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 Section j.hj/F2c 
 No „.. 
 
THE CHRIST OF 
 
 OUR POETS 
 
 II. WALTER FEATHEBSTUN, D.D. 
 
 m 
 
 "What think ye of Christ?"— J^svs 
 
 Nashville, Tenn.; Dallas, Tex. 
 
 Publishing House M. E. Church, South 
 
 Barbkb & Smith, Agents 
 
 1901 
 
Copyrighted, 1901 
 By 
 
 H. Waltek Featherstun 
 
To My Friend and Brother 
 REV. H. M. Du EOSE, D.D. 
 Whose Suggestion Gave Birth 
 to My Purpose to Write 
 These Studies 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 ' J'AGE 
 
 The Christ of Browning 7 
 
 The Message of " In Memokiam " 19 
 
 The Optimism of "Locksley Hall".... 31 
 
 The Rege?>ieration of En-iiiN ^ i 
 
 Tennyson's " Holy Gkaii." ^9 
 
 Lov/eee's "Sir Launfal" 59 
 
 ^Irs. Browning's Gospel of Reform ... 65 
 "The jMeuchant of Venice" Trans- 
 figured 75 
 
 The Gospel in " Lalla Rookh " 85 
 
 IMoore's vSong of Sin 93 
 
 Moore's Lyrics of Faith - . . . . 101 
 
 Whittier's Creed 113 
 
 The Religion of Longfellow 1 25 
 
 Holland's "Bitter-Sweet" 135 
 
 '•The Marrle Prophecy " K15 
 
 Epics of Jesus 153 
 
 Co) ■ 
 
THE CHRIST OF 
 BROWNING 
 
" God so lotad the world, that he 
 
 gate his only begotten Son, that 
 
 whosoever believeth in him should 
 
 not perish, but have everlasting life " 
 
 —John Hi. i6 
 
By "The Christ of Browning" let us not un- 
 derstand merely the poet's conception of the per- 
 son and mission of the Christ, hut his notion of 
 Christ's teachings as well; indeed, of that whole 
 grand system of which Christ is the center, as 
 the hub is of the w^lieel. In a very essential sense 
 Christ and Christianity are one. 
 
 A living writer^ has recently said: 
 
 If Tennyson reflected the scientific nineteenth cen- 
 tury's doubt, and triumph in struggling out of it, 
 Browning reflected the theological nineteenth cen- 
 tury's faith, and as an exuberance of spiritual life. He 
 incorporated into his metaphysical genius the psychol- 
 ogy underlying the great literature of the Bible, and 
 the newly forming literature of the Wesleyan move- 
 ment. 
 
 This is not saying too much ; and yet there is 
 apparent throughout his works no effort to make 
 public the sacred secrets of his spiritual life ; but 
 on the other hand, like tlie Christ, he would say to 
 Lis children, creatures of his brain, "See thou tell 
 no man." But spirituality, like "a city that is set. 
 en a hill, cannot be hid" ; its very existence is 
 self-assertive; it is light made to lighten the 
 
 ' Rev. D. S. Hearon, D.D. 
 
 9 
 
The Christ of Our Poets 
 
 world, and when it fails to enlighten it ceases to 
 exist. Perhaps Dr. Hearon only told the truth 
 when he wrote: 
 
 The uplift of religious- consciousness as reflected in 
 English literature registers its highest reach in Rob- 
 ert Browning. His poetry reflects a higher, complet- 
 er spirituality than is found elsewhere in our litera^ 
 ture. 
 
 Browning's conception of God is that which 
 he could have gotten only through the Christ. 
 He thought of God as a Father; his gospel was, 
 "God so loved the world." ?Iis Festus in "Par- 
 acelsus" says: 
 
 God! Thou art love! I build my faith on that. 
 
 This was Browning's very soul. In "Evelyn 
 
 Hope" he sings : 
 
 God above 
 Is great to grant, as mighty to make. 
 
 In "Saul," one of his masterpieces, he puts 
 these grand utterances into the mouth of young 
 David : 
 
 I have gone the whole round of creation: I sav/ and 
 I spoke: 
 
 I, a work of God's hand for that purpose, received in 
 my brain 
 
 And pronounced on the rest of his handiwork — re- 
 turned him again 
 
 His creation's approval or censure: I spoke as I saw: 
 
 I report as a man may of God's work — aKs love, yet 
 all's law. 
 
 lo 
 
The Christ of Broivning 
 
 He reaches a still higher tide of this lordly 
 conception, and takes in a prophecy even of Cal- 
 vary as an expression of the love that he sings : 
 
 .Would I suffer for him that I love? So wouldst Thou 
 — so wilt Thou! 
 
 So shall crown Thee the topmost, ineffablest, utter- 
 most crown — 
 
 And Thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor 
 down 
 
 One spot for the creature to stand in. 
 
 Addressing the king, the young minstrel proph- 
 esies : 
 
 O Saul, it shall be 
 A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to 
 
 me, 
 Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever: a Hand like 
 
 this hand 
 Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See 
 
 the Christ stand! 
 
 In "A Death in the Desert" he sings : 
 The love that tops the might, the Christ in God — 
 
 Putting the question ever. Does God love? 
 And will ye hold that truth against the world? 
 
 He urges : 
 
 I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ 
 Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee 
 All questions in the earth or out of it. 
 
 In "An Epistle" he makes Karshish, an Arab 
 physician, the supposed author of the "Epistle," 
 II 
 
The Christ cf Our Pods 
 
 Y/ho stoutly resists belief in the raising of Laz- 
 arus, finally break down and confess : 
 
 The very God! think, Abib; dost thou think? 
 So, the All-Great were the All-Loving too — 
 So, through the thunder conies a human voice 
 Saying, O heart I made, a Heart beats here! 
 
 Thou hast no power nor mayst conceive of mine. 
 
 But love I gave thee, with myself to love. 
 
 And thou mayst love Me who have died for thee. 
 
 In "Fears and Scruples" he sings thus beauti- 
 fully his high, true thought of God : 
 
 Of old I used to love him, 
 
 This same unseen friend, before I knew: 
 Dream there was none like him, none above him — 
 
 Wake to hope and trust my dream were true. 
 Loved I not his letters full of beauty? 
 
 Not his actions famous far and wide? 
 Absent, he would know I vowed him duty; 
 
 Present, he would find me at his side 
 
 Hush, I pray yon] 
 What if this friend happened to be — God? 
 
 That there should be coupled witli such a con- 
 ception of God, of "Christ in God" and "God in 
 Christ," a strong, sweet faith as beautiful as it 
 was buoyant, is but to be naturally looked for. 
 His "Paracelsus" voices that faith : 
 
 I go to prove my soul! 
 I see my way as birds their trackless waste. 
 
 12 
 
The Christ of Broivniii^ 
 
 1 shall arrive! What time, what circuit first, 
 I ask not: but unless God send his hail, 
 Or blinding fireballs, sleet or stifling snow, 
 In some time, his f^ood time, I shall arrive: 
 He guides me and the bird. In his good time. 
 
 In "Reverie" he sings the same strong faith : 
 
 I know there shall dawn a day — 
 
 Is it here on homely earth? 
 Is it yonder, worlds away. 
 
 Where the strange and new have birth 
 That Power comes full in play? 
 
 Somewhere, below, above, 
 
 Shall a day dawn — this I know — 
 When Power, which vainly strove 
 
 My weakness to o'erthrow. 
 
 Shall triumph 
 
 I have faith such end shall be: 
 
 From the first Power was — I Icncw. 
 Life has made clear to me 
 
 That, strive but for a closer view. 
 Love were as plain to see. 
 
 He does not leave us in doubt here just what 
 he means by "Power" : 
 
 Power is love — transports, transforms 
 Who aspires from worst to best. 
 
 This faith which he here sings is an optimism 
 
 that inspires — a "faith that works" : 
 
 Then life is— to wake not sleep. 
 
 Rise and not rest, but press 
 From earth's level where blindly creep 
 
 13 
 
The Christ of Our Poets 
 
 Things perfected, more or less, 
 To the heaven's height, far and steep. 
 
 In "Abt Vogler" his faith sings out more 
 strongly, clearly, sweetly still: 
 
 To whom turn I but to thee, the ineflfable Name? 
 Builder and Maker thou, of houses not made with 
 hands! 
 What, have fear of change from thee who art ever the 
 same? 
 Doubt that thy power can fill the heart that thy 
 power expands? 
 There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall 
 live as before; 
 The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound; 
 What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much 
 good more; 
 On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a per- 
 fect round. 
 All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall 
 exist; 
 Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, 
 nor power 
 Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the 
 melodist 
 When eternity affirms th^ conception of an hour. 
 
 In "Apparent Failure" he sings it again : 
 
 My own hope is, a sun will pierce 
 The thickest cloud earth ever stretched; 
 
 That, after Last returns the First, 
 Though a wide compass round be fetched; 
 
 That what began best can't end worst. 
 Nor what God blessed once proved accursed. 
 
