^ A great sorrow — like any other possession — is a great trust. The very magnitude of a great calamity or grief confers in itself the privilege of exception, and, in the measure in which it brings " detachment," it brings that true mastery of self without which — ^no matter how much else we may attain — our lives must be incomplete. With some such catastrophe, involving the apparent ruin of his life, and bringing with it his betrayal by those in whom he trusted, Jacques Rutebeuf seems to have been face to face when he wrote —
Que sont mi ami devenu Que j'avoie si pr^s tenu
Et tant am^? Je cuit 11 vens les a ost^;
L'amor est morte. Ce sont ami que venz emporte Et il ventoit devant ma porte.
This, however, is not the language of him who has won freedom in the loss of things earthly, and to whom — though the favourable answer sought with prayer and bitter tears has been denied — the gates of heaven itself have been unlocked. It is the complaint of one who dreads the unkindness of the blast and the sharp sting of trust and love betrayed.^
(3) In the Moral Law. — The God who reveals Himself to us in Nature and in Providence, reveals Himself also in the Moral Law. It needed no voice from the rolling darkness, it needed no articulate thunder leaping among the fiery hills, to persuade mankind that " God spake these words, and said." For that law was written on their hearts, their conscience also bearing them witness. The Jews believe that the souls of all Jews, for genera- tions yet unborn, were summoned from their antenatal home to
» Lady Dilke, The Book of the Spiritual Life, 168.
I SAMUEL III. lo 261
hear the Deliverance of the Fiery Law; and when a Jew ia charged with wrong by another, he says, " My soul too has been on Sinai." But it is the souls not of Jews only, but of all man- kind, that have been there.
^ The great philosopher of Germany might well doubt of all things, till he had found that their certitude rested on the in- destructible basis of duty. If all else were shattered under our feet, that would still remain. False miracles themselves could not rob us of it. As in that grand legend of the Talmud, the tree might at the words of the doubter be transplanted from its roots ; the rivulet might flow backward to its source ; the walls and pillars of the conclave might crack ; yea, a voice from heaven itself might preach another Law ; yet neither rushing trees, nor backward-flowing waters, nor bending roofs, nor miracles, nor mysterious voices should prevail against our solid and inde- structible conviction, and the Eternal Himself should approve our constancy and exclaim from the mid glory of His Throne, " My sons have triumphed." ^
*[| We must date our full manhood from the hour in which we know that God is speaking to us. This is the third epoch in life. When the conscience becomes king the man is born ; and con- science means the knowledge that one has of one's self in the presence of God. Until the moral nature burns and smokes, and rolls forth its thunders and flashes its terrible lightnings ; until the soul becomes a Mount Sinai, receiving, reading, recording, and delivering the eternal law of God, the man is not born. Nowhere is this seen more clearly than in the early songs of Tennyson. There is little in them because the moral nature of the poet is yet to come, because the full man is yet to come. In all those early years there is much loveliness, wonderful sensitiveness to the beauty of nature and art, the power to revel in the charming fields of fancy. But the voice that afterwards shook the nation is not in them. " The Vision of Sin " breaks the silence. " The Two Voices" tells of the mistake and the brave endeavour to escape from it, the terrible sorrow in which doubt struggles into faith, and out of which " In Memoriam " comes, and reveals a new man. The poet is fully here when the man is here, and the man is here when the conscience is here.^
Whenever my heart is heavy,
And life seems sad as death, A subtle and marvellous mockery
Of all who draw their breath,
' F. W. Farrar. 2 q, _^. Gonion.
262 THE CALL OF SAMUEL
And I weary of the throned injustice,
The rumour of outrage and wrong, And I doubt if God rules above us,
And I cry, 0 Lord, how long, How long shall sorrow and evil
Their forces around them draw ! Is there no power in Thy right hand?
Is there no life in Thy law ?
Then at last the blazing brightness
Of day forsakes its height, Slips like a splendid curtain
From the awful and infinite night; And out of the depths of distance.
The gulfs of purple space, The stars steal, slow and silent,
Each in its ancient place, — Each in its armour shining,
The hosts of heaven arrayed. And wheeling through the midnight,
As they did when the world was made.
And I lean out among the shadows