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Letters to Jewett -- Contents
THE PROFESSOR'S LETTERS
BY
THEOPHILUS PARSONS
BOSTON, ROBERTS BROTHERS
1891
Copyright, 1891
BY ROBERTS BROTHERS.
University Press:
JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
Site editor's note
The letters in this book were not addressed to Sarah Orne Jewett. The letters we have from Parsons to Jewett show that they were somewhat more personal than the set of letters printed here. However, this set probably indicates the ways in which Parsons presented New Church doctrine to Jewett and the particular doctrines he is likely to have presented.
PREFACE
A FEW words only are needed to introduce this little book. If it has any quality of helpfulness, it will speak for itself better than any preface could do, and if it is found to be without that essential quality, it would be vain to bolster it with words. The book is rightly entitled "THE PROFESSOR'S LETTERS," but as there is a little work in them by another hand, it is right that it should be acknowledged. The letters were written many years ago to a young girl, solely for her benefit and instruction, and without any thought of publication. But after a time, the recipient of the letters thought they contained so many wise and useful thoughts that it seemed selfish not to share them with others, and she asked Professor Parsons if extracts from them could not be published. To this he gave his consent with a condition which at first seemed to spoil the plan. He said that his young friend must prepare them for publication herself, re-writing and adding whatever thoughts were suggested during this work.
All who knew Professor Parsons well, are aware of his constant kindness and zeal in carrying on this sort of education; that is, drawing out all that was possible from the young people about him, by leading them to give expression to their faintly struggling thoughts. People were not inclined to disobey him; they would generally try to do what was suggested, and so it was in this case. The letters, therefore, are still in substance the Professor's letters, wearing only a slightly different garment from the original ones, and with the addition of a few pages which though not written by the Professor, were certainly inspired by him.
THE PROFESSOR'S LETTERS
I.
IT seemed to me when I last saw you, my dear friend, that I could read in your eyes even before you told me with your lips, that you were at last ready to welcome gladly the truths which I so gladly share with you. Yes, now I can believe that our Father has made you ready. Your heart was like a rich meadow at which I often gaze from my window. Thick emerald grass and wild daisies grew there already; but the owner meant to make it into a garden; and last spring it was all ploughed up, and in that way prepared for the reception of the young trees and plants from which another year we may have sweet blossoms. I felt a momentary pang when the ploughshare began cutting long ridges in the soft green carpet which I loved, and which had often served to soothe my wearied eyes. At first it seemed almost cruel to turn the fresh grass underneath to die, till I remembered that its very death would help the new plant to a richer life. The simile which I have used is a trite one, but none the less apt, and you, who have now felt the effect of this preparation in your own heart, you at least will not find fault with it.
When I was with you a week ago we had no opportunity for much talk together, but you told me how strong was your desire to learn more of the doctrines of our Church, and I will endeavor to tell you what I can by letters, since I may not come again to ---- for a long time, and I could hardly expect you to come where I am.
I speak of doctrines; yet it is not my purpose to unfold them to you in any regular system; but rather to suggest for your own earnest thinking whatever you may seem to need at any particular time. And this need I shall endeavor to find out from your letters.
Permit me to recur for a moment to the time, now long ago, when we first began to speak of these things. Like many another you hungered and thirsted for happiness; for relief in some shape from the troubles which assailed you from your uncongenial surroundings; for a removal of the pressure which weighed upon you, you knew not why. I remember you could not enjoy the delicious outpouring of song that interrupted our talk one day in the woods, because the first thought that came was, "Why cannot I be as happy as that bird? Every note which he utters seems pure joy, and I, a human being with an organization so much higher, with a capacity of joy so much larger than this thrush, am yet so unsatisfied." But at this time you had not suffered enough to find out the secret of true happiness, paradoxical as this may sound. I am convinced that many natures learn it only in this way.
I will pass over the events of a few years -- the hard lessons, by which I am sure you have already profited much. I cannot but think that you are now able to perceive that the greatest human happiness must be an active and loving coöperation with our Father. Because His love is infinite, He gives blessings to all -- to the infant, and to the most immature or feeble. But He must desire to give the highest happiness He can, and that He may do this, He gives to men the power of active and voluntary working with Him, that they may share, in their finite way, the infinite happiness He finds in His infinite work. And now I will ask you to consider whether it must not be true that they who can receive this best of Divine gifts, because they can meet His efforts with their own, must be unable to receive it unless they join their efforts with His?
I know that I lay a burden upon you in asking you to think all this out. Not at once, nor yet at many times. But I beg you to try, and persist in trying; for great will be your reward. It will come, not at once, possibly not soon, but it will come in the knowledge and invigoration of your own power, in the conscious elevation of thought and of your whole being. More than this, in the clearer perception of your Father, and in ever growing trust and gratitude, and ever clearer recognition of His presence in His word and in His works, in all the circumstances of being, in all the events of your own life.
I would not deceive you. All this cannot come unless you pay the price; and this may be painful effort, suffering, and grief. But may you live to know how --
"From grief comes glory
As the rainbow from the cloud."
II.
I HASTEN to answer your last letter which interested me much, for I find that you have been not only reading the book which I suggested on Heaven and Hell, but have been thinking as well as reading. Swedenborg says things about Heaven which you find it difficult to accept. But what are they? This is just what I want you to tell me, just what I want you to tell distinctly to yourself. One trouble I think I know -- you cannot believe the fact that Heaven does not contain all who die. You wish all to be in Heaven. "God must wish it more than I do; but He is omnipotent. If then, He wishes this more than I can, why does He not exert His omnipotence to effect it?" I will not now argue this with you, but leave it for you to consider. Does not your trouble about this matter recall most vividly my own when first called upon to forsake the vague but pleasing faith in which I had always indulged -- that somehow all would become good and happy in exchanging this world for a higher one, although it might be after a longer or shorter period of trial and purification?
An explanation of this difficulty would involve an inquiry into the origin and nature of evil. Let me postpone anything like a discussion of this question to a future time. One reason for this delay is, that however willing you might be to believe certain truths, your intellect would necessarily reject them if offered prematurely. And rejected truth closes a door closes - not fastens, but closes at least for a time. But in the mean time think about it.
On reading over what I have written I become aware what a burden I have laid on your unpractised strength. It must seem to you nothing less than the solution of the whole problem of being -- the reconciliation of any and all human suffering with perfect and omnipotent love. For a little thought will convince you that the difficulty is much the same as to this world and to the other. The only difference is that here you know there is misery and the problem is to account for it. There, you do not know that it exists and you deny it because you cannot account for it.
If you had died at birth and grown up in heaven, and the comers from this earth had told you of the sin and suffering and degradation which prevail here, it would have been still more difficult for you to believe that such things can be in the universe of God, than it is now for you to believe their existence in the spiritual world.
This problem has vexed the most thoughtful minds and saddened the tenderest hearts in all ages. Heretofore all that could be done was to compel the acquiescence of the intellect and silence its denials, by proving from the analogy of all known existence, that a mingled thread of good and evil, of order and disorder, of joy and sorrow runs through all being. This was hard enough, but, thanks be to our Father, the truth has come which is the key to all these problems.
This key, in a feeble and untrained hand as mine is, and yours still more, will not so unlock them as to leave no mystery behind. This I do not pretend to do, and may almost say I do not desire. I have no wish to lose the pleasure of progress in thought, while I can see surely and certainly that I am treading a pathway towards the Truth. "Evening and morning" belong always to every day of creation; evening first, for it is the doubt, the uncertainty, the question, the sense of darkness and want which must come first; and the light follows for then it is sought. If there were no night there could be no morning.
This key is in that great truth, unknown on earth until Swedenborg told it. The truth, that human life is God's own life, given to man to be his own, incessantly given to be absolutely his own, his selfhood, himself. God gives this life to man because there can be no other life; because if cut off from constant and continued effluence from God it would be what light is when we cut it off from its source and shut it up -- and that is, nothing. And if it is given us to be our own and make each man himself, then man is not an imperfect fragment of God, but has his own personal individuality, and can forever cowork with God in building up his own happiness, and work so of himself, of himself but from God, in freedom and in power and consciousness of self-existing power -- not self-derived power, but self-existing by God's gift. And this must be the greatest blessing Infinite Love can give to a creature, and therefore that which that Love must desire to give. Then I see clearly that all this necessarily involves power, duty, and responsibility; and then I have the key to all the vexed problems of the existence of evil. For if evil could not be, then the highest good could not be; because all the highest good springs from or rather is the choice -- the actual choice in actual and not illusory freedom -- of good rather than evil.
III.
HOW well I understand, my dear young friend, what you say of your feelings about the Bible. You do not know that you have only your share of what is becoming the universal feeling of Christendom. Everywhere, among all who have any sentiment of religion, with any freedom of thought, or any capacity of thinking about their thoughts, there is a prevalent sense of unrest and discomfort about the Bible. No two feel it just alike, for its aspects are innumerable. What does it all mean? what is its cause? what is to be its effect?
A hundred years ago, Swedenborg saw in the spiritual world a magnificent Temple, wherein lay the Word, opened, and girded with light, and over the gate of the Temple, was an inscription which grew into form as he looked, and he read "NUNC LICET," "Now it is permitted." He inquired what this meant. He was told that an age was drawing near when it would be permitted to inquire with perfect freedom into the Word; into its origin, its character, its authority, its meaning; and to investigate with the same freedom all questions of religious doctrines.
In the long ages which have passed this was not permitted. Men were protected from it, because the results must have been disastrous. Therefore the Word was enveloped in its awful sanctity as in impenetrable armor. Its mysterious holiness silenced all inquiry but that of the scorner. All that state or condition of thought has passed or is passing away. The age has come which Swedenborg saw in vision. The word "Free-thinker" was once, and not long since, synonymous with "Infidel;" and now the most religious minds are asking the questions and urging the difficulties which formerly only to name was an act of irreligion.
Why is all this now permitted? Because now an answer can be given to all these questions; a solution for all these difficulties.
But this work must be gradual and slow. Why -- you may ask -- why has He not written His truth legibly on the sky, and painted it with sunlight on the clouds, and made every flower and every leaf His page, and let the winds whisper His lessons? Dear friend all this is so. The sky and cloud, the flower and leaf are His written page, and the winds utter His voice. But we have not learned the language in which they speak to us. You describe a beautiful cloud which seemed to you like a "very glimpse into heaven." You did not know that in fact and in truth it was just that. You did not know, that simple, exact, and rigorous truth, scientific truth, if it were but the truth now attainable in the science of religion, would have made that cloud as significant as it was beautiful; would have taught you to look through all its splendor and glory to the glory beyond -- to the sun within that material sun which painted the dark cloud with the flame you saw. So may that inner Sun, so will that inner Sun one day, make the clouds of your mind resplendent with light. Many may be the days and nights of your pilgrimage; but let us pray that every night may be bounded by the beauty of evening and the promise of dawn.
To return to your Bible difficulty. You say that you are quite ready to believe in a spiritual meaning, and indeed see no other road out of the infinite perplexities and apparent incongruities which beset you on every hand. But if the science of correspondences is to be the key which will open the door into this blessed region of light, how are you to apply it? Does it seem a hard answer to say that patient and prayerful study and a simple belief that the Bible is God's own Word, will help you in this? I verily believe that nothing more than these are wanted to help us at least to all that we need from the Divine Word. The simple, loving heart, will find truth soonest.
You ask if the passages in the Word which now contain in the literal sense beautiful and heart reaching truths, still contain other, higher, more beautiful, and more searching truth. I can easily make the general answer, They do. But I would say more. The literal sense hides the spiritual meaning far more completely in some parts than in others. In many texts there is a spiritual meaning distinctly expressed in the letter. It comes to the surface and is one with the letter. Swedenborg compares these passages to the human face, which is not clothed, but reveals and expresses the inmost thoughts and feelings of the man.
