I want you to be--a tower of strength--strength perfected,\nit may be, in weakness--weakness forcing you to despair of self, and find\nthe Rock of Ages.  You have been so much to me, and helped me so often,\nthat I feel you must be born to help others as well.  And this quiet\ntime, it may be that God is using it to call you closer to Himself, to\nteach you to revise your 'values,' to show you a new fund of strength.\n\n    Our wills are ours, we know not how,\n  Our wills are ours, to make them Thine.\n\nYou must--literally must--let His will overpower your will.  Nothing but\ncomplete sacrifice will satisfy you or Him, and I believe in you\nprofoundly.  I am sure that, whatever be the ghastly struggle, you will\ngo through with it, and find your strength in Him.  I pray for you.\n\n\n\n_To his mother._\n\nCambridge; March 15, 1903.\n\nThe term is almost over . . .  I am enjoying a quiet Sunday.  What a\nblessing these Sundays are {182} to us--a foretaste of a fuller life of\nservice and worship hereafter!  I have been thinking lately with comfort\nof the quiet perpetual work of the Holy Spirit, silently but surely\nleading us on to higher things--comforting, correcting, guiding.  It\ngives ground for hope in dealing with men, this knowledge that there is\nOne who perfects what we feebly struggle to begin, who watches over men\nwith a love that will not let them go.  We are not alone in our work; we\nhave omnipotence and illimitable wisdom on our side, forwarding our\nefforts.  When I consider what the Spirit has accomplished in my own\nlife, I have large hope for others.  The argument from personal\nexperience is singularly convincing.  'The fellowship of the Holy\nGhost'--it is He who unites men and interprets them one to the other.  It\nis He who gives spirit and life to our words.\n\n\n\n_To H. J. B._\n\nBexley House, Cromer: March 31, 1903.\n\nIt was good of you to send me that card from Florence.  You don't know\nhow glad it made me.  To know that you were thinking of me was a strength\nto me.  Your love for me comes as a perpetual surprise and inspiration.\nI feel a brute compared with you, but the knowledge that you care for me\nmore than you do for most men makes me feel that I must try to be good.\n'In Italy of the fifteenth century renaissance we see in strange\nconfusion all that we love in art, and all that we loathe in man!'  Greek\nhistory was short compared {183} with the Hebrew: I suppose because\nintellectual and artistic ideals are more easily realised than ethical\nand religious.  It takes time to make a saint.  It is part of the\ndiscipline of life to find the two sets of ideas apparently antagonistic.\nThere is a higher unity in which they are blended--in God Himself.  It\nmust be right to follow the dictates of conscience when it bids us lose\nour soul if we would gain it.  We cannot trust God too much.  If we\nforget our self, He will see that our truest self is ultimately realised.\n\nI can't express myself well, for I have just finished a spell of hard\nwork.  I have sent away my tripos papers to-night.  I am going up to\nEdinburgh on Friday or Saturday.  I fear I shall not see you until April\n21.  Will you tell Armitage that I will, if convenient to him, sleep at\nWestminster that night instead of going straight to Cambridge?  The\nhopelessness of ever showing my gratitude to you or of ever making you\nrealise how much I love you oppresses me.  I don't know what I should do\nif I had not One Higher than I am to confide in--if I could not leave you\nin His hands--if I could not gain strength and life for you by appealing\nto Him.\n\n  O brother, if my faith is vain,\n    If hopes like these betray,\n  Pray for me, that I too may gain\n    The sure and safer way.\n\n  And Thou, O God, by whom are seen\n    Thy creatures as they be,\n  Forgive me if too close I lean\n    My human heart on Thee!\n\n{184} I lean closer and closer as life goes on.  I feel that our hope\nlies in despair--despair of self.  The vessels which contain the treasure\nare, as to-night's lesson says, earthen, 'that the excess of the power\nmay be God's and not from us.'  And there is a power, there is a life\nworking in us.  It is the quiet, sane, constant work of the Spirit in and\nupon our spirit, that never hastes and never tires: which gives me\ncomfort for you, for myself, for all of us.  The same life that is at\nwork in the hedge across the road is in us, only in us it attains full\nself-consciousness and freedom.  We can deliberately use it or refuse it.\nForgive the length of the letter.  