11 
 
 BR 148 .A8 1913 
 
 Atkins, Gaius Glenn, 1868- 
 
 1956. 
 Pilgrims of the lonely road 
 
Pilgrims of the Lonely Road 
 
Pilgrims of the 
 Lonely Road 
 
 By .c 
 
 GAIUS GLENN ATKINS 
 
 Minister of the Central Congregational Church 
 Providence 
 
 New York Chicago Toronto 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 London and Edinburgh 
 
Copyright, 19 13, by 
 C 7 3 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
 Chicago: 125 North Wabash Ave. 
 Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. 
 London: 21 Paternoster Square 
 Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street 
 
To A. H. A. 
 Good Comrade of the Friendly Road 
 
Contents 
 
 
 Introduction 
 
 9 
 
 I. 
 
 The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius . 
 
 21 
 
 II. 
 
 The Confessions of St. Augustine . 
 
 6i 
 
 III. 
 
 The Imitation of Christ 
 
 1 06 
 
 IV. 
 
 Theologia Germanica 
 
 149 
 
 V. 
 
 Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress . 
 
 191 
 
 VI. 
 
 Newman's Apologia .... 
 
 . 245 
 
 VII. 
 
 Tolstoy's Confessions 
 
 . 281 
 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 . 335 
 
Introduction 
 
 THE author of these studies does not know any 
 better way of preparing an introduction to them 
 than by giving some account of their genesis. 
 They were, to begin with, a series of rather informal ad- 
 dresses on certain books of the confessional type given to 
 the people of the author's parish as a Lenten exercise 
 under the caption •' Books of the Spirit." In the 
 addresses themselves the books were considered with 
 no more reference than seemed absolutely necessary 
 to the men who wrote them and with little reference, at 
 least in the beginning of the series, to the deeper connec- 
 tions of the spiritual process of which the books them- 
 selves are the revelation. Something of the informal 
 character of that first presentation and the method of it 
 has persisted in spite of much revision. There is very 
 little need to say so much as this, for the discriminating 
 critic will discover it directly. 
 
 It was quite impossible, however, to go far in the study 
 of such books as these without finding in them varying 
 aspects of a deeper movement which underruns them all. 
 The sense of this grew with the process of revision : the 
 processes which the books reveal rather than the books 
 themselves came to be uppermost in the author's mind. 
 It became apparent that each book recorded some aspect 
 of a common quest, undertaken at the bidding of im- 
 mense spiritual compulsions, pursued in interior loneli- 
 nesses by men following a road whose major landmarks 
 are, in each instance, much the same and end almost in 
 
 9 
 
10 INTRODUCTION 
 
 the same country, though indeed the various pilgrims do 
 not at all agree in the way of naming the goals towards 
 which they strive. 
 
 This reshaping of material beneath the author's hand 
 has made it hard to find a fit name for the studies, for 
 here, when all is said and done, is not so much a study of 
 certain books of the spirit as of certain pilgrims of the 
 lonely road who set out in search of peace. No need to say 
 that the records with which we are dealing do not exhaust 
 the story of the search for peace ; great regions are wholly 
 unapproached, great masters not so much as named. But 
 on the whole these men and their books are typical, es- 
 pecially of the quest as influenced by what is deepest and 
 most distinctive in Christianity. Only one man — Marcus 
 Aurelius — is uninfluenced by the Christian spirit and in- 
 deed there is not a little in the life of the great stoic em- 
 peror which suggests, as Martha has said, that some breath 
 of Christianity itself had already begun to draw down into 
 his life and philosophy. Marcus AureHus apart, all the 
 rest of this fellowship have been so germinally influenced 
 by Christian conceptions in all the action and reaction of 
 their lives that without Christianity it is utterly impossible 
 to imagine what they would have been. Here is a body 
 of very great literature which is inexplicable except as we 
 discern through and behind it the play of great domi- 
 nant Christian conceptions and experiences. 
 
 More than that it is by no mere accident or indeed 
 through the superficial necessities of a Christian environ- 
 ment that these men speak the language of Christianity, fall 
 back upon its assurances and are guided by its great affir- 
 mations. They are compelled to do just that. Had they 
 been driven by the same deep needs but with no knowl- 
 edge at all of the great Christian formularies, along the 
 
INTRODUCTION ii 
 
 roads of their pilgrimage, one sees that they would none 
 the less have found the equivalent of these formularies, 
 though with other names, and in the deeper part of them 
 have borne witness to the same truths. The reason for 
 this is not far to seek. Life is everywhere and always the 
 same. Similar processes and experiences are, for those 
 who seek to live sincerely, unescapable in the end. All 
 pilgrims tell the same story and when you begin to plot 
 the road they have travelled you find, to repeat, that they 
 have all been following the same way-marks and, if they 
 have at all succeeded in their quest, have come at last to 
 the same region. They have fought with the same weap- 
 ons and rested in the same assurances and these assurances 
 prove to be the supreme and encompassing certainties of 
 Christianity itself. All this casts a light which our own 
 time sorely needs upon the necessities of the spirit, the 
 genesis of faith and the deep-rooted inevitableness of the 
 forms in which faith expresses itself. 
 
 So considered the experiences of such men as St. 
 Augustine, John Bunyan, Tolstoy, as well as the consid- 
 eration of those more organic experiences which find a 
 voice in the " Imitation of Christ" and the " Theologia Ger- 
 manica," supply new interpretations of the significance of 
 the great Christian contentions. They are rooted in hfe. 
 They are, in the end, simply the attempt to formulate the 
 experiences, confidences, abnegations, battlings, sereni- 
 ties and victories which the pilgrim has known, in the 
 light of those interpretations of God in His world which 
 have made life possible for great and sorely tried men. 
 It is not hard to understand Augustinianism, for example, 
 when one understands Augustine himself. So inter- 
 preted his theology is no theology at all, but simply the 
 endeavour of a man who has lived greatly, suffered 
 
12 INTRODUCTION 
 
 greatly and triumphed greatly to uncover for us all 
 the secret places, the hidden sources of his strength 
 and peace. St. Augustine did not begin as a 
 theologian ; he became a theologian only as he strove 
 to recast and formulate for the instruction and di- 
 rection of others that by which he knew himself to 
 have been guided and saved. His theology is simply 
 the hardening down, the casting into definite moulds of 
 what was immensely fluid, vivid, vital as he himself lived 
 through it. What is true of St. Augustine is true of 
 every great theologian and every great system of the- 
 ology, except of course those systems of theology which 
 have been recast by men who have dealt with them as 
 logic rather than life and have themselves failed to share 
 the great and searching experiences of which the systems 
 were in their beginning the expression. Great creeds 
 are, in the end, just the expression of life in its most in- 
 tense and eager aspects, seeking to uncover and describe 
 the springs of its power, the hills of its serenity. We 
 should indeed be all the gainers if we might have a new 
 nomenclature which would wholly free us from the mis- 
 takes, misconceptions and prejudices which centuries of 
 theological debate have woven in and about our inherited 
 systems. Apparently this is quite impossible. And 
 since it is impossible, there is no better way in which to 
 be made sure that we are not dealing with either shadows 
 or the artificial constructions of speculation than to dis- 
 cern how vital these great contentions were in their be- 
 ginning, how impossible it is to consider great spiritual 
 experiences apart from them and how constantly, now in 
 this form and now in that, they renew and reassert 
 themselves ; to see how inevitable all the great pilgrims 
 of the roads of the spirit have found in the Incarnation, 
 
INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 which is the witness of God with us, and in the Cross, 
 which is the sign of God suffering for us and in a Justify- 
 ing Faith, which is after all a kind of holy adventure — 
 the throwing of the whole weight of life in its practical 
 conduct upon such persuasions as these — the light of all 
 their seeing, the seat of all their power, the source of all 
 their peace. 
 
 Besides such general considerations as these, these 
 studies have also made other things evident. Large 
 mystical elements enter into all confessional literature. 
 Nothing is more significant in our own time than the 
 new employment of the word mystic. It has long 
 stood for the undefinable and for formless and difficult 
 spiritual attitudes. It is by no means easy to define 
 mysticism even now, but we are coming to see with in- 
 creased clearness that the mystical temper is not formless 
 and above all that it is not sterile. On the contrary it 
 has been unbelievably rich in great and transforming 
 qualities of life. The mystic moves in regions of inner 
 certainties, he ventures much upon the testimonies of his 
 own experience. He is persuaded that he is in intimate 
 and fruitful fellowship with the Unseen and Eternal and 
 all that is strongest and most significant in his life is 
 born of this fellowship. He gives a validity to the 
 emotions which our arid intellectualism has too long 
 denied. He rejoices in far horizons and fills them with 
 wonder and adoration. And yet with all this he does 
 not lose himself nor does his consuming attachment to 
 God mean detachment from life and its duties. He is 
 often unexpectedly practical, brave and far seeing. He 
 is, without knowing it, a pragmatist in the regions of 
 faith. He knows whom he has believed and justifies his 
 faith by the fruits of it in his own soul. The interest in 
 
14 INTRODUCTION 
 
 mysticism, which is just now so apparent, is a testimony 
 to the value of such attitudes as these as a corrective of 
 our own deficient attitudes. We have refused to allow 
 the emotions their proper place in a rich and ordered 
 inner hfe; we have depended too much upon pure defi- 
 nition ; we have refused to recognize that the real value 
 of much which so wonderfully dominates and transforms 
 life is that it cannot be defined, that it opens on the side 
 towards the infinite, and so allows room and place for 
 forces within us which are as impatient of mere defini- 
 tions and abstractions as our vision is impatient of 
 shadows and barriers which veil from us those distances 
 in which the eye rejoices and all lesser things find their 
 true place and proportion. 
 
 It is evident, in the next place, that these men were 
 committed to a quest for peace in liberty. It is impos- 
 sible to separate either peace or liberty from the goal 
 which they sought. They sought peace in liberty. 
 Each one of them was much weighed upon by what 
 William James calls the sense of incompleteness. They 
 did not always so name it. It was for them very much 
 more often the sense of sin and moral impotency. But 
 however they did name it they sought to be set free 
 from fightings and fears within, from rigid and inade- 
 quate systems without. They were always, without ex- 
 ception, doubly constrained. Sometimes they sought to 
 escape doubts and perplexities and always they sought 
 to be freed from a strife which filled all the table-lands of 
 their souls with its clamour, from tendencies and long- 
 ings which continually defeated them in their endeavour 
 after better things and constantly drew them back into 
 the shadow, but to whose unchallenged supremacy they 
 never for a moment consented. As they sought this 
 
INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 inner peace however, they were, as we see when we 
 stand far enough back from the whole movement, com- 
 pelled at the same time to seek new forms of faith, wor- 
 ship, ecclesiastical organization and even of society 
 itself. Even men of the type of Newman who react 
 against the extreme individuahsm of their inherited faith 
 and who seek spiritual security beneath the shelter of 
 almost immemorial institutions are, none the less, seeking 
 freedom and space in which spiritually they may live 
 and move and have their being. By so much the 
 more are the larger movements which flow beneath 
 and about them movements towards liberty. Mys- 
 ticism and half obscure impulses towards spiritual de- 
 mocracy, tugging like a ground swell at the bases of 
 pre-reformation society and breaking into tumult after 
 the reformation, are a part of that quest for liberty which 
 has become the dominant social factor of the last two 
 centuries and which, in one form or another, fills all our 
 horizons with its portent or its promise. We cannot 
 dwell too strongly upon the real relation between forces 
 which are everywhere operative in the world to-day and 
 the deeper, quieter movements to which the " Theologia 
 Germanica," for example, gives voice. That displacement 
 of outer authority by inner regnancies, that crowning 
 and mitering of the soul which is at once the record of 
 the development of individual life and stormy national 
 movements would have to be so utterly rewritten as to 
 become unimaginable if we considered it apart from those 
 interpretations of hfe and the will of God which St. Au- 
 gustine supplies or from the possibility of a man setting 
 out alone with no passport but the roll in his bosom of 
 which " Pilgrim's Progress " is the record. 
 
 Finally each man or book with which we are now deal- 
 
i6 INTRODUCTION 
 
 ing marks the achievement of some great transition. 
 They move us by the recital of what they sought and ac- 
 comphshed because, Hke Pilgrim, they set out running 
 from this or that city of destruction and came in the end 
 unto another city set in cloudless light upon some far- 
 seen, far-sought summit. St. Augustine accomplished 
 the transition from paganism to Christianity ; the " Theo- 
 logia Germanica " tells between the lines the story of 
 obscure multitudes who passed from the externalism into 
 which mediaeval Catholicism had hardened down into a 
 most intimate sense of God, a most intimate communion 
 with Him, unconditioned by sacraments, creeds and 
 authorities. Even Tolstoy, unsatisfactory as many of 
 his contentions are now seen to be, really does voice 
 all the discontent of our own time with the vast burden 
 of a civilization whose materialism feeds men at the 
 best with bitter bread and at the worst is cruel and crush- 
 ing. It is not too much to say then that each man 
 or book in this fellowship marks the beginning of a new 
 and better time and even though long spiritual and social 
 movements seem to bring us back to the place from which 
 they set out we are always returning with a difference, 
 and always upon higher levels. 
 
 Such studies as these would not really be complete, 
 indeed they cannot rightly be begun, without some con- 
 sideration of a man who, 'jaexpectedly enough, is the 
 point of departure in this whole process : that man is 
 Saul of Tarsus. Such a study was originally planned, 
 but it has been omitted, partly because the book is quite 
 long enough as it is and partly because in the judgment of 
 the publishers any study of St. Paul would give to a book 
 of this sort a seemingly theological aspect which would 
 really misrepresent its character. The author can only 
 
INTRODUCTION 17 
 
 say that it is unfortunate indeed that we cannot consider 
 the confessions of St. Paul in the same free and vital way 
 in which we may consider the confessions of St. Augus- 
 tine. His letters are the first in the long literature of 
 Christian confession ; he is the first great mystic ; he 
 achieved the first great transition and what we call his 
 theology is nothing but his own attempt to make evi- 
 dent to others the great conceptions by which he him- 
 self was empowered and set free. The springs of all our 
 passion for liberty, at least as that passion has been at all 
 shaped or influenced by the faith which has dominated 
 Europe since the fall of the Roman empire, take their 
 rise in him. And all the forces which prevent liberty 
 from becoming license, which subordinate and consecrate 
 it are equally to be found in the considerations by which 
 he sought to restrain and discipline the members of his 
 little churches. He handled, though he did not so dream, 
 forces which were destined to be deployed upon vaster 
 fields, conceptions which were to be urged in remote and 
 strangely unexpected controversies ; for the ground of 
 emancipation, human brotherhood, democracy, declara- 
 tions of independence, revolutions, the death of caste, the 
 abolition of privilege, the exaltation of a common hu- 
 manity and the genesis of the social conscience are all to 
 be found in his teaching. 
 
 In his emphasis upon faith as a fructifying and con- 
 trolling principle in the life of the spirit he is the very 
 fountainhead of all that is finest and most fruitful in the 
 centuries which follow. The faith which he urged was 
 spiritual openness, receptivity, self-committal. It had its 
 mystical qualities and its practical applications ; it was the 
 readjustment of life on a higher level and in answer to 
 new and commanding realities ; it was taking God at His 
 
18 INTRODUCTION 
 
 word ; it was simplicity ; it was emancipation from fear ; 
 it was living as children live in their father's house, know- 
 ing indeed that life is neither simple nor easy, that the 
 household itself is related to other causes and interests, 
 wide and difficult, that somewhere and somehow there are 
 burdens to be borne and battles to be fought and contin- 
 gencies to be faced, difficulties to be overcome, and yet 
 with a trust that the father is equal to the burdens of 
 fatherhood and that the household is to be a place of 
 peace, serenity and quiet dependence. He would have 
 all those to whom he wrote, for whom he wrought, saved 
 from their futile endeavours after their own salvation, not 
 because they were not needing to be saved, but because 
 God Himself was concerned with their salvation, com- 
 mitted to it by all that the Divine implies. They them- 
 selves might therefore be at peace. There are champions 
 who, having taken our causes into their own hands, dis- 
 miss us to rest. When God Himself has undertaken the 
 salvation of His children He asks of them not strife, but 
 the serene acceptance of His own effective grace. No 
 need to say that just in so far as any of the pilgrims of 
 the lonely road have come into any kind of peace they 
 have found it in just these regions. Sometimes they 
 acknowledge their debt to this, the first of their comrades ; 
 sometimes they are unwitting of their obligation. But 
 if St. Paul is not the first of all the great company, 
 known and unknown, who have followed the gleam as the 
 light of it has been mediated by the great facts and sug- 
 gestions of the Christian Evangel, then the author, at least, 
 does not know who is. 
 
 Here, then, are the determining principles of all that 
 these studies seek to illustrate. They rehearse, now in 
 this fashion, now in that, the experiences of men who set 
 
INTRODUCTION 19 
 
 out to find liberty and peace, achieve great transitions 
 and emancipations ; men who are always lonely and yet 
 belong to a vast fellowship, who follow various roads and 
 yet journey by a common highway. Such men are con- 
 stantly repeating and rehearsing the experiences of the 
 past and yet with a difference ; they laboured in secret 
 but published their labour to the world ; they were ac- 
 counted dreamers but their dreams have rewritten his- 
 tory ; they have released in the silences forces which in 
 the end have more than once been mobilized on fields of 
 battle and filled senates and parliaments with their 
 clamour. They testify to many things, but they testify to 
 this above all : that history is a spiritual process and we 
 shall never understand its most massive movements until 
 we have understood its potencies of silent, hidden spiri- 
 tual travail. 
 
 It only remains to be said that in the preparation of 
 these studies the author has gone as much as possible to 
 the sources themselves. More than most other books, 
 books of confession supply to those who study them all 
 the needed material. But beside that, the author has 
 availed himself of many sources of knowledge and com- 
 ment, too many, indeed, to try to list them here. 
 They are all accessible and many of them very simple. 
 As far as possible he has sought to give credit in the 
 course of the book itself; if he has failed in any instance 
 so to do it is an oversight which is here acknowledged 
 and apologized for. And if those who happen to read 
 this book find in it more than once this or that which 
 they have seen before, they may be comfortably persuaded 
 that the author has seen it too and that they are simply 
 meeting old friends to whom generally now the author 
 gladly acknowledges his obligation. He is in debt to 
 
20 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Professor John E. Goodrich, of the University of Vermont, 
 who has read the proofs, to the Reverend Charles A. 
 Dinsmore for the partial suggestion of a title, and if his 
 good friend John Hutton of Glasgow should ever see this 
 introduction he will know that the author gladly con- 
 fesses his priority in similar studies, even though by a 
 happy coincidence these essays had already taken form 
 before the author saw Mr. Hutton's fine and kindling 
 volume : *' Pilgrims in the Region of Faith." 
 
I 
 
 The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius 
 
 ST. PAUL and Marcus Aurelius are divided, as 
 years go, by something like the space of a cen- 
 tury, but in their essential temper the two men are 
 separated by all that separates Stoicism and Christianity. 
 Directly one has said this it has to be qualified, for there 
 are indeed similarities between the teaching of St. Paul 
 and the teaching of the Stoics so striking as to have led 
 many to believe that there must have been commerce 
 between Seneca and Saul of Tarsus. The frontiers of 
 Christianity and Stoicism meet as the frontiers of all fine 
 and noble ways of thinking meet, but their capital cities 
 are far, far apart. 
 
 Any consideration of the " Meditations " of Marcus 
 Aurelius demands, at least, some consideration of their 
 governing philosophy, that is of Stoicism. Stoicism is sim- 
 ple enough if you stand far enough from it. The name 
 itself has a well defined meaning, suggests directly certain 
 attitudes towards life about which there is no debate. It 
 is by no means so simple when seen close by. Its gov- 
 erning conceptions are vague and not always consistent, 
 its roads take unexpected turnings through a hill country 
 much overlaid with clouds. It is a philosophy trans- 
 formed into moral idealism ; moral idealism exalted to 
 the levels of religion itself. In the main Stoicism as a 
 philosophy is the contribution of Greek genius to the 
 interpretation and conduct of life, though there are those 
 
 21 
 
22 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 who think that the founder of the Stoic School was himself 
 of Phoenician descent ; that Stoicism reflects the Semitic 
 inheritances of its founder ; and that we have in it the 
 mingling of the Greek and Semitic temperaments. This 
 may well be so and its being so will explain many things. 
 Born in the East and cradled in the colonnades of 
 Athens, it rooted itself deeply in the hfe of the Roman 
 empire, was taught in the palaces of Nero, found rare 
 expression in the life of a scarred and crippled slave, and 
 prompted an emperor, in lonely meditations and self-ex- 
 amination, to expressions of its essential spirit which 
 have made his interpretations of it deathless. 
 
 It began as a philosophy, taught by Zeno and named 
 as it is because he taught it hard by the market-place of 
 Athens in a glorious porch whose columned cloisters the 
 genius of Athenian artists had adorned with frescoes of 
 Homeric battles and Athenian victories. It is not easy 
 to put the substance of that ancient teaching into a 
 paragraph ; the very contradictory qualities of it make 
 the clear statement of it difficult. It has the mingled 
 strength and weakness of all the Greek interpretations of 
 life and the world ; interpretations now supremely vera- 
 cious in their penetrating vision, now strangely childlike 
 and inadequate in their speculations, yet always redeem- 
 ing their fallacies by their very scope, audacity and 
 deathless insight. Had the Greek been all sage or all 
 child he would have been easier of comprehension ; his 
 subtle fusion of sage and child is the thing which baffles 
 us. 
 
 As taught by its founders, Stoicism was an interpreta- 
 tion of life and the world in terms of matter and of force. 
 Those ancient worthies distinguished clearly enough be- 
 tween matter and force in their operation, but identified 
 
MEDITATIONS OF MARCUS AURELIUS 23 
 
 them in their essential nature. Force was a finer kind of 
 matter, reason a finer kind of force, and personahty but 
 the expression of the indvveUing reason. All was, there- 
 fore, in the thought of the Greek a seamless robe. The 
 world of Zeno and the world of Dante do not greatly 
 differ (in their physical characteristics, that is; otherwise 
 they are poles apart). The Stoic's world was earth, air, 
 fire and water, each in its concentric sphere. It began 
 in a primary unity, some mother stuff, out of whose 
 travail issued " force and matter, soul and body, as well as 
 the variety and multiplicity of individual things." In his 
 more daring moments the Stoic was quite convinced that 
 this cosmic travail would repeat itself again and again, 
 and that an aeon- weary world would more than once re- 
 turn to its golden morning-time, but he was never quite 
 sure that in such rebirth it was committed to anything 
 more than the repetition of experiences, in the bearing 
 of which it had already grown old. Each cycle would, 
 at the best, but repeat what earlier cycles had known and 
 borne. Nor was he ever quite sure of God's place in all 
 this. Sometimes God is the living activity of the whole. 
 " God, nature. Reason, world-soul, Germinal Reason, Law, 
 Providence, necessity, destiny are but expressions of the 
 different relations in which the one universe, the sum and 
 whole of existence, stands to particular things and events 
 within it." Sometimes He is a " spiritual power work- 
 ing upon and in the material universe." This is only to 
 say that Stoicism shared those natural doubts and hesita- 
 tions common to us all. It would be easy, even in the 
 devotional literature of our own time, to find a like loose- 
 ness in the use of terms which carry the aspirations and 
 idealizations of our souls and are indeed fit vehicles 
 for that supreme and momentous task because we can 
 
24 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 and must use them in these vaster, freer ways. They 
 carry what we put into them. In our times of noble 
 faith and clear insight they expand to meet our spiritual 
 passion ; in our times of doubt they contract themselves 
 to the narrower measure of our courage and insight. 
 They have the uncertainty of the ocean's shore, they 
 answer to the ebbing and flowing tides of our spirit. All 
 pantheistic systems are especially fluid and take their range 
 and colour from the faith and temper of those who pro- 
 fess them. A clearer recognition of all this would have 
 saved the modern interpreters of Stoicism — many of whom, 
 it must be confessed, labour sadly in their treatment of 
 their theme — from the perplexity in which they find 
 themselves. Stoicism is, in a sentence, in its definitions 
 of God most largely a Pantheism, vague and doubt- 
 ful in its earlier developments, but growing in its clear 
 sense of God as in and still above His world, with the 
 growing spiritual quahty of those who profess it. Yet 
 even Marcus Aurelius is no more consistently con- 
 stant in his faith than troubled, burdened men to-day, 
 and his changing tempers are reflected in his " Medita- 
 tions." 
 
 Uncertain and fluid as is the Stoic's thought of God, it 
 was none the less never divorced in any of its nobler ex- 
 pressions from a really great and brooding sense of the 
 Unseen and Eternal. It saturates the baffling orders of 
 this world with the very presence of the Divine and rises 
 in its finer expressions to a sincere devotion to a God at 
 once within and beyond His worshippers, and within and 
 beyond the world which they inhabited. Cleanthes's 
 hymn is the classic expression of the finer reverences 
 and insights of Stoicism, and Cleanthes has found an 
 echo in a poem of Emily Bronte which breathes the very 
 
MEDITATIONS OF MARCUS AURELIUS 25 
 
 essence of what has been, and is, best and most devout 
 in the Stoic faith. 
 
 O God, within my breast, 
 
 Almighty, ever-present Deity ! 
 Life, that in me has rest, 
 
 As I — undying life — have power in Thee. 
 
 With wide-embracing love 
 
 Thy spirit animates eternal years, 
 Pervades and broods above, 
 
 Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears. 
 
 Though earth and man were gone. 
 And suns and universes ceased to be, 
 
 And Thou wert left alone. 
 
 Every existence would exist in Thee. 
 
 There is not room for Death, 
 
 No atom that his might could render void ; 
 Thou — Thou art Being, Breath, 
 
 And what Thou art may never be destroyed.* 
 
 Just as Stoicism, to save itself from a numbing Panthe- 
 ism, was finally compelled in its reverences and adorations 
 to distinguish between God and the world, so it was com- 
 pelled to distinguish between the soul and the body which 
 it inhabits and to assign creative priority to the soul. All 
 that is most distinctive in the moral idealism of this great 
 school is really rooted here. " From the unity of soul it 
 follows that all psychical processes, — sensation, assent, 
 impulse, — proceed from reason, the ruling part; that is 
 to say, there is no strife or division : the one rational 
 soul alone has sensations, assents to judgments, is im- 
 pelled towards objects of desire, just as much as it thinks 
 or reasons." ^ 
 
 All this is miserably technical, but what it means is 
 
 1 Hicks, "Stoic and Epicurean," pp. 14 -17. 
 
 ' " Encyclopaedia Britannica," Vol. XXII, p. 565. 
 
26 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 that the soul is the creative and the determining power 
 in hfe, and reason the determining and controlling power 
 of the soul. " Translated into simple, every-day terms," 
 says President Hyde, " this doctrine in its application to 
 the personal life means that the value of any external fact 
 or possession or experience depends on the way in which 
 we take it." " Stoicism is fundamentally this psycho- 
 logical doctrine of apperception, carried over and applied 
 in the field of the personal life, — the doctrine, namely, 
 that no external thing alone can affect for good or evil, 
 until we have woven it into the texture of our mental life, 
 painted it with the colour of our dominant mood and 
 temper, and stamped it with the approval of our will." * 
 
 Here then is the first great line of approach to the 
 moral idealism of the Stoic. Since reason is the power 
 which shapes each man's world, his world is not so much 
 a gift as a creation ; his real world is not forced upon 
 him; he may give it what shape or colour he will. Its 
 circumstances and incidents are not indeed wholly negli- 
 gible, but they are never for a moment dominant or final ; 
 they are merely the stuff upon which reason may dwell, 
 to which she may issue her mandates and to which she 
 may give the colour and constitution of her own com- 
 manding conceptions. It goes without saying that great 
 implications lie wrapped up in such an attitude as this. 
 Men who so conceive and approach life will, at their 
 best, be masterful, and will be always nobly independent 
 of the mutations of fortune. They will not be unduly 
 cast down by sorrow or unduly exalted by happiness or 
 favour. They will reign without let or hindrance in the 
 empire of their own souls and, if that empire be well ad- 
 ministered, they will be nobly content. They will have 
 
 * Hyde, «« The Five Great Philosophies of Life," pp. 66, 70. 
 
MEDITATIONS OF MARCUS AURELIUS 27 
 
 strongholds into which retreating nothing can assail them, 
 and great central serenities which will never be overcast. 
 They will not, of course, come without sore struggle to 
 such a state as this, nor, indeed, will many men ever be 
 able wholly to attain unto it. Only the exceptionally 
 strong are ever able to deal thus with the world of for- 
 tune and experience. Most of- us will be always feeling 
 that what happens to us really affects our joy and well- 
 being, that we are not so independent of the All of which 
 we are a part as to look into its face with indifference, 
 dismiss its hostihties with scorn, or bear its crosses with 
 a song. 
 
 The second line of approach to this moral idealism of 
 the Stoic leads us into another country. As the Stoic 
 brooded upon his world, he found in the world without a 
 reason which answered to his own. Nature seemed to 
 him only another way of spelling reason and reason an- 
 other way of spelling nature. True enough, this com- 
 mitted him to a difficult enterprise in which he was not 
 always successful ; the enterprise, that is, of interpreting 
 all the facts of this encompassing world in terms of sov- 
 ereign and constant reason. If nature and reason are 
 interchangeable terms, then pain, sorrow, defeat, weari- 
 ness, unhappincss, and all the perplexities and challenges 
 of a troubled and difficult order must be explicable in 
 terms of reason ; everything, that is, must be right : — 
 light and shadow, life and death. There is no room here 
 to indicate how zealously the Stoic sought to justify this 
 conclusion or how far afield such an endeavour sometimes 
 led him. It is enough to say that few nobler attempts to 
 justify the ways of God to men have ever been made. 
 " They held that in this world, the common habitation of 
 all living things, everything had been ordained by perfect 
 
28 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 reason for the general good ; everything, therefore, hap- 
 pens in the best way possible." ^ They were not indeed 
 in a position to prove such a thesis ; it cannot be proved 
 except in the Hght which shines from the Cross. It is 
 only the profound persuasion that we are living unfin- 
 ished lives in an unfinished world, the consummations of 
 which are to be found in the perfection of character ; 
 that God shares with us the pain of so costly an en- 
 deavour, bears in His own atoning strength the burden 
 of consequences which otherwise would overwhelm us 
 and offers, in the completions of immortality, recom- 
 penses and readjustments without which the truest insight 
 finds itself halted and perplexed ; it is only such persua- 
 sions, I say, which make it possible for faith, laying hold 
 of all the tangled web of life, to find in every strand the 
 interwoven love of God. None the less this attempt to 
 find good in everything, to which the Stoic is always re- 
 turning, gives a nobility to the larger movements of his 
 thought and stirs us as winds blowing down from austere 
 mountain heights. 
 
 Had Stoicism been severely logical it would have shut 
 itself up in a circle. The Stoic escaped that unhappy 
 fate, just as we are always escaping the consequences of 
 our ingrowing theories about life, under the stress of 
 life itself He set out by professing to find in nature 
 the perfect revelation of the perfectly reasonable ; as a 
 matter of fact, he found in nature a great deal which 
 was unreasonable and acted accordingly. He professed 
 to yield implicit obedience to the compulsions of things 
 as they are. ** There is but one way to happiness and 
 freedom, that is to will nothing but what is the nature 
 of things, nothing that will not be realized independ- 
 
 * Hicks, " Stoic and Epicurean," p. 4a. 
 
MEDITATIONS OF MARCUS AURELIUS 29 
 
 ently of us. In this way success is insured beforehand. 
 Our wishes cannot be balked or disappointed. Our ra- 
 tional freedom is a wiUing cooperation with destiny." * 
 In the actual conduct of hfe the Stoic was strangely 
 wanting in such cosmic docility. He met the stings and 
 arrows of outrageous fortune, not with an eager coopera- 
 tion, but with a haughty indifference, and through his 
 other principle — the supremacy of the soul — he flung 
 himself free of the constrictions of circumstances and, 
 instead of accepting the world as he found it, he made it 
 after his own fashion. In his endeavour to make the 
 best of the world he made it a better world. The very 
 necessity to which he was pledged, of finding in the 
 world a perfect expression of reason, made him more 
 largely an idealist than he would ever have been willing 
 to confess himself. As he sought to find the light of 
 reason shining across all its broken, shadowed forms, he 
 was following a gleam whose day-spring was not in the 
 world, but in his own soul. So he came, though not by 
 the roads which he vainly supposed himself to follow, to 
 a moral idealism, in the possession of which our com- 
 mon humanity has been enriched. 
 
 He found two worlds before him : the higher and the 
 lower, and like good, brave men everywhere and always 
 he denied the lower world and all its works. He dis- 
 cerned two men within him ; he sought, as good brave 
 men everywhere and always have sought, the triumph of 
 the new man. Harmony, he said, is the fruitful mother 
 of peace and power, rebellion the spring of all pain and 
 discord, but he found that harmony can only be won 
 through struggle and that, though the spirit protest that 
 peace is to be sought in surrender, life constrains us to find 
 * Hicks, " Stoic and Epicurean," p. 77. 
 
30 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 peace through strife. So he found himself committed 
 to a warrior's life and leading an embattled existence, 
 and in the exigencies of that embattled existence he fell 
 back upon his own inner resources. He forgot " that there 
 is but one way to happiness and freedom ; to will noth- 
 ing but what is in the nature of things." He denied the 
 supremacy of anything except the disciplined and self-re- 
 hant soul ; he compelled the circumstances of life to suit 
 themselves to his vision, retreat before his dominant pur- 
 poses, and be weighed in his balances. In his loneliest 
 and most austerely self-sufficient times he could look 
 without trepidation into a godless sky or cry in the 
 teeth of the wind, 
 
 " O Neptune, you may save me if you will, 
 You may sink me if you will. 
 But I will keep my rudder true." 
 
 There is a strangely modern note about all this. The 
 solutions which the Stoic offered for the problem of sin 
 are much upon the lips of many of our contemporaries. 
 The effort which the Stoic made to justify the goodness 
 of all that is has been often repeated, and still those who 
 seek to find a place in the world for its shadows as well 
 as its lights, its stains as well as its holinesses, are com- 
 pelled, as was the Stoic, to flee the consequences of their 
 own serene optimism and battle, as for their lives, against 
 the very forces which they justified as part of the ex- 
 pression of the goodness and the love of God. Life is, 
 after all, a great corrective, an universal solvent of creeds 
 and speculations. It is not easy to find a reconciling 
 unity in the Stoic's philosophy, but when the Stoic 
 ceased to speculate and began to live, when he ceased to 
 talk about universal reason and began to love and follow 
 
MEDITATIONS OF MARCUS AURELIUS 31 
 
 God, an almost unexpected quality of spiritual fidelity 
 begins to express itself. His " high aim is to follow 
 God and please Him, to live in His service and obey His 
 commands." 
 
 " Lead me, O Zeus, lead thou me, Destiny, 
 By whatsoever path ye have ordained, 
 I will not flinch ; but if, to evil prone. 
 My will rebelled, I needs must follow still." * 
 
 On the face of it there ought to be radical differences 
 between Stoicism and Platonism. Plato is constantly 
 telling us that we are to seek a city which hath founda- 
 tions whose builder and maker is God. He commits 
 us to a great and kindling search — the search for the 
 ideal ; he reminds us that we have here no continuing 
 city; he lifts us towards the eternal in search of the 
 temporal. The philosophy of the Stoics pledged them 
 to conformity and yet, in the end, they themselves be- 
 came, if not soldiers of the ideal, at least supreme and 
 lonely dissenters, discovering in that world, which log- 
 ically they ought to have considered the supreme reality, 
 only the shadow of a dream ; the baseless fabric of a 
 vision. By paradoxical roads, therefore, the Stoic's 
 gospel of harmony according to reason became the gos- 
 pel of lonely self-sufficiency. These are the qualities 
 in Stoicism which made their commanding appeal to 
 the Roman. There was that in the Roman temperament 
 which welcomed Stoicism as the hilltops welcome the 
 austere light. Indifferent to its speculations, careless of 
 its contradictions, they accepted and made incarnate its 
 ethical consequences. 
 
 Roman Stoicism is permanently identified with three 
 great names — Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurehus. 
 > Hicks, " Stoic and Epicurean," p. 76. 
 
32 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 Seneca is the rhetorician, the courtier, the tutor of Nero, 
 the administrator of the affairs of the empire. He was 
 wanting in moral sohdity. He owed to his talent and 
 suppleness the position which he achieved. Martha has 
 called him " the Philosophic Director." He held the 
 place in that old Roman order which the courtiers of the 
 Church held in the ancient regime. He counsels simplic- 
 ity to men who are weary of the distractions of a stained 
 and voluptuous age ; austerity to men who, clothed in 
 soft raiment, sought distractions from an excess of ease ; 
 and moderation to those who were beginning to turn in 
 weariness from a world whose fruits were but dust and 
 ashes on their Hps. He met them all in their reactions 
 with counsels which, if they are not free from the suspi- 
 cion of the theatrical, were none the less wise and whole- 
 some, offering to a satiated society occupations and inter- 
 ests unspeakably nobler than those from which they 
 turned. All this while Jesus walked with His disciples 
 through pleasant Galilean ways, filled the streets of Ori- 
 ental towns with the fragrance of His ministration, faced 
 the Roman procurator in his judgment hall, and found 
 His exaltation in the Cross ; all this while the Apostolic 
 Church took shape and form ; all this while Saul of Tar- 
 sus stood by and consented to the death of Stephen, or, 
 blinded by the very excess of light, found his second 
 birth in the Syrian desert. 
 
 P>pictetus was the slave of Epaphroditus, secretary to 
 Nero, in whose courts without doubt Seneca must have 
 seen " a little blind Phrygian boy deformed and mean- 
 looking, whose face, if it were"" any index to the mind 
 within, must even from childhood have worn a serene 
 and patient look." Epictetus, hard beset by fortune but 
 dauntless in soul, lifted Stoicism to rare altitudes. For 
 
MEDITATIONS OF MARCUS AURELIUS 33 
 
 him it was a consolation in the face of difficult and 
 searching conditions ; a mental and spiritual emancipation 
 more accessible and efficacious than any manumission of 
 the Roman law. He made himself free by the assertion 
 of the essential liberty of a soul unsubjugated by folly, 
 passion or fear. " Freedom and slavery are but names 
 respectively of virtue and vice, and both of them de- 
 pend upon the will, but neither of them have anything to 
 do with those things in which the will has no share, for 
 no one is a slave whose will is free." From such a point 
 of departure as this, Epictetus journeyed far and nobly. 
 He had a serene confidence in the justice of the order to 
 which he belonged and refused to test the purposes of 
 God by the accidents of birth or the turns of fortune. 
 *• Know you not," he said, " what an atom you are com- 
 pared with the whole, and what else can I do who am a 
 lame old man except sing praises to God." He learned 
 long before Lovelace that 
 
 " Stone walls do not a prison make, 
 Nor iron bars a cage ; 
 Minds innocent and quiet take 
 That for an hermitage." 
 
 Such a temper as this is one of the great human 
 qualities and the call for it did not pass with Epictetus. 
 We are needing to be taught again and again how 
 powerless that is to harm us to which we do not 
 consent ; in what inner liberties which may not be 
 denied us our souls may really move ; how hearten- 
 ing it is to interpret our own fortunes in terms of the 
 justice of God ; and what serene and holy compen- 
 sations wait upon men who, taking humility for a guide 
 and contentment for a comrade, seek the fellowship 
 of the true, the beautiful and the good. It is by such 
 
34 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 masters as these that Marcus Aurelius was taught. The 
 finer part of Stoicism had been wrought into the ideahsm 
 of the better part of the Roman people. The life of 
 Marcus Aurelius was, therefore, coloured by conceptions 
 and interpretations drawn from a multitude of sources, 
 and representing in themselves the very best that the 
 pagan world was able to compass. It is one of the af- 
 fecting things in the history of the human spirit that, just 
 before the darkness finally fell on the old pagan order, its 
 sky began to clear and the rays of its setting sun shone with 
 such m.oving clarity of light upon men and institutions 
 even then beginning to rock with the birth of the rising 
 storm. For it is now one of the commonplaces of the his- 
 tory of Roman morals and institutions that a real ethical 
 revival preceded the period of the Antonines. It is an 
 open question whether the corruption of the empire was 
 ever so wide-spread, so deep-seated, so wholly unrelieved 
 by any gleam of better things as the Roman satirists have 
 made out. Something surely has to be allowed for the 
 temper in which they wrote, the ends to which they ad- 
 dressed themselves ; and it is more than likely that even 
 in the times of sorest moral decadence there were regions 
 of moral integrity, multitudes of men and women who, 
 true to what gods they knew, ordered their lives in obe- 
 dient conformity to the great saving moralities. At any 
 rate it is beyond debate that the beginning of the second 
 century saw a distinct moral amendment. The moral ex- 
 cesses of the empire were always closely connected with 
 vicious and dissolute imperial courts and the extrava- 
 gances of the newly rich. A finer and simpler court hfe 
 cleared the air in the palaces of the Csesars, and the rich 
 themselves came through the generations to be taught 
 the folly of their extravagances, the weariness of their 
 
MEDITATIONS OF MARCUS AURELIUS 35 
 
 worse than idle restlessness, and the bitter fruition of 
 their excesses. 
 
 A noble religiousness, moreover, began to mark the 
 finer aspects of the Roman life. The City of the Seven 
 Hills had offered a strange and uncritical hospitality to 
 the cults of the East, many of them mystical, most of 
 them fevered, and too many of them foul ; but along with 
 all this had gone a quickening of the real spirit of devo- 
 tion. The cold and official Roman faith began here and 
 there to glow with an inner quality, and a hungering and 
 thirsting after better things became undeniably manifest. 
 The more difficult and hopeless problem of the empire 
 of the second and third centuries was not its moral 
 delinquency, but its economic situation. Rome finally 
 made shipwreck through economic maladjustment, the 
 extinction of the small landholding class, the massing 
 of a pauperized population in the cities, the suprem- 
 acy of the slave in almost all industrial concerns, 
 and the consequent extinction of an intelligent and ef- 
 fective citizenship. Without doubt the genesis of this 
 economic ruin must be sought, as the genesis of eco- 
 nomic maladjustment must always be sought, in moral 
 and spiritual conditions, but the empire did however 
 begin to mend its morals when it was too late. Even 
 so soon as the Antonines, the redemption of the Ro- 
 man empire demanded almost impossible conditions ; — 
 an economic insight which the Roman did not possess, 
 profound and far-reaching social readjustments to which 
 he was not equal, quiet decades free from the alarms and 
 excursions of border warfare which the menace of alien 
 and hostile people drawn around the northern and east- 
 ern frontiers of the empire would not allow him, and a 
 cleansing moral passion drawn from deeper sources than 
 
36 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 those to which he pressed, for cooling, his fevered lips. 
 Even Christianity itself, in its utter detachment from all 
 the secular order, did but the more deeply wound a 
 State already wounded to the heart. 
 
 Marcus Aurelius, therefore, came to the headship of 
 an empire which had already within it the germs of its 
 own dissolution. Whether he and his followers sensed 
 this at all clearly I do not know. But one reads between 
 the lines of the *' Meditations " a deep sadness, a profound 
 hopelessness, as if the judgments of God were already 
 registered against the order which he was under bonds to 
 continue and defend, and as if in some vague and troubled 
 way he knew it. 
 
 He was born 121 years after Christ. He was fortu- 
 nate or unfortunate in having changed his name often 
 enough to bother his biographers. His father was 
 Annius Verus, a Roman official of high descent. His 
 mother, Domitia Calvilla, was " also of consular and 
 kingly race." The boy's father died when he was 
 still a boy. He seems then to have been nurtured by 
 his grandfather, who taught him to think kindly of 
 his father and brought him up in a wholesome sim- 
 plicity. He begins his " Meditations " with an acknowl- 
 edgment of his debt to those who nurtured him. It 
 has been ungraciously intimated that he catalogues 
 their virtues only to draw attention to his own, 
 but such a temper is so far removed from the whole 
 spirit and attitude of the man that to impute it to him 
 seems not only unnecessary but unjust. " Of my grand- 
 father Verus I have learned to be gentle and meek, and 
 to refrain from all anger and passion. From the fame 
 and memory of him that begot me I have learned both 
 shamefastness and manlike behaviour. Of my mother I 
 
MEDITATIONS OF MARCUS AURELIUS 37 
 
 have learned to be religious, and bountiful ; and to for- 
 bear, not only to do, but to intend, any evil ; to content 
 myself with a spare diet, and to fly all such excess as is 
 incidental to great wealth. Of my great-grandfather, 
 both to frequent public schools and auditories, and to get 
 me good and able teachers at home ; and that I ought 
 not to think much if, upon such occasions, I were at ex- 
 cessive charges." ^ 
 
 He has a clear recollection of his father though it 
 would not be easy to say how much of the fine picture 
 which he draws of his father is due to his own observa- 
 tion and memory, how much to the reminiscences 
 of his grandfather ; the qualities which he notes in his 
 father are not such as a boy would commonly have 
 noted. His picture of his father, probably a composite 
 picture, is worth dweUing upon. It shows us the Roman 
 character at its best — strong, patient, self-contained, self- 
 sufficient, observant, accurate, painstaking, with great gifts 
 for government, domestic administration, and the ordering 
 of details. Allow as you will for the light in which the 
 lonely soldier saw his youth, his people, his tutors, and 
 his friends, — the society which he pictures in the begin- 
 ning of his " Meditations " is a society which would be noble 
 in any period and finely effective in any people. " From 
 the gods," he says as he makes the list of the blessings of 
 his boyhood, " I received that I had good grandfathers, 
 and parents, a good sister, good masters, good domestics, 
 loving kinsmen, almost all that I have; and that I never 
 through haste and rashness transgressed against any of 
 them, notwithstanding that my disposition was such, as 
 that such a thing (if occasion had been) might very well 
 
 * Book I : i. Unless otherwise noted the citations are from Casaubon's 
 translation. E. P. Button & Co., 1900. 
 
38 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 have been committed by me, but that it was the mercy 
 of the gods to prevent such a concurring of matters and 
 occasions, as might make me to incur this blame. That I 
 preserved the flower of my youth. That I took not upon 
 me to be a man before my time, but rather put it off longer 
 than I needed. That I have had such a brother, who by 
 his own example might stir me up to think of myself; and 
 by his respect and love, delight and please me. That I 
 was no great proficient in the study of rhetoric and poetry, 
 and of other faculties, which perchance I might have 
 dwelt upon, if I had found myself to go on in them with 
 success. That I have had occasion often and effectually 
 to consider and meditate with myself, concerning that 
 life which is according to nature, what the nature and 
 manner of it is : so that as for the gods and such sugges- 
 tions, helps and inspirations, as might be expected from 
 them, nothing did hinder, but that I might have begun 
 long before to live according to nature. That my body 
 in such a life hath been able to hold out so long. That 
 I never had to do with Benedicta and Theodotus, yea and 
 afterwards when I fell into some fits of love, I was soon 
 cured. That having been often displeased with Rusticus, 
 I never did him anything for which afterwards I had 
 occasion to repent. That it being so that my mother 
 was to die young, yet she lived with me all her latter 
 years. That as often as I had a purpose to help and 
 succour any that either were poor, or fallen into some 
 present necessity, I never was answered by my officers 
 that there was not ready money enough to do it ; and 
 that I myself never had occasion to require the like 
 succour from any other. That I have such a wife, so 
 obedient, so loving, so ingenuous. That I had choice of 
 fit and able men, to whom I might commit the bringing 
 
MEDITATIONS OF MARCUS AURELIUS 39 
 
 up of my children. That by dreams I have received help, 
 as for other things, so in particular, how I might stay my 
 casting of blood, and cure my dizziness, as that also that 
 happened to thee in Cajeta, as unto Chryses when he 
 prayed by the seashore. And when I did first apply 
 myself to philosophy, that I did not fall into the hands of 
 some sophists, or spent my time either in reading the 
 manifold volumes of ordinary philosophers, nor in practic- 
 ing myself in the solution of arguments and fallacies, nor 
 dwelt upon the studies of the meteors, and other natural 
 curiosities. All these things without the assistance of the 
 gods, and fortune, could not have been." ' 
 
 We are fortunate in having still kept for us certain 
 letters which passed between Marcus Aurelius and Corne- 
 lius Fronto, Fronto having been the tutor and the com- 
 rade of Aurelius. The boy's letters are a boy's letters, 
 ingenuous, affectionate and revealing. He loved his tutor 
 with an affection which boys have not always displayed 
 for their tutors. He strained the Greek language in 
 his appreciation of Fronto's eloquence and skill as a 
 rhetorician, and his letters lead us to wonder whether as 
 a boy he had that scorn for rhetoric which he professes 
 as a man. One of the letters gives us alluring and 
 homely visions of the boy's life, and the sheer humanity 
 of it binds the ages and the races together. Here is the 
 record of one day in that far-off boyhood. Follows it 
 a picture of his home life which gives us good rea- 
 son for believing that Mr. Rudyard Kipling is quite 
 right when, in one of his own studies of a Roman 
 household, he ventures the opinion that " all good 
 families are pretty much the same everywhere and al- 
 ways." 
 
 * Book I : xiv. 
 
40 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 «' My dearest Master, — I am well. To-day I studied from 
 the ninth hour of the night to the second hour of the 
 day, after taking food. I then put on my slippers, and 
 from the second to the third hour had a most enjoyable 
 walk up and down before my chamber. Then booted 
 and cloaked — for so we were commanded to appear — I 
 went to wait upon my Lord the emperor. We went 
 a-hunting, did doughty deeds, heard a rumour that boars 
 had been caught, but there was nothing to see. How- 
 ever, we climbed a pretty steep hill, and in the afternoon 
 returned home. I went straight to my books. Off with 
 the boots, down with the cloak ; I spent a couple of hours 
 in bed. I read Cato's speech on the Property of Pulchra, 
 and another in which he impeaches a tribune. Ho, ho ! 
 I hear you cry to your man, Off with you as fast as you 
 can, and bring me these speeches from the library of 
 Apollo. No use to send : I have those books with me 
 too. You must get round the Tiberian librarian ; you 
 will have to spend something on the matter ; and when I 
 return to town, I shall expect to go shares with him. 
 Well, after reading these speeches I wrote a wretched 
 trifle, destined for drowning or burning. No, indeed my 
 attempt at writing did not come off at all to-day ; the 
 composition of a hunter or a vintager, whose shouts are 
 echoing through my chamber, hateful and wearisome as 
 the law-courts. What have I said ? Yes, it was rightly 
 said, for my master is an orator. I think I have caught 
 cold, whether from walking in slippers or from writing 
 badly, I do not know. I am always annoyed with phlegm, 
 but to-day I seem to snivel more than usual. Well, I 
 will pour oil on my head and go off to sleep. I don't 
 mean to put one drop in my lamp to-day, so weary am 
 I from riding and sneezing. Farewell, dearest and most 
 
MEDITATIONS OF MARCUS AURELIUS 41 
 
 beloved master, whom I miss, I may say, more than 
 Rome itself." 
 
 " My beloved Master, — I am well. I slept a httle more 
 than usual for my slight cold, which seems to be well 
 again. So I spent the time from the eleventh hour of 
 the night to the third of the day partly in reading Gate's 
 * Agriculture,' partly in writing, not quite so badly as yes- 
 terday indeed. Then, after waiting upon my father, I 
 soothed my throat with honey water, ejecting it without 
 swallowing : I might say gargle, but I won't, though I 
 think the word is found in Novius and elsewhere. After 
 attending to my throat I went to my father, and stood 
 by his side as he sacrificed. Then to luncheon. What 
 do you think I had to eat ? A bit of bread so big, while 
 I watched others gobbling boiled beans, onions, and fish 
 full of roe. Then we set to work at gathering the grapes, 
 with plenty of sweat and shouting, and, as the quotation 
 runs, ' A few high-hanging clusters did we leave survivors 
 of the vintage.' After the sixth hour we returned home. 
 I did a little work, and poor work at that. Then I had a 
 long gossip with my dear mother sitting on the bed. My 
 conversation was : What do you think my friend Pronto 
 is doing just now? She said: And what do you think 
 of my friend Gratia? My turn now: And what of our 
 little Gratia, the sparrow-kin ? After this kind of talk, 
 and an argument as to which of you loved the other most, 
 the gong sounded, the signal that my father had gone to 
 the bath. We supped, after ablutions in the oil-cellar — 
 I mean we supped after ablutions, not after ablutions in 
 the oil-cellar ; and listened with enjoyment to the rustics 
 gibing. After returning, before turning on my side to 
 snore, I do my task and give an account of the day to my 
 delightful master, whom, if I could long for a little more, 
 
42 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 I should not mind growing a trifle thinner. Farewell 
 Fronto, wherever you are, honey-sweet, my darling, my 
 delight. Why do I want you ? I can love you while 
 far away." * 
 
 Marcus was advanced to an equestrian rank when but 
 six years of age ; at eight the Emperor Hadrian " made 
 him a member of the ancient SaHan priesthood." He 
 was nephew by marriage to Antoninus Pius, and so was 
 from the very beginning set apart for the imperial station. 
 All his training had that in view. His friends and tutors 
 kept him much apart from the world of luxurious extrava- 
 gance and temptation, taught him hardihood of body, 
 mind and soul; and fitted him, more successfully than 
 most rulers have been fitted, for the high station which 
 he was to occupy. He names his friends and tutors one 
 by one. They taught him not to busy himself about vain 
 things nor to believe those things which are commonly 
 spoken, nor to be superstitious, nor to be mad after games ; 
 to sleep on the philosopher's couch and neither to be af- 
 fected nor theatrical. 
 
 He is especially grateful to Rusticus, who taught him 
 *' to read with diligence ; nor to rest satisfied with a light 
 and superficial knowledge, nor quickly to assent to things 
 commonly spoken of : whom also I must thank that ever 
 I lighted upon Epictetus his Hypomnemata, or moral 
 commentaries and commonefactions which also he gave 
 me of his own." ^ To ApoUonius, who taught him self- 
 restraint and constancy, '* true liberty, and unvariable 
 steadfastness, and not to regard anything at all, though 
 never so little, but right and reason : and always, whether 
 in the sharpest pains, or after the loss of a child, or 
 
 • Appendix. » Meditations." E. P. Button & Co., 1900. 
 » Book I : iv. 
 
MEDITATIONS OF MARCUS AURELIUS 43 
 
 in long diseases, to be still the same man. Of him also I 
 learned how to receive favours and kindnesses (as com- 
 monly they are accounted ;) from friends, so that I might 
 not become obnoxious unto them, for them, nor more 
 yielding upon occasion, than in right I ought ; and yet 
 so that I should not pass them neither, as an unsensible 
 and unthankful man." * Sextus taught him *' mildness 
 and the pattern of a family governed with paternal affec- 
 tion ; and a purpose to live according to nature; to be 
 grave without affectation ; to observe carefully the several 
 dispositions of my friends, not to be offended with idiots, 
 nor unseasonably to set upon those that are carried with 
 the vulgar opinions, with the theorems, and tenets of phi- 
 losophers." 2 
 
 Alexander, the Platonist, gave him counsel which men 
 of small affairs, who make their petty businesses an excuse 
 for impoliteness, might now take to heart : " Not often 
 nor without great necessity to say, or to write to any man 
 in a letter, ' I am not at leisure; ' nor in this manner still 
 to put off those duties, which we owe to our friends and 
 acquaintances (to every one in his kind) under pretense 
 of urgent affairs." ^ For us these guides and tutors are 
 only names, but the gratitude of a king to whom they 
 taught true kingliness has secured for them the remem- 
 brance of the generations. 
 
 The boy was fortunate, not only in his tutors and 
 his friends, but also in his imperial tutelage. The un- 
 derstanding between him and Antoninus Pius was so 
 perfect that during the whole of that happy reign 
 Marcus Aurelius slept but twice outside the house of 
 Pius. 
 
 The long reign of Antoninus Pius was a golden period, 
 
 » Book I : V. > Book I : vi. > Book I : ix. 
 
44 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 not only in the history of Rome, but indeed in the history 
 of the world. An almost unbroken peace held through 
 his whole administration ; taxes were lightened, the 
 emperor's government was efficient. He himself was 
 known and loved from the frontiers of Persia to Hadrian's 
 wall. The world which the emperor and his nephew by 
 marriage (and now his son-in-law, for Marcus had been 
 betrothed to Faustina, daughter of the emperor) knew 
 and ruled was in some ways more beautiful and ordered 
 than ever before or since. It was a world of finished and 
 beautiful cities, of corn-fields and vineyards, of villas and 
 countless quiet villages. Roman roads ran from its 
 centre to its circumference ; Roman posts carried the 
 mails. For a time so long that the memory of none 
 living, nor of their fathers or their fathers' fathers could 
 run to the contrary — all those beneath the guardianship 
 of the Roman eagles had been secure from the havoc 
 and the rapine of war. Kind skies brooded over those 
 classic lands ; their temperate light fell upon countless 
 temples of gleaming marble as yet unscarred, and only 
 mellowed by the gray procession of the years. The 
 temples themselves were such treasure-houses of art that 
 the broken torsos of their gods and goddesses are the 
 hoarded wealth of our own museums. Figures of bronze 
 and ivory watched upon the templed heights of classic 
 cities or guarded their busy squares. Roofs and gates 
 of gold answered the rising and setting sun, and pillared 
 colonnades — made splendid with mural frescos and grate- 
 ful by cool deep shadows — lined the squares and streets. 
 Upon the heights of the Acropolis the consummate 
 achievement of the Parthenon called across the blue 
 .^gean waters above an Athens whose political and 
 intellectual glories had begun to be eclipsed, but whose 
 
MEDITATIONS OF MARCUS AURELIUS 45 
 
 heart-breaking perfectness was as yet unmarred. Roman 
 aqueducts led the waters of the Apenines or the foot- 
 hills of the Alps to the baths and fountains of Gallic and 
 Italian cities. Western Asia and Northern Africa were 
 gardens of fertility, swarming with population and centres 
 of culture. The Mediterranean was the secure highway 
 of the nations. Through the streets of Rome herself all 
 the peoples of the world came and went. In almost 
 every city and town of the empire there were also those 
 whose faces testified to the dawning of a new and noble 
 spiritual light, who named the name of Christ as the sign 
 of their brotherhood, who found in the midst of condi- 
 tions always difficult and too often tragic, such compen- 
 sations as Epictetus had never discovered, who looked 
 with far-seeing eyes across the hills of time to the con- 
 summations of eternity, and who, seeking cities which 
 have foundations, had their true citizenship in heaven. 
 They indeed upon occasion found it hard enough to 
 reconcile their heavenly citizenship with the stern de- 
 mands of the empire, and so were ground between the 
 upper millstone of their consecration and their faith and 
 the nether millstone of hard imperial conditions. The 
 picture of course is not without its deep and menacing 
 shadows. There was an almost inconceivable bulk of 
 sheer idleness in this fair and ordered world. In Rome 
 herself two hundred and fifty thousand able-bodied 
 beggars consumed in cruel emptiness of life the sweat- 
 born products of the provinces ; greed and lust and 
 cruelty — a bold and shameless fellowship — walked the 
 highways of the empire, thronged her amphitheatre, 
 dwelt in her palaces. The dust of economic decay, as 
 has already been said, was everywhere, but none the less 
 the order, the beauty, the peace which marked the age 
 
46 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 of the Antonines constituted an epoch all too rare in 
 human history. 
 
 It was to the headship of such an empire that Marcus 
 AureUus came in the year i6i, and in his fortieth year. 
 He associated immediately with him, in the full adminis- 
 tration of the empire, his adopted brother, Lucius Verus. 
 Verus proved himself sadly unworthy and was mercifully 
 removed. After that Marcus ruled alone. His admin- 
 istration was coincident with famine, plague, and far- 
 reaching misfortune. The skies themselves were unkind, 
 the river valleys were devastated by floods, the plague 
 drew in from the East in the train of conquering legions, 
 and the foes of the empire swarmed upon her northern 
 and eastern frontiers. The emperor lived in the saddle 
 and camp. He faced the hostilities of nature, his enemies, 
 and rebellion, with an equal mind and overcame them 
 all. He was wounded in his household, his wife was 
 unworthy if not untrue; of all his children, one alone 
 survived himself, to bear a name synonymous with 
 cruelty and depravity — Commodus. 
 
 In his " Meditations " Marcus Aurelius has discovered 
 for us the sources of his constancy, faith, and power. 
 They are the examinations of his own conscience, his 
 silent communion with himself while all the camp save 
 the sentinels slept, and only the lights in the imperial 
 tent were burning. The " Meditations " show, therefore, 
 the very best of which the pagan world was capable ; 
 they disclose those conceptions of life, its reenforcements 
 and compensations, which held one of the greatest of 
 men to one of the most difficult of tasks through two- 
 score troubled years. 
 
 A lonely self-sufficiency breathes through all the book, 
 for that is the essence of Stoicism. The Stoic ventured 
 
MEDITATIONS OF MARCUS AURELIUS 47 
 
 much on the sufficiency of human reason, the strength 
 of the human will, and the steadfastness of the human 
 spirit. As the reverent comrade of the gods he seeks to 
 do their will, but if there be no gods he will not change 
 his course. He expects from the gods that respect 
 which he accords them as their vicegerent, administer- 
 ing a realm which they have committed to him. " But 
 gods they be certainly and they take care for the world ; 
 and as for those things which be truly evil, as vice and 
 wickedness, such things they have put in a man's own 
 power, that he might avoid them if he would." * What- 
 ever proceeds from the gods deserves respect for its 
 worth or excellency. The gods themselves then are to 
 be summoned to the judgment seat of this all-sufficient 
 reason. They are to be honoured not for their godhead 
 but for their worth. The note of mystical yearning is 
 here far to seek. The restlessness which, says St. 
 Augustine, moves us incessantly till we rest in God, 
 finds here no expression, or if indeed it is expressed, 
 Marcus Aurelius was not enough a physician of his own 
 soul to know the deeper causes of his sadness. Nor is 
 there any indication of that passionate longing for re- 
 demption and reconciliation which stirred strangely 
 through many Oriental religions, broke into clear flame 
 in Christianity, and found its hallowed and permanent 
 expression in the utterances of Saul of Tarsus. If 
 Marcus Aurelius ever cried in the watches of the night, 
 *• Oh ! wretched man that I am," he has not greatly 
 made us his confidants nor burdened his pages with any 
 longing for a deliverer. 
 
 He is strongest and wisest in those regions in which 
 he searches for and discovers the enduring values and the 
 
 ^ Book II : viii. 
 
48 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 just balances of life. He is constantly calling upon him- 
 self to consider. Group by group, aspect by aspect, he 
 summons before him the occupations, the relations, the 
 experiences of life, as he would summon the administra- 
 tors of the empire to his imperial judgment-seat, and one 
 by one he appraises them and dismisses them. He con- 
 siders the evanescence of life ; ♦* our years are like the 
 shadows on sunny hills that lie." He dwells with a cer- 
 tain grave, noble aloofness upon the endless procession of 
 birth and death, the vast dissolving of bodies and sub- 
 stances and the merging of their very memories into the 
 general age and time of the world. He finds httle that 
 is permanent. The soul is restless, fortune uncertain, 
 and fame doubtful. " As a stream so are all things be- 
 longing to the body ; as a dream or as smoke, so are all 
 that belong unto the soul." Our life is a warfare and a 
 mere pilgrimage ; fame like life is no better than oblivion. 
 Such passages as these contain the haunting echoes of all 
 their meditations, who, standing on the shores of the 
 stream of time, see not only all that which they have 
 loved and sought perish therein, but know themselves as 
 also borne along by the same unresting tides. Here the 
 Psalmist chants with the Stoic, " Thou earnest them away 
 as with a flood, they are as a sleep ; " and the sad music of 
 the book of Job deepens with an immemorial sorrow the 
 meditations of the Roman. " He fleeth also as a shadow 
 and continueth not." 
 
 *♦ What is it then that will adhere and follow ? Only 
 one thing, philosophy. And philosophy doth consist in 
 this, for a man to preserve that spirit which is within 
 him, from all manner of contumelies and injuries, and 
 above all pains or pleasures ; wholly to depend from 
 himself, and his own proper actions : all things that hap- 
 
MEDITATIONS OF MARCUS AURELIUS 49 
 
 pen unto him to embrace contentedly, as coming from 
 Him from whom he himself also came ; and, above all 
 things, with all meekness and a calm cheerfulness, to ex- 
 pect death, as being nothing else but the resolution of 
 those elements, of which every creature is composed." ^ 
 
 Here then is the frame in which the emperor's inter- 
 pretation of life is set and the test to which life itself is 
 subject. It is easy to see that all this way of thinking 
 carries with it the germ of a hopeless fatalism ; in the 
 face of fortune so unyielding and brevities so imperative, 
 a man might well fold his hands and lie down. Marcus 
 Aurelius was saved from all this by a deeper sense of the 
 nobility of hfe, though played upon so brief a stage, and 
 by fugitive gleams of a hope which shone from far be- 
 yond the horizons of the perishing. Truth, righteous- 
 ness, temperance and fortitude are the master lights of all 
 his seeing. Constrained by them, he sets out as a good 
 soldier and takes his share of hardship. The very cir- 
 cumstances of life constrain him to be brave. The more 
 there is to be borne and the less hope there is of anything 
 but the wages of obHvion in bearing it, the greater the 
 need that a man should comport himself nobly. He 
 must not break his faith nor lose his modesty, hate any 
 man, or above all desire those things which require secret 
 walls or veils. Life must be lived in a great openness, 
 its motives, its methods, and its actions must be open to 
 the searching of an universal light. This is no world for a 
 double-minded man ; *♦ freely make choice of that which 
 is best " and stick to it. What others may say or leave 
 unsaid is of little worth. The compensations of life are 
 in the great calls of life itself, and the sense of having 
 greatly lived it. There are no weapons which can wound 
 
 » Book 11 : XV. 
 
50 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 us which we do not ourselves supply, nor can any really 
 hurt us unless we ourselves consent. We are to be 
 noble, steadfast ; courage itself is its own compensation. 
 The brave man meets the fortunes of life as the promon- 
 tory meets the sea, and stands himself steadfast and un- 
 changing though hostile waves lash themselves into 
 foam at his feet. 
 