You have been troubled with a difficulty which besets and of necessity must beset all who begin this work of searching for the inner truth of the Word. You hear an explanation of some passage which is utterly meaningless in the literal sense, so far as relates to any religious truth. And in the light of this explanation it is full of the most beautiful, most useful instruction. The first impression is one of delight that a truth is presented to you so full of charm and power. But then comes the thought, How can I know that this is the spiritual sense? What can assure me that another mind of equal ingenuity may not extract from this passage another meaning wholly different but of equal power and beauty?
The first answer is one of which you can learn the full force only slowly and gradually. It is that our interpretation of the Scripture is founded upon exact and definite principles, which can be accurately learned; or rather upon laws of interpretation which justify the use of the phrase, "Science of Correspondence."
Another answer, however, is one which I am anxious to bring before you intelligibly. Let me then say that the phrase, the spiritual meaning of any passage of Scripture, is not so good as a spiritual meaning. Try to remember that this little earth on which we live is the foundation on which all the heavens, consisting of all good men who ever lived here, rest. It is the last and lowest ultimate towards which converge and in which end all the creative and causative influences from all those heavens. Hence, innumerable and inconceivable influences of life come down into and centre in any one thing that is here, and that thing is a fitting basis to receive them all, and to be what it is because it receives them all.
It is just so with the literal sense of the Word. For there is no passage there which is not the clothing and expression of innumerable higher senses. It is the lowest step of the ladder which rests upon the ground, but which goes up higher than the heavens, and on which the angels of God are forever descending and ascending -- descending to find man in his lowest possible condition, and present their truth in a form adapted to him, and ascending to bear upwards all who are willing to go up with them.
The next thing I would have you observe is, that while there is but one literal sense, no two persons who discern a higher and interior sense would see it in precisely the same way; for to every one it presents itself, in its aspect and in its application, as that which suits their character and wants. Nor would they use precisely the same words to express it. And these diversities might be so great that there might seem to be almost inconsistency between them. But there would be none in fact.
My purpose in saying all this is to give you freedom and hope. Begin where you will. This beginning, like that of all good progress, will have its difficulty, but will I think give you pleasure. And as you go on you will find the difficulty less, and the enjoyment more. Apply to any passages the simple laws of interpretation which you know now. You may not succeed in the first effort, or the second; but of this be sure, that when you do succeed in finding an interpretation which, while it accords with the principles of correspondence, gives to any passage new meaning and new life, that is a spiritual meaning for you.
You speak of the twelfth chapter of Romans. It is indeed a most instructive and a most spiritual chapter. But it will perhaps surprise you to hear that the Canon of the New Testament, the true Canon, consists only of the Gospels and the Revelation. The epistles were written by men of sense, men wise in spiritual or religious truth, and of profound piety. But they were not inspired. Their letters to the churches or in a few cases to individuals have been, by the permission of Divine Providence, received from early ages as authorized Sacred Writings, and bound up with the inspired books, because of their immense utility from the stores of religious wisdom they contain. And they have been all the more needed and all the more useful, because the ignorance that there was any spiritual sense in the Gospels made so much of them, and especially so much of their mere narrative, of comparatively little use for religious instruction. Eminently useful the epistles indeed are; and Swedenborg often refers to them, for illustration of the spiritual sense of the WORD, properly so called.
The great difference is here. The Gospels and the Revelation were written by inspiration, and contain in all their words infinite stores of wisdom which were unknown to those who were employed as the subjects of inspiration to write them. The epistles are wise and good only because the writers were so, and only as far as they were so.
Take for example the twentieth verse of the twelfth chapter of Romans: "Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head." The first clauses contain and express with great force truth which cannot be too deeply rooted in every heart. But the reason given for feeding a hungry enemy is St. Paul's own reason. There is very little of spiritual character about it, nor is there any spiritual meaning in it. It elevates the feeling of hostility, but does not extinguish it. It says, return good for evil, because you will inflict upon the enemy whom you relieve the pain and anguish of remorse. It is far better to return good for evil even for this reason, than to return evil for evil; but then it is not a spiritual reason. For all that, let the epistles minister to you all the good they can. There is in them much religious truth of the greatest value; much that may well open the mind to far higher truth than they can impart.
IV.
THIS morning a text of Scripture fell under my eye and fastened itself upon me, and I have been thinking of it, at times, through the day. Shall I tell you why? I cannot without writing you a sermonette upon the text.
"The axe is laid unto the root of the tree." What is the axe? It represents truth in its destruction of error, when it seems hard and sharp and pitiless, for so it must seem while it is doing this work. How easy it is to recognize the beauty of truth, to accept it even with the purpose of obeying it, to let it prune away many exuberances of thought and feeling, perhaps cut off some things which were as a very pleasant fruit to us; and then to stop, then to think the work done which is only begun. For that work is not done till "the axe is laid unto the root of the tree."
You read your Bible, and read it reverently; and yet has the lesson been often before your mind which it is always teaching -- the absolute opposition between all that we are naturally, and that which we should become; the lesson taught in such words as those which commend us to hate our own life -- to lose our life that we may save it!
Who is there nowadays that reads such things without the feeling that they are rhetorical and extravagant expressions, which no one can suppose intended to be taken as true in their full extent and breadth, and in their plain and direct meaning? And yet this is just what is intended. These are God's words, said to you, yourself, just as much as if He whispered them in your ear, and you alone of all the earth heard them.
And then you will ask me, How can I obey this command? How can I at once, by any effort of my will, change the whole nature of that will, and hate what I have always loved, and love with my whole heart and soul what I certainly have never loved in that way?
Of course you cannot. There can be no greater impossibilities. What then is the true question? It is, Is this end distinctly before you as one which your Father invites you to approach and will help you to approach; one that you yourself must constantly and steadfastly strive to reach, as nearly as may be, and by all the means which every day and hour offer to you. Anything less than this would be, at the very least, weakness. You know that no night when you sleep finds you just where you were when you rose. That day offered you the means of advancement; some means, either by learning new truth, obeying something you had learned, doing something, no matter what, to cast off the influence of worldliness and the habit of frivolity, to build yourself into the stature of an earnest and resolute woman, who, instead of floating on the current of circumstances, makes use of them for her eternal good.
Some one says, "Unless above himself he can erect himself, how poor a thing is man!" A grand thought and well to be remembered, if we remember also that this self, above which we must rise, is that poor creature which man has made himself, in the abuse of our God-given freedom; a far different creature from that regenerated self, the Divine image, which we were intended to be.
V.
LET me try to give you some thoughts which I have been full of lately. They relate to a text of Scripture to which, I suppose, before the Science of Correspondence was revealed, it was impossible for any one to ascribe a spiritual meaning. You remember Pilate said to the Jews, "Whom will ye that I should release unto you, Barabbas or Jesus?" But the chief priests and elders persuaded the multitude that they should ask for Barabbas, and destroy Jesus. "Now Barabbas was a robber." He had "made an insurrection," and "had committed murder in the insurrection."
The worst and last robbery is robbery from God, which steals away from Him the faith and the affections which should be His, and robs Him of our love, our obedience, and our trust. The same feeling and falsity which does this, "makes an insurrection" against Him, seeks to dethrone Him, deny His sovereignty, and His right to our constant worship, obedience, and love, and even His personal existence, if it cannot otherwise deny this sovereignty. In this insurrection it commits "a murder," the murder of the very soul -- of all that constitutes true life within us. And all this is Barabbas. And Barabbas and Jesus cannot both live within us. One must die. Yes, every emotion of selfishness or worldliness in every soul plays the part of Barabbas. Good influences may have prevailed for a time, and they, or perhaps motives of worldly regard, may have put Barabbas in prison, and under some restraint; but the decisive, the fatal question remains, Shall he die? Yes, he or Jesus. The powers of evil ruling in us, our priests and elders, come to his rescue, because they hate and fear the influence of Jesus. They persuade the multitude of thoughts and feelings which take the side of worldliness to liberate and save him. They do save him, and Jesus dies!
Nor is it only on great occasions and in fearful crises that this question comes to us. Every hour, every moment, when we resist what we must know to be the influence of our Lord, and, casting that aside, give the victory, under whatever pretence or name, to that which is indeed our own Barabbas, we then do all that we are able to do to crucify our Lord anew.
Every emotion which tempts us to refuse obedience to Him, "to make insurrection," to suppress and overcome whatever sense of right conscience gives -- is not that the robber, rebel, murderer, Barabbas? We may have indeed imprisoned him, we may have resolved that he should die -- shall we now release him from restraint, and let him go free? If we do, we know now what must happen -- we know between what alternatives we choose.
And who proposes the question to us? Pilate, who said to our Lord, "Knowest thou that I have power to crucify thee, and have power to release thee?" And Jesus did not deny this, but said, "Thou couldest have no power against me, except it were given thee from above." You know that the first chapter of Genesis tells us that God gave man dominion over all fish, fowl, cattle (or beasts), and creeping things. This means more than that man, aiding his hands by his intellect, is stronger than they are, and can kill a whale, tame an elephant, and cage a lion -- it means much more. All animals, like all other things in nature, represent and symbolize things of the spirit. Each animal lives because he is the impersonation of some of the intellectual or affectional elements of human nature. Sometimes this element in a man acquires such ascendancy that it characterizes him, and we call him a fox, a serpent, a bear, or a wolf, as he seems to be dominated by the element of life which that animal represents. Over all these, as they are in himself, that is to say, over himself and all that constitutes his selfhood, dominion is given him. He is his own master, and becomes whatever by the exercise of this power he makes himself to be. Pilate here represents this power of self-determination which is "given to us from above," with all its fearful responsiblities; because if it were not given, nothing else could be given. It constitutes our freedom. Without it we could not receive, by our own choice, by our own coöperation with our Father, and into our own love, His gifts of life; and because we can so receive them, we can also refuse them. Which shall we do?
I have left my letter open, and to-day so many thoughts press upon me which I would gladly impart to you, that it is with more difficulty than usual that I give expression to them -- for the throng push and jostle each other, and will not proceed in orderly fashion. I think it was writing to you of Pilate, yesterday, that gave me the text for my thoughts of today. I am going to write to you about worldliness.
The common idea of this is a devotion to wealth and distinction, or to low pursuits. This is well enough as far as it goes; but it is as nothing to the whole truth. What is the world? It is our home in this beginning of our being; and that it may be our home, it is exactly adapted to our needs, our senses, our enjoyment. The world, in this sense, is all that is outside of us, all that is not a part of our ME. And "the love of the world" is the love of this world.
There have been many in all ages who thought so, and who therefore renounced the world, and denied themselves the pleasures of sense and society, more or less completely. Was this good? It may have been so for them -- it may have been the only way in which they could escape from a great danger. "If thy right eye offend (endanger) thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee." But was it in itself right, in itself the best thing? Certainly not. Certainly this is not the best way to escape from social and sensuous worldliness. The only place in which we can really overcome a wrongful love of the world is in the world.
Society -- is it a good or a bad thing? It is in itself more than good. It is indispensable to man. To be sure of this one needs only to remember that the man who is entirely alone is entirely useless; and usefulness is the one condition of the happiness of heaven, and therefore of all true happiness -- for that can exist on earth only when it comes down from heaven. Let us remember, too, the kindly affections which demand some social relations for their birth and growth. Then, is all love of society good? Certainly not. For here we must apply the universal rule. Neither this love, nor any natural love, is of itself good or evil. Whether it be one or the other, is determined by something other than itself. Social pleasure, for example, is good and elevating, or bad and degrading, according to the end it has in view, the place it holds in the mind, the reasons for which it is sought, and the principles by which it is governed.