The Christ of Browning 
 
 The dying Paracelsus sings: 
 
 If I stoop 
 Into a dark tremendous sea of cloud, 
 It is but for a time; I press God's lamp 
 Close to my breast; its splendor soon or late 
 Will pierce the gloom; I shall emerge one day. 
 
 That a faith hke this had no fear of death is 
 but a natural conclusion. Browning in "Pros- 
 pice" sings his view of death — a very personal 
 view it is, too : 
 
 Fear death? — to feel the fog in my throat, 
 
 The mist in my face, 
 When the snows begin and the blasts denote 
 I am nearing the place. 
 
 I was ever a fighter, so — one light more. 
 The best and the last! 
 
 No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers. 
 
 The heroes of old; 
 Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears 
 
 Of pain, darkness, and cold. 
 For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave, 
 
 The black minute's at end, 
 And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave. 
 
 Shall dwindle, shall blend. 
 Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain. 
 
 Then a light, then thy breast, 
 O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again 
 
 And with — God — be the rest. 
 
 The catholicity of his faith is revealed in 
 'Christmas Eve," where he tells us tliat on a 
 15 
 
The Christ of O/n- Poets 
 
 certain night before Christmas he went into a 
 chapel where the service, crude and unrefined, 
 offended his taste ; but as the people were leaving 
 the building he had a realistic vision of our Lord 
 coming out with them and passing him by un- 
 noticed. An unutterable terror came over him, 
 and he cried : 
 
 But not so, Lord! It cannot be 
 That thou, indeed, art leaving me — 
 Me, that have despised thy friends! 
 Did my heart make no amends? 
 
 He then explains and confesses : 
 
 I thought it best that thou, the Spirit, 
 Be worshiped in spirit and in truth 
 
 And in beauty as even zw require it — 
 Not in the forms burlesque, uncouth, 
 
 I left but now, as scarcely fitted 
 
 For thee: I knew not what I pitied. 
 
 But all I felt there right or wrong, 
 
 What is it to thee who curest sinning? 
 
 Am I not we'ak as thou art strong? 
 
 The Lord turned and threw over him a pardon- 
 ing, purifying glory ; and thus he exchanged big- 
 otry for catholicity. Who will suppose this to 
 be a real experience of the poet's ? Only he who 
 knows nothing of Browning. It is his own 
 quaint, poetical way of preaching against bigot- 
 ry, which he, like his Lord, despised. 
 
 Dr. Hearon, already quoted, calls attention to 
 i6 
 
TJic Christ of Browning 
 
 the fact tliat our poet was what they call in En- 
 gland "an evangelical" : 
 
 Browning reflects the processes of saving faith. 
 Take the story of the conviction of the two lovers in 
 "Pippa Passes." The lovers were murderers. Up to 
 the moment at which the girl passes, and sings, they 
 were unmolested in the joy which they had in each 
 other. But their delight in each other, the Spirit. 
 using the song of the passing girl, reverses in mu- 
 tual revulsion. 
 
 His relation of the conversion of Paracelsus 
 and Karshish is also quite evangelical in tone. 
 
 While not an interpreter of nature like Words- 
 worth, yet Browning was not insensible to its 
 beauties ; but nature's beauties all told him of 
 God, and love, and the Christ ; as an example : 
 
 Wanting is — what? 
 Summer redundant, 
 Blucness abundant — 
 Where is the spot? 
 Beamy the world, yet a blank all the same 
 Framework which waits for a picture to frame: 
 What of the leafage, what of the flower? 
 Roses embov/ering with naught they embower! 
 Come then, complete incompletion, O Comer, 
 Pant through the blueness, perfect the summer, 
 Breathe but one breath, 
 
 Rose-beauty above, 
 And all that was death 
 Grows life — grov.'s love, 
 Grows love! 
 2 17 
 
The Christ of Our Poets 
 
 As another example: 
 
 Love greatens and glorifies 
 Till God's aglow, to the loving eyes, 
 In what was mere earth before. 
 
 We might wish that Browning's expression 
 had been simpler — it would then have been even 
 stronger and sweeter than it is; but no one can 
 wish for him a better evidence of faith in God 
 and the Christ. 
 
 i8 
 
THE MESSAGE OF 
 *'IN MEMORIAM" 
 
"Jesus said unto her, I am the 
 resurrection, and the life: he that 
 belieteth in me, though he were 
 dead, yet shall he lite : and whoso- 
 ever liveth and belieteth in me shall 
 never die. Believcst thou this?" 
 
 —John xi. 25, 26 
 
// 
 
 In Memoriani A. II. II., obiU MDCCCXXXIII. 
 
 Such is the full title of Lord Tennyson's mas- 
 terpiece. Nothing could be more unpretentious ; 
 and the poem itself wears the air of unstudied 
 outbreathings of a heart bereaved, now telling its 
 grief, now telling its love for the dead, now detail- 
 ing events in the life that has passed, now relating 
 something of that life's last days, and never es- 
 saying to teach or to reason or to moralize. 
 Nevertheless, "In Memoriam" has for us all a 
 beautiful message, strong and clear and life-up- 
 lifting. Its message, like that of "Locksley Hall," 
 is one of faith in the Christ. In "Locksley Hall" 
 the statements are suggested rather than made, 
 and Christ is mentioned but not named; but the 
 very opening words of "In Memoriam" are : 
 
 Strong Son of God, immortal Love, 
 Whom we, who have not seen thy face, 
 By faith, and faith alone, embrace. 
 
 Believing where we cannot prove, 
 
 Thou wilt not leave us in the dust: 
 Thou madest man, he knows not why; 
 He thinks he was not made to die; 
 
 And thou hast made him: thou art just. 
 
 The song of faith in "Locksley Hall" is rather 
 a pjean of victory breaking out of the din and 
 
 21 
 
The Christ of Our Poets 
 
 roar of battle; but "In Memoriam" is itself a 
 song of faith, clear-toned and melodious, stealing 
 out from under cypresses and weeping willows, 
 now all aquiver with the grief of a widowed spir- 
 it, now brightly striking a higher note, the hope 
 of immortality, now singing strongly its virile 
 faith in God. The very things we would expect 
 to find in an "In Memoriam" are all here: the 
 sense of loss, the grief, visions of the past and 
 of the future, thoughts of heaven, consoling facts 
 and considerations, and, greatest among them all, 
 a strong, sure hope of immortality; and yet 
 there is in it all not one trite phrase or word, 
 not one conventional utterance or suggestion; 
 but it is throughout pervaded with a most re- 
 freshing individuality or naturalness sincere and 
 full of faith in God and his Christ. 
 He sings his grief: 
 
 I sometimes hold it half a sin 
 To put in words the grief I feel; 
 
 yet he must tell it — 
 
 In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er 
 Like coarsest clothes against the cold; 
 But that large grief which these infold 
 
 Is given in outline and no more. 
 
 He spurns the slavish, doltish comfort that 
 sometimes comes to lower souls from the fact 
 that "loss is common," and death the doom of all : 
 
 22 
 
The Message of '•'■In Aletnorlam " 
 
 That loss is common would not make 
 My own less bitter, rather more: 
 Too common! Never morning wore 
 
 To evening, but some heart did break. 
 
 He finds real consolation, however: he finds it 
 in the deathless memory and fadeless love of tlie 
 friend who has passed from his sight : 
 I hold it true, whate'er befall; 
 I feel it when I sorrow most; 
 'Tis better to have loved and lost 
 Than never to have loved at all. 
 
 He finds it in the hope of immortality, to him 
 a fact rather than a hope, a present fact as real 
 as any other and as deathless as God : 
 
 My own dim life should teach me this. 
 That life shall live forevermore. 
 Else earth is darkness at the core, 
 
 And dust and ashes all that is — 
 
 What then were God to such as I? 
 
 'Twere hardly worth my while to choose 
 
 Of things all mortal, or to use 
 A little patience ere I die; 
 
 'Twere best at once to sink to peace. 
 Like birds the charming serpent draws, 
 To drop headforemost in the jaws 
 
 Of vacant darkness and to cease. 
 
 This fact of immortality was to him not mere- 
 ly a logical fact, but a real, living certainty: he 
 imagines his dead friend coming to him, as of 
 old — // it zvere so, 
 
 23 
 
The Christ of Our Pods 
 
 And I perceived no touch of change, 
 No hint of death in all his frame, 
 But found him all in all the same, 
 
 I should not feel it to be strange. 
 
 He tells an experience common with those of 
 like heart and faith : 
 
 When in the down I sink my head, 
 
 Sleep, Death's twin brother, times my breath; 
 Sleep, Death's twin brother, knows not death. 
 