 Two tempers, opposing, though not necessarily hos- 
 tile, are much in evidence in Marcus Aurelius's attitude 
 towards life. In his serener moments he is the philo- 
 sophic Stoic ; in his more exalted moments he is in the 
 hands of a just and considerate God ; in his lonelier mo- 
 ments he is a self-sufficient spirit possessing within him- 
 self resources which cannot be taken from him, and hav- 
 ing the power always to retreat into a citadel from which 
 he may not be dislodged. Truly the haunting sense of 
 the transitoriness of all things lies like a great and poign- 
 ant light over all his brooding, but from time to time 
 broken anticipations of immortality lend to his sense of 
 mortality far, far drawn gleams of hope. But though the 
 shadows of the temporal soon darken these all too brief 
 visions of the Unchanging, he is never supine in the face 
 of this execrable brevity of life. There is always a clear 
 call to eager courage. We must make haste, not only 
 because we are daily nearer to death, but also because the 
 conceptions of things and the understanding of them 
 ceases first. In his serener states, when he knows him- 
 self a part of all that is, and life at its best a profound and 
 far-reaching harmony, he is persuaded that all things are 
 good. The world, he says, is like a baker's loaf; there 
 are indeed fissures in the crust and burnings from the 
 oven, but it is all a part of the loaf, and on the whole the 
 loaf is thereby more appetizing. " Figs when they are 
 
MEDITATIONS OF MARCUS AURELIUS 51 
 
 quite ripe gape open, and in the ripe olives the very cir- 
 cumstances of their being nearer to rottenness adds a pe- 
 cuHar beauty to the fruit ; and the ears of corn bending 
 down, and the Hon's eyebrows, and the foam which flows 
 from the mouth of wild boars, and many other things, 
 though they are far from being beautiful, if a man should 
 examine them severally, still, because they are conse- 
 quential upon the things which were formed by nature, 
 help to adorn them and they please the mind." ^ All 
 things are good then in their several degrees to the man 
 so conceiving the world as ready to share its fortunes, 
 submit to its loss, bow to its ultimatums. " Whatsoever 
 is expedient unto thee, O World, is expedient unto me ; 
 nothing can either be unseasonable unto me, or out of 
 date, which unto thee is seasonable. Whatsoever thy 
 seasons bear, shall ever by me be esteemed as happy fruit 
 and increase. O Nature ! from thee are all things, in 
 thee all things subsist, and to thee all tend. Could he 
 say of Athens, Thou lovely city of Cecrops ; and 
 shalt not thou say of the world. Thou lovely city of 
 God ? " 2 
 
 In its rarer expressions this temper really becomes a 
 real sense of relationship with God, itself the hidden 
 secret of all power and beauty. " For without relation 
 unto God, thou shalt never speed in any worldly actions ; 
 nor on the other side in any divine, without some 
 respect had to things human." ^ But as a matter of fact, 
 in many regions of his life, Marcus Aurelius was the 
 sturdiest of non-conformers. Again and again he dis- 
 misses as inconsequential fortune, circumstance, the in- 
 cidents and recompenses of life. His soul is his citadel. 
 
 » Book III : ii (Long's translation). 2 Book IV : xix. 
 
 ' Book III : xiv. 
 
52 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 Pleasure and pain are always indifferent and the na- 
 ture of all worldly sensible things such that the wise 
 man having considered them casts them out of his life 
 plan. 
 
 The emperor in his meditations upon the nature and 
 power of the soul speaks with sustained nobility. The 
 soul is the true treasure-house ; there the real and endur- 
 ing wealth of life is to be stored. The soul is a great 
 trust to be nobly used. The soul is something to be 
 kept or lost or even exchanged. The soul is the test of 
 the essential self. If one has a child's, a youth's, a 
 woman's, a tyrant's, or even a wild beast's soul, then one 
 has fallen from his high estate.* It is in terms of the life 
 of the soul that God-comradeship is to be defined. " He 
 Hveth with the Gods, who at all times affords unto them 
 the spectacle of a soul, both contented and well pleased 
 with whatsoever is afforded, or allotted unto her ; and 
 performing whatsoever is pleasing to that spirit, whom 
 (being part of Himself) Jove hath appointed to every 
 man as his overseer and governor." ^ 
 
 The soul is an inviolable sanctuary into which, retreat- 
 ing, a man may always be at peace, and the soul comes in 
 the end, when the voyage of life is done, to shores 
 whether of oblivion or peace, as the mariner comes to his 
 appointed haven. 
 
 Death has no terrors for Marcus Aurelius. He is con- 
 stantly cataloguing their names who have passed into the 
 shadows. Emperors and princes, statesmen and coun- 
 sellors, freedmen and slaves — all having set sail come not 
 back. He himself awaits, sometimes almost with eager- 
 ness, the approach of the ferryman. If there be gods in 
 all lands where he shall make his landing, it will be well 
 
 1 Book V : xi. « Book V : xxi. 
 
MEDITATIONS OF MARCUS AURELIUS 53 
 
 with him ; if there be no gods, why should he cry out 
 against oblivion and endless sleep. ' 
 
 Now between these extremes — a serene acceptance of 
 all that comes as good and a lonely spiritual self-suffi- 
 ciency — the emperor counsels himself much about the 
 practical conduct of hfe. He is to be accessible, unhur- 
 ried, courteous, and always serene. He is to be open to 
 the teaching of experience and accept the indications 
 and mutability of life and fortune. He is to take no 
 mean revenge, nor allow himself to be swayed by un- 
 worthy motives. He is to remember especially how 
 fickle a jade is fortune ; how uncertain fame ; and how 
 capricious the judgments of men. He is constantly to 
 test his sense of values by the highest and most endur- 
 ing. He is to act with proportion and balance ; he is to 
 live as a man driven by the brevity of life, and yet with 
 the large leisure of those who never die. He is to keep 
 himself " truly simple, good, sincere, grave, free from all 
 ostentation, a lover of that which is just, religious, kind, 
 tender-hearted, strong, and vigorous to undergo any- 
 thing that becomes him." * He is to find in his own 
 mind the cure for the ills of life ; he is to be always re- 
 membering that nothing may wound the inner and truer 
 part of him except by his own permission. He must 
 summon his own acts as he summons his subjects to the 
 tribunals of judgment. He is to remember that no man 
 is a true man cut off from his fellows ; that what is good 
 for the hive is good for the bees. He is to keep his 
 body under, to hold death in contempt, and to walk as 
 one worthy of the fellowship of the gods whether there 
 be gods or no. And yet in his heart he knows that God 
 is and that He is not only the rewarder of all those who 
 
 1 Book III : iii. 2 Book VI : xxvii. 
 
54 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 diligently seek Him, but the searcher of the deep things 
 of our spirits. «' God beholds our minds and under- 
 standings, bare and naked from these material vessels, 
 and outsides, and all earthly dross. For with His simple 
 and pure understanding, He pierceth into our inmost and 
 purest parts." ^ Marcus Aurelius constantly strives so to 
 bear himself that he shall stand in the presence of such a 
 searching and self-revealing light unashamed. 
 
 Beyond that, he takes his part as a brave player upon 
 a little stage, content to be dismissed, as he was called, 
 by the power which sets the stage and determines each 
 player's part. " For in matter of life, three acts is the 
 whole play. Now to set a certain time to every man's 
 acting belongs unto him only, who as first he was of thy 
 composition, so is now the cause of thy dissolution. As 
 for thyself, thou hast to do with neither. Go thy ways 
 then, well pleased and contented : for so is He that dis- 
 misseth thee." ^ 
 
 We come to see when we are done with the " Medita- 
 tions " that their deeper unity must be sought in the in- 
 ner life of the emperor himself. They have such logic 
 as belongs, for example, to " In Memoriam," — the logic 
 of a brooding and perturbed spirit facing the supreme 
 problems and challenges of life, moving from phase to 
 phase of them, now in acceptance, now in rebeUion, now 
 in faith, now in doubt, now in pain, now in peace. It is 
 too much to ask of a soldier king the reason and deliver- 
 ances of a disciplined philosophy. Marcus Aurelius' 
 " Meditations " are the many-faceted play of his mind 
 around great central themes, and his temper varies with 
 the conditions under which he writes, and what he 
 writes varies with his temper. You must not seek 
 
 » Book XII : ii. ' Book XII : xxvii. 
 
MEDITATIONS OF MARCUS AURELIUS 55 
 
 utter consistency in the moods even of the wisest and 
 best. 
 
 The temper of Marcus Aurelius varies, as has been 
 said, between two remote and contradictory extremes. 
 There are times — one can easily imagine them — when 
 beneath the clear shining of the stars he feels himself the 
 child of the passing and perishing, yet in the hands of an 
 eternal strength and a wisdom too vast for comprehen- 
 sion, and when to strive and cry aloud seems unworthy 
 of his soul and the silences. So Carlyle betakes himself 
 and his pipe to the little back garden of the house in 
 Chelsea and in the intervals of an ail-too wakeful night 
 composes his soul beneath the stars. But Carlyle's soul 
 did not stay composed, and while the emperor has no- 
 where any such explosions of restless gropings as Car- 
 lyle, he docs not long nor largely rest in such quietistic 
 musings, for when the morning comes and the cares of 
 state overwhelm him, and the foes of the empire chal- 
 lenge his legions, and reports of rebellions come from 
 the provinces, rumours of plague from Rome, and " de- 
 struction wastcth at noonday ; " then he forgets the 
 mystic broodings of the night and becomes the lonely 
 competent, making headway against the presence of hos- 
 tile circumstances by the power of his own spirit, thank- 
 ing whatever gods there be, not for a world in which all 
 that is is good, but that 
 
 " In the fell clutch of circumstance 
 I have not winced nor cried aloud. 
 Under the bludgeonings of chance 
 My head is bloody, but unbowed." 
 
 Then once more the mood changes ; he seeks the eter- 
 nal values. He finds in himself the springs of an unfail- 
 
56 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 ing serenity. Then he too falling with his •' weight of 
 cares " 
 
 *' Upon the great world's altar-stairs 
 That slope thro' darkness up to God," 
 Does ** stretch lame hands of faith, and grope, 
 And gather dust and chaff, and call 
 To what " he feels *' is Lord of all," 
 And faintly trusts *' the larger hope." 
 
 Alternating moods therefore of resignation, a serene 
 but none the less real defiance, and mystical yearnings 
 which find expression rather in his sadness than his 
 speech, colour the passages of the " Meditations." 
 Through it all one thing clearly emerges : the picture of 
 the emperor himself — so much gentleness and so much 
 strength have rarely sat upon a throne. Surely here is a 
 man to be put alongside Edward the Confessor and St. 
 Louis, — a crowned and sceptred mystic. 
 
 " In Marcus Aurelius, last of the great pagan moral- 
 ists, there are two men : one cast in an antique mould for 
 whom the service of the state is the first duty ; the other 
 child of a new age, who loves to retire within himself, to 
 take thought for his own soul, to establish himself in 
 charity, to meditate upon the transitoriness of life and the 
 world, and upon the laws of God. His book is full, not 
 of ideas, but of Christian attitudes and dispositions. It is 
 as if some wandering breath of the new Faith had met 
 and penetrated spiritual remotenesses which sought least 
 of all to be so touched. Without denying the principles 
 of his school or renouncing the familiar and consecrated 
 formulas, with no suspicion indeed of vaster and under- 
 lying truths, the Stoicism of Marcus Aurelius tended to 
 lose itself in a kind of mysticism, if one may so name the 
 Hking for moral contemplation, the indifference to the 
 
MEDITATIONS OF MARCUS AURELIUS 57 
 
 world, this abandon of self to Providence, this ecstasy of a 
 soul rapt by the laws divine." * 
 
 " Marcus Aurelius lent to Stoicism a new accent, mel- 
 lowed its hard precepts by his own innate tenderness. 
 By his sovereign example as well as by his words he 
 sought to exalt the love of God and man into a law. . . . 
 Through him the pagan philosophy touched the very 
 foundations of Christianity. What was wanting was a 
 religious basis which a pantheistic stoicism could not 
 offer. They had pious and confused desires, but they 
 did not know to what to relate themselves ; they knew 
 only a God half-lost in the world of space and time, and 
 a future without hope. Their scorn of the world needed 
 a consolation, their so vague life an object, their sorrow 
 a deathless hope." ^ 
 
 Marcus Aurelius and his comrades needed not only a 
 clearly defined faith, a worthy object of love and a hope 
 beyond the grave, they needed a conquering and trans- 
 forming vision. Their philosophy was fatally lacking in 
 either the affirmations of principles or the disclosure of a 
 spirit by which the empire, whether of Rome or of life, 
 is to be enlarged and made victorious. Some haunting 
 consciousness of ultimate social and moral defeat breathes 
 like the rising of a great, sad wind through the chapters of 
 the " Meditations." They reveal a decaying order ; they 
 are the interpretation of life by an emperor who does not 
 hope to widen his realm or plant the eagles in regions as 
 yet unsubdued. The secret of this self-recognized limi- 
 tation is to be sought, not in the strength of the men 
 who pressed hard upon the Roman frontiers, but in the 
 deep interior weakness of the men who defended those 
 
 1 Martha, Les Moralistes Sous L'Empire Romain, L'Examen de Con- 
 science d'un Empereur Romain. ' I bid. 
 
5 8 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 frontiers. It is not in pantheistic resignation to the neces- 
 sity of an encompassing order, in pious communings with 
 shadowy gods, or in pietistic withdrawals into the sanc- 
 tuary of the soul, that the conquering eagles are to be 
 advanced. We are needing always to do more than affirm 
 that things cannot harm us. We are needing to affirm 
 that they are the ministers of our strength and our well- 
 being, not bludgeons whose battlings we may bear with 
 bloody and unbowed heads, but potential swords to be 
 tempered and fashioned for eternal conquest. Put over 
 against all this the great and culminative and passionate 
 words of St. Paul, " Nay, in all these things we are more 
 than conquerors through Him that loved us. For I am 
 persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor 
 principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor 
 powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, 
 shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which 
 is in Christ Jesus, our Lord. What then shall we say to 
 these things ? If God is for us, who is against us ? He 
 that spared not His own Son, but dchvcrcd Him up for 
 us all, how shall He not also with Him freely give us all 
 things ? " 
 
 Wc may, says the emperor, desert field after field as 
 long as we maintain our own integrity ; let go fortune, 
 let go felicity, let go friends, let go life itself ; so long as 
 we have maintained our spiritual integrity, we have lived 
 aright. Now all this is true, and there is immense and 
 continuing need that we remember it. Some elements 
 of Stoicism must enter into every brave and adequate 
 life. Nor, as has been intimated, was Paul himself a 
 stranger to what is essential in the thought and expres- 
 sion of the Stoic. But all this is not enough. Life is 
 not for letting go, hfe is for achievement and transfor- 
 
MEDITATIONS OF MARCUS AURELIUS 59 
 
 mation. These, its challenges, its barriers, its untoward 
 circumstances, its battles, its burdens, and its tears, 
 are but impelling opportunities, trumpet calls across 
 the fields of time. Spiritual integrity is to be won by 
 mastering them, — making them tributary to the soul's 
 supremacy, wringing from them the gifts which they hold 
 hard closed in reluctant hands. They are to be wrestled 
 with in the watches of the night, while we cry as Jacob 
 cried, " I will not let thee go except thou bless me." 
 Then though the morning find us wounded, it shall find 
 us triumphant. And all this becomes possible only in 
 the light of a faith which Marcus Aurehus never attained, 
 and in the conception of a reenforcing and redeeming 
 God which was not vouchsafed to him. There were com- 
 mon folk in the streets of his imperial city, such is the 
 irony of fate, — men and women whom he passed with as 
 near scorn as could dwell in that magnanimous breast, 
 and whom, by a strange and cruel paradox, he himself 
 persecuted, who could have taught him the secret for 
 which he yearned. It was to them the future belonged, 
 and not to the emperor and his friends ; they had been 
 taught the secret of overcoming, they had come up out 
 of great tribulation, they had made the darkness of the 
 catacombs radiant with their faith, and its silences vocal 
 with their praise. They looked for a city which hath 
 foundations, and the passion of their quest for the 
 Unseen and the Eternal lent conquering soHdity to their 
 hold upon the earth. If only, one may speculate, the 
 Christian Church might have seen in its morning, as it 
 sees now in its high forenoon, its duty to the world that 
 now is, and if the splendour and solidity of the Roman 
 administration might have had the moral cleansing, and 
 the spiritual illumination, and the new definitions of hu- 
 
6o PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 man values, and the new sense of the fellowship of God, 
 which moved the Christian Church, how might not the 
 history of the world have been rewritten. If Aurelius 
 the devout, instead of Constantine the crafty, could have 
 been the first Christian emperor, how might not the his- 
 tory of the Christian Church have been rewritten. But 
 it was not so to be. 
 
 Let us be done then with judging what was in the 
 light of what might have been. Marcus Aurelius lived 
 in what light he had, nor was that light but darkness. 
 To have had brave, clear purposes, to have sought bal- 
 ance and proportion, to have exalted the right, to have 
 lived as a soldier always waiting the trumpet call, to have 
 faced death without fear, to have kept one's soul as a 
 citadel — surely this is no mean and unworthy fashion of 
 life, nor will the hght of it soon be clouded. And when 
 all this was touched with emotion and illustrated by the 
 example of a man set upon the high places of the world's 
 administration, when the hand which held so dominant a 
 sceptre was the hand of gentleness and justice, and when 
 upon the head of the soldier king there were crowns, not 
 only of administration but of subordination, so that he 
 who kept his empire truly, kept his soul nobly, — we have 
 such an assembling of noble qualities in a great guise 
 that the throne which made them highly manifest is 
 doubly illustrious, and the book in which the man who 
 sat upon that throne has uncovered his heart one of the 
 great treasures of the life of the spirit. 
 
II 
 
 The Confessions of St. Augustine 
 
 WITH the death of Marcus Aurehus the peace 
 of the Roman world came to an end. The 
 ruin of the empire was indeed long delayed. 
 From time to time great generals reestablished the ancient 
 integrity of its frontiers, and great executives secured 
 anew the dignity of its ancient administrations, but none 
 the less all this was but the postponing of the inevitable. 
 An immemorial order had begun to yield to the shocks 
 of time and change. The deepening shadows of an 
 imminent doom drew irretrievably across all those radiant 
 lands, so long the homes of beauty, peace and order. 
 
 Swift and tragic changes in rulers succeeded, to begin 
 with, the grave stabilities of the administration of the five 
 good emperors. Within a century twenty-three men 
 were lifted, largely by the stormy suffrages of the legions, 
 to the headship of the empire — only to be as speedily 
 cast down, dizzy with cruelty, lust and power, helpless in 
 the face of staggering tasks of administration, and using 
 their brief exaltation only for their own deeper degrada- 
 tion. When at the end of so chaotic a period men who 
 really knew how to rule were set upon the throne they 
 altered its very traditions. The shadowy survivals of the 
 constitution of the republic were robbed of their last 
 political significance. The temper and fashion of Ori- 
 ental monarchies, bizarre, diademed, magnificent, sup- 
 
 6i 
 
^2 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 planted what broken traditions of the austere sim- 
 plicity of the fathers of the Roman state still lingered 
 in the palaces of the Caesars. There was, however, a real 
 sagacity and solidity of administration behind all this 
 pomp and show. The empire was too great for a single 
 head. Two senior rulers, called Augusti, divided the 
 East and the West between them. Constantine built his 
 capital city at the meeting-place of the East and the 
 West, and lo ! Rome was no longer the chief seat of 
 the government of the empire to which she had given 
 her name. In this last vain effort to assert a universal 
 dominion, the Roman eagles confessed their essential 
 powerlessness in the face of divisive forces old as human- 
 ity and deep as its deathless tempers, for the ineffaceable 
 distinctions between Occident and Orient, Greek and 
 Latin, which now began to reassert themselves were 
 prophetic of the reemergence of racial distinctions every- 
 where and of the new birth of nations. 
 
 All this was coincident with the increasing restlessness 
 of the peoples who lay, half lost in their remote and 
 lonely forests, along all the frontiers of the empire. 
 Themselves hard driven from behind, they pressed with 
 growing power upon barriers which were as constantly 
 losing their strength to defend, and their majesty to over- 
 awe. What remote compulsions lay behind this strange 
 restlessness of the races we shall never know. The very 
 interiors of Asia were affected. Climatic changes may 
 have rendered lands once fertile uninhabitable ; hunger 
 and thirst have come into action. At any rate, readjust- 
 ments thus inaugurated communicated themselves from 
 people to people and vast agitations began which have, 
 from that day to this, hardly known cessation. The 
 story of the movements of the peoples does not end un- 
 
THE CONFESSIONS OF ST. AUGUSTINE 63 
 
 til the Norsemen were done with France, the Danes and 
 the Normans with England. Indeed it did not end then, 
 for scarcely had these readjustments worked themselves 
 out when Europe threw herself back upon the East in the 
 crusades, and the last crusading fervour had hardly 
 cooled its fires before adventurous ships began to ques- 
 tion the gray Atlantic and shadowy remembrances of 
 sunken Atlantis called men to the doors of a virgin 
 world and continued the story of the migration of the 
 peoples in new lands and under alien skies. So much we 
 see now as we cast back over the ages. For the Roman 
 all this meant that his frontiers were increasingly hard to 
 keep ; that he was compelled to ask the warriors of the 
 north to guard that which they sought to possess ; that so 
 he laid bare his weakness and taught the men he feared 
 how to seize the heritage of his children. 
 
 Under such circumstances the inevitable happened. 
 The outposts of the empire were abandoned ; lands so 
 long held by the Latins that their inhabitants had lost 
 their own language, their very racial consciousness, were 
 given up and, if they were in part and for a moment re- 
 covered, such recoveries were but the futile reassertion of 
 an idle dominion. While Augustine, a boy of twelve, 
 played upon the streets of Thagaste, or plundered the 
 orchards of his long-suffering fellow-citizens," the eastern 
 frontiers of the empire were menaced by the Persians, 
 the northern by the Greeks." As he began to consort 
 with the men in the baths, the Goths crossed the Danube, 
 annihilated the forces of the East at Adrianople, and 
 knocked at the very doors of Constantinople ; while he 
 strove with his own soul in the schools of Milan, Maximus 
 kindled Britain and Gaul with the fires of revolt. While 
 he ministered as Bishop of Hippo, the perishing empire 
 
64 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 was finally divided. While he strove against the Dona- 
 tists and began to forge those weapons with which the 
 heresies of Pelagius were to be confounded, Alaric and 
 his Goths, twice turned from the walls of Rome, entered 
 at last through gates unbarred by treachery into the city 
 and ravished the immemorial mistress of the world at 
 once of her treasures and her inviolability. 
 
 Beneath such turnings and overturnings, the Christian 
 Church had been laying the mystical foundations of her 
 dominion over the souls of men and the crasser founda- 
 tions of that ecclesiastical empire which was to reestablish 
 and perpetuate in another realm the authority of Rome 
 and associate it all with the name of Him who died at the 
 sentence of a Roman procurator — who proclaimed His 
 kingdom as not of this world, and whose gentleness and 
 humility were in their essence more remote from all the 
 suggestions of the Roman purple than are the wide- 
 wandering constellations one from another. 
 
 It is not easy, passing behind the concealing years, to 
 reconstitute the story of the expanding Church. The 
 early Church grew by personal contact ; it grew in un- 
 noticed ways and obscure places. Little groups gathered 
 together in every city in the empire, meeting in the upper 
 rooms of the houses of their more prosperous members ; 
 churches, worshipping in secret, guarding their faith, 
 keeping their sacraments. From time to time, with a 
 ferocity which might have been fatal had it not been 
 spasmodic, the wrath of the State was poured upon their 
 devoted heads ; then they betook themselves to the 
 catacombs or hid themselves as they might until the 
 storm was overpast. But none the less by the grace of 
 God they grew. With their increase the question of 
 their relationship to the civic and social order of which 
 
THE CONFESSIONS OF ST. AUGUSTINE 65 
 
 they were a part became more pressing and fateful. The 
 recital of their disentanglement from the smothering web 
 of Paganism into which they were woven lends to the 
 pages of Boissier an interest which his scholarship illu- 
 mines and his style enriches. All their spiritual com- 
 pulsions were at bitter odds with the necessary forms of 
 their lives. If they threw a handful of incense on the 
 fires before the bust of the emperor, they were before 
 their own consciences guilty of the grossest idolatry ; if 
 they refused, they were in the eyes of all their fellows 
 branded as traitors. If they hung garlands upon the 
 door-posts in the day of the emperor's triumph, they 
 recognized the integrity of the pagan gods ; if they left 
 their windows unlighted and their doors undecorated, 
 they were disloyal to the State. The very waters which 
 they drank were drawn from springs long associated with 
 guardian spirits. The food which they bought in the 
 markets had first been offered to heathen gods and con- 
 secrated in pagan temples. If they sent their children 
 to school, the literature which they studied was saturated 
 with pagan associations. The wonder is not that, so 
 constrained and entangled, they were from time to time 
 — aliens and outcasts, — assailed with fires which their 
 own blood extinguished, but that they had power and 
 constancy enough to tear the web asunder, release them- 
 selves, and save their Church and their faith. 
 
 Forty years before the birth of Augustine the long 
 agony ended. In their steadfastness they had won their 
 souls ; Constantine made the mystic sign of their re- 
 demption the standard of his conquering legions, granted 
 them religious freedom in an edict named after the city 
 in which Augustine was to find his second birth, pro- 
 fessed a conversion whose motives were of doubtful 
 
66 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 purity, and secured for the Church to which he joined 
 himself a temporal ascendency which was in the end to 
 cost it dear. 
 
 The Church was freed from its struggle with the em- 
 pire, only to be involved in theological controversies 
 which came near being more dangerous to its real life 
 than the wrath of the emperors had ever been. In the 
 East, the fatal gift of speculative insight divorced from 
 effective action, which had cost the Greeks their poHtical 
 liberty, weakened and divided the Church. In times so 
 troubled, when a world order was rocking to its founda- 
 tions and nations were in travail, the Church could not 
 live by speculation alone, even though the great con- 
 siderations to which the Greek Fathers addressed them- 
 selves had inevitably to be faced, and although their 
 nobler conclusions have been as the very horses and 
 chariots of God. Born of the Greek temper and ad- 
 dressed to peoples shaped by Hellenic speculations, those 
 controversies and their central theme would have seemed 
 more insubstantial to the children of the northern forests 
 than the mists of their marshy woodlands. They needed 
 another discipline ; they must be appealed to by other 
 interests. If the Church were to survive the perishing 
 empire, it must have strength enough to transform the 
 restless races who were to possess the lands of the em- 
 pire and inherit its memories, teach them discipline and 
 order, and bow them with new consecration to the hal- 
 lowed tasks of life. 
 
 By the grace of God, Augustine shaped the forces 
 which accomplished just this. He was born in northern 
 Africa in the year 354. The half century which pre- 
 ceded his birth had been full of the tumult and bitterness 
 of the Arian controversy. During the early years of 
 
THE CONFESSIONS OF ST. AUGUSTINE 67 
 
 Augustine's boyhood " Athanasius stood alone against 
 the world and for six years was sheltered by faithful 
 monks in the lonely monasteries of the Thebaid situated 
 on the tops of the mountains or on the islands of the Nile." 
 He was only a boy when Julian sought to turn back the 
 clock of time and defeat the pathetic prophecies of the 
 twilight of the gods. Augustine's father was a pagan ; 
 his mother, Monica, a devout and simple-hearted Chris- 
 tian with a passion for her son's salvation which neither 
 the years nor untoward fortune could cool, a faith which 
 shone always undarkened, and a simple patience which 
 did not in the end go unrewarded. 
 
 The northern Africa of to-day is not the northern 
 Africa of Augustine. Fourteen hundred years of mis- 
 rule have made it half a desert. The desert sands, re- 
 leased from the barriers set up against them, have assailed 
 the ruins of its cities and widened, beneath the unchang- 
 ing clarity of its sky, the pathos of its desolation. Then 
 it was a region of grain-fields and olive trees, densely 
 populated and using the assured peace of the empire for 
 its idleness and its lust — its sunny and careless life 
 touched as yet but lightly by the misfortunes of the 
 lands north of the Mediterranean. With the coming of 
 Christianity, finer and purer forces had begun to make 
 headway against its corruptions and superstitions. 
 Augustine's mother is a witness that the new faith was 
 rich in transforming and redeeming power, and the strife 
 of Augustine's soul is but the operation within the limits 
 of his great and stormy personality of a strife which was 
 being waged along all the coasts of the Mediterranean. 
 
 Augustine's life falls easily into well marked periods : 
 he is a schoolboy and a student in the schools of Tha- 
 gaste and Carthage, he is disciple of the Manicheans, 
 
68 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 teacher of rhetoric in Carthage, he is professor of rhet- 
 oric, Platonist, friend and disciple of Ambrose, a vvres- 
 thng spirit, and a twice-born man at Milan, he is the 
 first of the Augustinian monks at Thagaste, he is bishop of 
 Hippo, and a good soldier of Jesus Christ, he is the inex- 
 orable enemy of the Donatists, and the none the less in- 
 exorable foe of Pelagius. He hved to see the vandal 
 purge Africa as with fire, sweeping out its hoarded un- 
 righteousness with the besom of destruction, and to die 
 in the seventy-sixth year of his age while Hippo was in 
 a state of seige. So he became the common possession 
 of the Christian Church and launched influences which 
 have remade history. 
 
 He has told us the full story of his inner life until 
 his conversion in his " Confessions," and that record has 
 become a classic. There are other confessions as frank 
 and revealing, other revelations which belong, through 
 perfect literary form, to the rare fellowship of deathless 
 books, but there are no confessions so saturated as his 
 with the sense of the presence of God, none which 
 breathe so true a devotion or disclose so flame-like and 
 aspiring a soul. The "Confessions" of Rousseau have 
 their own value as the disclosure of a strange and 
 baffling inner life, shameless in its mendacities and un- 
 righteousnesses, and yet holding fast to ideals which kin- 
 dled the fires of the French revolution. The" Memoirs " 
 of Benvenuto Cellini are such a key to the stormy con- 
 tradictions of the Italian Renaissance as we shall find no- 
 where else, but the " Confessions " of St. Augustine show 
 us how faults may be blotted out with repentant tears, 
 the fires of the clay extinguished by the consuming 
 fires of the spirit, and the restless soul find its rest in 
 God. 
 
THE CONFESSIONS OF ST. AUGUSTINE 69 
 
 They are, more than any document of which v/e have 
 knowledge, the story of the birth of a soul. They show 
 us by what forces, in what intensities and with what in- 
 ner travail the Gospel of Jesus Christ laid hold of the old 
 pagan order, recast it and passed it through fires which 
 changed its very interior constitution. They lay bare for 
 us the bases upon which the new order was established, 
 and help us to understand, if we read them discriminat- 
 ingly, how the rock upon which the Church was being 
 built was really a metamorphic rock so reborn as to 
 have become wholly new, and yet burying within itself 
 ineffaceable records of its past. 
 
 A threefold charm — spiritual, psychological, and liter- 
 ary — attaches to the *♦ Confessions." There is probably 
 need, in considering them critically, that Augustine be 
 saved from himself. They were written almost fifty 
 years after his boyhood, and more than twenty years 
 after his conversion, when his theological presuppositions 
 had mightily coloured his interpretations of life and when 
 he saw all his past in the light of the conclusions to 
 which his controversy with Pelagius had driven him. It is 
 neither Augustine the Platonist, nor Augustine the 
 Manichean, nor the Augustine who leaned with his 
 mother over the window-casement at Ostia who wrote 
 the " Confessions " ; it was Augustine of the Augustinian 
 theology. So he searches the very restlessness of his 
 babyhood for evidences of original sin and finds in the 
 protests of an infant crying in the night the signs of 
 total depravity. He does not allow enough for the un- 
 moral give and take of undisciplined youth. If the boy 
 is not a saint, then he must needs be a hopeless sinner. 
 It is, therefore, a fair question whether he was as bad as he 
 would have us believe or whether he dealt justly and dis- 
 
70 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 criminatingly with all the doings of his youth. This 
 is not to say that there were not things which were 
 bad enough and for which he gives line and date, but 
 it is to say that he criticizes his own boyhood by stand- 
 ards to which no boyhood ought to be subjected. He 
 pretended, he confesses himself, to have been worse than 
 he was in order properly to impress his boyhood friends, 
 whose standards were disreputable enough. It is more 
 than likely that the need of living up to the standards of 
 the Augustinian theology insensibly biassed his memories 
 and interpretations of his own past. 
 
 .' The Augustine who wrote the " Confessions" believed 
 that to the last letter every man's life is a plan of God. 
 He sought, therefore, to discern in his own life the un- 
 foldings of the divine plan. He interprets the happen- 
 ings of each passing day in the light of the whole out- 
 come of his life, and discovers the ways of God with man 
 where we discover only the play of undisciplined human 
 nature. He uses himself, therefore, doubly by way of 
 illustration ; he is his own best example of the depravity 
 of the unregenerate, and his own best example of the 
 guiding providence of God. We shall see in the end how 
 unconsciously he reverses the logical connection of life 
 and doctrine. True enough, he interprets his experiences 
 by his doctrines and reads into them weightier meanings 
 than they would otherwise bear, but his •' Confessions*' 
 help us to understand at the same time how his doctrines 
 were rooted in his life and how he coloured all his concep- 
 tions of humanity and humanity's God by the unfoldings 
 of his own spirit, the stress of his own passions, the 
 urgency of his own restlessness, and the secret of his 
 own peace. 
 
 He seems after all to have been a pretty human sort of 
 
THE CONFESSIONS OF ST. AUGUSTINE 71 
 
 boy. American schoolboys are not wanting in the 
 quahties which he discloses. Other boys have hated 
 their lessons and loved their play, have taken unkindly 
 to corporal punishment, and have discovered all too 
 evident inconsistencies in the lives of their masters and 
 their elders. They have worked as Augustine worked, 
 under compulsion, and they have been fortunate if they 
 found out as Augustine found out, that in this also God 
 is good. He is not alone in having hated Greek gram- 
 mar, nor indeed, one may hope, in having loved Latin, 
 although had he added to the tale of his failings the 
 hatred of Latin also, he would still find too large a follow- 
 ing. In his later meditations upon the method and course 
 of his schooling, we have a clear light upon the real dif- 
 ficulties which the Christians found in the education of 
 their children. They had no secular literature but the 
 Greek and Latin classics. Sons of women Hke Monica 
 were taught the legends of the gods by men to whom the 
 gods themselves were more than fiction. The legends 
 were far from edifying and the influences such, to quote 
 Augustine, " as even they scarcely ever pass who climb 
 the Cross." The growing feeling of the Church that 
 children could not be fittingly educated upon pagan 
 literature led to the attempt to create an essentially Chris- 
 tian literature in which old forms were to be filled with 
 new meanings and the moving cadences of classic speech 
 made the vehicle of Christian teaching. The results of 
 such endeavours were none too successful. The soil from 
 which a literature springs must be deepened by the ex- 
 periences, the expectations, the meditations of the gen- 
 erations. It was to be almost a thousand years before 
 a literature adequately representing the real creative 
 power of a Christian civilization would begin to take form. 
 
72 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 The work of Commodianus, Saint Paulinus and Pru- 
 dentius had its prophetic value, but as a substitute for the 
 classics it left much to seek. 
 
 At the very end of these meditations upon his boyhood 
 Augustine reflects that men keep with care the rules of 
 grammar, but neglect the eternal laws of lasting salvation. 
 ♦' In quest of the fame of eloquence, a man standing be- 
 fore a human judge, surrounded by a human throng, 
 declaiming against his enemy with fiercest hatred, will 
 take heed most watchfully, lest, by an error of the tongue, 
 he murder the word * human-being ' ; but takes no heed, 
 lest, through the fury of his spirit, he murder the real 
 human being." * Here also, in clear and searching words, 
 he portrays the continuity of life and finds the roots of 
 outstanding and dramatic faults of our mature manhood 
 deep in the slighter sins of youth. *♦ For these very sins, 
 as riper years succeed, these very sins are transferred 
 from tutors and masters, from nuts and balls and sparrows, 
 to magistrates and kings, to gold and manors and slaves, 
 just as severer punishments displace the cane. It was the 
 low stature then of childhood, which Thou our King 
 didst commend as an emblem of lowliness, when Thou 
 saidst, ' Of such is the kingdom of heaven.' " ^ He does 
 not find, however, that this, his dawning morning, was 
 always wanting in the real light. Vague and half-felt 
 longings stirred within him. •' For even then I was, I 
 lived, and felt ; and had an implanted providence over my 
 own well-being, — a trace of that mysterious Unity, whence 
 I was derived ; — I guarded by the inward sense the entire- 
 ness of my senses, and in these minute pursuits, and in my 
 thoughts on things minute, I learnt to delight in truth, I 
 hated to be deceived, had a vigorous memory, was gifted 
 
 ^ Book I, Chapter xviii. ' Book I, Chapter xviii. 
 
THE CONFESSIONS OF ST. AUGUSTINE 73 
 
 with speech, was soothed by friendship, avoided pain, 
 baseness, ignorance." * 
 
 With the increase of years came the growth ofun- 
 discipHned restlessness. Monica's admonitions to her son 
 show the attitude of even a saintly soul towards the 
 possible waywardnesses of youth. It is still an open 
 question, however, how far Augustine shared the faults 
 and follies of his comrades or sinned against the integrity 
 of his soul. The theft of the pears — one of the classical 
 instances of the " Confessions " — was doubtless bad enough, 
 but it is not the only instance of such doings on the part of 
 boys, and its real interest is not that it proves the de- 
 pravity of Augustine, but that it rather offers him an 
 opportunity for edifying reflections upon the perversity of 
 human nature. The saint says it was " sin which sweet- 
 ened the pears " ; it is barely possible that the darkness, 
 the comradeship, and the adventure also heightened their 
 flavour. However that may be, the loss of the pears has 
 been more than paid for by those searching and intro- 
 spective chapters in which long afterwards a man, burdened 
 with many cares and grown stern before his time and sad, 
 sought to disentangle the roots of his boyish restlessness 
 and to discover there also the healing and the compassion 
 of God. Few trees have borne so rich a fruit. 
 
 Augustine's experiences in Carthage — his university 
 life, that is — marked the beginning of his searching 
 after truth. He found there no moral help in, nor any 
 diminution of temptation. Of all the cities of that 
 ancient world, open beneath the skies, Carthage was 
 probably the most sadly corrupt. Augustine rejoiced in 
 its colour, its movements, its fevered and tumultuous life; 
 its spectacles laid hold of him and he gave himself to the 
 
 * Book I, Chapter xviii. 
 
74 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 allurements of the city as men have done before and 
 since. One reads not only between the lines, but in the 
 hnes themselves, that he was winning honour in the 
 university world and was chief in the rhetoric school, 
 '• whereat I joyed proudly, and I swelled with arrogancy, 
 though (Lord, Thou knowest) far quieter than those 
 among whom I lived," * and yet, strangely enough, with 
 a shameless shame that he was not even as they. 
 
 The Hortensius of Cicero first recalled his mind to 
 philosophy, to God, and to a better way of thought. He 
 had never, he was persuaded, wholly ceased to be a 
 seeker after God. We may well assent to this and 
 equally doubt whether even the reading of Hortensius 
 changed him so utterly as he seemed, in after years, to 
 believe. None the less it stirred into flame longings and 
 intensities of nature which were in the way of being 
 smothered, and the fires thus lighted within him held until 
 the dross was burnt away. Once committed to the 
 classical philosophy, he found the Holy Scriptures want- 
 ing in simplicity and showing ill in comparison with 
 Tully's stateliness, so he put them by and committed 
 himself to courses of speculation which were to lead him 
 far afield before at last the truth should make him free. 
 
 He became a Manichean. Now the origins of the 
 Manichean cult are obscure. Without any doubt, they 
 take us back to Persia, and the cult itself is one more of 
 the endless attempts of men to reconcile a stained and 
 restless world with the stainlessness and the peace of 
 God, and to account for the origin of evil. The Mani- 
 chean cut the knot by dividing the empire. There are. 
 he said, two worlds, one of light and one of darkness ; 
 two Gods, one of goodness and one of evil. We our- 
 
 * Book III, Chapter iii. 
 
THE CONFESSIONS OF ST. AUGUSTINE 75 
 
 selves supply the battle-ground upon which these eter- 
 nally hostile elements fight for dominion. So our lives 
 are interwoven of good and evil, so our destinies are 
 mingled light and shadow, so the strife of contending 
 forces fills our souls. In the thought of the Manichean, 
 God was too good to have any contact with an evil 
 world, too holy to be responsible, either directly or in- 
 directly, for its existence. Such a way of thinking saved 
 the goodness of God, but robbed life of His redemptive 
 participation. It vindicated Him at the expense of His 
 children. As nearly as one can make out, Augustine's 
 conception of God, and indeed of spiritual existence 
 generally, was subtly materialistic, and it was not until 
 he came to apprehend the true nature of the spiritual that 
 he disentangled himself from the Manichean heresy. 
 
 The total separation of these two contending forces 
 and the consequent dismissal of the whole realm of 
 matter to the dominion of darkness and of evil resulted 
 among the Manicheans themselves in contradictory sys- 
 tems of morality. There were those who said that since 
 matter belonged to one kingdom and spirit to another, 
 and since by no possibility could there be any passing 
 and repassing between these kingdoms, whatever went 
 on in the realm of the flesh made no difference in the 
 realm of the soul. So the men and women who said 
 this gave themselves over to lawless lives, excusing 
 themselves in that no contamination of the clay could 
 defile the spirit. On the other hand, there were those 
 who said that the body belonged to the realm of dark- 
 ness and should be ignored and denied by all true 
 soldiers of the light. Here, therefore, was a ground for 
 asceticism. Many of the Manichees did become ascetics, 
 all the nobler and finer-minded of them, and their moral- 
 
76 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 ity suffered no loss in the comparison with the common 
 morality of their Christian neighbours. 
 
 Both these tendencies influenced Augustine. He was 
 never content in unascetic ideals; he was wanting in 
 moral power to make ascetic ideals supreme. So some- 
 thing of the moral contradiction which marked the ethics 
 of the Manichees filled his own soul with its strife. In 
 his reaction against Manicheanism he reacted strongly 
 against all its works, and later accused it of a thorough- 
 going immorality. He was not on the whole able to 
 make his accusations good, and for our estimate of the 
 moral worth of the whole system we must turn to other 
 sources. It is enough to say here that Augustine found 
 peace neither in its morals nor its speculations. It was 
 impossible that he should. The spirit of God within 
 him was urging him to a goodness complete in its sacri- 
 fice, and his really profound spiritual vision would never 
 let him rest in any solution of the problem of evil so 
 superficial as that to which he had for a little committed 
 himself. We shall not vindicate the holiness of God by 
 setting Him apart from all that is deepest, most involved, 
 and most difficult in His creation. The justification of 
 His righteousness is to be sought, not in a world wholly 
 free from every contamination of evil or of darkness, but 
 in the redemptive processes by which He meets the 
 darkness and the evil of the world, subdues them, saves 
 and reenforces all those who fight against them, and so 
 justifies the divine courage which made men free, even 
 though the possibility of sin — nay, the moral certainty 
 of it — waited upon their freedom. Augustine himself 
 did much to teach Western Europe this nobler way of 
 thinking, and more still to release by his teaching and 
 his life forces which mightily supported and heartened 
 
THE CONFESSIONS OF ST. AUGUSTINE jj 
 
 men in their stuggle. He never, even in the full devel- 
 opment of his system, clearly conceived all the implica- 
 tion of the problem of sin, and the solutions which his 
 system have offered have, on one side at least, been sadly 
 wanting. None the less the tremendous moral earnest- 
 ness which Augustinianism has always fostered has been 
 something far better than a speculative solution of a 
 great and vexed problem, — it has been a fire for right- 
 eousness and a keen-edged and prevailing sword against 
 evil, a road by which men and nations have come into 
 holiness, a force in which the redeeming and transform- 
 ing power of God has mightily realized itself. The real 
 solution of the problem of evil is always and everywhere 
 to be sought in effective goodness, and it is impossible 
 to overestimate the contribution of Augustine to that 
 solution. Without doubt, then, his Manichean experi- 
 ence had a real value in the making of the man. He 
 was never one to discard the greater for the less. The 
 very inadequacy of the answers which Manicheanism 
 offered to the questions about which he was always 
 puzzling, drove him to deeper and more vital solutions. 
 It is by such stairs as these that men climb towards the 
 light. 
 
 Augustine's derelictions burdened his mother sorely. 
 The salvation of her son was much upon her heart. She 
 was, as Augustine is firmly persuaded, crying much to 
 God for her wayward son, heard and answered in a 
 dream. " For she saw herself standing on a certain 
 wooden rule, and a shining youth coming towards her, 
 cheerful and smiling upon her, herself grieving, and over- 
 whelmed with grief. But he having (in order to instruct, 
 as is their wont, not to be instructed) inquired of her the 
 causes of her grief and daily tears, and she answering 
 
78 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 that she was bewailing my perdition, he bade her rest 
 contented, and told her to look and observe, ' That 
 where she was, there was I also/ And when she looked, 
 she saw me standing by her in the same rule. Whence 
 was this, but that Thine ears were towards her heart ? 
 O Thou Good omnipotent, who so carest for every one of 
 us, as if Thou caredst for him only ; and so for all, as if 
 they were but one ! " * Augustine sought to persuade 
 her by his sophistries that the dream meant that she 
 should come to him, but she held fast in her simpler faith 
 and summoned her son in anticipation to those heights of 
 spiritual experience which she herself occupied. 
 
 The ten years which followed are troubled and rest- 
 less. Augustine, himself a Manichean, seduces others 
 to the same heresy, though with no sure and unclouded 
 conviction of his own. One wonders if he sought in 
 such ways to establish himself more firmly in a faith 
 which drew him, but did not give him peace. He never 
 fell into its grosser errors and superstitions, although he 
 does confess to some consulting of astrology. For a 
 livelihood he taught rhetoric, and that with power and 
 success. Now there came to him a great sorrow in the 
 death of one of his oldest and truest friends — a man who 
 had been playfellow and schoolfellow to him. This 
 friend in a desperate illness had been baptized, although 
 unconscious. When Augustine sought, upon his partial 
 recovery, to jest with him about that baptism, he found 
 himself dealing with a changed soul. But their estrange- 
 ment was not for long ; the fever returned and his friend 
 departed. The shadow of that sorrow fell darkly upon 
 Augustine's undisciplined spirit. His native country was 
 a torment, his father's house a strange unhappiness, and 
 
 ^ Book III, Chapter xi. 
 
THE CONFESSIONS OF ST. AUGUSTINE 79 
 
 whatever they two had shared became a distracting tor- 
 ture. His eyes sought his friend everywhere and he 
 hated all places for that they had him not. 
 
 *' I wander, often falling lame, 
 
 And looking back, to whence I came 
 Or on to where the pathway leads ; 
 
 **And crying, How changed from when it ran 
 Thro' lands where not a leaf was dumb, 
 But all the lavish hills would hum 
 
 The murmur of a happy Pan." 
 
 Only tears were sweet to him, for they succeeded his 
 friend in the dearest of his affections. The meditations 
 in which Augustine renews the memories of his sorrow, 
 dwells in reminiscence upon all that he had suffered, and 
 relates the movements of his perturbed spirit, have strange 
 and haunting suggestions of the early Cantos of " In 
 Memoriam." They are the revelation of another sorrow 
 ** treasuring the look it cannot find, the words that are 
 not heard again," and there are (e\v passages in any 
 literature which so clearly declare the bitterness of love 
 without any hope of immortality as those wherein Augus- 
 tine declares that he was loath to Hve since he must live 
 a divided soul and feared to die lest he whom he had so 
 much loved should die wholly. " Well said one of his 
 friend, * Thou half of my soul ; ' for I felt that my soul 
 and his soul were ' one soul in two bodies ! ' and there- 
 fore was my life a horror to me, because I would not live 
 halved. And therefore perchance I feared to die, lest he 
 whom I had much loved, should die wholly." ' His grief 
 yielded finally to time and to the consolation of friends, 
 but the whole experience left Augustine a changed man. 
 ^ Book IV, Chapter vi. 
 
8o PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 He was to come to see in the end that God is the keeper 
 of all friendships and that he alone loses none dear to 
 him to whom all are dear in Him who cannot be lost. 
 
 He now begins a long career in book-writing which 
 was to close only with his death. There have been few 
 more fertile and productive minds, and one stands a good 
 bit staggered before his immense literary output. We 
 are to remember, however, that the secret is not far to 
 seek : — in Augustine's later life a shorthand reporter with 
 ever-ready tablets was his constant companion. When- 
 ever the master sat down to talk with his friends, out 
 came the tablets and down went the precious words. 
 Book-making upon such terms was easy, especially as 
 publishers were not critical and one's public constantly 
 receptive. Just how all this prodigious book-making 
 was financed, the records do not show. Augustine's first 
 book was upon " The Fair and Fit." It grew out of his 
 meditations upon the origin of love and the attractions 
 exercised by grace and beauty. " Do we," he said when 
 he had finally come to the place where he was able to 
 think calmly not only of the love he had borne his 
 friend, but of love generally, •' Do we love anything but 
 the beautiful ? What then is the beautiful ? and what is 
 beauty ? What is it that attracts and wins us to the 
 thing we love ? " * These considerations coming to his 
 mind, he wrote out of his inmost heart on •* The Fair and 
 Fit " he does not remember how many books, he thinks 
 two or three. He refers the accurate knowledge of the 
 number to the Lord with a serene confidence, not always 
 possessed by authors of a later time, that his book-making 
 had been taken account of in heaven. ** Thou knowest, 
 O Lord," he says, with a devotional familiarity which 
 » Book IV, Chapter xiii. 
 
THE CONFESSIONS OF ST. AUGUSTINE 8i 
 
 comes tremendously near being an excess of ease in 
 Zion. It is a far cry from the considerations which 
 Augustine urged in this the first of his books to the stern 
 temper of the man who wrote against Pelagius, and yet, 
 as we shall see when we come to consider the influence of 
 Platonism upon Augustine's spiritual development, the 
 whole thing is of a piece. There is a real and intimate 
 relation between his passion for beauty and truth and that 
 full deep consciousness of God which later closes upon 
 him hke the sea, only to bear him up into high and holy 
 intimacies. The man who was to find the key to Saul of 
 Tarsus in Plato found in all beauty the beginnings of the 
 road which lead to God. This is never to be forgotten ; it 
 helps us to understand the truer and finer part of him and 
 to disentangle his radiant spiritual communings with a 
 God whom he had found as he followed the roads of 
 longing and of light, from those later theological inter- 
 pretations of that same God which encompassed Him with 
 clouds and with the thick darkness of arbitrary provi- 
 dences. 
 
 He wrote his first book in his twenty-sixth or twenty- 
 seventh year, nor was he then free from corporeal fic- 
 tions, nor had he then come to see that God was a spirit. 
 He was early influenced also by Aristotle. He remem- 
 bers in the " Confessions " with a kind of a humble pride 
 that whatever was written either on rhetoric or logic, 
 geometry, music and arithmetic, " by himself and without 
 much difficulty or any instructors he understood." He 
 never, however, entered into the real spirit of Aristotle. 
 His ruling ideas belong to another realm, and of the two 
 great Greeks he was to be really influenced and shaped 
 by Plato. 
 
 The chapters which record these experiences disclose 
 
82 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 also his real conception of God, whom he then thought 
 of as a vast and bright body, and he a fragment of that 
 body. He is now hard upon his deliverance from his 
 Manichean bondage. He analyzes at great length and 
 with his involved acuteness all the movements of his 
 mind and soul during this period of emancipation. It is 
 enough to say that Manicheanism was neither big enough 
 nor true enough for the vast and searching action of a 
 mind like Augustine's. One by one he discards or chal- 
 lenges its errors, and yet with a sort of pathetic longing 
 to be established and satisfied. He kept waiting for a 
 great teacher much spoken of by the Manicheans who 
 should answer all his questions, satisfy all his doubts, but 
 when he had heard Faustus and all that Faustus could 
 offer, he shook himself clear of the whole system and be- 
 took himself to Rome. Once done with Manicheanism he 
 criticizes it with that bitterness which we always show 
 towards the creeds we have discarded, and it is not at all 
 unlikely that he bears too hard upon the followers of the 
 faith he had cast one side. True enough, they were 
 neither very wise nor far-seeing, but the best of them 
 were better morally than he allows. It is more than 
 likely that a desire wholly to free himself from relation- 
 ships which suggested either bitterness or sorrow turned 
 him towards Rome, but he was moved to go there on 
 his own account, because of the higher quality of the 
 university discipline. Discipline must have been sorely 
 wanting in the university of Carthage; the students 
 rushed into their classrooms tumultuously and left them 
 just as tumultuously; their noise and lawlessness sadly 
 disturbed their truth-seeking teacher who wanted only to 
 discourse upon " The Fair and Fit," and recover the in- 
 tegrity of his soul. 
 
THE CONFESSIONS OF ST. AUGUSTINE 83 
 
 He was sadly unfilial in his leaving. He lied to his 
 mother and left her behind weeping, having persuaded 
 her, upon the pretense that he had a friend whom he 
 could not leave until a fair wind arose, to spend the 
 night of his sailing at an oratory in memory of the 
 blessed Cyprian. Nothing in the " Confessions " does 
 Augustine more credit than the chapters in which he 
 confesses how unworthy all this was. In such sad self- 
 condemnation he ranges himself alongside Samuel John- 
 son and Thomas Carlyle. But even here, he is persuaded, 
 he and his mother were being led in ways they knew not 
 of; the very prayers which she put up that night for her 
 wayward and deceitful son were to be answered through the 
 overruling of God in the very enterprise which had been 
 so falsely undertaken. At any rate, his mother's prayers 
 were not interrupted; she betook herself again to inter- 
 cede for him in her wonted places, and with the assurance 
 that this son of so many prayers could not be lost. 
 
 He was received at Rome with the scourge of bodily 
 sickness, and near went down to hell, as he says plainly 
 enough, carrying all his sins with him. Even then he 
 did not desire baptism. He recovered from what must 
 have been a pretty severe attack of Roman fever, and 
 went about his work, to find to his discomfiture the stu- 
 dents of the universities of Rome as wanting in honesty 
 as the undergraduates of the university of Carthage had 
 been wanting in manners. They had a disconcerting 
 fashion of leaving one master and betaking themselves to 
 another just as their term bills came due, and all Augus- 
 tine's meditations about filthy lucre and the fleeting world 
 cannot conceal the fact that he found this practice incon- 
 venient and discouraging. 
 
 He made application for the position of Rhetoric 
 
84 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 Reader in the city of Milan and, one reads between the 
 lines, the position did not lose in his estimation be- 
 cause he was to be paid at the public expense. Then 
 as now, the public treasury had its attractions even for a 
 saint in the making. At Milan he came directly under 
 the influence of Ambrose, and entered the last phase in 
 the winning of his soul. The house of his faith had been 
 swept and garnished after leaving the Manicheans, but he 
 still retained low opinions of God and sin and the incar- 
 nation ; no great positive and satisfying faith had taken 
 the place of the errors which he had discarded. We be- 
 hold him, then, a man in the full maturity of his powers, 
 a great and restless mind, an equally great and restless 
 soul, — hungering and thirsting after the truth — disciplined 
 and humbled, ready to be led and taught. One needs to 
 add that his mother had come to join him in Milan. 
 Here also he brought the woman to whom for a long 
 term of years he had been faithful, though not in wed- 
 lock, and his son Adeodatus — the God-given one. 
 
 Two processes — one mental, one moral — now mark 
 Augustine's development. Under Ambrose's teaching 
 he became a catechumen of the Catholic Church, to 
 which he had been commended by his parents, till some- 
 thing certain might dawn upon him whither he might 
 steer his course. It was in the moral region that the 
 more searching travail now began. He would be con- 
 tent, such was the intensity of his nature, with nothing 
 less than a complete surrender, and such surrender meant, 
 as he conceived it, the utter denial of all the longings of 
 the clay, the complete surrender of the affections and re- 
 lationships of marriage. Augustine's recital of the for- 
 tunes of the battle to which he was committed, though 
 written almost a generation after the fight had been won, 
 
THE CONFESSIONS OF ST. AUGUSTINE 85 
 
 lends to the pages of the " Confessions " a great and 
 moving passion. 
 
 Monica as well came under the spell of the Bishop of 
 Milan. Upon his prohibition she discontinued her habit 
 of commemorating martyrs, the fashion of said commemo- 
 ration having apparently been to carry food and wine to 
 the churches on the saints' days and at each church to 
 eat and drink in memory of the departed. Here was 
 a custom which might easily lend itself to excess, and 
 Monica the more readily surrendered it because she re- 
 membered the temptations to which as a girl she had 
 been subjected. She substituted, then, for her basket, a 
 breast filled with more purified petitions and so bore her- 
 self as to win for Augustine the feHcitations of Ambrose, 
 because that he, Augustine, possessed such a mother ; 
 ** not knowing what a son she had in me, who doubted 
 of all these things, and imagined the way to Hfe could 
 not be found out." 
 
 Augustine now began to see new meanings in the law 
 and the prophets. Ambrose taught him the secret of 
 the spiritual interpretation of the Bible, a method which 
 Augustine himself and those who followed him, in their 
 loose dealing with the letter of Scripture and for the 
 sake of what they fancied to be its more mystic mean- 
 ing, were to push much too far. Above all did Augus- 
 tine begin to discern the truer significance of faith and to 
 commit himself to the Unseen and the Eternal with a 
 deepening confidence ; he came in the end to a sense of 
 the presence of God beside which all else seemed but the 
 shadow of a dream. He found time in his manifold 
 activities to reform Alypius, his friend, who was overly 
 fond of the circus. Alypius was not indeed greatly to 
 blame for this unhappy passion ; being dragged by his 
 
86 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 friends at Rome upon occasion to the Colosseum, he had 
 shut his eyes upon the dreadful spectacle, but opening 
 them at the shout of the multitude he found the spectacle 
 so interesting as to be thereafter quite unable to close 
 them. As medicine for this he was falsely taken to be a 
 thief, and was in the way of being more seriously dis- 
 ciplined than his faults deserved when a rather elemen- 
 tary piece of detective work set him free. The same 
 Alypius had always looked with scorn upon marriage, 
 but, much moved by the fervent discourses of Augustine 
 as to the desirabiUty of the state, he himself began to 
 desire marriage out of sheer curiosity to find out what 
 that might be without which the life of Augustine — to 
 him, Alypius, so pleasing — seemed to Augustine himself 
 but a punishment. All this means that Augustine him- 
 self was seriously contemplating marriage. His mother, 
 he professes, was the moving spirit in that doubtful en- 
 terprise, but however that may be a maiden was found, 
 two years under age, and, as pleasing in her station and 
 possessions, " was waited for." This engagement carried 
 with it readjustments in Augustine's own domestic hfe 
 which reflect on the whole no credit on the Saint, but we 
 must remember that he has not yet come fully into the light. 
 His thirty-first year saw his intellectual rebirth. Little 
 by little, but unceasingly, he freed himself from his long- 
 held errors, attained a deeper and more spiritual concep- 
 tion of God, saw that the freedom of the will is the cause 
 of evil — a conclusion which he was later to put one side. 
 He did not at this time clear up all his questionings 
 about the origin of evil. Indeed, Augustine's answers 
 to this continuing problem have never been wholly satis- 
 factory to the Church ; one wonders whether they were 
 ever wholly satisfactory to him. He was nearer the 
 
THE CONFESSIONS OF ST. AUGUSTINE ^j 
 
 heart of the whole matter in his affirmation of free will 
 than he afterwards was in the denial of it. His oppo- 
 nents of a later time used his own earlier affirmation of 
 free will to disconcert him sadly in his strife with Pelagius. 
 
 The light came to him through his certainty of God. 
 The sense of the love, the unchangeableness and the 
 goodness of God began to rise upon him like the morn- 
 ing. God became to him all in all. We need constantly 
 to interpret Augustine's life and ministry by the light in 
 which he himself sought the meaning not only of his 
 own life, but of life always and everywhere. Few men 
 have held such an overwhelming sense of the reahty and 
 power of God as St. Augustine. His most unqualified 
 affirmations of the Divine sovereignty were the expres- 
 sion of convictions deep-rooted in his own dearly won 
 experiences. Nor was the God thus exalted dread and 
 unloving. Tender intimacy breathes through every line 
 of Augustine's communion with his Heavenly Father. 
 He knows Him to be love ; he feels Him to be goodness, 
 and the sovereignty which he afterwards exalted and af- 
 firmed until it filled earth and sky to the exclusion of all 
 human freedom, was, as he himself knew, the sovereignty 
 of the tender, the loving, the compassionate and the re- 
 demptive. True enough, he left room for the reading of 
 dread quaHties into this sovereign power, but Augustine 
 did not dread God, nor was his God a God to be dreaded. 
 
 To Jesus Christ he, the greatest of Latin fathers, came 
 by a Greek road ; Plato taught him the meaning of the 
 word made flesh. We shall never be done wondering 
 how the great Greek has, in the providence of God, been 
 made a road-builder for the King. In after years Augus- 
 tine rejoiced that he had gone from Plato to the Holy 
 Scriptures instead of in the reverse direction, but once 
 
88 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 he approached the New Testament, with that key in his 
 hand, the doors began to fly open, for he saw invisible 
 things understood by those things which are made. His 
 mental emancipation was now complete. He had not 
 yet begun his work of theological construction, but the 
 great elements of the Christian faith were free and fluid 
 in his soul ; he had come into the hght. God was more 
 real to him than all else, and God was loving and just. 
 The word had become flesh and dwelt among us. Sin 
 and all its consequences were rooted in man's free will. 
 " And I enquired what iniquity was and found it to be 
 no substance, but the perversion of the will turned aside 
 from Thee, O God," ' God was all in all, and yet always 
 free from any responsibility for the moral wreckage of 
 the world. Augustine had only to have gone on in this 
 direction, meditating more deeply on the meaning and 
 necessity of freedom, to have found the true key to the 
 ---.,, of sin itself, and meditating deeply upon the re- 
 passion of God to have seen in what way God's 
 .» ies were to be achieved; but he halted upon 
 these 111^* e radiant thresholds and presently took himself 
 to darker and sterner ways of thinking. Very likely the 
 necessities of the time and his own temper were ever 
 upon him. It was his supreme service, after all, to have 
 been the deepener of the life of the spirit, the kindler of 
 moral passion. In this he most truly served his time. A 
 new world, which even then came out of the years to 
 meet him, needed above all just what he was to bring it. 
 Since he knew God as few have ever known Him he 
 made Him Lord through lawless and restless centuries ; 
 since, at whatever cost to himself, he bowed his own will 
 to what he conceived to be the will of God, he taught 
 
 ^ Book VI, Chapter xvi. 
 
THE CONFESSIONS OF ST. AUGUSTINE 89 
 
 discipline to the rude and undisciplined ; and since, 
 through just such experiences as this, inextinguishable 
 fires of spiritual passion were kindled on the altars of his 
 soul, he himself became the communicator of a like pas- 
 sion — the torch-bearer of the spirit through ages which 
 would have been dark without him. 
 
 Deeper than Augustine's mental struggle after the 
 clear vision of the truth were his wrestlings with the ur- 
 gencies of the clay and his own will. He could be, 
 as I have said, content with nothing less than full obe- 
 dience to the full counsels of perfection, and that obe- 
 dience was not easy to render. It is hard for us to un- 
 derstand why he could not have been contented in home 
 and marriage, or why he and his comrades of the ascetic 
 life bowed themselves beneath a cross whose burden was 
 in part self-imposed. I shall anticipate that upon which 
 we shall later dwell at length,' in saying that the com- 
 plete self surrender which men of his type yielded at such 
 immense cost was not only a mighty factor in the dis- 
 cipline of the Christian Church — detaching them from the 
 great relationships of life in order to attach them the 
 more unreservedly to its service and its sacrifice, but was 
 also a necessary stage in the training of the human spirit. 
 A new and finer conception of chastity was to be taught 
 the Christian world by just the expression of a consuming 
 passion for chastity which burned clean at a great cost 
 the lives of generations of men and women crucifying 
 themselves for an ideal. 
 
 The " Confessions " rise to great altitudes of searching 
 self-revelation, of contrition, strife and aspiration as 
 Augustine discloses this final travail of his soul. He 
 sought counsel from many sources. He was taught of 
 
 * See the chapter on the " Imitation of Christ." 
 
90 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 the old and the wise. From SimpHcianus particularly he 
 had much friendly help. Simplicianus told him of others 
 who having fought the same fight had kept the faith and 
 won the prize. When Augustine sought to escape the 
 cross of open confession the holy veteran told him how 
 Victorinus, seeking to hve an unconfessed life, kept ask- 
 ing, " Do walls then make Christians ? " and how Vic- 
 torinus himself saw that walls do make a Christian as the 
 regiment makes a soldier ; that an unconfessed spiritual 
 Hfe has no more power on the battle-fields of sense and 
 time than martial devotion, unarmed, unenlisted, un- 
 drilled and unattached to an army. SimpHcianus told 
 him how Victorinus came at last to profess his salvation in 
 the presence of the holy multitude and with what acclaim 
 the rejoicing multitude received and blessed him, and in 
 what increase of strength they thereafter dwelt together.* 
 The example of Victorinus set Augustine on fire to imi- 
 tate him, but alas, the flesh was still weak. Now the 
 inner voice became unresting, insistent *' Awake, thou 
 that sleepest and arise from the dead and Christ shall give 
 thee light." Now Augustine sensed to the full the bit- 
 terness of the ancient cry, " In vain I dehghted in Thy 
 law according to the inner man, when another law in my 
 members rebelled against the law of my mind and led 
 me captive under the law of sin which was in my mem- 
 bers. ' Who then should deliver me thus wretched 
 from the body of this death, but Thy grace only, through 
 Jesus Christ our Lord ? '" ^ Other friends told him of men 
 who by that grace had conquered, and called to his mind 
 especially the life and miracles of St. Anthony, an Egyp- 
 tian monk, fruitful in holy example. Such narrations 
 searched his soul, yet was he not free. He lashed him- 
 > Book VIII, Chapter ii. « Book VIII, Chapter v. 
 
THE CONFESSIONS OF ST. AUGUSTINE 91 
 
 self with scourges of condemnation ; his lashings were in 
 vain. All arguments were spent and confuted. There 
 remained a mute shrinking. It was not possible that 
 such a state of spiritual and moral tension should long 
 continue, — Augustine was upon the very threshold of the 
 new birth. The passages in which he describes the vio- 
 lence of his inward struggle as he sought to renounce his 
 own habits may well be abridged, but the story must be 
 told in his own words. 
 