If one enjoys social pleasures with no desire to give enjoyment to others -- if, in giving them enjoyment, the thing which delights us most is the homage paid to our own attractions, the favor we win, the delight of knowing that our beauty, or grace, or conversation are admired -- if all these are the ruling elements of our social pleasures, then, be our success what it may, and whatever charms of refinement or elegance we may present in our social relations, there is social worldliness; and it is a poor, bad thing, and an inevitably degrading thing.
So, too, social pleasure is social worldliness when it is sought and loved for its own sake alone, merely as amusement -- merely to fill up the vacancies of an unemployed life, and only because it banishes ennui for a moment.
Why do I say all this to you? You have not been prone to seek or enjoy society because it gratified your vanity, nor to seek in it your own enjoyment regardless of the happiness of others. Nor do I know that you love it too well. Why, then, do I speak of it to you? Because, my dear young friend, I would have society hold a very different place in your regard. I do not wish you to love it less, except so far as that may come from loving some better thing more; and of this I will speak presently, after first considering another form of worldliness.
It may seem very strange to hear me speak of your love of music and of the beautiful in nature or art, as having any relation to worldliness, and yet it is most certain that these things lie outside of us. They belong to the world that is made for us, and adapted to our senses; and the love of them is the love of a part of that world.
Consider the love of the beautiful. Not long ago we were speaking of the great happiness which may be derived from this faculty; and you will ask if I am not now about to censure the exercise of the same faculty. Far, far from it. Yet I think I told you then that there were many ways of loving the beautiful. Look only at a few principles which relate not merely to this but to all supersensuous truths.
Your life is from God. It is His life, limited and finited for you, and adapted to you, and given you to be your life, that He might have beings whom He might bless eternally with ever-growing happiness. He made man "in His own image and likeness." The meaning and the effect of this is, that whatever there is in God's life infinitely, may enter into man's life finitely. So much of the divine life as does in fact enter man's life in this world, is so inexpressibly small in comparison with what man might have, that it seems to be almost nothing. Nor do precisely the same elements of Divine Life enter into any two persons, or in precisely the same degree.
Now let me apply this to the love of the beautiful. God loves beauty infinitely, loves to make it, and loves to perceive it. Think of the wild loveliness of a South American forest, where no human foot ventures, where there is no human eye to gaze with delight on all the exquisite details; or of a richly colored sunset over a lonely sea -- what exquisite beauty is here. We should, however, think, in our poor way, that the beauty was wasted. But it is seen by God's eye, seen and delighted in with that delight of which our own, when we too see it, is but so small a part, so dim an image.
If one has no love of the beautiful, it is because he or she does not receive and make their own that element of the Divine life; for if it were not an element of Divine life, it could not be an element of human life; as there is not one particle of human life that originates in man himself, or is any other thing than the Divine life which is within him, and is his because it is constantly given to him.
But then comes in the universal, the inevitable, and inexorable law, that God's own life is given to man to be man's own life, to cause him to be himself -- to be that, and only that, which he makes himself by his own choice to be; and, therefore, this must be just that life in him, in general and in every particular, which he makes it to be, and loves that it should be.
And now let me apply this law, also, to the love of the beautiful. Is it not plain that our love of this may lift our eyes heavenward, or turn them downward? It may be mere sensuousness, however seemingly refined, graceful, and charming; or it may be sensuousness filled and elevated by something higher than sense.
The world is extremely beautiful -- it is brimful of beauty -- of more beauty a thousand-fold than the keenest sense has ever yet discovered. How dim and poor the love of the beautiful is in most minds; in how many is it almost wholly wanting. How apt one is who sees and loves so much that is beautiful, to suppose he sees it all. And yet it is certain that the clearest and keenest perception of the beautiful might become as much larger, wider, and clearer than it now is, as itself now is more than the dimmest perception of the beautiful in those who have least of it. But is it not better to have little of it, or none, than to permit it to fasten our eyes, and our thoughts, and our enjoyments to this earth; to make us love it for itself, and be content with it; to dim our thoughts, and weaken our desires and aspirations after a higher happiness than can ever come through the senses? For this is "the lust of the eye." And when is this enjoyment of the beautiful the happiness of the eye, and not its lust? The answer will occur to you. It is when you cannot see the beautiful and delight in it, without recognizing it as His work, His gift, and as the expression of His own perfect order and perfect love.
And if this habitual recognition comes only gradually, may we not be sure that every effort after it will help to bring it; that as it comes it will open our eyes to the beauty of the beautiful; that it will open our minds to its lessons, its significance -- I might say, to that soul of the beautiful which clothes itself in beauty, and seeks to express itself in its form and aspect.
And then, again, remember that when our Father gives us this love of the beautiful, and through this love this power, He can do no more. The rest is for us to do. Without our willingness, without our effort, this end cannot be reached, this purpose cannot be accomplished. But what efforts can we make which will not be immeasurably repaid?
And now let me offer you the general lesson for which all that I have said was preparatory. What is the true antagonist of worldliness? What is worldliness? For if we see that, we can see its opposite. But we have seen that worldliness, in its widest and most general sense, is the undue love of the world without us. Does it not follow that this must be checked and controlled by awakening a profounder interest for the world within? by holding in the mind an earnest and a constant love for the enjoyments which rightfully belong to the world within? They are the love for truth, the delight in growing wise, the delight in your very effort to grow wise, the happiness to be derived from the consciousness that you have given yourself to God; that it is the very business of your life to cultivate every faculty you have (the highest most, and most in the highest directions), in the belief that He has given them to you that you may become His instrument for usefulness; and that He asks this of you because, if you grant it, you enable Him to give you more of his own happiness than you can otherwise receive, and far more than you can imagine.
You are not wholly safe against worldliness until this way of thinking and feeling becomes the constant habit of your life. Whatever is less than this is not enough.
If you felt yourself called upon to go into a convent, or to dress and live as a sister of charity, I know very well it would not be a heavier task. Then, with one great effort you would be pledged, committed, and much more than half the work would be done. But now you are asked to change your whole nature by a constant, unremitted effort; to make it the primary object of your life; to become the child of God in a sense you never thought of. It is your Father who asks this of you -- your Father, Who took upon Him your nature that He might suffer for you, that He might open a way to Himself which you might follow -- Who entreats you to let Him give you His life. Oh! to love Him with all the heart, and soul, and strength, is not a rhapsodical fantasy, but a reality, to strive for, to win, to accept even from His own hands; and, in accepting, to find peace and happiness. And while He is beckoning you to come to His side, to His arms -- while He is showing you, even by my poor words, the place which He asks you to come to Him and fill -- you will remember that what you are through eternity, how near to Him, or how far away, and the character and the nature of your happiness -- all depend on what you do, with His help, and the strength He gives, but of yourself and for yourself in this life.
Again you may say to me, give me something practical, some test I can lay my hand on and make use of. I will do so. Would you know when you love society, or art, or nature, or music, too much, look into yourself and see which you love best -- them, or a higher self-culture. In which direction lie your thoughts: where is your greater interest? Count the hours of the day -- are those which you may well deem a reasonable gift of time, and thought, and care to those higher interests, given to them? Do you love, or are you even striving to love, the growing in the wisdom of heaven as you now love the lower pleasures? On which side lies earnestness, enjoyment, ready and grateful reception, and a prompt use of every opportunity? It should be for you to answer these questions; and when you have answered them, it shall be for you to learn from your own answers.
VI.
MAX MULLER, speaking of the fact that all philologists notice, namely, that all words in all languages which have a moral and intellectual meaning, have primarily a sensuous meaning (right, meaning originally only a straight line -- rule, a stick with a straight edge by which to make a straight line, etc.), says that the earliest men, far beyond all history, among whom language began, must have had a marvellous power of recognizing the analogies between things of the mind and things of sense, which is now comparatively lost. I quote from memory only. This struck me, because Swedenborg says, on totally different grounds, that the earliest races perceived the symbolism of nature, and founded all their systems of thought upon those correspondences. The old mythologies have no other foundation; and it is that which has given to their fragments such a hold upon human thought.
Now, why have I begun my letter in this fashion today? Simply because I was just reading over your last letter, and came upon this sentence: "B ____ is as strong as Ajax, or rather Achilles, for he had a weak spot." And the thought occurred to me whether you knew how right you were. You remember, because you allude to, the myth of Achilles. Well, he represented beauty, strength, valor, all invincible and invulnerable, except at his heel. Now what is the heel? That part of us by which we do and must come in contact with the earth when we walk in its ways; and the earth is all our external nature, relations, and interests. How many of us are always most vulnerable in this spot! But the myth goes on. Achilles, after conquering all whom he encountered, perished because a subtle enemy smote him with a poisoned arrow in the heel, while he was worshipping in a temple. Since mankind began, no man or woman has ever taken a distinct step forward without finding the external opposed to and endangering the internal. There must be assaults, and perils, and wounds, and often when we seek to worship in God's temple, the enemy finds us out, and will, if he can, bring up external cares, and interests, and thoughts, to distract us from the higher thoughts which we had begun to cherish. Yet, while God is on our side, what need we fear; and if we only turn our helpless look to Him, He is there, at our side, strong to sustain.
You give me one of your dreams, a very charming one, and it has set me thinking, for the hundredth time, what are dreams? In some respects they are certainly like the scenes of life in another world. In the first place, time and space, when and where, disappear. Or, rather, while we see things in our dreams as if in measured space or place, and there is that succession of facts and occurrences which is all we mean by time, yet place and time, or duration and succession, have not that fixity or determination which belong to them in our waking life, because in this life they are ultimated or fixed in unyielding matter.
In this respect our dreams are undoubtedly like spiritual life. Are we then to look upon the acts, relations, and forms of spiritual life as dreamy, unsubstantial, and unreal? Far, very far from it; for dreams are unlike spiritualities in this important respect. All power of self-determination is suspended and absent in dreams. Things go on, and we go on with them, at their own will. What they are, and through what course of events they lead to their results depends upon conditions of body, or mind, and influences which act through them, and are their only causes or directors; and with them we do not interfere by our personal wills. Just the opposite of this is spiritual life. There, the personality and the power of self-determination are far more distinct and positive than here. There, as in our dreams, what is outside of us is but the outbirth of what is active within us. But that activity is subject to our own conscious control; and this power, definitely exerted there, and not weakly and confusedly as it is here even in our waking hours, gives to the outside world and outside events an order, regularity, and permanence far greater than they have here.
I suppose that when we are first in that world, and perhaps while we remain in the world of spirits, there may be sudden and great changes in the appearance of the external world. These changes can occur, because there the mind uses and moulds space and time, but is not controlled by them. And these changes may occur for purposes of discipline and instruction. But they who go up from that world to their abiding home, carry with them defined and settled character and purposes. All their qualities may be developed continually forever, but never violently altered by paroxysmal changes within, or corresponding changes without. And all changes are as gradual, and successive, and peaceful as the growth in blossoming and beauty of the garden in the days of spring; and thus give the idea, not of fleeting transientness, but of permanence and endurance, amid the changes of growing life.