But I felt so tired that I thought it\nwould do me good to write to you, selfish brute that I am.\n\nI expect you enjoyed your time in Italy immensely.  I should have liked\nto be with you.  I wonder if ever we shall be there together?  Some day\nwe shall be in a world where the barriers of space are broken down:\n'There shall be no more sea.'  Yet it seems to me that we have not\naltogether to wait for that other world.  They are half broken down\nalready; and if we had faith as a grain of mustard seed, we should\nrealise the meaning of a unity deeper than any special or temporal bond.\nIf we fail to realise its meaning now, shall we realise it then?  Is not\nlife here a training for life hereafter?  If we learn nothing in this\nschool, we shall not be able to take our places in that school of\n'broader love.'  The best part in me does not complain.  I thank God for\nHis thoughtful goodness in bringing you near to me.  I thank Him for the\nmystery of life, which enables me to realise that {185} Power 'which\nlives not in the light alone, But in the darkness and the light.'  I\nbecome more and more inclined to thank Him as I see Him more clearly.\n\n\n\n_To F. S. H. on his accepting the post of chaplain at the Royal Naval\nCollege, Osborne._\n\nCambridge: April 30, 1903.\n\nI am satisfied with your decision.  I thought over the matter, but I\ncould not see my way quite clearly to say anything more definite, so I\ndid not write again.  Don't think that my silence was due to slackness.\nI did what I thought was better than writing.  I spent an hour in praying\nover the matter.  Now that the matter is settled I can tell you what a\nkeen pleasure it is to me to have my dear old ---- near me in England,[1]\nand doing a piece of work which is full of hope and joy.  I would not say\nthis before, because I did not wish to influence your decision by private\nconsiderations.  Get some quiet time for prayer before September 1, that\nwhen you go to Osborne you may go _en pleromati eulogias Christou_\n('filled full with the blessing of Christ').  I feel increasingly the\nneed of such times to learn to walk by faith without stumbling, and to\naccustom myself to the atmosphere of faith, to see things as they appear\nto a man who has faith 'as a grain of mustard seed.'\n\n[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrases in the above paragraph were\ntransliterated as follows: _en_--epsilon, nu; _pleromati_--pi, lambda,\neta, rho, omega, mu, alpha, tau, iota; _eulogias_--epsilon, upsilon,\nlambda, omicron, gamma, iota, alpha, final sigma; _Christou_--Chi, rho,\niota, sigma, tau, omicron, upsilon]\n\nWestcott records a visit (see 'Life,' i. 249) to his old schoolmaster,\nBishop Prince Lee.  '\"People quote various words of the Lord,\" said the\nBishop, \"as containing the sum of the Gospel--the Lord's Prayer, {186}\nthe Sermon on the Mount, and the like; to me the essence of the Gospel is\nin simpler and shorter terms: _me phobou, monon pisteue_.[2]  Ah!\nWestcott, mark that _monon_,\" and his eyes were filled with tears as he\nspoke.'  Ah!  S----, mark that _monon_! . . .  God bless you in your new\nwork and make you a blessing to others as you have been to me.\n\n[1] He had been offered work in South Africa.\n\n[2] 'Be not afraid, only believe.'\n\n[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrases in the above paragraph were\ntransliterated as follows: _me_--mu, eta; _phobou_--phi, omicron, beta,\nomicron, upsilon; _monon_--mu, omicron, nu, omicron, nu; _pisteue_--pi,\niota, sigma, tau, epsilon, upsilon, epsilon]\n\n\n\n_To J. K._\n\n_St. Thomas's Home, St. Thomas's Hospital: August 28, 1903._\n\n. . .  I am most grateful for your kind words, though I know full well\nhow little it is that I have done for you.  We clergymen so often seem to\nbe working in the dark.  There are no clear results to show, as _e.g._ a\ndoctor can comfort himself with, when he has visibly cured a patient.\nAnd I for one am too easily inclined to despair, and to wonder whether\nthe work is not in vain.  But 'trust is truer than our fears.'  Yet it\ndoes me good when I feel I have done anything, however tiny, for a man.\nAfter all, results are best left in God's hand.  He gives us enough to\nhelp us the next step onward, but not enough to exalt us, and to make us\nthink we can do anything without His assistance.  Work 'in the Lord'\ncannot be in vain.\n\nI am glad you have been reading Bishop Westcott's life.  He was a man of\nGod, and his life is an inspiration, and a prophecy of what our life\nmay--nay, some day--will be. . . .  