 " Then in this great contention of my inward dwelling, 
 which I had strongly raised against my soul, in * the 
 chamber' (Isaiah xxvi. 20; Matt. vi. 6) of my heart, 
 troubled in mind and countenance, I turned upon Alyp- 
 ius. * What ails us ? ' I exclaim : * what is it ? what 
 heardest thou ? The unlearned start up and " take 
 heaven by force" (Matt. xi. 12), and we with our learning, 
 and without heart, lo, where we wallow in flesh and 
 blood ! Are we ashamed to follow, because others are 
 gone before, and not ashamed, not even to follow ? ' 
 Some such words I uttered, and my fever of mind tore 
 me away from him, while he, gazing on me in astonish- 
 ment, kept silence. For it was not my wonted tone ; 
 and my forehead, cheeks, eyes, colour, tone of voice, 
 spake my mind more than the words I uttered. A little 
 garden there was to our lodging, which we had the use 
 of, as of the whole house ; for the master of the house, 
 our host, was not living there. Thither had the tumult 
 of my breast hurried me, where no man might hinder the 
 hot contention wherein I had engaged with myself, until 
 it should end as Thou knewest, I knew not. Only I was 
 healthfully distracted and dying, to live ; knowing what 
 evil thing I was, and not knowing what good thing I was 
 shortly to become. ... In the very fever of my ir- 
 
92 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 resoluteness, I made with my body many such motions 
 as men sometimes would, but cannot, if either they have 
 not the limbs, or these be bound with bands, weakened 
 with infirmity, or any other way hindered. . . . For 
 in these things the ability was one with the will, and to 
 will was to do ; and yet was it not done ; and more easily 
 did my body obey the weakest willing of my soul, in 
 moving its limbs at its nod, than the soul obeyed itself to 
 accomplish in the will alone this its momentous will. 
 . . . The mind commands the mind, its own self, to 
 will, and yet it doth not. Whence this monstrousness ? 
 and to what end? . . . Were the will entire, it 
 would not even command it to be, because it would al- 
 ready be. It is therefore no monstrousness partly to will, 
 partly to nill, but a disease of the mind, that it doth not 
 wholly rise, by truth upborne, borne down by custom. 
 And therefore are there two wills, for that one of them is 
 not entire : and what the one lacketh, the other hath.* 
 
 "... Thus soul-sick was I, and tormented, accus- 
 ing myself much more severely than my wont, rolling 
 and turning me in my chain, till that were wholly broken, 
 whereby I now was but just, but still was, held. . . . 
 The very toys of toys, and vanities of vanities, still held 
 mc; they plucked my fleshly garment, and whispered 
 softly, ' Dost thou cast us off? and from that moment 
 shall we no more be with thee forever ? and from that 
 moment shall not this or that be lawful for thee forever?' 
 . . . But now they spake very faintly. For on that 
 side whither I had set my face, and whither I trembled to 
 go, there appeared unto me the chaste dignity of Conti- 
 nency, serene, yet not relaxedly gay, honestly alluring 
 me to come, and doubt not ; and stretching forth to re. 
 
 » Book VIII, Chapters viii and ix. 
 
THE CONFESSIONS OF ST. AUGUSTINE 93 
 
 ceive and embrace me, her holy hands full of multitudes 
 of good examples.* 
 
 "... But when a deep consideration had from the 
 secret bottom of my soul drawn together and heaped up all 
 my misery in the sight of my heart, there arose a mighty 
 storm, bringing a mighty shower of tears. ... So was 
 I speaking, and weeping in the most bitter contrition of 
 my heart, when lo ! I heard from a neighbouring house 
 a voice, as of boy or girl, I know not, chanting, and oft 
 repeating, ' Take up and read ; take up and read.' 
 Instantly, my countenance altered, I began to think most 
 intently, whether children were wont in any kind of play 
 to sing such words ; nor could I remember ever to have 
 heard the like. So checking the torrent of my tears, I 
 arose ; interpreting it to be no other than a command 
 from God, to open the book, and read the first chapter I 
 should find. For I had heard of Antony, that coming 
 in during the reading of the Gospel, he received the 
 admonition, as if what was being read, was spoken to 
 him ; * Go, sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, 
 and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and come and 
 follow Me' (Matt. xix. 21). And by such oracle he was 
 forthwith converted unto Thee. Eagerly then I returned 
 to the place where Alypius was sitting ; for there had I 
 laid the volume of the Apostle, when I arose thence. I 
 seized, opened, and in silence read that section, on which 
 my eyes first fell : ' Not in rioting and drunkenness, not 
 in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envy- 
 ing: but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not 
 provision for the flesh' (Rom. xiii. 13, 14), in concupis- 
 cence. No further would I read ; nor needed I : for 
 instantly at the end of this sentence, by a light as it were 
 
 ^Book VIII, Chapter xi. 
 
94 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 of serenity infused into my heart, all the darkness of 
 doubt vanished away." * 
 
 I have quoted all this at length because it is so tre- 
 mendous a document. Starbuck has given us the psy- 
 chological explanation of the new birth and has even 
 diagramed the tensions of the soul. William James has 
 invested it all with the charm of his great learning, his 
 eager style and his illuminating philosophy. Begbie has 
 found for us the comrades of Augustine — twice-born men 
 — in the slums of London. But the narration of Augus- 
 tine is the classic recital of one who spoke out of the 
 depths of his own inner experience, who traces step by 
 step all the movement of the inner tumult, and who has 
 communicated to his deathless pages the fires which 
 burned within him in the solitudes of his own chamber, 
 in the rooms where he spoke with his friends, and in the 
 gardens of Milan. I wonder did he lift up his eyes from 
 time to time to the stainless inaccessible barriers of the 
 Alps, envying their changeless serenity ; I wonder if he 
 found in them any suggestions of the heahng serenity of 
 God. 
 
 Augustine's confession changed all his life; he de- 
 termined thereafter to give up his teaching of rhetoric 
 and devote his life to God. In preparation for his bap- 
 tism and for the consummation of readjustments so pro- 
 found, he betook himself with his friend Alypius, his son 
 Adeodatus, and his mother, to the country-house of 
 Verecundus, a friend as yet himself unconverted and 
 sincerely regretting those necessities which would de- 
 prive him of Augustine's comradeship. This was one 
 of the happiest periods of Augustine's life. In all likeli- 
 hood he went to Casciago, " a quiet little town at the 
 
 » Book VIII, Chapter xii. 
 
THE CONFESSIONS OF ST. AUGUSTINE 95 
 
 foot of the mountains. To the northwest it had the 
 superb horizon of Monte Rosa and the Pennine Alps, 
 whilst the hills encircled it also on the north and east, 
 giving broken glimpses of Maggiore and a few smaller 
 lakes to the northeast." To the southeast lay the broad 
 plains of Lombardy. It is good to think that after 
 having been so much tossed about, Augustine came for 
 a little to such a haven of peace and that now every 
 shadow of estrangement between mother and son having 
 been cleared away and all her prayers for him having 
 been answered, she herself dwelt in a joy which was a 
 thing more precious since it had been so long sought 
 and was to be so brief. Augustine confesses to having 
 forgotten much which passed in those holy days, but to 
 remember still such a pain in his teeth as fairly deprived 
 him of speech. The pain departed as it had come, and 
 Augustine is minded to remember it, more gratefully 
 than most of us remember toothache, as the chastening 
 scourge of God. At the end of the vintage time, 
 Augustine with Alypius and Adeodatus was baptized, 
 and he pauses in his grateful memories to rejoice in the 
 son whom he had called " the God-given," and whose 
 brief Hfe was full of charm and promise. " Excellently 
 hadst Thou made him, he was not quite fifteen, and in 
 wit surpassed many grave and learned men. I confess 
 unto Thee, O Lord my God, creator of all and abun- 
 dantly able to reform our deformities : for I had no part 
 in that boy, but the sin." 
 
 Now he starts with Monica to return to Africa and 
 their unclouded comradeship grows richer as it ap- 
 proaches its end. There are no more beautiful chapters 
 in any literature than those in which Augustine pays 
 his tribute of love and devotion to the one who was 
 
96 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 mother of his body and more than mother of his soul. 
 At Ostia the two paused a Httle that they might recover 
 from the fatigues of a long journey in anticipation of a 
 trying voyage. There, leaning together in a certain 
 window which overlooked a garden, they discoursed 
 upon high and holy things ; for them both the tumult 
 of time and sense was hushed, and in a great inner and 
 outer serenity they shared the beatific vision. Monica 
 was eager to depart and be at rest, but she sought no 
 passing voyage. " Son, for mine own part I have no 
 further delight in anything in this life. What I do here 
 any longer, and to what end I am here, I know not, now 
 that my hopes in this world are accomplished. One 
 thing there was, for which I desired to linger for a while 
 in this life, that I might see thee a Catholic Christian be- 
 fore I died. My God hath done this for me more abun- 
 dantly, that I should now see thee withal, despising earthly 
 happiness, become His servant : what do I here?" 
 
 Five days after she fell sick of a fever, and in the 
 ninth day of her sickness and the fifty-sixth year of her 
 age and the three and thirtieth year of her son's age 
 was that religious and holy soul freed from the body. 
 In Augustine's heart and in the hearts of his comrades 
 such a power of Christian restraint held that they buried 
 her without tears. Later the sorrow of the son over- 
 flowed. Years afterwards, Augustine debates with him- 
 self whether in so mourning he yielded to any sin. A 
 strange and pathetic voice out of a great human and 
 sorrow-filled past, strange misunderstanding of the com- 
 passion of the Eternal when the tears of a loving son for 
 a sainted mother are counted as sin in His sight who is 
 Motherhood and Fatherhood in their perfect and eternal 
 compassion. 
 
THE CONFESSIONS OF ST. AUGUSTINE 97 
 
 With the death of Monica, the interest of the *♦ Confes- 
 sions " ends, and the after years of Augustine's life may for 
 our purpose be quickly summarized. There was that 
 force in the man, both moral and mental, which secured 
 for him distinct leadership in the Latin Church. He be- 
 came directly a fertile and endless commentator on the 
 Old and New Testament. He continued a work of au- 
 thorship which was to secure him so large a place not 
 only in the publisliers'catalogues of his own time, but in all 
 accounts of patristic literature. He established at Tha- 
 gaste a communal life, the foundation of the old Augus- 
 tinian order. His passion for the monastic life led him 
 on the whole to overdo it, and the undisciplined multi- 
 tudes whom he attached without discrimination to the 
 monasteries served neither their own best lives or the 
 best interests either of the Church or the State. The 
 diocese of Hippo found him out and made him bishop 
 and from that time on the story of his life is the story of 
 the great interests, the great contentions, and the great 
 adjustments of the Latin Church. He spoke mightily 
 against those separatists, the Donatists ; he overthrew the 
 heretical contentions of Pelagius, and in so doing gave 
 temper and form, to the thought of Western Europe for 
 more than a tliousand years. He took part in the 
 stormy councils of a distracted time ; he meditated much 
 upon the significance of the overthrow of the Eternal 
 City ; he formulated a new philosophy of history in the 
 light of new spiritual forces just then being launched ; 
 he wrote " The City of God " to free the Church from 
 the reproach of the ruin of the empire and to disclose 
 those vaster and more spiritual foundations upon which 
 God had always been building ; he administered the af- 
 fairs of his diocese, comforted the troubled and perplexed. 
 
98 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 made the memories of his youth, young manhood and 
 conversion imperishable in his *♦ Confessions " ; was not 
 always either gentle or temperate in his speech, but none 
 the less bore himself hke a good soldier of Jesus Christ 
 and died behind the besieged walls of Hippo while the 
 Vandals thundered at its gates. He lived long enough to 
 see Northern Africa swept as by a broom of fire. He 
 did not live long enough to see the walls of the new City 
 of God begin to lift themselves above the fields of time. 
 What he had done was more persistent than he knew. 
 The resistless tides of barbarian invasion might indeed 
 sweep away much that he had loved or built, but the 
 deeper and more permanent things to which he gave 
 his testimony and which he enriched out of his own 
 brooding soul were not destined so to pass. In their 
 permanency he himself has become permanent. 
 
 When one is done with the '• Confessions," two out- 
 standing impressions remain. They have already been 
 more than once intimated in the course of these studies, 
 but they will bear repetition. First, we have in the expe- 
 rience of Augustine a wholly clear and adequate revela- 
 tion of the winning of a soul. Saul of Tarsus has shown 
 us what it meant to pass from Judaism to Christianity, and 
 more than one of the pagan writers has indicated the steps 
 by which he found his way from paganism into the Chris- 
 tian faith and experience, but none has so clearly por- 
 trayed the whole process as Augustine. In the travail of 
 his spirit we see something vaster than his own conver- 
 sion ; we see the formulation of new spiritual expe- 
 riences, the birth of new spiritual relationships, the 
 growth of new moral certainties and consecrations. We 
 see the passing of an ancient order; the birth of a new. 
 For one's soul, after all, is one's fullest and richest self 
 
THE CONFESSIONS OF ST. AUGUSTINE 99 
 
 grown into fruitful relationship with the Unseen and 
 Eternal. To win a soul is to establish such relationships, 
 develop such possibilities, find new meanings and new 
 realities, and to come to possess a real value for the mean- 
 ings and relationships which one has discovered. To 
 become a Christian soul means to have entered by the 
 roads of experience, love, obedience, truth, service, into 
 those revelations and conceptions of the Unseen and 
 Eternal which constitute the Evangel ; and to come to 
 possess, on the other hand, such a value for them that if 
 the Christian soul is richer in having a new world in 
 which to dwell, the world in which it dwells is richer by 
 having a new citizen. This is what happened to Augus- 
 tine. In the very travail of his spirit, the Christian faith 
 became not only his profound persuasion, but it found 
 verification in an experience which completely changed 
 the whole content of his life. He bridges for us the 
 passages between paganism and Christianity, he shows us 
 what it meant to discard the old like an outgrown gar- 
 ment and to be clothed upon with the new, though in- 
 deed no such superficial imagery does for so searching a 
 process. He shows us what rebirth meant for men to 
 whom it was no convention, but an agonizing recasting 
 of both the inner and outer life. He shows us what it 
 meant to put aside the inheritances and relationships of an 
 immemorial order and to stand as a little child, untaught, 
 undisciplined, and unperfect in the presence of the new. 
 What Augustine experienced, multitudes of men and 
 women also experienced. They have given us no con- 
 fession, the labour of their souls might not have been so 
 poignant; much that was profound in Augustine's strug- 
 gle may have been superficial in their own conversion, 
 but nevertheless they went the way that he went and 
 
loo PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 he has become their spokesman. He is a voice made 
 splendidly articulate, declaring for us all the experiences 
 of multitudes of silent folk who struggled through their 
 shadows to the light, and the outcome of whose strug- 
 gle was a new spiritual attitude, nay, a new spiritual 
 reality. With them a Christian soul becomes a fact and 
 a force in the inner and outer history of the world. 
 The spiritual attitude which Augustine attained was to 
 be for long the dominant spiritual attitude of Europe, 
 was to govern mediaeval conceptions, inspire mediaeval 
 actions, colour with its flame the mystic brooding of the 
 mediaeval mind. It was more than mediaeval. There 
 are in the spiritual affirmations of the ♦♦ Confessions " 
 elements of permanence transcending epochs and condi- 
 tions. 
 
 Augustine helps us not only to understand the medi- 
 aeval soul and the processes by which it came to its own, 
 he helps us to understand the universal soul. Augustine 
 was not the only force working towards the same ends 
 in Western Europe, but none the less he is distinctively 
 typical. The quality of his spirituality is the dominant 
 spiritual quality of Latin Christendom till the time of the 
 Renaissance. 
 
 In the second place, the immense sense of the sover- 
 eignty of God, or I might better say to begin with, the 
 immense sense of the reality of God which dominated 
 every aspect of Augustine's life and thought — deepened, 
 as it came to be later, by an equally immense sense of 
 the sovereignty of God, introduced into all Western 
 thmking and living an absolutely imperative note. No 
 one needs to justify what is overdrawn and overstated in 
 the Augustinian theology to be sure of this. I do not 
 believe myself that the root of the abuses to which that 
 
THE CONFESSIONS OF ST. AUGUSTINE loi 
 
 theology afterwards lent itself was in Augustine himself. 
 It might have been in his logic, but not in his heart. 
 The God whose sovereignty he so exalted was for him 
 always love beyond word, compassion beyond his broken 
 and stained desert, a healing and redemptive presence, an 
 interpenetrating power, the very spirit of comradeship. 
 If only he might have dwelt more expHcitly upon that 
 which is imphcit in every hne of the " Confessions," he 
 might have saved the Western Christian world from a 
 chilling shadow which has darkened the joy of sensitive 
 souls for generations, and might have secured the ends 
 which he sought to attain in so great and radiant a way 
 as to have stood alongside St. Paul and St. John. He 
 did not do this, but he did at least the necessary thing. 
 It was necessary that a great and awesome restraint should 
 be laid upon the restless peoples who were coming in to 
 possess the empire and lay the foundations of new 
 nations. They needed the constant exaltation of a sover- 
 eignty which should bow king and priest, lawless nobility 
 and turbulent commonalty before one common throne. 
 There was only one throne high enough for that — the 
 throne of the Divine Sovereignty. 
 
 We are always needing a new and constraining sense 
 of the true force of high spiritual conceptions. The world 
 is not moved in the last analysis by those forces which oc- 
 cupy the foregrounds of life and fill our ears too often with 
 their constant clamour. One must seek the true causes of 
 things in seemingly remote and quiet places. In the 
 great moments of human history when portentous issues 
 are joined, whether in senates, cabinets, diplomatic con- 
 ferences or the red arbitrament of battle-fields, the hostile 
 forces will be found, when you have passed by the show 
 of things, in political philosophies, embattled ideals, 
 
102 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 competitive interpretations of life, the spirit of national- 
 ity made incarnate — all in one form or another the very 
 passions of the soul, as these passions have been given 
 shape and power by the soul's most commanding faith 
 and discriminating vision. So wc are not lightly to dis- 
 miss contentions vi^hich seem far, far removed from the 
 concrete concerns of life. Sooner or later the political 
 theorist may launch a battle-ship, the philosopher sharpen 
 the edge of the warrior's sword, the dreamer shake 
 the earth with the tread of armed men, the prophet recast 
 institutions, the theologian direct the current of a thousand 
 years of history. For in some high way Augustine did 
 just this, and most of all in his controversy with Pelagius. 
 Nothing seems farther removed from us than that 
 ancient contention — that strife between monks, that 
 debate about themes in regard to which no final word 
 has really ever been said — a debate whose premises were 
 in part unprovable assumptions, whose temper was too 
 largely unchristian and whose outcome was the dominance 
 of a system of theology which has lent itself all too easily to 
 the caricaturmg both of God and man. Our own dominant 
 theological tendencies are against rather than for Augus- 
 tine ; our practical temper does but deepen our impatience 
 with him and all his kind. None the less a vast deal 
 more than theologies was at issue in the Pelagian con- 
 troversy. The question at issue was just this : was 
 Augustine or Pelagius to be the schoolmaster of Europe 
 for a long millennium ? Was Augustine or Pelagius to 
 supply the spiritual dynamic, the dominant temper of 
 that great and pregnant time ? For we must remember 
 that the victor in that controversy was to have at hand 
 the most marvellous institution for the incarnation and 
 propagation of certain great conceptions of life which 
 
THE CONFESSIONS OF ST. AUGUSTINE 103 
 
 has ever been offered men — I mean the Latin Catholic 
 Church. For a thousand years that Church without 
 competition or contradiction was to teach men about 
 themselves, their God and their duty to their God. Her 
 teachings were to be accepted as the very word of the 
 Divine ; the whole of society was to be, in an almost 
 unbelievable way, interpenetrated by her tempers, dom- 
 inated by her spirit, poured into moulds which she her- 
 self was to form and to furnish. The men who were to 
 be thus shaped were much in need of discipline — im- 
 perious, turbulent, strangely contradictory in their 
 qualities of pride and humility, strength and weakness. 
 To have dismissed them prematurely to a liberty which 
 they were not fit to exercise, to have minimized for them 
 the significance of the moral struggle, to have heightened 
 their pride and weakened their self-restraint would have 
 been to invite disaster. Augustine was a better spokes- 
 man for the time than Pelagius could ever have been. 
 
 We have seen already in this study how the " Confes- 
 sions " reveal to us, as no human document before or since, 
 how a soul is to be won when a man has become the battle- 
 field of the old and the new, when two worlds, one perish- 
 ing, the other just coming to birth, struggle for his pos- 
 session and when all the impulses of his undisciplined 
 nature cry out against the constraints to which the new 
 would bow him. Augustine knew better than Pelagius 
 how hard it is to be good ; he felt as the quiet and 
 temperate Pelagius had never felt the stress of elemental 
 urgencies. He knew better than the British monk what 
 heavenly forces needed to hasten to the assistance of the 
 hard beset if goodness and love were to win the fight. 
 All this makes him a better spokesman for the master 
 need of a troubled time than the man against whom he 
 
104 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 contended. In my more quiet and self-contained 
 moments I know that Pelagius was the more temperate 
 spokesman, in some regions the clearer thinker, and 
 always the champion of that natural worth of humanity 
 which we ought not to forget, but at other times when 
 the sense of the difficulty of life is much upon me, when 
 the empire of the soul is divided, then I know that 
 Augustine voiced such spiritual necessities as make the 
 calm conclusions of Pelagius utterly trivial. Some sover- 
 eignty there must be. Where shall we seek it if not in 
 the sovereignty of God ? Some unifying power there 
 must be to bind together in vast harmonious processes 
 the diverse restlessnesses of what would otherwise be a 
 formless welter of individualism. Whatever human free- 
 dom is, it is no unrelated thing, and if we be free at all 
 we are perfectly free only in the expression of a perfect 
 obedience. 
 
 " Our wills are ours, we know not how. 
 Our wills are ours, to make them Thine.** 
 
 Augustine felt all this because he had so lived it out ; 
 he exalted the forces which had made his own life so 
 fruitful and sought to secure for others those governing 
 conceptions in which he himself came in the end so 
 serenely to rest. Indeed, though he knew it not, he held 
 to them so passionately not because they represented the 
 conclusion of philosophy, but because they incarnated the 
 spirit of the saint. Now I repeat, Europe was to need 
 just what Augustine needed. Something of the kindling 
 contagion of his enfranchised soul escaped of course from 
 the forms and conclusions which were all he could com- 
 municate to the unborn. What was left seemed and 
 
THE CONFESSIONS OF ST. AUGUSTINE 105 
 
 still seems hard and repellent. But the wonder of it all 
 is that in the fire of need and passion those iron con- 
 clusions become again malleable ; they lose their hard- 
 ness and rigidity, they glow as they were meant to glow 
 with creating, sustaining, transforming powen They 
 bear men up where weaker contentions break beneath 
 them. It is not too much to say that Augustine thus 
 secured for Europe disciplining and transforming forces 
 without which all the better part of Christendom would 
 have to be reconstructed. He bowed Europe awestruck 
 before the tribunals of a sovereign God and in her nobler 
 spiritual moments, from that day to this, the Western 
 world has accepted the empire which he proclaimed. 
 There came indeed, in the providence of God, a time 
 when the teachings of Augustine were to be humanized 
 and his affirmations of the sovereignty of God qualified ; 
 when indeed for the very sake of that sovereignty our 
 own freedom was to be reemphasized and the sovereign 
 will of God made known as a will of tenderness and love, 
 mightiest of all in its redemptive passion and never so 
 sovereign as when, halting itself before the mysteries of 
 human personality, it allowed to men in the sanctuaries 
 of their own souls a freedom which, we reverently be- 
 lieve, was permitted them that they might, through that 
 freedom, come back to their Father as sons made perfect 
 in obedience. But all this must not blind us to the truth 
 and power of Augustine's contentions. As theologian 
 he has furnished to Western Christendom a doctrinal 
 form which has been dominant for a millennium and a 
 half; as a seeker after God the story of his travail is the 
 common treasure of the Church and the centuries. 
 
Ill 
 
 The Imitation of Christ 
 
 As centuries go it is a far cry from the " Confessions 
 of St. Augustine " to the " Imitation of Christ." 
 A millennium which saw the final passing of 
 the ancient Roman world, the birth and discipline of 
 new nations and the Church of the Nazarene made wholly 
 subject to the imperial spirit and wholly possessed by the 
 Roman genius for organization separates the two books. 
 Beneath these same brooding centuries the evolution of 
 new forms of society, the growth and perfection of 
 feudalism, the creation of new arts and architecture — the 
 marvellous expression of the Gothic spirit in cathedrals 
 and palaces — all got themselves accomplished, and — more 
 wonderful than all else — a new mind and more significant 
 still, a new soul came into being. This new mind — the 
 mediaeval mind — had itself taken root in soil either 
 wholly or partly saturated with classic traditions, and had 
 been nurtured, moreover, under the tutelage of a waning 
 classic culture, but it is in the end as far from the classic 
 mind as the east is from the west. 
 
 The pagan mind was perfectly at home in this world. 
 It was at its best estate conscious of no inner strivings 
 nor of divided laws ; it rejoiced serenely in the light and 
 beauty of the world, frankly related itself to the world 
 through the appetites and urgencies of the clay and found 
 in it all nothing of which to be ashamed, nothing from 
 
 io6 
 
THE IMITATION OF CHRIST 107 
 
 which to seek emancipation. This is not to say that, 
 from time to time, a breath from nobler and ampler 
 regions did not stir in pagan speculation and aspiration, 
 but even Plato — the lord of them that dream then and 
 now — had no such sense of divided laws and contending 
 empires as gave poignancy to the " Confessions of St. 
 Augustine " or constituted the backgrounds of the" Imita- 
 tion of Christ." 
 
 The pagan was frankly a citizen of this world. In 
 Augustine, as we have seen, the costly transition of the 
 pagan to the Christian order has found a great and im- 
 perishable expression. By the time of Thomas a Kempis 
 all this is unbelievably past. The classics had indeed not 
 been forgotten, Latin was still the scholars' language and 
 Greek was about to be rediscovered, but all the realities 
 which lay behind the classic literatures, the attitudes 
 which are there expressed, the tempers which there de- 
 clare themselves, had become for the mediseval mind un- 
 speakably remote. Thomas a Kempis and his fellow 
 monks might have made a shift to talk to Cicero could 
 that worthy have been reincarnated. He might not have 
 recognized their pronunciation ; they would have found 
 his majestic and balanced diction strangely different from 
 their monastic Latin, none the less so far as the forms of 
 speech are concerned the Roman and the monk might 
 have got on together. But neither could for a moment 
 have even begun to understand the other's soul, still less 
 could the monk have understood the soul of the Greek 
 or the Greek the monastic consciousness of life. Point 
 by point the new and the old are wholly alien. Life's 
 very centre of gravity has shifted. The monk was a 
 citizen of the world that is to be ; he lived not for time 
 but for the eternal. 
 
io8 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 The world of sense and space was no longer saturated 
 with beauty. If he thought of it at all he thought of the 
 earth as a hot-bed of temptation, the air as haunted with 
 demons. The shy and beautiful things which peopled 
 the olive groves of sunny Grecian mountain slopes, 
 watched over Grecian fountains, or dwelt in the reeds 
 by the river — haunting spirits of earth's kindness and 
 beauty, children of light and laughter — had disappeared 
 and the forms which the creative and revealing imagina- 
 tion of the mediaeval sculptor has put along the gal- 
 leries and upon the towers of his cathedrals had taken 
 their place. You have only to contrast classic art with 
 mediaeval art to see across what immense and sundering 
 spaces the human spirit had passed. Gone the perfect 
 beauty of a humanity utterly at peace, utterly adequate to 
 all that life might bring, utterly at one with the vaster 
 world-order of which it was a part ; wholly gone are 
 grace and beauty and noble lines and poises of strength 
 and balance. There is upon the faces of the men and 
 women — for the most part saints and martyrs who sleep 
 with piously crossed hands on their marble tombs or 
 meet you in the recessed portals of the great churches — 
 an utterly different look. Their bodies are worn and 
 wasted ; indeed it is utterly impossible that they should 
 ever have had such bodies as are there too often por- 
 trayed. But none the less they suggest great conquer- 
 ing aspirations and restlessnesses which have come through 
 crucifixion into peace, and wide-eyed longings after the 
 Unseen and Eternal, and mystic broodings upon the nature 
 and mystery of things, and numbing fears of death and 
 judgment and hell, and the expectations of purgatorial 
 pains, and radiant hopes of paradise, and the sense of the 
 insignificance of the things which perish, the certainty of 
 
THE IMITATION OF CHRIST 109 
 
 the things which endure, the reaUty of God and the re- 
 ahty of their own souls. For all that and more besides 
 is the mediaeval mind; all that and more besides the 
 mediaeval soul. 
 
 Mr. Henry Osborn Taylor has just been telling us, in 
 a very noble book, of all the elements which went to form 
 the mediaeval mind, what formative forces found their 
 expression in all those attitudes and conceptions and 
 central consciousnesses which may thus be named. For 
 my own part I believe that you will understand all that 
 is most significant, not only in the mediaeval mind, but 
 in the mediaeval soul, when you have dwelt much in the 
 hght of the windows of Chartres, when you have climbed 
 often the towers of Notre Dame, and when you have 
 sought to decipher all that the front of Amiens has to 
 tell. For in strongly fashioned stone, in the symbolism of 
 pictured windows, and the recitative of sculptured fronts, 
 we are taught the manifold aspects of the temper which 
 built the cathedrals, coloured the windows, and carved 
 the figures. There their hopes and fears are made tre- 
 mendously real to us, their limitations, their ignorances, 
 their profound intuitions, their endless sense of the wonder 
 and mystery of life, their reverence, their adoration, their 
 aspirations ; and there, at the same time, we are taught 
 the marvellous and inclusive unity which underlay all 
 these and which so wrought that their very contradictions 
 — as the contradictions of an arch — bore up into soaring 
 and architectonic stability the fabric which they built. 
 They built their cathedrals out of the reconciliation of 
 opposing thrusts ; so they built their civilization. 
 
 We shall understand the mediaeval mind best next 
 when we have dwelt much in the fellowship of Dante — 
 himself •' the voice of twelve silent centuries" — have seen 
 
no PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 how the sense of the eternal constantly possessed him 
 and with what vast outgoings and consequences the streets 
 of Florence were coterminous, with what a feeling of per- 
 fect fitness he felt himself to be the comrade of the shades 
 which cast no shadow, how strong his sense of ethical 
 consequence, and how immense, when all is said and 
 done, his mental grasp. 
 
 And in the last place we shall understand the mediaeval 
 mind and the mediaeval soul when we have read often the 
 pages of Thomas a Kempis and so have seen clearly be- 
 hind all the clamour of the time its inconsistencies, its 
 fightings, its cruelties, its endless ferment, its emphasis 
 upon externalities, its secret wealth of quiet souls, with 
 obediences and humilities and self-denials which gave 
 everything and asked nothing, save the sense of the love 
 and the favour of God. 
 
 The •♦ Imitation of Christ " is the culmination of one of 
 the two distinct processes of the mediaeval spiritual de- 
 velopment, for from the very first there were always two 
 contending conceptions of the perfect spiritual order. 
 One found its genesis in St. Augustine's ♦' City of God" 
 and its consummation in the Church of Innocent the 
 Third. Augustine had seen behind the passing of the 
 imperial order the emergence of an order more splendidly 
 and more permanently imperial — an administration of 
 the spirit in the realm of the temporal, employing ancient 
 temporal forms for new spiritual sovereignties. Here 
 or nowhere was the anticipation of the Latin Catholic 
 Church, and all the centuries from Augustine to Inno- 
 cent do but record the progressive realization of this 
 vision, until in the end the Church in its gradations, and 
 administrations, and organic solidities, and sovereign 
 pretensions had come to be mightier than even Augus- 
 
THE IMITATION OF CHRIST in 
 
 tine could have dreamed. The mediaeval mind accepted 
 all this as so essentially a part of the order of things that 
 without it the world would have been emptied as of light 
 itself. It was the perfect expression of central aspects of 
 the mediaeval mind, a perfectly logical development of 
 tendencies, which gave shape to mediaeval Europe. 
 
 None the less there had been from the very first other 
 attitudes and tendencies. Even Augustine himself was 
 mystic as well as imperialist ; while his vision of the City 
 of God kindled and satisfied his imagination, his need of 
 the presence of God built for him inner shrines of mys- 
 tical communion where he knew himself directly in com- 
 munion with the unmediated divine, and there found his 
 peace. This mystical temper underruns the whole 
 mediaeval hfe and finds, from time to time, rare and dra- 
 matic expression. St. Francis of Assisi may be taken as 
 the type of all those who found the consummation of the 
 life of the spirit in their own souls and sought the imita- 
 tion of Christ in poverty, humility and withdrawal from 
 the world. St. Francis' imitation of Christ was indeed in 
 part the imitation of what was incidental in the Master's 
 life — his poverty, his unmarried state and the Hke — but 
 along with all that went the imitation of much that was 
 most essential in the Master's life — his simplicity, his un- 
 worldliness, his utter denial of machinery and elaborate 
 methods and his serene trust in his Father God — a trust 
 which lent lyric quality to the utterances of the best loved 
 of all the saints, as it gave lyric quality to the utterances 
 of Christ. It is part of the deep pity of things that St. 
 Francis himself was defeated in that which he sought, was 
 compelled to organize what was essentially as incapable 
 of organization as the ecstasies of spring mornings or the 
 lights which lie on purple hills, and was himself caught in 
 
112 PILGRIMS OP THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 the processes and disciplines of his Church as a bird in the 
 snare of the fowler. But his testimony remains and we 
 are increasingly able to detach it from all its incidental 
 aspects and so to possess in him such a revelation of the 
 inner and freer aspects of the mediaeval soul as makes us 
 at once rich and glad. 
 
 The same stern genius for organization which did not 
 let even the rarer light of St. Francis and his kind fall 
 unregulated across a shadowy world, regulated, in one 
 form or another, all those aspects of mediaeval life which 
 sought peace in withdrawal from the world, and joy in 
 contemplation and meditation. For of such, I assume in 
 its beginnings, monasticism to have been: it was the 
 temper of those who sought in the inner life that peace 
 which the world cannot give, and who turned rather from 
 the restlessness, the strife or the ambition of their time 
 to the sheltered serenities of monastic walls. The old 
 monastic organization with its orders and its disci- 
 plines was just the attempt of the genius of the Church 
 to deal with a movement which was contradictory 
 enough — born of the very spirit of the Church and yet 
 alien to it. Very likely such regulation was necessary, 
 for the motives which led men to monasteries were so 
 various that without a searching discipline monastic life 
 would have tragically defeated its own ends. Indeed, 
 from time to time, just that did happen. Oftener still 
 the machinery of monastic life obscured its essential 
 spirit and we forget, in the consideration of the orders 
 themselves, what soul it was which gave the orders being ; 
 what spirit it was which they themselves were meant to 
 shelter and enrich. 
 
 It is the service of the " Imitation of Christ" to have 
 shown us the monastic temper in its essential purity. 
 
THE IMITATION OF CHRIST 113 
 
 The gentle soul of Thomas a Kempis disentangled, by 
 no logical effort but by the power of its own clear vision 
 and immediate experiences, all that was inner and essen- 
 tial from all that was external and incidental. If we had 
 no other source of information we should strive in vain 
 to reconstruct from the •' Imitation of Christ " the discipHne 
 and movement of the monastic life. Here is no indica- 
 tion of gray-walled cities of the spirit, of such institutions 
 as Clairvaux or Citeaux, of great churches which sheltered 
 the shrines of the saints, built by the devotion of multi- 
 tudes through the continuing centuries. Here is no in- 
 dication of fair domains embracing the best lands of 
 Europe, nor of the feudal relations between the abbot 
 and his tenants, or the monks and their poor. Nor is 
 there here any indication either of the play of ecclesias- 
 tical poHtics, or of unworthy ambition, or of gross and 
 sterile Hves, or of grievous faults, or of men made for 
 other and sterner things, who beat themselves against 
 their prison walls until their broken Hves were ended ; nor 
 of the withdrawal of multitudes of men and women, who 
 should have been the salt of the earth, from home and 
 secular administrations and the blessed upbuilding of a 
 pure and wholesome society. Nothing, I say, of all this 
 — and such things as these were the commonplace of 
 monastic life — nothing of all this breathes between these 
 serene and gentle lines. 
 
 The " Imitation of Christ" uncovers for us the soul of 
 monasticism in its best estate since monasticism was, for 
 the mediaeval mind, the very imitation of Christ. The 
 world which was just beginning to end when Thomas a 
 Kempis began to write had its degrees of perfection. The 
 monk, of course, was put first. Had he not wholly de- 
 voted himself to the things of the spirit and removed 
 
114 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 himself wholly from the world ; was he not sheltered 
 from the strife of a warring time and free from the 
 burdens of this present grievous order that he might de- 
 vote himself wholly to his soul's salvation ? For that he 
 was far removed from temptation ; for that he filled his 
 days and nights with prayers, fastings and worshippings ; 
 and because he was given so great an opportunity for the 
 achievement of perfection, perfection was asked of him 
 in return. The standards to which the world held him 
 were searching and high, his derelictions were not lightly 
 forgotten and, for him, the rewards of heaven, if so be he 
 were true, were reverently expected. The secular clergy 
 being more in touch with the world and therefore more 
 open to its temptations were held to less rigid ideals and 
 judged by lower standards; their faiUngs and frailties 
 were less harshly judged, and if the state of their souls 
 should demand a period of purgatorial cleansings, parish- 
 ioners, who hoped at best but to come into the same 
 state, were not minded to judge them too harshly. Be- 
 low or to one side were all the men and women who car- 
 ried on the affairs of the world, fought its battles, ruled 
 its states, ploughed its fields, shaped its armour or wove 
 its cloth. Much was allowed to them for the world 
 is an evil place and they who dwell therein are much 
 subject to buffetings and temptations. Nevertheless, if 
 only for the sake of those who have removed them- 
 selves from the world the world must make a shift to get 
 on and, therefore, marrying and giving in marriage were 
 recognized as a concession at once to the weaknesses of 
 the flesh and the necessities of the Church, while those 
 who thus lived and loved and fought could not in the 
 end expect much but a long sojourn in purgatory, and 
 indeed were happy if they escaped hell. 
 
THE IMITATION OF CHRIST 115 
 
 Such a scale of moral values must be judged by the 
 fruits of it and the necessities which drove men to it. It 
 is easy to see now what elements of sterility — spiritual 
 and social — lay in. just such a situation as this, how arti- 
 ficial it was in many of its aspects, how it exalted the 
 trivial and forgot the essential, and how, for a thousand 
 years, it complicated the ethical and social situations of 
 Europe. But we need to remember too all the qualities 
 of that life from which the monastic Hfe had, in the be- 
 ginning, reacted. It would have been quite impossible 
 at the beginning of the monastic period to have carried 
 its essentials over into the secular world or to have 
 offered such affiliations, as the third order of St. Francis 
 for example, to workers and warriors, husbands and 
 wives. It was just the emphasis of monasticism in its 
 better parts upon the hfe of the spirit, upon chastity and 
 cleanliness of life, which made it possible in the end to 
 take these virtues over into a world-order which was 
 meant, from the very first, to be the real field of their 
 exercise. It was the monastic exaltation and example 
 of chastity for almost a millennium which has wrought 
 the noble imperative of it into worthy living, always and 
 everywhere, and the passion for it into all sincere and 
 upright souls, even though we have come to see with 
 clear vision that it is not the foe of the great holy inti- 
 macies of life — nay, that in the great holy intimacies of 
 life its radiant stainlessness is most apparent. It has 
 always been necessary that great and necessary qualities 
 of the soul should thus be sought out and emphasized 
 through long periods of time and to the exclusion of 
 many counterbalancing qualities, to the end that they 
 might be made our permanent possession. It was neces- 
 sary then that those mystical qualities of devotion and 
 
ii6 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 communion which, as hght across stormy seas, qualified 
 the lawless and unholy desires of men, should be highly 
 exalted, set apart in a rare and commanding loneUness. 
 
 All this in anticipation of a time when society should 
 demand other and more inclusive adjustments, when the 
 great common interests of Ufe should take to themselves 
 the things of the spirit and the things of the spirit 
 should take to themselves the great common interests of 
 life, and the monastic virtues should come to sit, as 
 they were always meant to sit, by the hearthstone, and 
 beautify, as they were always meant to beautify, social 
 and family Hfe. Life is always richer in the end because 
 for a little we have underscored some single aspect of it, 
 since life in the end always comes back to possess its own. 
 But in taking possession of her own life does not undo 
 the past, but takes over into her own holy integrities, not 
 only the qualities which need to be sociaHzed, but the 
 emphases which such qualities have gained as men have 
 set them apart and dwelt much upon them. Nothing 
 less than that long emphasis upon religion as a vocation, 
 which gives colour to so much of the millennium be- 
 tween Augustine and the " Imitation of Christ," would 
 have been sufficient to make all vocations religious and 
 to bring into the life of Europe that full exaltation of the 
 things of the spirit which has been and is the expression 
 of our more worthy temper — the revelation of our more 
 representative moments. 
 
 The *' Imitation of Christ " then is the voice of such con- 
 ceptions of life as we have been considering ; it voices 
 the monastic ideal. It was written — or given final form — 
 by a man who thought of religion as a vocation and 
 from the monastic point of view. It seeks the perfection 
 of the spiritual hfe in the perfect life of the spirit and 
 
THE IMITATION OF CHRIST 117 
 
 conceives the life of the spirit as lonely and apart and it 
 voices all this just as all this was about to be lost. That, 
 also, has been always true. Whatever has come to be 
 fully conscious of itself and, after deep meditation, has 
 found for itself a perfect and adequate expression, gives 
 testimony thereby that its empire is ending, its sun is 
 setting. It is only at the end of the day that we cast up 
 the day's accounts ; it is only when life has been sub- 
 stantially lived that we fully express its spirit. When 
 we begin to meditate we have temporarily ceased to act ; 
 when we begin to sum up our meditations we are pro- 
 nouncing judgment upon ourselves. So the " Imitation 
 of Christ" marks the passing of the monastic order. 
 While the monk who wrote it shaped its pages in his 
 quiet cell the tumult of a world in travail must have 
 reached his ears. As he looked out of the arching 
 windows of the scriptorium to judge by the sunset what 
 the morrow was likely to be he must, if he had been at 
 all able to discern the signs of the times, have seen the 
 portent of a stormy morning soon to arise upon the 
 Church and the orders which he loved. In his lonely 
 moments as he lingered in the gathering shadows, come 
 silently in to possess the spaces of the cloister or the 
 cathedral, he must have felt that the virtues which he 
 was chronicling were more and more wanting in the life 
 which was so dear to him ; while he exalted the virtues 
 of the monastic life, monasticism itself was being debased. 
 Now the " Imitation " is not only the voice of mediaeval 
 devotion but it is the voice, at least in its deeper, truer 
 parts, of a school of devotion. It belongs by all its 
 deeper implications to the fellowship of the mystics. By 
 the end of the fourteenth century the true Catholicism of 
 the Latin Church had been wholly lost. Those who 
 
Ii8 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 emphasized the outer and those who emphasized the 
 inner Hfe, even though they bore one name, were still so 
 essentially separated that any hope of reintegration was 
 thereafter impossible. Here is a schism more divisive 
 than the great schism and indeed antedating it, pro- 
 founder than the separation of the Church into its re- 
 formed and unreformed branches, for the roots of these 
 differences are deep as human nature itself. We shall 
 consider mediaeval mysticism more at length in connec- 
 tion with the " Theologia Germanica " ; it is enough to say 
 that the whole mediaeval world was underrun by a quiet 
 and half-hidden spirit of extreme emphasis upon the 
 inner Hfe. Like an underground river this movement 
 fertilized institutions which seemed far enough removed 
 from its influences and gave quality to whatever, on the 
 whole, was most distinctive in the whole mediaeval 
 period. It found various expressions for itself, although 
 it was indeed impatient of organization and external 
 direction, and it spoke through a multitude of voices. 
 Indeed how manifold its expressions were we are just 
 beginning to find out. The " Imitation " although it does 
 not indeed claim to speak for any body of mystics is, 
 none the less, to repeat, so saturated in its better part 
 with mystical qualities that we cannot go wrong in dis- 
 covering here something more than the work of a single 
 author. The " Imitation " is a redaction, gathering into a 
 final and very perfect form, much which was being said 
 and dwelt upon in all monasteries of central Europe and 
 much indeed which was being said and dwelt upon far, 
 far outside monastery walls. 
 
 This brings us directly to the question as to the author- 
 ship of the " Imitation " — for long an open question. 
 There is a whole literature upon the subject and any discus- 
 
THE IMITATION OF CHRIST 119 
 
 sion of the arguments advanced demands a scholarship 
 which only the specialist can claim and an examination of 
 detail neither desirable nor possible in these studies. No 
 more suggestive and illuminating consideration of the 
 forces and conditions to which we owe the " Imitation " 
 has been made than that of Michelet in his tenth 
 book of the " Histoire de France " ; for he tells us the 
 " Imitation " is really the voice of that profound hope- 
 lessness which covered the Europe of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury as a flood. This book of the life of the spirit was 
 born in the seeming death of society. The world had 
 apparently come to its term ; all which makes life in any 
 fashion apparently worth living had failed. That has 
 already been intimated in these studies. Men were dead 
 of necessity to joy, prosperity and the wholesome vigour 
 of life'; there was but one thing left, to die also to pride 
 and desire and to begin to live in God. We can see now 
 that such death had in it the germs of an immense new- 
 ness of life. A Europe so reduced was already, though 
 she knew it not, upon the threshold of a marvellous res- 
 urrection. It is one of the most significant facts in all 
 our history that such a resurrection began in the deep 
 things of the spirit. Dead to so much of the world 
 through the compulsions of its misery and unhappiness 
 the devouter souls of the fifteenth century chose will- 
 ingly to die to the rest, to find their peace in the crucifix- 
 ion of self and their joy in the imitation of their Lord. 
 Then and there, by that paradox which Jesus is always 
 holding before us and which we are so slow in receiving, 
 they who had lost their lives found them in the very act 
 of losing them. In the shadowed depths, out of which 
 the '* Imitation " issued, Europe began to climb anew 
 towards the light. 
 
120 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 " The ' Imitation of Christ/ " says Michelet, *• after 
 the Gospel the most wonderful of Christian books, is 
 come as the Gospel came out of the womb of death. 
 Out of the death of the ancient world came the Gospel ; 
 out of the death of mediaevalism the * Imitation.' 
 These two dying worlds have borne such germs of life." 
 The " Imitation " suddenly becomes a new literary fact. 
 *• The first manuscript of the ' Imitation,' " and here I 
 quote Michelet again, " appears to be dated from the end 
 of the fourteenth century or the commencemen: of the 
 fifteenth. By the year 142 1 there were numberless 
 copies. We find twenty, for example, in a single monas- 
 tery. The new-born art of printing principally employed 
 itself in the reproduction of the * Imitation.' There are 
 2,000 Latin editions, 1,000 French; the French have 
 made sixty translations of it, the Italians thirty." ' A 
 book which within twenty years and under the most diffi- 
 cult circumstances secured such a response for itself as 
 the " Imitation " might well seem to have the spiritual 
 needs of contemporaneous society for its creator. No 
 wonder that each people claims it for its own. More 
 than that the book is claimed, not only by the nations, 
 but by the centuries. It did indeed " break out " in the 
 fifteenth century but there are anticipations of it in the 
 thirteenth and creative echoes of it in the sixteenth. All 
 this is but one more testimony to the inclusive and far- 
 reaching attitudes of life of which it was the voice, to 
 which it made its appeal. It is not likely, then, that the 
 author did more than finally to put into form what was 
 all about him in a pregnant and fragmentary way. 
 There is a true sense in which the man who speaks for 
 any great age or movement is robbed of originality by 
 
 * Michelet, " Ilistoire de France," Vol. 6, Book lo. 
 
THE IMITATION OF CHRIST 121 
 
 the very vastness of that to which he gives final expres- 
 sion. But all this does not diminish, it rather increases 
 his glory. What we clearly allow to Homer, Shake- 
 speare and even Dante we may well allow to the author 
 of the " Imitation of Christ." He did but give form to 
 what pressed upon him from every side and a single and 
 far carrying utterance to voices which prayed or wept or 
 confessed or aspired in all the hidden and half desolate 
 places of the spiritual life of his time. 
 
 Ampere has summed all this up in a sentence so signif- 
 icant as to be more than worth quoting. " There were," 
 he says, " in the middle age two existences : the one of 
 the warrior, the other of the monk. On one side the 
 camp and the combat ; on the other side prayer and the 
 cloister. The warrior had his spokesman in the whole 
 literature of chivalry ; those who wore away their lives 
 in the cloister had need also to express themselves. 
 They gave voice to their dreams and their solitary sor- 
 rows, softened by religion ; and who knows if the ' Imi- 
 tation ' was not the inner epic of the monastic Hfe, if it 
 has not taken shape little by little, cast and recast, to be- 
 come at last a collective work of mediaeval monasticism, 
 which so bequeaths to us its profoundest thought and its 
 most glorious movement." ' 
 
 The " Imitation " then is the inner epic of monasti- 
 cism ; an epic of quietness and gentleness, yet not without 
 its intimation of sieges and battles, bitter conflicts, tragic 
 defeats, sudden deliverances, all carried out upon the 
 table-lands of the soul and behind the shelter of gray 
 monastery walls. The warriors of that cruel time who 
 came and went in their marchings and fightings and their 
 plunderings may well have scorned, as they sang the 
 * Michelet, •' Histoire de France," Vol. 6, p. 136. 
 
122 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 death of Roland with the peers of Charlemagne at Ronce- 
 vaux about their camp-fires, the placid and uneventful 
 life of the monks, the sound of whose chantings may 
 have reached them even as they sat and sang. But who 
 knows whether in the sight of God the monks were not 
 also fighting as hard battles, experiencing as crushing de- 
 feats or as splendid victories, living or dying as gloriously 
 as any knight upon any boasted field. 
 
 There was, none the less, need that this epic of the 
 mediaeval soul should somehow be given final form and 
 it is more than hkely, when all is said and done, that 
 Thomas a Kempis did just that. He was born in i 379 
 or 1380 in one of the Rhine provinces under the author- 
 ity of the diocese of Cologne. His father was a peasant ; 
 his mother the keeper of the village school. Thomas 
 was the youngest son and showed such aptitude for 
 learning that he was advanced as his people were able to 
 advance him. He lost his name in the process, for when 
 he had gone away to school he was no longer Thomas 
 Hammerken, but Thomas from Kempen, and so presently 
 Thomas a Kempis. The influences which played upon 
 the boy in this, his formative period, were various and 
 fine. The traditions of the mystics, new ideals of sound 
 scholarship and practical benefactions, all had their part in 
 shaping the quiet scholar, for he was a quiet scholar. 
 He liked books, he said, and quiet corners all his days 
 and upon conversion he turned to the monastic life as to 
 a vocation to which he was called by all the inner and 
 outer forces of his soul and his world. It was given him 
 to live quietly in his monastic vocation for a long, long 
 lifetime; for he took his vows in 1407 and died in 1471. 
 
 These were stirring years enough. While Thomas a 
 Kempis was in the way of being ordained and was rejoic- 
 
THE IMITATION OF CHRIST 123 
 
 ing in his fully acquired priesthood all the world was 
 gathered together at Constance for the reforming of the 
 Church in head and members and for the purging it of 
 that pestilent heretic, John Huss. While the gentle soul 
 of Thomas rejoiced in his little new monastic honour — 
 for he had been made sub-prior — the pope had pro- 
 claimed a new crusade against Bohemia, hundreds of 
 thousands of men had been poured into that devoted 
 country and the very foundations of society were being 
 shaken. These were the days when Cosimo de Medici ruled 
 in Florence, and in gardens looking down upon the Arno 
 all that made the Renaissance wonderful and Florence 
 great was gathered together in fellowships where every 
 name is classic and where the long Italian afternoons were 
 passed in such high intensity of life as the world had not 
 known since the days of Athens. 
 
 These are the years in which France, distracted and 
 harried, seemed hopelessly fallen from her high estate, 
 when her own sons joined with the English to lower the 
 lilies in shame to the red mire of shameful battle-fields, 
 and when a peasant girl, counselled by voices whose 
 wisdom she never doubted and led by lights to which she 
 was always obedient, put to shame the unworthy leaders 
 of her people, lifted the Hlies from the mire, saw her king 
 crowned in the great cathedral at Rheims, and died her- 
 self in the market-place at Rouen — all this while Thomas a 
 Kempis might have been considering the beginnings of 
 the " Imitation." An old order was dying, a new was 
 being born. John Gutenberg had set up his printing- 
 press at Mainz. Constantinople had fallen and the star 
 and crescent had displaced the cross on the domes of St. 
 Sophia. Greek scholars had brought a new language to 
 Western Europe and art had begun to have its new birth. 
 
124 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 Portuguese sailors were insistently questioning the 
 mystery of seas heretofore undiscovered. Christopher 
 Columbus was beginning to dream those dreams which 
 should open the doors of a new world to the old. And 
 all the while Thomas was about his copying, his 
 chronicles, his tracts, his sermons, his letters and his 
 hymns, " a httle fresh-coloured man, with soft brown 
 eyes, who had a habit of stealing away to his cubiculum 
 whenever the conversation became too lively ; somewhat 
 bent, for it is on record that he stood upright when the 
 psalms were chanted, and even rose on his tiptoes with 
 his face turned upwards ; genial, if shy, and occasionally 
 given to punning ; a man who perhaps led the most 
 placid uneventful life of all men who ever wrote a book 
 or scribbled letters," while a world was in travail with a 
 double agony — the death of the old and the birth of the 
 new. 
 
 The imitation of Christ, as Thomas a Kempis then 
 conceived and expressed it, consists essentially in a 
 separation from the externalities of the world, the nar- 
 rowing of human relations and the searching limitation of 
 the objects either of ambition or desire. On the other 
 hand it exalts all qualities of awe and reverence, of devo- 
 tion and mystic brooding. It is a study in proportion. 
 The qualities which the conduct of businesses, the order- 
 ing of poHcies, the establishment of dominions, the enact- 
 ment of laws call out are dismissed as sterile and deceit- 
 ful, while all those qualities which make for detachment, 
 humility, contempt of the vanities of the world, and the 
 exaltation of the Unseen and Eternal are set in the places 
 of desire and are made administrators of the will. There 
 are, indeed, in the *' Imitation of Christ " echoes of voices 
 with which Thomas a Kempis could not have been famil- 
 
THE IMITATION OF CHRIST 12^ 
 
 iar ; intimations of older interpretations of life whose rela- 
 tion to his own interpretation he could not have suspected. 
 An element of stoicism enters into his whole scheme. 
 Marcus Aurelius and Thomas a Kempis would have had 
 much in common ; could they have sat together some 
 quiet night, under the stars before the imperial tent on 
 the frontiers of the empire, the Christian would have 
 found, where he did not dream they existed, sources of 
 his gospel in the life of the pagan, the pagan would have 
 found unexpected echoes of his own teaching in the 
 meditations of the monk, and together they would have 
 held high converse, agreeing chiefly in this : their 
 catalogue of vanities. " It is vanity," Thomas a Kempis 
 would have said, speaking gently, " to seek after perish- 
 ing riches, and to trust in them ; to strive after honours, 
 and to climb to high degree, to follow the desires of the 
 flesh, and to labour for that for which thou must after- 
 wards suffer grievous punishment. It is vanity to desire 
 to Hve long, and not to care to Hve well ; to mind only 
 this present life, and not to make provision for those 
 things which are to come ; to love that which speedily 
 passeth away." ' Aye, the emperor would have answered, 
 " soon will the earth cover us all : then the earth too will 
 change, and the things also which result from change will 
 continue to change forever, and these again forever. 
 For if a man reflects on the changes and transformations 
 which follow one another like wave after wave and their 
 rapidity he will despise everything which is perishable." ^ 
 " Well then, man," the emperor would have added, " do 
 what nature now requires. Set thyself in motion, it is in 
 
 * " Imitation of Christ," Book I, Chapter i, 
 
 ' " The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius," Book IX, Chapter xxviii 
 (Long's translation). 
 
126 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 thy power, and do not look about thee to see if any one 
 will observe it." * " Still there is, oh emperor," the 
 monk would have rejoined, " a truer conclusion than that 
 vi'hich thou thyself hast drawn. True all is vanity, but 
 there is one exercise of the soul which is not vanity and 
 in which all thy hope must lie : * All is vanity, except to 
 love God, and Him only to serve.' " ^ Much else also 
 they might have said between them ; the " Meditation " 
 and the " Imitation " sound a common note yet always 
 with this difference : the " Imitation " is rooted in deeper 
 spiritual securities and finds, in " The Royal Way of the 
 Holy Cross," a light which the emperor was sadly want- 
 ing and for the vi^ant of which he was halted even though 
 he did not go astray. 
 
 The " Imitation of Christ " is, in the thought of Thomas 
 a Kempis and his kind, to pour contempt on all the vic- 
 tories of the world. We are, they said in substance, shut 
 up in our lives to a hopeless duahsm. Two empires are 
 contending for us — the world and the spirit — and there 
 can be no peace between them. The victory of the 
 world is the defeat of the spirit ; the victory of the spirit 
 the defeat of the world. If we grant such premises it is 
 not easy to avoid the conclusions which follow. Indeed, 
 many of the counsels of the " Imitation " are not to be es- 
 caped, whether we grant its premises or not, but the 
 validity of its judgment upon life as a whole depends 
 upon the validity of its premises. These are considera- 
 tions which naturally adjourn themselves to the end of 
 the study, but at least we shall understand the ** Imitation " 
 more clearly if we begin by recognizing the sense of 
 
 ^ " The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius," Book IX, Chapter xxix 
 (Long's translation). 
 
 ' " Imitation of Christ," Book I, Chapter i. 
 
THE IMITATION OF CHRIST 127 
 
 hopeless antagonism between the ideals of the world and 
 the spirit which breathes through its pages and defines, 
 as vanities to be escaped, occupations and relationships 
 in which multitudes of men and women have always 
 found joy and fullness of life. That imitation of Christ 
 which begins with the contempt of the vanities of the 
 world must issue in humility. No one may deny the 
 wisdom of this central counsel. The shadow of our- 
 selves darkens too often the paths along which we press 
 and in that shadow we too often stumble. 
 
 There is a shrewd note about many of the counsels to 
 humility, although the shrewdness, one may well believe, 
 was no virtue for Thomas a Kempis. " Affect not," he 
 says, ♦' to be overwise, but rather acknowledge thine own 
 ignorance. If thou wilt know or learn anything profit- 
 ably, desire to be unknown, and to be little esteemed. 
 It is great wisdom and perfection to think nothing of 
 ourselves, and to think always well and highly of others. 
 We are all frail," is the charitable conclusion, " but do 
 thou esteem none more frail than thyself." * It is from 
 such points of departure as these that we come into 
 the clear perception of truth. Surely there is a wisdom 
 independent of changing faiths and changing authorities 
 in this. '* The more a man is at one within himself, and 
 becometh of single heart, so much the more and higher 
 things doth he understand without labours ; for that he 
 receiveth the light of wisdom from above." ^ What is 
 all this but to say : " Blessed are the pure in heart : for 
 they shall see God " ? There is a relation between our 
 attitudes and tempers and our vision of truth which we 
 ought never to be forgetting. These counsels hold for 
 
 ^ " Imitation of Christ," Rook I, Chapter ii. 
 » Ibid.y Book I, Chapter iii. 
 
128 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 the laboratory as they hold for places of prayer and 
 meditation. Here, also, is the secret of serene effective- 
 ness in life. " A pure, single, and stable spirit is not 
 distracted, though it be employed in many works ; for 
 that it doeth all to the honour of God, and being at rest 
 within, seeketh not itself in anything it doth." * 
 
 With all his so sweet and reasonable spirit, Thomas 
 cannot forbear to gird at the vain learning of the world. 
 " How many perish by reason of vain learning of this 
 world, who take little care of the serving of God." ^ But 
 we forgive him, so rebuking what after all deserves to be 
 rebuked, for the sake of the noble wisdom with which 
 he closes his exhortation. " He is truly learned, that 
 doeth the will of God, and forsaketh his own will."^ If 
 the will of God be broadened to the amplitudes of its full 
 revelation, if the will of God be made resident in the laws 
 of the heavens, the ordered relationships of mathematics, 
 the creations and dissolutions of the chemical laboratory, 
 the harmonies of music, the veracities of noble speech, 
 and the fruitfulness of disciplined lives, then " he is truly 
 learned, that doeth the will of God," and the end of all 
 science is the apprehension of the method and order of 
 the Eternal. 
 
 The notes with which the " Imitation " begins — contempt 
 of the world, thinking humbly of oneself, and discerning 
 truth through humility — are much sounded in the pages 
 which follow, and variously and fruitfully combined. 
 The roots of wisdom and forethought in our actions, of 
 peace and content, of obedience, of avoiding many words, 
 of taking profitable advantage of adversity, are all to be 
 sought in this same humility which esteems the things 
 
 » " Imitation of Christ," Book I, Chapter iii. 
 
 2 J Sic/., Book I, Chapter iii. ^ /^/,/^ 1300^ j^ Chapter iii. 
 
THE IMITATION OF CHRIST 129 
 
 of the world as of little worth, which is always gentle, 
 teachable, which waits much upon God, buffets the 
 urgencies of the body, does not glory in wealth or 
 friends, but in God alone, lays not its heart open to 
 every one, keeps company with the humble and single- 
 hearted, and desires to be famihar with God and His 
 angels. 
 
 Even the Scriptures themselves are to be read in this 
 same spirit of humility, simplicity and faithfulness, nor 
 ever in any deceitful desire for the repute of learning. 
 Obedience is, in the monastic definition of life, always 
 the sister virtue of humility, and obedience is much and 
 searchingly dwelt upon. " Go whither thou wilt, thou 
 shalt find no rest, but in humble subjection under the 
 government of a superior. Many have deceived them- 
 selves, imagining to find happiness in change." * There 
 are few admonitions between the covers of the book 
 more instinct with the monastic temper than these half 
 dozen short lines. It is this temper which has made the 
 Latin Catholic Church possible and which has in return 
 been continually exalted in the disciplines and ideals of 
 the Church. It is this temper which, from the very first, 
 has turned men, wanting in strength and courage for the 
 diviner adventures of life, to whatever havens of shel- 
 tered peace they might find. It is this temper which led 
 Newman and his friends out of Protestantism and into 
 Catholicism. It is this temper which makes the weak 
 and the restless to-day so strangely hospitable to any 
 bizarre but dogmatic creed whose authoritative note stills 
 all questions, or to :uiy unworthy leader who promises 
 to become at once the pilot and captain of their salva- 
 tion. A temper so persistent and many-sided in its ex- 
 
 * " Imitation of Christ," Book I, Chapter ix. 
 
ISO PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 pressions must be a real constituent of the soul, its 
 exercise must be allowed for, its needs ought surely to 
 be met. 
 
 These, the shelter seekers, are never rich in the brave 
 and more dramatic qualities of the human spirit ; they do 
 not sail untravelled seas, discover waiting continents, 
 build new roads for truth, let the light into regions of 
 darkness, blaze the trails of science, philosophy, or give 
 new meanings to faith, but none the less, in their shel- 
 tered quietness, they are the seers of such visions as would 
 darken our world were they wholly withdrawn. They 
 feed into the restless turbulence of our world the waters 
 of quiet meditation and call to us who are committed to 
 steep ascents or stormy seas, that mayhap the thing 
 which we seek is nearer home than we have dreamed. 
 The men of action and the men of meditation, the men 
 of sheltered harbours and the men whose spirits drive 
 them across the open seas always find it hard to under- 
 stand one another, though there is a possible reconcilia- 
 tion of contentions so seemingly opposed upon higher 
 levels than either commonly attains. There is, indeed, 
 no rest but in humble subjection to the government of a 
 superior, but the only pronouncement of authority final 
 and august enough to rule us all and still, to a holy peace, 
 our troubled seas, must be through the voices of truth 
 and goodness, speaking in the wide agreements of those 
 who have searched and tested them. There is a dis- 
 ciplined consensus of opinion firmly established in some 
 regions, tentative in others, and prophetic in all, which 
 offers to all adventurous spirits the challenge of the un- 
 charted, and to all timorous souls tested securities, but 
 the expression of such authorities as these is more and 
 more in the scientific, ethical or religious consciousness 
 
THE IMITATION OF CHRIST 131 
 
 and less and less in institutions and hierarchies ; mind 
 and conscience supply their thrones of administration. 
 Dante was wiser than Thomas a Kempis and at the 
 same time more faithful to the true spirit of the «' Imita- 
 tion" than Thomas himself when he conceives himself, 
 upon the thresholds of the Earthly Paradise, dismissed by 
 Virgil, as free in his obedience and nobly obedient in 
 his freedom. 
 
 *' Expect no more 
 Sanction of warning voice or sign from me, 
 Free of thy arbitrament to choose, 
 Discreet, judicious. To distrust thy sense 
 Were henceforth error. I invest thee then 
 With crown and mitre, sovereign o'er thyself." 
 
 The touch of the " Imitation " is, of course, surest in its 
 chosen field ; the disciplines, protestations and assurances 
 of the inner life. The monk was much schooled as to all 
 the subtle guises which temptation assumes and as con- 
 stantly drilled in all the approved forms of resistance. 
 Here he speaks as a wise physician of the soul, and 
 without doubt out of much painful introspection and mov- 
 ing experiences. The very roots of temptation must be 
 plucked out. " The beginning of all evil temptations is 
 inconstancy of mind, and small confidence in God." We 
 must be watchful, especially in the beginning of the 
 temptation ; for the enemy is then more easily overcome. 
 Withstand the beginnings : the remedy is applied too 
 late, when the evil has grown strong through long delay. 
 ** For first there cometh to the mind a bare thought of evil, 
 then a strong imagination thereof, afterwards delight, and 
 evil motion, and then consent."^ Temptation then is to 
 1 " Imitation of Christ," Book I, Chapter xiii. 
 
132 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 be overcome in the realms of imagination and desire. If 
 our broodings and meditations are kept clean, temptation 
 will not so much as shape itself. Like the fabrication of 
 clouds above the level floors of the sea the mists and faint 
 prophecies of the storms of temptation rise through our 
 broodings and our meditations, and though they be at 
 first so tenuous as to be scattered by the rising breath of 
 holy purposes and the direction of our thoughts to un- 
 stained and rightful themes, yet in the end, if we aug- 
 ment them by imagination and reenforce them by desire, 
 and let them have their way with us, they will drive down 
 upon us with the tempest's staggering shock and we shall 
 be rarely fortunate if we do not make shipwreck of this 
 or that interest of our lives, or even of life itself. 
 
 We should expect, of course, that Thomas a Kempis 
 would call those to whom he wrote to meditate much 
 on the example of the holy fathers, and indeed he 
 makes out a most formidable catalogue of their virtues 
 and their victories. The eighteenth chapter of the first 
 book of the " Imitation " reads like the eleventh chap- 
 ter of Hebrews. Very likely the fathers had, in the 
 days of their flesh, no such excess of zeal, humility 
 and righteousness as the *• Imitation " attaches to them. 
 Thomas a Kempis is not a good witness to all the quali- 
 ties of the lives of the fathers, but he is a good witness to 
 what the monks must have talked about in those times 
 when their silences could be broken, and the things 
 upon which they must have meditated in those other 
 times when their lips were sealed. 
 