 Nor can I dream of thee as dead: 
 
 I walk as ere I walked forlorn. 
 When all our path was fresh with dew. 
 And all the bugle breezes blew 
 
 Reveille to the breaking morn. 
 
 He restates his faith in immortality, his creed 
 of the dead, clearly and strongly, thus : 
 
 I wage not my feud with Death 
 For changes wrought on form and face; 
 No lower life that earth's embrace 
 
 May breed with him can fright my faith. 
 
 Eternal process moving on, 
 From state to state the spirit walks: 
 And these are but the shattered stalks 
 
 Or ruined chrysalis of one. 
 
 Nor blame I Death, because he bare 
 The use of virtue out of earth: 
 I know transplanted human worth 
 
 Will bloom to profit otherwhere. 
 
 What man of faith and thought before Tenny- 
 son could say that he was reckless of the changes 
 24 
 
The Message of '-'-hi Alemoriam '* 
 
 wrought by death "in form and face," and the 
 work of decay and of the very worms, so thought- 
 ful was he of the deathless spirit of his beloved 
 dead ? Who before ever spoke of "the article of 
 death" as a bearing out of this world into an- 
 other, "the use of virtue" ? 
 
 Evidently the surest, strongest consolation that 
 our singer has sung in this great song of faith is 
 his personal, living faith in Christ, the "Strong 
 Son of God, immortal Love," of his first stanza. 
 Christ was real to him ; hear him : 
 
 Thou seemest human and divine, 
 The highest, hohest manhood thou: 
 Our wills are ours, we know not how; 
 
 Our wills are ours to make them thine. 
 
 The historic Christ and the living Christ were 
 one to his thought and faith, the Christ who was 
 just as human as he was divine : 
 
 And so the Word had breath, and wrought 
 With human hands the creed of creeds 
 In loveliness of perfect deeds, 
 More strong than all poetic thought. 
 
 The poet's thought of heaven is told in one 
 strong, simple line : 
 
 That friend of mine who lives in God. 
 
 Could anything be finer? Could any thought 
 be loftier ? Could any notion of heaven be truer ? 
 This is the normal result of a living faith In a liv- 
 25 
 
The Christ of Our Poets 
 
 ing Christ, with whom the soul is so thoroughly 
 acquainted that communion with him is as real 
 as the faith in him. 
 
 With such faith in the Christ, it is but natural 
 that wild, rhapsodic bursts of optimism should 
 break out of this song of sadness and ripple like 
 the music nature makes on a May morning. 
 That richest, strongest song of optimism ever 
 sung, which begins, 
 
 Ring out wild bells to the wild sky, 
 
 and which is too well known and too often quoted 
 to be repeated here, is a part of "In Memoriam." 
 The last stanza reaches this lordly climax: 
 Ring in the valiant man and free, 
 The larger heart, the kindlier hand; 
 Ring out the darkness of the land. 
 Ring in the Christ that is to be. 
 
 His optimism was not altogether a hope, dwell- 
 ing in future tenses, but had about it the buoy- 
 ancy of a vernal present : 
 
 And all is well, tho' faith and form 
 Be sundered in the night of fear. 
 
 Consonant with all of this is the beautiful 
 prayer found in the introductory stanzas: 
 
 Let knowledge grow from more to more, 
 But more of reverence in us dwell; 
 That mind and soul according well. 
 
 May make one music as before. 
 
 But vaster. 
 
 26 
 
TJie Message of'''-Jn Ale/iioriatn'''' 
 
 That Tennyson's optimism carried him ahnost, 
 if not quite, into universalism may be regretted; 
 but this error is not so grave as is the God-dis- 
 honoring unfaith which would tell us that Chris- 
 tianity is all in vain, and that Christ's magnifi- 
 cent scheme to lift a fallen world, although so 
 wisely laid and all baptized with his blood, is a 
 failure, a fatal folly. We had rather hear him 
 sing : 
 
 Oh, yet we trust th'at somehow good 
 Will be the final goal of ill, 
 To pangs of nature, sins of will. 
 
 Defects of doubt, and taints of blood; 
 
 That nothing walks with aimless feet; 
 
 That no one life shall be destroyed 
 
 Or cast as rubbish to the void, 
 When God hath made the pile complete. 
 
 That these lines admit of an interpretation out 
 of harmony with the teachings of the New Tes- 
 tament is beyond question; but the poet rather 
 suggests than asserts the teaching which may be 
 inferred from them ; he pleads apologetically : 
 
 So runs my dream; but what am I? 
 
 An infant crying in the night, 
 
 An infant crying for the light, 
 And with no language but a cry. 
 
 He hints of a theological conflict within him- 
 self on the subject : 
 
 27 
 
The Christ of Our Poets 
 
 I falter where I firmly trod, 
 And falling with my weight of cares 
 Upon the world's great altar stairs 
 
 That slope thro' darkness up to God, 
 
 I stretch lame hands of faith and grope. 
 And gather dust and chafif, and call 
 To what I feel is Lord of all, 
 
 And faintly trust the larger hope. 
 
 That Tennyson's "larger hope" finds no sanc- 
 tion in our Lord's teaching is very evident; but 
 we will excuse the poet's errant thought, when 
 we find his heart so true to the Christ. 
 
 "In Memoriam" was written in 1849, when 
 the poet was barely forty years of age : forty 
 years later he wrote what might be called his 
 last song of faith, one of the sweetest lyrics ever 
 written : 
 
 Sunset and evening star. 
 
 And one clear call for me! 
 And may there be no moaning of the bar 
 
 When I put out to sea, 
 But such a tide as moving seems asleep, 
 
 Too full for sound and foam, 
 When that which drew from out the bound- 
 less deep 
 
 Turns again home. 
 
 Twilight and evening bell. 
 
 And after that the dark! 
 And may there be no sadness of farewell 
 
 When I embark; 
 
 ^8 
 
TJic Message of'-^In Memoriam'''' 
 
 For tho' from out our bourne of Time and 
 Place 
 
 The flood may bear me far, 
 I hope to see my Pilot face to face 
 
 When I have crossed the bar. 
 
 We cannot imagine a more fitting song for tlie 
 close of that rich, songful life of faith. It re- 
 minds us of that beautiful legend, he sang so 
 sweetly in early life, of "The Dying Swan" : only 
 the real death-song of the poet is a hundred-fold 
 sweeter than his dream of the mythical song of 
 "The Dying Swan." 
 
 29 
 
THE OPTIMISM OF 
 ** LOCKS LEY HALL** 
 
" We know that all things work 
 together for good to them that lote 
 God" — Rom. viii. 23 
 
/// 
 
 Reduced to its last analysis, optimism in this 
 connection means nothing more than faith in 
 Christ. Alore than anything else Christ is the 
 Redeemer of the world : a failure to really and 
 positively redeem the world from the ruin into 
 which sin has hurled it would be a fatal failure, 
 a negation of his Christhood. He so understood 
 it, for when he announced the organization of the 
 Church, the concrete expression of his move- 
 ment, he declared, "The gates of Hades [destruc- 
 tion] shall not prevail against it"; and just be- 
 fore his crucifixion he said, "1 have overcome 
 the world." The imagery of the book of Reve- 
 lation contains clear and strong predictions of 
 that good time coming when Christ shall really 
 have fully redeemed the world. If optimism 
 means faith in Christ, pessimism means unfaith, 
 only another name for infidelity. 
 
 Lord Tennyson, the son of a minister, and with 
 a mother specially noted for her piety, grew up 
 "strong in the faith" of the Christ. "Locksley 
 Hall" reveals that faith. It was not unthinking 
 faith, the kind which exists because of inherit- 
 ance, or because some leader of one's life be- 
 lieves; but it was a virile faith, made strong by 
 the struggles it has maintained. There are hints 
 3 33 
 
The Christ of Our Pods 
 
 of this struggle even in this song of faith: h^c 
 sings of the evil, tlie persistent, apparently un- 
 conquerable evil, that obtrudes everywhere : 
 
 Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength 
 of youth! 
 
 Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the livin;^ 
 truth! 
 
 Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest Na- 
 ture's rule! 
 
 Cursed be the gold that gilds the straighten'd forehead 
 of the fool! 
 
 lie is even more explicit yet : 
 
 All things here are out of joint: 
 Science moves but slowly, slowly, creeping on from 
 
 point to point. 
 Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion, creeping 
 
 nigher. 
 Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly 
 
 dying fire. 
 
 He speaks of tlie struggle through which his 
 faith passed, and of the exuberant youth and vig- 
 or of that earlier faith : 
 
 O thou wondrous Mother-age! 
 Make me feel the wild pulsation that I felt before the 
 
 strife. 
 When I heard my days before me, and the tumult of 
 
 my life 
 Yearning for the large excitement that the coming 
 
 years v/ould yield 
 Eager-hearted as a boy. 
 