I like that passage {187} when he\ngoes to see his old schoolmaster, Bishop Prince Lee, who tells him with\ntears in his eyes that to his mind the whole Gospel message is summed up\nin the words '_me phobou, monon pisteue_.'\n\n[Transcriber's note: see the previous letter for transliteration notes on\nthe above Greek phrase.]\n\n\n\n_To a friend who had been an international athlete._\n\nSt. Thomas's Home: September 5, 1903.\n\nWe had a fairly good 'Long' in spite of the miserable weather.\nCongratulate me.  I won my first athletic distinction last 'Long'--a\nten-shilling prize.  I am thinking of chucking work and becoming a\nprofessional.  It was a second prize in a tennis tournament.  I had (I\nmust own) the best player in College as my partner.  I want to get a very\nconspicuous object as prize.  What do you suggest?\n\n\n\n_To C. T. W._\n\nSt. Thomas's Hospital: September 1903.\n\nI am getting on first-rate, and I hope to be up early next week.  I\nbelieve you are right.  We should do well if we had more regularity and\nself-discipline in our life at Cambridge, and we should have more power\nover others.  Pray for me. . . .\n\nYou needn't pity me.  I am having a very good time.  It is jolly to do\nnothing, and not even to have to dress and undress--both exhausting and\nmonotonous occupations.  It has been a glorious day, and although it is\nalmost 7 P.M., I am still out on the balcony enjoying the cool breezes.\n\n\n\n{188}\n\n_To W. O._\n\nAlassio; December 1903.\n\nDeath has come near to my family lately.  I told you that my sister--the\nDeaconess--had passed away from us.[1]  It is not all sorrow, when we\nknow that the life has been spent in walking with God, when we know that\nthis corruptible puts on incorruption, and that what is sown in intense\nbodily weakness is raised in strength--eternal strength.\n\nI am so glad that God has given to you His highest blessing.  I long to\nmeet your future wife.  It makes me very happy to think of the happiness\nin store for you--to know that you are in the best of all schools.  I\nthank God.  Love will bring you both nearer to the source of Love. . . .\nThis new blessing, as you say, is 'the gathering up of the best that God\ngives.'  I can't express my thoughts as I would, but I am very, very\nglad. . . .\n\nIllness teaches one many lessons.  I trust I have learned some.  I have\nbeen amazed at the goodness of my friends!\n\n[1] His sister, Deaconess Cecilia, 'passed away' at the Deanery,\nWestminster, on September 8.\n\n\n\n_To W. P., an officer in the Army._\n\nHotel Salisbury, Alassio, Italy: December 21, 1903.\n\nI don't think things happen by chance.  Indeed I am sure they do not.  I\nhave never felt so humbled to the earth.  One sees one's life as a whole,\nwhen one is helpless and can do nothing, and the whole looks very poor\nand mean.  It is like the {189} judgment-day--only with this grand\nexception, that life is not yet over, that the night has not yet come in\nwhich 'no man can work,' that you have still a chance to make the future\nbetter, more honest, more noble than the past.  Then, again, I learnt the\nutter and wonderful kindness of my friends.  I felt so selfish and so\nsurprised at the goodness they showed me.  Again, I saw something of the\nmystery of pain.  My own was so trivial compared with that which some\nothers had to bear.  Yet I had enough to startle me that such a fact\nshould be permitted on earth at all.  I don't suppose we can understand\nits meaning; but my consolation was that it is not necessarily a sign of\nGod's displeasure--that the highest life was a life of suffering, that\nthe Son of Man was a 'Man of Sorrows.'  Everything seems to me to depend\nupon the way in which one takes the pain--if one voluntarily says, 'Thy\nkingdom come, Thy will be done,' then one is entering into the highest\nlife, and the pain becomes a new method of serving and knowing God.  But\nphysical pain, if prolonged, is a terrible thing; and there is no time on\na bed of sickness for praying or thinking much of God unless one is\naccustomed to do so in health.  The needs of the poor body press in upon\none.  Death-bed repentances are realities, but I am inclined to think\nthat they are very rare.  It is terribly dangerous to defer being good\nuntil we are ill.  Illness does not necessarily make us good.\n\nI am afraid I was but a poor coward, and yet my faith did not utterly\nfail.  God is the one hope for a man who is ill, and He is true to His\nword.  