 *• Life in a Religious Community " was not always 
 without its difficulties, if we are to accept the testimony 
 of the short chapter so headed. The constant contact 
 of a small group of men, the routine of whose days was 
 
THE IMITATION OF CHRIST 133 
 
 unrelieved and who were never saved from themselves by 
 the demands of vaster interests or the unforeseen contin- 
 gencies of life was without doubt productive of much 
 wearing friction, of petty jealousies and antagonisms 
 from which there was no outer deliverance. The monks 
 must upon occasion have grown weary of the cowled 
 faces of their brethren and the biting words of the 
 *• Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister " are without doubt 
 much more than a poet's mordant fancy. 
 
 *' G-r-r-r — there go, my heart's abhorrence ! 
 Water your damned flower pots, do ! 
 If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence, 
 God's blood, would not mine kill you ! " 
 
 " It is no small matter," we are told, " to dwell in a re- 
 ligious community, or monastery, to hold thy place 
 there without offense, and to continue faithful even unto 
 death." ' Some of the advice as to the conduct of life 
 within monastery walls is still good for all sorts and con- 
 ditions of people. To collect oneself from time to time, 
 to fix one's purpose in the morning, and to cast up one's 
 spiritual accounts when the day is done, to bridle riotous 
 appetite, and never to be entirely idle, but to be if noth- 
 ing else endeavouring something for the public good, to 
 fit one's spiritual exercise to one's personality, and to ac- 
 complish all that to which one is bound, surely these are 
 the essentials of wise living, now as then. 
 
 The monk dwelt much in the sense of the transitori- 
 ness of all life, and found in his meditations upon death 
 a wholesome corrective for his restlessnesses and his vain 
 desires. ♦' Death is the end of all, and man's life sud- 
 denly passeth away like a shadow." ^ We who dwell in 
 
 1 Book I, Chapter xvii. « Book I, Chapter xxiii. 
 
134 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 a changed atmosphere will never understand how this 
 sense of the transitoriness of life oppressed the mediaeval 
 mind and affected all its exercise. For the most part 
 such other-worldliness affected unfavourably the whole 
 conduct of mediaeval hfe, but in one mind it rose to en- 
 duringly noble and fruitful levels. Dante alone saw the 
 changeless relations of the temporal and the eternal in 
 true perspective. For him, indeed, the temporal ceased 
 to exist and the eternal became all in all ; in his vision 
 the streets of Florence were coterminous with the pits of 
 the Inferno and the terraces of the Mount of Purgation. 
 As easily as waters fall to subterranean levels and again 
 emerge, life as he knew it flowed on unbrokenly, now in 
 the mutations of Florentine politics, now in the pallid 
 fellowship of shades, reaping what they have sown, but 
 always sub specie seternitatis — under the guise of the 
 eternal. None the less he was not taught by all this that 
 we are to keep ourselves as strangers and pilgrims upon the 
 earth, having nothing to do with the affairs of this world, 
 but that rather, since the affairs of this world are the 
 affairs of all the worlds, and the affairs of time the affairs 
 of eternity, we are to bear ourselves as men and women 
 who are even here and now about the King's business 
 and who are under bonds to bring even to that which 
 seems transitory some qualities of the Unchanging. This, 
 at least, the monk never saw, nor seeing it would he in all 
 likelihood have understood the meaning of it ; for him 
 life was only a preparation for death and the world which 
 now is only the shadow of a dream ; its relationships but 
 evil entanglements, its loves but follies, its desires but de- 
 lusions. Here or nowhere is the root of the sterility, not 
 only of the old monastic order, but of all such orders as 
 have been in any fashion affected by its temper. The ad- 
 
THE IMITATION OF CHRIST 135 
 
 journment of all pure joy and noble service to celestial 
 fields must in the end empty this present world of real 
 meanings, weaken all the springs of action, withdraw 
 from any active participation in passing things those 
 whose citizenship is most literally in heaven, to the great 
 loss of this present world. Indeed in all this the monk 
 did despite not only to the temporalities but to the eter- 
 nalities, for he would in the end come but to a monkish 
 heaven through taking there only the capacity for a 
 monkish heaven. He was far afield in all this. If what 
 we are is what becomes of us and if our citizenship here 
 determines the quality of our citizenship hereafter, then 
 he best serves the everlasting who does not desert what 
 now is for the sake of things that shall be, but seeks 
 rather to secure for that which nov/ is some foregleams 
 of the eternal splendour. 
 
 It is upon such considerations as these that the " Imita- 
 tion " dwells, varying indeed its treatment and shifting its 
 emphasis, but holding fast always to one central theme : 
 *• Thou shalt profit much, if thou keep thyself free from 
 all temporal care. Esteem all comfort vain, which thou 
 receivest from any creature." ' " By two wings a man is 
 lifted up from things earthly, namely, by Simplicity and 
 Purity. Simplicity ought to be in our intention ; purity 
 in our affections. Simplicity doth tend towards God ; 
 purity doth apprehend and taste Him. If thy heart were 
 sincere and upright, then every creature would be unto 
 thee a living mirror, and a book of holy doctrine. As 
 iron put into the fire loseth its rust, and becometh clearly 
 red hot, so he that wholly turneth himself unto God, put- 
 teth off all slothfulness, and is transformed into a new 
 man." ^ 
 
 » Book II, Chapter v. = Book II, Chapter iv. y 
 
136 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 The " Imitation " dwells much and directly upon the joy 
 of a good conscience. Here only are the deep unhin- 
 dered springs of peace. Having the approval of con- 
 science all other judgments are idle and all losses but to 
 be despised. *• To walk in the heart with God, and not 
 to be held in bondage by any outward affection, is the 
 state of a spiritual man." ' The connection between the 
 chapters of the" Imitation" is not always evident; one must 
 seek the logic of such connection as exists in the deeper 
 spiritual movements which begot them. Here is no work 
 of systematic theology, but rather the report of the move- 
 ments of a meditative soul, dealing now with this and 
 now with that aspect of Hfe, sometimes doubling back 
 upon its tracks, sometimes anticipating what, in the light 
 of pure logic, should have been later considered. But 
 beneath it all there is a deepening intensity, a growing 
 power. 
 
 Having dwelt much upon the fruitfulness of humility 
 and of spiritual discipline, with the rewards incident 
 thereto, the author of the " Imitation " is next moved to 
 consider the love of Jesus. Here he speaks as the pure 
 mystic. Suggestions of the Song of Songs breathe 
 through his passages. Indeed, the wonder is that one 
 does not find a larger use of that rather difficult book, 
 for the mediaeval mind loved much to find in the fervent 
 passages so supplied an adequate vehicle for the expres- 
 sion of its own passion for Christ. St. Bernard found in 
 the canticles texts and 'suggestions for his most famous 
 sermons, and so used, the fire of strophes, sung first be- 
 neath oriental skies and for forgotten marriage feasts, 
 pales before the transmuting power of his pure and fer- 
 vent spirit. Monk and nun alike dwelt much in their 
 
 ' "Imitation of Christ," Book II, Chapter vi. 
 
THE IMITATION OF CHRIST 137 
 
 more exalted states upon these glowing passages, giving 
 them new meaning, and filling them with a rapt expres- 
 sion of a mystic love which exalted the beloved as chiefest 
 among ten thousand and the one altogether lovely, in 
 whose comradeship hell itself becomes a paradise and 
 without whom paradise is become hell. 
 
 From dwelling upon the love of Jesus it is a short way 
 to urge that those who are lovers of Jesus must also be 
 lovers of His cross, and in the twelfth chapter " Of the 
 Royal Way of the Holy Cross " the meditations reach 
 their loftiest altitude. Behind this chapter, or better be- 
 neath it, is the whole mediaeval understanding of cross- 
 bearing ; the mediaeval interpretation of the Master's 
 master word : " If any man will come after Me, let him 
 deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me." In 
 the thought of Thomas a Kempis the cross is set squarely 
 across any road to salvation. Cross-bearing is, for the 
 mediaeval mind, an unescapable discipline, the present 
 condition of future felicity ; the cross is not only the sign 
 of the redemptive love of God made manifest in Christ, 
 but also the symbol of pain and self-denials, without 
 which one can in no wise be a true disciple of Jesus, but 
 in it all there is no real endeavour to relate the cross 
 either to the deep necessities of the life of Christ or to the 
 deep necessities of our own lives. " Christ's whole life 
 was a cross and martyrdom ; and dost thou seek rest and 
 joy for thyself? " ^ The cross of the " Imitation " is the 
 assumption of hard and difficult things rather than the 
 acceptance of the costly consequences of high consecra- 
 tion to brave and fruitful methods of life. All miseries, 
 pains and privations are crosses to be sought out and 
 borne. If there is nothing in the normal stations of life 
 
 ' «' Imitation of Christ," Book II, Chapter xii. 
 
138 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 to beget them then they must be created and then* edge 
 must be sharpened and, with increasing purity of purpose 
 and deepening aspiration of soul, their weight must be 
 doubled. All that life offers of disappointment and nega- 
 tion was to the temper which has given us the " Imita- 
 tion " one or another aspect of the cross ; indeed the 
 whole endeavour after salvation was a cross, an en- 
 deavour whose present pains were endurable only in the 
 light of the future joy, purchasable only upon such 
 bitter terms. Since the cross and pain were, in the 
 teaching of the " Imitation," interchangeable terms, 
 cross-bearing is pain-bearing, the assumption of the 
 cross is the assumption of pain. Holy and redemptive 
 value is thus given to all self-denials, asceticisms and 
 limitations of this present life. The vocation of the monk 
 is rooted in such a soil as this, governed by such contra- 
 dictions and, if in his more thoughtful moments he may 
 have wondered why he was bowed beneath so heavy a 
 burden, he would have been answered, or would have 
 answered himself, that we are to take up our cross, and 
 in such an answer he would have been content. Since 
 pain and sacrifice are, as he would have said speaking 
 scholastically, of the essence of the cross, therefore, pain 
 and sacrifice must be sought out, must patiently be borne. 
 The " Imitation " does not attempt to disentangle those 
 crosses which spring out of the vast brave necessities of 
 life and those crosses which are the self-sought contrivance 
 of the ascetic temper. The mystery and pain of life itself 
 and the discipline of the cloister are put exactly upon the 
 same level, endowed with the same virtue, though it is 
 only fair to say that behind the self-sought discipline of the 
 cloister there lay a true impelling force ; the feeling, that 
 is, that life must be somehow or other a living sacrifice. 
 
THE IMITATION OF CHRIST 139 
 
 In all this it is the deeper part which is true. We 
 shall free ourselves from the circle in which Thomas 
 a Kempis and his fellows so long moved by recognizing 
 that that is no true cross which does not spring out of 
 the necessities of life itself. The whole mediaeval con- 
 ception of " The Royal Way of the Holy Cross " was so 
 sterilized that the world has never gathered therefrom 
 any harvest at all proportional to the immense devotion 
 which moved the actors in that ancient piteous drama, 
 because those who thought themselves to be imitating 
 their Master missed the central quality of all His life and 
 passion. He was committed by all the passion of an in- 
 carnate love to the costly task of the world's redemption, 
 but He began that task in the most simple and unmys- 
 tical ways. He loosed the coils of folly and fault in 
 which He found men and women everywhere caught by 
 teaching them the truth about life and God, by cleansing 
 and heartening them, by bringing joy to little chil- 
 dren and opening for women, deep in the shadow, the 
 gates of a new and stainless life — therein rebuking hoary 
 wrongs — by championing the cause of the forgotten and 
 the downtrodden, by correcting men's sense of values, by 
 disclosing to them those lights of the eternal which shone 
 upon the fields of their toil and the cities of their habita- 
 tion, by reinterpreting inherited beliefs, and by giving 
 new and searching spiritual significance to admonitions 
 and commandments whose real meaning they had lost. 
 It was in such simple and immediate and human services 
 as these that Jesus began His tasks of redemption ; it was 
 out of such foundations as these that the cross began to 
 lift itself. As the shadow of the Passion begins to 
 deepen across His road, it is humanly speaking because 
 all He was trying to do was bringing Him more and 
 
140 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 more into hostility with men determined that it should 
 not be done, whose interests would be compromised by 
 His triumph, whose ideals would be darkened if His 
 ideals were exalted. None the less, He held bravely to 
 this, His appointed work, following without any doubt 
 or fear the roads which He had chosen, because they 
 were the highways of love and service. He followed 
 them clean to the end, though they brought Him to 
 the garden of Gethsemane and the Halls of Judgment 
 and the Chambers of Mockery and the Hill of Pain. 
 Here was nothing assumed or nothing which He had 
 gone out of His way to seek. Indeed He would have 
 gone out of His way to have avoided the Cross. His 
 cross was just the brave and radiant and sacrificial com- 
 pletion of holy and redemptive tasks which began face 
 to face with needy men and women and ended in the 
 mediatorial lonelinesses of the passion. There is no indi- 
 cation of this in the pages of the " Imitation." 
 
 Thomas a Kempis and all his fellows were bearing 
 their specially assumed monastic and ascetic crosses, not 
 because great human needs, redemptive necessities and 
 the problems of the restless and misguided world had 
 brought them face to face therewith in their endeavour to 
 establish the kingdom of God in the fields of time and 
 upon the foundations of eternity, but because such 
 denials as they were undergoing seemed to them neces- 
 sary aspects of their own attainment of salvation. It was 
 to save their lives eternally that they were so willing to 
 lose them for a little space. All this is not to say that 
 they found no justification in the words of the Master for 
 what they were doing. He indeed urged men to lose 
 their lives that they might in the end save them, but 
 when all this is interpreted in the light of His own temper 
 
THE IMITATION OF CHRIST 141 
 
 and the commanding necessities of the kingdom one sees 
 that there is not now and has never been any need for 
 creating conditions of self-sacrifice. If hfe itself is lived 
 bravely, if all its burdens are nobly assumed, its battles 
 fought to the end, its difficult roads followed through 
 light and shadow, its steep ascents breasted, its sins 
 atoned for and its follies retrieved, its far-shining ideals 
 consistently obeyed, we shall find that though we are not 
 spared the necessities of taking up our crosses, they are 
 always, none the less, crosses which have already taken 
 shape in the needs of the kingdom and the high impera- 
 tives of life ; we do not need to build them out of 
 materials which our own imaginations or our own con- 
 ceptions or misconceptions of self-denial may supply. 
 We need always to be holding such wide considerations 
 as these in view in interpreting any exhortation to cross- 
 bearing. 
 
 Once however all this is clearly seen we may well 
 recognize how necessary it is that we should meet the 
 pains and disappointments of life in some such temper as 
 breathes quietly through the blessed pages of the •' Imi- 
 tation." For there are crosses which come to', us, not 
 through the brave assumptions of difficult and challeng- 
 ing tasks or the courageous fighting of battles to which 
 we are led by far-shining visions, but because we belong 
 to the fellowship of the suffering and the sinning, because 
 life, at its best, is full of sorrows and disappointments 
 which draw down upon us out of the spaces of the skies, 
 storms born it may be in another hemisphere — unsought, 
 unforeseen, unavoidable. We shall bruise ourselves sadly 
 if we beat with restless pride against such conditions as 
 these, or refuse to accept as part of the discipline of life 
 itself its tears and its disappointments. Since there is 
 
142 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 much which we must bear if we are to live at all, and 
 since those who live most nobly are often asked to bear 
 much, and indeed do live nobly because they do bear 
 much, there is unspeakable gain in recognizing clearly 
 that here also is a Royal Way and that we are not 
 alone when we travel it, but that we move in great and 
 kindling comradeships — the comradeship of all those who 
 have accepted these light afflictions which are but for a 
 moment as a part of a Father's purpose, sure in the end 
 to work out a far more exceeding and eternal weight 
 of glory. We have here but one or two alternatives : we 
 may be sadly bruised or broken by fighting against all 
 the harder part of life or, accepting the bitter and diffi- 
 cult as also a part of Love's plan, we may find that what 
 would otherwise wound us heals us ; that experiences, 
 which, borne in one temper, crush us, do, when borne in 
 another temper, exalt us, and that to have accepted, en- 
 dured and glorified what is hardest with the glory of the 
 cross is to have emptied it of its terror and robbed it of 
 its power to wound ; nay, indeed, to discover in all pain 
 and burden-bearing a spiritually creative force fruitful 
 since the morning of time in high perfections of soul. 
 For this is the glory of the cross of Christ. It is lifted so 
 high that the shadow of it, which is no shadow at all but 
 an excess of light, touches and transforms every hard 
 thing truly or lovingly borne. 
 
 In the third book of the " Imitation " the mystic note 
 deepens, though there is rather the dwelling upon con- 
 siderations already urged than the advance into wholly 
 new regions. Humility is much dwelt upon. All things 
 are to be referred to God, the longing desires of our heart 
 are to be examined and moderated, we are to grow in 
 patience and to strive much against evil desires. We are 
 
THE IMITATION OF CHRIST 143 
 
 to find in the example of Jesus Christ the kindhng in- 
 spiration of all we are and all we seek. Our self-abase- 
 ment is to be entire, our resignation without quahfication, 
 true comfort is to be sought in God alone. We are to 
 cast all our care upon Him because He careth for us. 
 Through much resting in God and the remembrance of 
 His manifold gifts, through constant imitation of our 
 Lord, and the uncomplaining acceptance of all chasten- 
 ing and discipline we are to enter into peace. The roads 
 which lead to the Land of Peace are not easy to miss, 
 though indeed a proud heart would rather do without 
 peace than choose them. For there are, says the " Imi- 
 tation," four things that bring great inward peace : 
 
 First : " To do the will of another rather than thine 
 
 own." 
 Second : To " choose always to have less rather than 
 
 more." 
 Third : To " seek always the lowest place, and to be 
 
 beneath every one." 
 Fourth : To ♦' wish always, and pray, that the will of 
 
 God may be wholly fulfilled in thee." ^ 
 
 In such counsels as these one hears the echo of quali- 
 ties old as all meditation upon the disappointments of 
 life. " He that is down," says John Bunyan, •* need fear 
 no fall." In the stormy pages of " Sartor Resartus " 
 Thomas Carlyle, speaking out of a sorely tried soul, sug- 
 gests the same conditions for the attainment of peace. 
 " Nay, if I mistake not, unity itself divided by zero equals 
 infinity. Decrease thy denominator. On the rolling bil- 
 lows of time thou art not engulfed, but borne aloft into 
 the azure of eternity." The " Imitation " does but echo 
 in its definitions of peace the older and more command- 
 
 1 <* Imitation of Christ," Book III, Chapter xxiii. 
 
144 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 ing word of St. Augustine ; " Thou hast made us for 
 Thyself, and we are restless till we rest in Thee." 
 
 Life, so established, has really a great power of self- 
 sufficiency. It is able to disregard the judgments of men, 
 clearly discerns the eternal values, measures the straitness 
 of life against the amplitudes of the Everlasting, and finds 
 in eternal life compensations for all grievous things, any- 
 where and anyhow borne. By asking very little all that 
 one gets is clear gain. By resting humbly in one's God one 
 is spared the promptings and the disappointments of vain 
 curiosity. By trusting wholly in God one need take no 
 thought for one's salvation. So the scheme of life finally 
 emerges. HumiHty, self-abnegation, the acceptance of 
 the hard and difficult as part of the loving purpose of 
 God, the crucifixion of natural desires and inordinate 
 affection, the constant subordination of the seen to the 
 unseen, of the temporal to the eternal, the glorification 
 of discipHne, the exaltation of pain and denial are the 
 frontiers of it. Within such boundaries its business is to 
 be carried on, its commerce conducted. All this is not 
 new. There are haunting echoes here of Marcus Aure- 
 lius and the whole stoic interpretation of life. It is not 
 wholly Christian, and it has found expression in forms too 
 multitudinous to bear repetition. The '' Imitation of 
 Christ " does but give a classic and hallowed form to such 
 contentions, relate them to the discipline of the Catholic 
 Church and the Passion of Christ, and soften all their 
 harsh contours by a great gentleness of spirit. 
 
 The " Imitation " is, however, distinctive in one thing: 
 in its emphasis upon the Sacrament of Communion as 
 being in some fashion the method by which all this is to 
 be realized. Here Thomas a Kempis speaks a language 
 which is hard for many of us to understand — the language 
 
THE IMITATION OF CHRIST 145 
 
 of the sacramentarian. But we can at least understand 
 this much ; he knows himself, in the ecstasies, the brood- 
 ings and the mystic identifications of the sacrament, to 
 have become one with his Lord, to have eaten living 
 bread and drunk a living draught, and so not only to 
 have been made strong for the burdens which such an 
 imitation of Christ embodies, but also to have become so 
 identified with Christ that imitation becomes something 
 deeper than imitation — the true expression of what is 
 imitated. When once a devout soul has found union 
 with Christ in the sacraments, the soul will be and bear 
 and do all that Christ did and was and bore, because the 
 soul and Christ are one. 
 
 The " Imitation " has gone far, has been translated into 
 many tongues, and has spoken its word of consolation to 
 troubled and restless generations. In its temper of other- 
 worldliness, in its simplicity of life, in its stripping away 
 the garments of pride and self-conceit or indolence, in its 
 discernments of eternal values, and in its cultivations of a 
 deep and brave temper, the imitation which Thomas a 
 Kempis counsels is a true imitation. It fails in its indica- 
 tion of allegiances to vaster causes and continuing human 
 needs. The book will always be the wise counsellor of 
 restless souls who, enmeshed in circumstances which they 
 may not escape, would without such healing restraint 
 beat out their lives against their prison bars. It com- 
 municates a magical temper which, laying hold of all that 
 is hardest in life, transforms it, lifts it up, transcends it 
 and, by a great paradox, escapes utterly by yielding to it 
 most completely. No one of us is ever likely to escape 
 the need of such gentle healing admonitions or the need 
 of being taught that the stern necessities of life are to be 
 escaped by bearing them; that gentleness, humility, 
 
146 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 meekness and patience are the roads to the kingdom ; 
 that beyond the Httle seen boundaries of the temporal 
 are the ampHtudes of the eternal, the home of final rec- 
 onciliations and the home of the soul. 
 
 But here, when all is said and done, is not the whole 
 imitation of the whole Christ. It is the imitation of the 
 Christ of the silences, the Christ of loneliness, the Christ 
 of mountain tops and holy and rapt communions with 
 His Father, the Christ of the Garden, the Passion and the 
 Cross. Here is no imitation of the Christ of the High- 
 ways of Palestine, of the marriage feast of Cana, the 
 Christ the healer and teacher, the Christ whose hatred of 
 all injustices was compact of holy fire, or the Christ the 
 good comrade of men, or the Christ who conceived and 
 inaugurated the kingdom. More than that, the " Imita- 
 tion" does not recognize those aspects in the life of 
 Christ which it most faithfully follows, as related in 
 indirect though unescapable ways to every other aspect 
 of His life. If He sought the silences it was only to speak 
 the more wisely and compellingly to the throngs on the 
 slopes of the Galilean hills or the mobs in the streets of 
 Judean cities ; if He were lonely it made him the better 
 friend ; if He sought the mountain top it was only to come 
 down divinely strengthened to heal and to teach or to 
 transform. Nay, the Garden, the Passion and the Cross 
 have for their backgrounds all His holy human service, 
 all His joy-bringing fellowships, all His brave passion for 
 the kingdom and His Father's cause. The Christ whom 
 the " Imitation " imitates is never for a moment unrelated 
 to the Christ of whom the '• Imitation " knows nothing. 
 Nor can one understand or justify the Christ of the 
 " Imitation " except as one understands and glorifies the 
 Christ of life and its needs. 
 
THE IMITATION OF CHRIST 147 
 
 For our imitation of Christ, then, we are to interpret 
 what the " Imitation " teaches in terms of what it does 
 not teach. We need sorely enough all its emphases. Our 
 own age needs to be called back again to a greater rec- 
 ognition of the worth of the inner life. We are demand- 
 ing an expression from the Church which is out of all pro- 
 portion to that which she has to express, and we are 
 wondering why the response is so inadequate. A rich 
 outer life must be the expression of a rich inner hfe. 
 We have our pumps, our canals, our fields to be irri- 
 gated, everything but the living water, and we shall gain 
 the living water only as men seek anew their eternal 
 sources. The world of Thomas a Kempis was poor be- 
 cause, having such inner wealth, it used it in such in- 
 adequate fashions. Our world is poor because, having 
 such demand for inner wealth, we are forgetting how to 
 create it. The perfect imitation of Christ lies in the 
 union of elements too often profoundly separated. The 
 full expression of all that Christ is and offers has indeed 
 seemed historically almost impossible, though all partial 
 expressions of Him do make Him somewhat more real in 
 a world which is richer and better for even the most 
 fragmentary reincarnation of His spirit, but the sheer 
 difficulty of the task does not excuse us from striving so 
 to imitate Him that the whole force of His temper, His 
 nature. His interpretation of life shall be brought to bear 
 upon a world whose need is so immense. Our own tend- 
 ency just now is to dwell too exclusively in regions 
 which the " Imitation" does not at all consider. Our 
 imitations of Christ are humanitarian, concrete. The 
 settlement not the cloister is our ideal; Jane Addams 
 not Thomas a Kempis writes our twentieth century 
 imitation. Ministries are our chosen tests ; service our 
 
148 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 master word. There is immense need that an otherwise 
 sterile overemphasis of subjective spiritual states as the 
 true Christian ideal should be corrected, but we need to 
 take care that we also do not rest in the incomplete. 
 Jesus Christ was never wholly imitated in the cloister, nor 
 is He fully imitated in the settlement, unless the settle- 
 ment possesses also some of the quahties of the cloister. 
 We must find Him in both. Only such imitations are 
 great enough to make Him truly real. We rightly bear 
 His cross only as we serve all holy causes with hands in 
 whose palms sacrifice sets the stigmata and offer, in the 
 sanctuaries of our souls deep withdrawn, a perfect obedi- 
 ence to the loving will of God. 
 
IV 
 Theologia Germanica 
 
 WE have not come even so far as this in these 
 studies without beginning to see that we 
 have been following the changing aspects of 
 one continuing process. Every one of the books with 
 which we have already dealt is not only a voice out of 
 the depths, but the revelation of a quest and its out- 
 come ; the quest, that is, for peace, power and finality. 
 Life lays upon men the immense burden of finding some- 
 where beyond its restlessnesses and contradictions healing 
 regions of unity and stability ; life lays upon men, that 
 is, the immense burden of the quest for God. 
 
 Every great book of the spirit is either a revelation of 
 the way in which men have found an inner peace, or the 
 pathetic disclosure of their inability to find it: a dis- 
 closure made compelling in the instance of those who 
 fail by the moving story of their unsatisfied endeavour. 
 All this is, of course, as old as life, but from time to 
 time new direction is given to the quest, new movements 
 disclose themselves, and new guides, having found at 
 last the city of their desire, call to us, across the years, 
 the roads which they have followed. 
 
 We began fittingly with Saul of Tarsus ; * he marked, 
 we saw, a great transition. Compelled, though he was, 
 to cast his proclamations of emancipation in theological 
 
 * See Introduction. 
 149 
 
ISO PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 form, he was first of all seer, mystic and poet, passion- 
 ately claiming for himself and all men the birthright of 
 an unhindered communion with the Father, and yet so 
 led in all his passion for freedom as never for a moment 
 to detach it from consuming humihties, holy obediences, 
 and absolute dependence upon the righteous will of God. 
 He made men free, yet so as not to abuse their freedom ; 
 highly proclaiming that God asks of His children only 
 the acceptance of all His benefits and comes into every 
 life upon no other condition than that the doors of de- 
 sire, confidence, and hospitable eagerness be opened to 
 His coming. Yet, just as in the ruined Abbey at Mel- 
 rose all the inner framework of one great window is after 
 the fashion of the cross, so that no light came through 
 that window which did not as it were shine through the 
 cross, — so the Apostle made the cross the framework 
 and enclosure of the door of faith to the end that no one 
 should enter that door without a profound sense of his 
 own unworthiness, a burning hatred of sin, the great 
 comforting consciousness that there is no bitterness of 
 hfe which God does not share, and the passionate ado- 
 ration of a Love which counted no price too great to pay 
 if only men might be freed from their burdens and 
 follow the Hving way. 
 
 In our study of Marcus AurcHus and his meditations, 
 and the backgrounds of these meditations in the Stoic 
 philosophy, we saw how fine a temper could nourish 
 itself on the moral idealism of the Stoic, how nobly men 
 might live who sought only the integrity of their own 
 souls, and what sanctuaries they secure who know them- 
 selves to be, in spite of all appearance, beyond the reach 
 of the passing or unhappy, who look fortune in the face 
 with level eyes, and who count the voyage well done if, 
 
THEOLOGIA GERMANICA 151 
 
 whether they have come or no to their appointed havens, 
 they have at least kept their rudders true. We savir, at 
 the same time, how inadequate all this is to the really 
 great enterprises of life, how it spells retreat rather than 
 advance, and how, while it may be a saving and neces- 
 sary attitude for those who champion failing causes, it 
 is no fit interpretation of life for those who have to lay 
 anew the foundations of the spiritual and the temporal, 
 and rebuild a ruined world. 
 
 The forces which were incarnate in St. Paul, — nay, the 
 forces which took their departure from St. Paul and 
 found in him their deathless spokesman, became rein- 
 carnate in St. Augustine, yet with this difference, that 
 whereas St. Paul in his own life made the transition from 
 the rigidities of Judaism to the freedom of Christian 
 discipleship, St. Augustine in his own life accomplished 
 the transition from Paganism to Christianity. St. Augus- 
 tine himself has borne witness at what cost this was ac- 
 complished and how immense was the travail of his soul. 
 But when at last he listened to the decisive and directing 
 voice and in an ecstatic moment of rebirth reorganized 
 all his hfe about centres of love, devotion and obedience, 
 and upon the full plane of the spiritual, something 
 more happened than that. Augustine the Rhetorician 
 was at last converted and was in the way of becoming 
 Augustine the Saint. Then and there the old life of 
 Western Europe was recast; then and there unborn 
 generations and shadowy centuries were committed to 
 new ideals, new affections, and new desires. From time 
 to time it is given to one man to anticipate and body 
 forth in his experiences all that which humanity, after 
 him, is to share and to become. Sometimes one man 
 dies for the people, sometimes one man is converted for 
 
152 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 the people. A thousand years of history were made 
 that afternoon in a now forgotten garden while the dis- 
 tant, changeless summits of the Alps looked down upon 
 the triumphant labour of St. Augustine's soul. 
 
 Three distinct forces took their departure from him. 
 As a theologian, he furnished the moulds into which, 
 even down to our own time, the dominant theologies, 
 both of the Catholic and Protestant Churches, have been 
 cast. As a philosophic interpreter of history, he antici- 
 pated and justified the reincarnation of the Roman im- 
 perial order in the imperial order of the Catholic Church 
 and gave force and direction to that movement. He 
 was, though he knew it not, the father of hierarchies and 
 the apologist for exercises of authority before the full 
 consequences of which he would himself have stood 
 appalled. And he was, besides (in Western Europe), the 
 first great Christian mystic and comrade of all who seek 
 God in the sanctuaries of their own souls by the roads of 
 self-denial, mortification, and illumination. 
 
 We have now to consider, in connection with the 
 " Theologia Germanica," the development of that mystic 
 temper in Latin Christianity both as it found expression 
 in a little book which, perhaps, more than any other has 
 made Mysticism intelligible to the plain man ; and as it 
 became a determining factor in the pregnant departures 
 of the Protestant Reformation. Mysticism itself is as 
 old as love and life and restless human yearning. It was 
 from the beginning a constitutive element in the great 
 religions of the East. Hinduism is steeped in it ; Bud- 
 dhism sits and dreams in its light. The attainment of its 
 states was part of the discipline of the Greek mysteries, 
 although it was never a distinctive quality of the Greek 
 temperament. The Greek loved balanced harmonies, 
 
THEOLOGIA GERMANICA 153 
 
 clear-cut forms of beauty, and the clarity of his own 
 matchless skies far too well to dwell overmuch in the 
 shadowed land of mystical speculations. Nor does 
 Mysticism enter largely into the faith of the Hebrew; 
 his emphases were primarily ethical, his consciousness of 
 God in every aspect of life so overwhelming as to make 
 any long and difficult search for Him an unnecessary 
 exercise of the soul for men who heard His voice in the 
 thunder, saw His glory in the lightning, were persuaded 
 that He drew the hail out of the treasures of His ice for 
 the discomfiture of their enemies, made the clouds His 
 chariots and the winds His messengers, and dwelt in a 
 heaven whose lower battlements an audacious tower 
 might scale. The mystical quality, however, is not 
 wanting in the Psalms, for it grows always with our 
 sense of the greatness and wonder of God ; indeed the 
 Psalms and the Canticle have been storehouses from 
 which Christian mystics have always drawn great haunt- 
 ing phrases to be burdened anew with meanings which 
 the Hebrew poets could not always have anticipated, 
 and which would indeed somewhat have surprised them. 
 How immediately the teaching and the ministry of 
 Jesus commended themselves to the mystical temper 
 and were by that temper taken up and rebaptized, we 
 have only to open the Gospel according to St. John to 
 find out. In the face of all critical discussion this is 
 beyond debate. The Gospel according to St. John is a 
 mystic's interpretation of Christ and His Evangel. There 
 was a vast deal in that Evangel, so the Gospel according 
 to John witnesses, which was capable of being redis- 
 tilled in the alembic of the mystic's temper, and the fra- 
 grance of that distillation has been filling the chambers of 
 devout souls for nineteen hundred years. The mystical 
 
154 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 interpretations of the Evangel, so begun, attained a trop- 
 ical growth upon Graeco-Judaic soil. For in Neo- 
 Platonism and Gnosticism mystic elements are not want- 
 ing. It must always remain a wonder why Judaism, 
 with its clear-cut and reverent sense of God, and Hellen- 
 ism, with its great sane clarities of thought, should be- 
 tween them have begotten a system in which God is lost 
 in unparallelled complexities of speculations, and clear 
 thinking wholly subordinated to capricious and bizarre 
 creations whose only value is to witness how far afield 
 men may go when they forget reality, name their dreams 
 philosophy, and their caprices faith. 
 
 Such a temper could, in the end, prove only sterile ; 
 such a cloud-built system could not preserve its co- 
 herency in a world where, after all, the winds of sanity 
 do blow down, cold, fresh and mist-dispelling, from the 
 heights of truth. You may draw a line north and south 
 to the west of Alexandria, and all mysticism east of that 
 line has been and remains sterile, capricious, subtle, and 
 unreal. To the westward, the mystical element, more 
 nobly controlled, never wholly divorced from action and 
 constantly made subject to an entirely different rehgious 
 temper, has been a spiritual leaven without which Western 
 civilization would have been poor indeed. It has filled 
 all our devotion with a saving sense of wonder and 
 mystery. It has offered that call of the far horizons 
 without which religion retracts upon itself and faith 
 narrows to rationalistic limits. 
 
 It is time now to try to define the thing about which 
 we have been talking. Mysticism is born of the restless- 
 ness and incompleteness of life : whether in the regions of 
 thought, love or action, we are not sufiRcient for our- 
 selves. The simplest facts of the inner and outer world 
 
THEOLOGIA GERMANICA 155 
 
 set us to asking questions which in turn raise other ques- 
 tions, and so drive us far down a road which either has 
 no end at all or else must end in that which answers all 
 our questions. If we are to keep our sanity, if we are 
 not to be always standing dizzy on the edge of an infinite 
 gulf, we must somehow find an answer to all our ques- 
 tions in some homeland of the questing soul, which 
 men have variously named, but which, however they 
 name it, is the goal of their pilgrimage. The One, the 
 Absolute, the Self-sufficient, the Self-evident, the Infinite, 
 an Infinite and Eternal energy, the Unknown and the 
 Unknowable God, — so men have named their goal. 
 
 " That which we dare invoke to bless; 
 
 Our dearest faith ; our ghastliest doubt ; 
 He, They, One, All ; within, without ; 
 The Power in darkness whom we guess." 
 
 In the regions of science and philosophy we reach this 
 goal by the difficult road of reason ; we climb by the 
 hard-hewn stairs of premise and conclusion. We strive 
 to test our facts as we climb and so follow the light from 
 level to level. Climbing by such rock-hewn roads as 
 these, our progress has never been rapid ; some of us 
 have gone farther than others and many of us have found 
 the way too hard. We accept as our guides great crea- 
 tive masters of human thought — the scientists and the 
 philosophers — nor do we always follow them to the end 
 of the road. We take their word for conclusions which 
 they themselves have reached, but which are too high or 
 too far for us. Only those who are blind to the great 
 intellectual achievements of our race will fail to rec- 
 ognize how far this way has led us, at what almost infi- 
 nite cost its steps have been cut out of the living rock, 
 
1 56 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 what horizons are disclosed as we pantingly take its 
 heights, or what splendour of the glory of God has been 
 so discerned. 
 
 But the road of reason is not the only road to God and 
 His rest. There have always been those who have dared 
 to take feeling as their guide, who have flown where 
 others have slowly climbed, and have been borne by the 
 wings of their intuition across abysses which more 
 cautious and challenging souls have been compelled to 
 bridge. The mystic has always maintained that God is 
 to be known not by the head, but by the heart ; our 
 emotional experiences (so they contend) are in the 
 regions of spiritual communion not only the surest 
 guides, but the most dependable witnesses. Until well 
 within our own time we have made no attempt either to 
 understand the mystic or to examine his claims. When 
 Starbuck published his " Psychology of Religion," he 
 gave notice that the specialists in psychology were at last 
 beginning to take the phenomena of religious experience 
 seriously ; a new day dawned then. When William 
 James in his epoch-making " Varieties of Religious Ex- 
 perience " lent to the interpretation of these experiences 
 the great weight of his scholarship, invested their narra- 
 tion with the charm of his style, and came at the heart of 
 them by his penetrating and sympathetic intuition, we 
 all recognized that the reHgious consciousness was no 
 longer a psychological outlaw. Now that the whole sub- 
 ject is being investigated from every possible point of ap- 
 proach, Mysticism has come in for a consideration which 
 more than atones for our past neglect. We are in the 
 way of at last really understanding a subject which has 
 hitherto been, for a variety of reasons, all too difficult, 
 and it is more than likely that we shall find ourselves 
 
THEOLOGIA GERMANICA 157 
 
 presently with a new respect for the witness of feeUng to 
 the everlasting reaUty of religion. " The freezing reason's 
 colder part " is not our only guide. When " like a man 
 in wrath " the heart stands up ♦' and answers, I have felt," 
 that testimony is not to be lightly dismissed. The peace 
 of God which passeth all understanding has a certainty 
 which mere demonstration can never attain. 
 
 Modern psychology helps us to understand the move- 
 ment of the mystical mind and lends a real reenforce- 
 ment to many of its conclusions ; our newer thought 
 about the subliminal consciousness lets in a flood of light 
 upon its processes and offers perhaps the best point of 
 departure for the consideration of mystical phenomena. 
 Even in the most normal and least perplexing mental 
 life there is a vast deal going on beneath the surface, of 
 which we are not conscious. Thought is matured, 
 processes of reasoning are carried on, conclusions are 
 reached, judgments are corrected and balanced, and all 
 this, either without our own knowledge or with such in- 
 termittent or fragmentary knowledge, that we do not for 
 a moment sense the full significance of what is being 
 transacted below the sea-level of our conscious lives. We 
 all have the habit, even though we have not dwelt upon 
 its full significance, of referring much which puzzles us 
 to those counsellors who sit in hidden chambers; we 
 dismiss to them our burdens and our perplexities only to 
 receive them again ordered and clarified by the ceaseless 
 and unguessed labour of these toilers in the deeps. We 
 do not always give credit to those to whom credit is due ; 
 we call such sure and clarified judgments intuitions. 
 They seem to us gleams or flashes from another world, 
 when in reality they are simply conclusions to which our 
 deeper selves have come, often at the cost of long-con- 
 
158 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 tinued and laborious mental processes which are none 
 the less real because they lie beneath the thresholds. 
 This is true, I say, even of those of us who most pride 
 ourselves upon the reasoned and orderly movements of 
 our minds. 
 
 There are, from time to time, men and women — women 
 more often than men — who are especially rich in this 
 deeper part of their nature, who defer more constantly 
 to these hidden counsellors, and who profess to be 
 more dependent upon their intuitions than upon reasoned 
 conclusions. They are folk of gleams and flashes. 
 They do not find it easy to explain the grounds upon 
 which they act, but their actions often possess an ex- 
 traordinary wisdom and fitness. They are always guides 
 worth following, especially in delicate and involved 
 situations where other than prudential considerations 
 come into play. There are, finally, those in whom all 
 such processes as these are raised to a unique power. 
 They live always either in the depths or upon the 
 heights ; they do not share the common processes of 
 our laborious lives. Their assurances of certainty and 
 sense of reality all shape themselves in the depths and 
 come to them in voices, visions, ecstasies, raptures, 
 senses of certainty, which set them apart from their 
 fellows and make them supremely citizens of a realm, 
 to which indeed no one of us is wholly strange, but 
 in which they have their birthright. These are the 
 mystics. 
 
 We see, then, that they really carry to an extraor- 
 dinary degree methods which we all brokenly employ, 
 and are marvellous manifestations of a psychical tem- 
 per, traces of which may be found even in the most 
 commonplace and least imaginative of men. They are 
 
THEOLOGIA GERMANICA 159 
 
 not always normal — genius is never normal — but they 
 possess something of that force which we recognize 
 in art, music and poetry as the truly creative and the 
 rare gift of God to man. The mystics are the artists, 
 the poets, the musicians of the moods and tempers of 
 the soul. They are attuned to rare vibrations, they have 
 eyes for the lights and shadows which play across the sur- 
 face of restless souls and spirits yearning for peace. 
 Their conclusions are the revelation of the hidden proc- 
 esses of wonderfully acute and sensitive personalities 
 who have allowed their emotions to guide them and who 
 are profoundly persuaded that purified and disciplined 
 emotion can never be a false guide. 
 
 For here is the second psychical characteristic of the 
 mystic : he seeks so to purify and exalt his desires that 
 they shall direct themselves only towards worthy ends 
 and, having so purified them, he follows them without 
 question. We are coming clearly to see that we have 
 no right to set up water-tight bulkheads between the dif- 
 ferent powers of the mind ; we have no right, that is, to 
 assign knowing, feeling and willing to entirely different 
 regions of the self, build an impassable wall between 
 them, and say that each goes on uninfluenced by the 
 other. There is really no figure of speech which easily 
 suggests their interpenetration. Each is crippled without 
 the other. The more nobly we live, the more perfect 
 the unity of their interwoven action. We speak of pas- 
 sionless thinking ; we even exalt it as an ideal. It is no 
 ideal at all. Passionless thinking is sterile, wanting in 
 carrying and constructive power. Great thinking always 
 glows as with hidden fires and kindles us as we follow it 
 by the contagious heat of it. When great emotions feed 
 into great mental processes, then thought frees itself of 
 
i6o PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 limitations and — nobly adventurous — claims time for the 
 field of its action and all the revelation of God in earth 
 and sea and sky as its material — then and then only. I 
 cannot conceive any mental operation, even in the region 
 of pure mathematics, which does not rise in efficacy as it 
 begins to glow with that driving intensity of which every 
 thinker at his best is always conscious, and which is nothing 
 other than the contribution of a deep and steadying emotion 
 to the mind's most austere, difficult, and searching tasks. 
 
 All this is even more true of the operations of the will. 
 Feeling feeds into will its sustaining and conquering 
 qualities. Those dominant volitions which have made 
 armies mobile and irresistible, moulded senates and cabi- 
 nets to one imperious desire, or fused the wayward pur- 
 poses of multitudes into a compact and effective national 
 will, have always at the heart of them an adequate and 
 unconquerable passion. Feeling is, moreover, something 
 more than a contributive and resolving force ; it is a hght- 
 bearing guide. Feeling at its best — disciplined, re- 
 strained, hallowed — gives a direction and a right direc- 
 tion to the whole expression of life. 
 
 It goes without saying that the emotions themselves 
 are as dependent upon thought and will as thought and 
 will are dependent upon them. They are neither capri- 
 cious servants nor lawless masters ; least of all are they to 
 be blind guides. Undisciplined feeling — feeling for the 
 wrong thing — must lead men terribly astray, and the 
 fires which are so fed into the operation of either mind 
 or will may come directly from the nether regions. A 
 true mystic assigns a value to emotion far, far beyond the 
 wont of other men ; but he subjects his emotions, on the 
 other hand, to such disciplines as other men do not even 
 dare attempt, and secures for them a validity so peculiar 
 
THEOLOGIA GERMANICA i6i 
 
 that we must not judge him for trusting them until we 
 have seen, at least, how terribly he labours to make 
 them fit to trust. 
 
 The third signal characteristic of the mystical process 
 which our new psychology recognizes and tries to account 
 for is the reorganization of life about new centres and 
 upon new levels. This is really conversion, whether 
 conversion be conceived of as a sharp crisis in which, 
 after long spiritual travail, old unwillingnesses give way, 
 struggling desires find expression, and transforming pur- 
 poses become suddenly supreme, or as the culmination 
 of gradual but unresting processes. We know well 
 enough that life offers manifold centres of interest and 
 devotion ; v/e may organize our lives about the inner or 
 the outer, about " ourselves, ourselves and none beside," 
 or about great causes in which self is wholly forgotten ; 
 about the regnancies of the clay or the regnancies of the 
 soul. We know well enough that men do live on differ- 
 ent levels ; that some men live in the basement of their 
 lives and some in those fair upper chambers whose win- 
 dows open towards the sunrising and whose " name is 
 peace." And we know, too, that all our conceptions of 
 life and its meaning, its possible relationships and its en- 
 compassing realities, depend upon the centres around 
 which our interests really cling, the levels upon which 
 we live. There is pitifully little commerce between those 
 who live, for example, on the levels of noble intellectual 
 interests and outlooks and those who live on the levels 
 of pleasure or of gain. The citizens of the higher re- 
 gions find it hard sometimes to persuade those who dwell 
 in the shadows that life has such wide horizons, such 
 radiant experiences, such amplitudes of sunrise and sun- 
 set as are their daily commonplaces. 
 
i62 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 Here, too, the mystic goes far, far beyond the com- 
 monalty of us. He chooses for his dweUing-places the 
 very highest places of spiritual communion and medita- 
 tion. " It is good for us so to live," he says, and then 
 he builds his tabernacles. He trains all his powers to the 
 apprehending of God, and he finds Him. There are, so 
 he testifies, for those who seek the very highest levels, 
 striving with ardour and long-held passion to dwell in 
 full communion with God, realities of experience, wit- 
 nesses of the soul itself to be known indeed only by those 
 who have paid their price, but which are no more to be 
 gainsaid by those of us who do not share them than 
 light is to be gainsaid by the blind, music by the deaf, 
 or the kindling power of truth by those who have been 
 sordidly content with ignorance or stained desire. It is 
 not easy to distinguish clearly between the reorganiza- 
 tion of life about new centres which we call conversion 
 and the reorganization of life on new levels which con- 
 stitutes this or that stage of the mystic's pilgrimage. 
 They are substantially the same thing. In some in- 
 stances the soul seems to ascend by what is almost liter- 
 ally a series of emotional explosions ; in others the ascent 
 is more gradual, painful, intelligible. But whether by 
 one road or the other, all true mystics have come at last 
 into the same final region : a region, that is, of clear- 
 held spiritual communion, a sense of oneness with God 
 which, in their more rapturous moments, floods their 
 souls with an unbelievable ecstasy and always fills them 
 with an unspeakable peace. They have attained what 
 Underhill calls the transcendental consciousness. 
 
 Here, then, are the psychological bases of Mysticism, 
 the possibility of submerged processes whose conclusions 
 are known only in flashes of intuitions and insight; the 
 
THEOLOGIA GERMANICA 163 
 
 real value of the emotions as a guide and compelling 
 force in thought and volition ; the possibility of the re- 
 organization of life about new centres and upon new 
 levels, either in sudden readjustments which we call con- 
 version, or by more gradual processes of growth. The 
 mystic is marvellously open to the pain of life's contra- 
 dictions and inadequacies ; he longs for peace as watch- 
 men for the morning. He seeks his peace in the up- 
 holding of the everlasting arms of God, though he has 
 many names for the object of his quest. He does not 
 reason ; his subconscious processes are so strong that he 
 refers his problems to them and accepts their conckisions. 
 These conclusions come to him often as voices or visions. 
 He is very sure that God speaks to him and he follows 
 these indications of divine will without doubt or hesita- 
 tion. He lives in his emotions, but seeks constantly to 
 discipline and direct them. And finally, his real interest 
 and concern rise from level to level until he believes 
 himself to have come really into the fellowship of the in- 
 finite ; there he rests and out of that he speaks. As a 
 spiritual adventurer he seeks for a city which hath foun- 
 dations, whose builder and maker is God. He is always 
 a lonely soul and in the real movement of his life wholly 
 independent of forms, authorities, and institutions. He 
 may or may not belong to a Church. He commonly 
 sadly puzzles the Church to which he does belong. 
 Sometimes the Church canonizes him and sometimes ex- 
 communicates him. The world looks at him askance ; 
 wise Germans investigate him with a Teutonic thorough- 
 ness, make him the subject of a Doctor's thesis ; brilliant 
 Frenchmen rejoice in him as a fascinating example of 
 pathological mental action and assign to him his proper 
 ward in Le Bicetre. But those to whom the gift of 
 
i64 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 insight has been given are coming to see that Mysticism, 
 also, is one of the highroads of the soul, which certain 
 who have set out upon the quest for God walk with a 
 convincing certainty ; — a road which some of us distrust, 
 many find difficult, and few find wholly possible, but 
 which has its own proper gate of entrance into the 
 Heavenly City, as witnessed by many whose testimonies 
 we are not to scorn because we cannot walk their paths. 
 
 The indirect service of the mystic has often out- 
 weighed his more direct service. His spirit has a com- 
 municable and kindling power. He travels in his loneli- 
 ness far, far beyond the ordinary frontiers of human 
 experience, but there are always those who are near 
 enough to heed and to hear him, to translate his ecstasies 
 into more ordered and inteUigible processes, and so, in 
 the end, to indicate to us, who are also set out upon the 
 quest for peace, something of his assurance and to urge 
 us more confidently towards the goals which he has at- 
 tained. This is only to say that Mysticism has con- 
 stantly fed into the life of the spirit qualities and ele- 
 ments which have sometimes challenged us, sometimes 
 heartened, sometimes emancipated, and often become 
 points of departure for great epochs, both in the inner 
 and the outer life of man. This brings us directly to the 
 '• Theologia Germanica." 
 
 I have already dwelt so long upon the characteristics 
 of Mysticism as a whole as to leave httle room for the 
 indication of its course from St. Augustine to Martin 
 Luther. It is enough to say that the Mysticism with 
 which we are chiefly concerned was born and nurtured 
 beneath northern skies. Italy, France and Spain have 
 not been without their mystical schools — we are just 
 coming to see how large are the mystical elements 
 
THEOLOGIA GERMANICA 165 
 
 in Dante — though indeed in all these countries it 
 would be truer to say that we have had great mystics 
 rather than great schools of mystics ; but, on the whole, 
 the clearer the sky the greater the joy in life, and the 
 less the constraint which drives men to the quest. The 
 more wholly, as Fr. Von Hugel says, are races given 
 over to externalism and superstition in religion, the less 
 part does Mysticism play in the spiritual life. It would 
 be wholly unfair, as it is perhaps temptingly easy, to 
 characterize the religion of the south of Europe as fun- 
 damentally external, still it has been hard for Mysticism 
 to secure any real foothold in the life of the Latin 
 peoples generally. There are, on the other hand, deep 
 affinities between the Northern temperament and the 
 mystical temper; the very literature of the North wit- 
 nesses to it constantly ; our noblest poetry has always 
 been burdened with the sense of the mystery of life. 
 Our souls, like our sky, have their mists ; and yet be- 
 neath these mists we yearn, as the children of sunnier 
 skies have never yearned, for the peace which passeth 
 understanding. We have been more lonely in our 
 quests ; we have felt more distinctly the burden which 
 has been laid upon us, one by one. We are less able to 
 hand over our spiritual concerns to infallible authorities 
 and forget our restlessnesses in the temporalities of life. 
 We have followed the call of the eternal as men follow 
 the call of a bell through the fog, or the blare of a 
 trumpet from some half-hidden high-held fortress. 
 
 " . . . Ever and anon a trumpet sounds 
 From the hid battlements of Eternity, 
 Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then 
 Round the half-glimpsed turrets slowly wash again." * 
 
 ^ Evelyn Underbill, " Mysticism," p. 87. 
 
i66 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 No wonder, then, that in Germany especially, as the 
 mediaeval Catholic Church became more and more ex- 
 ternalistic and more and more sterile in any possible an- 
 swer to the deep needs of the soul, men and women 
 turned from the assurances of priests, whose absolutions 
 brought no peace and whose lives were sadly marred 
 epistles, to the search for the inner peace. This move- 
 ment was wholly national. The one book which of all 
 mystic treatises the plain man can most easily understand 
 was fathered by all the deeper spiritual life of the great 
 people whose heart it uncovers and to whose leaders it 
 brought impulses which changed the face of history. It 
 is rightly named after a nation. It is the " Theologia 
 Germanica." 
 
 We have only to take any representative treatise on 
 Mysticism, for example the work of Evelyn Underhill, 
 to whom the writer of this study is so much in debt, to 
 see that, while there are common elements in all mysti- 
 cism ('* all mystics," says Saint Martin, " speak the same 
 language and come from the same country ") they differ 
 greatly in their explanation of their own experiences, 
 and are prone to use a terminology which is truly be- 
 wildering. Many mystics claimed — as a sign of their 
 increasing perfection in the mystic state — to be able to 
 write endlessly without premeditation or any knowledge 
 of what they were about to say. And with all due re- 
 gard to the exalted sources from which they suppose 
 their inspirations to be drawn, it must be confessed that 
 a vast deal of their writing reads as if it had been written 
 in just that way. Clarity is not the mystic's virtue. The 
 mystic has, moreover, his scholastic vocabulary, his cata- 
 logue of stages, his analysis of states— a terminology to 
 which most of us have never even had the key and 
 
THEOLOGIA GERMANICA 167 
 
 which drives us wild before we have read a chapter of it. 
 The mystic's somewhat erratic habit of composition, the 
 difficult nature of his subject-matter, his impossibly 
 technical vocabulary, and his want of agreement in all 
 these matters with others of his kind make the whole 
 literature of Mysticism — with blessed exceptions, of 
 course — a kind of sealed book — caviare to the ordinary. 
 How greatly this has hindered the mystic's propaganda 
 goes without saying. If a movement so rich in trans- 
 forming possibilities as mediaeval German mysticism is 
 ever to move common men, it must speak their lan- 
 guage, clothe itself in their forms, come to them, re- 
 baptizing in its rich experience what they know and 
 love best. 
 
 Now the " Theologia Germanica " does just that. It 
 clothes the mystical experience with the familiar forms 
 of Christian thought, or — to turn the matter about — fills 
 the familiar forms of Christian thought with the mystical 
 experience. You will read the book once or twice before 
 it ever occurs to you that here is anything else than an 
 early anticipation of the evangelical spirit which has be- 
 come, through the Protestant Reformation, our common 
 inheritance, whose phases are part of our birthright, and 
 whose experiences we have all somewhat shared. But if 
 you will take any analysis of the stages of the mystical 
 ascent of the soul, you will see that stage by stage they 
 are recorded in the " Theologia Germanica." The passion 
 for the perfect, which is the beginning of the mystic's 
 pilgrimage, the awakening of the self, the purification of 
 the self, the illumination of the self, the contemplative 
 peace and the sense of unity with God, which are all part 
 of the mystic's discipline, are here recorded. But they 
 have been merged so perfectly with the various aspects 
 
i68 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 of our evangelical faith and the various stages of our own 
 spiritual experience that they are no longer a strange 
 language, but of the very essence of the mother tongue 
 of our spirits. 
 
 The significance of all this has not, on the whole, been 
 enough dwelt upon, nor is it easy to get at the heart of 
 it, but here is a testimony that without any forcing and 
 in the most natural way in the world the whole experi- 
 ence of the mystic can be made to fit perfectly within the 
 frame of evangelical Christianity. We do not discern in 
 the backgrounds of the picture any unfamiliar features ; it 
 seems our own native country. Evangelical Protestant- 
 ism is itself, at the real heart of it, a mysticism ; Christi- 
 anity not only yields itself to, but demands a mystical 
 interpretation ; the great central realities of our faith do 
 not disclose their full interior meaning until they are seen 
 to be God's answer to man's eternal quest, God's medi- 
 ated gift of peace to the troubled souls of His children. 
 
 The " Theologia Germanica " is, in the noblest sense, 
 anonymous ; that is, we do not know the author ; but we 
 do know the movement which begot it. The ** Divme 
 Comedy," says Carlyle, is the voice of twelve silent centu- 
 ries ; the " Theologia Germanica " is the voice of the 
 spiritual labour of Northern Europe in the fourteenth 
 century. The mystical school of which it is the expres- 
 sion is commonly known in all histories of Mysticism as 
 the school of the Friends of God. I have used school 
 here, recognizing clearly enough how inadequate and 
 misleading it is, for the Friends of God were neither a 
 school nor a cult. A group of men and women, known 
 and unknown, living in Germany in the fourteenth 
 century, were moved by common impulses, expressed 
 a common temper, shared their experiences, and reacted 
 
THEOLOGIA GERMANICA 169 
 
 one upon the other in such a way as to give distinct 
 unity, not only to their history, but to their disciphne, 
 experience and teaching. " All the leaders of the move- 
 ment were profoundly influenced by the teaching of the 
 luminous figure of German mysticism, Meister Eckhart, 
 but they were hardly less definitely influenced by the 
 apocalyptic writings of the great German * prophetesses ' 
 of the two preceding centuries — St. Hildegarde, St. 
 Elizabeth of Schoeman, and St. Matilda of Magdeburg. 
 The writings of these famous women are full of incidents, 
 phrases, and images which formed * suggestion material ' 
 for the experience and ideas of the Friends of God. In 
 fact, they have very similar conceptions of the Church, 
 of the world, and of the impending catastrophes that are 
 about to break upon both the world and the Church." ^ 
 
 The fourteenth century was one of the troubled centu- 
 ries of history. Every state in Europe was in a welter 
 of anarchy ; the old mediaeval order was breaking up in 
 unspeakable confusion. The breaking of the ice-pack in 
 northern seas, with the spring tides beneath and the new- 
 risen sun above, is tranquillity itself compared with the 
 confusion of that time. It was indeed a prophetic con- 
 fusion, a travail rather than a catastrophe. A new world 
 was in the way of being born, but the pain of its birth 
 was beyond expression. France had been scourged by 
 the devastations of the One Hundred Years' War, her 
 peasants had been driven to live underground like beasts. 
 The narrow streets of her battle-scarred cities were popu- 
 lated by ghosts of men and women pallid with famine. 
 England was beginning to pay, in the feuds of her great 
 lords and the shame of her royal house, for her fierce 
 exploitation of her neighbour. Germany was wholly 
 
 1 Rufus M. Jones, " Studies in Mythical Religions," p. 242. 
 
I/O PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 wanting in any sense of national unity, a confusion of 
 strangely named states and principalities, the incessant 
 battle-ground of contending forces. The Church herself, 
 the one august and continuing authority in a Europe 
 grown old in sorrow, lowered the dignity of her high 
 estate in the Babylonian captivity, forfeited a unity which 
 had for centuries dominated the imaginations of men in 
 the great schism, silenced in her fires of persecution the 
 men who would have shown her the way of her redemp- 
 tion, alienated by the wholly unworthy lives of many of 
 her high officials the regard of the sensitive and high- 
 minded. There have been few periods, since the be- 
 ginnings of Christianity, when men and women of finer 
 natures found themselves so wholly alien to the world in 
 which they lived. Eucken has just been telling us that a 
 world in which men are much at ease is always spiritually 
 sterile ; it is to be said, on the other hand, that a world 
 in which men feel themselves bitterly at odds with their 
 environment and when life's externalities offer little to 
 console or distract or inspire, is a world in which they 
 are driven either to revolution or to God. The finer 
 spirits of Northern Europe turned to God. We see now 
 how fruitful was this instinctive necessity. There are 
 times when the greatest service men can render, not only 
 to their own age, but to succeeding ages, is to forget the 
 world and seek anew the compensations and the com- 
 radeships of the Eternal, for it is thus that our world is 
 remade. 
 
 There is a group of men just now who, in their noble 
 and wholly justifiable passion for a better social order, are 
 sharply indicting the religious leaders of other times 
 because they turned aside to the search after God when 
 the hungry needed to be fed, the enslaved to be freed, 
 
THEOLOGIA GERMANICA 171 
 
 regnant injustices to be rebuked, and the cause of the 
 poor to be pleaded before all tribunals, whether of earth 
 or heaven. Such indictments are not only unjust in that 
 they judge men by our standards rather than the standards 
 of their own time, but they are blind in that they fail to 
 discern how, again and again, the men who have seem- 
 ingly done least for the world and its temporalities have 
 done the most for it. When the times are to be remade, 
 it is necessary to begin a long way back. Tempers 
 must be changed, conceptions altered, new forces released, 
 and a new spirit created. St. Paul did that as he sought 
 to make men spiritually free, strangely careless about the 
 emancipation of the body of the slave if only he might 
 free his soul. Saul of Tarsus as a labour agitator, the 
 leader of a revolt against Rome or even the passionate 
 prophet of social justice, would have ended where he 
 began, while the sheer brute force of an immense 
 materialized order would have driven across his protesta- 
 tions. But St. Paul, liberating and transforming spiri- 
 tual forces, has made liberty operative through the cen- 
 turies and its morning has just begun to rise. St. 
 Augustine in giving direction to purifying and fruitful 
 conceptions of spiritual relationship leavened the whole 
 of Europe for one thousand years. The Friends of God 
 in turning from earth to heaven, from the welter of a 
 changing world to an inner and unclouded peace, and 
 from the temporal to the eternal, released forces which 
 we may now see to have been the really seminal forces in 
 the political revolutions and social regenerations of the 
 last three hundred years. 
 
 They sought, so their spokesman tells us in the very 
 first chapter of the " Theologia," they sought that which is 
 perfect. True enough, the voice goes on to say directly, 
 
172 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 " * that which is perfect ' is a Being, who hath compre- 
 hended and included all things in Himself and Mis own 
 Substance." All this seems remote enough, but in a 
 world so wanting as was theirs in every outer sign of the 
 perfect, the passion for perfection w^as the supreme and 
 primary need nor did it greatly matter in what direction 
 their quest led them. When we have really set out to 
 seek for the perfect, when we are sincere in our search, 
 and when we are willing to follow the road to the end, 
 we shall find not only a new heaven but a new earth. 
 I The key to the knowledge of the perfect is to be 
 wholly sought in the crucifixion of self. I, self, and the 
 like are creature-nature qualities. They must all be lost 
 and done away. " So long as we think much of these 
 things, cleave to them with love, joy, pleasure or desire, 
 so long remaineth the Perfect unknown to us." ^ This is 
 the open secret of all those who set out upon such roads. 
 There is, indeed, a prior stage; the awakening of the self, 
 which is the real point of departure in all the charts of 
 the mystics. That stage is assumed in the *' Theologia 
 Germanica." It means, of course, that we never commit 
 ourselves to any sort of enterprise through which we 
 hope to enrich or enlarge our lives, except as first of all 
 the sense of need moves within us, as the Spirit of God 
 upon the face of troubled waters. There is a contentment 
 which makes true peace impossible, a divine discontent 
 to which, in the end, the peace of God is not denied. 
 It is only as we come to know our possibilities and 
 feel the bitterness of our limitations and the urgence of 
 unsatisfied longing and lift up our eyes to those further 
 hills upon which the light of the unattained and always 
 to be desired forever lies, that we shake ourselves free of 
 
 1 Chapter I. 
 
THEOLOGIA GERMANICA 173 
 
 our lethargies and set out, running like Christian, from 
 the city of unworthy content which is likely to become, 
 if we make it our abiding-place, the city of destruction. 
 But directly we have set out, then, by the deepest paradox 
 in life, we who have been urged to depart by the awakened 
 self must wholly subordinate self to the causes which we 
 serve, the goals which we hope to reach. In the more 
 technical terminology this is known as the Purification of 
 the Self. Purification from self the '* Theologia " would 
 call it. Contrition, purgation, self-simplification, detach- 
 ment are the steps which constitute this stage of the 
 journey. This is in substance, of course, the self-surrender 
 of the Christian life. If we are blind to all this we go 
 astray before the journey has fairly begun. 
 
 Now the •' Theologia " uses throughout the terms of our 
 evangelical experience. This exaltation of the creature- 
 nature qualities, from which we must at any cost be free, 
 is sin. " Sin is nought else, but that the creature turneth 
 away from the unchangeable Good and betaketh itself to 
 the changeable ; that is to say, that it turneth away from 
 the Perfect to ♦ that which is in part ' and imperfect, and 
 most often to itself. Now mark : when the creature 
 claimeth for its own anything good, such as Substance, 
 Life, Knowledge, Power, and in short whatever we should 
 call good, as if it were that, or possessed that, or that were 
 itself, or that proceeded from it, — as often as this cometh to 
 pass, the creature goeth astray." ' The " Theologia " finds 
 in this a form spacious enough to contain and explain the 
 costly indiscretion of the first parent of us all. " What else 
 did Adam do but this same thing ? It is said, it was because 
 Adam ate the apple that he was lost, or fell. I say, it 
 was because of his claiming something for his own, and 
 
 » Chapter II. 
 
174 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 because of his I, Mine, Me, and the Hke. Had he eaten 
 seven apples, and yet never claimed anything for his own, 
 he would not have fallen : but as soon as he called some- 
 thing his own, he fell, and would have fallen if he had 
 never touched an apple." ^ This fall was amended by 
 the Incarnation, by such an entrance, that is, of God 
 into our human life that He Himself was made man and 
 man was made divine. Our own fall must be amended 
 as was the fall of Adam. We all stumble on the same 
 thing, and to us all healing comes in the same guise. 
 We cannot compass our own restoration without God, 
 nor indeed can God compass our restoration without us 
 and in this cooperation of the human and the divine 
 there is such a fusion of man and God that we are truly 
 become a new creature. 
 
 The •' Theologia " here touches and dismisses in a 
 single appealing sentence conceptions by which the 
 Friends of God were greatly governed and in the expres- 
 sion of which they more than once gave offense to the 
 more robust theological sense of their own time. Eck- 
 hart, for example, seemed to his contemporaries to drive 
 often enough dangerously near the verge of blasphemy ; 
 he seems to us, who understand him better, to be again 
 and again in the way of crossing those frontiers against 
 which Mysticism, in its best estate, is always pressing, 
 and to lose himself in a pantheism, wherein distinctions 
 to which we must hold if we are to think clearly or live 
 bravely, are always likely to be lost. In the " Theologia " 
 this danger is escaped, but one may find between the 
 hnes signs enough of the school to which the author 
 belongs. 
 
