^ Fawcett's great principle (which, of course, he shared in general with Mill) was one which would only be disputed in general terms by an Egyptian anchorite or an Indian faquir — Live in camel's-hair raiment, and you may fairly denounce the rich and regard poverty as a blessing. Fawcett, who preferred broadcloth, held that the master evil of the day was the crushing poverty of great masses of the population. To make men better, you must make them richer — that is, less abjectly poor, less stunted and shackled by the ceaseless pressure of hard, material necessities. Eeligious, moral, and intellectual reforms are urgently needed, but they cannot become fruitful unless the soil be pre- pared. Apply all your elevating influences, but also drive the wolf from the door or they will never have fair play. Men ought to desire more, or rather ought to have further-reaching desires. They should be more prudent and thoughtful — oftener at the savings-bank and less often at the public-house. That was the pith of Fawcett's teaching as an economist, and few who call themselves Christians will admit that it is condemned by Christianity.^
* Leslie Stephen, Life of Henry Fawcett, 140.
ST. LUKE II. 49 141
(3) But, however we act and wherever we go, we must not lose sight of the fact that we are all the time in the presence of the living God. We may be dwelling in a world of sense, but we are also in a world of spirit. This universe is God's universe. His power is manifest in it, and His spirit pervades it. We cannot go where He is not. That is the thought which is given to sober us and to impart steadiness to all our aims. Before it all con- siderations of the temporal vanish. We are no longer mere denizens of this mortal world. We are spiritual beings, living in a spiritual world, endowed with spiritual attributes, having an immortal destiny, and are indeed the children of the Highest.
^ When the knowledge of our immortality dawns upon us, how little then our hearts are set upon the pleasant garniture of life, and the riches which it then becomes almost a delight to resign ! Our mind is fixed no longer on sweet colours and sounds, because it knows that it is passing through them, and that they are but symbols of the fulness and unity that shall be. Those whom we love are no longer merely those with whom we use delight, and from whom we gather joy, but souls bound to us for ever by a stainless bond, which no lapse of time can hurt or break. And therefore we make haste to cast out of our life all sick and jarring elements, and to agree swiftly while we are in the way together.
The thought of sweet things that must fade is no longer a mere poignant sentiment, but a sign of renewal and freedom. Memories are no longer mere hopeless phantoms, but as the stones of the desolate place out of which the wayfarer piles his pillow. We do not lose the sense that things belong to us, but instead of their being things which we hoard for a little and then reluctantly and pathetically resign, they are ours for ever. The old days of kind- ness and regret, when we grasped at what seemed so solid, but lapsed like the snow-crystal while we held our breath, are no longer times to muse ruefully over and to forget if we can, but miry ways which led us, how blindly and dully, to the house of life itself ; and instead of viewing pain and death as cruel grada- tions of decay, through which we fall into silence, we know them to be the last high steps of the ascent from which the view of life itself, with all its wide plains and woods, its homesteads and towns, will break upon our delighted eyes.
It may be said, " Can we live life on this level of hope and expectation ? " No, we cannot all in a moment. But we can return again and again, in times of grief and pain, to contemplate
142 ALWAYS AT WORK
the truth, and drink fresh draughts of comfort and healing. The one thing that we must determine is not to acquiesce in being entangled in the earthly things that catch and wind, like the grasses and branches of the brake, about our climbing feet. Not to make terms with mortal and material things, not to abide in them, that is our business here and now. To take life as we find it, but never to forget that it is neither the end or the goal, that it is at once the problem and the solution.^
Guest from a holier world, Oh, tell me where the peaceful valleys lie ! Down in the ark of life, when thou shalt fly,
Where will thy wings be furled ?
Where is thy native nest? Where the green pastures that the blessed roam? Impatient dweller in thy clay-built home,
Where is thy heavenly rest?
On some immortal shore, Some realm away from earth and time, I know; A land of bloom, where living waters flow,
And grief comes nevermore.
Faith turns my eyes above ; Day fills with floods of light the iDoundless skies Night watches calmly with her starry eyes