He {190} hides His face behind the clouds; but even when I\ncouldn't see Him at all, I felt that He was there.  Pray for me; at\npresent I feel too weak to pray much for myself.  I want--I do want--to\nbe a better man, to help others nearer the kingdom.  I want, when life is\nover, to have a better record to look back upon than I had in hospital.\n\n\n\n_To F. S. H._\n\nAlassio, Italy; January 2, 1904.\n\nYour letter came to me at a time when I was rather low.  I had to have a\nsecond operation.  However, after fifteen weeks of Nursing Homes I\nescaped, and, as soon as I could, made my way to St. Moritz.  For once\nthe place didn't seem to suit me very well.  So, after little more than a\nweek, I came down into Italy.  I am so far recovered now that I quite\nhope to be able to go back to college at the beginning of this term.\n\nIllness and pain have taught me some lessons--at least I hope so.  I feel\nsolemnised, startled, when I think of how life looked when I could do\nnothing for the time.  Pray for me that I may be more real.  I learnt,\ntoo, how futile it is to put off repentance till sickness.  It is hard at\nsuch a time to think of aught save self and physical pain.  And my own\npain was so trivial compared with that of others.  O God! it is a\nterrible thing.  Some day shall we be able to understand, if not with the\nhead, with the heart, part of its meaning?  Meanwhile the individual can\nsay, however feebly, 'Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done.'\n\n{191}\n\n_To his brother, a doctor in South Africa._\n\nAlassio, Italy: January 7, 1904.\n\nAt last I am beginning to get tired of doing nothing.  I hope that\neventually I shall be stronger than I have been for some years past.  At\nany rate I hope a little first-hand experience of pain will make me more\nsympathetic.  Pain seems to me now a greater mystery than ever before.\nBut I comforted myself with the thought that in the highest Life ever\nseen on earth, there was a full measure of spiritual, mental, and\nphysical pain.  Also it was a comfort to feel that when one accepted, not\nsimply with resignation but with faith, certain suffering, one was in\nsympathy with the will of the universe, 'working together with God' in\nsome mysterious way.  What a strange place a hospital is!  How wonderful\nthe Gospels are, with their hope and comfort on every page--hope for the\nphysical as well as the mental side of man's life!  I like more than ever\nnow to read how Jesus went about healing all manner of diseases and all\nmanner of sickness and bringing life and strength wherever He came,\nshowing us that Heaven is on our side in our wrestle with all that\ndeforms and degrades human nature.\n\nI certainly don't regret my illness.  Besides showing me the marvellous\nkindness of friends, it has, I hope, taught me much.\n\n\n\n\n{193}\n\nAPPENDIX\n\nThe following letter addressed to the Editor of this volume was\nreceived from the Rev. H. Bisseker, chaplain at the Leys School,\nCambridge, too late for insertion in an earlier portion of the book:\n\n\n'Your brother's friendship, as you must have heard so often during the\npast few months, was valued in Cambridge beyond that of most men, and I\nam probably only one of many who still look to that friendship as among\nthe prominent facts of their time up here.  Though personally I did not\nlearn to know Mr. Robinson when I first came up, his brotherliness so\ndeeply impressed me during the four years for which our friendship\nlasted, that I still find it difficult to believe that he is no longer\nto be found in the familiar rooms at Christ's, and has ceased to be a\npart of our Cambridge life.  And yet, in another sense, he has not\nceased to be a part of that life; for one feels that during his\nresidence up here he managed, if one may so express it, to put a bit of\nhimself into more than one man, and that in this way he will continue\nto live among us long after he himself has been removed.\n\n{194} 'I have often thought about him and his quiet, strong influence\nsince we heard that we had lost him, and almost invariably the same\nthree of his characteristics assume the uppermost place in my thought.\nDifferent sides of his nature would appeal to different men: I can best\nserve your purpose by mentioning those which made the deepest\nimpression on my own mind.\n\n'One of the chief causes of your brother's influence was unquestionably\n_his sense of the value of the individual_.  He used to take men one by\none and make a separate study of each.  The consequence was that he\n_knew_ his men.  