King of mercy, King of love, In whom I live, in whom I move, Perfect what Thou hast begun, Let no night put out this sun; Grant I may, my chief desire. Long for Thee, to Thee aspire ! Let my youth, my bloom of days Buy my comfort, and Thy praise ;
* J. Martineau, A Study of Religion, i. 26.
• S. D. Gordon, Quiet Talks on Service, 30.
246 THE FRUIT OF THE LIGHT
That hereafter, when I look
O'er the sullied, sinful hook,
I may find Thy hand therein
Wiping out my shame and sin I
O it is Thy only art
To reduce a stubborn heart ;
And since Thine is victory,
Strongholds should belong to Thee;
Lord, then take it, leave it not
Unto my dispose or lot ;
But since I would not have it mine,
0 my God, let it be Thine.i
3. In all truth. — Truth comes last, for it signifies the inward reality and depth of the other two. Truth does not mean veracity alone, the mere truth of the lips. Heathen honesty goes as far as this. Men of the world expect as much from each other, and brand the liar with their contempt. Truth of words requires a reality behind itself. The acted falsehood is excluded, the hinted and intended lie no less than that expressly uttered. Beyond all this, it is the truth of the man that God requires — speech, action, thought, all consistent, harmonious and transparent, with the light of God's truth shining through them. Truth is the harmony of the inward and the outward — the correspondence of what the man is in himself with that which he appears and wishes to appear to be.
If Like you, I am most interested in the progress of art, and believe it can only be great by being true ; but 1 am inclined to give truth a wider range, and I cannot help fearing you may become near-sighted. That I feel with you with regard to earnestness and truth in painting must be evident from my agreeing with you in admiration of certain productions ; but I do not agree with you in your estimation of truth, or rather your view of truth. It appears to me that you confound it too much with detail, and overlook properties ; and that in your apprecia- tion of an endeavour to imitate exactly, you prefer the intro- duction of what is extraneous, to the leaving out of anything that may be in existence. Beauty is truth, but it is not always reality. In perceiving and appreciating with wonderful acute- ness quality and truth of accident, you run some risk of over- looking larger truth of fundamental properties. In fact you are
' Honry Vaughan.
EPHESIANS V. 9 247
rather inclined to consider truth as a bundle of parts, than truth as a great whole.^
^ Imagination has pictured to itself a domain in which every- one who enters should be compelled to speak only what he thought, and pleased itself by calling such domain the Palace of Truth. A palace of veracity, if you will ; but no temple of the truth. A place where each one would be at liberty to utter his own crude unrealities, to bring forth his delusions, mistakes, half- formed, hasty judgments ; where the depraved ear would reckon discord harmony, and the depraved eye mistake colour ; the de- praved moral taste take Herod or Tiberius for a king, and shout beneath the Eedeemer's cross, " Himself he cannot save ! " A temple of the truth ? Nay, only a palace echoing with veracious falsehoods, a Babel of confused sounds, in which egotism would rival egotism, and truth would be each man's own lie.^
^ The part of public agitation which she least liked was its unfair- ness. She could detest a thing wholeheartedly, but she never could misrepresent it, and partisanship — including Labour partisanship — she would not even excuse. Sentiment of the gushing type she mis- trusted, and it found no place in her appeals. Eigidity in truthful- ness was one of her fundamental characteristics. "Error is the only fruit of error," she once said when some one urged that in dealing with the crowd one had to practise some deceptions. " If the road ahead is difficult, say so ; if the pilgrimage is drudgery, discipline your people so that they may be able to go through it." Consequently, if she held to her views with unbending decision she was always tolerant and always anxious to meet the other side.^
Let me find thy road whilst my strength holds out.
Thy rest when my strength has failed, First the weary search, and the misty doubt,
Then Truth with her face unveiled.
In the dim pine-woods I have known her near
By the flash of her dear white feet Down the quiet glades, where the soul can hear
A song that is passing sweet.
For the ears that hear and the hearts that dare
Her ageless song she sings ; For her listening ones she has filled the air
With the tumult of her wings.^
' George Frederic Watts, i. 92. » F. "W. Robertson.
• J. Ramsay MacDonald, Margaret Ethel MacDonald, 198.
* P. C. Aiusworth, Poems and Sonnets, 51.
The Purchase of Opportunity.
Literature.