 34 
 
The Opimlsm of^^LocksIcy HalV 
 
 lie tells the optimism of that halcyon time "he- 
 'fore the strife" : 
 
 For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, 
 Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder tliat 
 
 would be; 
 Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of mag- 
 ic sails: 
 Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with 
 
 costly bales; 
 Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there 
 
 rained a ghastly dew 
 From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central 
 
 blue; 
 Far along the world-wide whisper of the south wind 
 
 rushing warm, 
 With the standards of the peoples plunging thro' the 
 
 thunderstorm; 
 Till the war drum throbbed no longer, and the battle 
 
 flags v/ere furled 
 In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world. 
 There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful 
 
 realm in awe, 
 And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal 
 
 law. 
 
 Then he tells of his optimism a^ter "the strife," 
 an optimism all-victorious in "the strife," and 
 larger and stronger because of "the strife" : 
 
 Yet I doubt not thro' the ages one increasing purpose 
 runs, 
 
 And the thoughts of men are widened with the proc- 
 ess of the suns, 
 
 35 
 
TJie Christ of Our Pods 
 
 Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward 
 
 let us range. 
 Let the great world spin forever down the ringing 
 
 grooves of change. 
 Thro' the shadow of the globe we sweep into the 
 
 younger day: 
 Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay. 
 
 Oh, I see the crescent promise of my spirit hath not 
 
 set. 
 Ancient founts of inspiration well thro' all my fancy 
 
 yet. 
 
 Tennyson wrote another "Locksley Hall," 
 which he entitled "Locksley Hall Sixty Years 
 After." In "Locksley Hall" the plot presents a 
 young lover, whose suit has been rejected, and 
 another, a mean, unworthy man, has been ac- 
 cepted because of his wealth and title; and who 
 rails at his fate and raves over the injustice and 
 meanness of society. In "Locksley Hall Sixty 
 Years After," the same man, now a grandfather, 
 counsels and argues with a young grandson who 
 has met a like rebuff. The two episodes are as- 
 sumed to have occurred sixty years apart; hence 
 the name of the later poem. It was really writ- 
 ten some forty or fifty years after the other. 
 
 An old adage says, "Twice a boy, and once a 
 man." Old age, like verdant youth, is peculiar- 
 ly subject to the temptation that makes pessi- 
 36 
 
The Optimism cf'^Lockslcy Hair 
 
 mists of weak men. So in the later poem we 
 nnd evidences of an old-age conflict with doubt 
 and a final victory of faith. Again the poet 
 comes face to face with the rampant evil in the 
 world ; he rails at current vices, the tendencies of 
 modern literature especially: 
 Rip your brother's vices open, strip your own foul 
 
 passions bare; 
 Down with Reticence, down with Reverence — for- 
 ward — naked — let them stare. 
 Feed the budding rose of boyhood with the drainage 
 
 of your sewer; 
 Send the drain into the fountain, lest the stream 
 
 should issue pure. 
 Set the maiden fancies wallowing in the troughs of 
 
 Zolaism — 
 Forward, forv/ard, aye and backward, downward too 
 into the abysm. 
 
 He storms at ecclesiastical abuses : 
 Love your enemy, bless your haters, said the Greatest 
 
 of the great; 
 Christian love among the Churches look'd the twin 
 
 of heathen hate. 
 From the golden alms of Blessing man has coined 
 
 himself a curse. 
 Rome of Caesar, Rome of Peter, which was cruder? 
 
 which is worse? 
 
 He parades the political corruptions of the day, 
 especially the excesses of democracy : 
 France has shown a light to all men, preached a Gos- 
 pel, all men's good; 
 
 37 
 
The Christ of Our Poets 
 
 Celtic Demos rose a Demon, shriek'd and slaked the 
 light with blood. 
 
 Notv/ithstanding all this rampant evil half 
 dominant, he does not lose faith : 
 
 After all the stormy changes shall we find a change- 
 less May? 
 
 After madness, after massacre, Jacobinism and Jac- 
 querie, 
 
 Some diviner force to guide us thro' the days I shall 
 not see? 
 
 When the schemes and all the systems. Kingdoms and 
 Republics fall. 
 
 Something kindlier, higher, holier — all for each and 
 each for all? 
 
 A^U diseases quenched by Science, no man halt, or deaf 
 
 or blind, 
 Stronger ever born of weaker, lustier body, larger 
 
 mind? 
 Earth at last a warless world, a single race, a single 
 
 tongue, 
 I have seen her far away — for is not Earth as yet so 
 
 young? — 
 Every tiger madness muzzled, every serpent passion 
 
 killed, 
 Every grim ravine a garden, every blazing desert 
 
 tilled. 
 Robed in universal harvest up to either pole she 
 
 smiles, 
 Universal ocean softly washing all her warless isles 
 
 His last note of faith is loftier and stronger, if 
 38 
 
The Optunlsm of '•'■Lockslcy HaW* 
 
 possible, than any other note of this twin song of 
 Iiope and faith : 
 
 Far away beyond her myriad coming changes earth 
 
 will be 
 Something other than the wildest modern guess of 
 
 you and me. 
 
 Close kin to it is the closing exhortation : 
 
 Follow you the Star that lights a desert pathway, 
 
 yours or mine. 
 Forward, till you see the highest Human Nature is 
 
 divine. 
 Follow Light, and do the Right — .... 
 Love will conquer at the last. 
 
 39 
 
THE REGENERATION 
 OF EDYRN 
 
"Except a man be born again, he 
 cannot see the kingdom of God" 
 
 — JOEN iii. 3 
 
 "If any man be in Christ, he is 
 a new creature " —2 Cor. v. 17 
 
 "As many as received him, to 
 them gate he power to become the 
 sons of God, even to thevi that be- 
 lieved on his name " —John i. 13 
 
IV 
 
 Lord Tennyson, in his Arthurian epic entitled 
 "Geraint and Enid," tells the story of Edyrn. 
 He was a cousin of the beautiful young Enid, 
 and a suitor for her hand; but was rejected be- 
 cause he was utterly unworthy. Love so spurned 
 turned to hate, and all the demoniac villainy of 
 his baser self was vented upon Enid and her par- 
 ents. With bribes and misrepresentations he 
 turned the vassals of Yniol, Enid's aged father, 
 from him, seizing upon the estate by means of a 
 fictitious claim, and thus he reduced the feudal 
 lord from opulence to penury. Just in the dark- 
 est hour of their misfortune Geraint comes to 
 the rescue, challenges tlie villainous Edyrn in a 
 tournament, overthrows him, and spares his life 
 only on condition that he restore to Yniol and his 
 family their wrested fortune ; and tlien woos and 
 weds the beautiful Enid. 
 
 Edyrn, beaten, humiliated, cliecked in his mad 
 career of villainy, comes to himself, goes to Ar- 
 thur's court, repents, reforms thoroughly, and bc- 
 com.es one of Arthur's famed Knights of the 
 Round Table. He afterwards "tells his experi- 
 ence" to Geraint and Enid : 
 
 My lord Geraint, I greet you with all love — 
 
 43 
 
The Christ of Our Pods 
 
 Who love you, Prince, with something of the love 
 Wherewith we love the Heaven that chastens us. 
 For once, when I was up so high in pride 
 That I vv^as halfway down the slope of Hell, 
 By overthrowing me you threw me higher. 
 
 This sounds not unlike tlie doctrine we hear 
 nowadays from the popular evangelistic pulpit; 
 and it is as philosophic as it is scriptural. All 
 real upward movement in human life must begin 
 in a humiliation. The Beatitudes, constituting 
 the first paragraph of the Sermon on the Mount, 
 give us the steps upward of every life that aspires 
 toward God and heaven; and they begin with, 
 "Blessed are the poor in spirit." Long before 
 the coming of the Preacher on the Mount, an in- 
 spired bard had sung : "The sacrifices of God are 
 a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, 
 O God, thou wilt not despise." 
 
 To Enid, who unwittingly showed some trepi- 
 dation in his presence, the reformed Edyrn said : 
 Fair and dear cousin, you that most had cause 
 To fear me, fear no longer; I am changed. 
 
 Here is where the poet puts the stress in his 
 story; and here evangelical Christianity, follow- 
 ing the New Testament, puts the stress: Chris- 
 tianity changes men. Peter, with his uncontrol- 
 lable impulsiveness ; Thomas, with his chronic in- 
 fidelity ; Paul, with his pharisaic intolerance ; Zac- 
 cheus, with his disloyalty ; the Samaritan woman, 
 44 
 
TJic Rcgatcraiion of Edyrn 
 
 with her unchastity; the malefactor on the cross, 
 with aU his crimes, were changed by the rehgion 
 of Jesus. "Except a man be born from above, 
 he cannot see the kingdom of heaven," is the sol- 
 emn dictum of our Lord. His religion offers to 
 change every sinner in the world. 
 