On any given visit the acquaintance did not, as it\nwere, have to be begun over again.  On the contrary, the acquaintance\nonce formed, some common ground already existed; for so great was your\nbrother's power of sympathy that, where at the first no such common\nground appeared to exist, he soon learnt to find a standing-place\nhimself on that assumed by the man he was seeking to know.  And not\nonly did Mr. Robinson possess this power of valuing the individual, but\nhe also was able to inspire the objects of his influence with the\nknowledge of his particular interest in them.  Thus they soon dropped\nthe idea of acquaintanceship, and began to think of him as friend, and\nthere you have in a word the secret of his wide influence.  He was\ninterested in _men_, but what he loved was a _man_.\n\n'Mr. Robinson was no less marked off from the majority of men by the\nstress which he laid upon the reality and power of prayer.  We used\nfrom time to time to have long talks together on this subject, so {195}\nthat I can speak with some little knowledge of the place which he\nassigned it in his life.  With characteristic modesty he not\ninfrequently distrusted himself in his active contact with men.  His\nvery anxiety to help others towards the ideals by which his own life\nwas dominated led him to see the risk of placing hindrances in their\nway by an injudicious intrusion into the secret places of their hearts.\nDrawn in different directions, therefore, by his passionate desire to\nwin men for Christ and his cautious fear lest untimely words of his\nshould hinder rather than help, he found refuge in giving himself up to\nearnest prayer on their behalf.  And prayer to him meant more than a\nlight repetition of words.  He used often, I believe, to spend as long\nas half an hour at a time in seeking blessing for a single man.  We\ncannot doubt that, in the strong influence which he himself exerted\nupon so many of those who knew him, such persistent prayer received at\nleast a part of its own answer.\n\n'The last element in your brother's individuality which always\nimpressed me was his restrained, but genuine, mysticism.  In the few\naccounts of his life that I have read I do not remember any allusion to\nthis characteristic.  That he possessed it, however, and this to no\nusual degree, seems to my mind quite patent; in fact, it was this\nsuggestion of mysticism that first attracted me to him.  The mysticism\none sees around one is often so unregulated and so ignorant that it was\nrefreshing to find a mystic who was also an enlightened scholar and\nthinker.  It confirmed the feeling, instinctive in one's heart, that,\ndespite the abuse of caricature, a deep, intelligent {196} apprehension\nof unseen realities is of the essence of the fulness of religion.  Mr.\nForbes Robinson appeared to possess an unusually certain cognisance of\nthe unseen world.  How well I remember the way in which, again and\nagain, tea over and our pipes lighted, he would curl himself up in one\nof his or my own big chairs and discuss questions of interest to us\nboth with a far-away look in his eyes altogether suggestive of a\ngenuine otherworldliness!  And this familiarity with unseen verities\nseemed to run through all those parts of his life with which I was\nacquainted, and indeed to be to him the most real fact of all\nexistence.  To use the simple language of olden days, I believe that\n\"he walked with God\": and that explains his life.\n\n'These, then, were the three characteristics of your brother which more\nthan any others have impressed themselves upon my mind.  I do not think\nthat they were three separate sides of his personality: I should say,\nrather, that they were three different expressions of one fundamental\nattribute.  It was because he walked so closely with God that he so\nloved the individual sons of God.  It was because he so loved the Great\nFather and each child of His that he had so strong a faith in the power\nof prayer and such unwearying patience to persist in it.\n\n'A life like your brother's, if I may say one thing more, forms, I\nsometimes think, one of the strongest pledges of human immortality.  In\none sense, it is true, he seems to have done so much; and yet, in\nanother sense, those of us who knew the faculties which he had\ncultivated, his knowledge and patient {197} scholarship, his sympathy\nand insight, his tact and passion for men, and, most precious of all,\nhis power with God, were looking for even greater things in years to\ncome.  