The absolute suspension of self-determination in dreams is as perfect in the mind as in the muscles; and this gives to dreams one possible utility. It enables us to see ourselves as we are; or, more accurately, to see a part of what is in us. We may do base and sinful things in dreams, which we should mistake in regarding as true pictures of ourselves; because this self-control and choice of good against temptation to do evil, is a part of ourselves, and a most important part. But it is all absent in dreams. Hence foul things escape from the darkness and inactivity in which we keep them, and always shall, while we are awake and self-controlling. We hide them there, and do not always know that they are there. But these ghastly shapes could not appear in our dreams if they were not already within us. They may then teach us what we should become, if we were not withheld by the strength He gives us, and guarded by His constant and merciful Providence.
VII.
I DO not remember just when my last letter was dated, but have an impression that I have allowed a longer interval than usual to elapse between yours and my answer. There are moods when even in this world it is hard to measure time by the ordinary rules of sunsettings and sunrisings, and perhaps one of these moods has been mine. But let me go to other topics, and try to tell you certain thoughts that have been busy with me lately.
Something led me to notice what is always so obvious, the mingling of good and evil which exists in everything in this world. I was more than ever impressed with its universality, and remembering the common statement of Swedenborg, that this world and all things belonging to it are intermediate between heaven and hell, and the reason that he gives, that this equilibrium may be universal, and man always in freedom to turn whither he will, I went further to another conclusion I do not remember thinking of before.
This mingling of opposites is indeed universal.
In all things of external nature, good and evil, the kind and sweet and lovely, meet and mingle with the harsh and painful and repulsive; the life-giving with the life-destroying; and things which make life pleasant with those which make it a pain and burden. They are so in externals because they are so in internals; they are so in that which is the mirror of all that is within, because that mirror is truthful. We might, then, learn from it, if we did not know before, that these same opposites meet in every person, in all character, in every event, in every act, feeling, or thought. Now for my inference. What is Heaven? Just all these elements of the good, of the beautiful, and the pleasant, liberated from all admixture with evil. They are all from heaven, they are in some form or measure in all things here; and freed from all that opposes or weakens them here, they constitute the all of heaven. Seldom in exact equilibrium at any time here, the more of either quality at one time balances the more of the opposing quality of another time, and so on the whole there comes that equalizing of two elements from which arises our capacity of obeying the command, "Choose ye this day whom ye will serve." We cannot but obey -- but if we choose aright, then comes the result for which we live; we go where this equalizing of opposites no longer is needed, and no longer exists.
If heaven, as a whole, is constituted by all the elements of good which ever descend from it, so the heaven of each person may consist of all the elements of good, of true happiness, of justified hope, of pure enjoyment ever known in the faint and dim way we know them here, but cleansed from all stains, and liberated from fear or doubt; beginning, even there, it may be feebly, but with the peaceful certainty of unchecked growth, of uninterrupted continuance. I have half a doubt whether any entirely new elements of happiness come after death to those who live on earth into adult life. Is it not enough if all we knew here are freed and perfected, and ever growing with constant development? And thus each one's heaven is his own, and is the outgrowth and fruit of his life here.
Nor when I say that each one's heaven is his own, do I mean to convey any idea of isolation, except in so far as it is essential to the preservation of our distinct individuality, which is something that can never be taken from us. Rather would I give you, if possible, the comfort of my own profound assurance, that the spiritual loneliness which all of us must at times feel so intensely here, will be in a great measure done away with there, and that the giving and receiving of a sympathy more perfect than ever was dreamed of in any earthly friendship, will be a great part of the joy of heavenly life. Adaptation is the one secret of genuine enjoyment of human intercourse. In this world we scarcely seek it, and if we do we seldom find it. But in the other world it is the law of life; for there, by the very necessity of their natures, they are nearer each other who can be and do more for each other, and they are nearest who can do most.
In one view life is a kind of commerce, in which we supply each other's needs, nearly all of it by that compulsion of want which keeps the world agoing. But this very want and compulsion are permitted, that the habit of mutual assistance may grow up to be, as far as possible, a preparation for that life where the merchandise exchanged is of the heart and soul.
Our Father seems to prepare us for His heaven in two ways. Some He leads to thirst for His truth, to receive it, to live upon it here, and taste the peace it gives. In some He only kindles a passionate and earnest longing for the truth, and a sense of desolation in the midnight of its absence, and so prepares them to receive of it in His "kingdom of light," as the panting hart drinks of the water brooks. He knows which way is best for us; He knows what is possible for us; He knows what obstructions inheritance or education have planted; and He knows how to prepare us for truth, and to delay its coming until the hour when delay is no longer necessary -- and to do this so as to save us from the misery of rejecting offered truth.
A neighbor of mine has a severe affliction in the loss of all use of his eyes. In reading with him this evening, a new view came to me of a passage I have read a hundred times; and as I return to my desk and find this unfinished sheet lying here, I think you must let me tell you my thoughts on the text, even though they may strike you at first as not quite in harmony with the rest of my letter. The words were these -- "I will make all things new." I have always regarded this as a prophecy of a new heaven and a new earth, of a sun which will shine in heaven with tenfold splendor, because the love which reigns there will be poured forth as never before, and will be in the hearts of the angels purer and warmer than ever before, and the wisdom will grow as the love grows; and of a new earth, where the influence of the new heaven will bring new order, and peace, and happiness. But I see in this prophecy a promise -- an individual and personal promise; and what hope it might bring to the sin-laden soul -- sin-laden, but repentant! He will make all things new. If we can but carry into the other world, not only a consciousness of how evil we have been and are, but an earnest desire to escape from this evil, and that a new heart may be given us, then we may hope for just this help -- this change. If we feel that over all our thoughts, and affections, and motives, the trail of the serpent has left its stains, and look at these things till the whole head is faint and the whole heart sick, we may still remember the promise that He will make all things new. And yet in one sense, not all. The very condition of this total change, without which it cannot take place, is that there shall be within us a germ of goodness, which, received from our Father, we have rooted in repentant sorrow for evil done. If this, however weak and poor, be still a living germ, from it the new growth may come. Then, whatever of goodness or truth there may be in us will not perish -- for nothing good can perish -- but will be saved, and cleansed, and strengthened, and all conflicting tendencies will gradually be suppressed. And yet even this good, which is thus preserved, will in a still higher sense be "made new." "Sown in corruption, it will be raised in incorruption." It will be cleansed from the clinging defilement of a belief that this good is from ourselves, originating in ourselves, and proving our own excellence; and with the increasing clearness of our perception that whatever is good within us came from our Father, will grow our grateful joy that He has given us this good to be our own.
"Out of the depths" -- even out of the depths of conscious sinfulness, we may look up with hope, that while it trembles is still hope, if we can be sure that we have learned, even in those depths, a repentance as profound as the sins which it makes us hate, and hate ourselves for.
VIII.
CHRISTMAS. -- All Christendom is now celebrating the day when, nearly two thousand years ago, Jesus Christ was born.
When Jesus Christ was born! What words are these! Of the myriad topics which they suggest, I select but one; and that I will endeavor to set forth as simply as possible.
First, then, is it not certain that if God were utterly alien and foreign to man, and wholly other than man, it would be simply impossible for us to have any idea of Him, and therefore impossible for us to have any love or gratitude towards or any recognition of Him? But all this we can have; and is not this possible to us, because our life is His life in us? Is ours, then, Divine? No; because it is given us to be our own, and so made human. In its origin Divine, it is given us to be our own, and therefore to be whatever we choose to make it. The new system of faith concerning the relations between God and man, finds one of its chief foundations in the truth that man is free because his life is given to him to be his own; and because our life is His life in us, we are able to form some conception of Him, and this, however dim and feeble in its beginning, may grow as we draw nearer to Him; and whatever are the essential qualities, or powers, or laws of our life, they must also belong to His life; or, in other words, our life, if perfectly free from perversion, would be, on a finite scale, what His is infinitely.
Now one of the most certain of the laws of life is, that love demands return; that it cannot be in its freedom, and its fulness, and its entire happiness, unless it be returned. Even in the low condition of human nature, every one who has loved knows this. All the best happiness of human life rests upon mutuality of love, and the best happiness of heaven can have no other foundation.
But if this be the law of His life in us, discernible even through our perversions, it must be the law of His life in Himself -- only then it must be infinite.
What follows? That He must desire infinitely, from the necessity of His divine nature, that we should love Him -- that on this foundation our highest happiness might rest. How can it be otherwise if He is Love, perfect Love, and only Love? If this seems to put a narrow limit to His happiness, we have but to remember that He has Infinity and Eternity in His constant view; that He sees the whole -- the end. What the future is to Him we cannot see, because we think in the fetters of time; but we may see this, that the future is not to Him what it is to us. He sees the end in the beginning, and towards this end all things in His view converge. And this end is an immeasurable Heaven of those who love Him as He desires, and whose love for Him He sees growing through eternity -- and to whom He is able to impart of His own happiness, because they love Him.
And how does He provide for such an end? First by creating men -- immortals -- and giving them the power of loving, and then the command to love Him with all our strength, and all our mind, and all our soul, and giving them all the help they can receive to comply with this command. But is not love more disinterested which, however it may lament its own disappointment, yet loves on without return? Is not the love which asks so urgently for a return selfish? Yes, it may be very selfish, and whether it be so or not, we have a certain test which eve find even here on earth. He who loves fervently is always tempted, sometimes sorely tempted to insist, and, if he can, compel a return. But this temptation is always from selfishness. Whoever has any goodness or wisdom, even here, resists this temptation. He feels that such love would not be love -- that it could not be one with his, in unity of happiness.
What then will he do? All that the tenderest affection, the most unwearied kindness, all that any service within human power can do, to win for him that voluntary love which is his heart's desire. But there he stops. From the next step he shrinks, for he knows that compulsion would prevent the love he seeks.
So he feels and acts if he be good and wise, or, in other words, if God's life in him be in any degree unperverted. Because so God in His perfect wisdom knows, and so in His perfect love He acts, infinitely. All that Omnipotence can do, with all heaven and earth for its instruments, He does to lead us for our own good to love Him. But there He, too, stops. He knows, as we cannot, that love and force are antagonists, which not even Omnipotence can reconcile. Gladly he accepts any measure of voluntary love which we are willing to offer. More than this cannot be -- for our Father who alone is wholly free from selfishness, has no desire to insist or compel.
It is in working for this end that the whole of His providence has worked, and is ever working on the largest scale by successive dispensations, as the increasing preparedness of mankind permits higher truths and stronger motives to be offered. On the smaller scale, to each individual he offers only what he or she may accept, if only willing to work with Him and His angels in overcoming those evils which oppose the reception of the gift.
To us all He gives eternity for our love to grow in. And He gives us this beginning of eternity, this life on earth wherein we may begin the work -- and then -- this beginning determines the end.
If it were otherwise, why do we live here? why are we called to suffer through all the conflicts of this life?
The beginning determines the end. It cannot determine whether God will love us all infinitely, or give us all the happiness which we can enjoy, for this He cannot but do eternally; but it determines whether His love shall act upon our will and against it, or in and through it. For this we must choose -- this every man does choose.
And then how is it with all those who choose the better way, and suffer Him to make their will an instrument of His, their love a return to Him of His own love? That it might be so, that it might come back to Him as their love, He gave it to them to be their very own, and they have this blessed consciousness.
Still for them also, and for each one of them, the beginning determines the end.
Now, let me ask two or three questions -- Can you believe that all persons at death stand on precisely the same plane, and whether they be good or bad, acquire at once the very same characters, and hold them forever? This I would have you ask yourself thoughtfully, for there is indeed too much thoughtlessness on this subject. I think you will answer, perhaps, after a little pause, No.
Then can you believe that after a certain interval in the other world, all men, whatever they were here, acquire precisely the same characters, and hold them to eternity? Again I think you will say, No. The conclusion is then inevitable, that in some way the beginning determines the end. The only question now possible is, in what way? To answer this, we must look back to the laws of human nature, as we can discern them, and get from them whatever instruction they can yield, and then bring our conclusion to the test of the Word of God.
