still hoping, ever and anon, To reach, one eve, the better land.
"I wonder whether it is possible," he asks, in writing to a friend, " to grow a little better as one grows older. What do you say ? I rather think so. Will you take the matter into consider- ation for you and for myself ? People seem to me to have lost the secret of it, and to keep to the old routine, having taken in about as much religion or truth or benevolence as they are capable of. Against this I venture to set the homely doctrine, that we should be as good as we can, and find out for ourselves ways of being and doing good." ^
Thy hills are kneeling in the tardy spring, And wait, in supplication's gentleness,
The certain resurrection that shall bring A robe of verdure for their nakedness.
* Abbot and Campbell, Life and Letters of Benjamin Jowett, ii. 352.
ST. LUKE XXI. 19 42
Thy perfumed valleys where the twilights dwell,
Thy fields within the sunlight's living coil, Now promise, while the veins of nature swell,
Eternal recompense to human toil. And when the sunset's final shades depart,
The aspiration to completed birth Is sweet and silent ; as the soft tears start,
We know how wanton and how little worth Are all the passions of our bleeding heart
That vex the awful patience of the earth.^
IL
The Mastery of the Soul.
1. The first essential in the struggle to win our souls is^self- mastery. We say that a man is self-possessed. What do we mean by that but that there resides in the man a power which holds all his faculties at command, and brings them into service in spite of all distractions ? There can be no better phrase to express it. He possesses himself. He can do what he will with that side of the self which he chooses to use. Nothing takes away his courage. He has that in possession. Excitement and tumult do not take away the clearness of his mental vision. He keeps his eye on his theme. He has possession of his tongue. No confusion takes from him the power of lucid speech : and, above all, that deep-lying personality of the man is not thrown off its feet. It asserts itself. Men as they look and listen, perhaps as they rave, say, "The man is himself. He is not what our threats or our tumult or our opposition make him. We cannot take his man- hood away from him. He has himself in hand. He is self- possessed."
Tl The figure which our Lord uses will perhaps be best under- stood through the physical analogy. Instances are common enough among us of those who have lost the mastery over some physical power. It may be a case of paralysis. It may be a species of atrophy. It may be the result of disease, or the result of neglect. But the power over the limb, let us say, for any effective service, has been lost. And we are so constituted in this marvellous physical organism that from the loss of one power the
^ G. C. Lodge, Poems and Dramas, i. 76,
422 THE WINNING OF THE SOUL
whole body suffers. Now, supposing it be possible by some treat- ment to recover the possession of the lost power: to reanimate the paralysed limb, renew, and as it were recreate, the decaying or decayed faculty, so that once again its full activity and use lies at the service of the will — this would be the winning of the physical organism. Well, that is not an idea which it is diffi- cult to transfer to the spiritual nature. Who is there who has not known instances of an atrophied conscience ? Who has not known, alas, men with a withered faith as real, if not so visible, as the withered hand of the man whose misery moved the compassion of Christ ? Do you suppose any man would excite the pity of God for a withered hand, and none for a withered heart? Yet men who have thrown all their force into their intellect and allowed their affections to wither are a tragic reality. It is possible, as we know, not from prophet lips alone, but from our own experience, to lose the vision of God. More, it is possible to lose the power of vision. This it was that was in the thought of Christ, surely. Ye shall win your souls — recover your mastery over these God-given powers and faculties.^
Man is not God but hath God's end to serve,
A master to obey, a course to take.
Somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become.
Grant this, then man must pass from old to new,
From vain to real, from mistake to fact,
From what once seemed good, to what now proves best.
How could man have progression otherwise ? ^
^ I shall have frequent occasion to refer to the letters of Jonathan Otley, a most true pioneer in geological science, and to avail myself of his work. But that work was chiefly crowned in the example he left — not of what is vulgarly praised as self-help (for every noble spirit's watchword is " God us ayde ") — but of the rarest of moral virtues, self-possession. " In your patience, possess ye your souls." ^