 If sin, he goes on, is on the one side the exaltation of 
 
 1 Chapter III. 
 
THEOLOGIA GERMANICA 175 
 
 the creature-nature and the claiming for our own of any 
 lesser good, sin is, on the other hand, the failure to love 
 the best. " That which is best should be the dearest of 
 all things to us ; and in love of it, neither helpfulness nor 
 unhelpfulness, advantage nor injury, gain nor loss, honour 
 nor dishonour, praise nor blame, nor anything of the kind 
 should be regarded ; but what is in truth the noblest and 
 best of all things, should be also the dearest of all things, 
 and that for no other cause than that it is the noblest and 
 best." ' In such a sentence as that the pilgrim has taken 
 to the highroad. 
 
 In the brief but pregnant chapter which treats " Of the 
 Eyes of the Spirit, wherewith Man looketh into Eternity 
 and into Time, and how the one is hindered of the other 
 in its Workings," 2 the " Theologia " comes at the very 
 heart of the old mystical contention ; the contention, 
 that is, that we possess what Underhill calls the sense of 
 the transcendental and that the soul has the capacity, not 
 only of the immediate apprehension of spiritual truth, but 
 of such a vision of God as makes Him the one reality and 
 all else the baseless fabric of a vision. Here are matters 
 which are too high for speech and to which our sense- 
 born vocabularies lend themselves reluctantly. 
 
 *' Vague words ! but ah, how hard to frame 
 In matter-moulded forms of speech, 
 Or even for intellect to reach 
 Thro' memory that which I became." 
 
 We have an unbroken testimony, old as the quest of 
 the soul for peace, that God may be known, not by the 
 laborious processes of reason, or even by the rapt confi- 
 dences of faith, but in experiences which carry with them 
 
 » Chapter VI. « Chapter VII. 
 
1/6 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 their own verification, are no more to be gainsaid than 
 any other first hand content of experience, and become 
 wonderfully fruitful, not only in all the graces of the 
 spirit, but in a sane and practical effectiveness of life. 
 For the mystics have always discovered unexpected prac- 
 ticabilities, they have borne heavy burdens, fought brave 
 battles, directed great affairs, dealt with endless detail, 
 and somehow — children of the clouds as we have always 
 thought them to be — have moved in the affairs of this 
 world with a security and wrought with a deftness some- 
 times sadly wanting in those who boasted themselves of 
 their practicality and looked askance at the dreamer 
 and the mystic. Surely here is a testimony not easy to 
 be thrown out of court ; an insistent witness to realities 
 short of which we may not stop, beyond which we may 
 not pass. In the light of such a testimony the hindering 
 forms of sense withdraw themselves, the life within and the 
 life without overpassing the barriers which separate 
 them, — nay, rather finding in all the vast mystery of the 
 outer world but the vehicle of communion between soul 
 and Over-Soul, — meet at last in a fellowship in which all 
 that men would ask of God is granted and all that God 
 would say to man is understood. 
 
 '' Speak to Him ihou, for He heareth, 
 And spirit with spirit can meet, 
 Closer is He than breathing, 
 
 And nearer than hands or feet." 
 
 " Now," says the " Theologia," " the created soul of man 
 hath also two eyes. The one is the power of seeing into 
 eternity, the other of seeing into time and the creatures, 
 of perceiving how they differ from each other as afore- 
 said, of giving life and needful things to the body, and 
 
THEOLOGIA GERMANICA 177 
 
 ordering and governing it for the best. But these two 
 eyes of the soul of man cannot both perform their work 
 at once ; but if the soul shall see with the right eye into 
 eternity, then the left eye must close itself and refrain 
 from working, and be as though it were dead." ^ 
 
 There is no explaining a passage like that. The 
 power of it lies first in its suggestion, and second in the 
 absolute persuasion of the man who wrote it that he is 
 seeing into eternity. For us who are not equal to these 
 high things, closing the eye of sense must mean that we 
 are not to allow ourselves to be so wholly lost in our in- 
 terests and occupations and passing pleasures as to dull 
 our powers of spiritual apprehension and lose all possible 
 touch with higher and better things. In all this the 
 psychologist reenforces the mystic ; a bifocal soul com- 
 plicates all the situations of life. Jesus Himself has said 
 it, " Ye cannot serve two masters." The organization of 
 life about commonplace things and on commonplace 
 levels does make us strangely insensible, not only to the 
 call of higher things, but to their very existence. If we 
 have any quarrel at all with the mystic, it is because he is 
 lacking in the great and heartening recognition that God 
 fulfills Himself in many ways. We do not need to dis- 
 tinguish so sharply as the mystic distinguished between 
 the world of sense and spirit. The commonest objects of 
 sense are instinct with mystery. Our God speaks to us 
 with manifold voices, may be discovered in sights and 
 sounds, fellowships and occupations, tints the *• little 
 speedwell's darling blue," orders the majestic outgoing of 
 the belted constellation of Orion. If our vision were 
 keen enough we should see in the tables upon which we 
 write the revelation of forces as truly wonderful as the 
 
 » Chapter VII. 
 
1/8 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 beatific vision ; if our ears were keen enough we might 
 hear, even in the silences, the rush of tides which sweep 
 by as the very garment of God. God is, after all, to be 
 discerned, not so much by closing as by opening our 
 eyes. We do not need to refuse to see things, but we 
 have immense need to see through and beyond things. 
 The two eyes of the soul of man not only can, but mus't 
 perform their work at once. The question is, not which 
 eye must be closed, but rather by what light we shall be 
 guided and in terms of what reality we shall interpret 
 what we see. If it were possible to change the figure of 
 the " Theologia " without making it really grotesque, we 
 might better say that the soul has two eyes, the one far- 
 sighted, sensitive to reahties and relationships far, far be- 
 yond the immediate foreground of our lives, the other 
 much occupied with that foreground and its employments, 
 and that finally the meaning of all sensible and immediate 
 things is to be understood only as we interpret them in 
 the light of deeper realities, vaster meanings, diviner 
 destinies which the other eye supplies. Somewhere in 
 all this, if the reader will puzzle it out for himself, is the 
 equivalent of the distinctions which we draw between 
 knowledge and faith, reason and speculation, experience 
 and its necessary interpretations. Our greatest need to- 
 day is not to free ourselves from a world in which God is 
 sadly wanting in common experiences and dear and 
 familiar realities, but rather to transfigure our outer and 
 inner world by such a sense of His immanence as makes 
 every soul His dwelling-place, every experience the 
 broken accent of the eternal message, every reality the 
 manifestation of His power and wisdom. Then ♦* earth 
 is crammed with heaven and every bush aflame with 
 God." 
 
THEOLOGIA GERMANICA 179 
 
 The movement of the " Theologia " is, on the whole, 
 simple enough. There is no little repetition and much 
 returning to dwell upon its central thesis. Blessedness is 
 the goal which it seeks, obedience and self-renunciation 
 are something more than the guide-posts which point 
 towards the goal ] they are themselves the road by which 
 the goal is reached. The goal itself is a blessedness 
 which " lieth not in any creature, or work of the crea- 
 tures, but it lieth alone in God and in His works. Self- 
 will, self-assertion, the affirmation of me and mine, are 
 stones of stumbling which must be avoided at any cost. 
 Our hearts are to be so pure that we shall desire only 
 the knowledge of God and the perfect expression of His 
 will in our lives. We are to renounce all desire except 
 " the desire to go forward and get nearer to the Eternal 
 Goodness." And we are to be as plastically and im- 
 mediately responsive to the divine will as our hands are 
 to our own wills. All this the " Theologia " gathers up in 
 one golden sentence, termless and timeless. " I would 
 fain be to the Eternal Goodness what His own hand is 
 to a man." ' Few sentences ever spoken carry further 
 than that ; it is vastly more than the mystic's expression, 
 it is the universal and unescapable law of peace and 
 power in any region of life or service. The scientist in 
 his laboratory, the electrician in the installation of his 
 plants, the farmer driving his furrow beneath the April 
 sky, the poet seeking to convey in winged words the 
 secret of his serene and kindling vision, Dante in his 
 interpretation of life and its stages, the mystic in his 
 longing after rest, — are all alike beneath the domination 
 of the truth which this sentence gathers up and expresses. 
 Plastic obedience to laws and realities beyond and above 
 
 » Chapter X. 
 
i8o PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 ourselves is always the secret of empire. Whether in 
 small things or great, the more perfectly we understand 
 and express, either the will of an electric current or the 
 will of God, the more perfectly are we reenforced by a 
 power not ourselves, the more fully do we appropriate 
 the opulence of the Eternal, the more splendidly do we 
 exalt and empower ourselves as we humble and empty 
 ourselves. 
 
 The wholly responsive flexibility of the mind to all 
 the suggestions and dominations of truth is the secret of 
 true efficacy in any region of thought. Such an im- 
 mediate and almost automatic response of the will to 
 goodness is the secret of that sanctity which has ceased 
 to be a struggle and has become the serene and inevi- 
 table habitude of the soul. Such facile subordination of 
 all hfe, such openness of all our channels to the spirit of 
 God is the end of all spiritual discipline and the thresh- 
 old of a deathless peace. 
 
 Now it is the high distinction of the " Theologia Ger- 
 manica " not only to say all this over and over again in 
 simple and compelUng fashion until we are persuaded of 
 its truth, but to relate it all to what is most familiar in 
 our Christian faith. The life of Christ is set up not only 
 as the perfect example of what the true life really is, but 
 as the living way by which we ourselves shall attain the 
 true life. It is only as we become participants of His 
 life that we enter into peace. And yet directly we are 
 told this, lest we should lose ourselves in matters too 
 high for us, we are told that we share the life of Christ 
 as we take up our crosses and follow Him, forsaking all 
 ** the beggarly elements " of tliis world which may keep 
 us either from the true light or the Master's fellowship. 
 This indeed is not easy, and it is only as we are pos- 
 
THEOLOGIA GERMANICA i8i 
 
 sessed by the spirit of God that it becomes possible. 
 Once more we are told that we are possessed by the 
 spirit of God in so far as, resigned and submissive to 
 God, we take all things as from His hands. «• And he 
 who would be obedient, resigned and submissive to God, 
 must and ought to be also resigned, obedient and sub- 
 missive to all things, in a spirit of yielding, and not of 
 resistance, and take them in silence, resting on the 
 hidden foundations of his soul, and having a secret in- 
 ward patience, that enableth him to take all chances or 
 crosses willingly, and whatever befalleth, neither to call 
 for nor desire any redress, or deliverance, or resistance, 
 or revenge, but always in a loving, sincere humility to 
 cry, * Father, forgive them, for they know not what they 
 do ! ' " * This is indeed that union with the Divine will, 
 that true inward peace which Christ left to His disciples 
 at the last. 
 
 There are three stages by which all this is attained : — 
 first, Purification ; second, EnHghtening ; third, Union.* 
 Here, in a general way, the *' Theologia " follows the well- 
 marked stages of the mystic's roads. These stages are 
 often much amplified ; each mystic has his own termi- 
 nology and out of his own experience draws that curious 
 chart of his soul's progress in which men have so often 
 sought to portray the unportrayable and render evident 
 to the eyes of sense the dear-bought fruits of their spiri- 
 tual travail. There is a most curious literature here, with 
 which we do not need to concern ourselves ; it is enough 
 to say that these three stages are necessary and funda- 
 mental in all the interpretations of life; no one ever 
 escapes either littleness, ignorance, or powerlessness in 
 any direction without repeating them in his own ex- 
 
 » Chapter XXIII. « Chapter XIV. 
 
1 82 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 perience. " Put off," says the Apostle, " the old man," 
 — that is Purification ; " be renewed in the spirit of your 
 mind," — that is Enlightening ; ♦' put on the new man," — 
 that is Union. 
 
 Such a process as this takes time ; no one can be made 
 perfect in a day. Moreover, we are not, to begin with, 
 independent of guides and outer disciplines. The end 
 of the quest is a spiritual self-sufificiency or, one would 
 better say, a life so perfectly suffused with God that 
 forms, institutions, sacraments, orders, instructions be- 
 come wholly immaterial. The full significance of all 
 this, in connection, for example, with the Church and 
 her disciplines, we shall presently consider ; it is enough 
 to say now that the mystics themselves seem to have 
 felt that it is possible for a man to withdraw himself too 
 soon from such outward guidance, to cast down the 
 ladder before his wings are fully fledged. The true 
 mystic may, therefore, in the earlier stages of his spiri- 
 tual progress " receive example and instruction, reproof, 
 counsel and teaching from devout and perfect servants 
 of God, and not follow his own guidance. Thus the 
 work shall be established and come to a good end. 
 And when a man hath thus broken loose from and out- 
 leaped all temporal things and creatures, he may after- 
 wards become perfect in a life of contemplation. For he 
 who will have the one must let the other go. There is 
 no other way." ' The " Theologia " doubts, however, if it 
 be possible for any one before death to attain so high as 
 not to be moved or touched by outward things. But 
 whether or no this be possible, it must always be the 
 ideal towards which we strive. 
 
 The " Theologia " dwells much upon these stages of spiri- 
 
 1 Chapter XIII. 
 
THEOLOGIA GERMANICA 183 
 
 tual growth and there is always in its meditations a kind of 
 universal applicability. Life is, after all, a seamless robe, 
 all its endeavours are related, and there is an infinite 
 comradeship in all the better part of our movings and as- 
 pirations. Considerations which helped the mystic as he 
 sought the beatific vision will help the schoolboy as he 
 cons his book. " To learn an art which thou knowest 
 not, four things are needful. The first, desire and dili- 
 gence. The second, a copy or ensample. The third, to 
 give earnest heed to the master, and watch how he work- 
 eth. The fourth, to put thine own hand to the work, 
 and practice it with industry." ' Now if a man will 
 bravely follow this road, wholly forget himself, be true to 
 the hght which leads him, two things will in the end come 
 to pass. He will be made a partaker of the divine nature. 
 This is the stage which the mystic commonly calls deifi- 
 cation. The masters of the school to which the author 
 of the " Theologia Germanica " belonged were not, as we 
 have seen, always wise in their definition of deification, 
 — and indeed who can be wise in dealing with such 
 matters ? Not a little of the criticism which the Friends 
 of God brought upon themselves was due to their loose 
 or daring definitions of the union of the human and the 
 divine. There is a restrained sanity in the " Theologia " 
 which is wanting in much other mystical literature of the 
 time. He is a partaker of the divine nature, or a God- 
 like man *' who is imbued with or illuminated by the 
 Eternal or divine Light, and inflamed or consumed with 
 Eternal or divine love, he is a Godlike man and a partaker 
 of the divine nature ; and of the nature of this True Light 
 we have said somewhat already." '^ All this is sane enough, 
 though indeed in any such connection words fail us. 
 > Chapter XXII. ' Chapter XLI. 
 
1 84 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 The " Theologia " solidifies the whole discussion by di- 
 rectly relating this mystical knowledge to great ethical 
 qualities. It is quite impossible for a man to walk in any 
 such light as this if he does not walk in love, — nay more 
 than that, if he does not walk in love of virtue so as to 
 hate wickedness and neither do nor practice it nor leave 
 any virtue unpracticed, and do all this simply for the love 
 of virtue. Moreover, no man walks in the true light if 
 he does not so love justice as to rather die than do an un- 
 just thing, all this for nothing except the love of justice.^ 
 Truly, if our heads are here somewhat among the clouds, 
 our feet are always on the ground. 
 
 A second thing to which men will attain who follow 
 that way is a great God sufficiency, an inner free- 
 dom, a release from laws, forms, and time-born conven- 
 tions. Not indeed that men are set free to do as they 
 will, but only that they have attained the immediate vi- 
 sion of what they ought to do and will immediately to do 
 it. This is what Saul of Tarsus was claiming for the Gala- 
 tians ; this is that liberty in Christ which is the birthright 
 of all His disciples ; this is that whereunto Dante had at- 
 tained when, upon the thresholds of the earthly paradise, 
 Virgil dismisses him. 
 
 ** Await no more a word or sign from me ; 
 Free, sane, and upright, now thy will hath grown, 
 And not to follow it were sin in thee ; 
 Wherefore I set on thee mitre and crown." 
 
 This, in a lesser or greater degree, is the consumma- 
 tion of all discipline, the end of all noble endeavour. In 
 the light of such a vision all lesser distinctions disappear, 
 the walls between the temporal and the Eternal are over- 
 » Chapter XLI. 
 
THEOLOGIA GERMANICA 185 
 
 passed, and this world becomes an outer court of eternity. 
 This present time is then a paradise, a paradise regained, 
 but like to the paradise which we lost in this one thing : 
 it has also its tree of forbidden fruit. We are free in all 
 things but this : " Nothing is forbidden and nothing is 
 contrary to God but one thing only : that is, Self-will, or 
 to will otherwise than as the Eternal Will would have it." * 
 The " Theologia Germanica " is wanting in all those at- 
 tempts to portray the ineffable and declare the raptures 
 of the beatific vision which make considerable parts of 
 the literature of Mysticism hard reading for common folk, 
 but rather constantly defines even the rarest experiences 
 of the soul in such terms of obedience, unselfishness and 
 goodness as to make the way quite plain. It was this 
 quality which commended the book to the practical sense 
 of Martin Luther and has made it the plain man's classic. 
 We have now, finally, to consider the relation of all 
 this to the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther was 
 more strongly moved by this little book than by any 
 other except the Bible, and without any doubt his words 
 were so immediately fruitful because they fell on a soil 
 which had already been prepared by just such a discipline 
 as this. It would be utterly unfair to call great mediaeval 
 mystics and the mystics of a later time the pioneers of 
 Protestantism ; there is much in Protestantism to which 
 they would be wholly indifferent if they were reincar- 
 nated, just as there was, in their own time, much in 
 Catholicism which was wholly alien to the real move- 
 ment of their lives. Many of them were true sons and 
 daughters of the Church ; they would have shared her 
 own horror at the movement which left her so bereft ; 
 but none the less the genesis of Protestantism is to be 
 > Chapter L. 
 
1 86 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 sought in Mysticism. We have seen that here is only a 
 name for a quest as old as the soul, as endless as restless 
 weariness, whose outcome is the establishment of life upon 
 higher levels and in immediate relation to ultimate reali- 
 ties. Once these immediate relations are gained, the ex- 
 periences of the soul itself are the sure witness of the 
 reality of that in which peace has been found. Other 
 testimonies are idle and forms and sacraments as unnec- 
 essary as were the stagings which supported the vast arches 
 of those very cathedrals into which the mystic builded 
 something of the inextinguishable longing of his soul, 
 when at last the keystone had been put in place and the 
 arch fell into architectonic soHdity, made stronger by 
 the very burden which it had to bear. 
 
 There was much then in Mysticism which made all 
 true mystics independent of any church and, even before 
 the Reformation, largely independent of the rigidities of 
 mediaeval Catholicism. Men who had come to find their 
 own way to God over roads already beginning to be 
 worn deep by the spiritual ascent of aspiring souls had no 
 need for a great part of that which the Church offered 
 and very little real concern about it. For indeed a 
 great part of the mediaeval church order was really the 
 survival of forms which had been gradually shaped to 
 meet the demands of ages in which untutored races 
 needed most intimate and explicit guidance. By the 
 fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the better spiritual part 
 of Europe had utterly outgrown all this, but the forms 
 themselves remained unchanged, or if anything height- 
 ened in their rigidities. Those habits of the mystic, 
 therefore, which rendered him and his kind so largely in- 
 dependent of the offices of the Church were really prepar- 
 ing the way for a more formal and self-assertive inde^ 
 
THEOLOGIA GERMANIC A 187 
 
 pendence which was to find its full and stormy expression 
 in the Reformation. Mysticism in its best estate was a 
 kind of witness that just what the Church was really 
 meant to do had been accomplished, for no church nor 
 any holy book can in tlie end do more for the soul than 
 just this : bring it to God and recreate those relationships 
 of which the book is but the record, the church the testi- 
 mony. 
 
 This however was not all. Just as there was much in 
 the Church of that time which was sterile, there was a 
 vast deal which positively offended those who were being 
 taught to love virtue for its own sake and so to hate in- 
 justice as to be incapable of doing an unjust action. 
 These and their kind everywhere were feeling the 
 anomaly of the Church's position, they were shamed by 
 her captivities, they were wounded by her grievous 
 faults. By so much the more, then, as they took to 
 their own roads her absolutions brought them no peace ; 
 they had found the secret of deeper peace. Her ex- 
 communications did not affright them ; there was that 
 from which she was wholly unable to bar them out. 
 More than almost any institution which has ever lifted 
 its vast bulk above the fields of time, the Latin Catholic 
 Church was and is dependent upon certain attitudes ; 
 when those attitudes arc changed the fabric of her au- 
 thority dissolves like a mist, and her voices, whether of 
 entreaty or command, are impotent and hollow. The 
 very temper of which Mysticism is the expression had 
 been dissolving the deep bases upon which the solidities 
 of the Catholic administration depended, and when at 
 last the trumpet called across Northern Europe there was 
 such a sudden realignment of spiritual forces as to sur- 
 prise us if we had not studied the extension of leavening 
 
1 88 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 and transforming forces long at work ; a realignment in- 
 deed so sudden as to have constituted the very embar- 
 rassment of the Reformation. The leaders of that Ref- 
 ormation were given a spiritual world to remake before 
 they had really conceived the fashion in which it was to be 
 reshaped. They were asked to order a new empire of 
 the spirit before they had agreed among themselves as to 
 the forms which they were to follow, or even the stand- 
 ards which they would set up. Not a little of the tragedy 
 of the Reformation is to be sought just here. 
 
 Deeper than these predisposing causes, so largely 
 operative in Europe by the end of the fifteenth century, 
 was that quenchless call which is the condition precedent 
 of every sort of gain in every region of life and with 
 which the Catholic Church was dealing always so inade- 
 quately, sometimes so bitterly : — the call, that is, of spiri- 
 tual adventure. I use this word in a large sense, but so 
 employed there is no substitute for it. The soul was 
 never meant to dwell in securities ; her incessant yearn- 
 ings, her divine discontents were given her for constant 
 witness that we have here no abiding place. It is not 
 fair to say that the Catholic Church did not recognize this 
 and afford some room for the exercise of it, but her au- 
 thorities and rigidities were sadly cramping the freer play 
 of the spiritual forces of Europe. In an age when geo- 
 graphical discoveries were giving men a new earth and 
 astronomical investigations a new heaven, the soul also 
 must needs fare forth, and that not only in such quiet 
 pilgrimages of the spirit as were permitted to the Friends 
 of God, but in a larger, broader, more objective way. 
 The time was waiting only upon a man who would himself 
 set forth like Abraham, not knowing whither he should 
 go and who, at the same time, would so adequately voice 
 
THEOLOGIA GERMANIC A 189 
 
 the wide-spread restlessness of his time as to make clear 
 to men everywhere the deeper meaning of what they 
 themselves sought. If such a man were to inaugurate 
 any far-reaching movement, it would be necessary also 
 that he should be sheltered for a little from those driving 
 attacks as had already silenced such men as Huss and 
 Savonarola. 
 
 Martin Luther was all this and in Martin Luther a 
 new spiritual movement took its departure. He has 
 told us himself how he was helped and kindled by the 
 " Theologia Germanica." We are in a position now to 
 see the deeper significance of the contribution of Mys- 
 ticism to Protestantism, for the mystics were, when all is 
 said and done — though this is sheer repetition — lonely 
 adventurers in the regions of faith. They did not, indeed, 
 think themselves to be without guides or to follow an 
 uncharted way, but even in the interpretation of the 
 guides whom they followed they fell back upon the stress 
 of their own souls, and every one of them, even though he 
 thought himself to follow a path worn deep by the feet 
 of the aspiring, was, nevertheless, his own road-builder, 
 with an eye for the Unseen and Eternal, careless of ex- 
 ternal authorities, depending upon the witness of the 
 Spirit. Is it any wonder that Mysticism deepened and 
 fertilized the soil in which the churches of the Reforma- 
 tion were to be planted ? For Protestantism itself, as we 
 are coming at last to see, is essentially of just this temper. 
 Protestantism has not been without its guides, its author- 
 ities, its definitions, its institutions, but at best there 
 has always been some fundamental lack of harmony be- 
 tween the spirit which we have miscalled Protestantism 
 and the institutions with which it has always been cloth- 
 ing itself. I suppose this is the reason of our endless 
 
I90 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 division and subdivision. We are always trying to find 
 a more perfect outward expression of that which was 
 really never meant to perfectly express itself in institu- 
 tions. Protestantism is a quest. We should know that by 
 now. Its most distinctive book is " Pilgrim's Progress " ; 
 its greatest theologian St. Paul ; its greatest doctrine — 
 justification by faith — is simply its proclamation of its 
 divine right to an immediate intimacy with God. The 
 consciousness of peace and reconciliation of which in its 
 nobler moments it has always proclaimed itself sure is 
 but another aspect of the mystic's testimony to a knowl- 
 edge of God in which his soul is at rest. Surely the 
 sense of all this should help us to understand more 
 clearly the deeper meaning of all that has come out of 
 the Reformation, should set us to search with more dis- 
 criminating vision the real hiding of the spiritual power 
 of all the churches of this order, and should give us a 
 new sense of comradeship with the lonely and aspiring 
 who sought, in the travail of their souls and along 
 the stages of a road whose way-marks are not indeed 
 named as we would name them — though it leads to a 
 country which we are all seeking — the peace of God 
 which passeth understanding. 
 
Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress 
 
 No one of the books which we are here consid- 
 ering is so familiar to us all as Bunyan's 
 " Pilgrim's Progress." It is part of the spir- 
 itual inheritance of the men and women whom these 
 studies are most likely to reach, is instinct with their 
 very racial temper and the qualities of a faith wrought 
 into their ancestral memories. It does, indeed, speak a 
 universal language ; its endless translations into all 
 tongues, its use with considerable adaptations by Cath- 
 olics and high Anglicans bear a compelling testimony to 
 its power of addressing itself to universal human experi- 
 ences and to its true catholicity. None the less the book 
 is English, Protestant, Puritan. By such forces it was 
 gendered and to such forces it has given in return deep- 
 ened consciousness and distinctive character. Though 
 it belongs, by way of descent, to the direct line of the 
 *• Theologia Germanica " — it is yet to be distinguished 
 from the " Theologia " by outstanding qualities — and is 
 separated by the most far-reaching of spiritual revolu- 
 tions — the Protestant Reformation. " Pilgrim's Prog- 
 ress " is the child of the Reformation and indeed, for 
 its catholicity and universal appeal, of certain aspects of 
 the Reformation. In the light of this, it may be said in 
 passing, those who judge the Reformation so hastily and 
 too often so superficially, who call it divisive, schismatic 
 
 191 
 
192 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 and sadly wanting in inclusive spiritual appeal, had better 
 pause, for it is not out of the essentially narrow and 
 schismatic that such a voice as Bunyan's speaks. The 
 far-reaching experiences, profound assurances, aspirations 
 and enterprises old as time, which have found a voice in 
 *♦ Pilgrim's Progress," do witness that the movement 
 which begot it is not in its essentials to be condemned 
 on the ground of spiritual provincialism. All this is an 
 aside and an anticipation, but let it stand. 
 
 We may well take for our point of departure in con- 
 sidering the genesis of the book its most evident char- 
 acteristic and let that lead us where it will. " Pilgrim's 
 Progress " is nothing other than the history of the lonely 
 adventures of a soul which has assumed the responsibil- 
 ities of its own salvation. In this it is distinctly the 
 child of the Reformation, for the dismissal of men to 
 just such an adventure was the greatest single outcome 
 of the Reformation. Such a statement as this will be 
 challenged, and indeed rightly challenged, directly. The 
 whole reformatory movement, it will be urged, was the 
 fruitful endeavour of men, hopelessly weighed down by 
 the burden of good works, obediences, weary conform- 
 ities and endless strivings to cast all their burden upon 
 the Lord and to find at the foot of the cross a peace 
 utterly unrelated to anything which they might do or 
 leave undone : the gift of God through His Son, condi- 
 tioned only upon the willingness of those to whom it 
 was offered to accept it, and so to be justified by their 
 faith. The book itself disclaims the saving value of all 
 good works and witnesses to the very stars the futile 
 helplessness of men apart from God. All this is beyond 
 debate, but does not turn the point of our central conten- 
 tion. Salvation did become, after the Reformation, a 
 
BUNYAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS 193 
 
 lonely adventure ; lonely, that is, as far as human inter- 
 ference or mediation is concerned. It was a matter 
 simply between the new-born Protestant and his God. 
 There were no earthly assurances which could bring him 
 any peace or comfort ; his search after salvation began 
 in loneliness, was carried on in loneliness, was completed 
 in loneliness. So Christian follows a lonely way. He 
 is not without his roll in his bosom or the comradeships, 
 illuminating or perplexed, of the roads which he travelled. 
 There were with him those who shared the chambers 
 of the house of the Interpreter, the prisoners' benches 
 of the courts of Vanity Fair, the dungeons of the castle 
 of Giant Despair, the blessed ways of Beulah Land, stood 
 with him upon the slopes of the Delectable Mountain 
 and forded with him the river of the Waters of Death. 
 There were, beyond all this, compelling voices and 
 presences, gifts and assurances of the spirit of God, in 
 the strength and comfort of which he fought and 
 journeyed, slept and woke again, but who does not feel 
 the deeper loneliness of it all reads the book unwittingly. 
 It is an inevitable kind of lonehness, the loneliness of life, 
 the loneliness of those who are thrown back upon God ; 
 a loneliness which men are always seeking to escape for 
 the sheer burden of it, but to which, in the end, they are 
 brought back by nothing less than the unescapable con- 
 ditions of hfe itself. 
 
 Something of all this we find in Augustine, to begin 
 with, in the deeper part of the " Confessions," and indeed 
 in the deeper part of the Augustinian theology. Salva- 
 tion with Augustine is a matter wholly between him and 
 his God, and in what unshared and unsharable agonies 
 of soul all this worked itself out every page of the •♦ Con- 
 fessions " bears witness. But there is this difference be- 
 
194 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 tween the unshared experiences of St. Augustine and the 
 unshared experiences of John Bunyan : namely, the dis- 
 ciphne of the Latin CathoHc Church and the immense re- 
 action of the fifteenth century against it. For we may 
 find in St. Augustine himself another spiritual habit 
 which grew apace for a thousand years and for half a 
 thousand years completely overshadowed the thought of 
 salvation as the lonely adventure of the individual, deal- 
 ing directly with his God. The enterprises to which the 
 Augustine of the " Confessions " would have committed 
 men were too great for their failing strength. The very 
 necessities of the succeeding centuries created a Church 
 which met the doubts of the spiritually undisciplined 
 with her affirmations, their hesitations with her assur- 
 ances, their fears with her confidences. That Church 
 gradually relieved men of all their spiritual responsibili- 
 ties and built about them sheltering walls which did in 
 the end but foster their weaknesses. She hung the veil 
 of her own mysteries before eyes not strong enough to 
 bear the healing light of vaster mysteries and modulated 
 her own voices to ears which could not or would not hear 
 the unmediated voice of God. To shelter men in the 
 storm and guide them in their perplexities she exalted 
 her own authority and framed her own ordinances. In 
 the end there was nothing for men to do but to rest in 
 her arms. Hers the arms which received the new-born 
 babe, guided the growing child, confirmed those whom 
 she instructed. Hers the ears which heard the stammer- 
 ing confessions, hers the lips which pronounced the com- 
 forting absolutions, hers the counsel which guided and 
 directed men in the last detail of their conduct of life. 
 Hers the touch which placed the oil of supreme unction 
 upon foreheads where the death dews gathered and hers 
 
BUNYAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS 195 
 
 the majestic and indisputable power which held the keys 
 of the celestial city, shortened the pain of purgatorial 
 fires and professed to keep the books of the judgment of 
 God. She asked obedience and offered peace, security, 
 forgiveness and eternal life. There has never been any- 
 thing like this, as far as it now endures there is nothing 
 hke it, there will never be anything like it again. No 
 single word can dismiss so vast a spiritual fact, no un- 
 qualified judgment is to be pronounced upon a system so 
 conceived and developed. George Eliot has said that 
 the Latin Catholic Church is the massive and ardent 
 spiritual experience of humanity, and while that wants 
 much of being entirely true, it is a judgment which must 
 give us pause as we strive to estimate the meaning of it 
 all. 
 
 It was inevitable enough that such a system should 
 take form ; it was clearly inevitable, with changing con- 
 ditions, that it should in the end defeat the very purposes 
 which it was meant to serve. The one secret which men 
 have been unbelievably slow in learning is when and how 
 to discharge the institutions which they themselves have 
 created. Life is fluid; institutions are rigid; the time 
 always comes when new wine demands new bottles. 
 This is eminently true in matters of the soul. We were 
 never meant to be kept in an endless spiritual minority. 
 There are shelters which weaken us, assurances which 
 blind our vision. God has no mind to be hid forever 
 behind the veil of any temple. One such veil was rent 
 in the travail of the spirit of the Son of God ; such veils 
 are always rent anew in the travail of the spirit of the 
 sons of God. No kindness however exalted into majestic 
 authorities may forever hold men back from the supreme 
 spiritual adventure of life. In the end such kindnesses 
 
196 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 are mistaken and their mistake becomes tyranny. Better 
 the challenge of unvoyaged waters and strange horizons 
 than always to beat behind breakwaters from sheltered 
 shore to sheltered shore. Life is more than safety and 
 salvation something more than peace. Surely the Master 
 meant something like this when He said that we are to 
 lose our lives if we hope to save them. 
 
 There came a time, then, when the salvation of ecclesi- 
 astical authority meant the real loss of the life which that 
 authority had aforetimes been exalted to save. The men 
 of Northern Europe could not and would not longer en- 
 dure it. They broke down the walls which held them in, 
 passed in storm and tumult through the dust of their 
 overthrowing and for their true salvation took to the 
 lonely road. This I understand to be the very heart of 
 the Reformation. It was the recommitment of humanity 
 to its central essential task : the winning of life in the 
 profound persuasion that life can only be won as it is 
 risked, and that there are no victories save on fields of 
 battle. All this carried with it the possibility of immense 
 loss, but every brave, true thing carries with it the possi- 
 bility of loss ; the elimination of risk is ultimately the 
 eHmination of life. Biologically, intellectually, spiri- 
 tually, the undue prolongation of shelter causes degenera- 
 tion and degeneration marches with death. 
 
 So the Reformation came. With what restlessnesses, 
 disorders, overturnings and lesser losses it came is the 
 commonplace of history, but with v/hat braveries, splen- 
 dours of achievement, spiritual emancipations, stormy 
 dawnings of new mornings, unfoldings of new powers, 
 sowing of new fields with the seeds of life it came, is no 
 commonplace at all, but the signal glory of our kind. 
 Here, then, is the new aspect of the quest which " Pil- 
 
BUNYAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS 197 
 
 grim's Progress " supplies. It has for its backgrounds 
 the long endeavour of Western Europe to avoid the more 
 lonely and searching aspects of the quest, by the creation 
 of an institution which would at once relieve men of their 
 responsibilities and shelter them from the dangers of the 
 pilgrim way, and the reaction of the northern races gen- 
 erally against such mediation. Life is after all an ascend- 
 ing spiral; we are never returning to the same point of 
 departure, but we are again and again returning to analo- 
 gous points of departure. Situations constantly repeat 
 themselves, though always upon different fields and, please 
 God, upon higher levels. The Reformation was the recur- 
 rence of a situation which men had faced more than once 
 before and which in all likelihood our sons and our sons' 
 sons will in their own turn be called upon to face. When 
 havens of shelter become prisons and walls of defense be- 
 come walls of hindrance ; when that which was meant to 
 nurture us will not dismiss us to the tasks of manhood 
 and what was meant to launch us will not let us seek the 
 open sea, then, once more, at whatever cost and for the 
 sake of life itself the brave and more daring will break 
 down the barriers which hold them back, relate them- 
 selves anew to God and truth and duty and take to the 
 open. 
 
 So much then for the larger historical movements 
 which issued in John Bunyan and " Pilgrim's Progress." 
 We cannot, however, dismiss the genesis of the book 
 without some further consideration of what has shaped 
 and coloured it. It is not only Protestant, it is Pauline, 
 Calvinistic, Anabaptist. It was by no accident but under 
 the compulsions of necessity that the Reformation re- 
 established its doctrinal bases in the teachings of St. Paul, 
 for we have seen already in these studies how St. Paul 
 
198 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 committed Christianity itself to a course of spiritual ad- 
 venture which the rigidities of Judaism would have made 
 impossible. His doctrine of the justification of faith was 
 at once an emancipation proclamation, freeing men from 
 sterile loyalties, fruitless obediences, and hopeless disciple- 
 ships, and an empowerment, putting them in such hving 
 touch with the quickening spirit of God that in relation- 
 ships so established the impossible became the possible, a 
 new peace was attained and a new fruitfulness began to 
 come into life. No wonder that Martin Luther facing 
 the same problem as Saul of Tarsus turned back to Gala- 
 tians and Romans, felt rather than reasoned his way 
 through St. Paul's soul-stirring message and so heart- 
 ened, not only himself passed from the shelter of hierarch- 
 ies and the absolutions of priests to the shelter of his 
 Father God and the absolutions of His sacrificial love, 
 but made possible a like experience for the whole of 
 Northern Europe. 
 
 St. Paul then fathered " Pilgrim's Progress " as he 
 fathered so much else in the freer movement of the 
 Christian faith. But the book has in it not only the 
 vision of the greatest, although the last born, of the 
 apostles ; it has wrought into the stuff of it the iron of 
 Calvinism, for John Calvin rendered the Reformation 
 two services. He created, to begin with, by sheer genius 
 of ecclesiastical statesmanship a closely federated church, 
 not at all the modification of the old, or even as he sup- 
 posed the reproduction of the Apostolic Church, but an 
 wholly new creation so wrought into spiritual solidity as 
 to have stood the shock of persecution, the testing of 
 battle and the trying of time. He supplied, moreover, 
 to the whole movement — though not in the same measure 
 to all its parts — a fundamental and transforming convic- 
 
BUNYAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS 199 
 
 tion without which the whole history of the Reformation 
 would have to be rewritten, and in all likelihood " Pilgrim's 
 Progress " would never have been written at all : an affir- 
 mation of the sovereignty of God, that is, which has too 
 often been so interpreted as to obscure the divine love, 
 misrepresent the divine justice and defeat the very ends 
 which it sought to establish, but which, in its best estate, 
 set the august and stainless tribunals of the Eternal over 
 against the rocking seat of the successors of the Fishermen, 
 freed men from all lesser allegiances that they might be 
 God's men and from all lesser sovereignties that He might 
 be their supreme King. In the face of such a sovereignty 
 the thrones of time shrank to pitiful proportions, repub- 
 lics and democracies were born, the subjects of God be- 
 came the masters of their own estate. The conscious- 
 ness of such a God ranged the spiritual forebears of John 
 Bunyan on battle-fields where the sense of divine decrees 
 made them unconquerable. For there has always been 
 this paradox in Calvinism : the conviction of a vast and 
 inflexible will which ought logically to have made men 
 supine has made them unspeakably resolute, the belief in 
 all life as simply the expression of a foreordaining purpose 
 which ought logically to have weakened the springs of 
 resolution and devotion has instead tempered them as by 
 fire. Surely our eyes are blinded if we cannot see, in 
 the spiritual passion which John Calvin and his followers 
 spread abroad in Holland, England and Scotland, the true 
 source of a noble freedom, and in the temper which the 
 followers of William the Silent, John Knox and Oliver 
 Cromwell drew from his doctrines the secret at once of 
 their impregnable determination in the face of all the 
 forces which the ancient order could marshall, and their 
 flame-like attack upon its very strongholds. 
 
200 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 Geneva under John Calvin v^as " The school of the 
 martyrs." " City of wonder where all was flame and 
 prayer, study, labour, austerity. What was the unspeak- 
 able joy of those who, having succeeded in fleeing 
 the lands of idolatry, reached at last this blessed city of 
 desire. With what grateful vision all those fugitives, 
 having by unbelievably good fortune gained the Lyons 
 road and followed the austere valley of the Rhone, saw 
 at last the towers of hope and salvation. Many of the 
 great left all, risked all, to reach Geneva. Poyet, Robert 
 Estienne, the widow and children of Bude sought there 
 a new fatherland. More than one confessor of the faith 
 there brought his scars. The fearless and unconquer- 
 able Knox, after eight years passed in the galleys, his 
 arms furrowed by chains, his back marked by the scourge, 
 came to seat himself for a day at the foot of the chair of 
 Calvin. To this presence all came and from that pres- 
 ence all departed." * " In those narrow streets, in that 
 sombre garden of God, there bloomed beneath the hand 
 of Calvin and for the safeguarding of the freedoms of the 
 soul, such blood red roses of devotion. If there was 
 needed anywhere in Europe, either blood or torture, a 
 man to burn at the stake or break upon the wheel, that 
 man was in Geneva, eager and ready to set out, praising 
 God and singing His psalms." ^ 
 
 We must search still further for the historical genesis 
 of *• Pilgrim's Progress." St. Paul supplied its doctrinal 
 atmospheres, John Calvin the spirit, steel tempered, 
 which gave power of resistance and attack to the spiritual 
 forces which underrun it, but apart from all this, though 
 not indeed unrelated to the interwrought and dominat- 
 
 * " Histoire de France," J. Michelet, Vol. II, p. 99. 
 
 2 Ibid., Vol. 10, p. 429. 
 
BUNYAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS 201 
 
 ing system of Calvin, was an obscure movement, not yet 
 clearly understood and awaiting still its English-speak- 
 ing historian, half social, half religious, always demo- 
 cratic, largely formless, often capricious, and in one in- 
 stance at least strangely lawless, called by a misrepre- 
 sentative name, yet having a significance which vi^e must 
 not overlook, and unexpectedly related to much u'hich is 
 most significant in our modern religious life — I mean the 
 Anabaptist movement. 
 
 We are coming to see, thanks to the painstaking work 
 of a good many men of insight and scholarship, the 
 significance and, indeed, the relationship of all those ob- 
 scure but tremendously vital movements which just be- 
 fore the Reformation underran the institutional life and 
 even the doctrinal expressions of the Christian Church. 
 The consideration of the " Theologia Germanica " has, 
 at least, indicated to us the existence of an inner re- 
 ligious life, existing everywhere in Northern Europe, 
 half in shadow, half in light and finding for itself mani- 
 fold expressions. For the most part the men and women 
 in whose lives such religious movements found expres- 
 sion were obscure, half submerged, almost wholly for- 
 gotten. The weight of the social and governmental 
 maladjustments of Europe weighed heavily upon their 
 shoulders already deeply bowed under the burden of 
 endless and bitterly requited toil. New industrial con- 
 ditions were beginning vaguely to shape themselves, but 
 they had brought as yet only harder labour and more 
 meagre fare to the peasant in the field and the workman 
 in the city. New alliances were in the way of being 
 formed between the burgesses and the king in which 
 both undertook to make common head against a feudal 
 nobility which had long outhved its usefulness, but this 
 
202 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 did not lighten the elemental wretchedness of the com- 
 mon folk. We have only to study the social conditions 
 in Germany before the Reformation in so accessible a 
 book as Lindsay's " History of the Reformation," with 
 even the most superficial examination of the literature 
 there quoted, to see what restless misery moved at the 
 bottom of European society. We have only to take 
 Michelet's classic description of the suppression of the 
 rebellion of the citizens of Ghent by Philip the Good — one 
 of the noblest pieces of historical writing in any language 
 — to see in what fashion the ancient liberties of free cities 
 were being extinguished and hopeless divisions being in- 
 troduced even into those cities themselves.* 
 
 It is not easy to analyze the ferment which stirred a 
 society beginning to take upon itself forms with which 
 we are only too familiar. " The gradual capitalizing of 
 industry had been sapping the old ' gild ' organization 
 within the cities ; the extension of commerce, and espe- 
 cially the shifting of the centre of external trade from 
 Venice to Antwerp, in consequence of the discovery of 
 the new route to the Eastern markets, and above all, the 
 growth of the great merchant companies, whose world- 
 trade required enormous capital, overshadowed the 
 •gilds* and destroyed their influence. The rise and 
 power of this capitalist order severed the poor from the 
 rich, and created, in a sense unknown before, a proletariat 
 class within the cities, which was liable to be swollen by 
 the influx of discontented and ruined peasants from the 
 country districts." ^ 
 
 How far all these stirrings of dumb discontent, this 
 
 * Michelet, " Histoire de France," Vol. 7. 
 
 '"A History of the Reformation — The Reformation in Germany," 
 
 Lindsay, pp. 88, 89. 
 
BUNYAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS 203 
 
 sullen and half obscure, though steadily rising passion for 
 social justice, were related to the new spiritual passions 
 which just as dumbly and obscurely were stirring in so 
 many regions it is not altogether easy to say, but we 
 may at least be sure that such connections were not 
 wanting. We can see clearly enough now that any far- 
 reaching modification of the immemorial religious order, 
 even then more nearly upon the point of breaking up 
 than any one could possibly have dreamed, would re- 
 lease this body of social discontent, offer a new instru- 
 ment for hopes and purposes half shaped or wholly 
 shapeless, and precipitate a fight for social and industrial 
 freedom which has never ceased from that day to this, 
 the clamour of which is always, in some quarter or other, 
 in our ears. The unhappiness which did not express 
 itself in action sought other and quieter roads in its 
 search for some alleviation of its pain. These studies 
 have already sought to show in the consideration of the 
 " Theologia Germanica " how rare and more gentle 
 spirits, feeling much the burden and unhappiness of the 
 time, sought to escape it all neither in revolt nor social 
 dreams, but in the quest after the inner peace in the 
 hidden and quiet comradeships of the Friends of God. 
 
 Now, in the end, both these tempers fed into the Ana- 
 baptist movement. It had its side of the social revolt, its 
 dumb and sometimes fierce passion for social justice, its 
 confused and half-blind aspirations after liberty and self- 
 government. It had, on the other side, its aspect of 
 spiritual loneliness, the endeavour of the soul after peace, 
 the soul's commitment of all its fortunes to the love of 
 God and His saving grace as made manifest in Jesus 
 Christ. The whole Anabaptist movement, we are begin- 
 ning to see clearly now, was the first turning of Demos 
 
204 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 in his sleep, the premonitory stirring of forces some day 
 to shake the world, the dim underground, half understood, 
 but none the less august beginnings of democracy, whether 
 in church or state. A movement so vast, pregnant, un- 
 formed was morally sure to go wrong, to inadequately 
 represent itself, to most effectually misrepresent itself, to 
 emphasize the unessential, to fall apart again and again 
 like a rope of sand, to be fruitful in bizarre doctrines and 
 barren in united action, offer an opportunity for unworthy 
 leaders, abuse its new-found liberty, offend the historic 
 and ordered sense of Europe, and even to stain all its be- 
 ginnings with this or that moral lawlessness which would 
 offer an excuse for the blind hatred of its foes and try the 
 loyalty of its friends. And indeed all this and more hap- 
 pened. The Anabaptist was caught between the upper 
 and nether millstone; the old under the hierarchy, the 
 new under the princes of the Protestant German states 
 agreed in but one thing: their hatred of him. He was 
 their common victim in a thousand forms of cruel and 
 heroic death, he made expiation for himself and for them 
 all. For a little the earth smoked with the blood of his 
 martyrdom, and the courage with which he met the mad 
 barbarities wliich fenced him in goes far towards redeem- 
 ing even the saddest of his shortcomings and at best 
 gives him a sure place in the long and kindling recital 
 of the costly loyalty of men to the compulsions of the 
 ideal. 
 
 Beneath the stress of persecution, in the face of the 
 hostility of Europe Anabaptism lost its earlier character, 
 but it did not die. Some parts of it were so shaped 
 and directed as to constitute the beginnings of the great 
 Baptist Church ; its deeper impulses, truly deathless, 
 struggled on towards their clear emergence upon the 
 
BUNYAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS 205 
 
 field of human action : that emergence we call democ- 
 racy. Moving through still other channels the Anabap- 
 tist temper fertilized the soil out of which sprang the 
 whole modern independent church movement. It is not 
 too much to say that somewhere and somehow, though 
 the connection is not wholly easy to follow, what was 
 most central and essential in Anabaptism launched the 
 Mayflower and was so carried across stormy seas to lodge 
 itself upon the shores of a new world — there, corrected 
 and broadened, to become the leaven of the spiritual and 
 political democracy of New England and the American 
 states. John Bunyan and " Pilgrim's Progress " are the 
 spiritual offspring of this movement. 
 
 '• There are two well-marked stages in the development 
 of Anabaptism in England. The first stage, speaking 
 roughly, covers the sixteenth century. During this 
 period frequent refugees from Holland and Germany 
 introduced, into different localities of Great Britain, the 
 doctrines of the continental Anabaptists, and there was 
 simultaneously a steady maturing of the ideas and teach- 
 ings which the scattered groups of Lollards had kept 
 alive. The early movement was, however, never allowed 
 to have free development, nor did it achieve distinct 
 national characteristics or produce a prophetic leader 
 who was able to organize it into a national movement. 
 Throughout the entire century it was regarded with dis- 
 gust and horror by all sections of the Church, and it was 
 subjected to a persistent campaign of ♦ extermination.' " * 
 
 " Pilgrim's Progress " was not fathered by this formless 
 and unrecognized Anabaptism, although it is as impossi- 
 ble to separate this vaster, vaguer movement from its 
 later august developments as it is to divide between twi- 
 
 1 Rufus M. Jones, " Studies in Mystical Religions," p. 396. 
 
2o6 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 light and dawn. By the middle of the sixteenth century 
 there were Baptist societies in England which may 
 be taken as the direct beginnings of the English Baptist 
 Church. These societies were not at all reticent in their 
 confessions of faith and were, by the tests of the time, 
 almost tragically fertile in heresies. They were not nice in 
 their condemnation of observances which seemed to them 
 hindrances to the true exercise of their spirits, and they 
 included much which was immaterial and not a little 
 which was beautiful and serviceful in their straightforward 
 denunciations. They were persuaded for example : " That 
 it is as lawful to christen a child in a tub of water at home, 
 or in a ditch by the way, as in a font-stone in the church. 
 That it is not necessary or profitable to have any church 
 or chapel to pray in or to do any Divine service in. That 
 the singing or saying of Mass, matins, or even-song is but 
 a roaring, howling, whistling, mumming, and juggling; 
 and that playing at the organ is a foolish vanity." * 
 
 All this, of course, did not endear them to their eccle- 
 siastical neighbours and one does not wonder that " The 
 King was from the first resolved to ' repress and utterly 
 extinguish these persons,* who, * whilst their hands were 
 busied about their manufactures, had their heads also 
 beating about points of divinity * ; and from the year 
 1538,' by the exercise of the royal prerogative in the im- 
 position of dogmas of faith on the consciences of his sub- 
 jects,' he set the machinery in operation to exterminate 
 both the Anabaptists themselves and their books." * As 
 the movement freed itself of its excesses and took organic 
 form it made, in its propaganda, much use of simple and 
 unlettered preachers. *' Tailors, leather-sellers, soap- 
 boilers, brewers, weavers, and tinkers " were the apostles 
 
 ^ Rufus M. Jones, •• Studies in Mystical Religions," p. 402. ^ /^/^^ 
 
BUNYAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS 207 
 
 of the movement.* They were much reproached and 
 cried out against, but those who cried out against them 
 were in the way of forgetting that the first apostles were 
 very simple folk and that Christ did not hesitate to com- 
 mit the beginning of His Gospel to fishermen and tax- 
 gatherers. Those who first discovered the layman and 
 began to utilize his individual gifts for the Kingdom 
 of God rendered the Church as a whole a service which 
 has put us all in their debt. Great aspects of the Church's 
 redemption have always come through her laymen. Latin 
 Catholicism in its far-reaching discriminations between 
 the laity and the clergy had done the great causes of 
 the spirit a disservice which grew more positive as the 
 distinction between the two orders deepened and 
 hardened. If we cannot see the significance of common 
 and unlettered men, dealing always inadequately of 
 course and often very foolishly with the high things of 
 God, we have lost the gift of discriminating vision. For 
 all this was to reestablish the life of God in the common 
 affairs of society and to find new channels for the revela- 
 tion of His spirit. Sooner or later some one, of all this 
 obscure and groping fellowship, was sure to speak out of 
 the fullness of an homely experience some word or other 
 which would be, because of the spiritual passion which 
 prompted it and the wise human insight which lay be- 
 hind it, and the free, vital conditions under which it was 
 said, our common and priceless possession. " Pilgrim's 
 Progress " was just that word. 
 
 No one could have written " Pilgrim's Progress " with- 
 out such ancestries and experiences as met in John 
 Bunyan. The clergyman of any church would have 
 given it, in spite of himself, a hopelessly ecclesiastical 
 
 1 P. 418. 
 
2o8 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 bias, the learned could not have been so simple, nor those 
 disciphned in the schools so wise. No one who had not 
 been the comrade of men in the homely concerns of life 
 could have spoken so directly to the universal human 
 heart. Much, of course, distinctive in the movement 
 which begot the book makes no showing in its pages. It 
 is always the province of the master to get himself clear 
 of the capricious, the bizarre, and the adventitious and, 
 winnowing out the chaff, to keep only the pure grain of 
 the enterprise whose voice he has become. All the 
 social side of Anabaptism, for example, is wanting in 
 " Pilgrim's Progress " and yet we have seen how the 
 Anabaptist movement was, in one great aspect of it, the 
 expression of a vague, unformed, social passion. 
 
 The hall marks of mysticism are equally wanting, 
 though Anabaptism was, in other of its aspects, but one 
 more troubled phase of the mystical religions. John 
 Bunyan had borne a costly witness to his fidelity to the 
 Baptist faith and yet one would not easily discover from 
 " Pilgrim's Progress " to what church he belonged. The 
 tinker of Bedford Jail did that which is given only to one 
 man in a century to do : he took unto himself, whether by 
 inheritance, or by the forces which shaped him, or by his 
 own sad travail of soul, or by a kind of many-sided one- 
 ness with his time — which is the secret of each master's 
 power — impulses, doctrines, restlessnesses, in short the 
 confusion of a great undisciplined, unorganized, unreg- 
 ulated spiritual movement, and he so dwelt upon it in 
 his meditations and so clarified it by his life and so 
 universalized it by his sheer human genius that, when at 
 last he gave it back to men, he gave it back to them in a 
 universal language. No superficial experience was com- 
 petent to produce an effect like that ; it needed mighty 
 
BUNYAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS 209 
 
 inner wrestlings. So John Bunyan belongs to the fellow- 
 ship of the twice-born and the real interest of his 
 biography attaches to its inner rather than its outer proc- 
 esses. 
 
 He was born in 1628 just as Charles the First was 
 making up his royal and misguided mind to rule for eleven 
 momentous years without a parhament. He died in 1688 
 just as parliament itself was making up its mind to unseat 
 the House of Stuart and teach the English kings once and 
 for all that they ruled only upon the sufferance of their 
 people. John Bunyan's sixty stormy years saw the 
 tragic outcome of Charles' experiment, the wars of the 
 Commonwealth, the brief and splendid dominance of the 
 red star of Oliver Cromwell, the setting of that star and 
 the collapse of the hopes of militant Puritanism, the 
 moral murk of the Reformation, the unteachable folly of 
 the last Stuart, and the beginnings of a better, braver day 
 for England. Coincident with all this was the Puritan 
 migration and the establishment of a new England in the 
 shadow of the immemorial forests of a new world. Surely 
 these were great times in which to have lived, but for the 
 biographer of John Bunyan their interest is not in the 
 hall of parliament, or the council chamber of kings, or 
 with the hard-bitten Iron-Sides, or upon the fields of 
 Marston Moor and Naseby. 
 
 •* Pilgrim's Progress " is not, indeed, uncoloured by the 
 time through which Bunyan passed — " he was during one 
 brief campaign himself a soldier " — and the picturesque 
 imagery of war lived ever afterwards in his vivid imagina- 
 tion to be summoned upon occasion for the uses of the 
 soul. The sound of trumpet is never wanting in his 
 pages ; " he loved to draw his illustrations of sacred things 
 from camps and fortresses, from guns, drums, trumpets, 
 
210 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 flags of truce, and regiments arrayed each under its own 
 banner." He loved a good fight in a good cause and his 
 pilgrims are able to give a good account of themselves 
 with their swords laying about mightily. But the battles 
 with which John Bunyan was most concerned were upon 
 the high table-lands of his own soul. He fought not 
 «* against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against 
 powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, 
 against spiritual wickedness in high places.'* 
 
 That war began early. ** Before he was ten, his sports 
 were interrupted by fits of remorse and despair ; and his 
 sleep was disturbed by dreams of fiends, trying to fly 
 away with him." A boy driven so early to the fight was 
 not wanting either in imagination or sensibility. Bunyan 
 and his later biographers do not agree as to the extent of 
 his moral depravity ; Bunyan himself has not words 
 hard enough to indicate the state of his unregenerate 
 soul, but we need to take notice that he confines himself 
 to generalities — save that he professes himself profane 
 enough to shock old women — and that accused by 
 others of definite shortcomings in the flesh he denied 
 their accusations quite as vehemently as he proclaimed 
 his own wickedness. It has been the custom to take 
 Bunyan at his own estimate of himself, so much more 
 wonderful does the grace abounding of God then become ; 
 against such backgrounds the testimony of " Pilgrim's 
 Progress " glows with a rarer light. An analysis of 
 Bunyan's young manhood, happy or unhappy, does not 
 substantiate his claim to have been far and away the chief 
 of sinners. " The four chief sins of which he was guilty 
 were dancing, ringing the bells of the parish church, 
 playing at tipcat, and reading the history of Sir Bevis of 
 Southampton." Most of us would consider the problems 
 
BUNYAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS 211 
 
 of parental discipline rarely simplified if we had to deal 
 with nothing worse. 
 
 The true significance of Bunyan's experiences is to be 
 sought, not in that against which he waged warfare, but in 
 the reality of the strife. He too was committed to the quest 
 for peace : a peace not to be attained without surrender. 
 Much which he felt called upon to give up seems to us so 
 trivial as to be not worth dwelling upon, but that is beside 
 the point. Somewhere or other a man's soul must be 
 engaged ; somewhere or other along the long frontier 
 between the world and the spirit " the lust of the flesh, 
 and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life " take actual 
 and challenging shape and offer us battle. Whether 
 they solicit us in the wayward ringing of church bells, 
 the selling of a birthright, or the sights and sounds of a 
 far country is not primarily material. How a man bears 
 himself is the first question, whether or no he is minded 
 to surrender and when and how he wins the victory. 
 The fields upon which we are to fight are determined for 
 us by boards of strategy which do not consult us. In a 
 multitude of ways theirsealed orders reach us — inheritance, 
 environment, training, temperament, the ruling ideas of 
 the time in which we live, the shaping of circumstances, 
 the interplay of kindling forces bring us to the place of 
 our high appointed strife. It is ours to play the man 
 and, by the grace of God, to hold the field. 
 
 The deeper significance then of Bunyan's long-drawn 
 inner strife must not be sought in the things about which 
 he was concerned, but rather in his supreme concern for 
 his soul's peace and salvation. His whole experience 
 witnesses to his extreme sensibility and to his vivid 
 imagination. He hears voices, sure evidence of a 
 most high strung temperament. In such experiences 
 
212 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 he belongs to the fellowship of the mystics. He 
 was offered in the midst of a most innocent game the 
 dreadful alternative of leaving his sins and going to heaven 
 or keeping his sins and going to hell. He dared not 
 ring the church bells for fear the tower would fall upon 
 him. Surely he must from time to time have rather 
 sorely tried the comrades of his sports. He was tempted 
 as so many have been to stake everything upon one 
 supreme test, to cry to the water by the roadside " Be 
 thou dry " and so to settle the question of his salvation, 
 " for," he argued, " if I have faith I shall be saved, and if 
 I have faith I may work miracles." He even sought to 
 secure a kind of impersonal salvation by associating him- 
 self with the Jews. In that case he would share with the 
 chosen people the fulfillment of the promises which were 
 made to them as Abraham's seed. The only trouble 
 with this plan was that he could find no trace of Jewish 
 blood in the Bunyan family record — which must however 
 have been ill kept — and his father was, moreover, very 
 unwilling to confess himself related to the Jews, even for 
 the sake of his son's salvation. " After I had been thus 
 for some considerable time, another thought came in my 
 mind ; and that was, whether we were of the Israelites or 
 no ? For finding in Scripture that they were once the 
 peculiar people of God, thought I, if I were one of this 
 race, my soul must needs be happy. Now again, I found 
 within me a great longing to be resolved about this 
 question, but could not tell how I should : at last I asked 
 my father of it, who told me, no, we were not. Where- 
 fore, then I fell in my spirit, as to the hopes of that, and 
 so remained." * There was nothing for him to do but to 
 fight it through. All that he afterwards put on record of 
 
 1 " Grace Abounding." 
 
BUNYAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS 213 
 
 Christian's experience with Apollyon in the Valley of the 
 Shadow is but the transcription of his own experiences. 
 Frightful and blasphemous voices whispered the unspeak- 
 able in his ears, forms of terror encompassed him, and 
 the deep darkness of doubt lay all across his path. He 
 was persuaded, as so many others have been, that he had 
 committed the unpardonable sin. He is tempted to the 
 sin of Judas ; insistent and almost uncounted voices keep 
 urging him to renounce his own part in the saving work 
 of Christ and to sell his Master. •< Sell Him, sell Him," 
 the voices urged. The strain was too much. " Let Him 
 go, if He will," he cried one day and with that black 
 night fell upon his soul. 
 
 The mystics have always had their black night of the 
 soul : a stage, that is, of depression and reaction, follow- 
 ing earlier ecstasies and preceding the clear dawn of their 
 day of cloudless peace. The darkness through which 
 Bunyan fought his troubled way was not of that sort : he 
 had no earlier ecstasies, he had been struggling through 
 shadow from his boyhood. It is easy to set all this one 
 side as wholly abnormal, which indeed it was, and barren, 
 which it certainly was not. We know the psychological 
 bases of such experiences, the power of auto-suggestion, 
 the return of the mind, paralyzed by fear, upon the very 
 thing it fears ; we know that the positive is always the 
 door of escape from the negative. What Bunyan needed, 
 of course, was friendly counsel, a greater sense of the love 
 of God, and wholesome occupations both of mind and 
 body. He found little help at a time when his need was 
 sore ; the books which he read only deepened his misery, 
 the friends with whom he counselled brought him no 
 peace. " I am afraid," said Bunyan upon one occasion to 
 an " ancient man of high repute for piety," " that I have 
 
214 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 committed the sin against the Holy Ghost." •' Indeed," 
 was the temperate and consohng reply, " I am afraid that 
 you have." Bunyan found cold enough comfort in such 
 a reply as this. Talking with the man further, however, 
 he was led to doubt whether his Job's comforter spoke 
 out of a really qualifying experience. He " found him," 
 he says, •* though a good man, a stranger to much combat 
 with the devil. Wherefore I went to God again, as well 
 as I could, for mercy still." ^ Such fightings within and 
 fears without are a heavy burden for any soul to bear. 
 Only the bravest and most self-sufficient are equal to such 
 things. The Catholic Church provides the confessional 
 for hke troubled ones, corrects out of the stress of her 
 vast experience such spiritual maladies, and in her abso- 
 lutions offers peace. All this is well enough and very 
 hkely Protestantism has paid a great price for the want 
 of it, but we must not forget that it was the travail of 
 John Bunyan's soul which gave us " Pilgrim's Progress." 
 We may let our sympathy with birth pangs carry us far, 
 but never so far as to forget that they are the price — the 
 age-old price — of life and birth, and hope and new begin- 
 nings. Bunyan himself wore through his darkness, the 
 clouds began to break, and the Dayspring from on high 
 arose upon him. 
 
 In all the long record of such strife, as Bunyan has 
 written it down, we have a constant witness to the mean- 
 ing of the Bible and its texts for that sorely tried man. It 
 is something more than an armoury from which he draws 
 his weapons ; it is for him the holy word of God. He 
 was wanting, of course, in his use of it in all those 
 methods which is to-day our commonplace ; he does 
 not seek to interpret the text by the context or to ascer- 
 
 ' * " Grace Abounding." 
 
BUNYAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS 215 
 
 tain what the author of the text himself had in mind. 
 For him each passage is perfect and apart. But the inter- 
 wrought play of soul and the truth so revealed in alter- 
 nations of light and shadow, hope and despair, helps us to 
 understand, as perhaps few other human documents do, 
 what the Bible meant to men and women who came to 
 it with a sense of discovery which we have lost, with an 
 intensity of faith now profoundly altered, and with a 
 passion for redemption which made that redemption the 
 supreme business of their lives and made every word of 
 the Bible from cover to cover a force to be reckoned 
 with, a revelation to be followed, a weapon to be seized, 
 or a strength to be leaned upon in the achievement 
 of salvation. In a narration whose homely and fitly 
 chosen words, taken so often from common uses and 
 familiar services, are so perfectly the vehicle of the mes- 
 sage which they carry that not one of them can be 
 changed or spared while our language lasts, John Bunyan 
 gives such a vital interpretation of the meaning of the 
 text to his soul that we ourselves live through again with 
 him the long-drawn, heart-breaking intensity of the strife. 
 There are texts which stab him like swords, texts which 
 cast for an instant such a light upon his shadowed way 
 as he must have seen fall upon Bedford meadows in the 
 rare sunlit intervals of watery skies. There are texts as 
 seasonable to his soul as the former and the latter rain, 
 texts which seized upon him, words which fettered his 
 soul Hke fetters of brass, texts in the face of whose 
 smiting challenge the tempter did leer and steal away 
 from him, passages which seared him as with fire and 
 passages which spread abroad the beginnings of the peace 
 which passeth understanding. " Then fell with power 
 that word of God upon me, ' See that ye refuse not Him 
 
2i6 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 that speaketh/ This made a strange seizure upon my 
 spirit ; it brought light with it, and commanded a silence 
 in my heart, of all those tumultuous thoughts, that did 
 before use, like masterless hellhounds, to roar and bellow, 
 and make a hideous noise with me. It shewed me also 
 that Jesus Christ had yet a word of grace and mercy for 
 me." * There are certain promises at which he catches 
 as a spent swimmer at a plank, and certain others for the 
 possession of which he fights with the adversary as Chris- 
 tian with Apollyon. " Oh, many a pull hath my heart 
 had with Satan for that blessed sixth chapter of John." 
 