Then let me ask, Is anything more certain than that we see different persons in this world stand upon different planes of life, if I may so express it? That is, some persons recognize truths of a distinctly higher character than others do, or yield themselves to the influence of distinctly higher motives. Or, to shape the question differently, Is not the kind of goodness of some persons distinctly higher than that of some others? Separate this question in your mind from that which refers to the quantity or measure of goodness, such as it is. For example, do you not know people who, on a low or limited plane of life, or of thought and affection, are very kind, pure, and good? And then do you not see others whose goodness is far less complete, who struggle with worse evil tendencies, and sometimes yield to them, and whose goodness and intelligence are therefore more broken and imperfect -- but whose goodness, such as it is, is of a far higher kind?
Then remember that the Bible tells us that our works do follow with us, and that its whole instruction tends to the conclusion that "as the tree falleth (or in whatever direction), so it lies." Then ask yourself, Is not that doctrine of our church probable and reasonable, which tells us that every one who lives to mature age in this world, opens here some plane of his life; that the Lord constantly helps all to rise from plane to plane, but that the need, the nature, and the use of this life, spring from the possibility of rising while here, through conflict with sin and self, from plane to plane; but that after we go to the other life, we have left this possibility behind us? What then remains? For our Father, with infinite love and infinite wisdom, to provide continually throughout eternity, with no exception whatever, alike for the good and bad of all degrees, all means and methods by which each one may be enabled to have and may have all the completeness and all the happiness possible, on his or her self-determined plane of life, and this more and more forever -- this always, but never more than this.
Remember, I am now appealing to your reason. I am asking you to do justice to your reason and to yourself. Our Father will offer us no other means or methods than those which it lies within our capacity, in our self-determined freedom, to accept and to use; and I cannot but hold the belief, to me most precious, that if we do accept these means and use them, He will be the happier for us through eternity, and that even in our hands is placed what may be a portion of His happiness!
The disciples were told to give up father, and mother, and brother, and sister, and lands for His sake, and they should have an hundred fold more even in this life, with persecutions. They understood this literally, and obeyed it literally, and many suffered martyrdom. But even in this life they had their hundred fold. To us, to you, these things are said, but in an inner, an infinitely higher sense. You must obey them, if at all, in the way pointed out by that sense; and if you strive to renounce for His sake what these things here represent and signify, you will have inner persecutions -- persecutions from influences within you which seek to hold you back -- doubts, fears, struggles, darkness, fainting hopes, and restless fears, which may be your martyrdom; but even in this life you will have your hundred fold, and in the world to come "Eternal Life," -- and what life?
To this end, that we may have this life, all His providences are active; and most of all, that which closed and consummated the whole preceding series -- when Jesus Christ was born. And from this Providence, forward through all eternity, will radiate all the mercies of Infinite Mercy. All, however seemingly distant or different, converge in this -- that we may accept Him who thus comes down to us; that we may accept Him as God who thus comes down to be Immanuel, God with us; who thus came down that He might ever stand before us, a personal God, an object of personal thought, obedience, trust, and worship; one whom we may learn to love with the heart and soul, and whom we shall so love in the degree in which our eyes are opened to see His goodness, to see Him as He is, to see Him in His own revelation of Himself.
IX.
THE delicate beauty of a winter landscape is something of which I can never grow weary. This afternoon is certainly not one which could be selected as remarkable in any way. It is a little too early for sunset glories, and I doubt if when that time comes there will be any brilliant color; for, though the day has been a fine one, the sky for the last hour has been gradually overcast by a soft veil of that beautiful steel blue which harmonizes so perfectly with a snowy landscape, and only in the southwest can one see a few clouds faintly blushing. But in some moods we take especial delight in trying to find the hidden beauties of the common and the insignificant. They are then more precious to us than those strikingly beautiful scenes which compel admiration from all. So in this upper world of steel blue, the lower one of white, with the fringes of black forest between, I find today a profound pleasure. I believe this little bit of egotism escaped me because I have been re-reading your last letter -- and from the way in which you speak of a beautiful sunrise and sunset, I think you sympathize readily with nature in her various phases, and, having a keen eye for these, may get some idea of that which I have so faintly described.
There is a difference in the tints of coloring at the sun's rising and setting which is not easily explained. I never saw what I should call a radiant dawn -- not one like many of those sunsets which bring to the lips the word "glorious." In the morning the eye and mind are waiting for the sunburst, and the sudden flood of light almost effaces from the thought the earlier beauty of the clouds; but the moment when the sun sinks out of sight, it has no such overpowering splendor. I have looked at the evening clouds of one of our golden sunsets, until it seemed to me that all over the sky -- they most which were nearest to the sinking sun -- they were greedily gathering all of his splendor that they could hold, to keep it while they could, giving it up slowly and reluctantly, clinging to the last pale tints, and finally yielding them up so sadly!
Much of the symbolism of all this is obvious. The turning of the earth to the sun always, through day and night, represents what should be the constant turning of every human mind towards the Lord. The earth seems to turn away from the sun that sinks, but it is to meet him in his coming; and that should be our work in all our nights -- for "the night cometh" to every man. For every spot of earth, it is day when it is turned to the sun, and night when it has turned away; and this is precisely the same with the spiritual night and day of every soul. In the darkness we may sleep, for there need be no distress, but acquiescence and rest and hope; for "He giveth His beloved sleep," that they may be strengthened to do His work when the light of his countenance shines on them again, as assuredly it will.
The clouds represent certain thoughts or states of mind; and these, however cold and dark at night, when the morning is coming they catch the light of the yet distant sun, and we read in their beauty the promise of day. At first it mingles with the darkness of a night not yet gone; but at every moment it grows brighter with growing hope. And no wonder that when the whole day has run its course and night draws near, these clouds gather into their bosom all the radiance and glory of the day that they can hold, and cling to them while they can. I think we do, or should do, just the same thing.
The love of nature is a gift for which those who possess it cannot be too grateful. How many a lonely hour does it fill with richest delights! But I think you will understand me when I say that the love of the external of nature alone, is only a part of what I mean; though many who have never had glimpses of the inner beauty would undoubtedly deny this, and are quite contented with the sensuous delight which the perfume and color of roses or the sweet voices of birds afford them. Let us think for a moment who tinted the rose, who created those lovely musical instruments. The very thought of Him, the loving and grateful thought of Him, will open the spiritual eye and ear. If we believe that He really created all from Himself, we are irresistibly led to the conclusion, that within this lovely outer vesture of things there must be a something higher and more spiritual -- something flowing out from the Divine nature itself. This love of the beautiful, then, may become the seed of far higher happiness -- the recipient vessel, the form, into which may be poured the abiding joy of seeing and knowing all the spiritual beauty of which the outspread magnificence all about us is but the garment. Do you remember those lines of Faust in the invocation to nature, which opens the poem?
"And ever on the resounding loom of time,
Thou weavest the Godhead's living garment."Perhaps, because I have quoted this poetry, you will accept what I have said before as poetry also, -- mere poetical fancy! And you are, at least in part, right. It is poetry; it is taught us by our imagination; but would that I could tell you what Poetry is, what Imagination does.
Did it never seem to you strange, that when Imagination is the only human faculty which even they who desire most to brutalize man have never even conjectured that they found in the slightest degree or under any guise in animals, that this purely human faculty should be given by his Creator to man alone, if its only function be to deceive, and its only work to fill our minds with fantasies and illusions? It is not so. Poetry works with and it speaks to the imagination. And we owe it to the provident mercy of God, that in all ages poetry has been able to tell us through the imagination great and elevating truths, which our reason, our reason as we have made it to be, would utterly reject. It is for this that poetry is given. Even in this dead age it insinuates into the mind, and into the affections, beautiful truths, which reason, while it scorns, is willing to admit, provided we call them imaginations; and on no other terms would this reason, in its present condition, allow them any existence.
Look into your own mind, and tell me if this is not true? The beautiful suggestions of poetry are profound realities; standing to the facts and knowledges of which reason and science are so proud, in the relation of soul to body. There is abundance of false poetry in the world, as there is of everything else that is false. I speak only of true poetry. It is the misery of our times that reason is utterly ignorant of its greatest power and highest work, and that science does not know that it has a soul.
The time will come -- and there are moments when the light flashing all around me, and beginning to illuminate the dark corners of what is called science and philosophy, lets me hope that it may come soon -- when reason will call on imagination to do for truth what only imagination can; and when imagination will gladly come to reason for guidance, for rectification, for confirmation. Then, only then, will terminate this unhappy divorce between these two great human powers -- human and finite in us, but divine and infinite in Him from whom they come to us -- coming always as we can become willing to receive from Him the gift of His own elements of life.
X.
IN one of my letters I alluded to my neighbor with the weak eyes. This man has a genius for making the best of everything that really has a best in it, which is truly admirable. A medicine was prescribed for him lately, which he applied, and for one day experienced much relief; but ever since has been so much worse, that one would think the temporary benefit would have been quite forgotten in the suffering afterwards. By no means; he clings to the memory of that one day with a beautiful persistency, and will not be condoled with much on his present condition, without reverting to the "ray of brightness that the Lord did send him, before He let down the dark curtain again."
There is a saying which must be as old as human experience, repeated ever since there were words to express it, and by everybody that ever lived, the truism of truisms, and yet almost powerless. It is, that putting positive pain and want aside, our happiness is dependent, not on external circumstances, but on internal condition, Why can we not remember this? There is in one of Miss Evans's novels, -- Adam Bede, I think -- a beautiful paragraph on the habit of everybody, of wishing eagerly, passionately, for some boon, some change of circumstance, which he must know, if all experience and observation are able to teach him anything, would, if it were granted, be inevitably followed by a new want, a new disappointment. Shall we, then, wish, hope for nothing passionately? If this is what wisdom tells us, then it is the part of wisdom to destroy our best happiness -- for does not that rest on hope? Wisdom tells us something very different. It tells us we cannot wish too eagerly, strive too earnestly, hope too passionately for that good thing which will change our inward condition. That change which will enlarge our capacity for abiding happiness, fill out and complete our life, strengthen our weakness, feed us with all good, satisfy the heart, not with quietude and rest, but with energy and strength for all usefulness, and so for all happiness -- surely wisdom itself will tell us that we may wish for this with all our capacity of desire, and live in the joy of hope, if that be granted! Live in this hope, and in the joy of this hope, let what will befall us.
You know Church history is one of my favorite studies. In the early ages of Christianity I often find instances of this. There were martyrs upon whom ingenious cruelty did its worst. But their hope, their bounding and exulting hope, acted upon them with anæsthetic power -- I do not believe they felt the flame or the rack.
Martyrdom of that sort is at an end; but martyrdom of another sort is still the law of Christian life. The ecstasy of joy in the midst of suffering has gone, too. But our martyrdom -- the pains and stings of every day -- may be borne with better patience, if such a wish and hope as I have above described be given us.
XI.
THE only work I have to do for you is to help you to do your own work. Nor should I be deterred from doing what I can by the consciousness that all the assistance I can give you is so poor and imperfect, for it may possibly be the best that is now within your reach. Sometimes the earth seems to me like a great garden; not the "garden of nature" that men talk of, but a garden where our good and evil tendencies are growing side by side. If, in the little patch of ground which is assigned to each, that plant called "Love of God" should be found, let it be most carefully nourished and watered; let everything be done to help it to grow; its flowers will be so much more beautiful than all the others that they will fully repay the gardener for his pains. There are not wanting instructions in this spiritual floriculture for those who will read them; but often the Lord lets us help each other; and if it be only a cup of cold water, or a bit of trellis for our precious plant to climb upon, coming at the right moment, it may preserve it from drought and death.