Such fitness for influence as he possessed is not acquired in a\nday, and just when its worth was being proved he was taken from us.\nSurely these gifts and graces are not now as if they had never been, or\nas if, once granted, they had been idly wasted!  Can that earnest,\npatient cultivation really have been gratuitous, and the unselfish\ninstinct that inspired it mistaken?  Were it so, the whole universe\nlooks out of joint.  The more I consider such lives as that of your\nbrother--lives, I mean, which, bearing promise of so rich a harvest,\nare yet cut off before the full harvest can possibly have been\nrealised--the more my conviction grows that the passing of such men as\nhe is not death, but only \"the birth which we call death.\"'\n\n\n\n\n{199}\n\nINDEX\n\n\n  Anthropomorphism in the O.T., 135\n  Average man, the, 43\n\n\n  Beauty, natural, 153, 156 _sq._\n  Beauty, origin of personal, 78-81\n  Boers, religion of the, 110 _sq._\n  Boer war, the, 162 _sq._\n\n\n  Christmas, meaning of, 153\n  Christ's College Magazine, extract from, 10\n  Clough, quotation from, 164\n  Communion of saints, 69\n  Continuity of work, 106 _sq._\n  Cornwall, open-air preaching in, 25\n  Criticism of O.T., 54, 136 _sq._\n\n\n  Daily service, repetition of, 59\n\n\n  Eternity, life in the light of, 164\n\n\n  Faith, function of, 120\n  Fitzpatrick, Rev. T. C., sketch by, 36-42\n  Friendship, permanent character of, 84\n  Friendship, the, of Christ, 89 _sq._\n  Future life, the, 69, 117 _sq._, 125, 149, 150 _sq._\n\n\n  Gordon, General, in S. Africa, 116 _sq._\n\n\n  Hebrew and Greek ideals, 166 _sq._, 183\n  Holy Spirit, work of the, 182, 184\n  Home life, significance of, 60, 77 _sq._, 84, 110, 118, 159\n  Humour, sense of, 47 _sq._\n\n\n  Incarnation, results of his belief in, 45\n  Influence upon others, 75\n\n\n  James, Dr., sketch by, 7 _sqq._\n\n\n  Kant, philosophy of, 176, 178\n  Kittermaster, Rev. D. B., sketch by, 42-53\n  Kruger, interview with, 112\n\n\n  Law as revealed to the Jews, 63 _sqq._\n  Letter-writer, St. Paul a, 82\n  _Letters_--\n  H. J. B., 151, 164, 166, 182\n  W. A. B., 60, 74, 77, 86, 113\n  F. J. C., 129, 131, 134, 153, 179\n  G. J. C., 122, 123, 158\n  J. L. D., 91, 93, 95, 109\n  G. F., 104\n  A. W. G., 69\n  F. S. H., 102, 103, 105, 106, 119, 132, 136, 139, 185, 187, 190\n  J. C. H., 117\n  W. D. H., 127, 162\n  D. B. K., 148, 159, 172, 174\n  J. K., 108, 186\n  E. N. L., 58, 68\n  T. H. M., 55, 56, 57, 76, 100\n  W. O., 143, 188\n  H. P., 145, 171\n  W. P., 188\n  A. V. R., 54\n  D. D. R., 63, 88, 98\n  C. N. W., 120\n  C. T. W., 107, 111, 126, 127, 187\n  Anonymous, 114, 125, 146, 149, 162\n  To a friend at Cambridge, 154, 167\n  To his brother Edward in S. Africa, 137, 156, 171, 178\n  To his brother, a doctor in S. Africa, 128, 135, 191\n  To his mother, 116, 181\n  To the mother of his godchild, M. F., 110, 118, 165\n  Life, _zoe_ as used in St. John, 55\n  Life, the Divine, manifested, 101 _sq._\n  Love, his, for his friends, 45 _sq._, 50, 154, 182\n  Love, meaning and scope of, 73, 76, 113 _sq._, 124, 142\n  Love, the action of the Divine, 142\n\n\n  Motto, family, 1.\n\n\n  National life, significance of, 66\n  Natural beauty, eternal, 105\n  Naval officers, life of, 139 _sq._\n\n\n  Ordination, letters to candidates for, 58, 127 _sq._, 146, 162\n\n\n  Pain, mystery of, 189, 191\n  Parties in the Church, 109\n  Person, God revealed as a, 71 _sq._, 75\n  Prayer, his habit of intercessory, 29, 40, 51, 123, 138, 151,\n      154, 167 _sq._, 173, 185\n  Prayer, need of, 95, 97, 129-132, 160 _sq._, 162, 177\n  Providence revealed in life of individuals, 121\n\n\n  Sacraments, the, their significance, 76 _sq._, 80\n  Saints, called to be, 96, 149 _sq._\n  Schoolmaster, the work of a, 86 _sq._, 145 _sq._, 158\n  Selfishness, tendency of, 92 _sq._\n  Self-sacrifice, 166, 170\n  Self-sacrifice of God, 175\n  Simplicity of the Divine nature, 57\n  Suffering, a proof of the Divine love, 165 _sq._, 180\n  Sunday evening 'at homes,' 39 _sq._\n  Sympathy, meaning and need of, 91 _sq._, 106, 140, 171, 175-7\n  Sympathy, silent, 23 _sq._\n\n\n  Tancock, Dr., impressions of F. R., 3 _sq._\n  Temptations of Christ, 144\n  Thackeray's novels, 103 _sq._\n  Think, attempts to teach men to, 12\n  Toft, work at, 25 _sq._\n  Toleration, 26 _sq._\n  Trinity, significance of doctrine of, 71, 75\n\n\n  Unity of all men in God, 70\n\n\n  Walk from London to Cambridge, 19 _sq._\n  Worship, public, 122","title":"Letters to His Friends","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":56010}