 Two or three things, we may be quite sure, Bunyan 
 owed to all this. He won upon such fields as these his 
 marvellous knowledge of the Bible and that immediate 
 and elastic response of all within him to its precepts and 
 its promises, the full quality of which it is so difficult to 
 indicate. We are not wanting to-day in multitudes of 
 men and women who find the word of God between the 
 covers of the Book as Bunyan found it and seek in fine 
 fidelities and following obediences to work out their sal- 
 vation through its guidance and direction, but it may be 
 questioned whether,even in such lives, some subtle change 
 has not been wrought, some mist of doubt arisen, not 
 dense enough indeed to shape itself in clouds but real 
 enough to give a new quality to spiritual atmospheres. 
 As he sends out his pilgrims upon their roads of pilgrim- 
 age he furnishes them with the weapons, he knew best. 
 They meet their adversaries with proof texts, comfort 
 themselves as they grow weary with dear remembered 
 promises, and find in all the course of their pilgrimage 
 that the way-marks which the very intensity of the quest 
 itself demand are also such way-marks as the Bible sup- 
 
 *" Grace Abounding." 
 
BUNYAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS 217 
 
 plies. There is something more than a coincidence 
 here ; there is an abiding testimony to the fundamental 
 unity of all spiritual aspirations and to the unescapable 
 stages of any journey in any age from the City of De- 
 struction to the City of Light. " All mystics," to quote 
 St. Martin again (and in our pilgrim's progress we are 
 all mystics), •' belong to the same country." That is to 
 say, it is something more than a coincidence that John 
 Bunyan is able to show proof texts for every stage of 
 Christian's journey — and that without doing violence to 
 the texts themselves — and to furnish out of the Bible 
 all the country which he crossed with certain features 
 which make it deathless, while every one of us feels at 
 the same time that Bunyan does but furnish forth what 
 every man of us knows in his own wayfaring and vah- 
 dates in his own experience. 
 
 What is all this but one more sure testimony that the 
 Bible itself is a pilgrim's progress ; the revelation of the 
 experience at once of a race, and of the ardent and 
 aspiring souls of that race singled out to become its spokes- 
 men, seeking a city which hath the foundations, whose 
 builder and maker is God ! Patriarchs, judges, poets, 
 prophets, each in his own time and each in his own 
 degree are travelling the same road. Where the prophets 
 gave over the apostles began, what others but dimly felt 
 Jesus made radiantly certain, where others faltered He 
 walked in a heavenly security, the lands which others 
 sought He spoke of as His own home country. The 
 Bible is thus the one treasure house for pilgrims always 
 and everywhere. They do but repeat in some fashion 
 the experiences which made the Book and when, there- 
 fore, the story of the pilgrimage is furnished forth and 
 illustrated as it was by Bunyan out of the Book itself it 
 
2i8 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 is deep calling unto deep : the vaster adventures of which 
 the Bible is the record, the vaster need to which the Bible 
 is the answer, correct, hearten, restrain, perfect the lonely 
 adventurer. 
 
 Bunyan's experiences in this long-drawn strife lend 
 a certain quality, otherwise difficult to account for, to 
 " Pilgrim's Progress." Pilgrim is never safe until he has 
 finally got across the river and has begun to climb the 
 heavenly steeps. He saw, indeed, as he looked back, 
 once the river was overpassed, poor Ignorance who, 
 through the kindness of one Vain-Hope, had come dry 
 shod across the river, in his own presumption had climbed 
 the hill unescorted by such rejoicing angels as came to 
 meet Christian and had indeed knocked at the gate ; he 
 saw, I say, that poor Ignorance, having come even so far 
 as this, utterly failed of entrance through want of a cer- 
 tificate and found to his own sad undoing that there is a 
 way to hell from the gates of heaven. Froude is not a 
 little troubled by this untoward ending of " Pilgrim's 
 Progress " and thinks — in which indeed we will agree 
 with him — poor Ignorance deserving of no such hard 
 fate.* Such consideration may be true enough, but it is 
 beside the mark. There are no stages of safety in " Pil- 
 grim's Progress " anywhere between the gate of the City 
 of Destruction and inside the walls of the Celestial City 
 because, among other things, Bunyan's own pilgrimage 
 had lasted so long, hope had so often been eclipsed, and 
 the cup of living water so often snatched from his lips. 
 It is the militant experiences of the author, long con- 
 tinued and rather grown out of than finished by any 
 signal triumph, to which we are partly in debt at least for 
 the long-drawn militant quality of Pilgrim's experiences, 
 • James Anthony Froude, ** Bunyan." 
 
BUNYAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS 219 
 
 I would not urge this too far, but I am just as sure, on 
 the other hand, that it needs to be taken into account. 
 Poor Bunyan's life was sadly wanting in peace, for when 
 indeed, after many buffetings, he had secured the inner 
 peace, the doors of Bedford Jail opened and he sat for 
 long in its " stinking dungeon." 
 
 It was a hard world for a non-conformist tinker who 
 had such a sense of the Unseen and Eternal as no man 
 had possessed since Dante, and who was minded to 
 preach the Gospel. No wonder his Christian was hard 
 put to it until he found ground to stand upon well-nigh 
 across the river. Last of all just as the duration of this 
 experience gave a long-drawn militant quality to Chris- 
 tian's search, just as the weapons with which he furnished 
 himself gave him a knowledge of the Bible, without which 
 he could never have done his work, so the very intensity 
 of his experience gives a deathless vividness to his inter- 
 pretation of other men's battles. The compelling note 
 of " Pilgrim's Progress " is an unbelievable realism ; the 
 friends and foes of the spirit which throng its pages are 
 no mere personifications : they are more than incarna- 
 tions. It is the least abstract book in the world. How 
 abstract many of its contentions were capable of becom- 
 ing doctrinal Puritanism was afterwards to make sadly 
 evident, but there is not an abstraction of doctrinal Puri- 
 tanism which does not become real as one's next door 
 neighbour in the pages of ♦• Pilgrim's Progress." The 
 things with which you have done battle for your life are 
 never abstractions. The moving pages of " Pilgrim's 
 Progress " lived, first of all, in the soul of John Bunyan. 
 He had met during the years of his agony all the throng- 
 ing fellowship with which Christian had to deal, had lis- 
 tened with spacious arguments to all the hidden enemies 
 
220 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 of the soul and had been shaken by their whispered sug- 
 gestions. " He shall be," said Simeon of the child Jesus, 
 " He shall be the revealer of the hearts of men." In his 
 own measure John Bunyan is the revealer of the hearts 
 of men because he bore and suffered so much in himself. 
 
 Bunyan had come before the end of his long set-to with 
 fear and doubt and temptation to find much comfort and 
 peace in the fellowship of the Baptist Church in Bedford. 
 Whether or no they had always given him wise counsel 
 may be open to question, but they had at least given him 
 a real comradeship and a living manifestation of the peace 
 he was seeking. He dates one of his own points of spir- 
 itual departure from that day when the good providence 
 of God called him to Bedford to work at his calling, and 
 he saw in one of the streets of that town " three or four 
 poor women sitting at a door, in the sun, talking about 
 the things of God." He drew near to hear what they 
 said and so came to long all the more earnestly that he 
 too might sit in the sun of divine favour and that the 
 things of God might be real in his own life. Later still 
 the state and happiness of these poor people at Bedford 
 were presented to him in a kind of vision. " I saw as if 
 they were on the sunny side of some high mountain, 
 there refreshing themselves with the pleasant beams of 
 the sun, while I was shivering and shrinking in the cold, 
 afflicted with frost, snow, and dark clouds : methought 
 also, betwixt me and them, I saw a wall that did compass 
 about this mountain ; now through this wall, my soul did 
 greatly desire to pass ; concluding, that if I could, I would 
 even go into the very midst of them, and there also com- 
 fort myself with the heat of their sun." 
 
 Such a picture as that of the three or four women sit- 
 ting in the sun not only testifies to Bunyan's vivid sense 
 
BUN VAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS 221 
 
 of the meaning of homely things, but testifies also to the 
 reality of religion in obscure and difficult places. Miche- 
 let's picture of the " Beghards " singing at their looms 
 in the sunless basements of high-timbered houses in 
 Flemish cities and Bunyan's picture of old women sitting 
 in the sun in Bedford Street and speaking of the high 
 things of God are all of a piece. They disclose to us 
 those hidden sources of strength which have kept men 
 strong in loneliness and poverty, they help us to sense a 
 quiet tide of unhindered peace flowing beneath the stormy 
 movements of restless times and flooding unexpectedly 
 the lives of folk who had, on any other showing, little to 
 live for, they help us to understand that however the Gos- 
 pel of Jesus urges us to social reconstructions which are 
 to make poverty but the forgotten shadow of a dream. 
 He had other meanings when He said, " Come unto Me 
 all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give 
 you rest." 
 
 Bunyan joined his friend Mr. Gifford's church and was 
 baptized in the river Ouse. In that congregation his 
 gifts came speedily to be recognized. We have reason 
 to believe that he had prospered modestly in his worldly 
 undertakings. His name is in 1653 attached to an ad- 
 dress sent from Bedfordshire to Cromwell '• approving 
 the dismissal of the Long Parliament, recognizing Oliver 
 himself as the Lord's instrument, and recommending the 
 county magistrates as fit persons to serve in the Assem- 
 bly which was to take its place." ^ He would not likely 
 have been permitted to sign such a document had he not 
 been a householder. Whatever he possessed could not 
 have been sufficient to endanger his hope of salvation, for 
 he had begun most humbly. He had married in his 
 
 ^ James Anthony Froude, '• Bunyan," p. 54. 
 
222 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 youth wholly on faith and love. " My mercy was to 
 light upon a wife whose father was counted godly : this 
 woman and I, though we came together as poor as poor 
 might be (not having so much household stuff as a dish or a 
 spoon betwixt us both), yet this she had for her part, 
 * The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven ; the Practice of 
 Piety ' ; which her father had left her when he died. In 
 these two books I should sometimes read with her, 
 wherein I also found some things that were somewhat 
 pleasing to me ; but all this while I met with no con- 
 viction." * 
 
 Bunyan's real power, of course, lay in other regions 
 than the conduct of his trade. No man who had come 
 through such fires as he and could so body forth his 
 experiences would long be permitted to remain silent. 
 It was, as we have seen, a time when the obscurer re- 
 ligious bodies were discovering the lay preacher and 
 when there was a place for a tinker in the ministry of the 
 word. Bunyan began modestly enough. " After this, 
 sometimes, when some of them did go into the country 
 to teach, they would also that I should go with them ; 
 where, though as yet I did not, nor durst not, make use 
 of my gift in an open way, yet more privately, still, as I 
 came amongst the good people in those places, I did 
 sometimes speak a word of admonition unto them also, 
 the which they, as the other, received with rejoicing at 
 the mercy of God to me-ward, professing their souls were 
 edified thereby. Wherefore to be brief, at last, being still 
 desired by the Church, after some solemn prayer to the 
 Lord, with fasting, I was more particularly called forth, 
 and appointed to a more ordinary and public preaching 
 of the word, not only to and amongst them that believed, 
 
 1 " Grace Abounding." 
 
BUNYAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS 223 
 
 but also to offer the Gospel to those who had not yet re- 
 ceived the faith thereof; about which time I did evidently 
 find in my mind a secret pricking forward thereto; though 
 I bless God, not for desire of vain glory, for at that time 
 I was most sorely afflicted with the fiery darts of the 
 devil, concerning my eternal state." * 
 
 No need to dwell upon the quality of his ministry ; we 
 should know what that was had he never told us. " In- 
 deed, I have been as one sent to them from the dead ; I 
 went myself in chains, to preach to them in chains ; and 
 carried that fire in my conscience, that I persuaded them 
 to be aware of."^ He grew in his own soul in such ex- 
 ercises as these and beat back the devil for himself as he 
 laid about for his congregation. 
 
 A serener note began gradually to disclose itself. " I 
 did much labour to hold forth Jesus Christ in all His 
 offices, relations, and benefits unto the world." He suf- 
 fered sore for this preaching, but continued faithful unto 
 the end and gradually won more than the tolerance of the 
 " doctors and priests of the country." The more sincere 
 and devout of them could not fail to see that here also 
 was a man named John who was sent from God He 
 never, he says, *< cared to meddle with things that were 
 controverted, especially things of the lowest nature ; yet 
 it pleased me much to contend with great earnestness for 
 the word of faith, and the remission of sins by the death 
 and sufferings of Jesus." He must have been popular 
 for he saw people drink in his opinions. He goes on to 
 add that that pleased him nothing, though this we may 
 be permitted to doubt. He had many children of his 
 spiritual labour and knew the worth of that beatitude 
 which promises rare blessing to all those about whom 
 
 »«' Grace Abounding." * Ibid. 
 
224 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 much evil is spoken falsely. So the work which was 
 begun in the dark night of his soul began to ripen in his 
 ministry and came to its perfect fruit in Bedford Jail. It 
 was impossible for such a hght as Bunyan's to be hidden 
 under a bushel. 
 
 He was well known in all the Midland counties and 
 was in demand everywhere. Meanwhile, as the dis- 
 ordered ferment of English religious life increased, the 
 Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell came to its stormy end. 
 With the end of the Commonwealth, says Green in sub- 
 stance, the hope of Puritanism to establish the Kingdom 
 of God by the sword also came to an end. Henceforth 
 the truer part of such passions as the Commonwealth 
 sought to express, whether in church or state, was to 
 work itself out in less dramatic channels and to constitute 
 a leaven rather than to become the form of the state. 
 But there were hard times in store for all those who had 
 thought that Cromwell was he who should save Israel 
 and that the Kingdom of God was forthwith to come, for 
 directly the Stuarts were set upon their none too firmly 
 established throne they sought to undo everything which 
 they could reach and to secure many things which, in the 
 end, they were to be shown unable to reach. The res- 
 toration was held to have revived the thirty-fifth Act of 
 Elizabeth. " Non-conformists refusing to attend worship 
 in the parish churches were to be imprisoned till they 
 made their submission. Three months were allowed 
 them to consider. If at the end of that time they were 
 still obstinate, they were to be banished the realm ; and if 
 they subsequently returned to England without permis- 
 sion from the Crown, they were liable to execution as 
 felons." * Froude seems to think that there was probably 
 
 ^ James Anthony Froude, " Bunyan," p, 67. 
 
BUNYAN'S PILGRIMS PROGRESS 225 
 
 a real necessity for the revival of this Act. Froude has a 
 genius for supposing many things which may or may not 
 be so. But it was, we should all at least agree, the 
 strange irony of fate which singled out the Bedford 
 Baptists as the first objects of religious persecution and 
 made John Bunyan the first non-conformist marked for 
 arrest. 
 
 He was offered his liberty on what seemed to the 
 magistrates, before whom he was tried, reasonably easy 
 terms : he had only to promise not to preach and to be 
 substantially false to the compulsion which God had laid 
 upon his soul. It was not easy for him to make the 
 choice ; he had been lately remarried and even while he 
 was being tried, his wife lay at home in peril through the 
 premature labour which his arrest had brought upon her. 
 He had besides four young children, one of them bhnd. 
 He was indicted as having " devilishly and pertinaciously 
 abstained from coming to church " and as being the 
 " common upholder of unlawful meetings and conventicles, 
 to the great disturbance and distraction of the good sub- 
 jects of this kingdom." The authorities seemed unwill- 
 ing to go to extremities with him ; they advised him, as 
 such gentlemen have always done, not to interfere with 
 the high things of the spirit ; they told him that while he 
 was quite right in thinking that he ought not to hide his 
 gift, his real gift was in the tinkering of old kettles. 
 Great things turn on small hinges sometimes. The 
 wholly negligible mutations of Florentine politics sent out 
 Dante an exile to eat other men's bread, climb other 
 men's stairs, and write the " Divine Comedy " ; an ungener- 
 ous law and a foolish magistracy conspired with the deep 
 things of the spirit to offer John Bunyan the occasion for 
 writing «' Pilgrim's Progress." The men who sent him to 
 
226 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 Bedford Jail made their best bid for immortality in telling 
 John Bunyan that he was fit only to mend kettles. 
 
 In the end he was imprisoned for three months with 
 nothing to expect when the three months were ended but 
 conformity or exile. A safe tradition and the judgment 
 of scholarly biographers has assigned Bunyan to the worst 
 of the three Bedford jails. Froude with that invincible 
 optimism, that genius for the rehabilitation of doubtful 
 characters and difficult situations in which he is always 
 indulging, is quite persuaded that Bunyan was put in the 
 best and not the worst of the jails and that his treatment 
 was not severe. Bunyan himself seems to have thought 
 otherwise. ^^ His treatment did indeed vary, but it is enough 
 to say that for twelve years he lay in Bedford Jail. He 
 supported his family by making long tagged thread laces ; 
 he fed his soul upon the Bible, his courage upon Fox's 
 book of martyrs ; he ministered as he was permitted to his 
 fellow prisoners, and even established something very 
 much like a Baptist church in that most untoward 
 sanctuary. He meditated upon the deep things of the 
 spirit and began to write. 
 
 His work showed from the first those qualities which have 
 made the best of it as permanent as his mother tongue. 
 We have already seen what fires of spiritual agony fed 
 their heat into his speech and meditations. He was now 
 to discover a mastery of written English which puts him 
 in a class apart. The secret of his style is, of course, 
 primarily in the very fibre of his personality ; the style is 
 always the man. Whatever made John Bunyan made 
 his speech. He was fortunate in knowing but few 
 books and in knowing best the Book which furnished 
 him both model and matter. The Bible served his style 
 so perfectly because he himself had sought between 
 
BUNYAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS 227 
 
 its covers a ministry of an entirely different sort. He 
 went to it for life, not for its vocabulary. He came in the 
 end really so to incarnate its spirit that he was under 
 bonds to reproduce its speech and, lo, he knew no other. 
 This is not, however, the whole matter. The common 
 speech of Bunyan's time was the English of the King 
 James Version. It was a period in the development of 
 the English language which that language itself could 
 reach but once and will not reach again. Behind John 
 Bunyan lay the joy of Shakespeare and his compeers in 
 the discovery of their mother tongue and the free and 
 constructive use of it, their delight in bending its almost 
 infinite possibilities to their own lordly desires, which 
 were none the less so truly one with the language over 
 which they lorded it that, while they dealt with it as a 
 sculptor with his clay, they did no violence to its essen- 
 tial genius but rather liberated that genius in the use 
 which they made of it. (There is no little gain in being 
 granted the use of a language before the dictionary 
 makers have had their way with it.) All this is, of course, 
 the poetic use of language ; it soon escapes, it belongs 
 to the childhood of races and individuals. But ah, the 
 wonder and miracle of it ! It was something then of the 
 poet's joy and wonder in the use of words into which 
 John Bunyan came as into an inheritance. On the other 
 hand, discipline was beginning to tell, forms were being 
 established, the mother speech of the English people 
 was being given rules of structure and employment 
 which were to make thereafter impossible the " gentle- 
 man adventures " of the high uncharted seas of speech, 
 though in those very prohibitions making speech itself 
 a clearer and more fitting vehicle for the commerce of 
 the spirit. 
 
228 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 John Bunyan, I say, belongs then, just as the King 
 James Version belongs, to this time of transition. He 
 possesses, as the King James Version possesses, the 
 incommunicable secret of filling homely words with 
 radiant meanings, of bringing the suggestion of the 
 empire of the spirit to the speech of the wayside and 
 the market-place, and of making the shorter, directer 
 Anglo-Saxon words which do seem to offer so little to 
 music and to rhythm something more than the vehicle 
 of a suffused poetry — poetry itself. Bunyan's poetry is 
 almost unworthy the name, but his prose in its nobler 
 movements is instinct with a free creative spirit, with a 
 rhythmic balance, and with something deeper still : that 
 magic which is the birthright of those whose lips God 
 has touched and which is as incapable of definition as it 
 is certain of recognition. Bunyan then drew, in his dic- 
 tion, from those springs from which the King James trans- 
 lators themselves drew. " Pilgrim's Progress " and the 
 King James Version are the manifestations of one com- 
 mon linguistic impulse. The King James Version served 
 John Bunyan in this : he constantly and unwittingly 
 corrected his own more homely speech by the culture of 
 that great translation and thereby amplified and height- 
 ened a style which, without this rebaptism in a purer 
 source, would have been too homely and too broken to 
 serve its perfect purpose. That is beyond debate. 
 
 It is very likely that we owe to Bunyan's third im- 
 prisonment the greatest of his books. We know now 
 that his first imprisonment lasted about six years, and 
 with a brief respite his second imprisonment lasted some 
 six years longer. There is an endless controversy, as 
 has been intimated, over the place or places of this long 
 confinement. In a general way the biographers of 
 
BUNYAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS 229 
 
 Bunyan, belonging to the Established Church, seem very 
 desirous of proving how impossible it must have been for 
 the worthy representatives of that Church ever to have 
 treated so saintly a man as John Bunyan with the tradi- 
 tional rigour. The Nonconformists, on the other hand, 
 find real satisfaction in heightening Bunyan's sufferings 
 and making his imprisonment dismal enough. It is too 
 late to establish, for the properly constituted religious 
 authorities of England in the years immediately following 
 the Restoration, any saving record of either clemency or 
 forbearance. Even had Church and State been minded to 
 do their best for Bunyan, that best was bad enough. He 
 did have, however, towards the end of his imprisonment 
 considerable latitude ; he was simply asked to keep within 
 bounds ; he was put, as it were, upon parole. 
 
 Three years after his second release he was again im- 
 prisoned, probably for the winter of 1675 and 1676, and 
 this time, in all likelihood, in the picturesque Bedford 
 Jail built upon the gray stone bridge whose three arches 
 so gracefully overpass the river Ouse and are so serenely 
 reflected in those quiet waters. We have every reason to 
 believe that Bunyan's condition here was hard enough to 
 satisfy any of his friends. And here •' Pilgrim's Progress " 
 was begun. Bunyan tells us, at the end of the passage 
 which deals with all the experiences of the Delectable 
 Mountains and with their kind shepherds, that he awoke 
 from his dream and then did sleep and dream again. 
 This his biographers believe betokens his release from his 
 third and last imprisonment. " Pilgrim's Progress " was 
 finished, therefore, when the author was at liberty. 
 
 He professes himself to be wholly unindebted for the 
 scheme and suggestions of his greatest allegory. Stu- 
 dents of English literature have hesitated to take him 
 
230 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 literally at his word and have sought in all directions 
 sources from which he might have drawn suggestion or 
 inspiration. Such sources are not wanting, but it is not 
 easy to prove that Bunyan could ever have known them 
 or have been influenced by them. There is real kinship 
 between " Pilgrim's Progress " and the morality plays of 
 the Middle Ages ; they too loved the personification of 
 qualities and surrounded their actors, as they fared forth, 
 with the incarnate fortunes, vicissitudes and solicitations 
 of this earthly life. There is no reason to believe, how- 
 ever, that Bunyan could have been acquainted with them ; 
 almost every reason to believe he could not have known 
 them, except indeed as they were part of the broken 
 traditions, the homely memory of the soil from which he 
 sprang. " Piers Plowman " is the record of a quest, " The 
 Faerie Queen " an allegory, and there is a P>ench allegory, 
 — "Le Pelerinage de I'Homme" — "The Pilgrimage of 
 Man " — which might well have given Bunyan his point of 
 departure were there any available testimony that he had 
 even so much as heard of it. We must find, as has al- 
 ready been indicated, the genesis of " Pilgrim's Progress " 
 in Bunyan's life and genius. There is more initiative in 
 the world than we in our own time, occupied as we are 
 with tracing the derivations and relationships of things, 
 are willing to admit. We have not come so far as this in 
 these studies without seeing how central the quest for 
 peace and security is and in how many guises that quest 
 has been pursued ; what is most distinctive in Bunyan's 
 work is rooted in Calvinistic Protestantism and needs no 
 other explanation than the faith in which it was nurtured 
 and his own searching experiences. 
 
 Richard Heath argues most suggestively for the rooting 
 of " Pilgrim's Progress " in Anabaptist soil. We owe to 
 
BUNYAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS 231 
 
 Anabaptism, he contends, not only the deep creative 
 forces which made both Bunyan and his book, but many 
 characteristics of the book itself. Bunyan must, he says, 
 have drawn in Anabaptist memories and traditions with 
 his mother's milk. How these memories and traditions 
 wove themselves into the fabric of " Pilgrim's Progress " 
 Mr. Heath goes on to make clear.* The dramatic incident 
 of Christian setting out running, leaving wife and children 
 behind, may be parallelled in the records of the Anabaptist 
 historians. Hans Ber, for example, of Alten-Erlangen, 
 rises from his bed in the night and begins to dress. 
 "Where art thou going?" asks his wife, stirring at his 
 side. ♦• I know not ; God knows," is the answer. " What 
 have I done to grieve thee ? " his wife protests. " Dear 
 wife," he answers, " leave me unburdened by earthly 
 things. God bless thee ! I will henceforth know and do 
 the will of God." So he sets out. Not a little of 
 Christian's experience might almost be the transcription 
 of Anabaptist records. They, too, had houses of ref- 
 uge, houses beautiful, where the fugitive, fleeing it may 
 be from the Tyrol to Moravia or to England, would be 
 admitted when he had given the proper sign and there be 
 sheltered from his foes. These houses were really stations 
 on a kind of underground railroad, the whole made neces- 
 sary by the constant peril in which the Anabaptist dwelt. 
 There were Moravian orphanages where children were 
 received and cared for as were the children of Christiana's 
 daughters in the house in the meadow by the riverside, 
 " built for the nourishing and bringing up of those lambs, 
 the babes of those women who go on pilgrimages." The 
 prototype of Great-heart is to be found again and again 
 in these same records for there were many whose business 
 
 * Contemporary Review, October, 1 896. 
 
232 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 it was to lead Anabaptist fugitives by unfrequented 
 roads, across lonely and remote mountain passes, fight for 
 them when they were assailed, and bring them in safety 
 to the end of their journey. The experience of Christian 
 and Faithful at Vanity Fair was a story so bitterly old in 
 the annals of Anabaptist persecution that even the kind 
 and patient stars must have grown weary of looking down 
 upon its repetition. The indictment which is brought 
 against Faithful is just such an indictment as had been 
 brought again and again against the dreamers and fanatics 
 of a century before who showed so little respect for the 
 honours, titles and privileges of this present world and 
 were so disconcerting in their judgments upon it. 
 
 No one who has sought from other sources to sense 
 the significance of the Anabaptist movement will fail to 
 feel the force of Mr. Heath's contentions. The recital 
 of all this as John Bunyan may well have heard it, going 
 up and down the eastern counties, would indeed kindle 
 his imagination, afford him material and all unconsciously 
 give real direction to his recital of the fortunes of Chris- 
 tian and Christiana. There is no proving it, however, 
 just as there is no disproving it. One may only balance 
 probabilities and adjust his conclusions correspondingly. 
 If we really widen all this, if we say that Bunyan was con- 
 trolled as he must have been controlled by the dominant 
 interpretations of the Christian experience as he and his 
 friends knew that experience, if we recognize that Protest- 
 antism in its more unworldly, radical and hard- tried forms 
 constituted not only the soil in which Bunyan was rooted, 
 but the air which he breathed and the light which he fol- 
 lowed, we shall be able to find a place among the forces 
 which shaped his life for such influences as these and still 
 recognize the rare creative originality of the man's genius. 
 
BUNYAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS 233 
 
 "Pilgrim's Progress " would not be " Pilgrim's Progress" 
 if it were not the expression of so much which is common 
 not only to the Puritanism which begot it, but to the age- 
 old experiences of all the ardent and aspiring. Nor 
 would the book be what it is if Bunyan had not given 
 it the form to which he was impelled by his own temper 
 and set the mark of his distinctive genius upon it. 
 
 So much has already been said about " Pilgrim's Prog- 
 ress " as to leave little need for its more detailed consid- 
 eration. There would have been no need a generation 
 ago to tell its story or dwell upon its characters. The 
 men and women of an earlier time knew it as they knew 
 their Bible, children dreamed over its pages, men and 
 women in the thick of the fight turned to it for a heart- 
 ening sense of comradeship, and fought still more bravely 
 in that they knew they did not fight alone. Saints 
 whose warfare was well-nigh finished looked up from its 
 pages which they saw but dimly (though indeed those 
 same pages were often printed in fair, large type for their 
 especial comfort) to see in the western sky towards which 
 they looked the shining of the Celestial City. We do 
 not know it to-day as did our fathers, but in all likelihood 
 most of us know it so well that any paraphrase would be 
 an unnecessary impertinence. 
 
 It opens with a note of intensity, with the picture of 
 one weeping and trembling and crying, *♦ What shall I 
 do ? " So deeply, one may say in passing, was " Pilgrim's 
 Progress " coloured by Bunyan's knowledge of the Bible 
 that there are in that first paragraph six clear references 
 to the Old or New Testament ; hardly a sentence without 
 some fibre or other rooted in the Bible. It is Christian 
 who is thus borne upon ; Evangelist answers his cry and 
 points him the road to safety. Thereupon he sets out 
 
234 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 Now this road runs straight from the City of Destruction 
 to the Celestial City, a narrow way from which Christian 
 always wandered at his peril. The whole narrative sug- 
 gests none the less an amplitude of movement. We 
 think of Christian as coming and going over wide terri- 
 tories. Life is always like that ; a strange interweaving 
 of fundamental narrowness and intensities with that pas- 
 sion of the soul which makes earth and sky the place of its 
 proper habitation. Here is the first wonder of the book 
 itself. The Pilgrim goes a straight and narrow road, yet 
 always in an atmosphere of latitude and inclusion. Chris- 
 tian sets out alone ; he cannot persuade his neighbours 
 nor move his wife and children. His wife cries after him 
 only to ask him to return ; his neighbours follow him 
 only to persuade him to go back with them. 
 
 Everything is vivid beyond belief and unbelievably 
 apt. The allegory is never forced ; it could not be other 
 than it is. Of course the Slough of Despond has swal- 
 lowed up at least twenty thousand cart loads of wholesome 
 instruction ; there are states of the soul in which exhor- 
 tation is but added material for hopeless confusion. This 
 sure touch never fails from beginning to end. Bunyan 
 does not always place his emphasis where a later time 
 would have put it. He dismisses the falling of Christian's 
 burden before the cross and the sepulchre almost in a 
 single paragraph ; the whole incident in about a page. 
 He makes no attempt to enlarge upon the doctrinal im- 
 plications of it all. As Christian comes up with the cross 
 his burden looses from his shoulders, falls from his back 
 and tumbles into the mouth of the sepulchre. Just that 
 and nothing more. This is the testimony of a man who 
 cared more for vital experiences than for theology ; this 
 is John Bunyan from the beginning to the end of" Pil- 
 
BUNYAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS 235 
 
 grim's Progress." He works with the utmost restraint, 
 but creates characters which are imperishable. He uses 
 the phraseology of his time, his station and his race, but 
 he accomplishes the universal. 
 
 There would be no end to naming the characters which 
 throng these pages. Here are Simple, Sloth and Pre- 
 sumption, asleep in their chains. Here are Formalist 
 and Hypocrisy, most ancient comrades ; Timorous and 
 Mistrust, friends since the mornmg of time; Faithful, 
 Hopeful, Evangelist, Save-all, Want-the-world, Money- 
 love, Bye-ends. Very hkely Bunyan had met them all in 
 the flesh, seizing out of each man as he came and went in 
 his tinkering the essential heart of him, elevating his domi- 
 nant characteristics into a deathless incarnation. This 
 is always the quality of the great artists. So Hogarth 
 draws for us the very heart of the eighteenth century 
 England, Albert DUrer makes mediaeval Germany im- 
 perishable in the very moment of its decay, or Fra Lippo 
 Lippi sees in every Florentine face some meaning for his 
 canvass. 
 
 " I'd like his face — 
 His, elbowing on his comrade in the door 
 With the pike and lantern, — for the slave that holds 
 John Baptist's head a-dangle by the hair 
 With one hand (' Look you, now,* as who should say) 
 And his weapon in the other, yet un wiped ! " 
 
 Bunyan found what he sought, not in men's faces, but 
 in their souls. His dealings with men after his con- 
 version would give him opportunities for great insight 
 into their possible attitudes towards what had come to be 
 for him the master concern of life. It is no unwarranted 
 exercise of the imagination to think of Bunyan as he 
 went about his business always urging upon others the 
 supreme concerns of religion and more than that, of a 
 
236 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 religion which offered them persecution, contumely or 
 exile as their earthly portion. Men always reveal them- 
 selves when they are brought face to face with supreme 
 and elemental things. Bunyan knew them by their an- 
 swers. Timorous, Mistrust, Save-all, Money-love, Vain- 
 confidence, Watchful, Sincere, Faint-heart are all his 
 neighbours to begin with. He would never have made 
 them live upon his pages had he not possessed the genius 
 to find them, first of all, abroad in England. This is in 
 some part the explanation of all that homely reality 
 which underruns " Pilgrim's Progress." What Bunyan 
 did not furnish out of his own experience he seized out 
 of the experience of others. For all the scenery in 
 the book Pilgrim might well have travelled through 
 the English Midlands. When Bunyan, who had never 
 seen a mountain in his life, would fill the further stages 
 of Christian's journey with the Delectable Mountains he 
 goes to the Scriptures for his description and lifts the 
 purple summits of those unchanging ranges of fruition 
 and hope out of what his imagination conceived the 
 nature of Emanuel's Land to be. " Pilgrim's Progress " 
 does not lend itself to the unbridled imagination of 
 illustrators, because the book with all its marvel of im- 
 agination is so unfailingly established in Bunyan's own 
 homely experiences. This is the reason why Charles 
 Burnett's illustrations are by far the best ever done. His 
 men and women are English men and women, clothed 
 and ordered in the fashion of the seventeenth century. 
 They come out of the pages to meet us, they are so real. 
 And you are constantly finding in them haunting sug- 
 gestions of the man whom you met yesterday or the face 
 which you passed on the street. 
 
 Bunyan's touch rarely fails. He is surest as he rein- 
 
BUNYAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS 237 
 
 carnates the faults and failures of life in characters which, 
 to repeat, he names after the quality suggested and where 
 he gives us the quahty unrelieved, unqualified, unshaded. 
 For the most part every word which he puts into their 
 mouths has an inevitable kind of fitness. If they speak 
 only a sentence, that sentence is profoundly revealing 
 and wholly consistent. Take for example the speech of 
 the jurymen at Vanity Fair among themselves. There 
 is, to begin with, the marvellous genius of their impanel- 
 ing. Who but Bunyan could have brought together in 
 the jury box to try Faithful Mr. Blind-man, Mr. No-good, 
 Mr. Mahce, Mr. Love-lust, Mr. Live-loose, Mr. Heady, 
 Mr. High-mind, Mr. Enmity, Mr. Liar, Mr. Cruelty, Mr. 
 Hate-light and Mr. Implacable? And who but Bunyan 
 could have put into their mouths those inevitable words 
 which make the whole scene live before us and secure, in 
 one short paragraph, not only the quality of a drawing 
 of Hogarth's, but an unrivaled analysis of the perverted 
 possibilities of these hearts of ours? " ' I see,' says Mr. 
 Blind-man, the foreman, * I see clearly that this man is 
 a heretic' Then said Mr. No-good, * Away with such a 
 fellow from the earth.' * Ay,' said Mr. Malice, ' for I 
 hate the very looks of him.' Then said Mr. Love-lust, 
 
 * I could never endure him.' ' Nor I,' said Mr. Live- 
 loose, ' for he would always be condemning my way.' 
 
 * Hang him, hang him,* said Mr. Heady. * A sorry scrub,' 
 said Mr. High-mind. * He is a rogue,' said Mr. Liar. 
 
 * Hanging is too good for him,' said Mr. Cruelty. * Let 
 us despatch him out of the way,' said Mr. Hate-light." 
 
 It was surely out of the memory of his own inner strife 
 that Bunyan wrote the story of Christian's battle in the 
 Valley of the Shadow. There is a sad kind of comfort 
 in recognizing that he now sees the grievous blasphemies, 
 
238 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 whisperingly suggested to Christian as he came over 
 against the mouth of the burning pit, to be but one more 
 device of the evil one. If Bunyan could have known 
 that earher in his own life, it would have saved him much 
 agony of soul. One has but to turn the pages and the 
 scenes stand out. Vanity Fair with its booths and its 
 merchandise, its strange traffickings, its bitter spirit. By- 
 path Meadow with its way of delusion beginning ever so 
 gently and following the winding of the quiet waters. 
 Doubting Castle with its dungeons, which might well 
 have been suggested to Bunyan by the tales of old 
 imprisonments of the Anabaptists in the heartless for- 
 tresses of Europe, where Christian and Hopeful lay in a 
 very dark dungeon, nasty and stinking, while Giant 
 Despair and his wife once gone to bed talked together in 
 that homely intimacy which is one of the imperishable 
 traditions of all good English literature. The long con- 
 versations with which the pilgrims hearten themselves 
 when the stages are weary are not always wholly edify- 
 ing, but they witness at least to the amount of theological 
 discussion which must have been abroad among all sorts 
 and conditions of people, especially the common people 
 in John Bunyan's time, and the perfect saturation of his 
 mind and his soul with the speech and teaching of the 
 Bible. 
 
 Towards the end of the journey a new light begins to 
 fall across the pilgrims' road. Beulah Land is musical 
 and fragrant ; the glories of the Celestial City are there so 
 much in evidence that the pilgrims fall sick of longing. 
 Orchards, vineyards and gardens with hospitable, opened 
 gates are all along the road. With an wholly infallible 
 dramatic instinct Bunyan brings the pilgrims face to face 
 with the River of Death almost without warning. They 
 
BUNYAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS 239 
 
 have been loitering through the gardens of Beulah Land 
 and suddenly the river is at their feet. There is no 
 bridge and the river is deep. No need to tell how they 
 take to those cold waters or how hard Christian found it 
 to get ground beneath his feet. He was in the way of 
 sinking without Hopeful and he battles against the numb- 
 ing flood, fighting within and fears without. In the end 
 he is delivered by virtue of the promises. Once he finds 
 himself the rest of the river is but shallow. 
 
 In the pages with which the allegory ends Bunyan 
 voices anew the quenchless longing of men for the rest and 
 beauty of the City of God. He never could have sung 
 the praises of that City as Bernard of Cluny sang them, 
 but his prose becomes lyric as he climbs in imagination 
 with the two who mount so swiftly towards the Town 
 above the clouds. The blare of the trumpets with which 
 Christian and his fellows are saluted and all the hearten- 
 ing splendour of the sights and sounds which greet them 
 are but Bunyan's anticipation of the triumph which they 
 were to earn who, at such sore cost, had finished their 
 course and kept the faith. Surely it must have been 
 such hopes as these which held men steadfast in the 
 bitter agony of long-drawn persecution and taught them 
 to count the world well lost if so be they might pass 
 through the gates into the City. 
 
 It is the custom to dismiss the second part of " Pilgrim's 
 Progress " as a kind of after-thought, made possible and 
 necessary by the unexpected success of the book. That, 
 on the whole, is not fair. Something of Bunyan's power 
 of getting the picture out with the fewest possible number 
 of pen strokes does indeed fail him here, but his invention 
 is remarkably sustained and clean to the end. We never 
 could have forgiven his leaving Christiana and the chil- 
 
240 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 dren in the City of Destruction. Charity's justification 
 of such a procedure does not carry conviction. Bunyan 
 is far enough from those conceptions of human solidarity 
 which govern us to-day, but even he saw that for a man 
 to achieve his own salvation while his wife and children 
 are in the way of being lost is a doubtful accomplishment. 
 So Bunyan brings Christiana and the children over a 
 road, almost every step of which her husband has made 
 famous, not primarily, let us hope, because he sought to 
 expand his allegory, but because he could not let 
 Christiana and her little ones dwell any longer in the 
 City of Destruction. 
 
 We should be in debt to Bunyan for the wonderful 
 pictures with which the second part of his story closes 
 if for nothing else. Nowhere in all his work has he 
 written so nobly and yet withal so simply. Here the 
 awesome sense of the eternal subdues and possesses words 
 which any child may understand, sentences so simple 
 that wise men would have been ashamed to write them. 
 When the word has come for Christiana she gathers her 
 friends about her and to them, one by one, she gives her 
 last counsels. " Then she called for old Mr. Honest, and 
 said of him, • Behold an Israehte indeed, in whom is no 
 guile.' Then said he, ' I wish you a fair day, when you 
 set out for Mount Zion, and shall be glad to see that you 
 go over the river dry-shod.' But she answered, * Come 
 wet, come dry, I long to be gone; for, however the 
 weather is in my journey, I shall have time enough, 
 when I come there, to sit down and rest me, and dry 
 me.' " 
 
 Her farewells spoken, she goes down towards the river 
 and the fashion of her passing will not be forgotten. 
 " Now the day drew on that Christiana must be gone. 
 
BUNYAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS 241 
 
 So the road was full of people to see her take the journey. 
 But behold, all the banks beyond the river were full of 
 horses and chariots, which were come down from above 
 to accompany her to the City-gate. So she came forth, 
 and entered the river, with a beckon of farewell to those 
 that followed her to the riverside. The last words that 
 she was heard to say were, ' I come. Lord, to be with 
 Thee, and bless Thee,' " 
 
 One by one the messengers come for those whom she 
 left behind. Mr. Ready-to-halt leaves his crutches. 
 '• Now I shall have no more need of these crutches, since 
 yonder are chariots and horses for me to ride on." Mr. 
 Despondency and his daughter Much-afraid pass in 
 their turn through waters which are strangely kind to 
 them, the daughter singing as she crosses. At the day 
 of Mr. Honest's departure the river has overflowed its 
 banks, but Good-conscience meets him and lends him a 
 hand and so helps him over. At the crossing of Mr. 
 VaHant-for-truth the music of Bunyan's sentences is like 
 the call of a trumpet. " After this it was noised abroad 
 that Mr. Valiant-for-truth was taken with a summons by 
 the same post as the other ; and had this for a token that 
 the summons was true, that * his pitcher was broken at 
 the fountain.' When he understood it, he called for his 
 friends, and told them of it. Then said he, ' I am going 
 to my Father's ; and though with great difficulty I got 
 hither, yet now I do not repent me of all the trouble I 
 have been at to arrive where I am. My sword I give to 
 him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my 
 courage and skill to him that can get it. My marks and 
 scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me, that I have 
 fought His battle, who now will be my Rewarder.' When 
 the day that he must go hence was come, many accom- 
 
242 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 panied him to the riverside, into which as he went he 
 said, ' Death, where is thy sting ? ' and as he went down 
 deeper, he said, * Grave, where is thy victory ? ' So he 
 passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the 
 other side." 
 
 Many qualities conspire to produce such effects as 
 these : the dominant sense of the Unseen and Eternal, 
 a confidence in immortality absolutely untouched by any 
 suspicion of doubt, the moving passion of the poet, a 
 great knowledge of the hearts of men. Bunyan must 
 have sat by many death-beds to have been so taught the 
 fashions, often unexpected, in which men meet death. 
 Beyond all this there was, of course, the persuasion com- 
 mon to Bunyan and all his friends that the life which now 
 is is but the unhappy and troubled anticipation of the life 
 which is to come. No one of Bunyan's pilgrims has ever 
 learnt in whatsoever state he is therein to be content. 
 They are always anticipating; nothing matters but the 
 end. They are in a desperate haste to be done with time, 
 for to them time is meaningless save as the condition of 
 entering into the eternal. Much of course was lost by 
 this postponement of the real value of life. Life is, after 
 all, a seamless robe ; we begin to live when we begin to 
 live, and if we do not find life's compensations in the very 
 pilgrimage upon which we set out to discover them we 
 shall never find them when the pilgrimage is done. 
 
 So much at least is true but it is not easy to make a 
 dramatic story out of it. The very conception of the pil- 
 grimage exalts the goal ; the dramatic moment in any 
 pilgrimage is when the goal is approached. Here Bun- 
 yan does but voice passions, convictions, aspirations as 
 old as life and deep as sorrow. Men have always lifted 
 the perfectness of the eternal over against the incomple- 
 
BUNYAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS 243 
 
 tions of life. Fields of asphodel, shining meadows, halls 
 of heroes, cities with streets of gold, and living waters have 
 called the troubled sons of time since the dawn of the 
 first troubled morning. In such regions as these, then, 
 Bunyan is only one more of an almost innumerable fel- 
 lowship, but surely no one has ever made the crossing of 
 the river so real or so reported the sights and sounds of 
 celestial places as this English tinker who, speaking out 
 of the sad sincerity of his own soul, has spoken for us all. 
 For this is, indeed, the supreme service of" Pilgrim's 
 Progress." We have called the " Theologia Germanica " the 
 plain man's book of mysticism, but " Pilgrim's Progress " 
 is something more than that: it is every man's book of 
 life. Its country is such as we all pass through ; its citi- 
 zens are such as we all know. The mystics often made 
 their charts and marked thereupon the stages of their 
 quest and there, indeed, we do read our own experiences, 
 but as in a glass darkly. In " Pilgrim's Progress " we see 
 them face to face. It has its theological bases, its doc- 
 trinal assumptions, but they do not, we feel instinctively, 
 largely matter. Much of that which is set down in " Pil- 
 grim's Progress " either for reproof or instruction might 
 be taken away with no great loss, but the deep continuous 
 things in it are a part of the structure and testimony of life 
 itself. It is this profound elemental kind of veracity 
 which has secured and will secure its dominion for the 
 book. In this recital what is of the very essence of the 
 quest, that without which there would be no quest, is set 
 forth in moving simplicity and breathing earnestness. I 
 for my part am proud enough that English-speaking 
 Puritanism begot such a book as this. It is one more 
 clear testimony to what has been urged so often in these 
 studies: Protestantism is no negative but a mightily posi- 
 
244 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 tive force. It possesses a vaster catholicity than its 
 friends commonly claim or its foes allow, and its strength is 
 not where we have too often sought it. Protestantism is 
 neither a body of divinity nor a method of church organi- 
 zation : it is a quest, a divinely commissioned spiritual 
 adventure, a pilgrimage — the search after God. In this 
 its devout and aspiring souls are comrades of devout and 
 aspiring souls everywhere and always, and are so to be 
 considered. 
 
 The Latin Catholic Church has been unspeakably rich 
 in manifold types of piety. She is the mother of a won- 
 derful devotional Hterature and her sons and daughters 
 have recorded their spiritual experiences in pages of con- 
 fession and self-analysis which offer to the student of the 
 varieties of religious experience an endless field for illus- 
 tration, rich in kindHng suggestions, but it was left to a 
 man who won his lonely way from darkness to light to 
 have spoken as the mystics could never speak, and to 
 have done for the struggling and unhappy what no cal- 
 endared saint has ever done. The testimony of our own 
 experiences vahdates all this. We know how true it all 
 is for we have gone that way ourselves ; we have had our 
 sloughs of despond, our hills of difficulty, our valleys of 
 humiliation, our castles of despair, our delectable moun- 
 tains yielding far visions as we renewed the stages of our 
 own pilgrimage. In reading " Pilgrim's Progress " all 
 that is within us acknowledges the truth of Bunyan's in- 
 terpretations. We not only hail him as master of words, 
 seer of visions and regnant in the realm of spiritual imagina- 
 tion ; we know him as one who sought and struggled and 
 attained, and so we reach our hands across the years and 
 hail him brother. 
 
VI 
 Newman's Apologia 
 
 " T^ILGRIM'S PROGRESS" is the classic example 
 1--^ of a lonely spiritual adventure. All those in- 
 JL fluences which at once taught men to conceive 
 life as an individual endeavour after salvation and com- 
 mitted them to such a pilgrimage culminated in this book. 
 Bunyan seems, singled out by his relation to the Reforma- 
 tory movements, to the more solitary aspects of all that 
 which was most individual in the Reformation, and by 
 the disciplines of Bedford Jail itself, to portray their 
 experiences, who, with no guide but the Bible, no com- 
 radeship but the high-engendered qualities of their own 
 souls, no confidence but Christ, and no Hght but the 
 light of the spirit of God seen, as Socrates would say, by 
 the eye of the soul, set out along perilous and difficult 
 roads to escape the City of Destruction and to come to 
 the Celestial City. The very book itself bears witneiis to 
 the difficulty of the pilgrimage. There are many who 
 fall by the way; many who have not even grace and 
 courage enough to set out. The weariness of the road 
 taxes all the pilgrim's strength, its uncertainties baffle and 
 perplex him, its battles are more than any coward can 
 face and all that a brave man can fight through, its hills 
 of difficulty must be taken panting for breath, its castles 
 of despair have thick walls and heavy-hinged gates, its 
 cities of seduction are hard to come by, and the river at 
 the end of it is all that a man can ford. It takes a man's 
 
 245 
 
246 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 whole life to make a pilgrimage like that; he has no 
 time or strength for anything beside. It is true enough 
 that, in the end, Bunyan's weak and halting do get across 
 the river, and some of them in great state; yet he sum- 
 mons lesser, weaker spirits to such an undertaking that 
 one does not wonder either at their reluctance to set out 
 or at their falling by the way. 
 
 All this is to say that the Reformation, although it set 
 men splendidly free for the central tasks of the spiritual 
 life, nevertheless laid upon them a heavy enough burden. 
 Evangelical Protestantism has always been wanting in any 
 real response from great races and permanent human 
 temperaments. It has always been selective ; the men 
 who have answered its call have been like Pilgrim setting 
 out from the City of Destruction ; they have left many of 
 their neighbours behind. It was from the first but a 
 question of time when, within the field of Protestantism 
 itself, such forces as built up the vast brooding, assuring 
 and directing fabric of the Catholic Church would begin 
 anew to assert themselves, and serene and devout souls 
 craving above all things the peace and shelter of the 
 Celestial City, should, through their sheer sense of help- 
 lessness, when confronted with that pilgrim road which 
 Bunyan plotted and surveyed, seek another route and 
 commit themselves to other guides. The wonder is not 
 that this temper disclosed itself in the nineteenth century, 
 but that it did not disclose itself sooner. It goes without 
 saying that, even so, there are some things which are not 
 to be escaped. Salvation is still a lonely road, and the 
 race is run by one and one and never by two and two. 
 But there always have been and always will be those who 
 lean hard upon authorities, historical sequences, confident 
 assurances, and who fight behind such shelters as these as 
 
NEWMAN'S APOLOGIA 247 
 
 they can never fight in the open. This brings us directly 
 to John Henry Newman. For he, of all men of our 
 speech, born and bred in Protestantism, seems to have 
 realized most poignantly the difficulties of the lonely road, 
 and he has clothed his narration of the way in which 
 he himself sought and found deliverance with such mystic 
 charm of utterance and style as to make the experience 
 itself a revealing type, and the story of it an English 
 classic. 
 
 John Henry Newman was born in Old Broad Street in 
 the city of London on February 21, 180 1. He was the 
 eldest of six children, his father a London banker of 
 sound English stock, his mother of a French Protestant 
 family which came over to England from France after the 
 revocation of the edict of Nantes. The boy was, from 
 the first, a most delicate instrument, played upon by 
 many childish fancies, sensitive to praise or blame, devout 
 almost from the cradle, and much devoted to his books. 
 His imagination was always running on unknown influ- 
 ences, magical powers and talismans. He was not, he 
 says, in childhood deeply religious, but since the standards 
 by which he measures himself are the standards of that 
 severe Calvinism which furnished the spiritual atmosphere 
 of his boyhood, we may doubt whether Newman is the 
 best witness as to his own early spiritual states. He was 
 never converted, in the searching evangelical definition 
 of conversion, but he had from the first a clear sense of 
 God's presence which deepened with the years. 
 
 The world in which he lived seems to have left little 
 impression upon his boyish memories, although it was a 
 day of turnings and overturnings. The mighty perturba- 
 tions of the French Revolution were giving place to the 
 mightier perturbations of the Napoleonic wars. The 
 
248 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 French eagles were ranging from the North Sea to the 
 Pyramids, and during all his boyhood the coasts of 
 England were piled with the stuff of beacon lights whose 
 quick-kindled fires might at any time announce to a 
 troubled land that Napoleon had violated the channel and 
 landed on English shores. Keenly alive as Newman 
 always was to the historical significance at least of certain 
 aspects of the past, he never understood the present. 
 Boy and man alike, he failed to sense the deeper mean- 
 ings of the world which rocked and changed about him. 
 He lived in his spiritual needs, his idealisms, and his 
 interpretations of history which were always in the way 
 of widening out into splendour, and were always just 
 stopping short. He says himself that he knew no period 
 of skepticism, and yet he battled with skepticism all his 
 life. The whole secret of Newman's spiritual experiences 
 may be put almost in a sentence. The man who thanked 
 God, in 1845, " that He shielded me morally from what 
 intellectually might easily have come on me : a general 
 skepticism," was driven, although he rnay never have 
 known it, by a profound skepticism to take to the shelter 
 of authority. 
 
 He did not go to a public school, but spent eight years 
 at a private school kept by an Oxford man. He took 
 little part in the games of the boys, although they made 
 him arbitrator; and his Calvinism gave to him" a solitari- 
 ness of spirit and a certain austerity which his nature 
 never lost." Yet there was always on the surface a play 
 of lighter, brighter things, an unexpected lightness even 
 in his more serious letters and his narration of great spiri- 
 tual crises. He went up to Oxford a boy of fifteen to 
 become a commoner at Trinity College. The university 
 was to him a sacred shrine ; he approached it in awe and 
 
NEWMAN'S APOLOGIA 249 
 
 transport. The Oxford which he knew and loved was 
 the Oxford of Matthew Arnold, " spreading abroad her 
 gardens to the moonlight, and whispering from her 
 towers the last enchantments of the Middle Ages," " the 
 home of lost causes and impossible loyalties," and yet 
 withal such a shrine of the human spirit in its love of the 
 ideal and its devotion to the ripe culture of the ages as 
 men have never built before nor shall ever build again. 
 No need to say how all this laid hold of Newman's sensi- 
 tive soul, how Oxford entered into him or how he entered 
 into Oxford. Nothing, in the end, gives him more pain 
 than his self-imposed exile from that home of his youth's 
 desire and his manhood's full orbed spirit. No page in 
 the " Apologia " is fuller of the tears of things than the 
 page with which it ends. " In him " (that is Dr. Ogle) ♦' I 
 took leave of my first college, Trinity, which was so dear 
 to me, and which held on its foundations so many who 
 have been kind to me both when I was a boy, and all 
 through my Oxford life. Trinity had never been unkind 
 to me. There used to be much snapdragon growing on 
 the walls opposite my freshman's rooms there, and I had 
 for years taken it as the emblem of my own perpetual 
 residence even unto death in my university. On the 
 morning of the 23d I left the observatory. I have never 
 seen Oxford since, excepting its spires, as they are seen 
 from the railway." ^ 
 
 As he entered into residence the boy was much im- 
 pressed by the creature comforts of the hall dinner, and 
 his first letter home was of the earth earthy. " Fish, 
 flesh and fowl, beautiful salmon, haunches of mutton, 
 lamb, etc., fine strong beer, served up on old pewter 
 plates and misshapen earthenware jugs. Tell mama 
 
 * " Apologia," p. 263. 
 
250 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 there were gooseberry and apricot pies — there was such a 
 profusion that scarcely two ate of the same." ' 
 
 Newman made his way quickly; in i8i8 he was 
 elected Scholar of Trinity, and three years later gained 
 the Oriel Fellowship. In this he found for a while the 
 crown of his ambition ; he wished for nothing better or 
 higher than, in the words of the epitaph, ** to live and die 
 a Fellow of Oriel." 
 
 From this time to the end of his Oxford connection 
 and his change of communion the interest in Newman's 
 life is almost wholly interior, except indeed as the pro- 
 jection of those interior changes released forces which are 
 still much in action and which have given a new quality 
 to Anglicanism. Newman's fellowship guaranteed his 
 living, and the then temper of academic life — now both 
 for good and evil seriously modified by hard-hearted re- 
 forming commissions — gave him a maximum of leisure 
 with a minimum of responsibility. He naturally took 
 orders as those things are done in England, and became 
 in turn curate of St. Clement's and vicar of St. Mary's. 
 Oriel was, during Newman's early residence, singularly 
 rich in brilliant and stimulating thinkers. Under their 
 influence the raw and bashful youth of 1 821 became the 
 brilliant Newman of 1825, whose innate force so stamped 
 itself upon his comrades. He had only to choose, so his 
 friends thought, the great prizes of English preferment 
 whether in Church or State, and they would be his. He 
 never so much as heard the call of the State. We know 
 now that Newman's supreme interests were in the region 
 of the spirit and, more than that, that the supremest in- 
 terest was the salvation of his own soul. I do not say 
 this unadvisedly or without the full recognition of all the 
 » " Life of Cardinal Newman," Wilfrid Ward, Vol. I, p. 32. 
 
NEWMAN'S APOLOGIA 251 
 
 far-reaching implications of his hfe and his boundless de- 
 votion to causes beyond himself, but none the less it is 
 true, and the pages of the " Apologia " bear out the as- 
 sertion. " The simple question is. Can I " (it is personal, 
 not whether another, but can I) " be saved in the English 
 Church ? " ' 
 
 Certain experiences in 1827 and 1828 — his own illness in 
 1827 and the loss of a sister in 1828 — deepened Newman's 
 already profound and tremulous spiritual sense. The 
 shadow of the transitoriness of all things was much upon 
 him, and he began to seek instinctively those shelters of 
 the permanent and the unchanging for which his soul was 
 always craving. The church fathers offered him, as they 
 have ever offered to devout members of the Anglican 
 communion, such stabilities and refuges as he sought. 
 Newman possessed always the quality of investing 
 the past times of the Church with an indescribable 
 charm ; all that had been he saw through such rever- 
 ences, devotions, hallowed imaginations as clothed the 
 past with a light which never was on sea or land. The 
 fathers were the repositories of a heavenly wisdom ; the 
 Church of the early fathers a paradise of delight. He 
 felt his way into the better part of the mediaeval soul ; 
 there is nowhere any such recital of the ineffaceable 
 charm of the offices of the Mediaeval Church, or any such 
 exaltation of her pomp and glory, as one finds in New- 
 man's pages. Over against this passionate, almost mys- 
 tic delight in things done, was a tremendous and most 
 sensitive fear of things doing. All this is temperamental. 
 Indeed, no one ventures far into the pages of John Henry 
 Newman, or strives towards any just estimate of the 
 movement of the man's soul, without recognizing di- 
 
 * " Apologia," p. 259. 
 
252 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 rectly that the main interests he offers are psychological. 
 No man, within his own or our generation, has combined 
 so many contradictory qualities or so baffles us by the 
 strangely constant inter v/eaving of strength and weak- 
 ness. 
 
 It is difficult to write here without anticipating the 
 conclusions to which we are presently to come, but one 
 must say at once that he was already wofully lacking in 
 any real sense of the present tense of the spirit of God. 
 That the spirit of God could operate in channels which 
 were not endeared to Newman himself by all intimate as- 
 sociations and mystic broodings seemed to him quite im- 
 possible ; that that operative spirit should lead men into 
 entirely new regions of truth seemed to him equally im- 
 possible. Directly I have said this I must qualify it. Is 
 not this the Newman whose essay on development, to 
 which we are all in debt, was later to clarify and empha- 
 size indispensable principles of historical criticism ? 
 
 Quite true ; but none the less Newman from the first 
 insisted that the operative spirit of God should confine 
 itself to time-worn historic channels, and of the opera- 
 tions of the spirit of God beyond those channels he was, 
 from first to last, deeply suspicious. Nay more, to all 
 such operations he was, in his great, strange, gentle way, 
 profoundly hostile. The fear of liberaHsm was then, 
 even by the late twenties, much upon him. It is easy 
 to see now that, even in the regions in which Newman 
 was much concerned, liberalism was constructive rather 
 than destructive ; that it has, in the last three genera- 
 tions, almost wholly remade our world and for the better ; 
 that all finer things have been or are in the way of being 
 reenforced by it; and that nothing has gone down before 
 it except rigidities, misconceptions, inadequate defini- 
 
NEWMAN'S APOLOGIA 253 
 
 tions, and social and mental attitudes which made the 
 world of Newman's young manhood a world in which no 
 one of us would willingly have lived. 
 
 Even Newman's Oxford, beautiful and gracious, was 
 hoary with abuses. I suppose what Newman felt in the 
 driving impact of liberalism was the individualistic 
 note, the deracinating temper and a certain scorn of the 
 past which was bound to issue in a vast deal of superficial 
 declamation and propaganda and to tempt men to throw 
 out of the window what, sooner or later, would come 
 back by the door. A great French thinker once said 
 that one of the earlier tasks of the twentieth century 
 would be taking out of the waste-basket many excellent 
 things which the nineteenth century had put into that 
 convenient, but sometimes undiscriminating receptacle. 
 I am not sure that Newman ever wholly justified himself 
 as he might by clarifying his own attitude towards 
 liberalism. He simply tells us, over and over again, 
 that he fears and dislikes it. I am sure that the roots of 
 his fear must have been in some such soil as I have been 
 trying to indicate. At any rate, as many of his con- 
 temporaries in Oriel and Oxford went forward he went 
 backward. He began systematically to read the Fathers 
 and to saturate himself in the history of the earlier story 
 of the Christian Church. He came, in the end, to have a 
 sound strain of wide though wholly uncritical scholar- 
 ship. Given a period or a movement in which his soul 
 found peace, and everything was grist that came to his 
 mill. Out of such readings and such meditations in the 
 face of rising tides of liberalism, both in Church and 
 State, the High Church tendencies, of which Newman 
 was to become front and head, gradually shaped them- 
 selves. I confess myself, in these regions, not free 
 
254 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 enough from predisposing prejudices to be able to deal 
 justly with Newman's point of view. Many things 
 which he now began to urge, and which he urged with 
 deepening intensity to the end of his life, do not seem to 
 me to be true. He began with the assumption that the 
 Church was the guardian of a deposit of truth, super- 
 naturally imparted, the integrity of which was beyond 
 the reach either of reasonable proof or reasonable denial 
 — a truth, that is, above reason ; that the truth thus in- 
 trusted to the Church might indeed be developed along 
 the Hnes of all its implications, but neither could be added 
 to nor subtracted from ; and that, in the days when such 
 truth seemed to be challenged, such challenges were to 
 be met, not by proving or disproving them, but in test- 
 ing them by the deposit of faith once and for all com- 
 mitted to the Church. To do this it was necessary, first 
 of all, to determine what that deposit was ; and second, 
 what the Church was to which that deposit had been 
 committed ; for the guarantee of the authority of the 
 deposit lay, after all, rather in the integrity and con- 
 tinuity of the Church than even in the qualities of the 
 deposit itself. 
 
 To these two tasks Newman's life was committed be- 
 fore he was thirty years old, and all his after intellectual 
 and spiritual history becomes reasonably luminous in the 
 light which this twofold and central endeavour throws 
 upon all the movement of his mind. Because he be- 
 lieved the guarantee of the deposit to be rather in the 
 Church to which it was committed than in its own ap- 
 peal to human reason he was, first of all, concerned with 
 the integrity of the Church. He began with the assump- 
 tion that the Church of England was the true Church so 
 guaranteeing, in her creeds, her liturgies, her catechisms 
 
NEWMAN'S APOLOGIA 255 
 
 and her ecclesiastical procedures, the integrity of the 
 faith once delivered to the saints ; and it seemed to him 
 that all the restless liberalism of his time was to be met 
 by tracing the authority of this Church to its holy and 
 ancient sources and by reestablishing, in the eyes of all 
 men everywhere, her so divinely constituted authority. 
 This was the central endeavour of the High Church 
 movement. 
 
 It seems, to the writer of this article, that the real 
 service of the High Church movement, not only to the 
 Anglican Church, but to all our religious life, does not 
 lie where Newman sought it. What he did for us all 
 was not to establish the ancient authority of the 
 Anglican Church, — that endeavour broke beneath his 
 hand — but rather to set the massive continuities of his- 
 tory over against our restlessnesses and our disconnec- 
 tions, and to correct the judgment of a fraction of a cen- 
 tury by the judgment of all the centuries. We are 
 needing constantly to be told that the sun did not first 
 rise with our morning, and as constantly to be compelled 
 to test our new-born affirmations in the light of the long 
 experiences of our kind. What springs out of the whole 
 experience of the race is not lightly to be put to one 
 side. Faiths which have shaped themselves through the 
 travail of the ages, which have been gradually built up 
 through the long action and interaction of our conscious 
 past upon the wonder, the mystery, the challenge, the 
 sorrow, the tasks and the needs of life, do possess — and 
 we must recognize it — by their very ancestry a validity 
 which should give us pause ere we disown or deny them. 
 The great central dogmas of any religion are the hard- 
 won expressions of the needs and satisfactions of the 
 soul. True, the world does change, and God fulfills Him- 
 
256 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 self in many ways, but the times when men are most im- 
 patient of the teachings of the past are the times when 
 they most need to take those teachings into account. 
 Historical continuities are to be used, not as terminals 
 beyond which we must not pass, but as sign-boards 
 indicating to us the directions in which truth in all like- 
 lihood lies ; and more than that, the very forms which 
 faith and worship have built for themselves may become 
 for us bridges to bear us over the void until we find our 
 feet once more on solid ground. 
 
 This I conceive to have been one great service of the 
 High Church movement which, widening through many 
 channels, has affected us all and has not been without its 
 results, even in the great evangelical and non-liturgical 
 communions. As far as it has dwelt upon form it has 
 taught us that form and faith can never be wholly divided 
 and that, just as sheltering forests clothe the uplands 
 with those shadowed silences where the waters are born, 
 so noble forms of worship shelter those uplands of the 
 soul where reverences and adorations are born. Worship, 
 indeed, is born of something beyond the forms which 
 shelter it or through which it finds expression. As the 
 streams themselves are born in the restless vast of the 
 sea, in the incessant rising of invisible vapours far-sum- 
 moned from the depths to become evident in brooding 
 mists and splendid in toppling clouds and majestic in the 
 storm, so worship is born ofthe soul's sense of the Unseen 
 and Eternal. It is deep answering unto deep ; it is that 
 homage of the human to the Divine which proves their 
 inseparable kinship and exalts men in proportion as they 
 bow themselves before God. 
 
 Worship will always fail when our sense of the Unseen 
 and Eternal fails, and this will fail without reasonable 
 
NEWMAN'S APOLOGIA 257 
 
 proofs and justifications. Without the mystery of sea 
 and sky the forests will, in the end, shelter only pathetic 
 channels from which all the waters have fled ; without 
 faith and God, worship will gradually drain away from 
 the most majestic minster which ever sought to simulate 
 in its arches the aspirations of the soul and in its windows 
 the glory of vision and desire. But nevertheless what we 
 may call the garmenture of worship always serves and 
 quickens devotion, and in times of transition such forms 
 may shelter and husband it until those clouds of light 
 which witness God begin anew to form themselves 
 along the horizons of the souls of men. In so far 
 as the High Church movement corrected the excesses of 
 our own time by its affirmations of a Church rooted in 
 the centuries, rising in newness of power after seeming 
 defeats, adjusting itself to new and changing conditions, 
 and gathering men again and again and still again to its 
 august and comforting shelters, so indeed bearing witness 
 to the everlasting reality of religion, the reasonable needs 
 of the soul and that in which those needs always have 
 been and always will be met and answered, the services 
 of the whole movement have been beyond easy estimation 
 and have helped us altogether. Here, as elsewhere, 
 Newman's great power lay in the instinctive feeling for 
 what ought to be done ; his weakness lay in the mechanical 
 and limited way in which he sought to define the agents 
 by which the thing needed should be done. 
 