Not long after my last letter I sent you a Life of Swedenborg. I selected this because, besides the mere narrative part which would interest you, the writer speaks of Swedenborg's books, and, partly by extracts, partly by his own comments, endeavors to exhibit the leading doctrines.
This is done abruptly, without the aid of the mutual illustration they give each other, and sometimes inaccurately; but I thought, in spite of these defects, you could from this book gain a general view of the whole, which might afterwards be both rectified and enlarged by study of the details. Let me beg you to remember two or three things. First, that you study these things to become more free, not to be bound; to be taught and led, not to be commanded and coerced. Remember, too, Swedenborg has none of the character or authority of inspiration. Nothing would he have disclaimed more. Again, what he teaches is a new and universal system of thought. There are two reasons why this must present many and great difficulties. The first is its absolute novelty. It presents to the mind a new way of believing and thinking about everything. Nor is this all; for if it be received in any degree, in that degree it must change our mode of thought. And you will see that this implies not merely the reception of the new, but, to make that reception possible, the casting away of the old. And this is sometimes a cause of great pain. The second cause of difficulty is the boundless extent and measureless magnitude of many of the truths he tells. The effect of this is that, to some minds, many of these seem at first utterly incomprehensible. Yet the prevention of difficulty or embarrassment from either or both of these causes is easy and effectual.
Determine resolutely not to be embarrassed by them. How, you may ask, shall you accomplish this? Very easily. Cultivate a due respect for Swedenborg's marvellous ability, and for his most extraordinary means of knowledge. Acknowledge and reverence the ends for which he was so taught. But, if you do not understand what you read, remember that the truth which may be there is not truth for you at that time. Keep your mind free and open, and there is always abundance to understand and rejoice in. Let this be your habit, and you will be surprised to find how this freedom and ease of mind will often make things quite clear, will often give you at least beautiful glimpses and dawnings of truth, when, if the mind were disturbed or oppressed, everything would be dark and confused.
XII.
LAST Sunday I wrote to guard you from embarrassment at finding, in the course of reading you have undertaken, things which you cannot now understand. Let me now speak of what may sometimes happen. You will understand a paragraph, or think that you do, and be wholly unable to receive it. What are you to do then? I answer as before, Be tranquil; let it alone; do not come too hastily to the conclusion that your author is mistaken, for at a later time you might perhaps discover that you did not understand him aright, or that you did understand him and were yourself mistaken.
Swedenborg is peculiarly open to misconstruction, not so much about doctrines, as in his relations of what he saw in the spiritual world, from this cause, namely, that there the appearance of things is greatly affected and almost determined by the character of the observer. Something of this is true even here. Perhaps nothing appears as precisely the same thing to one person that it does to another. Suppose a kingdom in this world, where there are wise laws affecting the minutest conduct of every man, admirably adapted to give to all who obey them the largest comfort and enjoyment of which they are capable, and for their own sake carried into full and constant force by observant and inexorable justice and irresistible power, so as to produce the greatest amount of quiet enjoyment with the minimum of coercion and punishment. To some people this would seem to be a very heaven upon earth. To others, the absolute absence of freedom would make it a hell.
Now this difference of aspect, according to difference of character, is carried infinitely further in the spiritual world than here.
Swedenborg often speaks of those in hell, and of their surroundings -- exactly suited to them, as are all surroundings in the spiritual world -- as they are seen in the light of truth, or as the angels see them. And the picture is horrible enough. And passages of this sort would be selected by one whose sympathies with the old notions of divine vengeance and eternal punishment led him to prefer this view of hell. But it is the constant statement of Swedenborg that those who are in hell appear to themselves, and to each other, what they would love to appear and to see -- and so it is with their surroundings. And in all his Relations, it must be remembered that all external things in the spiritual world symbolize and represent internal things, not merely in general, as on earth, but with particular adaptation to individuals. Most of his Relations refer to the world of spirits, which is a purely transitional condition, and where all things fluctuate, appear, disappear, and change almost like the scenes of a drama; while in the heavens, where character is fixed and determined, there is in the external world of the angels far more permanence and seeming reality in the substance of things than in this changeful world, while hues and forms, and light and shade, change with inexhaustible variety, to represent the changes of state in a life of constant development.
It is said to be the test of a true system of philosophy, that no part of it can be understood except in the light of all the rest. Never was this more true than of Swedenborg's philosophy of religion -- or religion of philosophy. They may be called which you will, for with him there can be no true religion which is not philosophical, no true philosophy which is not religious.
XIII.
THIS afternoon I ascended a hill at no great distance from my house, which I had not visited before, and on reaching the top was amazed at the extent and loveliness of the prospect. Expecting little from so slight an ascent, it seemed as if "all the kingdoms of the world "were spread before me. It was very beautiful to see so many miles of God's fair earth all clad in the perfection of midsummer garments; and at first the pure delight of the eye banished any definite thought. But after each part of the picture had been sought out and enjoyed, the village at my feet nestled in dark green trees, the meadows dotted with haycocks and here and there a mower -- seen from my point of view only as a red spot -- the clear blue river, the sunny upland slopes and the lovely blue hills, growing softer and bluer in the distance -- then came again the thought of that mountain where Satan tempted our Lord; and if the scene had been no lovelier than this which met my eye, if the offer of absolute power had been only over the few villages which my hill-top commanded, what a temptation might not that have been!
The subject of our Lord's temptations is too sacred and mysterious to be lightly approached -- almost too sacred to be approached at all; but one passage of your last letter, as it perhaps suggested the thought I have above expressed, so it induces me to offer to you a few thoughts about it, because it seems to me that you are in an obscurity which I may be able to illuminate, though perhaps very faintly.
We are told, "He was tempted in all points as we are"; and this you must remember does not mean merely as you are tempted, or as I am tempted, for numberless germs or possibilities of evil exist in us which may never rise to assail us, and there are other people who have foes to deal with quite different from those from which we pray daily for deliverance. All the terrible and infinitely varied temptations of all men assailed Him. The German artist, Moritz Retsch, has drawn in vivid outlines the struggles of angels and demons for the mastery over a human soul; yet when the dark hour of our own conflict comes to us, the picture seems a dim and feeble presentation of our own struggles and torments. Would it not help us in that hour, if, remembering that all this, and infinitely more, was suffered by our Lord, the unspeakably consoling thought should also come -- and yet He conquered?
Then by a patient reading, and oft re-reading, of the story, may we come at last to see -- to see here very faintly, but hereafter more perfectly -- how He conquered. I will give you one of the thoughts which came to me about it today. There are three words: "It is written." Did it ever occur to you that the only answers made by the Lord, when tempted by the Devil, were "It is written" so or so. And always the answers thus found in the Word overcome the Devil.
The temptations of our Lord in the desert were symbolical, nor could they have happened literally. But they symbolize all the temptations He endured in the whole of His life on earth, and therefore all that we can endure; and His answers symbolize the means of His constant victories. Remember that temptations can be undergone only by those who are striving to be better. They are combats, and only they resist sin who would escape from sin.
The first temptation symbolizes all that vast class of feelings which, when we are worn and wearied with our efforts to attain the spiritual truth for which we so hunger, tempts us to give up the effort -- to be content with this world and what it offers, and to find in its very stones, where no life is, all the bread we want. If we yield, we have momentary comfort; if, yielding still more, we absolutely decline to make further effort for better things, we fall into naturalism and worldliness. But if we resist, it is because we remember that we can live only by the bread of God -- only by the words He has given us to lead us to Himself.
None are in this world wholly free from this temptation; but even when we are most free from this, it is then that we are assailed by a new temptation. We think we have conquered, are ascending, are strong -- that we stand on the pinnacle of the temple, and are safe; for even if we cast ourselves down, have not His angels charge to save us? Ah! sorrowful and woful condition; and our fancied strength turns to weakness now. Yet may not those most beautiful, blessed words in Revelation have been spoken to us, "To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life"? And here we can overcome if we remember that we must not tempt the Lord our God -- that we must not forget that to the highest and lowest of His children He gives His law, His truth; and that constant and humble obedience to that law, constant and humble care not to offend, is the condition on which His angels can save us.
And then will come, and it comes in myriads of forms, the last and deepest temptation. It is that we love our goodness and our wisdom for ourselves, and the greatness and superiority they give us, and the pleasant consciousness that we are not as other men are; and not that they may make us more perfectly His instruments, and the servants of His will. And here, too, we are saved, if we remember that we must worship, not ourselves, but "the Lord our God, and Him only shall we serve." "Thy will, not our will."
These are the most general forms of all temptations; and the lesson with regard to this parable which has come to me today, and which I have shared with you, is that against every temptation we may find sufficient answer, and in every danger sufficient defence, in the Word of God.
XIV.
YOU say that you find it "quite impossible to live in the country and not fill your letters with gossip of woods and birds and streams," and fear that I will "be tired of it." Instead of tiring, my dear friend, it rests me -- I mean it gives me a restful feeling about you; it must be that your mind is at peace, when you can feel in harmony with God's innocent creation which we call nature.
I can quite sympathize, too, with your pleasure in telling of the impressions which you are constantly receiving from this beautiful nature. Long as I have lived in the country, I have not outlived this pleasure; and it is particularly delightful to send to some imprisoned city friend a stray leaf from this book of bright pictures painted by a Divine Hand. Pausing for a moment only, leaving myself, my cares and anxieties, I have only to glance from my window, and dark indeed must be the mood which would not be arrested, at least, by the bright midsummer picture outside. And even if one cannot look, the murmuring brook is always telling about it in its own gentle way, monotonous perhaps, but never tedious, and with an unobtrusiveness which is all the more touching when one thinks what a story it is which the brook has to tell.
But you are now in the mountains, and have begun already to learn from them as well as to enjoy them. It seems to me that mountain-tops have sometimes an effect which is a strange blending of exhilaration and tranquillization -- a simple joyousness in being, and a sense of calm gladness in being lifted so far above the mists and cares of earth. I am speaking of quite high mountain-tops, where the landscape underneath is too distant to be distracting. Does not this represent the normal state of man, expelled afterwards by the glooms and anxieties which we permit to fill our minds? Is not the only needful thing to cast these out? For then we need not seek for joy -- it would return of itself, as to its rightful home. The soul has its mountain-tops, and climbs up thither to be alone with God. "I will flee unto the hills from whence cometh my help." "His foundation is in the holy mountains." In these high solitudes the soul finds a refuge when all else has failed; and the beautiful spiritual sense of these words -- their soul -- comes to us. Yet these are not our home, nor is it in God's order to dwell apart from our fellow men. In the valleys and plains below, our work is to be done, and when we stand on a mountain-top of thought or feeling, it may be that we shall be called down by some woful disappointment, some stinging calamity -- called down to our hard work, inner or outer, there where it must be done. Ah, well! let us answer the call -- let us descend; but while we are up there let us try, by grateful and earnest recognition of our Father's love, to strengthen our trust in Him, to strengthen ourselves for the work to which disappointment or calamity may be sent to guide us! Nor is it an unkind Providence which bids us descend from our mountains. The air there is too thin to breathe; soon the solitude, at first so charming, would grow irksome. From the heights we can bring down new vigor for old duties, and recollections and lessons which will make us more useful than we could have been before.
The mountains and hills drink the "dew of the morning," and gather from the clouds their beneficent rains, and a thousand streamlets pour down their sides. Remember that water, everywhere and universally, in all its forms and functions and laws, corresponds to truth in the intellect. When we climb to mountain and hill states, then, if we are but ready for the blessing, thoughts and truths which had floated through our understanding like clouds, or were as invisible as the dew, come down to us and we may hold them. And what becomes of them, or what may become of them?