 The poet stresses the need of a change and the 
 fact of that change by shov/ing what Edyrn was 
 before the change put into contrast with what he 
 became by it. He makes the convert tell it to 
 Enid: 
 
 Yourself were the first blameless cause to make 
 
 My nature's prideful sparkle in the blood 
 
 Break into furious fiame; being repulsed 
 
 By Yniol and yourself, I schemed and wrought 
 
 Until I overturned him; then set up 
 
 My haughty jousts, and took a paramour; 
 
 Did her mock honor as the fairest of the fair, 
 
 And, toppling over all antagonism, 
 
 So waxed in pride, that I believed myself 
 
 Unconquerable, for I was well-nigh mad: 
 
 And, but for my main purpose in these jousts, 
 
 I should have slain your father, seized yourself. 
 
 I lived in hope that some time you would come 
 
 To these my lists with him whom best you loved; 
 
 And there, poor cousin, with your meek blue eyes, 
 
 The truest eyes that ever answered heaven, 
 
 Behold me overturn and trample on him. 
 
 Then, had' you cried, or knelt or prayed to me, 
 
 I should not less have killed him. 
 
 Human ingenuity could hardly have concocted 
 45 
 
The Christ cf Our Poets 
 
 a more diabolical scheme of cruelty and crime. 
 Part of his dark scheme carried. He tells it all : 
 
 And you came — 
 But once you came — and with your own true eyes 
 Beheld the man you loved (I speak as one 
 Speaks of a service done him) overthrow 
 My proud self, and my purpose three years old, 
 And set his foot upon me, and gave me life. 
 There was I broken down; there was I saved. 
 
 King Arthur himself, having tested thorough- 
 ly the converted Edyrn, bears testimony to the 
 thoroughness of his conversion : 
 
 This work of his is great and wonderful. 
 His very face with change of heart is changed. 
 
 This very language is often heard in the mid- 
 glow of the modern revival. 
 
 The world will not believe a man repents: 
 
 And this v/ise world of ours is mainly right. 
 
 Full seldom does a man repent, or use 
 
 Both grace and will to pick the vicious quitch 
 
 Of blood and custom wholly out of him 
 
 And make all clean, and plant himself afresh. 
 
 Edyrn has done it. 
 
 The wise king shows his faith in the conver- 
 sion by trusting fully the convert : 
 
 I, therefore, made him of our Table Round, 
 Not rashly, but have proved him every way 
 One of our noblest, our most valorous, 
 Sanest and most obedient. 
 46 
 
The Regeneration of Edyrri 
 
 This whole story reads as if its author were 
 a diseiple of General Booth, of tlie Salvation 
 Army ; or of Wesley, the fcimdcr of I\Iethodisni ; 
 or of Moody, the great evangelist, so lately de- 
 ceased. Cut it must be rernea:ibcred that Lord 
 Tennyson was a member of tl.e Church of En- 
 gland, and not known to have any sympathy with 
 tlie evangelical notions and methods of Wesley, 
 Booth, Moody, or any of the great revivalists of 
 these later centuries ; and furthermore that his 
 'Idyls of the King," as lie entitled his Arthurian 
 epics, were but his own poetic versions of old 
 myths handed down a thousand years or more. 
 Wliere then did Tennyson, or the legends he 
 voices, get the evangelical doctrine of regenera- 
 tion so strongly and so clearly taught in the story 
 of Edyrn? There is but one ansv/er: just where 
 Wesley and Booth and Moody and all of us get 
 it — from the Nev/ Testament, where it is written 
 down by the pen of inspiration from the lips of 
 our Lord. 
 
 47 
 
TENNYSON'S 
 ''HOLY GRAIL 
 
"Blessed are the pure in heart: 
 for they shall see God" 
 
 — Matt. v. S 
 
 "Follow . . . holiness, without 
 which no man shall see the Lord" 
 
 — Heb. xii. 14 
 
If "In Memoriam" must be classed as Lord 
 Tennyson's masterpiece, it must be conceded, I 
 think, that "The Holy Grail" is his most beauti- 
 ful long poem. He who always sought the rich- 
 est melody possible to rhyme and rhythm, and 
 the most gorgeous drapery in v/hich imagination 
 could clothe its thought, reached the summit of 
 his marvelous capacity in this, possibly the most 
 beautiful epic ever vv'ritten. 
 
 It retells the old medieval legend of tlie search 
 for the Holy Grail by King Arthur's Knights of 
 the Round Table. The Holy Grail was 
 
 The cup from which our Lord 
 Drank at the last sad supper with his own. 
 Which, from the blessed land of Aromat — 
 After the day of darkness, when the dead 
 Went wandering o'er Moriah — ^the good saint, 
 Arimathean Joseph, journeying, brought 
 To Glastonbury, where the winter thorn 
 Blossoms at Christmas, mhidful of our Lord. 
 And there awhile it abode; and if a man 
 Could touch or see it, he was healed at once. 
 By faith, of all his ills. But then the times 
 Grew to such evil that the holy cup 
 Was caught away to heaven, and disappeared. 
 
 ^This chapter first appeared as a communication to 
 the Epworlh Era. 
 
 51 
 
The Ch7'ist of Our Poets 
 
 For a long, long time no one had seen the Holy 
 Grail, though very many with prayers and fast- 
 ings had sought to see it. At length, half a thou- 
 sand years having passed, "a holy maid," sister 
 of Sir Percivale, a nun, whose "heart was pure 
 as snow," got a vision of it, and, calling her broth- 
 er, said : 
 
 Sweet brother, I have seen the Holy Grail; 
 For, waked at dead of night, I heard a sound 
 As of a silver horn from o'er the hills. 
 
 Oh, never harp nor horn, 
 Nor aught we blow with breath or touch with hand, 
 Was like that music as it came; and then 
 Streamed through my cell a cold and silver beam. 
 And down the long beam stole the Holy Grail, 
 Rose-red with beatings in it, as if alive, 
 Till all the white walls of my cell were dyed 
 With rosy colors leaping on the wall; 
 And then the music faded, and the Grail 
 Passed and the beam decayed, and from the walls 
 The rosy quiverings died into the night. 
 
 Sir Percivale told the story in Arthur's Hall, 
 iand every knight was fired v/ith a purpose to 
 catch at least a glimpse of the wonderful all-heal- 
 ing Holy Grail so long withheld, but at last re- 
 turned. Each sought it in his own chosen way. 
 Some rode one way, some another — all vowed to 
 give one year to the quest. 
 
 Sir Percivale rode on for many a day, and saw 
 52 
 
Tennyson'* s '"'■Holy GraiP'' 
 
 many things, but not the Holy Grail ; had many 
 promising visions, each fading and leaving him 
 "alone, wearying and thirsting in a land of sand 
 and thorns." When he set out on his quest there 
 came to him a prophecy of failure. He tells it 
 thus : 
 
 Then every evil word I had spoken once, 
 And every evil thought I had thought of old, 
 And every evil deed I ever did, 
 Awoke and cried, "This quest is not for thee!" 
 
 After various disappointing experiences, each 
 winding up with him "alone, Vv^earying and thirst- 
 ing in a land of sand and thorns," he sought out 
 "a holy hermit in a hermitage," and told his story, 
 craving advice. The good man said: 
 
 O son, thou hast not true humility, 
 The highest virtue — mother of them all. 
 
 Thou hast not lost thyself to save thyself. 
 As Galahad. 
 
 He learned the hermit's lesson, and saw at last 
 the Holy Grail. 
 
 And who was Galahad? He is called the 
 "Llaiden Knight." 
 
 "God make thee good as thou art beautiful," 
 S'aid Arthur, when he dubbed him knight. 
 
 He was the purest knight in Arthur's court — 
 both pure and beautiful. Arthur's prayer was 
 answered. When the news of the Holy Grail's 
 53 
 
The Christ of Our Poets 
 
 reappearance was told at Camelot, Sir Galahad 
 caught the nun's spirit and "believed in her be- 
 lief," setting his heart, with a sure hope, on see- 
 ing the Holy Grail; and he saw it again and 
 again. In the great hall at Camelot there stood 
 A vacant chair, 
 Fashioned by Merlin ere he passed away. 
 
 And Merlin called it "The Siege Perilous" — 
 Perilous for good and ill; "for there," he said, 
 "No man could sit but he should lose himself." 
 
 Sir Galahad, having learned the real secret of 
 salvation as revealed in the Gospels, 
 Said, "If I lose myself I save myself." 
 Then on a summer night it came to pass. 
 While the great banquet lay along the hall. 
 That Galahad sat down in Merlin's chair. 
 
 And all at once, 
 
 A beam of light seven times more clear than day; 
 And down the long beam stole the Holy Grail, 
 All covered with a luminous cloud. 
 
 None saw it save Sir Galahad. The others 
 saw the cloud ; but he saw the Grail. Of all the 
 knights in Arthur's court only he, who had lost 
 himself to save himself, was holy enough to see 
 it. The legend stresses the fact that Arthur was 
 not there. Sir Galahad had other visions of the 
 Holy Grail, and he followed where the visions led 
 him until at last "one crowned him king far in the 
 spiritual city." 
 
