"Oh that I knew where I might find him, That I might come even to his seat!
Behold, I go forward, but he is not there; 1 J. Parker.
i CORINTHIANS xm. 12 381
And backward, but I cannot perceive him;
On the left hand, when he doth work, but I cannot behold
him: He hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot see him."
What then? Experience refuses to go further, turns back, and would have him give up the quest. But faith stands beside him in the cloud and driving tempest, faces the blast with lighted face, cheers him to make the grand venture —
"When he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold."
I think if thou couldst know,
0 soul that will complain, What lies concealed below
Our burden and our pain ; How just our anguish brings .Nearer those longed-for things
We seek for now in vain, — I think thou wouldst rejoice, and not complain.
I think if thou couldst see,
With thy dim mortal sight, How meanings, dark to thee,
Are shadows hiding light; Truth's efforts crossed and vexed Life's purpose all perplexed, —
If thou couldst see them right, I think that they would seem all clear, and wise, and bright.
And yet thou canst not know,
And yet thou canst not see; Wisdom and sight are slow
In poor humanity. If thou couldst trust, poor soul, In Him who rules the whole,
Thou wouldst find peace and rest: Wisdom and right are well, but Trust is best.1
ii. Then.
"Even as also I have been known."
If the Bible speaks of a disadvantageous " Now " it is always able to put over against it a bright and glorious " Then." And these two must always be taken together. Look only at the
1 Adelaide Anne Procter.
382 THE PARTIAL AND THE PERFECT
"Now," with its limitations and imperfections, forgetful of the " Then," and your philosophy will be a chain of despair ; but view earth revolving, as it surely does, in the light of a not far- distant heaven, and your thoughts will be gathered up into a song of hope. It was this that enabled St. Paul to write these words expressive of our present disadvantage without dissatisfac- tion or regret. "We see through a glass darkly, we know in part!" Those words tell all the intellectual struggle and pain through which a great mind passes before it accepts its defeat. They are the words of intellectual resignation in presence of those inscrutable problems before which lesser minds beat them- selves in fruitless pain ; grand words of one who has assayed the heights and depths of knowledge to prove them past finding out, and yet is calm. Not the words of an impatient thinker, or the petulance of a little mind not strong enough to wait, but the language of a great faith resting hopefully in God.
If Porphyry, in his Principles of the Theory of Intelligibles, seems to me to have written a warning which might fitly stand at the beginning of this book — " By our intelligence we say many things of the principle which is higher than the intelligence. But these things are divined much better by an absence of thought than by thought. It is the same with this idea as with that of sleep, of which we speak up to a certain point in our waking state, but the knowledge and perception of which we can gain only by sleeping. Like is known only by like, and the condition of all knowledge is that the subject should become like to the object." x
I know the night is heavy with her stars, —
So much I know, — I know the sun will lead the night away,
And lay his golden bars Over the fields and mountains and great seas, I know that he will usher in the day
With litanies Of birds and young dawn-winds. So much I know, —
So little though.
I know that I am lost in a great waste,
A trackless world Of stars and golden days, where shadows go
In mute and secret haste,
1 M. Maeterlinck, JRuysbroeck and the Mystics, 6.
I CORINTHIANS xm. 12 383
Paying no heed to supplicating cries
Of spirits lost and troubled, — this I know.
The regal skies Utter no word, nor wind, nor changing sea, —
It frightens me.
Yet I believe that somewhere, soon or late,
A peace will fall Upon the angry reaches of my mind ;
A peace initiate In some heroic hour when I behold A friend's long-quested triumph, or unbind
The tressed gold From a child's laughing face. I still believe, —
So much believe.
Or, when the reapers leave the swathed grain,
I'll look beyond The yellowing hazels in the twilight-tide,
Beyond the flowing plain, And see blue mountains piled against a sky Flung out in coloured ceremonial pride;
Then haply I Shall be no longer troubled, but shall know, —
It may be so.1
1. Then shall we see face to face ; then shall I know even as I am known. Even as I am known. That is a good thing to rest upon, even in this stage — that, however little I know about you and about myself and about God, I am known to Him, every bit of me, and the way that I take, and the thoughts I think, and the fears which disturb me, and the doubts which worry and the sins which oppress. All is spread before Him in the search- ing light which scans and tries the uttermost secrets, and from which nothing can be hid. He knows me as well as He knows Himself. He knows every heart-beat, and every struggle, and every penitential sigh, and every passing shame and regret, and every striving after better things. He knows all the possibilities that are in me, the worst and the best, and all the helps, in- centives, and pardons that they call for. And He never mis- reads, misunderstands, or misjudges. He is always fair, just, true, and pitiful. " And I shall know even as I am known."