 Two lines of action, for the time parallel, one of which 
 carried him into the Roman Church, the other failing as 
 the first led towards the shadow of Peter's chair, charac- 
 terized the great period of Newman's Oxford residence. 
 
 First, the "Tracts for the Times." In 1832 Newman 
 and Hurrel Froude sailed for the Mediterranean. They 
 
258 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 left behind them a troubled England. Disestablishment 
 was in sight. The Church of England " was folding her 
 robes about her to die with what dignity she could." 
 Newman left all that to traverse seas spread with historic 
 memories, where every coast was clothed upon with the 
 charm of immemorial ages and every headland the re- 
 surgence of a classic past. Beneath such skies, upon such 
 seas Newman burst into song. " Of all his published 
 poetry, barring the * Dream of Gerontius/ four-fifths was 
 written in these weeks." 
 
 Rome laid her mighty spell upon his facile imagination 
 <* All that I ever saw are but as dust compared with its 
 majesty — glory." And though he supposed himself to 
 have gone home more established than ever in his 
 antipathies to the Roman Church, later testimonies show 
 that impressions more lasting than he dreamed had been 
 made upon him as he yielded himself to the mighty 
 pageantry of the Latin liturgy in the Sistine or came 
 upon lonely chapels full of chanting worshippers in the 
 remotenesses of the SiciHan mountains. It was upon his 
 homeward voyage that he wrote " Lead, Kindly Light," 
 «' which is," says Lowell in a judgment which he did not 
 offer for publication, " as far from poetry as I hope most 
 hymns are from the ear to which they were addressed." 
 " The kindly light," to follow Newman's last biographer 
 — who certainly would never have got on without that 
 feeling clause — led Newman, upon his return, to seek a 
 justification and a defense of the Anglican Church by 
 tracing her roots to patristic soil, establishing her apostolic 
 succession, and throwing about her the august and in- 
 violable mantle of the Holy Catholic Church. 
 
 A consideration of the tracts lies far to one side of such 
 a study as this. I have already sought to indicate what 
 
NEWMAN'S APOLOGIA 259 
 
 seem to me, at least, the enduring services of the High 
 Church movement. To say that Newman failed to 
 establish his theories of an unbroken apostolic succession 
 for the Anglican Church, or to secure for her such a 
 catholic character as to establish her on a parity with 
 the Church of Rome and separate her wholly from the 
 common genesis of the Protestant Church, is to beg a 
 disputed question. But there are not wanting signs that 
 sound scholars, within the Anglican communion, are 
 modifying their contentions in this field and that to-day, 
 whatever real human interest tlie Tractarian movement 
 possesses, it has little to offer scholarship and, as an in- 
 terpretation of church history, is more and more put to 
 it to hold its ground. But in such regions as have already 
 been indicated, Tractarianism has been and is a force 
 which has modified the outlook of all the Churches. 
 
 All the while Newman was vicar of St. Mary's and 
 preaching such sermons as have rarely been preached to 
 such audiences as have rarely been assembled. In his 
 " University Sermons " Newman has made his supreme 
 bid for immortality and has become already as deathless 
 as English speech. Much else in his life will one day be 
 forgotten ; the motives that led him into the Catholic 
 Church no longer concern many save curious seekers into 
 the more labyrinthian movements of perturbed souls — 
 nor concern them over-much. His whole work for Cath- 
 olic propaganda and defense has already largely spent its 
 force. The pitiful sterility of his life, in many regions 
 where he thought himself fruitful, is too apparent ; but 
 because he was given the magic of style and the magic of 
 vision, the fabric which he wove out of these two will not 
 soon be fretted away. 
 
 " From the seclusion of study, and abstinence, and 
 
26o PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 prayer, from habitual dwelling in the unseen, he seemed 
 to come forth that one day of the week to speak to others 
 of the things he had seen and known. . . . As he 
 spoke, how the old truth became new ! how it came home 
 with a meaning never felt before ! He laid his finger — how 
 gently, yet how powerfully ! — on some inner place in the 
 hearer's heart, and told him things about himself he had 
 never known till then. ... To call these sermons 
 eloquent would be no word for them ; high poems they 
 rather were, as of an inspired singer. . . . And the 
 tone of voice in which they were spoken, once you grew 
 accustomed to it, sounded like a fine strain of unearthly 
 music. Through the silence of the high Gothic building 
 the words fell on the ear like the measured drippings of 
 water in some vast dim cave." ^ 
 
 These were the high days of Newman's soul, and their 
 music remains our perpetual possession to witness that 
 Jerusalem which is from above is free — which is the 
 mother of us all — and what Newman spoke out of the 
 free homeland of his spirit will abide. Meanwhile those 
 lesser contentions, those supposititious necessities, to 
 which, by the strange duality of his nature, he was com- 
 pelled to bow himself for peace, carried him far afield. 
 "With increasingly daring and subtle and specious argu- 
 ments, Newman and his compeers were reading the con- 
 tent of Catholic tradition into the creeds and formularies 
 of the Anglican Church, and, as you are minded to argue, 
 wresting her articles from their proper historical setting 
 or else restoring them thereto. All this in the face of a 
 rising storm. There was but one of two outcomes to 
 such a course as that to which the Tractarians were now 
 committed : either they would be silenced by the Angli- 
 » " Life of Cardinal Newman," Wilfrid Ward, Vol. I, p. 65. 
 
NEWMAN'S APOLOGIA 261 
 
 can authorities, or the sheer force of the movement they 
 had launched would carry them into the Roman fold. 
 Indeed, both happened. The authorities spoke and in 
 speaking drove the movement, in the person of its lead- 
 ers, hopelessly Romeward. The certainty of such an 
 outcome was resident by implication in Newman's posi- 
 tion from the first. Since the guarantee of the quality of 
 the deposit of faith lay in the ancient constitutions of the 
 Church to which it was committed, the all too evident 
 gulf between the Anglican and the Latin Catholic 
 Churches was, sooner or later, to open at Newman's 
 feet. He was little enough of a critical historian, but his 
 very instincts would, sooner or later, bring him to an im- 
 passe which would compel elemental reconstructions of 
 his ecclesiastical life. 
 
 A " quasi monastic " sojourn at Littlemore tempered 
 the transition, but in the end, in October, 1845, 3-t the 
 close of a day of pouring rain, Newman made his con- 
 fession to Father Dominic, a Passionist, who " has had 
 his thoughts turned to England in a distinct and remark- 
 able way," and was received into the " Church of Christ." 
 He was " afterwards quite prostrate." In this, so mo- 
 mentous a step, Newman followed the compulsions of his 
 soul. He had to say as truly as Martin Luther : " Here 
 I stand, God help me, I can do no other." And his act 
 was for him fruitful in a deep interior peace. 
 
 Twenty years later he wrote : " I have found in the 
 Catholic Church abundance of courtesy but little sympa- 
 thy among persons in high places except a few, but there 
 is a depth and a power in the Catholic religion, a fullness 
 of satisfaction in its creed, its theology, its rites, its sacra- 
 ments, its discipline, a freedom yet a support also, before 
 which the neglect or the misapprehension about oneself 
 
262 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 on the part of individual living persons, however exalted, 
 is as so much dust when weighed in the balance. This 
 is the true secret of the Church's strength, the principle 
 of its indefectibihty and the bond of its indissoluble 
 unity. It is the earnest and the beginning of the repose 
 of heaven." * This •' earnest and beginning of the repose 
 of heaven " was for Newman, during the first twenty 
 years of his Catholic communion, somewhat to seek — at 
 least in externalities. 
 
 " The very source and fount of Day 
 
 Is dashed with wandering isles of Night." 
 
 There were a good many sun-spots in Newman's 
 firmament. Very likely, to begin with, his submission 
 to St. Peter's chair seemed more centrally significant to 
 him than it did to the then reigning successor of the 
 fisherman. Newman was a man of real and unfeigned 
 humility, but his world, none the less, revolves unex- 
 pectedly about himself. His story is, in its abiding in- 
 terests, the drama of a soul and that soul his own. His 
 supreme concerns are interior, and all the projects and 
 adventures of his Catholic life have himself for their depar- 
 ture. His self-dedication was without qualification, his 
 obedience to all those in authority so perfect as to be 
 pathetic ; yet in it all I do not believe that it is to deal 
 unfairly with Newman to say there was never wanting a 
 haunting consciousness that it was John Henry Newman 
 who was so dedicating himself, John Henry Newman who 
 was offering an obedience to his Bishop or his Pope. 
 Deeper, in all likelihood, than he himself knew there lay 
 inbred remnants and tendencies of Protestantism which 
 obscured the clear light of his Catholic devotion only as 
 1 " Life of Cardinal Newman," Wilfrid Ward, Vol. I, p. 20I. 
 
NEWMAN'S APOLOGIA 263 
 
 unseen vapours lend a strange and poignant clarity to 
 high autumnal days, never shaping themselves, or at best 
 but rarely shaping themselves into clouds, and yet at the 
 same time constituting the stuff out of which clouds are 
 wrought and holding the elemental possibilities of 
 tempests. This is, perhaps, an indirect way of saying 
 that, in certain regions at least, Catholicism was never so 
 utterly the home of Newman's soul as he himself always 
 supposed, and that, from first to last, his relationships to 
 the Church were never wholly free from such subtle and 
 deep-based elements of tension. On the other side the 
 Church to which Newman devoted himself was, during 
 all the period of his more active connection with it, 
 strangely different from the Church of his rare and 
 tender dreams. From time to time Newman seems to 
 sense the limitations of the hierarchy in dealing with 
 his own case ; he is unexpectedly wanting in any sense 
 of the limitations of that hierarchy in dealing with con- 
 temporaneous Europe. One has only to turn from 
 Newman's radiant idealizations of a Catholic Church, 
 rooted in apostolic soil, unbroken in her sequences, 
 inviolate in her great utterances, coming to a head in a 
 Pontiff in whom all the glory of Christendom is incarnate 
 and who sectirus jiidicat orbis terrarum, to the realities of 
 papal politics and the intrigues of papal diplomats, to see 
 what capacities reside in the dreamer's soul of transfigur- 
 ing the objects of his passion and his desire. The papacy 
 of Newman's high Catholic days was the head and front 
 of reactionary Europe, opposed on the whole to all the 
 finer and better spirit of nationality which in Italy and 
 France was striving to secure the real gains of the French 
 Revolution, desperately opposed to Italian unity, and not 
 at all nice in choosing the weapons which it employed. 
 
264 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD . 
 
 The wonder is that such a poet and dreamer as Newman 
 was not more deeply disillusioned and subjected to still 
 more trying experiences. 
 
 In the main, from first to last, all that he sought to do 
 through the Church and for the Church was defeated. 
 He was anxious to employ his unrivalled powers as a 
 teacher and leader of young men in giving, first to Irish 
 and later to English Catholicism, a quality of intellectual 
 openness and hospitality, then sadly to seek, and in 
 establishing the faith of the EngHsh-speaking Church on 
 broader and more reasonable foundations and in fuller 
 consonance with the dominant scientific and even philo- 
 sophical tendencies of the time. In other words, he 
 sought, in regions of faith, that same via media — that 
 same safe position — between extremes which, in regions 
 of ecclesiastical organization, he had aforetime fondly 
 supposed the Anglican Church to hold. Just as he had 
 confessedly failed to discover in the Anglican Church the 
 via media between extreme Protestantism and extreme 
 Catholicism, so he failed to establish the theological 
 via media^ and that, we can see clearly, for two reasons. 
 First, because the Catholic Church did not mean to have 
 such a position established ; it was against all her instincts, 
 her traditions, her dominant temper ; it involved recogni- 
 tions and permissions of which she was logically afraid — 
 or better, of which she feared the logic. She put her ban 
 upon this movement wherever it disclosed itself, whether 
 in Germany with Bollinger, in France with Lacordaire 
 or Montalembert, or in England with Newman and Lord 
 Acton. Her attitude towards Newman's endeavour was 
 exactly her attitude towards modernism to-day, for 
 Newman, though he knew it not, was in this region a 
 modernist. 
 
NEWMAN'S APOLOGIA 265 
 
 The story of the way in which Newman was constantly 
 checked and thwarted, whether in his endeavour to found 
 a Cathohc university in Ireland, to secure a representative 
 pubhcation in England, or to establish the Oratory at 
 Oxford and so to leaven Oxford life, is long and pathetic, 
 and Newman's attitude in it all is very much more credit- 
 able than the attitude of the men who fought him with 
 weapons which he did not understand and entangled him 
 in a web whose subtle weaving was far beyond his sight. 
 From first to last he was patient, obedient and vastly 
 wiser than the powers which hindered him. Only once 
 does his impatience break through, and that in connection 
 with the second attempt to establish himself at Oxford. 
 The permission then given, and upon which he acted, 
 was accompanied by secret reservations so fundamentally 
 unfair as to wring from Newman perhaps the sharpest 
 words which he ever said about the group of men whoso 
 long bafBed him. His habits of thought, moreover, were 
 for a long time under the shadow of Rome's suspicion. 
 It is not easy, after all, for a man born and bred as was 
 Newman to dismiss all the stronger and more inde- 
 pendent part of his past. He was never able to under- 
 stand why statements which seemed to him either directly 
 a part of his work as a scholar or incident to the straight- 
 forward conduct of life as he sought to live it, should 
 bring him so perilously near the index. He was for long, 
 happily or unhappily, unconscious of the subtle disfavour 
 under which he moved, simply because there was want- 
 ing in him any temper by which he could test himself. 
 I am seeking in all this to say that which is not easy to 
 say, but which may be summed up in a sentence ; and 
 that is, that there were wanting in certain regions of 
 Newman's life the qualities of a perfect Catholic. 
 
266 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 Beyond all this one may gravely question whether 
 Newman himself was capable of accomplishing the work 
 to which he sought to dedicate his life. He sought to be 
 a mediator and, within the safe shelter of the Church's 
 authority, to meet the rising tides of rationalism and 
 doubt which faced the whole Christian world. But after 
 all is said there are certain battles which cannot be 
 fought behind walls, certain great adventures of the 
 human soul which cannot be conducted from behind 
 a breakwater. We are coming to see now that beneath 
 those searching challenges with which the nineteenth 
 century met the inheritances of faith there were slowly 
 forming vast and luminous affirmations in which faith 
 should be reborn, and that in bewildering and, to sensi- 
 tive souls, even terrifying guises the forces of the Unseen 
 and Eternal were beginning to arm themselves not for 
 our overthrowing, but for our reenforcement. The ends 
 which Newman sought were to be and are in the way of 
 being reached ; faith is being given a new content, the 
 everlasting reality of religion new protagonists. But all 
 this has been true only as men have been willing to take 
 to the open sea and let truth lead them wheresoever she 
 would. That sea was rough enough and the portent of 
 rising tempests was in the sky, but in the nineteenth 
 century, as in all the centuries, there was nothing to do 
 except to face its challenges, accept its call and, with 
 only the stars for a guide and a great confidence that 
 God does not mean the mighty adventure of the human 
 soul to come to naught, to make head against waves and 
 winds in the hope of reaching the appointed haven. 
 
 Newman was not strong enough to do this, else he 
 would never have taken to the sheltered harbours to be- 
 gin with. Here is the strange duality of the man's na- 
 
NEWMAN'S APOLOGIA 267 
 
 ture, the supreme interest of his biography. He could 
 not follow things through ; he felt the full force of the 
 winds, but he was wanting in sense of elemental secu- 
 rity ; in the pressure of doubt he did not know that doubt 
 may become the very pilot of the soul. He believed 
 where he ought to have doubted and doubted where he 
 ought to have believed. He knew the ends which ought 
 to be reached, but he faced in the wrong direction. No 
 man could have done what he sought to do who was not 
 willing to do what he could not do, and that is to ac- 
 cept every approved conclusion of the scientists, every 
 sound ascertainment of historic criticism and the move- 
 ments of human reason itself in a great confidence that 
 truth can never contradict herself, that reason is always a 
 God-given guide and that, in the end, reconciliations be- 
 tween the needs of the soul and the affirmations of the 
 intellect are not only possible, but inevitable. He should 
 have known better the deeper meaning of the times which 
 he so loved and the guides whom he so faithfully fol- 
 lowed ; he should have known that the Fathers themselves 
 were pioneers and the councils of the Church were the 
 stages of daring speculations — the doors through which 
 new truth was always entering. Had the Fathers met the 
 problems of their own time with such a recourse to an- 
 tiquity as he himself advocated, they would never have 
 got anywhere at all. The men in the last two genera- 
 tions who have done the work which Newman sought to 
 do have been brave, lonely and storm-tossed, but they 
 have known that to put themselves in the hand of any 
 authority save the authority of truth, even though they 
 brokenly discerned her gleaming splendours, was to com- 
 mit intellectual suicide and to halt humanity in the morn- 
 ing of its high advance; that with such a trust ship- 
 
268 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 wreck was impossible, and that, though their boat might 
 sink, " 'twas to another sea." 
 
 For twenty years then, and for such reasons as I have 
 sought to indicate, Newman's Hfe was sadly sterile in ex- 
 ternal accomplishments. True enough there was much 
 lecturing, preaching, occasional book writing and writing 
 of many articles, but Newman himself testified again and 
 again how inadequate he felt it all to be and how far 
 from what he really sought to get done. During all 
 these years he was living in a most simple way in an 
 Oratory at Birmingham, doing mission work in a poor 
 quarter of the city, devout and gentle. He found his 
 peace in a Rome which he idealized, and in a Church 
 whose daily offices fitted the needs of his soul. While 
 still, as years go now, a young man, he complained of ad- 
 vancing age ; he grew old soon and remained old a long, 
 long time. He had, at least on one occasion, the fear of 
 imminent death. His friends wondered if his change of 
 communion had secured all that he sought, and there 
 were, from time to time, rumours that he was to return to 
 the Anglican fold, rumours which he denied with such 
 an estimate of the quality of the life and worship of that 
 same fold as did not greatly endear him to men who still 
 loved and served it. In all likelihood nothing more 
 would have come out of Newman's Catholic communion 
 beyond what has already been indicated had it not been 
 for Kingsley's unwise attack upon him. The " Apologia" 
 was the direct consequence of that attack, and Newman's 
 reestablishment in the favour of his countrymen and of 
 the Catholic Church was the outcome of the *• Apologia." 
 
 At Christmas time in 1863, when peace is most com- 
 monly supposed to prevail among Christians, Charles 
 Kingsley inaugurated an historic and fruitful strife by a 
 
NEWMAN'S APOLOGIA 269 
 
 sentence in a review of Froude's " History of England " 
 published in MacMillan s Magazine. That pregnant sen- 
 tence follows : " Truth for its own sake has never been a 
 virtue with the Roman clergy. Father Newman informs 
 us that it need not be, and on the whole ought not to be ; 
 in that cunning is the weapon which heaven has given to 
 the saints wherewith to vi^ithstand the brute male forces 
 of the wicked world which marries and is given in mar- 
 riage. Whether his notion be doctrinally correct or 
 not, it is, at least, historically so." * Seen dispassion- 
 ately this was a rather uncalled-for aside, and one 
 does not wonder that Newman wrote directly to call 
 the attention of the publishers as gentlemen to a " grave 
 and gratuitous " slander. Kingsley acknowledged the 
 authorship of the article, said that he felt justified in 
 saying what he had said in the light of many passages 
 from Newman's writings, and especially in the light of 
 one of Newman's sermons, and that he was ready, on 
 being proved wrong, to retract his accusation as pub- 
 licly as he had made it. Such a retraction was evi- 
 dently made, but in an unhappy and half-grudging way. 
 Kingsley sought to be sarcastic and subtle ; these were 
 not his proved weapons and he was using them, more- 
 over, against a past-master in their employment. New- 
 man answered still more subtly and sarcastically, and 
 there, in all likelihood, the matter would have rested had 
 not Hutton taken it up in the Spectator and shaken the 
 whole situation as a red flag, not only in the face of the 
 protagonists but in the face of the English people. 
 Kingsley returned to the attack with a controversial 
 pamphlet, " What, then, does Dr. Newman mean ? " 
 The issue showed that Kingsley had taken his position 
 
 > *• Life of Cardinal Newman," Wilfrid Ward, Vol. II, p. i. 
 
270 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 hastily, had been governed rather by his instincts than 
 his acumen, and had deUvered himself into the hands of 
 the enemy. In the face of this renewed attack Newman 
 did not long hesitate ; he determined to meet it by a full 
 revelation of all that travail of soul in which he had made 
 the exchange of communions and come into his Catholic 
 faith. It was not easy for him to do, he says, for it 
 meant the uncovering of the secret places of his inner 
 hfe and the touching anew of wounds which had never 
 wholly healed, but it gave him, at the same time, the 
 strategic opportunity of clearing a career, always some- 
 what overcast by suspicion and misunderstanding, from 
 clouds which had so darkly gathered around it as to 
 have begun seriously to obscure Newman's future. With 
 groanings then, some of which could not be uttered and 
 many of which were uttered, working sometimes twenty- 
 two hours at a stretch, shaken with tears as he wrotCp 
 Newman got the " Apologia " done, delivering it to Mac- 
 Millan in weekly parts. By this time all England had 
 gathered around the combatants. As a combat it was a 
 melancholy spectacle. Kingsley's method of attack had 
 been sadly loose ; every joint of his armour was open. 
 Newman thrust his rapier through that armour wherever 
 he pleased and revenged himself in the end by affixing to 
 it some thirty stigmata which he called blots, the afore- 
 said blots being signal instances of Kingsley's want of 
 acumen and fairness. It was a thorough piece of work. 
 As one reads it now one sees, what the English-speaking 
 world long ago came to see, that its values do not lie in 
 its controversial dexterity. Towards the end, in those 
 passages which reveal Newman's real intellectual quality, 
 he maintains his integrity at the cost of intellectual ro- 
 bustness. He shows himself sadly wanting in critical 
 
NEWMAN'S APOLOGIA 271 
 
 qualities and is not wholly free from the reproach of deal- 
 ing tortuously with the question which precipitated the 
 whole controversy : the attitude of the Roman Church 
 towards truth. 
 
 The " Apologia " belongs rather to the literature of con- 
 fession ; it is the revelation of the processes of a soul. 
 Newman supposed himself to have justified his religious 
 development by the processes of his reason ; in reality it is 
 all deeper than reason. He does indeed show, to his own 
 satisfaction and doubtless to the satisfaction of others, 
 that the Anglican is no true Church, being in a state of 
 schism and holding the same relation to the one Holy 
 and ApostoHc Catholic Church as the schismatic bodies 
 of earlier times. He tells us in pages whose literary 
 charm would alone secure their immortality, of the prin- 
 ciples from which he set out, the objects which he sought 
 to accomplish and the studies and conclusions which 
 guided, checked, deflected and finally impelled him into 
 the Roman Church. We must read between the lines 
 the confessions of a doubter who could not in the clear 
 light of reason resolve his doubts — he had come to see, 
 lie says, that as between atheism and full subjection to the 
 Church at Rome there was no halting place — of an un- 
 believably sensitive soul incapable of bearing, without the 
 reenforcements of ancient authority, the challenges ot 
 contemporaneous thought ; of a conservative whose fear 
 of liberalism was almost a mania and yet who, by a con- 
 tradiction which was never wanting in the man's life, saw 
 how necessary it was that a place should be made in the 
 life of the Church for many of the liberal contentions ; of 
 a childlike nature wanting to be led, of a temper keenly 
 alive to the offices and consolations of the Roman liturgy • 
 of a thinker who with all his critical acumen displays 
 
272 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 most unexpected credulities and finds a strange intellec- 
 tual peace in surrounding himself with wonders and leg- 
 ends which he is too much of a poet to disturb and too 
 much of an historian to accept save as he secures for him- 
 self new canons of probability and shelters himself behind 
 the authority of the Church. 
 
 There is no end here to what one might keep on say- 
 ing. Newman is capable, for example, — although I do 
 not quote from the " Apologia " but from a letter written 
 from Santa Croce in 1847 — of writing like this apropos 
 of the liquefactions of the blood of the saints : 
 
 " But the most strange phenomenon is what happens 
 at Ravello, a village or town above Amalfi. There is 
 the blood of St. Pantaleon. It is in a vessel amid the 
 stone work of the altar — it is not touched — but on his 
 feast in June it liquefies. And more, there is an excom- 
 munication against those who bring portions of the True 
 Cross into the Church. Why ? Because the blood 
 liquefies whenever it is brought. A person I know, not 
 knowing the prohibition, brought in a portion — and the 
 Priest suddenly said, who showed the blood, ' Who has 
 got the Holy Cross about him?' I tell you what was 
 told me by a grave and religious man. It is a curious 
 coincidence that on telling this to our Father Director 
 here, he said, ' Why, we have a portion of St. Pantaleon's 
 blood at the Chiesa Nuova, and it is always hquid.' " ^ 
 
 And then almost directly changing his ground, he 
 idealizes and really with great sagacity uncovers the 
 ageless power of the papacy in sentences like these : 
 
 " Punctual in its movements, precise in its operations, 
 imposing in its equipments, with its spirit high and its 
 step firm, with its haughty clarion and its black artillery, 
 
 1 •' Life of Cardinal Newman," Wilfrid Ward, Vol. I, p. 189. 
 
NEWMAN'S APOLOGIA 273 
 
 behold the mighty world is gone forth to war — with 
 what? With an unknown something, which it feels but 
 cannot see ; which flits around it, which flaps against its 
 cheek, with the air, with the wind. It charges and it 
 slashes, and it fires its volleys, and its bayonets, and it is 
 mocked by a foe who dwells in another sphere, and is 
 far beyond the force of its analysis, or the capacities of 
 its calculus. The air gives way, and it returns again ; it 
 exerts a gentle but constant pressure on every side; 
 moreover, it is of vital necessity to the very power which 
 is attacking it. Whom have you gone out against ? A 
 few old men, with red hats and stockings, or a hundred 
 pale students, with eyes on the ground, and beads in 
 their girdle ; they are as stubble ; destroy them ; then 
 there will be other old men, and other pale students, in- 
 stead of them. But we will direct our rage against one ; 
 he flees ; what is to be done with him ? Cast him out 
 upon the wide world ; but nothing can go on without 
 him. Then bring him back ! But he will give us no 
 guarantee for the future. Then leave him alone ; his 
 power is gone, he is at an end, or he will take a new 
 course of himself; he will take part with the state or the 
 people. Meanwhile, the multitude of interests in active 
 operation all over the great Catholic body rise up, as it 
 were, all round, and encircle the combat, and hide the 
 fortune of the day from the eyes of the world ; and un- 
 real judgments are hazarded, and rash predictions, till 
 the mist clears away, and then the old man is found in 
 his own place, as before, saying mass over the tomb of 
 the Apostles." ' 
 
 What shall we do with such a man except first of all 
 do what Kingsley himself should have known enough to 
 
 *" Life of Cardinal Newman," Wilfrid Ward, Vol. I, pp. 195, 196. 
 
274 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 do: acknowledge his entire sincerity, despite his long 
 hesitations and his most involved and tortuous move- 
 ment from the Anglican to the Catholic Church ? It 
 was not, we see it clearly enough now, a part of a subtle, 
 deeply-laid plan ; it was simply the reflection in his out- 
 ward career of the progress of his opinions and the un- 
 folding of his purposes. John Henry Newman was 
 under as deep compulsions to Catholicism as Kingsley 
 to his militant Protestantism ; he could have found peace 
 nowhere else. The '• Apologia " reestablished him in the 
 favour of the English people and the Roman Church ; 
 the leaders of that Church recognized that he had com- 
 mended their communion to the English world as no one 
 else could have done it, and they were therefore reason- 
 ably grateful. True enough the trying Oxford expe- 
 riences were to follow, and m the second Oxford expe- 
 rience the Church treated Newman more unfairly than in 
 any other chapter of their long relationship and his im- 
 patience with the Church probably reached its greatest 
 tension, but none the less the forces which the " Apologia " 
 released did not weaken or give over until they had 
 made John Henry Newman a Cardinal and secured for 
 him that light of popular favour at eventide which went 
 far to compensate for the pathetic shadows which so 
 checkered his long, long day. 
 
 The real power of the •* Apologia," as justifying the 
 Catholic Church to all those who read it, does not, I 
 repeat, lie in its processes of reasoning, but is rather 
 here : Newman is the type of those who need a shelter 
 for their salvation, who require to be fed with the 
 ancient, the traditional and the hallowed, who are un- 
 able adequately to worship except in great fullness of 
 form and with all that which appeals to the finer senses 
 
NEWMAN'S APOLOGIA 275 
 
 and kindles the imagination, who are always needing to 
 unburden themselves in the secret of the confessional, for 
 whom the comforting assurances of forgiveness must be 
 fashioned by human lips, and whose imaginations need 
 to be dominated as was the imagination of Newman by 
 great conceptions given august expression — Newman 
 himself has told us how the word of Augustine heard 
 through his perplexity — securus judicat or bis terrarujfi — 
 dominated his imagination and became as distinct a turn- 
 ing point in his own life as the voice which came to Saul 
 of Tarsus in the Damascene desert or to Augustine in 
 the Gardens of Milan. As long as such tempers exist, 
 the Church which has been created through them and 
 for them will also exist in spite of failures and divisions 
 so great as to have long ago ruined any institution 
 whose foundations were not so deeply laid. There is 
 much in the contention of some Catholics themselves 
 that no Church not a true Church could have outlived so 
 many unworthy leaders and so many chapters which 
 might well be forgotten. The capacity of the Roman 
 Church to endure and to reestablish her authority from 
 age to age is a testimony, which must not be gainsaid, 
 to the enduring reality and the wide-spread existence of 
 such tempers as that of which John Henry Newman is a 
 great and fascinating example. 
 
 So much then is to be said for him from the Catholic 
 side of his nature, but something is also to be said from 
 the other side, for he was always two men and he came 
 tragically near being so great in other and nobler regions. 
 His contradictions lie in the regions of his mind. He 
 was always so near seeing great things and just missing 
 them. There is, as John Hutton has said in substance, 
 a hole-and-corner quality in Newman's thinking which 
 
276 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 comes out in the pages of the " Apologia " and indeed in 
 all his work. " Perhaps Newman's entire system rests, 
 when all is said and done, not upon revelation but upon 
 reason, upon reason working in holes and corners. Per- 
 haps it all rests, not upon the revelation of God, but upon 
 his own terrible analysis of man, which way madness lies. 
 Perhaps it has as its root idea, not that faith in God to 
 which Christ invites us, but a certain suspicion of God, a 
 certain terror of what the Almighty might do to us if He 
 were minded. It may be that all this is a true charge 
 against Newman. Indeed, it was his boast that he had 
 accomplished many of these things. And, so far, we 
 blame him." ^ 
 
 Newman found a satisfaction in intellectual backwaters 
 which the main currents of history did not yield him. 
 His dislike of liberalism was so extreme that he would 
 not, in the harbour of Marseilles, look at thetri-colour on 
 the French ships, and on one occasion at least would not 
 go abroad in Paris. In the Anglican Church his whole 
 attitude towards the free churches was a serene super- 
 ciliousness. A Catholic, he dismissed the whole Protes- 
 tant movement far more easily than is the scholar's right 
 — whatever be the scholar's communion. 
 
 The basal fault of his mind was in stopping short. In 
 his essay on " Development " he was one of the pioneers in 
 the interpretation of history in terms of evolution. He 
 defended the additions of the Catholic Church to the 
 body of primitive truth on the ground that such addi- 
 tions were the legitimate unfolding of germinal truth 
 contained in the Apostolic deposit. He had a clear 
 vision of an unfolding truth — always within the field of 
 the Catholic Church — and he has pictured for us that 
 
 * «« Pilgrims in the Region of Faith," John A. Hutton, M. A., p. 153. 
 
NEWMAN'S APOLOGIA 277 
 
 development with such true joy and such a nobly exalted 
 style as to show how real it ail was to him. But he was 
 sadly wanting in any sense that the range of the develop- 
 ment of truth was too vast to be restrained by the bar- 
 riers which the Roman Church had set up or docilely to 
 follow her time-worn channels. Once you have set 
 development free it is hard enough to hold it to ancient 
 forms or compress it in any mold, no matter how hal- 
 lowed or consecrated by the years. Here, too, is a spirit 
 which will not be put back in the bottle from which it 
 was set free. Newman's philosophy of history was too 
 big for the applications which he made of it. His mental 
 range suffered through the very constriction of his mental 
 processes to which the caution of his dependent soul al- 
 ways constrained him. He would have been braver, hap- 
 pier, immensely more fruitful if, having discerned the vast 
 unfolding of the spirit of God through the institutions of 
 men, he had followed that light beyond the frontiers of 
 Catholicism. That, too, was a " kindly light " and would 
 have led him " o'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, 
 till the night " of his fear was gone, and he would have 
 stood in the morning of an ampler and a freer day. He 
 would not then have forgotten (I quote Lowell) that God 
 is always " I am " ; never " I was." ^ He would have 
 seen the hope, not the portent, of the banners of the free 
 nations, and he might have gone far in finding a common 
 ground for all the Churches and in some part supplied an 
 answer to his own prayer : " And I earnestly pray for this 
 whole company, with a hope against hope, that all of us, 
 who once were so united, and so happy in our union, 
 may even now be brought at length, by the Power of the 
 Divine Will, into One Fold and under One Shepherd." ^ 
 
 * •' Letters," Vol. II, p. 415. ' " Apologia," p. 304. 
 
278 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 The same quality of stopping short underruns his in- 
 terpretation of the infallibility of the Church — an inter- 
 pretation which he would, I suppose, have later extended 
 to the infallibility of the Pope. Nowhere is his imagina- 
 tive insight finer than, for example, in such a passage as 
 this, where he shows what ferments of discussion, what 
 endless debates, what intricate movements of the mind, lie 
 behind the decisions of the councils, or the ex-cathedra 
 pronouncements of the Popes : 
 
 " Perhaps a local teacher, or a doctor in some local 
 school, hazards a proposition, and a controversy ensues. 
 It smoulders or burns in one place, no one interposing ; 
 Rome simply lets it alone. Then it comes before a 
 bishop ; or some priest, or some professor in some other 
 seat of learning takes it up ; and then there is a second 
 stage of it. Then it comes before a university, and it 
 may be condemned by the theological faculty. So the 
 controversy proceeds year after year, and Rome is still 
 silent. An appeal, perhaps, is next made to a seat of 
 authority inferior to Rome ; and then at last after a long 
 while it comes before the supreme power. Meanwhile, 
 the question has been ventilated and turned over and over 
 again, and viewed on every side of it, and authority is 
 called upon to pronounce a decision, which has already 
 been arrived at by reason." ' 
 
 It is open to question whether the long-suffering 
 patience of Rome is such as here described. It certainly 
 was not in Newman's case. He was pulled up more than 
 once long before the propositions which he hazarded ran 
 such a leisurely course of debate. Nor have we seen, in 
 our time, any such attitude as this towards modernism. 
 More than that, the process which is here so penetra- 
 
 » " Apologia," p. 289. 
 
NEWMAN'S APOLOGIA 279 
 
 tingly described is too vast to be confined simply to an 
 infallible Church. An infallibility which does nothing 
 less nor more than to adopt, and so authenticate, the out- 
 come of long continued processes of debate and investi- 
 gation, does not need to be set up as a dogma nor require 
 for its pronouncement so theatrical a setting as the 
 Vatican Council of 1870. If this is all that infallibility 
 means, the dogmatic proclamation of it is a work of 
 supererogation. Why could not Newman have seen that 
 this is just the way in which all truth is always coming 
 into the world ; that here is nothing else than an appeal 
 to that reason of which he was so much afraid ; that the 
 same infallibility attaches to the work of the scientist, the 
 historian and the philosopher, and is constantly being 
 secured for causes which were beyond the reach of his 
 vision, for worshipping fellowships which he ignored, and 
 for intimations of truth which he feared ? The pity of it 
 all is that, having seen so clearly how the spirit of God 
 moves to bring men into all truth, he should have directly 
 turned about and sought to confine that spirit to channels 
 which are as incapable of containing it as the Panama 
 Canal is incapable of containing the floods of the Amazon. 
 Nor is the world such a welter of confusion or so wanting, 
 except in the fellowships of the Catholic Church, in any 
 manifestation of the ordering and conquering will of God, 
 or such a time-stained monument to the defeat of 
 Eternal purposes and the lack of perspicuity in the divine 
 vision, as Newman makes out in one of the most cele- 
 brated passages in the " Apologia " (p. 267 and seq.). 
 Nor does God come into His world only upon a kind of 
 afterthought and to repair, as best He may, the confusion 
 to which He first dismissed His children. Such shallow 
 and mechanical ways of thinking sent Newman far afield 
 
28o PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 and obscured all his vision. I am not sure, in the end, 
 but that here is the keystone of all those strange vaulted 
 arches of aspiration and v^eakness beneath which he 
 sheltered his faith and built his altars. Had he possessed 
 a braver, fuller sense of God, all might have been differ- 
 ent ; he was too much restricted in the regions in which 
 God is operative ; here, more than anywhere else, he took 
 the wrong turning. 
 
 Finally we see clearly that the " Apologia " has an 
 unexpected relationship to the book with which, least of 
 all, we should superficially compare it. All that I said 
 in the beginning about the gulf which opens between 
 *' Pilgrim's Progress " and what Newman stood for and 
 sought is wholly true, but none the less the " Apolo- 
 gia" is Newman's "Pilgrim's Progress." He was not 
 after all freed, nor have any ever been freed, from lonely 
 necessities and sohtary seekings after the city which hath 
 foundations. In spite of the securities upon wliich he 
 leaned, the shelters beneath which he walked, he too was 
 a pilgrim. His way was not wanting in sloughs of des- 
 pond, nor hills of difficulty, nor even castles of despair; 
 he too had his visions of the delectable mocntains, and 
 came down in good courage to the river. Surely, when 
 his eyes were opened, he must have seen that he was di- 
 vided from his fellows not so much by ma:ters of spiritual 
 geography as by diversities of nomenclature. It is the 
 same map for us all and, though we give the roads which 
 we follow different names and quarrel bravely about our 
 guides, we are more nearly comrades than we dream. All 
 this should give us a great tenderness for all our fellow 
 pilgrims and the hope that, in the end, we shall come 
 more clearly to recognize this and to act upon it should 
 be for us all a light in the sky. 
 
VII 
 Tolstoy's Confessions 
 
 THE choice of some one representative figure in 
 whom these studies may terminate is a wholly 
 debatable matter. We are far, far past the 
 time when any one man is great enough to speak for his 
 entire age. We are in the midst of a smothering spiritual 
 confusion and may indeed doubt whether any one will 
 ever be able to speak for long periods and vast move- 
 ments as Dante spoke for the mediaeval mind, Bunyan 
 for the Puritan, or the " Imitation of Christ " for monastic 
 gentleness and devotion. If we were considering solely 
 the literature of lonely confession without reference to 
 the fructifying and transforming influence of such con- 
 fession we might well end with Amiel, for without doubt 
 the " Journal Intime " of Amiel is, in the range, delicacy 
 and haunting wonder of it, one of the very greatest of 
 confessions. In its literary charm it stands quite apart 
 and it is, moreover, a true revelation of a temper wholly 
 distinctive of our own time. It voices our own new 
 sense of the wonder and mystery of life. 
 
 We have shifted our sense of emphasis : hfe is no 
 longer secondary ; it is supreme. We do not subordinate 
 it to theologies, we are unwilling to postpone its con- 
 summations and rewards, we make it rather the test of all 
 our formularies. Our very vocabulary witnesses our 
 changed conceptions ; a new employment of the word 
 
 281 
 
282 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 Life — we spell it with a capital letter — characterizes all our 
 literature, saturates our poetry, has modified our preach- 
 ing and given new titles to our books. Without any 
 doubt the lack of a positive note in so much of our mod- 
 ern teaching has its roots just here. The contemporane- 
 ous voices which speak most clearly and representatively 
 voice the restlessness of life rather than its peace, its 
 sense of insistent change rather than great permanencies, 
 their mystic wonder at their own inheritances, their 
 strange interminglings of hopes and foreboding. 
 
 In such regions as these no one is more representative 
 than Amiel. He also witnesses, not only to the wonder 
 of life, but to the paralysis which this sense of wonder 
 may produce. There are always those who, keenly sen- 
 sitive to the deeper implications of life, lose the roads of 
 action as they dream and so wander to the edge of 
 abysses which deepen, not only with the passing of their 
 own years, but with the passing of humanity's years. 
 Their very consciousness of the significance of life para- 
 lyzes their powers of choice and action. So life becomes 
 for them an unspeakable burden and yet, by a strange 
 contradiction, an unspeakable experience. They dwell, 
 like Matthew Arnold, between two worlds, one dead — 
 the old world of simple faith and resolute action, the 
 other — the new world of faith and deed equal to their 
 vision — powerless to be born, and above both worlds the 
 haunting sense of the Infinite and Eternal. The very 
 sensitiveness of Amiel's soul, the reach of his intuitions, 
 the scope of his knowledge, the purity of his aspirations 
 made him tremulously responsive to all which plays upon 
 the more feeling children of our own time. The music 
 of his meditations, now vague and tremulous, now storm 
 swept, now nobly massive, grave and majestic as a great 
 
TOLSTOY'S CONFESSIONS 283 
 
 organ brought into full action, shows us what perfect 
 spiritual instruments are capable of when played upon by 
 manifold experiences and strangely open to all the winds 
 that blow, and witnesses, at the same time, how pathet- 
 ically unsatisfactory all this is if no conquering purpose 
 keeps step to such music, no matter how various or 
 grandiose the music itself may be. Life is now, as it al- 
 ways has been, a great adventure ; its full meanings are 
 never known by those who dream along the shores of 
 time. The full meanings of life are known only to those 
 who take to the open sea and are so much occupied with 
 meeting wind and wave and keeping their course through 
 the fog and bringing their cargo to the appointed haven 
 that only for a little, in the intervals of eager duties, have 
 they any time to scan with mystic vision the ever re- 
 ceding horizons or wonder beneath the stars. Only 
 when we search the skies for changeless light by which 
 to test and correct the pilgrimages of earth is their in- 
 finity kind ; only when we look up to vast horizons be- 
 tween our tasks is their very wideness the wideness of 
 the mercy of God. It is because Amiel failed just here 
 that his confessions, meditations, introspections, wonder- 
 ful as they are, are no true expression of all that is best 
 and bravest about us. 
 
 It is to Tolstoy, therefore, that we must turn, Tolstoy 
 has Amiel's feeling for the immense significance, the 
 penetrating difficulties of life itself, but with a really pro- 
 found difference. It is, to begin with, a difference in 
 courage and effectuality. Whether Tolstoy's road is the 
 right road or not may be open to debate, but that he 
 went clean to the end of it is beyond debate. He put 
 his faith to the test and sought to readjust, not only his 
 own life, but the life of the world as far as he could reach 
 
284 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 or move it to his own changing conceptions. A note 
 of self-reliant action is never wanting in Tolstoy's music 
 and though our own time needs sadly enough to be 
 purged of its own more superficial self-reliances and to be 
 taught the deeper meaning of action no man is a satis- 
 factory guide for this or any other age who loses himself 
 in his dreams. Whatever Tolstoy wrongly does or 
 wrongly leaves undone he does at least incarnate those 
 qualities of faith in action and action in faith without 
 which every pilgrimage ends either in the Slough of 
 Despond or Doubting Castle. Amiel's haunting music 
 will lead us, if we do not take care, down the byways of 
 By-path Meadow ; Tolstoy takes the Hill of Difficulty 
 breast forward. 
 
 Tolstoy is also distinctive (and here indeed he differs 
 from all those whom we have been considering) in that 
 he is the son of a race but recently constituted and as 
 yet hardly clearly conscious of itself. Saul of Tarsus and 
 Augustine were the children of races rooted deep in his- 
 tory ; the mystics of the " Imitation " and " Theologia 
 Germanica " had behind them a national conscious- 
 ness already mature, but even in the day of Bunyan 
 Russia was hardly born. We must allow for something 
 of this fermenting racial consciousness in all Russian 
 literature and in the work of Tolstoy himself. The world 
 in which he lived was nearer primitive and elemental 
 backgrounds than he would himself have been willing to 
 confess. 
 
 Tolstoy speaks, moreover, for the Slav. He was not 
 only the son of a new-born people, but of a race bringing 
 distinct contributions to our common human world. The 
 Slav is not wanting in mysticism, yet he marries Mys- 
 ticism to a terrible Realism : he is a dreamer, yet capable 
 
TOLSTOY'S CONFESSIONS 285 
 
 of a materialism which becomes, upon occasion, sheerly 
 brutal. He is hard and susceptible at the same time, 
 idealist and realist in the same breath. And deeper than 
 all this is a racial note never wanting, never common- 
 place, difficult of analysis, and so different from all that 
 we have been considering as simply to rest in its sepa- 
 rateness. Tolstoy incarnates all this ; he is always two 
 men. It is the strife between these two men which gives 
 spiritual significance to his hfe. 
 
 The lower man against whom he battles so long, whose 
 lawless doings he so often and so bitterly repudiates, has 
 a sheer elemental quality which is wanting in the lower 
 selves against which St. Paul and Augustine and John 
 Bunyan were called to do battle. Tolstoy has also 
 — though this is to anticipate — a quality of self-suffi- 
 ciency greatly wanting even in great spiritual adventures. 
 (Possibly we feel all this so strongly because we know 
 Tolstoy so well. If we had the same quantity of con- 
 temporaneous gossip about St. Paul or St. Augustine we 
 might see them in a very different light.) Like Augus- 
 tine he too is restless till he rests in God; like St. Paul he 
 cries out " Oh, wretched man that I am, who will deliver 
 me from the body of this death ? " But with all this we 
 do not discern in him that sense of spiritual weakness 
 which threw Augustine and St. Paul back in faith upon 
 the redemptive compassions of the Eternal, or bowed 
 them, in av/estruck humility, at the foot of the throne 
 of God. The sense of need he surely had — the sense of 
 weakness — no. Where Newman takes to the shelter 
 Tolstoy takes to the open sea, and where Amiel is para- 
 lyzed by the difficulties of life and its choices Tolstoy 
 shakes himself clear of its complexities and triumphs 
 by his own spiritual force. For the " Theologia Gcr- 
 
286 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 manica " the imitation of Christ is to be sought in mys- 
 tical surrenders and fellowships ; Tolstoy's imitation of 
 Christ is the utter simplification of life and the literal 
 acceptance of the gospel teaching. Thomas a Kempis' 
 imitation of Christ is possible only within the shelter of 
 monastic walls ; the great Russian's " Imitation " is at a 
 shoemaker's bench without vows or disciplines. Besides, 
 the road which every one of these men followed led 
 them to systems and governments ; Tolstoy solves his 
 own problems in an excess of individualism and reads a 
 philosophic anarchy into the lines of the Sermon on the 
 Mount. 
 
 Tolstoy was born in 1828. He was descended on both 
 sides from aristocratic families ; it is likely that his 
 mother's was the better stock. Certain Russian tradi- 
 tions trace back a considerable body of the Russian 
 nobility — the Tolstoys among them — to German immi- 
 grants. The Tolstoys themselves indignantly repudiated 
 any such suggestion and indeed there is little in Tolstoy's 
 personality or message to indicate a Teutonic ancestry. 
 He was Russian through and through. His ancestors, 
 beginning with one Peter Tolstoy — born in 1645 — had 
 various fortunes ; they were sometimes intimately associ- 
 ated with the Russian court and sometimes in disfavour 
 and exile. Their estates were confiscated upon one occa- 
 sion, but their family fortunes were mended by a fehcitous 
 marriage. In fact the waning fortunes of the family were 
 more than once rehabilitated in the same way. Tolstoy's 
 forebears " were more or less in passive opposition to 
 the government, and shared the humanitarian sympa- 
 thies current in the early years of the reign of Alexan- 
 der I." He was early left motherless and was cared for 
 by an aunt for whom he had, from the beginning, the 
 
TOLSTOY'S CONFESSIONS 287 
 
 greatest affection. The affection was always returned 
 and her concern for the boy was shown in numberless 
 ways. "Auntie Tatiana had the greatest influence on 
 my life. From early childhood she taught me the spir- 
 itual delight of love. She taught me this joy not by 
 words ; but by her whole being she filled me with love. 
 I saw, I felt, how she enjoyed loving, and I understood 
 the joy of love. Secondly, she taught me the delights 
 of an unhurried, quiet life." Tolstoy was much influ- 
 enced by his eldest brother, Nicholas, who seems to have 
 possessed to the full the idealism by which Tolstoy him- 
 self was so much moved. It was Nicholas who told Tol- 
 stoy and his brothers how he had discovered a secret by 
 which all men might become happy. The boys had a 
 strange name for this felicitous fellowship ; they were to 
 be called *' Ant-Brothers." " We even organized a game 
 of Ant-Brothers, which consisted in sitting under chairs, 
 sheltering ourselves with boxes, screening ourselves with 
 handkerchiefs, and cuddling against one another while 
 thus crouching in the dark." The real secret of happi- 
 ness, however, Nicholas told his brothers, he had written 
 upon a green stick and buried in a certain place. Other 
 conditions which Nicholas imposed upon his brothers 
 were equally fantastic and capricious, but the memory of 
 the Ant-Brotherhood remained with Tolstoy to the end. 
 Almost seventy years later he writes : " The ideal of 
 Ant-Brothers lovingly clinging to one another, though 
 not under two armchairs curtained by handkerchiefs, but 
 of all mankind under the wide dome of heaven, has re- 
 mained the same for me. As I then believed that there 
 existed a little green stick whereon was written the mes- 
 sage which could destroy all evil in men and give them 
 universal welfare, so I now believe that such truth exists 
 
288 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 and will be revealed to men, and will give them all it 
 
 promises." * 
 
 Tolstoy's reminiscences have something of the char- 
 acter of Marcus Aurelius' memories of his own boyhood, 
 something of the same suggestion of a keen and observ- 
 ant boy, sheltered and happy, about whom larger move- 
 ments ebbed and flowed. He lived from the first a 
 vigorous outdoor life, was always a keen sportsman and 
 trained athlete. (His uncommon bodily power stood him 
 in good stead to the end.) The boy had always the in- 
 stinct of adventure. (He tried to fly once and threw 
 himself out of a window with the expectation that if he 
 only held tight enough to his knees he would defy the 
 law of gravitation. He got a slight concussion of the 
 brain out of this adventure, but no lasting injury.) He 
 was better at riding than his lessons. The family tutor 
 said : " Sergey both wishes and can, Dimitry wishes but 
 can't, and Leo neither wishes nor can." It is only fair 
 to say that Tolstoy's French tutor took a very much 
 more hopeful view of him. He had a deal of intellectual 
 power when he was minded to put it into action. Later 
 in life he performed great feats of acquisition. Evidently 
 the tutor who said that he neither would nor could was 
 no just judge. 
 
 The undisciplined intensities of Tolstoy's nature came 
 directly into action and the years following his unsatis- 
 factory university course were restless and tumultuous 
 enough. He is always dealing with himself introspec- 
 tively and always setting up for himself high and search- 
 ing ideals. He resolves for instance : " To fulfill what I 
 set myself, despite all obstacles. To fulfill well what I do 
 undertake. Never to refer to a book for what I have for- 
 1 " The Life of Tolstoy," Aylmer Maude, Vol. I, p. 19. 
 
TOLSTOY'S CONFESSIONS 289 
 
 gotten, but always to try to recall it to mind myself. Al- 
 ways to make my mind work with its utmost power." 
 He outlines for himself a course of study fairly appalling 
 in its scope : he will study law, medicine, all the modern 
 languages, agriculture, mathematics, music, painting and 
 the natural sciences, and write essays on all the subjects 
 he studies/ No need to say that such a program 
 remained unfulfilled. 
 
 The ferment of his soul was even more intense than the 
 ferment of his mind. The very first pages of the " Con- 
 fession " testify to the stages of his deflection from faith. 
 ** The religious teaching which was imparted to me in 
 my childhood disappeared in me just as in others, with 
 this difference only, that, since I began to read philo- 
 sophical works at fifteen years of age, my apostasy very 
 early became conscious. With my sixteenth year I quit 
 praying and through my own initiative stopped attend- 
 ing church and preparing myself for communion. I did 
 not believe in what I had been told in my childhood, but 
 I believed in something. I should never have been able 
 to say what it was I believed in. I believed in God, or, 
 more correctly, I did not deny God, but what kind of a 
 God I should have been at a loss to say. Nor did I deny 
 Christ and His teaching, but what His teaching con- 
 sisted in, I should also have been at a loss to say." ^ 
 Tolstoy's diary shows however that even in this period of 
 storm and stress he was never wholly unconscious of the 
 necessities of his soul ; his altar fires were sadly smothered, 
 but never in his most troubled times wholly extinguished. 
 
 The world in which Tolstoy lived is not easily recon- 
 structed. It was a world, now of the vast open spaces of 
 
 » " The Life oi" Tolstoy," Aylmer Maude, Vol. I, pp. 37, 38. 
 2 " My Confe:.sion," Tols oy, Beacon Edition, p. 6. 
 
290 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 the Russian countrysides, now of Moscow with its walls 
 and its domes, of occasional famine, of dependent serfs, 
 of religious intensities and moral laxities. He took in 
 his early manhood full advantage of these laxities and the 
 practical conduct of his life left much to seek, but we 
 must remember in judging him the moral standards to 
 which he was expected to conform. He never seeks to 
 conceal or minimize all this part of his life. His confes- 
 sions portray a struggle even more intense than the 
 struggle which still kindles the pages of the " Confessions 
 of St. Augustine " with its passion. There is always this 
 difference : Augustine was a rhetorician and with all our 
 sure persuasion of the man's entire sincerity we feel, 
 even in those pages in which Augustine strips his soul 
 bare, the rhetorician's touch. 
 
 Tolstoy is, in his nobler passages, the master of a most 
 telling style, but he is never a rhetorician and he always 
 writes under restraint. Each stroke of the pen tells. It 
 is this restrained intensity of narration, this paucity of 
 emotion, with a pitiless veracity of fact and detail, which 
 gives the " Confessions " of Tolstoy their power and signifi- 
 cance. He is realistic in confession as in all his literary 
 art. In this, at least, there is not his hke in the whole 
 literature of confession. The periods of self-indulgence 
 were always succeeded by times of bitter repentance and 
 spiritual depression. ♦* Oh, wretched man that I am " is 
 again and again upon his lips and at the point of his pen. 
 
 The division of the family estates gave Tolstoy a 
 modest patrimony. He was never good at business de- 
 tail and although that patrimony grew beneath his hand 
 it was rather owing to his great creative force than to the 
 excellency of his business administration. He was, from 
 time to time, a reckless gambler and he more than once 
 
TOLSTOY'S CONFESSIONS 291 
 
 put so heavy a strain upon his resources as seriously to 
 endanger his financial integrity. It is not a wholly happy 
 story, the story of these years of storm and stress, but its 
 grosser aspects were always redeemed by the deep and 
 unquenched spiritual passion of the man. 
 
 For the sake possibly of his health and certainly for 
 the sake of his fortune — he was deep in gambling debts 
 — as well as to escape from surroundings all too full 
 of moral temptation, Tolstoy went, in the year 1 85 1, into 
 the Caucasus. The names of the places he visited are un- 
 pronounceable, but the whole experience is extraordi- 
 narily picturesque. He entered the army and distin- 
 guished himself in the endless border warfare which was 
 then being carried on with the Tatars. He was not yet 
 a commissioned officer, but he bore himself bravely and 
 was three times in the way of receiving the St. George's 
 cross. He missed it in each instance for reasons which 
 do him no discredit. 
 
 He now began his long career as an author. He 
 wrote from first to last largely out of his own experi- 
 ences. The outstanding masculine characters in all his 
 novels are compelling incarnations of his many-sided 
 personality. His first work is a study in childhood so 
 definitely autobiographical that his sister Mary who knew 
 nothing of her brother's venture was surprised to find 
 recognizable incident after incident in the story as she 
 read it in a Russian magazine. He was recognized 
 directly by those to whom he submitted his earlier writ- 
 ings as an author of unusual promise. They knew that 
 a new force had begun to display itself in Russian litera- 
 ture ; they could hardly then have known that a new 
 force was beginning in the world's literature. This is no 
 place for any full estimate of Tolstoy as a writer ; such 
 
292 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 estimates have been made by the greatest critics of our 
 times and may easily be found. It is enough to say that 
 Tolstoy has exercised the profoundest of influences upon 
 modern literature. He has not been alone in this, I 
 mean, that is, that his Russian contemporaries have been 
 co-contributors with him, and it would be truer perhaps 
 to say that the group in which Tolstoy is easily the most 
 commanding figure became, after the middle of the 
 nineteenth century, a new point of departure for modern 
 literature. Realism really came into action with these 
 men. 
 
 Tolstoy writes always with the utmost simplicity, with 
 great reserve and with an almost brutal fidelity to every 
 kind of fact. He never softens or obscures. He knows 
 the literary value of the disagreeable and always calls a 
 spade a spade. He so secures an unfailing vividness, 
 sometimes charming, sometimes searching, sometimes 
 disagreeable, sordid, brutal, but the power is never want- 
 ing. Take for example this fragment of conversation. 
 He is speaking of death and how when one really stands 
 face to face with it it loses its terror. He speaks out of 
 his own experience. He had, at one time, been shooting 
 in the snow and, with a wholly characteristic indiffer- 
 ence to another man's advice, he neglected to trample 
 down the snow about him so as to secure space for free 
 movement. Half buried he was attacked by a bear 
 which came near ending his distinguished career then and 
 there and left for long the marks of its teeth upon his face. 
 He was saved almost by a miracle. Now these are the 
 conditions under which men are supposedly not carefully 
 observant of detail, yet such was the quality of Tolstoy's 
 mind that he saw it all with a vast deal more than the 
 fidelity of the best camera and he was able, many years 
 
TOLSTOY'S CONFESSIONS 293 
 
 after, to paint this picture of the whole incident. ** I re- 
 member once, when a bear attacked me and pressed me 
 down under him, driving the claws of his enormous paw 
 into my shoulder, I felt no pain. I lay under him and 
 looked into his warm, large mouth, with its wet, white 
 teeth. He breathed above me, and I saw how he turned his 
 head to get into position to bite into both my temples at 
 once ; and in his hurry, or from excited appetite, he made 
 a trial snap in the air just above my head, and again 
 opened his mouth — that red, wet, hungry mouth, drip- 
 ping with saliva. I felt I was about to die, and looked 
 into the depths of that mouth as one condemned to exe- 
 cution looks into the grave dug for him. I looked, and I 
 remember that I felt no fear or dread. I saw with one 
 eye, beyond the outline of that mouth, a patch of blue 
 sky gleaming between purple clouds roughly piled on one 
 another, and I thought how lovely it was up there." * 
 Nothing is wanting here : he sees the wet, white teeth 
 of the beast and the serene splendour of piled up clouds 
 with the same searching and retentive vision. Now 
 these are the very qualities which give a lonely and un- 
 approachable character to his great descriptions. 
 
 His sense of the earth and earthy is always much in 
 evidence. It would be possible to separate out of all his 
 writing a mass of hard and repulsive deHneations, dealing 
 remorselessly with elemental things and saved from the 
 atmosphere of the dissecting room only by his great lit- 
 erary art and his unrivalled powers of portrayal, but above 
 and beyond this is always something better. He 
 sought, even in his most pitiless realism, the regions of 
 the ideal. He sees, at the same time, the tooth of the 
 beast, the patch of blue sky and the purple clouds. His 
 
 >"The Life of Tolstoy," Aylmer Maude, Vol. II, p. 74. 
 
294 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 art was from the first but the instrument of his human- 
 ity and his humanity deepened with the years, though 
 towards the end it grew very stern and sad. 
 
 We have followed, in the course of these studies, the 
 quest for peace into many unexpected regions and 
 strange. In Tolstoy we trace it through modern realism, 
 the dissecting room and sometimes almost the sewer. 
 But because the passion for the quest never fails and the 
 humanity of the man rests like light upon all the vast 
 movement of his life, his realism is always redeemed and 
 the suggestions of an ultimate dawn are always breaking 
 through his shadows. Mr. William Dean Howells, who 
 has been mightily influenced by Tolstoy and more than 
 any one else has sought to justify his art to America, 
 tests him by just this test. " It is Tolstoy's humanity 
 which is the grace beyond the reach of art in his imagina- 
 tive work. It does not reach merely the poor and the 
 suffering ; it extends to the prosperous and the proud, 
 and does not deny itself to the guilty. . . . Tolstoy 
 has said of the fiction of Maupassant that the whole truth 
 can never be immoral ; and in his own work I have felt 
 that it could never be anything but moral." * 
 
 Such qualities as these save Tolstoy and his readers 
 from consequences which are always implicit in realism, 
 for the whole test of such literature is its redemptive 
 power. We may follow men in all their faults and fail- 
 ures down into the depths if only we are not left in the 
 depths, nay if we are led there simply to discover the 
 first far off and unexpected beginnings of a redemptive 
 process, but if there is no redemption and we are left in 
 the mire, nothing has been accomplished and we have de- 
 serted the clean light-filled upper reaches of life in vain. 
 ^ " The Life of Tolstoy," Aylmer Maude, Vol. I, p. 441. 
 
TOLSTOY'S CONFESSIONS 295 
 
 Indeed we are fortunate if we have not so weighed down 
 all the powers by which we rise as to be unable to reach 
 the heights again. Tolstoy's tools have always been apt 
 to turn in hands less strong and sure than his. Realism 
 has, for a generation now, been widening into unex- 
 pected quarters and has given an unhappy quality to 
 much contemporaneous literature. Men, and women 
 too, have learned from the great Russian to describe the 
 unlovely, discuss the disagreeable, deal with the stained 
 and set their little stage with figures moved by false and 
 unholy desires whom, having created, they have not 
 been able to redeem. More unhappily, still others seem 
 to love the dissecting room and the sewer ; they dwell 
 upon the morbid and the unrighteous with perverted 
 imaginations which exalt that which ought to be debased 
 and debase that which ought to be exalted. I wonder, 
 said Lowell in substance speaking of just these aspects of 
 our literature, why men go down into the cellar to live 
 when they might dwell in those fair upper chambers 
 whose windows look towards the sunrise of the resurrec- 
 tion. Tolstoy was saved all this by the persistent re- 
 fusal of his soul to dwell in the cellar, by the passion for 
 the upper chamber and its windows of vision which held 
 him steadily to the end. 
 
 In fighting, writing and hunting Tolstoy's three years 
 in the Caucasus spent themselves. He came back home 
 at the beginning of the Russo-Turkish war and since he 
 had not become a commissioned officer he was ordered 
 immediately to the army of the Danube. In the cam- 
 paign which followed he shared first-hand the manifold 
 experiences of a great European war. We owe a vast 
 deal to these experiences. Tolstoy made war upon war 
 unceasingly, without pity, and without qualification ; he 
 
296 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 neither gave nor accepted quarter. His own military ex- 
 periences put powerful weapons into his hands ; he had 
 seen the thing about which he wrote. He stripped war 
 bare of all the garmenture of glamour with which the 
 imaginations of men have, since the beginning of time, 
 clothed it and showed it naked in its besieged trenches 
 or upon the death-strewn fields of victory or defeat. It 
 is something more than a coincidence that we owe to a 
 Russian writer as we owe to a great Russian painter — 
 Verestchagin — pictures of battle-fields terrible in their 
 searching veracity. Very likely Tolstoy has left out 
 something here as in so many other regions ; a battle- 
 field is not all death and grizzly terror. Battle-fields have 
 also been the home of great devotions, radiant revela- 
 tions of courage and a passion and willingness to submit 
 loyalties and convictions to the last supreme arbitrament 
 which have lifted men above their clay and made death- 
 less the places where they have dared to die. Tolstoy 
 does not greatly dwell upon all this : his hatred of the 
 whole unreasonable and unveracious way of deciding 
 questions which might otherwise be decided blinded him 
 to everything except the cost, the tragedy and the un- 
 reasonableness of it all. You have only to put side by 
 side Tennyson's poem " The Charge of the Five Hun- 
 dred " and Tolstoy's merciless descriptions of the siege of 
 Sebastopol to see at once the elemental difference in their 
 points of view. The poet was never nearer a battle-field 
 than to dream in English meadows, ripe with an immemo- 
 rial peace, though truly he saw some things to which the 
 smoke of the batteries of the Fourth Bastion blinded 
 Tolstoy. We need to stand far back from the play of 
 life's elemental forces to discern their meaning as we 
 need to be very close to them to appreciate their cost. 
 
TOLSTOY'S CONFESSIONS 297 
 
 The first of his war sketches commended itself to the 
 whole Russian people and one of the unexpected results 
 of it was an order from the Czar, Alexander II, 
 " to take care of the life of that young man." He was 
 removed from Sebastopol and assigned to a less dangerous 
 service. When the full consequences of his portrayal of 
 war began to be made evident in later articles the pen of 
 the Russian censor bore heavily upon them and Tolstoy's 
 hope of military promotion was effectually ended. The 
 suspicion that he had a good deal to do with certain slangy 
 topical songs much thought of in the army, in which the 
 whole Russian conduct of the campaign was dealt with 
 most irreverently, deepened the disfavour in which he was 
 held in high military quarters. 
 
 At the end of the war he visited Europe for the first 
 time. The isolation of Russia even so late as the middle 
 of the last century is indicated in such a statement ; when 
 a Russian travelled towards the west he went from Russia 
 to Europe. He sums up his Parisian experiences almost 
 in a sentence. The memory of Paris which dwelt with 
 him longest was the memory of an execution which he 
 saw, the vision of which came up years after to reenforce 
 his moral judgments and lend graphic power to his indict- 
 ment of modern society. He was, nevertheless, in- 
 fluenced in a multitude of ways by the freer culture of 
 France and Germany. His experiences made him more 
 completely a citizen of the world. 
 