 54 
 
Tennyson'' s ^'■Hcly GraiP'' 
 
 Sir Lancelot was the most famous kniglit in 
 Arthur's court, and had been considered the 
 strongest and bravest; but his heart had become 
 very impure: 
 
 The great and guilty love he bare the queen, 
 
 In battle with the love he bare his lord, 
 
 Had marred his face, and marked it ere his time. 
 
 He had come to know his weakness; and once 
 he confessed it : 
 
 Me you call great: 
 
 but there is many a youth 
 Now crescent, who will come to all I am 
 And overcome it; and in me there dwells 
 No greatness, save it be some far-off touch 
 Of greatness to know well I am not great. 
 
 In his quest for the Grail he had tempestuous 
 experiences. At last he was brought in peni- 
 tence to the foot of the cross, where he found 
 pardon ; and then he, too, saw the Holy Grail. 
 But the vision was not clear and full and rich like 
 those which came to Sir Galahad. 
 
 Sir Gawain started on the quest strong in pur- 
 pose and hope, but 
 
 Found a silk pavilion in a field. 
 And merry maidens in it; 
 
 and turned from his search, and never saw the 
 Holy Grail at all. The race of Gawain is a pop- 
 ulous one. Thousands of young people start out 
 55 
 
The Christ of Our Poets 
 
 -J 
 
 SO purposeful aiid hopeful and ardent in their 
 seeking- for the best things God has for them, and 
 are soon turned aside by some little worldliness, 
 and thus miss all their high aims in life. 
 
 Such is the legend as told by England's great- 
 est poet; but the lesson he would teach is richer 
 than the legend which bodies it, and more beau- 
 tiful than the gorgeous poetry that tells it. It 
 means that purity of heart is a necessity if we 
 are to reach the ideal life possible to us and come 
 into possession of the wonderful things God has 
 for his children. It means also that sin — all sin, 
 though it be but the idling of a Gawain "in a silk 
 pavilion" with the innocent maidens; though it 
 be but the merest worldliness, the most innocent 
 omission of duty, of the slightest indifference — 
 blinds our eyes to the beauties of heaven and 
 deafens our ears to the music of God. 
 
 Mrs. Browning says : 
 
 There's nothing small: 
 No pebble at my feet but proves a world; 
 No skylark but implies a cherub choir; 
 No hum of lily-mufifled bee but finds 
 Some coupling music with the whirling stars. 
 Earth is crammed with heaven, 
 And every common bush afire with God; 
 But only those who see take off their shoes: 
 The rest sit around it and eat blackberries. 
 
 And only the pure in heart "see" : the rest are 
 so sordid that they can see nothing in nature ex- 
 56 
 
Tennyson'' s '''■Holy GraW'' 
 
 cept it be somctliing to eat or to drink, and so 
 spirit-blind that they see nothing in grace what- 
 ever. "Blessed are the pure in heart; for they 
 shall see God." One with greater claim to in- 
 spiration than Tennyson has said : "We speak the 
 pliilosophy of God in a mystery, even the hidden 
 philosophy, which God ordained before the world 
 [began] to our glory; [and] which none of the 
 princely thinkers of this world knew. . . . 
 But as it is written. Eye hath not seen, nor ear 
 ■heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, 
 the things v/hich God liath prepared for them 
 that love him. But God hath revealed them unto 
 us by his Spirit. . . . Which things also we 
 speak, not in the v/ords which man's philosophy 
 teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth. 
 . . . But the natural man receiveth not the 
 things of the Spirit of God : for they are foolish- 
 ness unto him : neither can he know them, because 
 they are spiritually discerned." 
 
 Tennyson's dream of the Holy Grail and Paul's 
 revelation tell the same lordly story. Tliey mean 
 that only the soul which has passed the regenera- 
 tive transforming of the new birth, and felt the 
 touch of a Pentecostal chrism, may think the tow- 
 ering thoughts of God, and fathom glorious mys- 
 teries unknown to common minds. They teach 
 that a regenerated soul means a reinvigorated in- 
 tellect as well as a purified heart, and that the 
 57 
 
The Christ of Our Poets 
 
 'child of God must know more of God than any 
 other, and learn more of the divine secrets, get- 
 ting deeper in God's mysteries, and keeping more 
 in touch with God and heaven. Only "the pure 
 in heart" see God. 
 
 58 
 
LOWELL'S 
 *^SIR LAUNFAL 
 
"Inasmuch cs ye have done it 
 unto one of the least of these my 
 brethren, ye have done ft unto me " 
 
 Matt. sxv. 40 
 
VI 
 
 The legend of the Holy Grail has been tlie 
 theme and inspiration of more than one of oiir 
 poets. Lowell, as well as Tennyson and Morris, 
 sang the legend. Lowell says of his poem : 
 
 The plot (if I may give that name to anything so 
 slight) of the following poem is my own, and, to 
 serve its purposes, I have enlarged the circle of com- 
 petition in search of the miraculous cup in such a 
 manner as to include not only other persons than the 
 heroes of the Round Table, but also a period of time 
 subsequent to the date of King Arthur's reign. 
 
 On "a day in June" Sir Laimfal made prepara- 
 tions for a long, wide search : 
 
 For to-morrov/ I go over land and sea 
 In search for the Holy Grail. 
 
 As was the custom Vv^ith the knights of that ro- 
 mantic era of chivalry, he had made a vow to 
 seek the Grail : 
 
 Shall never a bed for me be spread, 
 
 Nor shall a pillow be under my head, 
 
 Till I begin my vow to keep. 
 
 Here on the rushes v/ill I sleep, 
 
 And perchance there may come a vision true 
 
 Ere day create the v/orld anew. 
 
 So he slept on the pile of straw that night in 
 6i 
 
The Chi'ist of Our Poets 
 
 his castle, intending to start on his long journey 
 early next morning. But that night 
 
 Into his soul the vision flew. 
 
 He dreamed that, just as he had planned, he 
 started with the morning on his tour of seeking; 
 but 
 
 As Sir Launfal made morn through the darksome gate, 
 He was 'ware of a leper crouched by the same, 
 
 Who begged v/ith his hand and moaned as he sate; 
 And a loathing over Sir Launfal came — 
 
 For this man, so foul and bent of stature, 
 Rasped harshly against his dainty nature, 
 And seemed the one blot on the summer morn — i 
 So he tossed him a piece of gold in scorn. 
 
 He dreamed that he rode on and on and on, 
 seeking for years and years, undergoing many 
 hardships, toiling incessantly in his search, but 
 finding no trace of the long-sought Holy Grail. 
 
 At last, when old and gray and worn v/ith 
 years of toilsome, fruitless search, he found him- 
 self again in a wild midwinter at his castle gate. 
 The leper was there also. 
 
 Lank as the rain-bleached bone, 
 a thing as lone 
 And white as the ice-isles of northern seas '~ 
 In the desolate horror of his disease. 
 
 The discipline of his suffering through those 
 toilsome years had wrought a change in Sir 
 63 
 
LowcWs '■^Sir LamtfaP'* 
 
 Launfal ; he had become more Christlike, and 
 when the leper said, 
 
 For Christ's sweet sake I beg an alms, 
 
 he replied humbly : 
 
 I behold in thee 
 An image of Him who died on the tree; 
 Thou also hast had thy crown of thorns — 
 Thou also hast had the world's bufTets and scorns — 
 And to thy life were not denied 
 The wounds in the hands and feet and side: 
 Mild Mary's Son, acknowledge me; 
 Behold, through him, I give to Thee! 
 Then the soul of the leper stood up in his eyes 
 
 And looked at Sir Launfal, and straightway he 
 Remembered in what a haughtier guise 
 
 He had flung an alms to leprosie, 
 When he girt his young life up in gilded mail 
 And set forth in search of the Holy Grail. 
 The heart within him was ashes and dust; 
 He parted in twain his single crust, 
 He broke the ice on the streamlet's brink. 
 And gave the leper to eat and drink: 
 'Twas a moldy crust of coarse brown bread, 
 
 'Twas water out of a wooden bov;l — 
 Yet with fine wheaten bread was the leper fed, 
 
 And 'twas red wine he drank with his thirsty soul. 
 
 The leper no longer crouched at his side. 
 But stood before him glorified. 
 
 Sir Launfal recognized the very Qirist indeed 
 before him, and his whole soul went out to him 
 in loving devotion. The Master said : 
 63 
 
The Christ of Our Poets 
 
 Lo, it is I, be not afraid! 
 
 In many climes, without avail, 
 
 Thou hast spent thy life for the Holy Grail; 
 
 Behold, it is here — tliis cup ivhich thou 
 
 Didst fill at the streamlet for -Me but now; 
 
 This crust is My body broken for thee. 
 