See those streamlets gliding along in their pure and stainless beauty, singing their songs of gladness. Downwards they go, and form the streams and swell the rivers which invigorate and help to make habitable the levels far below. But how often, when they get there, they are stained, and sad, and sluggish!
XV.
IN the French book I sent you the other day, did you notice how hardly the author was pressed to find eminent men whom he could cite to prove his position, that intellectual power and cultivation were not incompatible with sincere belief? Under one point of view I lament this; under another there is hope in it.
It is one of the marvellous signs of the times that all the forces of reason, logic, and science seem to be permitted to assail supernaturalism with irresistible force. This is permitted in this age for the first time in the history of man. And the reason is that now men may find a refuge there, where none was ever opened to them before. In the closest reasoning, in the severest logic, in all scientific processes, if only there be thrown on these the light of new truths -- utterly unknown to past ages -- the most exact thinkers may find evidence and certainty. I fear this will seem to you a strong assertion; but it is literally true. I do most distinctly believe that the truths now revealed concerning the nature of God and His relation to the universe, the nature of spiritual being and its relation to the material world outside of it, the nature of the soul and its relation to the body, and the methods and purposes of God in creating and sustaining man, are able to bring to a rational mind undoubting conviction and positive certainty that man begins to live in this world and never ceases to live, and never ceases to have a world about him adapted to him. But what proof have we of these truths? Their own light -- the proof we have at noon-day of the sun's existence.
The assailants of supernaturalism find in the "Word" of God their great battle-ground; and I have spoken to you before in some of my letters of these controversies, and the reason of their being permitted in these days as never before, because the freedom of thought which must once have been utterly disastrous, may now, in the new light which our Father has given through His servant, Swedenborg, lead to the most beautiful results.
When we first know that there is a spiritual sense to the Word, to every part of it, and that our Church reveals this sense, we look for it perhaps hungrily, and are disappointed when we find so little that we can clearly discern; nor is it impossible that we may be too persistent in our search, and make an effort which not only disappoints but retards us. Yet, after awhile, we learn to see a few things distinctly, and many more things dimly, yet gladly -- I say dimly, but I rather mean generally. And as our knowledge grows we learn that the spiritual sense is not a new language into which the old words are to be translated, but new light, new significance, new precision, and appropriateness to our own wants. We feel that this is infinite and inexhaustible; and that, as we go upwards, we shall see forever more clearly that it is the Word of God, and what that Word says to us.
Without losing our enjoyment of what we see, we lose the painful feeling that we see nothing because we see so little. We receive and recognize without effort and without struggle what comes to us, and it is all the more welcome. The sermons we hear, the books we read, tell us the meaning of these or those texts, and gradually accumulating a stock of such meanings, we shall be sure to find other texts coming within the light we have thus obtained.
We cannot doubt that our Father has countless ways of speaking to His children. Through all the voices of nature He speaks; there is not the faintest whirr of insect-life in which we should not hear the Divine accents, if we would only listen for them. He speaks to us through the eye still more powerfully; and not the smallest event of every-day life but may be to us a lesson, an exhortation from the Father of Light. Yet the Holy Scriptures are none the less emphatically His Word -- a word worth infinitely more than all human words ever uttered; and though this Divine Word must yet come down to us through human means, though much in this way may have been darkened and obscured, we have an assured faith that the truth itself not only remains forever secured to us -- a precious heritage -- but a faith, too, that God has now sent us that illumination which will drive away the thick clouds and darkness.
I am sure you see plainly that infinite wisdom could be communicated to finite intellects only by some method of accommodation. This is only another way of saying that the Divine energy can make a tree grow and pass through its circle of life only by means of organs perfectly adapted to this purpose, the soft coverings which infold the germ, the drinking and breathing apparatus of rootlets and leaves. So only could it give to animals their life; so only can it give life to man, or, better, so only can it be in man, human life. And that man may be man, he has a physical organization which includes the vegetable and the animal, and then an affectional and intellectual organization into which Divine love and wisdom may flow, becoming human affection and human reason -- while through this whole scale of being, from the absolute divinity at the summit, down to the fixed matter of our earth, the energy is always the same, the laws of its action are always the same, and its effects on one plane of being correspond to those on other planes of being.
You remember Jacob's dream: "Jacob was in Beth-el (the House of God) and he dreamed; and behold a ladder set up on the earth; and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold the angels of God ascending and descending upon it. And behold the Lord stood above it." This ladder is the Word. In all ages, among the Jews as among the Christians, there have been those who were too deeply penetrated with the belief of its sanctity and divinity to rest contented with supposing it to have no other meaning than that which rests on the ground. Oh, how they have labored to find the ascending steps of the ladder! But they have been able to see it only as a dream; only as Jacob saw it. Now, however, we are permitted (and if we will, we may be instructed) to see it with our waking reason; to see it, not as a mere dream fabric, but as a reality, resting on a foundation solid as earth itself, and ascending by steps built of the very substance of truth, and arranged in their places by the laws of infinite wisdom. What multitudes have stood on the lower rounds, seeing no more, but with eye and soul looking and longing for more. When they pass into the next world will not such mount up, and ever upwards?
The angels of God ascend and descend perpetually upon it. You know that "angels" means "messengers," and all good influences come down to us along its steps and arise with us if we will only go up with them. How unspeakably grateful should they be who are now permitted to see, not its whole extent, but many of its steps, and to be sure that its foundation cannot fail, and that its summit is in Heaven.
XVI.
I READ and re-read all that you told me about your two Sunday sermons, and I thought I could see plainly why you were so much more at home in the afternoon. There was some religion there. Never have I felt so strongly, never seen so clearly as of late, that the difference between forms or modes of religion is not so important and so vital as the difference between any true, heartfelt religion, and none; and in feeling this, we lose care for the difference in forms, or even in faiths, except as one is better able than another to feed whatever hunger for religion we may have, and to give us the bread of life as nothing else could. What is religion, but to know, to worship, and to love God -- for from a true love to Him springs all love of goodness, and therefore all happiness. But we must know and love Him as our Father; and what can be more plain than that we can have no such love except for a person? And where, but in the truths which He has now given us, can we find that knowledge of Him, of His nature, of His work, of His own inconceivable love for us, which makes our faith unwavering, our thoughts distinct, and, if worldliness or selfishness do not paralyze our hearts, fills them full -- full of love for Him who loves us so.
Do not think, however, that by this last sentence I would confine all religion to those who accept the same truths which I accept; or, in other words, that in dividing all men into two classes, I put those who belong to the New Church in one, and all the rest of humanity in the other. There is a marked line of division, an almost indefinable yet never absent distinction between New-Church and Old-Church people, which I will not here enlarge upon; but most certainly I would be the last one to say that this distinction existed because on one side they were religious and the others were not. Not in the least. Many of them have much religion, more than either you or I have; but their religion suits them; and because it would not suit or help us, our Father has given us our own. There is, however, a deeper view to be taken of this subject. All truth known to man is but as a few drops from an exhaustless fountain, or rather from an infinite ocean; for it is an effluence from Infinite Wisdom. This Wisdom, you know, is one with Infinite Love, and He in whom it is, desires to give it to us as largely and as freely as possible. But it can come only gradually, only in its own order, step by step. Then what follows? Every truth given us is given for two purposes -- one, that it may pour its light upon the mind, and bring our thoughts into the order and clearness belonging to that truth, and kindle our affection for the truth itself and for the good of which it is the instrument, and make this affection warm and permanent. And the second purpose it accomplishes by doing just this first work; for this second purpose is, to open our minds to higher truths. Hence two things -- first, to every age, and nation, and individual, that truth is given which is best for him or her, in that state; and the other thing is, that only by holding fast, by loving and living that truth, do we make ourselves receptive of more and higher truth. This we can do, and unless we do it, it cannot be done.
A man may live in a dungeon and not know that it is dark, because he neither knows nor cares to know what light is. Many live so. Or he may live in a broken or diffused light, and be content therewith, because he does not know that there is a sun, nor wish to know it. And upon him the sunshine is never permitted to fall, because it would blind him with excess of light. But if he was once sure that there was a sun, and that its glory was all around him and everything, seeking to enter at every crevice, now perhaps he would try to open the shutters of his mind and let the sunshine in. He might seek to do this, and strive and moan because he could not. For whether he could or not would depend entirely upon what he desired the sunshine for; and what he would do with it when he got it; for it might be to him a curse! Here seems to me to be the key to the whole providence of God in the divine dispensation of truth to the world in every age, and always to every individual.
The other day I was reading a most eloquent account of the marvellous display of Divine Wisdom in so perfectly adjusting the eye to light, as it comes to earth and exists here with infinite differences as to place, and season, and hour; and so adjusting the sun, the source of all light, to the eye, that a healthy human eye and sunlight are exactly made for each other. When -- I thought as I read this -- when will it be as well known, and as readily admitted as a part of familiar knowledge, that this outside adjustment, exquisite as it is, is but the effect, presentation, and symbol of the inner adjustment between the mind's eye and the mind's light. Often have I found it a most startling thing to say, that the spiritual eye is an organ perfectly clothed by the material eye, filling exactly every part of it, giving life to it, and in that way giving sight to that natural organ, which without it can no more see than a stone, or than it can when death has taken away this spiritual organ. Oh! that either you or I could put the millionth part of its true value on the truth -- the light -- given to us!
When I think of the truths themselves, when I see them offering the solution of the problems which vex the human mind, giving to the wandering feet some guidance, and to the sad heart hope and faith and joy, I wonder that the whole world does not welcome them. But when I think of existing character as I suppose it to be in others and know it to be in myself, then am I astonished that they have made any impression on mankind.
To return for a moment to my man in a dungeon: it is not desire, not even intense desire for truth that brings it -- but a desire of such kind, and on such grounds, as to indicate that if it be received it will be so loved and used as to make it well that it should be received. Do you remember the words, "Verily I say unto you, that many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things which ye see and have not seen them and to hear those things which ye hear and have not heard them"? They were prophets and righteous men. They longed for truth. Why was it not given them? You will see, I think, that if we push this inquiry to its legitimate extent, it becomes the question why man at the beginning of his existence is not taught by Infinite Love all of the Infinite Wisdom that he is willing to ask for and to hear. And you see at once that now you ask why man is not made just what man is not. The universal answer is, every living person is always within reach of all the truth he needs -- all which he can receive without wasting it, idling with it, subjecting it to his own self-intelligence, or so perverting it that it becomes a mischief and not a blessing. All this wrong we may do with what is given us to be our own, but it would not have been given to us unless we might have done better.
XVII.
NOT long ago, I wrote you a letter about worldliness; but you must not imagine that the subject is exhausted. No, even in my comparative seclusion, I feel continually its influence; and again and yet again it forces itself upon me as a painful subject of consideration. The immediate reason for my writing about it today is, perhaps, because I have just been reading a letter from Mr. ____, an old friend, who after a faithful service of many years has just resigned an important office in the ministry. Several motives led him to this resignation; but the strongest seems to have been an overpowering sadness at the condition of the society into which he was necessarily thrown. He writes: "It is not that I see everywhere a worldliness that is positive and offensive, but I do find a worldliness which is utterly >without God in the world.' Men, old and young, are for the most part good men, doing their duty satisfactorily, and meeting me with kindness; but seldom, very seldom, do I detect a motive, a thought, or feeling, or hear an expression which indicates that this life is valued chiefly for its relation to another. It is not good to live always in such an atmosphere."
