O why are darkness and thick cloud
Wrapped close for ever round the throne of God ?
Why is our pathway still in mystery trod ? None answers, though we call aloud.
The seedlet of the rose.
While still beneath the ground, Think you it ever knows The mystery profound Of its own power of birth and bloom, Until it springs above its tomb ?
The caterpillar crawls
Its mean life in the dust, Or hangs upon the walls A dead aurelian crust; Think you the larva ever knew Its gold-winged flight before it flew ?
When from the port of Spain Columbus sailed away.
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And down the sinking main Moved towards the setting day, Could any words have made him see The new worlds that were yet to be?
The boy with laugh and play
Fills out his little plan, Still lisping, day by day, Of how he'll be a man; But can you to his childish brain Make aught of coming manhood plain?
Let heaven be just above us,
Let God be e'er so nigh. Yet howsoe'er He love us, And howe'er much we cry, There is no speech that can make clear The thing " that doth not yet appear,"
'Tis not that God loves mystery.
The things beyond us we can never know,
Until up to their lofty height we grow, And finite grasps infinity.^
ii. Patience.
That which passes muster for the spirit of patience is some- times only constitutional amiability, or lymphatic indifference and stagnation.
1. Let us look first, then, at this spirit — the spirit of indolence. Perhaps its most frequent cause is a want of sensitiveness. The person is not finely developed, and so does not feel the tribulation, unless it is very material indeed — or at least does not feel it to anything like the same extent as his more sensitive brother. To the superficial onlooker he seems to be bearing his trial with patience; but he makes no progress, his capacity for sympathy is still dormant. Or his apparent patience may be the result of mere idleness.
^ Browning in The Statue and the Bust teaches the paltriness of this kind of patience. From mere indolence the " Bride of the Eiccardi " did not leave her husband and flee to the " Great Duke Ferdinand " whom she loved. It was no tliought that she would
^ Minot Hudson Savage.
ROMANS XII. 12 315
be committing a sin that deterred her, and so her patience was worthless. She says : —
If I spend the night with that devil twice, May his window serve as my loop of hell Whence a damned soul looks on Paradise !
I fly to the Duke who loves me well. Sit at his side and laugh at sorrow Ere I count another ave-bell.
'Tis only the coat of a page to borrow, And tie my hair in a horse-boy's trim, And I save my soul — but not to-morrow.
And he on his part argues : —
Yet my passion must wait a night, nor cool — For to-night the Envoy arrives from France, Whose heart I unlock with thyself, my tool.
Be sure that each renewed the vow, No morrow's sun should arise and set And leave them then as it left them now.
But next day passed, and next day yet, With still fresh cause to wait one day more Ere each leaped over the parapet.
I hear you reproach, " But delay was best
For their end was a crime" — Oh, a crime will do
As well, I reply, to serve for a test,
As a virtue golden through and through,
Sufficient to vindicate itself
And prove its worth at a moment's view!
The counter our lovers staked was lost
As surely as if it were lawful coin :
And the sin I impute to each frustrate gliost
Is, the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin, Though the end in sight was a vice, 1 say You of the virtue, (we issue join) How strive you ? J)t te, fahula !
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2. But there is a finer spirit — the spirit of stoicism — which animates some. It also, however, is a spirit of stagnation. It is no more than a surrender to the inevitable.
Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever Gods may be For my unconquerable souL
In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud, Under the bludgeonings of chance, My head is bloody but unbowed.
It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my souL^
3. The spirit of progress. Wherein, then, lies the difference between the Christian spirit of progress and this old pagan spirit of stoicism ?
(1) Take the two attitudes towards death. Seneca, like a Stoic, argues thus : " Death is universal, all men have died ; death is inevitable, we must die. It is no good for any man to complain about the inevitable and the universal. It is better for us simply to submit to what we cannot alter." Now here stands St. Paul, face to face with death. It is not a pleasant death, any more than it was a pleasant life. But St. Paul says, To me to die is gain. I have a wish to depart and be with Christ, which is far better. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness. If the earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved we have a house, builded of God, eternal in the heavens.