 After the death of his brother, Nicholas, he returned to 
 Russia and to his country estate. He was for a little 
 while " arbitrator of the peace," umpire, that is, between 
 the landlords and the serfs in all the endless adjustments 
 which the new policy of emancipation demanded. 
 Tolstoy's mind was really judicial in its higher regions, 
 
298 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 but his dealing with details was never satisfactory and 
 one is not surprised to learn that he presently resigned 
 to his own satisfaction certainly, and to the satisfaction 
 of the landlords without much doubt. He now began 
 certain interesting experiences in education with the 
 peasant children. He really anticipated the Montessori 
 methods and secured unexpected results by allowing free 
 play to the boys and girls whom he led. He was always 
 impatient of discipline, always trusted everything to the 
 individual, and his educational experiences, we must 
 confess, justified this faith. His lack of discipline 
 would have driven a trained schoolmaster wild, 
 but the response of the children was such as any 
 schoolmaster would be happy to secure. There are no 
 more delightful pages in Tolstoy's life than the chapters 
 which picture his free and stimulating comradeship with 
 the children of the Russian peasants, and which, 
 incidentally, give us also a vivid portrayal of many of 
 the conditions of peasant life. 
 
 Here, as in other dealings with the Russian peasantry, 
 Tolstoy discovered the unsuspected powers of narration 
 which the peasant often possesses. More than once he 
 found them retelling the stories which he had told them 
 with a vivid effectiveness beyond his own compass, and 
 more than once he gave these same stories to the world 
 in the form which the peasants themselves had suggested. 
 All this throws an unexpected light upon the processes 
 by which folk stories are fashioned and helps us to under- 
 stand how such tales, handed on from generation to 
 generation, shaped by the accretions of numberless 
 retellings, finally attain a perfection of form combined 
 with a directness of statement which puts them in a class 
 apart. Tolstoy found Russian literature sadly wanting 
 
TOLSTOY'S CONFESSIONS 299 
 
 in proper material for children's readers and he began a 
 series of primary text-books in literature which have 
 become part of the permanent possession of the Russian 
 people and which are, even now, being issued in cheap 
 editions and by the hundred thousand. He also wrote 
 articles on education, revolutionary as is most of his work, 
 grudgingly received in Russia as most of his work has 
 been, but anticipating, at the same time, much which has 
 become the commonplace of modern educational methods. 
 
 On the twenty-third of September, 1862, Tolstoy was 
 married to Sophia Behrs. True to his revolutionary soul, 
 which never permitted him to follow the more travelled 
 paths, Tolstoy proposed to the woman who was to become 
 his wife by writing the initial letters of certain sentences 
 upon cards, so challenging the young woman to read his 
 thoughts rather than his words. She did just that with 
 an insight which bears more than a negligible testimony 
 to mutual intimacies of feeling. Before their marriage 
 Tolstoy gave to Miss Behrs his diary, in which the moral 
 derelictions of years, searching and unhappy self-judg- 
 ments and the record of unassuaged discontents, were 
 woven into such a body of self-confession and self-estimate 
 as few young women have been asked to read upon tlie 
 eve of their marriage. It cost her a sleepless night and 
 she stained its pages with her tears, but she gave it back 
 to him and forgave the past. Tolstoy made confession, 
 received the eucharist and was married according to the 
 rites of the Greek Church. 
 
 One may anticipate here much which should be con- 
 sidered later by saying that Tolstoy could have chosen 
 no worthier woman. Having chosen her he called upon 
 her to bear heavy burdens. She became the mother of 
 many children and as the travail of Tolstoy's soul grew 
 
300 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 more intense her life was often lonely and she found her- 
 self sadly perplexed. At the time of his greatest spiritual 
 stress Tolstoy ignored every interest in life except the 
 concern of his own soul and there are few more moving 
 passages in modern biography than the story of the day 
 in which Tolstoy, in his intensity of spiritual labour, turned 
 his back upon his wife then in labour with one of their 
 daughters and went out of the house uncertain whether 
 he should ever return. But there are always reconcilia- 
 tions and one feels that although the Countess was called 
 upon to drink such bitter waters as the wives of geniuses 
 have almost always been called upon to taste, their 
 marriage, none the less, was truly happy and where it 
 failed in happiness was fruitful in blessedness. In all 
 likelihood she brought more to Tolstoy than he brought 
 to her and we have no right to forget the woman who, 
 with a brave, fine spirit, endured and reenforced and 
 served him through many troubled years. 
 
 She became, in the end, his publisher, looked after his 
 copyrights and secured for the Tolstoy children some of 
 the fruits of their father's literary toil. For years Tol- 
 stoy's copyrights and translations were in a welter of 
 confusion. A very great deal which he wrote — sub- 
 stantially the whole body of his later writing — was never 
 allowed to be published in Russia. His books were pub- 
 lished as might be in Western Europe, but he took no 
 pains to secure competent translators or to assign the 
 rights of translation to dependable publishing houses. 
 As a result his works were badly translated, badly pub- 
 lished and it is only very recently that we have begun to 
 get dependable translations of his writings. He received, 
 at the best, only a fraction of the financial returns to 
 which, under ordinary circumstances, he would have been 
 
TOLSTOY'S CONFESSIONS 301 
 
 entitled, though that fraction was so large as probably to 
 have saved his family from really sore need, secured the 
 education of his children and maintained the expensive 
 establishments which the Countess kept up at Yasnaya 
 Polyana and Moscow, and all this was more largely due 
 to the Countess than any one else. 
 
 About the time of his marriage, a little before or after, 
 Tolstoy secured large holdings of land in western Russia; 
 these holdings increased greatly in value although they 
 were always administered in a hit or miss kind of fashion. 
 When Tolstoy was minded to give attention to earthly 
 affairs he had really a large, sound business sense, but he 
 was hopeless and helpless in the matter of detail and ad- 
 ministration. This practical helplessness coloured his so- 
 cial judgments and makes him an ill guide to follow in 
 all his more positive proposals for social regeneration. 
 Very likely the roots of it all are temperamental ; Tol- 
 stoy was temperamentally an anarchist, in the philosoph- 
 ical sense, that is. He trusted everything to the individual, 
 constantly underestimated the necessity and value of 
 common action, hated government, though there is reason 
 enough for that (all Russia would hate government, one 
 would think), and trusted to individual initiative for re- 
 sults which individual initiative is totally unable to secure. 
 Tolstoy's anarchy broke down in the administration of 
 his own affairs ; they were saved again and again by the 
 practical sense of his wife. They would have broken 
 down so much the more certainly and tragically in a 
 larger administration of the affairs of the world. All 
 this is to anticipate, for much which is here dismissed did 
 not develop until later. 
 
 Between his marriage and his rebirth Tolstoy published 
 his greatest novels : " Anna Karenina " and " War and 
 
302 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 Peace." These stories effectually established his place in 
 literature ; had he done nothing else he would still re- 
 main one of the greatest novelists, not only of the nine- 
 teenth century, but of all time. His novels are some- 
 thing more than novels ; they are sections of human life, 
 slow in movement, vast in their inclusiveness. •* War and 
 Peace " is really a picture of Russian society from Auster- 
 litz to the overthrow of Napoleon. So many characters 
 move across its pages that they are difficult to follow and 
 one loses again and again the movement of the story in 
 its amplification. He writes as a hater of war, the re- 
 vealer of the deep forces which make and remake the na- 
 tions. His Napoleon is a blind puppet, an almost pitiful 
 figure who has invoked powers which he cannot control, 
 riding helplessly upon the wings of the storm which he 
 has raised until those wings fail him and he is dashed to 
 the ground. The Russian peasant fighting for his father- 
 land is, in Tolstoy's conception, mightier than the em- 
 peror. Napoleon is an accident ; the forces which de- 
 feat him are elemental. 
 
 During all these years Tolstoy's life was eager, mani- 
 fold in its activities and successful. Child after child is 
 born to him, his station is assured, his literary creativity 
 apparently inexhaustible, but beneath the surface strange 
 forces were at work, signs of which had never been 
 wanting. His higher or deeper self, as one will, had 
 always sat in judgment upon the self of pleasure and ac- 
 tivity. He found no peace in activities and relationships 
 which most men would have judged most fruitful and 
 satisfying, and while he wore himself out in manifold ac- 
 tivities his soul still followed the gleam. Everything con- 
 spired to drive him on. The Russia of the seventies 
 and eighties was stirred to its depths. All the past of 
 
TOLSTOY'S CONFESSIONS 303 
 
 Russian history had conspired to give to the Russian 
 government its arbitrary and autocratic form. The 
 people had no voice in the control of their affairs ; the 
 state was ridden by a bureaucracy while beneath all the 
 show of imperial magnificence was the welter of a people 
 sunk deep in economic misery and the spiritual stir of a 
 race which has always married to its sterner and more 
 brutal qualities vast devotions, great tendernesses and an 
 endless capacity for dreaming dreams and seeing visions. 
 Such a condition could not forever endure. Almost 
 everything in contemporaneous Russian life challenged 
 every earnest and clear thinking man and burdened him 
 with a sense of the utter inadequacy of the order of 
 which he was a part. Tolstoy was not only the citizen 
 of a state even then beginning to be tortured by the con- 
 sciousness of dual tendencies, but he himself was a dual 
 nature. "Already in 1875 Mihaylovsky had published a 
 remarkable series of articles on * The Right and Left Hand 
 of Count Tolstoy,' in which he pointed out that that 
 author's works reveal the clash of contrary ideals and 
 tendencies in the writer's soul, and that especially his 
 educational articles contain ideals quite in conflict with 
 certain tendencies noticeable in * War and Peace.' With 
 remarkable prevision Mihaylovsky predicted an inevitable 
 crisis in Tolstoy's life and added : One asks oneself what 
 such a man is to do, and how he is to hve? . . . I think 
 an ordinary man in such a position would end by suicide 
 or drunkenness ; but a man of worth will seek for other 
 issues — and of these there are several." * 
 
 These then were the forces which drove Tolstoy 
 remorselessly on : an exterior world in which no right- 
 thinking man had any right to be content; an interior 
 * ••The Life of Tolstoy," Aylmer Maude, Vol. I, p. 395. 
 
304 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 world which had not yet organized itself in either peace 
 or power upon the high levels to which his better self was 
 always urging him. We see directly how the great human 
 experiences constantly repeat themselves. Tolstoy's feet 
 are already set — had indeed long been set — upon the way 
 of the mystics. He was now about to enter the stage of 
 purgation. Temperamental forces, of course, are here 
 much in evidence ; nowhere do men differ so widely as 
 in their attitudes towards the complex elements which 
 enter into their lives. Multitudes of men are always and 
 unquestionably content to dwell upon the lower levels ; 
 they surrender without protest their high estate, live and 
 die, seemingly without travail or inner protest, upon levels 
 which are far, far short of the best. A good many men 
 seem able to maintain themselves upon the conventional 
 levels " of reason, order, decency and use " ; still others are 
 gradually pushed from such respectable stations down all 
 the passes of that weary road which leads to darkness. 
 From time to time we are vouchsafed the vision of those 
 who seem born citizens of the highest ; they do not strive 
 nor cry aloud ; their voice is not heard in the streets ; they 
 simply come home, quietly, directly, with no conflict 
 which other men at least may discern, to the high habita- 
 tions of the soul. They mount up with wings as eagles 
 and where we falter through the shadows they pass in 
 radiant certitudes. But there are others still — and all our 
 studies have had to deal with such — who will not sur- 
 render to the lowest and who cannot attain the highest 
 except in sore agonies of spiritual endeavour. Intima- 
 tions are not wanting even in Tolstoy's earliest self- 
 revelation of such a sore conflict and yet he would have 
 been a rare prophet who could have anticipated at the 
 time of Tolstoy's marriage, or even a decade later, the 
 
TOLSTOY'S CONFESSIONS 305 
 
 forms which that conflict were to take, the bitter intensity 
 of it, its wearied duration and its outcome. When the 
 time came he laid bare his soul in his " Confession " and 
 there we may trace it all, step by step. 
 
 He writes, as has already been said, with the utmost 
 restraint, with a Doric simplicity, and yet with passionate 
 intensity. From time to time the subterranean fires break 
 through ; you are always conscious of their presence. The 
 early pages of the '♦ Confession " record the decay of an 
 inherited faith which had really never gripped his soul and 
 is one more chapter in the story of that twilight of the 
 gods whose shadow has fallen deeply across so many men 
 and women in the last two generations, whose recital 
 lends haunting melancholy to wide reaches of contempo- 
 raneous literature. Like all his comrades, Tolstoy's 
 " cradle faith " died of inanition. *' Thus, now as then, the 
 religious teaching, which is accepted through confidence 
 and is supported through external pressure, slowly melts 
 under the influence of knowledge and the experiences 
 of life, which are contrary to the religious teaching, and 
 a man frequently goes on imagining that the religious 
 teaching with which he has been imbued in childhood is 
 in full force in him, whereas there is not even a trace left 
 of it." * It is a bitter day when a man comes to bear 
 his weight upon inherited convictions and finds they will 
 not support him. 
 
 He tells of his friends' experiences, for example: 
 
 " S , an intelligent and truthful man, told me how he 
 
 came to stop believing. When he was twent}'-six years 
 old he once at a night's rest during the chase followed 
 his old habit, acquired in his childhood, and stood up to 
 pray. His elder brother, who took part in the cha?e, was 
 *<'My Confession," Tolstoy, Beacon Edition, p. 5. 
 
306 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 lying on the hay and looking at him. When S got 
 
 through and was about to lie down, he said to him : 
 * So you are still doing these things ? * That was all that 
 
 was said. And S that very day quit praying and 
 
 attending church. Thirty years have passed since he 
 stopped praying, receiving the communion, and going to 
 church. Not that he knew the convictions of his brother 
 and had joined them, not that he had decided on any- 
 thing in his mind, but only because the sentence which 
 his brother had uttered was like the pressure exerted 
 with a finger against a wall which was ready to fall of its 
 own weight; the sentence was merely an indication that 
 where he thought there was faith there had long been a 
 vacant spot, and that, therefore, the words which he 
 spoke and the signs of the cross and the obeisances which 
 he made during his praying were quite meaningless 
 actions. Since he had come to recognize their meaning- 
 lessness, he could not keep them up any longer." * 
 
 With nothing to sustain him except a passion for per- 
 fection unrelated to transforming and redeeming powers, 
 Tolstoy entered, he tells us, upon bitter and sterile years. 
 *' I cannot recall those years without dread, loathing, and 
 anguish of heart. I killed people in war and challenged 
 to duels to kill ; I lost money at cards, wasting the labour 
 of the peasants, . . . Lying, stealing, acts of lust of 
 every description, drunkenness, violence, murder — there 
 was not a crime which I did not commit, and for all that 
 I was praised, and my contemporaries have regarded me 
 as a comparatively moral man." ' 
 
 He found nothing in the standards and ideals of his 
 contemporaries either to correct or inspire him ; they 
 were all alike wanting in any real vision of the meaning 
 
 * " My Confession," Tolstoy, Beacon Edition, pp. 5, 6. ' Ibid.^ p. 8. 
 
TOLSTOY'S CONFESSIONS 307 
 
 of life. Literary activities brought him no release ; his 
 stars were blotted out and the deep weariness of life 
 weighed increasingly upon him. Life had lost its mean- 
 ings, its compulsions, its justifications. The question 
 " why " hung like a portent across all his horizons. 
 «* The truth was that life was meaningless. It was as 
 though I had just been living and walking along, and 
 had come to an abyss, where I saw clearly that there was 
 nothing ahead but perdition. And it was impossible to 
 stop and go back, and impossible to shut my eyes, in 
 order that I might not see that there was nothing ahead 
 but suffering and imminent death, — complete annihila- 
 tion.'" 
 
 He found a strange and vivid commentary upon his 
 situation in the Eastern story about the traveller who, in 
 the steppe, was overtaken by an infuriated beast. " Trx- 
 ing to save himself from the animal, the traveller jumps 
 into a waterless well, but at its bottom he sees a dragon 
 who opens his jaws in order to swallow him. And the 
 unfortunate man does not dare climb out, lest he perish 
 from the infuriated beast, and does not dare jump down 
 to the bottom of the well, lest he be devoured by the 
 dragon, and so clutches the twig of a wild bush growing 
 in a cleft of the well and holds on to it. His hands grow 
 weak and he feels that soon he shall have to surrender to 
 the peril which awaits him at either side ; but he still 
 holds on and sees two mice, one white, the other black, 
 in even measure making a circle around tlie main trunk 
 of the bush to which he is clinging, and nibbling at it on 
 all sides. Now, at any moment, the bush will break and 
 tear off, and he will fall into the dragon's jaws. The 
 traveller sees that and knows that he will inevitably 
 *" My Confession," Tolstoy, Beacon Edition, p. 19. 
 
3o8 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 perish ; but while he is still clinging, he sees some drops 
 of honey hanging on the leaves of the bush, and so 
 reaches out for them with his tongue and licks the leaves. 
 Just so I hold on to the branch of life, knowing that the 
 dragon of death is waiting inevitably for me, ready to 
 tear me to pieces, and I cannot understand why I have 
 fallen on such suffering. And I try to lick that honey 
 which used to give me pleasure ; but now it no longer 
 gives me joy, and the white and the black mouse day and 
 night nibble at the branch to which I am holding on. 
 I clearly see the dragon, and the honey is no longer 
 sweet to me. I see only the inevitable dragon and the 
 mice, and am unable to turn my glance away from them. 
 That is not a fable but a veritable, indisputable, compre- 
 hensible truth." * 
 
 Such a tragic impotence is never wanting — at a cen- 
 tral stage — in the lives of men upon whom the quest 
 lays its searching touch. Many men have also stood 
 upon what Hutton calls '• the last shelf of things, looking 
 out into the blankness." Listen to Arthur Christopher 
 Benson, whose serene meditations, sent out volume after 
 volume from the quiet cloisters of Cambridge or from 
 that sequestered grange upon which the towers of Ely 
 look down and up to whose very garden walls the or- 
 chards come with their colour and their perfume, seem as 
 far removed from the tragedies of the soul as college 
 gardens from the habitations of Begbie's " Twice Born 
 Men." None the less he, also, came to the end of the 
 road. " I seemed to myself like a man who has wan- 
 dered heedlessly along the rocks of some iron-bound 
 coast, with the precipices above him on one hand and 
 the sullen sea on the other hand. I had reached, as it 
 1 '« My Confession," Tolstoy, Beacon Edition, pp. 21, 22. 
 
TOLSTOY'S CONFESSIONS 309 
 
 were, a ledge, from which advance and retreat seemed 
 equally impossible ; the cliff overhead, with its black and 
 dripping crags, was too steep to climb, and I seemed 
 to be waiting for the onrush of some huge and silent 
 billow from the bitter surge beneath. I was at bay at 
 last, helpless and hopeless." ' When a man stands on 
 ** the last shelf of things," driven from behind, there is 
 only one of two things to do ; to fling oneself out either 
 for life or for death. 
 
 Tolstoy seriously contemplated suicide and his biogra- 
 phers delight to show us just the beam between the book 
 shelves in the library where he meditated hanging him- 
 self. " And it was then that I, a man favoured by for- 
 tune, hid a cord from myself, lest I should hang myself 
 from the crosspiece of the partition in my room, where 
 I undressed alone every evening ; and I ceased to go out 
 shooting with a gun, lest I should be tempted by so easy 
 a way of ending my life. I did not myself know what I 
 wanted : I feared life, desired to escape from it, yet still 
 hoped something of it." * All this while he was not yet 
 fifty, happily married, a man of large fortune and inter- 
 national fame. But Tolstoy's hands were holden by the 
 very intensity of those forces which hold us fast to life 
 and, since he could not choose to die, he must learn to 
 live. 
 
 Well, there is this one thing in it all : if a man stands 
 on " the last shelf of things " and throws himself out on 
 life life will bear him up and life has its own compensa- 
 tions, its own mystical and unfailing reenforcements. 
 We are always being taught this. From time to time in 
 the regions of speculation men have stripped themselves 
 
 » "Thy Rod and Thy Staff," Arthur Christopher Benson, pp. 6i, 62. 
 « " The Life of Tolstoy," Aylmer Maude, Vol. I, p. 402. 
 
310 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 as bare of certainties as Tolstoy and his kind have been 
 stripped bare of peace and power, and always, when doubt 
 and skepticism have led them to the brink of abysses of 
 negation and their last support is about to disappear, 
 they have saved themselves by cramping their slipping 
 feet against some ledge of reahty and therefrom pain- 
 fully climbing towards the table-lands, accepting what life 
 offers and rebuilding laboriously, but with a new and un- 
 faihng sense of security and power, the houses of their 
 habitation, the temples of their worship. Curiously 
 enough when such houses and temples are finished they 
 are very like those from which they had moved out, but 
 always with this difference : their foundations have been 
 reestablished in those certainties beyond which we cannot 
 pass and deeper than which we cannot delve. Surely 
 this is the first stage in the new birth: to begin again 
 with nothing at all except life itself. It is worth while 
 at any cost to go down to the foundations of things. We 
 who do not so dare or are not so driven are at least in 
 debt to the men who have sounded the shadows and who 
 come back to testify to us that the " foundation of God 
 standeth sure," To be sure those who make this dis- 
 covery do not always directly discover that it is the foun- 
 dation of God. That comes later as the light begins to 
 rise. 
 
 Tolstoy, then, came in his agony to the place where he 
 really had to choose between death and life : he chose 
 life and set out to find its meanings. Then he found di- 
 rectly, as we all find, that as the day so shall our strength 
 be. Life offered him enough to go on with and the 
 further he went the stronger and more wonderful it be- 
 came. He sought the guidance of all sorts and condi- 
 tions of men ; he asked many questions of the leaders of 
 
TOLSTOY'S CONFESSIONS 311 
 
 the Greek Church. He consorted with peasants and 
 sought their point of view who see hfe most simply and 
 elementally unconfused by learning, possessions or re- 
 sponsibility ; and he found, he confesses, most help from 
 those who approach life most simply and bravely. He 
 got no help from those dreamers whose final verdict is 
 " vanity of vanities ; all is vanity." They were wanting, 
 we see clearly enough and he felt clearly enough, in the 
 very first condition of escape : and that is the will to 
 live. Life will not yield its meanings to those who de- 
 spair of understanding them. When Christian was locked 
 up with Hopeful in Doubting Castle he discovered one 
 day that he was a fool so to lie in a stinking dungeon 
 when he might as well have been walking at liberty, for 
 he had all the while a key in his bosom which would 
 open any lock in Doubting Castle. He called that the 
 key of promise. We may call it, if we will, the key of 
 confidence and action, for confidence and action are the 
 ward and slot of the key to all the meanings of life. Mr. 
 William James and his school have rendered us no greater 
 service than in justifying on psychological grounds the 
 ancient enthusiasms of the soul ; they have shown us that 
 desire does not follow but leads in the master enterprises 
 of life and that will is a creative force giving quality and 
 solidity to all our experiences. So many men to whom 
 the generations have looked for guidance, asking bread 
 only to be given a stone, have failed just here : they have 
 really been wanting in the will to live and have spread 
 abroad a contagious paralysis which is responsible for an 
 unbelievable body of confusion and despair. 
 
 Tolstoy also examined and immediately discarded 
 three or four ways by which he found men and women 
 about him trying to escape. He would have nothing to 
 
312 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 do with the way of ignorance or self-indulgence or weak- 
 ness. He found some help in what he calls the way out 
 through force and energy. '♦ I saw that this was the 
 worthiest way and I wanted to act in that way." But 
 force and energy may make our life more difficult than 
 ever if they are not constantly sustained by the inflood- 
 ing of an energy which supplements our weakness and 
 knows no ebbing tides. Above all, if force and energy 
 do not act in the right direction and along an open road, 
 they are likely in the end to dash us against a wall. 
 
 So, having determined to live, Tolstoy sought next the 
 right way in which to live and the secret of unfailing 
 power. He found the secret of unfailing power where 
 men have always found it : in God. His search for God 
 carries us into regions which no confession heretofore 
 considered has occupied — the region of intellectual doubt. 
 It goes without saying that this is a modern note which 
 has come into the quest. The strife of St. Augustine, 
 St. Paul and John Bunyan is the strife of the divided 
 purpose ; they found it hard enough to completely sur- 
 render their lives to the will of God, but they never 
 doubted His existence. Tolstoy grappled with his doubts. 
 " He would not make his judgment blind." How far, 
 in the end, he completely resolved his doubts or in what 
 conceptions of God he finally rested it is not easy to say. 
 As far as one may read between the lines of his con- 
 fession his apprehensions of God were emotional rather 
 than intellectual ; his path the mystic's rather than 
 the high and austere road of reason. His confidence in 
 God is born of satisfied need. " I need,'* he said, " only 
 to be aware of God to live ; I need only to forget Him or 
 disbelieve in Him, and I die. . . . ' What more do 
 you seek ! ' exclaimed a voice within me. * This is He. 
 
TOLSTOY'S CONFESSIONS 313 
 
 He is that without which one cannot hve. To know 
 God and to Hve is one and the same thing. God is hfe. 
 Live seeking God and then you will not live without 
 God.' And more than ever before, all within me and 
 around me ht up, and the light did not again abandon 
 me." ' 
 
 Having so discovered God and resolved his doubts by 
 experience rather than by reasoning processes he saw faith 
 in a new light. For a little, indeed, he accepted with a 
 childlike simplicity the offices of the Greek Church. 
 " And strange as much of it was to me, I accepted every- 
 thing; and attended the services, knelt morning and 
 evening in prayer, fasted and prepared to receive the 
 eucharist ; and at first my reason did not resist anything. 
 What had formerly seemed to be impossible did not now 
 evoke in me any resistance." ^ This could not long con- 
 tinue, but it enabled Tolstoy to gain a deeper and more 
 inclusive vision of the meaning of faith and worship. 
 " I told myself that the essence of every faith consists in 
 its giving life a meaning which death does not destroy." 
 This really marvellous definition, a little amplified, 
 comes more nearly to the heart of the problem, which 
 emerges now in one aspect, now in another, in all the 
 literature of confession and travail, than in any other 
 sentence in all such literature, save the great word of St. 
 Augustine, so often herein quoted : " Thou hast made us 
 for Thyself, and we are restless till we rest in Thee." 
 Faith not only gives to life a meaning which death does 
 not destroy, but it gives to life a meaning which doubt, 
 fear, perplexity, despondency, the vast incessant chal- 
 lenges of pain, tragedy and loss cannot destroy. It 
 
 * "The Life of Tolstoy," Aylmer Maude, Vol. I, pp. 417, 418. 
 ^ JM(/., p. 419. 
 
314 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 gives to life a meaning which no shadow can permanently 
 darken, no flood overwhelm and no earthquake level to 
 the dust. Faith then is the assumption of truths, re- 
 alities, relationships which make life livable, give us heart 
 to face its demands, introduce into every situation, no 
 matter how perplexing or complex, just the final ele- 
 ments which are necessary to clear it up and make it 
 consonant with the needs of the soul, the demands of 
 justice and the nature of love itself. The supreme affir- 
 mation of all that is deepest within us 
 
 ** That we may lift from out the dust 
 A voice as unto him that hears, 
 A cry above the conquer* d years 
 To one that with us works, and trust, 
 
 ** With faith that comes of self-control, 
 The truths that never can be proved 
 Until we close with all we loved. 
 And all we flow from, soul in soul," * 
 
 is, so Tolstoy found, the indispensable condition of co- 
 herent thought as it is of fruitful action. 
 
 The childlike submission of a man like Tolstoy to the 
 offices and creeds of the Greek Church could not long 
 endure ; there came a time when he deliberately stopped 
 fasting on fast days and disengaged himself, strand by 
 strand, from all the web which that Church weaves about 
 the subjects of the Czar. He was willing that his chil- 
 dren should be married without the sanction of the 
 Church (though they themselves chose differently) ; he 
 asked neither its sacraments nor its absolutions. He 
 was rather bitterly at odds with Pobiedonostzeff, the 
 fiercely reactionary patriarch of the Greek Church, and 
 
 ' " In Memoriam," CXXXI. Tennyson. 
 
TOLSTOY'S CONFESSIONS 315 
 
 he has spoken upon occasion as bitterly of the Church 
 as any one would care to speak. All the temper of the 
 man drove him ultimately in another direction. He 
 examined, one by one, the articles of the historical 
 creeds and, one by one, he discarded them. He familiar- 
 ized himself with the original tongues of the Old and 
 New Testament that he might search out the heart of 
 their meanings. He dropped entirely during this period 
 all literary creation, gave himself entirely to the study 
 of religion and theological problems, grew suddenly old 
 and deep lined in face, white haired, with sad deep eyes 
 and flowing white beard. He became, in outward form, 
 brother to all the prophets since the morning of time. 
 Surely it is a testimony to the dominance of the spirit to 
 which we ought not to shut our eyes that men separated 
 by all the reaches of nationalities, civilizations and the 
 unresting years do, nevertheless, under the stress of the 
 same experiences conform to type in body, mind and 
 soul. 
 
 It is not easy to say how far Tolstoy's theological 
 studies have greatly served any one but the man who 
 made them. He took liberties with the New Testament, 
 he himself confesses, in his translations and, on the whole, 
 all which he sought to do in the region of scholarship 
 has been better done by men who were better fitted to 
 do it. The whole thing was a necessary stage in Tol- 
 stoy's own spiritual endeavour. He found his own peace 
 more and more in utter simplification of his life. He 
 sought guidance from all sorts and conditions of people, 
 as has been said, but he found most light in those who 
 worked with their hands and lived nearest the earth. 
 He began to take the teachings of Jesus literally; all his 
 instincts and the whole driving force of his temperament 
 
3i6 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 made it easy for him to do this. He dwelt much upon 
 the five central commandments of Christ as the great 
 guiding rules for a Christian. The first, " Do not be 
 angry." The second, " Do not give way to evil desire." 
 The third, *♦ Do not forswear thyself; do not, that is, give 
 away the control of your future actions." The fourth, 
 " Resist not him that is evil." The fifth, " Love your 
 enemies." How far Tolstoy was right in his interpreta- 
 tions of Jesus' teaching is not here in discussion. The 
 wisest and most sincere of men equally desirous of peace 
 and the triumph of the Kingdom differ radically as to the 
 practicability of non-resistance. Tolstoy was a spiritual 
 anarchist and the solution of all moral problems in terms 
 of the simple exercise of individualism was as natural to 
 him as the course of a river to the sea. He immediately 
 began, however, to give these fundamental teachings of 
 Jesus, as he conceived them, the right of way in his own 
 life, sought to live simply, work with his hands and support 
 himself by that same labour, and to undo and remake all 
 the world about him in order that the expectations of the 
 sons of God might become real. 
 
 If we could stop here there would be Httle to add ex- 
 cept that one of the most distinguished figures in our 
 modern life chose to accept the words of Jesus with sweep- 
 ing literalness and to live them out with searching fidelity 
 and that, moreover, in doing all this the very station and 
 quality of the man combined to give his spiritual en- 
 deavour a picturesque and dramatic quality which made 
 it carry far. We might then discuss the real significance 
 of it and close this chapter, and we should still be in as much 
 doubt as when we began whether Tolstoy's contribution 
 to the problem of life had largely contributed towards its 
 solution. But just here an unexpected thing began to 
 
TOLSTOY'S CONFESSIONS 317 
 
 happen ; very likely it ought not to be called unexpected, 
 for intimations of it had not been wanting in Tolstoy's 
 earlier experiences, and yet one may reasonably contend 
 that even Tolstoy himself could not have clearly foreseen 
 where he was going to be carried. In proportion as he 
 simplified his own life, grew careless of externalities, stood 
 one side from the pleasures and occupations of his class 
 and station, he began to see the world with new eyes and 
 a sense of its inequalities, follies and miseries came upon 
 him like a tide. It has always been so ; no man has ever 
 come down to elemental things, shaken himself clear of 
 the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches, 
 sought to test life by searching standards and stored his 
 treasures in the treasure houses of the Kingdom, who has 
 not come to see the tremendous masses of social injustice 
 and misery clear against his sky. Tolstoy must always 
 have been uneasily conscious of the social inequalities, 
 the injustices of his world, but he comes now to the place 
 where he can see nothing else. The scales have dropped 
 from his eyes. He became a brother to Amos and Micah, 
 John the Baptist, St. Francis of Assisi ; he became the 
 comrade of the judges of human delinquencies, the 
 dreamers of a happier world. He saw what none of the 
 men whom we have heretofore considered has seen, felt 
 that to which they had been strangely insensible; he saw 
 that salvation is no mere individual concern — men can 
 never be at peace as long as their neighbours are in sor- 
 row, or perfectly attain their own salvation while the bitter 
 cry of an unsaved world forever rises towards the stars. 
 
 All this makes it impossible to say whether Tolstoy's 
 road is the road to real peace, for directly he began to 
 travel it it led him into the very heart of the fellowship 
 of the wounded and forcrotten. Before he was done with 
 
3i8 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 saving his own soul the problem of salvation had so 
 widened as to throw him into the swift current of a deeper 
 river to battle once more for the shore. He saw the Rus- 
 sian world divided into two parts : on the one side the 
 rich and the comfortable, on the other side the unbe- 
 lievably poor and degraded, and he saw the rich and the 
 comfortable feasting like Dives with Lazarus lying at his 
 gate and strangely untroubled by the misery which they 
 had but to open their eyes to see. The whole situation 
 became for him directly impossible and his sense of the 
 impossibility of it all is perhaps, when everything is said 
 and done, his greatest contribution to the hope of the 
 Kingdom. In a paragraph of such vividness as only 
 Tolstoy could compass he simply opens to their very 
 roots two outstanding convictions which never failed him, 
 about which he never wavered and in defense of which 
 he lifted up his voice until that voice was forever stilled, 
 although indeed it is not hkely, the world being what it is 
 and life being what it is, that a voice so lifted can ever be 
 stilled. 
 
 " Thirty years ago in Paris, I once saw how, in the 
 presence of thousands of spectators, they cut a man's head 
 off with a guillotine. I knew he was a dreadful criminal ; 
 I knew all the arguments that have been written in 
 defense of that kind of action, and I knew it was done 
 deliberately and intentionally ; but at the moment the head 
 and body separated and fell into the box, I gasped and 
 realized not with my mind, but with my heart and my 
 whole being, that all the arguments in defense of capital 
 punishment are wicked nonsense, and that however many 
 people may combine to commit murder — the worst of all 
 crimes — and whatever they may call themselves, murder 
 remains murder, and that a crime had been committed be- 
 
TOLSTOY'S CONFESSIONS 319 
 
 fore my eyes ; and I, by my presence and non-interven- 
 tion, had approved and shared in it. In the same way 
 now, at the sight of the hunger, cold and degradation of 
 thousands of people, I understand not only with my mind 
 or heart, but with my whole being, that the existence of 
 tens of thousands of such people in Moscow — while I and 
 thousands of others overeat ourselves with beefsteaks and 
 sturgeon, and cover our horses and floors with cloth or 
 carpets — no matter what all the learned men in the world 
 may say about its necessity, is a crime, and one not com- 
 mitted once, but constantly ; and that I with my luxury 
 not merely tolerate it, but share in it." ^ 
 
 We may say what we will in criticism of Tolstoy's 
 economic and social vagaries, we may defend as we will 
 the supposititious necessities of government and society, 
 but we are not likely to get away from these fundamental 
 contentions of the great Russian. They did not begin 
 with him ; they did not cease when his pen fell from his 
 fingers. They are likely, in the end, to have their way 
 with all of us. We know better than Tolstoy what far- 
 reaching reconstitutions of our world and of all the lives 
 of men and women in it are necessary before the day of 
 their sure and untroubled triumph shall have dawned, but 
 we are under the necessity of unweariedly seeking such 
 triumph, nor will all our better hopes come true until love 
 and brotherhood are supreme. 
 
 During all this period Tolstoy was simplifying in every 
 possible way the conduct of his own life. It must al- 
 ways be a question how far such simplification was robbed 
 of its most searching difficulties by the encompassing cir- 
 cumstances of his life. The little room in which he wrote 
 was barren and monastical enough but it was a part of a 
 
 > " The Life of Tolstoy," Aylmer Maude, Vol. II, pp. no, iii. 
 
320 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 very considerable establishment. He wore the costume of 
 a peasant but it has been reported — one does not know 
 how truly — that he wore silken underwear. He did 
 labour with his hand, but his manual labour was only an 
 incident in his social and literary career. He made boots, 
 but his handiwork acquired an excessive value from the 
 very circumstances under which he made them, and 
 his philosophic soul was really troubled because he was 
 always finding out that people were willing to pay very 
 much more than the market price for his handiwork, not 
 because they were good boots but because Leo Tolstoy 
 made them. It was impossible to eliminate a certain 
 theatrical element from the situation which he partly 
 created for himself and which was partly created for him 
 by forces too strong for his control. There is always 
 the temptation to think of Tolstoy as unconsciously a 
 poseur ; very hkely such a conclusion is unjustified, but it 
 is not easy to escape the suggestion of it. 
 
 Certain things, however, undoubtedly came out of 
 Tolstoy's whole course of renunciation. For one thing 
 his health was better, his literary creativeness increased. 
 He suddenly began to look like an old man, but beneath 
 his long gray hair and wrinkled face was a soul whose 
 fires if anything grew more intense, while his body grew 
 tireless, inexhaustible in its vitality. He learned what 
 we are all in sore danger of forgetting : the joy of phys- 
 ical labour. He has written few more compelling pas- 
 sages than the story of the mowing in •* Anna Karenina." 
 We may be sure then that the joy which Levin found in 
 manual labour, the purgation of body, mind and soul 
 which came to him as he kept pace all day long with the 
 mowing peasants, is Tolstoy's own personal testimony. 
 He was sadly wanting in economic vision, but when he 
 
TOLSTOY'S CONFESSIONS 321 
 
 tells us how manual labour sweetens and simplifies life 
 and clarifies the moral vision he is dwelling upon a truth 
 too easily forgotten. 
 
 From the levels to which Tolstoy now ascended, for 
 one must always climb to reach the levels of simplicity 
 and humility, he saw a new world. We have already 
 dwelt much upon the new sense of social inequalities and 
 injustices so fathered. He had always moved much among 
 simple folk ; this now grew upon him. He was unhappy 
 enough in Moscow during the winter and went to the 
 city only for the social and educational advantages of his 
 children. While they were busy about their balls and 
 dinners Tolstoy sounded the depths of the poverty, misery 
 and sin of the holy city of all the Russians. It is not too 
 much to say that here he was almost a pioneer and in 
 proposing to friends who would barely listen to him and, 
 at best, dismissed him with unfulfilled promises, the re- 
 habilitation of the whole submerged population, he was 
 proposing what is now the ideal of every social worker 
 worth the name. He saw clearly and felt still more 
 deeply how complex and interwrought was the web 
 whose black threads were sorrow, poverty, shame, degra- 
 dation and despair. 
 
 Tolstoy's social impulses worked out in three direc- 
 tions : in the conduct of his own life, in what may be 
 called his spiritual economy, and in impulses which he 
 communicated to others. The fruit of it all in the sim- 
 plification of his own life we have already dwelt upon, 
 but he could not rest content with that. He was a born 
 propagandist, even t'louc^h he was impatient of disciple- 
 ship. In the face of the misery and inequalities of Rus- 
 sian society he asked himself the question, What shall 
 we do ? — and answered his own question at length in a 
 
322 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 book so named. He was not always consistent. At 
 certain times in his life he was inconsiderately generous, 
 giving away relatively large sums of money without in- 
 quiry and upon impulse. He did this, for example, in that 
 Moscow winter when he sought to organize Russian so- 
 ciety for the rehabilitation of the underworld of the old 
 city. In the end he came to attach very little value to 
 money and was firmly persuaded that the regeneration of 
 society was to be accomplished by the bestowal of other 
 and more precious gifts. He had the modern science of 
 charity on his side in such contention. It is perfectly evi- 
 dent to us all now that what the submerged really need 
 is redemptive personal contact ; the giving of money is 
 too often an wholly inexpensive escape from situations 
 demanding Hfe and love, fidelity and wisdom. We are not 
 to be permitted so to escape the moral compulsions which 
 are laid upon us. Tolstoy's impatience of such superfi- 
 cial charities led him, however, to strange extremities, as 
 when, for example, he refused to supply his own villagers 
 with spades enough to do the spring planting, stoutly 
 contending that it would be better for them to pass the 
 three spades which they had between them from hand to 
 hand than to have a sufficient supply of those homely 
 tools. The sheer inconvenience of such a situation seems 
 wholly to have escaped him. There is a time for sowing, 
 and even the most friendly village in the world can sow 
 adequately only when there are spades enough to go 
 around. 
 
 He was more than impatient of all organized effort — 
 it never for a moment entered into his scheme of things 
 — nor had he any use for division of labour ; each man 
 must be sufficient unto himself, dividing his day's work 
 into three parts — for one-third of the time he is to dig, 
 
TOLSTOY'S CONFESSIONS 323 
 
 for another third weave, and for another third write about 
 it all. He was quite persuaded that society could be 
 organized on the basis of a Russian village ; the fuller 
 development of the social order seemed to him not only 
 unnecessary but iniquitous. Part of this, of course, was 
 temperamental, part due to the circumstances under 
 which he found himself. There was little in the Russian 
 bureaucracy of Tolstoy's maturer years to commend itself 
 to thoughtful and justice-loving men. No wonder multi- 
 tudes of Russians have reacted against it all. Anarchism 
 and nihilism have rooted themselves in an overgoverned 
 soil, protests both against rigidities, conservatism, intru- 
 sions and arbitrary stupidities which have rendered all 
 government odious in the eyes of those so governed, led 
 them wholly to underestimate the worth of organized 
 effort and to seek to establish the state of their dreams 
 upon wholly inadequate foundations. 
 
 Tolstoy was wanting always in the sense of historic 
 backgrounds ; he did not attach importance enough to 
 the great ordered movements of society nor did he un- 
 derstand the deep solidities of forms and institutions 
 against which his life was a flaming protest. There is 
 nothing, after all, arbitrary or capricious in the forms into 
 which our common life has, of necessity, fallen. What 
 vast intricacies of abuse and maladministration our folly 
 and our fault have woven about the methods and ad- 
 ministrations of our common life is evident to us all, but 
 always to deny these methods and administrations be- 
 cause of such abuses is to throw the baby out with the 
 bath. Morality, we are told, is of the nature of things ; 
 so also is the state and so also, indeed, are the great 
 industrial and social tendencies which we may discern 
 slowly emerging as from troubled waters and beneath 
 
324 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 cloud-filled skies. Tolstoy ignored the witness of his own 
 experiences and the manifold necessities of human life. 
 The individual does not find or fulfill himself except in 
 comradeships ; our world always breaks down in the 
 measure in which we isolate ourselves. Loneliness car- 
 ried to its logical extreme is just nothingness. We do 
 not need to dismiss the state ; we have rather to recall it 
 to forgotten tasks, baptize it into new names, consecrate it 
 to new endeavours. In asking the help of his Moscow 
 friends for the rehabilitation of certain sections of Mos- 
 cow society Tolstoy was anticipating the whole current 
 of modern welfare work. Why could he not have seen 
 that only the whole of society is equal to such an undertak- 
 ing? Those excesses of individualism which have really 
 undone us are not to be cured by more but by less anarchy. 
 The division of labour is an unescapable economy. Our 
 world demands and will increasingly demand specializa- 
 tion and the faults of specialization are to be met not by 
 turning the clock back nor by shattering a machine con- 
 structed at such vast cost and capable of so great service, 
 but by bringing into play new and compensating forces, 
 by a more equitable sharing of burdens, by a more care- 
 ful assignment of men to their work and a greater enrich- 
 ment of all our common life. Such social readjustments 
 are already beginning to be indicated and are to save us 
 all from the consequences of an industrial order whose 
 tendencies towards subdivision of labour are inevitable, 
 but whose tendencies towards the alienation of classes 
 must be combated at any cost. 
 
 Tolstoy's value then, as a social reformer, is to be 
 sought rather in the impulses which he communicated 
 than the methods which he suggested ; we are in debt to 
 him for a passionate humanity, for a persistent courage, 
 
TOLSTOY'S CONFESSIONS 325 
 
 for a kindling fidelity to his own ideals. He was, indeed, 
 saved from the full consequences of what he was urging 
 upon others by the very situations of his own house- 
 hold, but we must recognize behind all the contradictions 
 of Tolstoy's regime a real courage, a patience and consist- 
 ency, an endeavour to simplify and at the same time 
 elevate life which has made the man who lived as a 
 monk, swung the scythe like a peasant, worked with his 
 awl and waxed ends as a cobbler, wrote as only the great 
 masters of all literature may write, repented as St. Peter, 
 and loved in his more tender moments as one to whom 
 much has been forgiven, one of the great forces of a 
 troubled time, a man who swayed the ideals of the 
 dreamers of two continents, and who became himself one 
 of the most tenderly loved of the men of the last two 
 generations. 
 
 Tolstoy's influence communicated itself; it was im- 
 possible, of course, that it should not. Disciples came 
 and went and more than one colony endeavoured to put 
 into active operation the theories of the master. With- 
 out exception such colonies have so far failed. The rope 
 of sand by which they were bound together could not 
 sustain the strain even of the most trivial necessities of 
 daily life. One or two perfectly ridiculous instances illus- 
 trate the helplessness of men who surrender every au- 
 thority and seek to secure no real reincarnation of the 
 authority so surrendered in some larger expression of life. 
 In one of the colonies a neglected boy was adopted. He 
 was first taught that no physical force could be used 
 upon any one, that no true follower of Tolstoy could ap- 
 peal to the courts, and that the possession of property 
 was an obstacle to the life of the soul. Whereupon, 
 having learned his lesson, the boy appropriated the waist- 
 
326 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 coat of the man who had taught him. No logical argu- 
 ment could get the waistcoat off the boy and on the back 
 of its one time possessor. The boy took his stand upon 
 the wrongfulness of property and challenged the unhappy 
 advocates of non-resistance to get the waistcoat back 
 again. They might indeed have recaptured it while the 
 boy was abed, but under such circumstances the man 
 who went to bed first was evidently at the mercy of the 
 whole community ; he might well find himself hard put to 
 it to make a proper showing in the world upon awak- 
 ing. The whole colony was eventually drawn into the 
 dispute and got such a vision of the unworkableness of 
 the principles to which they had committed themselves 
 as practically to bring them back to a less ideal world, 
 but a world, none the less, in which one can at least be 
 sure of his clothes in the morning. Here, as elsewhere, 
 Tolstoy forgot to qualify. The great single teachings of 
 Jesus are always, we shall find, qualified either by other 
 teachings of the Master or by the whole spirit of His 
 teaching. The law of love must always qualify the 
 teaching of indiscriminate charity. We are, indeed, 
 under bonds to give to all who ask but we are never un- 
 der bonds to give them the thing which they ask. Very 
 often society is kindest in giving to the beggar who asks 
 for bread not bread but a stone to break and a stick of 
 wood to saw. It would seem to the unregenerate that 
 what that boy needed was not a waistcoat but a pretty 
 thorough course in discipline. Love and wisdom are 
 heaven-born comrades. 
 
 In another instance the colonists were finally led to 
 give a piece of woodland to the peasants ; thereupon the 
 peasants came in like carrion birds. The woodland was 
 the scene of riot ; the richest peasants with the most 
 
TOLSTOY'S CONFESSIONS 327 
 
 horses got the most timber. The only thing which came 
 out of it all was quarrelling, greed and disillusionment. 
 Monastic life has shown again and again that a group of 
 men under a stern discipline to which they are held by 
 great religious enthusiasms can live such a Hfe as Tolstoy 
 suggested, but even so the note of authority is never 
 wanting but always lodged by the community in one who 
 becomes the incarnation of its common purpose. Fruit- 
 ful monastic life has been possible only when such au- 
 thority has been strongly sustained, discipline rigidly en- 
 forced and the springs of rehgious enthusiasm pure and 
 unfailing. Even under such circumstances the richest 
 monastic life in the records of the history of the Church 
 hasstiU been sterile in great regions and the complete ex- 
 tension of it would have meant the extinction of society. 
 
 There is nothing to say then in dismissing these ac- 
 tivities of Tolstoy but to dwell once more upon his great 
 contributions and to forget their unhappy deficiencies. 
 He has taught us the worth of the simple life, exalted in 
 the materialistic age the things of the spirit above mere 
 possession, dignified labour and shown us, above all, how 
 clearly we are bound to discern the dramatic inequalities 
 and the unconsidered miseries of the world directly 
 we have been brave enough to shake ourselves free 
 from the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of 
 riches. He has shown us, moreover, that the quest which 
 begins in loneliness must end in comradeship, that there 
 is no peace for a man until his neighbour has secured 
 peace, that to live and die as the soldier of the ideal is 
 better than many possessions or any success which has 
 been achieved at the cost of the ideal. 
 
 Such then are the necessities and considerations which 
 Tolstoy, the regenerate, began to urge upon the world. 
 
328 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 After the full readjustment of his life he followed to the 
 end roads already indicated, lived in such fashion as we 
 have sought to portray, sought for himself in increasing 
 intensity those ideals of character and conduct whose 
 light had scattered his sore darkness. He grew more 
 and more Hke an Old Testament prophet in his outward 
 seeming, with a look upon his face which proclaimed a 
 new inner life which, if not at peace upon its troubled 
 spaces, was at least growing serene in its depths. His 
 brother-in-law — S. A. Behrs — thus pictures for us certain 
 aspects of the new Tolstoy. " His face, however, showed 
 evident signs of the serious mental suffering he had en- 
 dured. It was calm, sad and had a quite new look ; and 
 it was not his face only, but his whole personality that 
 had completely altered ; and not his life only and his re- 
 lation to everybody, but his whole mental activity. If 
 he still retained many of his former views (his hostility 
 to • progress ' and • civilization,' for instance) the ground 
 for these convictions had greatly changed." * 
 
 Any thoroughgoing criticism of Tolstoy's contentions 
 would carry us far afield. We have already seen how 
 hopelessly individualistic he was ; how careless of prec- 
 edent, how impatient of reforms into which, from the 
 very beginning, society has tended to organize itself. 
 His disciples found in their own evanescent Tolstoyian 
 colonies that even the peaceful continuance of a small 
 group of the elect was impossible upon Tolstoyian foun- 
 dations. By how much the more then would the con- 
 tinued existence of society have been impossible under 
 such conditions, for society is no group of the elect, but 
 the whole turbulent force of life working under manifold 
 compulsions towards ends whose full significance has not 
 
 » «« The Life of Tolstoy," Aylmer Maude, Vol. II, p. 325. 
 
TOLSTOY'S CONFESSIONS 329 
 
 yet begun to appear. Surely if morality is the nature of 
 things, the deep channelled forms which the world has 
 worn may also prove themselves to be the nature of 
 things, to be ignored at our peril and to be discharged 
 only when we have attained such altitudes of perfection 
 as are now far, far above us. 
 
 In such fashion as this does the old, old strife between 
 the prophet and the statesman, the dreamer and the man 
 of affairs, the idealist and the administrator reveal itself. 
 We should be poor enough without either. We are 
 needing constantly to correct our too hasty judgments, 
 our rigid definitions, our passion of idealism by the vast 
 deductions of experience and the massive testimonies of 
 an unresting world. But we are needing just as constantly 
 to test our accepted judgments, our familiar inductions, 
 and even our seemingly indispensable forms, by the vision 
 and passion of the prophet. It is always possible that 
 much which seems to us to be of the nature of things 
 may be only the projection of our selfishnesses, our 
 lethargies or our blindnesses against our horizons — nay, 
 that the nature of things by which we are so eager to 
 test every voice which summons us to set out for the city 
 which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God, 
 is nothing other than some low and most unworthy 
 nature which, for the sake of life itself, needs to be 
 transcended. The master dreamers have been rare 
 enough ; we have not too often had men who can speak 
 from mountain tops of vision with voices which carry 
 across seas and continents and years. We would better, 
 at least, be patient with them, for the past testifies that 
 they also have been of the nature of things, their voices 
 are remembered when the voices of protest are stilled, and 
 their dreams have more than once proved more per- 
 
330 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 manent than the empires which mocked them in their 
 pride and the forces which sought, in their arrogance of 
 station and possession, to silence them. The world at 
 large has never been seen yet on the side of too much 
 idealism ; here, if anywhere, we need correction. 
 
 Without any doubt Tolstoy has largely influenced our 
 own time, even where we do not dream his influence 
 to run. Already some of his revolutionary proposals 
 have become our commonplaces. The forces of ideal- 
 ism, which are just now challenging every accepted 
 position and reaching forward across even adamantine 
 barriers towards the realization of a better world, have 
 drawn their strength from a multitude of sources. We 
 have only to study the lives of many men who are con- 
 spicuous just now for their idealistic leadership to find 
 how far by their own confession they have been influenced 
 by the great Russian. His weakness, then, is not that he 
 is dreamer or even pure dreamer — pure dreamer indeed 
 he never was ; there was always a practical side to the 
 man's life which was capable, upon occasion, of large 
 effectiveness ; his fine leadership in relief work during a 
 Russian famine showed that. He had a power of 
 organization and direction which would put him as an 
 equal, for example, alongside any of the Red Cross 
 leaders of our own time. He did not, however, consider 
 his service to be in such fields ; he approached them re- 
 luctantly, turned from them gladly and became again the 
 stern, sad prophet, the protagonist of gentleness, love and 
 stainlessness in the souls of men. He was wrong, if any- 
 where, in his underestimate of the price at which all this 
 was to be attained ; he simplified life far too much — the 
 redemption of our common life is much more than the 
 formula of the salvation of the individual: it is the 
 
TOLSTOY'S CONFESSIONS 331 
 
 salvation of the individual in the mass and even by the 
 mass, a distinction which Tolstoy never clearly grasped. 
 The world is to be saved, not by the withdrawal of the 
 individual into lonely and isolated simplifications of peas- 
 ant-like hfe, but in the consecration of society itself to 
 the tasks of its own redemption. Nay, if St. Paul and 
 St. Augustine are not mistaken, even this is not enough : 
 the salvation of the world demands not only the con- 
 secration of society to redemptive tasks, but the reenforce- 
 ment of a redemptive society by the indwelling spirit of 
 a redemptive God who has made Himself manifest in a 
 redemptive incarnation and set up the cross as the eternal 
 sign of the comradeship between the human and the 
 divine in the great tasks of making men indeed the 
 children of mercy and justifying the travail of the Eternal. 
 In the end Leo Tolstoy was excommunicated by the 
 Greek Church, not the first of the great-souled sons of 
 men to be so singled out nor in all likelihood the last. 
 Excommunication is sometimes the greatest honour 
 which a decadent church can bestow upon God's prophet 
 and the greatest condemnation which she can visit upon 
 herself. There is a terrible reflex power in excommunica- 
 tion and more tlian once such ecclesiastical anathemas 
 have done nothing more than to separate the authorities 
 which pronounced them still further from the Master 
 whom they vainly sought to honour and defend. It is 
 an open question how far Jesus of Nazareth would have 
 found in Leo Tolstoy a wholly balanced and clear visioned 
 interpreter of His teachings, but it is beyond debate, if 
 the Gospel in any fashion portrays what He was or what 
 He said, that He would have recognized in Tolstoy a 
 disciple and would have stood in wonder and aghast at 
 the claim of Pobiedonostzeff and the Church of which he 
 
332 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 was the patriarch to represent His hfe, reincarnate His 
 authority, continue His temper and defend His honour. 
 
 It remains to be said that Tolstoy's long and dra- 
 matic life and immense labour do not bring us into 
 clear or final regions. He is, in many ways, a better 
 witness than guide. He bears a compelling testimony 
 to the inability of things to satisfy the soul ; he testifies 
 also that we are in sore danger of forgetting elemen- 
 tal things — labour, simplicity of life and singleness of 
 vision. What light he has he owes to his singleness of 
 vision. " If the eye be single," said the Master, •* the 
 whole body will be full of light." The very complexity 
 of our vision blinds us to the reality of things. Because 
 Tolstoy shook himself free of position, convention, pre- 
 supposition and sought, as far as possible, to free himself 
 from the recurrent restlessness of unassuaged desire, he 
 saw the contradictions of life, the fundamental inequaUties 
 of our social state, the injustices of much which we accept 
 as a matter of course, the tragic sterility of war and its 
 brutalities. His great literary genius, his dramatic posi- 
 tion, the appealing qualities of his manhood gave, to his 
 affirmation of all these things, a carrying quality which 
 won him the hearing of the civilized world. Very likely 
 his supreme service to our time is more distinctly here 
 than anywhere else. 
 
 The social character of the quest becomes vividly ap- 
 parent in Tolstoy. No one of the men heretofore con- 
 sidered has had any such sense of what may be called the 
 communal character of any real peace as the great Rus- 
 sian. In many ways more hopelessly individualistic than 
 even Bunyan's Christian, who set out running alone, 
 Tolstoy never for a moment forgets the encompassing 
 comradeships of the weary and heavy laden. We are 
 
TOLSTOY'S CONFESSIONS 333 
 
 sure now of one thing : we shall never enter into what- 
 ever measure of peace life keeps for men except as that 
 peace is shared. We are all bound up in one bundle ; a 
 lonely redemption is no redemption at all nor is there 
 any real escape from a situation in which others are in- 
 volved except as they also are set free. The impulses by 
 which Tolstoy began directly to be stirred, once he 
 sought really to conform his life to the teachings of Jesus 
 Christ, are moreover a compelling illustration of the 
 dynamic of the Gospel. We do not need to go all the 
 way with Tolstoy in his unqualified acceptance of teach- 
 ings which, even upon the lips of Jesus, were never un- 
 qualified and were always subordinate to larger determin- 
 ing processes whose full significance Tolstoy never seems 
 to have sensed, to recognize that there is no way except 
 the way which Jesus indicated. The more clearly we 
 discern, the more patiently and bravely we follow His 
 roads, the clearer the light into which we come. Tolstoy 
 did not solve all his own problems or furnish his disciples 
 with any final formula, but his Hfe was increasingly fruit- 
 ful in all fine and continuing things as he walked more 
 intimately in the comradeship of the Nazarene. Could 
 he have grasped more strongly the full significance of the 
 Kingdom teaching with its emphasis upon fellowship and 
 cooperation — so supplementing his exaltation of lonely 
 citizenship with the kindling sense of encompassing and 
 transforming comradeships — he would have spoken more 
 truly and saved himself and his disciples much wander- 
 ing in waste places. 
 
 Finally Tolstoy testifies more distinctly than any of the 
 great seekers that the search itself is part of the meaning 
 of Hfe. We have striven to draw an impossible line of 
 demarcation between the journey and its goal, between 
 
334 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 the quest and its recompense. We are always assuming 
 that somewhere at the end of the road are cities of seren- 
 ity, sheltering sanctuaries, which finally attained, we shall 
 be at rest. It is not so. The quest and the goal are one 
 and the same thing ; the deepest peace is to be sought 
 not at the end of the journey, but in the journey itself. 
 The only serenity which Hfe offers men is the serenity of 
 ceaseless endeavour. We want indeed to be quite sure 
 of our road and our guide, but given the right road and 
 the right guide the glory of life is to be always going on. 
 It is not in arriving that we are blessed, but in endlessly 
 aspiring. All this is not incompatible with an inner 
 quietness, a sustaining confidence, a growing sense of the 
 worth of the whole endeavour. The poets are here truer 
 teachers than the theologians. Virtue, indeed, 
 
 *' Desires no isles of the blest, no quiet seats of the just. 
 Nor to dream in golden groves, nor to bask in a summer 
 sky." 
 
 The greatest thing the quest can yield us is an uncon- 
 querable passion for perfection which in the face of the 
 Ultimate Shadow seeks only the " wages of going on and 
 not to die " and shouts aloud when the lesser levels have 
 been gained : ♦• Other heights in other lives, God willing." 
 
Conclusion 
 
 THERE seems now a place, at the end of these 
 studies, for some estimate of the whole move- 
 ment with which they have been concerned. 
 Since Tolstoy there has been no commanding figure, no 
 outstanding personality in which the quest is made in- 
 carnate. Nietzsche represents, perhaps, the other modern 
 interpretation of life upon which we might dwell. With- 
 out doubt the teachings of Nietzsche are influencing men 
 to-day who do not clearly know from what sources their 
 working philosophy of hfe is drawn. His philosophy of 
 the superman has been gratefully received in many 
 quarters because it coincides so completely with certain 
 aspects of modern science and secures anew the vindication 
 and reenforcement of pride, ambition and endless forms 
 of self-affirmation. It is only the doctrine of the survival 
 of the fittest, raised to the dignity of a gospel and in- 
 vested, in some instances, with great literary charm and, 
 in the case of Mr. Bernard Shaw, with an almost fiendish 
 cleverness. Tolstoy and Nietzsche are at opposite poles. 
 Stripped bare of whatever glamour the gospel of the 
 superman possesses it is nothing other than the pitiless 
 and unqualified affirmation of the right of the strong to 
 rule and of the fit to climb, no matter at what cost the 
 stairs by which they climb are built or with what blood 
 and tears their cement is watered. Nietzsche was willing 
 enough to confess himself the antichrist. However his 
 teachings may have been qualified in his own mind, there 
 
 335 
 
336 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 are vast reaches of our common life to-day in which they 
 hold without ethical qualifications. All remorseless com- 
 petition in business, all self-centredness in social life, 
 all paucity of pity, all brutal heedlessness of the cry of 
 the weak and submerged, every manifestation of the 
 mailed fist which is fast making Europe an armed camp, 
 the disregard of not only the conventions of morality but 
 even the fundamentals of ethics in which the strong pre- 
 sume to ride abroad, are all in one form or another the 
 gospel of the superman, manifestations of the spirit of 
 which the strange half-mad genius of Nietzsche has been 
 the protagonist in literature and philosophy. 
 
 The fault in all this, we see clearly enough, is in its 
 lack of spiritual vision. The law of the survival of the 
 fittest is not easily to be set to one side, but we have still 
 to decide who are the fit. The strong will always be the 
 masters of the world ; the world has yet to be taught in 
 what its strength is really resident. We shall always be 
 needing stairs by which to climb, but it is at least an open 
 question whether the steps of humanity's ascent are not 
 likely to better bear the unbelievable burden which is laid 
 upon them if they are cemented in pity and in brother- 
 hood. Charles Rand Kennedy in " The Terrible Meek " 
 is a better interpreter of the all-conquering force in whose 
 might the field of Armageddon is finally to be won than 
 Frederick Nietzsche. All the spiritual gropings, striv- 
 ings, restlessnesses of our contemporaneous world are 
 bounded on the one side by Tolstoy who builds for our 
 ascent but stairs of sand, and on the other by Nietzsche 
 who builds for our ascent stairs cemented in unheeded 
 blood and tears. We are waiting still our prophet and 
 leader. 
 
 Meanwhile, any one who would trace the quest in con- 
 
CONCLUSION 337 
 
 temporaneous literature must seek it in manifold places, 
 discern its outgoing in manifold forces. It expresses itself 
 in strange and bizarre religious movements, in minor 
 poetic strains, in a great social passion, in theological re- 
 constructions, in a body of fiction which, here and there, 
 discloses some little feeling for the process by which re- 
 demption is to be secured, but which too often succeeds 
 only in involving men and women in a coil of difficult 
 situations which the novelist has sense enough of the diffi- 
 culty of life to conceive, but not sense enough of the re- 
 demptive power of love and righteousness to untangle. 
 For the most part a note of unhappiness and discourage- 
 ment has latterly been more evident than anything else, 
 but there are not wanting signs of the emergence of a 
 braver, truer temper and always the light of the morning 
 is along the eastern sky. No one would dare to prophesy 
 the ways in which emancipation, reconcihation and re- 
 demption are finally to come, but it is more than likely 
 that we shall find, as our troubled age comes again to the 
 true highroads of Hfe, that life itself is so great as to de- 
 mand not one, but manifold formulas for its solution. 
 
 Marcus Aurelius has still much to teach us ; we shall 
 never be set free from the need of a certain stoicism ; we 
 shall always need to be assured that there are inner 
 citadels which cannot be taken and that in part, at least, 
 the integrity of life is secured as we retreat into the in- 
 violable domain of our own souls. The master affirma- 
 tions of St. Augustine will rule in the future as in the 
 past ; men are never wholly free until they are freed from 
 their lesser, meaner selves. We are made for God and 
 are restless till we rest in Him. Our broken purposes 
 gain power and integrity only as they are subdued to the 
 dominant music of the sovereign will of a righteous love. 
 
338 PILGRIMS OF THE LONELY ROAD 
 
 There is no freedom except the freedom of perfect obe- 
 dience. We shall still need to be taught by Thomas a 
 Kempis that there is no road to power save the Royal 
 Road of the Cross. We shall take counsel with the mys- 
 tics and know from them that God is no mere deduction, 
 but a very living experience ; that the ways of approach 
 into His presence are always open ; that when forms fail 
 us and mediations obscure instead of reveal, He is 
 always closer than breathing, nearer than hands or feet. 
 John Bunyan will always be teaching us that we have 
 here no abiding city ; that life is a pilgrimage ; that 
 the experiences which unite us are more compelling 
 than the conceptions which divide us ; and that there 
 is in all spiritual endeavour a lonely quality which 
 drives each man out along a hard road towards far 
 shining hopes. The deepening sensitiveness which seems 
 a part of civilization will give us increasingly such a sense 
 of the wonder and mystery of life as lends its magic to 
 the pages of Amiel. Newman must teach us to correct 
 our individualism by the sense of historic processes and 
 ordered forms into which the needs and aspirations of 
 men have been built through the centuries. Having had 
 Tolstoy we shall never forget that where the eye is single 
 the whole body is full of light ; that simplicity, courage 
 and labour are the keys which unlock many doors ; that 
 the nearer men live to elemental things the more nearly 
 does the strength of the elemental come into their lives. 
 The great assurances of Saul of Tarsus must finally 
 crown and establish all our spiritual endeavour. 
 /^ Life does not grow more simple with the passing 
 years, but its deeper needs are unchanging. The secret 
 of peace is not to be sought at the end of the road, but 
 in the spirit in which we journey. It is to be sought in 
 
CONCLUSION 339 
 
 the consciousness of the sustaining love of a God who is 
 committed, by the very nature of His Godhead, to a real 
 participation in all our strife ; who does not release us 
 from the battle, but who shares the fight ; who does not 
 set us free from the possibility of pain and tears, but who 
 feels the hurt of our wounds, the salt bitterness of our 
 sorrow ; who spends Himself, not only with us, but for 
 us, and in the travail of redemptive passion anticipates 
 the victories of the spirit. And finally whatever pilgrim- 
 age we undertake must be undertaken, in spite of the in- 
 terior loneliness of all great spiritual processes, in the 
 comradeship of our kind and all well-being must always be 
 our goal. We are never to forget that we are all so tied 
 up in one bundle that peace and reconciliations in which 
 others are not involved are quite impossible. The note 
 of service must be deepened and in our care for those who 
 lie wounded or broken along the road we shall forget our 
 own wounds and our own wearinesses. So conceived, so 
 reenforced, life is never impossible, but does indeed be- 
 come, so these books and leaders teach us, an adventure 
 whose greatness is its own best justification and whose 
 difficulties may become for the faithful and discerning 
 but stairs of ascent to radiant and triumphant regions. 
 
 Frinted in tht United States of Americ* 
 

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