 This water His blood that died on the tree; 
 
 The Holy Supper is kept, indeed, 
 
 In whatso we share with another's need: 
 
 Not what we give, but what we share — 
 
 For the gift without the giver is bare; 
 
 Who gives himself with his alms feeds three — 
 
 Himself, his hungering neighbor, and Me. 
 
 Sir Laimfal awoke from his dream ; he had 
 dreamed it all out in the vision of one night — a 
 psychological possibility — and the vision gave 
 him a lesson he had never learned before : 
 
 The Grail in my castle here is found! 
 Hang my idle armor up on the wall, 
 Let it be the spider's banquet hall; 
 He must be fenced with stronger mail 
 Who would seek and find the Holy Grail. 
 
 Instead of going on his senseless search, he 
 gave himself unstintedly to helping humanity 
 about him. 
 
 The meanest serf on Sir Launfal's land 
 Had hall and bower at his command; 
 
 for Sir Launfal's castle was ever open to the poor 
 and the needy. 
 
 The lesson of Lowell's song is easily read ; and 
 it is as sweet as it is true and strong. 
 64 
 
MRS. BROWNING'S 
 GOSPEL OF REFORM 
 
"Blessed is he that considereth the 
 poor" — Ps. xii. I 
 
VII 
 
 Christianity is essentially a gospel of reform. 
 Its one business in the world is to reform its 
 customs born of sin, and turn its trend of life 
 from downward to upward. Very early in its 
 history the coming of its apostles to a great hea- 
 then city was announced in these words: "They 
 that have turned the world upside down have 
 come hither also." It is a fact that every great 
 social reform ever inaugurated found birth and 
 impulse and guidance in Christianity. The slav- 
 ery of womanhood and the oppression of child- 
 hood, so universal before Christianity came, and 
 the inhumanity of the treatment met everywhere, 
 even among the Jews, by the insane, the leprous, 
 the blind, and the lame — not to mention a great 
 host of other intolerable cruelties — speak "trump- 
 et-tongued" of the need of the reforms Christian- 
 ity has brought, and is still bringing, 
 
 Mrs. Browning sang this gospel of reform, 
 which is the gospel of the Christ, 
 
 To one clear harp in divers tones — 
 
 sang it so strongly that all the world has heard. 
 
 In one of her sonnets, entitled "Hiram Powers's 
 Greek Slave," she sings a strong protest against 
 that species of human slavery so long and so 
 largely excused under the name of serfdom : 
 67 
 
The Christ of Oicr Poets 
 
 On the threshold stands 
 An alien Image with enshackled hands, 
 Called the Greek Slave: as if the artist meant her 
 
 To so confront man's crim.cs in different lands 
 With man's ideal sense. 
 
 Pierce to the center, 
 Art's fiery finger! and break up erelong 
 The serfdom of this world! Appeal, fair stone, 
 From God's pure heights of beauty, against man's 
 
 wrong! 
 Catch up in thy divine face, not alone 
 East griefs, but west — and strike and shame the strong, 
 By thunders of white silence. 
 
 A stronger protest against this and other cry- 
 ing cruelties is sung in her longer lyric, entitled 
 "A Curse for a Nation" : 
 
 I heard an angel speak last night. 
 
 And he said, "Write! 
 Write a nation's curse for me, 
 And send it over the Western Sea." 
 
 This curse was for America because of negro 
 slavery. She demurred: 
 
 Not so, my lord! 
 If curses must be, choose another 
 To send thy curse against my brother: 
 For I am bound by gratitude. 
 
 By love and blood. 
 To brothers of mine across the sea. 
 
 The angel insists: she argues her demurrer: 
 68 
 
Mrs. Broiuning^s Gospel of Reform 
 
 Evermore 
 My heart is sore 
 For my own land's sins: for little feet 
 Of children bleeding along the street: 
 For parked-up honors that gainsay 
 
 The right of way: 
 For almsgiving through a door that is 
 Not open enough for two friends to kiss: 
 For love of freedom which abates 
 
 Beyond the Straits: 
 For patriot virtue starved to vice on 
 Self-praise, self-interest, and suspicion: 
 For an oligarchic parliament, 
 
 And bribes well meant. 
 What curse to another land assign 
 When heavy-souled for the sins of mine? 
 
 She then urged that as she was woman, and 
 
 Had only known 
 How the heart melts and the tears run down, 
 
 she was incapable of writing a curse ; but the an- 
 gel turned back on her the argument she used : 
 
 Therefore shalt thou write 
 My curse to-night. 
 Some women weep and curse, I say 
 (And no one marvels) night and day, 
 And thou shalt take their part to-night: 
 Weep and write. 
 
 There is no defense to be made for negro slav- 
 ery ; but it was remarkable wisdom in this great 
 Christian woman to face the blind prejudices 
 and unreasoning partisanism of her time, and 
 69 
 
The Christ of Our Poets 
 
 recognize the truth that there prevailed a "white 
 slavery" as reprehensible as negro slavery, and 
 far worse in its tendencies, and that there were 
 other great evils that cried to Heaven for reform. 
 She revoices part of this protest in "The Cry 
 of the Human" : 
 
 The plague of gold strides far and near, 
 
 And deep and strong it enters: 
 This purple chimar which we wear 
 
 Makes madder than the Centaur's. 
 Our thoughts grow blank, our words grow 
 strange: 
 
 We cheer the pale gold-diggers — 
 Each soul is worth so much on change. 
 
 And marked like sheep with figures. 
 Be pitiful, O God! 
 
 The curse of gold upon the land, 
 
 The lack of bread enforces — 
 The rail-cars snort from strand to strand. 
 
 Like more of Death's White Horses: 
 The rich preach rights and future days. 
 
 And hear no angel scoffing: 
 The poor die mute — with starving gaze 
 
 On corn-ships in the offing. 
 
 Be pitiful, O God! 
 
 No protest that she ever uttered was so deep 
 and earnest and strong as was her protest against 
 the oppression of childhood. Her "Cry of the 
 Children" has been heard all around the world 
 wherever the English tongue is spoken; and it 
 has touched the world's heart profoundly, insoir- 
 70 
 
Mrs. Browning'' s Gospel of Reform 
 
 ing reform and molding legislation. Was there 
 ever sung a plea more pathetic than this? 
 
 Do you hear the children weeping, O my brothers, 
 
 Ere the sorrow comes with years? 
 They are leaning their young heads against their 
 mothers, 
 And that cannot stop their tears. 
 The young lambs are bleating in the meadows. 
 
 The young birds are chirping in the nest, 
 The young fawns are playing with the shadows, 
 
 The young flowers are blowing toward the west; 
 But the young, young children, O my brothers. 
 
 They are weeping bitterly! 
 They are weeping in the playtime of the others, 
 In the country of the free. 
 
 She probed fearlessly to the shameful cause of 
 "The Cry," a condition that had existed from 
 time immemorial and to a fearful extent in En- 
 gland, and that has existed shamefully in Amer- 
 ica until a higher Christianity, heeding this "Cry 
 of the Children," has compelled legislation abol- 
 ishing it: 
 
 "Oh," say the children, "we are weary. 
 
 And we cannot run or leap; 
 If we cared for any meadows, it were merely 
 
 To drop down in them and sleep. 
 Our knees tremble sorely in the stooping. 
 
 We fall upon our faces trying to go; 
 And, underneath our heavy eyelids drooping, 
 
 The reddest flower would look as pale as snow. 
 For, all day, we drag our burden tiring 
 
0f 
 The Christ of Our Poets 
 
 Through the coal-dark, underground; 
 Or, all day, we drive the wheels of iron 
 In the factories round and round." 
 
 As she sings on, the picture deepens, the pathos 
 grows, the horror of the condition becomes more 
 and more appalling : 
 
 Still all day the iron wheels go onward, 
 
 Grinding life down from its mark; 
 And the children's souls, which God is calling sun- 
 ward, 
 
 Spin on bhndly in the dark. 
 
 She pleads with intense pathos : 
 
 Let them feel that this cold metallic motion 
 Is not all the life God fashions or reveals: 
 
 Let them prove their living souls against the notion 
 That they live in you, or under you, O wheels! 
 
 She represents these children being told of 
 God and replying : 
 
 Who is God that he should hear us 
 While the rushing of the iron wheels is stirred? 
 
 They are urged to pray, and they answer: 
 
 Two words, indeed, of praying we remember. 
 
 And at midnight's hour of harm, 
 "Our Father," looking upward in the chamber, 
 
 We say softly for a charm. 
 V/e know no other words except "Our Father," 
 
 And we think that in some pause of angel's song 
 God may pluck them with the silence sweet to gather 
 
 And hold both in his right hand which is strong. 
 