When the thought flashes upon us (for it comes, and alas! it is gone, like summer lightning), that in a short time we shall begin a life which will not end, and that the whole of its character and condition must depend on the preparation for that life which we make in this world, what grievous calamity should we dread so much as that worldliness which puts upon our very souls the seal of death. A day or two since, in "The Imitation of Christ," I met with this line: "Vanitas, omne est vanitas, præter amare Deum." "Vanity, all is vanity, but to love God." It is the common saying of all ascetic writings; but, as they understood it, it involved a great mistake -- for they thought that this world stood, not merely with worldly men, but necessarily, and of its own nature, in absolute antagonism to heaven. Formerly I regarded the maxim, I suppose, only in its ascetic meaning, and therefore as only partially true; yet now it seems to me the truest thing that can be said -- perfectly and absolutely true. For in this very world, God dwells. He so governs and shapes all the circumstances of life, that if we use them aright we may draw near to Him here, and prepare to be near Him in the Forever after. He longs for our love -- our love, which is so feeble and faint, and yet so precious in His sight when we give it to Him freely. And why does He so desire it? Ah! I have told you many times before, and yet we cannot too often remember it, that it is because, if we love Him, He can make us supremely happy. All that belongs to us or occurs to us in this life, is so ordered that we may find in it the means of putting far from us those obstructions of evil which prevent us from seeing Him as He is, and as He has revealed Himself to us; for if we did but so see Him, how could we fail to love Him with the whole heart and soul? All is vanity but to love God. But when we understand Him and His Providence, we shall love Him in all the activities and duties of life, and in all innocent enjoyments which we gratefully accept as His gifts.
Swedenborg says something like this: "The only place where we can overcome worldliness is in the world." Hence necessity drives almost all into it; and it calls upon us so enticingly, or so imperatively, that solitary life is almost impossible. We cannot resist this necessity; on this point we have little freedom. Our freedom begins when the question comes, What use will we make of this world? And the answer involves an awful responsibility.
XVIII.
YOU ask me to explain to you the early verses of the sixty-third chapter of Isaiah, about Edom. In a page or two I can only give you hints for you to work out, but I will try to do that. "Esau is Edom," as we are told in Genesis xxxvi. 1. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob represent the three degrees of life -- heavenly, spiritual, and natural. Esau, the brother of Jacob, also represents the natural. But Esau represents natural good, and the whole history of Esau is a wonderful picture of what merely natural good is and does in our poor human nature. If we read the book of Genesis simply as an historical narrative, without attaching to it any spiritual symbolism, I think we cannot always understand why the Divine approval and blessing should have been given to Jacob, and why Esau should be so condemned; in fact, our sympathies are often with Esau. Because the good that was in him was natural good, for that very reason we can understand and admire it more readily as good; for it is like our own. How often do we form similar judgments of the friends and acquaintances who are about us!
Esau took possession of Mount Seir, and when his descendants possessed the whole range of mountains running south from near the Dead Sea to the head of the Red Sea (the Gulf of Akaba), they gave to the whole country Esau's name of "Edom." In the Word, this always represents natural good under one or other of its aspects; and, as this when only natural and selfish is bad as bad can be, the denunciations against Edom in the prophets are terrible. But there often occur passages in which are intimations that it may be redeemed and delivered -- as in Amos ix., 11th and 12th verses: "In that day will I raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and close up the breaches thereof; and I will raise up his ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old; That they may possess the remnant of Edom, and of all the heathen which are called by my name, saith the Lord that doeth this." Also in Psalm cviii. 10: "Who will bring me into the strong city, who will lead me into Edom?" Sometimes Edom is mentioned with direct reference to our Lord; and then it always means His human nature -- as in the passage you refer to. "He cometh from Edom mighty to save." He cometh and worketh for us in His assumed humanity to be our Saviour, as was in no other way possible. Garments dyed (literally dyed red), are truths warm and bright with love. "Glorious in His apparel" is, glorious in the truth He reveals. When you read the third and fourth verses, remember that the vengeance, wrath, and fury of the Lord are only the aspects His love bears to those who stand in utter hostility to Him. He cannot be anything but the eternally loving and merciful Father; but we, alas! wrapped in the dark clouds of our own evil passions, see not beyond them. We do not go out of ourselves, and this poor, distorted image of self is reflected everywhere, till the Father's smile becomes to us a frown of wrath!
"There was none to uphold, therefore mine own arm brought salvation." There was nothing, nothing in the human nature He came to regenerate, that could help him. So it is with the Edom which belongs to us -- to you and to me. But you may ask, How then can it be true that we may coöperate with Him in every step? And more than that, even He cannot lead us forward one step, unless we do cooperate [cooperate]. Is not this one of the distinguishing doctrines of our Church? Most certainly. Evil as we are, He can open our hearts to His influence, and does in childhood and infancy as well as youth and age, in myriads of ways, and then He can offer to our acceptance His own strength. He does all that may be done to induce us to accept it; all that is consistent with our perfect freedom to reject it. If we do receive this strength from God and use it to work with Him, then indeed we take a step forward, and by this we acquire the possibility of receiving more strength, in which we may advance another step -- and this forever and ever.
XIX.
YOU are much grieved and perplexed at the trials and consequent depression into which your excellent young friend L____ has fallen. I am grieved, too, to hear of her depression (and yet that may, perhaps, soon be mended), but not to hear of the trials -- although this may sound to you cold and unsympathetic to the last degree. But, remember who sends these troubles. Your friend was full of natural goodness -- that goodness of which I spoke to you in a recent letter; she was kind and amiable, generous and patient, and yet lacked one essential. She did not look to the Lord, nor acknowledge in Him the constant Giver of all her pleasant possessions; among others of her sweet and equable temper, which endeared her so much to those about her. With an appearance of humility which was deceptive even to herself, she in fact prided herself much on her Christian graces; more especially when they were applauded by those about her -- for she was exquisitely sensitive to human opinion. So much faith had she in those poor, short-sighted, human judgments, that a harsh sentence, even from one whom she might know to be utterly incompetent to form any just opinion whatever, would be a sudden blight; yet soon the praises of others would reinstate her in the happy condition of self-satisfaction.
Yet as gleams of truth come to us all sometimes athwart the clouds in which we wrap ourselves, so L ____ exclaimed to me one day, in what seemed like a prophecy of that which has now come: "Some calamity must one day befall me! Nothing short of this will ever bring me to God. I believe I really hardly care for Him at all. I do love my fellow-men, and I care so much more for the praise of men than the praise of God."
How much of that which we deem benevolence or philanthropy, is so mixed with selfishness that hardly any virtue is left in it. We love our equals and dear friends because they give us love and sympathy, even if for no baser motive; and if these gifts were withdrawn should we still love? Our kindly feelings towards the poor and dependent are too often sustained and kept alive by the flattery which we receive from them.
Nothing is more difficult than to look upon trials and persecutions as blessings; and though some would confess it to be true with a partial belief, others might altogether laugh at such a paradox. When we ourselves are the "victims," as we call it, it is harder than ever to accept the chastisement as a token of love; but when others are afflicted, we are sometimes able to see the great benefit accruing to them from their afflictions. This selfish clearness of vision could not be yours with regard to your friend, whom you loved too dearly to see her sufferings unmoved. Nor would I ask you to be unmoved, but only to be filled with a perfect assurance of God's love for her, and also to believe in the complete and exquisite adaptation of every permitted joy or sorrow to our need at the moment.
You know the persecutions of the early Christians. But all historians acknowledge that this was a most potent influence in the growth of Christianity. You must have met with the old and common saying, "The blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church." But the church consisted of the men and women who composed it. And it must have been good for them, if it was good for the church. Some of them knew it was, and rejoiced in it then. They all know it now, and are grateful for what grieved them. But if it was good and necessary for them -- had it not been necessary it would not have been permitted -- is it not certain that analogous causes make it good for us also to pass through pain and suffering?
XX.
I WANT a new English word, -- one that shall translate the common French word "orienter." This name means, primarily, to know where the East is, and thence the other points of one's compass, and thence how to guide one's self. A French critic, speaking of Hegel's confused and cloudy metaphysics, says: "I cannot understand him. I am unable >m'orienter,' and do not know in what direction he seeks to lead me." But this is only one of the ways in which this metaphor may be used. There is scarcely anything to which it does not apply. Happy are they who, in the whole course of life, are always able "s'orienter," and know where their East is that East to which, Swedenborg tells us, the angels always look. Miserable are they who are not thus able! Shall I give you a figure which seems to me to illustrate this? Suppose a man to be travelling on one of our boundless prairies, -- clouds chase each other across the sky; all nature, as it seems to him, has a lowering aspect; he is quite discouraged, for he seeks his home and there is no sun to guide him. He must go on, for it is death to stand still. He knows not whether he goes forward or backward, or what is forward or backward. With eyes fastened to the ground he moves on, but with the sluggishness of despair. See! from that little rift in the clouds the sun peeps out; but our traveller no longer glances upward with his earth-bound eyes, and that heavenly guidance he loses sight of. He still moves on in his random course, but night approaches. Whose footsteps are these? No other than his own, -- he has been walking in a circle.
Another man in the same wilderness, under as dark a sky, as weary and as far from refuge, knows that behind those clouds there must be a sun to tell him how to walk on earth. It is for him first to believe and hope, and then to look up, and, if he may, find it. Let his way be miry and difficult, suppose him faint with hunger and his lips parched with thirst, and let a sense of loneliness make his heart almost sink -- yet if he looks above, and looks trustingly, he will find his guide. Yes, there is a beautiful bright gleam! He presses on, and if every step is one labor more, it is also one hope more, for he is certain that he is so much nearer rest. He knows the end he seeks -- he knows that he shall reach it. In time? Perhaps not. But he will reach it.
It seems to me that under one or the other of these descriptions all the lives I know of may be ranked -- in different ways or degrees, however. But then it is always certain that the best and happiest life is that in which a definite purpose is always in view, and always approached.
I was much moved by your allusion to John the Baptist. As he represents Repentance, so his whole history in its least details is a perfect history of the birth, growth, nature, and working of repentance. John said: "I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness." Has it ever struck you what perfect humility was there -- what humility there must be about all true repentance? He claimed nothing for himself -- rather would he turn away all attention from his own personality; he prefers to call himself only a Voice -- to be known of men simply as the instrument and the forerunner of the Lord. And yet this was the great teacher of whom our Lord Himself said: "Among them that are born of women there hath not arisen a greater than John the Baptist." There can be no deep and sincere repentance without a profound and very painful consciousness of sinfulness; yet in this very darkest spot of the deep valley of the shadow of death, the Lord is seen to draw near, and Repentance cries,"Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world." In the fifty-first Psalm -- which expresses as no other words ever did the last intensity of humiliation and repentance -- occur these words: "Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean." What the plant intended by the Hebrew word translated "hyssop" actually was, is not certainly known. But it was used as a means of purification, and it was bitter. It is a prayer to be cleansed by bitterness -- by sorrow and suffering. It welcomes, it asks for sorrow and suffering, if only they will cleanse. Why can we not all so pray? Why at least when the cup of bitterness is held to our lips, can we not so drink as to help it do the work for which it is given?
XXI.
ONE of the fashions of the day is a little book propounding a list of questions as to various likes and dislikes, to which answers are to be written. It is called "Mental Photograph Book," because the answers are supposed to give a picture of the writer's mind, even if jestingly given. Among the questions was this: "What is your ideal of profound misery?" The answers interested me. One was, "To live with people who constantly and entirely misunderstand you." This seemed to me more rational than most of the other answers to the same question. To one