And if our hearts well rooted be, Their love, like sap within the tree,
With silent quickening moves ; Enlarged and liberated powers. More light and balmier warmth are ours,
And God His presence proves.
O Saviour, who, that silence keeps, But sometimes at the story weeps
Of all that he has known ? That we are what we are, how strange ! How gradual the silent change
By which our souls have grown !^
(1) There is a certain sacrednesa in silence ; reverence is ever- quiet. In a room where one is lying dying, whoever enters, by a natural instinct treads softly and speaks low. From our earliest years we have been taught that in a church, where rever- ence is due to the sacred functions and uses of the building, our behaviour ought to be the reverse of loud and boisterous. And this, which early training and habit have made a second nature to us even in respect of buildings which in themselves are not fitted to inspire awe, or even respect, is felt to be natural and instinctive when the church, by its structure, possesses that ^ Thomas Toke Lynch, The liivulet, 110.
404 HEWING AND BUILDING
power. In an old Gothic church or cathedral, where the height, the gloom, the mass, the antiquity, all at once impress one, every reverent-minded person will experience an instinctive repulsion to frivolity or clamour. And as we, in God's house, in recog- nition of His holy Name and worship, restrain ourselves from loud speech and secular noises, so on the other hand the vast and impressive silences of Nature may at times convey to us a sense of the presence of God. In mountain solitudes on an early summer morn, there is such a silence as may be felt. It is Nature paying her devotions to her Maker. Such sounds as there are do not break the silence, they only make it audible — the whisper of a breeze in the grass, the murmur of water from among the trees. It is as if Nature were holding her breath, yet finding just voice enough to say, "The Lord is in his holy temple : let all the earth keep silence before him."
^ When God created the heavens and the earth there was heard no sound of hammer or axe. The slow-revolving ages, the six grand epochs with their alternate lights and shadows, gradu- ated one into the other, marking off His successive creative acts. We speak of the creative fiat as if God did, with an audible voice, call out of nothing the things which are.
He said. Let there be light!
Grim Darkness felt His might
And fled away.
Then startled seas and mountains cold
Shone forth all clad in blue and gold
And cried, 'Tis day! 'tis day!
One lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee. One lesson which in every wind is blown, One lesson of two duties kept at one Though the loud world proclaim their enmity —
Of toil unsever'd from tranquillity ; Of labour, that in lasting fruit outgrows Far noisier schemes, accomplish'd in repose, Too great for haste, too high for rivalry.
Yes, while on earth a thousand discords ring, Men's fitful uproar mingling with his toil. Still do thy sleepless ministers move on,
I KINGS VI. 7 405
Their glorious tasks in silence XDerfecting; Still working, blaming still onr vain turmoil, Labourers that shall not fail, when man is gone.*
(2) This is God's method everywhere, not only in Nature but also in History and in Grace. It is His method in History. History as written is for the most part the history of what made a noise. The sound of warriors rushing to battle, the clashing of armour, the groans of the conquered, and the shouts of the con- queror fill our ears. Take up any ordinary English History, and is it not so ? Does it not concern itself mainly with the move- ments of kings and earls and generals, and a few prominent men in Church and State who did something illustrious ? And yet it is evident that these were at no time the whole of life. The vast body of life is always unhistoric; the quiet world is not reported because it is quiet; and yet it is in this region that much of the best life has been lived.
^ The landing of Csesar with his hosts in Britain was not so significant an event as the landing of St. Augustine bearing a white Christ on a silver cross. The marching forth to the Crusades of Richard Coeur de Lion was not so important in its ultimate issues as the quiet demand of Stephen Langton in the meadow at Eunnymede. The victories of Drake upon the high seas were of less real moment than the embarking of a few pilgrims from Delft Haven in search of religious freedom. The charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava was not so worthy of immortality in song as the play of a bare-legged lad in an English village, who at about that time was making clay engines furnished with hemlock sticks for pipes. The best history of Anglo-Saxon civilization is Green's History of the English People, which is constructed on the assumption that the victories of peace are more renowned than those of war.^
^ The oak grows silently, in the forest, a thousand years ; only in the thousandth year, when the woodman arrives with his axe, is there heard an echoing through the solitudes ; and the oak announces itself when, with far-sounding crash, it falls. How silent too was the planting of the acorn ; scattered from the lap of some wandering wind ! Nay, when our oak flowered, or put on its leaves (its glad Events), what shout of proclamation could there be? Hardly from the most observant a word of recog- nition. These things lefell not, they were slowly done ; not in an i Matthew Arnold, » D. J. Burrell.