 72 
 
J\Ii's Broivni7:g''s Gospel of Reform 
 
 She closes with tliese strong, fearful lines : 
 
 How long, O cruel nation, 
 Will you stand, to move the world, on a child's 
 heart — 
 Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation, 
 
 And tread onward to your throne amid the mart? 
 Our blood splashes upward, O gold-heaper, 
 
 And your purple shows your path! 
 But the child's sob in the silence curses deeper 
 Than the strong man in his wrath. 
 
 Mrs. Browning wrote also "A Song for the 
 Ragged Schools of London," in which she pleads 
 
 again for the children : 
 
 Children small, 
 Spilt like blots about the city, 
 
 Quay and street and palace-wall — 
 
 Ragged children with bare feet. 
 
 Whom the angels in bright raiment 
 Know the names of. 
 
 She pleads earnestly, eloquently, sweetly: 
 
 O my sisters! children small 
 Blue-eyed, wailing through the city — 
 
 Our own babes cry in them all: 
 Let us take them into pity! 
 
 When the Master sits as Judge, and we all 
 come to his judgment seat, he will say to this 
 gifted singer of England and Italy, this Christly 
 lover of the children: "Inasmuch as yon have 
 done if unto the least of these, you have done it 
 unto me." 
 
 73 
 
" THE MERCHANT OF 
 VENICE" TRANSFIGURED 
 
"Blessed are the merciful: for 
 they shall obtain mercy" 
 
 — Matt. v. 7 
 
VIII 
 
 That there was an old English play, very in- 
 ferior, which Shakespeare transformed and thus 
 made his Merchant of Venice, has been clearly 
 shown by Dr. Edward Dowden, of Dublin Uni- 
 versity. The old play was a product of the 
 Dark Ages, when Christianity, half robbed of its 
 Bible, was half pagan, and when literature was 
 lifeless and tame; hence it was crude and worth- 
 less until Shakespeare, in the large light and lib- 
 erty of the Elizabethan era of gospel emancipa- 
 tion, transformed it into the strong, virile, mag- 
 nificent work of art known as The Merchant of 
 Venice. The real difference, therefore, between 
 the old play and the modern is a difference 
 wrought by the religion of the New Testament : 
 hence the work of art we know and admire is 
 but The Merchant of Venice transfigured by the 
 gospel of Christ. 
 
 Antonio, whose occupation gives name to tlie 
 play, is a Christian. His character is one which 
 we never weary of contemplating," says Dr. Hen- 
 ry N. Hudson, wlio adds : "The only blemish we- 
 perceive in him is his treatment of Shylock, . . . 
 much more the fault of the times than of the 
 man." He is a real Christian, not merely in th.e 
 sense distinguishing him from a Jew or a Jvlo- 
 77 
 
The Christ of Giir Poets 
 
 hammedan, but one that can say, "I hold tlie 
 world but as the world," indorsing Gratiano's 
 statement that 
 
 They lose it that do buy it with much care — 
 
 an echo of our Lord's words, "Be not anxious 
 for your life" (Matt. vi. 25). When Shylock's 
 knife gleams thirsty for his heart's blood in for- 
 feit of his bond, he can say : 
 
 7 am armed and well prepared. 
 Give me your hand, Bassanio: fare you well! 
 Grieve not that I am fallen to this for you; 
 
 Repent not you that you shall lose your friend, 
 And he repents not that he pays your debt; 
 For if the Jew do cut but deep enough, 
 I'll pay it instantly with all my heart. 
 
 When the tide unexpectedly turns and the 
 court decrees that half of Shylock's wealth is by 
 law Antonio's, he has the grace to decline it, and 
 the wisdom and justice to direct it to Lorenzo 
 and Jessica, Shylock's son-in-law and daughter, 
 whom the Jew would disinherit, accepting only a 
 'temporary use or trusteeship of it for the young 
 people, and that only on condition that the court 
 return to Shylock the other half forfeited to the 
 state. Thus is indicated a Christlike absence of 
 resentment, and a sweet fulfillment of that high 
 law of the Christ which says, "Love your ene- 
 mies, bless them that curse you, do good to them 
 78 
 
'■'■The McrcJiant of J'^em'ce^^ Trausjigured 
 
 that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully 
 use you and persecute you." 
 
 In Portia, who is more the heroine than Anto- 
 nio is the hero of the story, and who is the au- 
 thor's one great female character, Shakespeare 
 got far ahead, not only of the age in which he 
 lived, an age shadowed by medioeval ignorance 
 and degeneracy, but of this age also, the bright- 
 est era of human history. His Portia is a new 
 woman in the highest, truest, best sense, a woman 
 idealized nowhere else save in the Bible, and pos- 
 sible under no social system that is not complete- 
 ly saturated with Christianity. Dr. Hudson thus 
 characterizes her: "Eminently practical in her 
 tastes and turn of mind, full of native home-bred 
 sense and virtue, uniting therewith something of 
 the ripeness and dignity of the sage, ... as 
 intelligent as the strongest, at the same time as 
 feminine as the weakest, of her sex: she talks 
 like a poet and a philosopher, yet, strange to say, 
 she talks for all the world just like a woman." 
 Mrs. Jameson thus writes of her, having studied 
 her more thoroughly, perhaps, than any one else 
 who has attempted to interpret Shakespeare: 
 
 She is full of penetrative wisdom, and genuine ten- 
 derness, and lively vv'it; but as she has never known 
 want, or grief, or fear, or disappointment, her wisdom 
 is without a touch of the somber or the sad; her affec- 
 tions are all mixed up with faith, hope, and joy; and 
 her wit has not a particle of malevolence or caustic- 
 
 79 
 
IVic Chf'lst of Our Poets 
 
 ity. . . . The sudden plan which she forms for the 
 release of her husband's friend, her disguise, and her 
 deportment as the young and learned doctor, would 
 appear forced and improbable in any other woman, 
 but in Portia are the simple and natural result of her 
 character. The quickness with which she perceives 
 the legal advantage which may be taken of the cir- 
 cumstances; the journey to consult her learned cous- 
 in, the doctor, Bellario; the spirit of adventure with 
 which she engages in the masquerading; and the de- 
 cision, firmness, and intelligence with which she ex- 
 ecutes her generous purpose — are all in perfect keep- 
 ing, and nothing appears forced: nothing is intro- 
 duced merely for theatrical efifect. But all the finest 
 parts of Portia's character are brought to bear in the 
 trial scene. , . . Her intellectual powers, her ele- 
 vated sense of religion, her high, honorable principles, 
 her best feelings as a woman, are all displayed. . . . 
 A prominent feature in Portia's character is that con- 
 fiding, buoyant spirit which mingles with all her 
 thoughts and affections. • . . Portia's strength of 
 intellect takes a natural tinge from the flush and 
 bloom of her young and prosperous existence, and 
 from her fervid imagination. In the casket scene she 
 fears, indeed, the issue of the trial on which more than 
 her life is hazarded; but while she trembles, her hope 
 is stronger than her fear. While Bassanio is contem- 
 plating the caskets, she suffers herself to dwell for one 
 moment on the possibility of disappointment and misery. 
 . . . Then immediately follows that revolution of feel- 
 ing so beautifully characteristic of the hopeful, trusting, 
 mounting spirit of this noble creature. 
 
 Portia's confidential estimates of some of her 
 suitors, spoken privately to Nerissa, are too re- 
 80 
 
" The ^Icrchant of Venice " Transfigured 
 
 freshing to be overlooked, especially as they in- 
 dicate that her idea of real manhood is that told 
 in the eighth Psalm, and portrayed in the New 
 Testament. Of Monsieur Le Bon, the French 
 lord, she says: "God made him, and therefore 
 let him pass for a man." Of "the young German, 
 the Duke of Saxony's nephew," she says : "When 
 he is best, he is a little worse than a man; and 
 when he is worst, he is little better than a beast." 
 
 Her plea with the Jew in the trial scene is be- 
 yond question the finest piece of the play, and is 
 saturated with the teachings of the Christ: 
 
 The quality of mercy is not strain' d, 
 It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven 
 Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest; 
 It blesseth him that gives and him that takes: 
 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes 
 The throned monarch better than his crown; 
 His scepter shows the force of temporal power, 
 The attribute to awe and majesty, 
 Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; 
 But mercy is above this scepter'd sway; 
 It is enthroned in the hearts of kings. 
 It is an attribute to God himself; 
 And earthly power doth then show likest God's 
 When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew, 
 Though justice be thy plea, consider this, 
 That, in the course of justice, none of us 
 Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy; 
 And that same prayer doth teach us all to render 
 The deeds of mercy. 
 
 6 Si 
 
The Christ of Our Poets 
 
 "The lyrical boy-aiid-girl love of Lorenzo and 
 Jessica" is as beautiful as a May morning, and 
 as pure and sweet as the dew on roses. There is 
 a beautiful philosophy as well as brilliant poetry 
 and thrilling faith in his love-sick warblings, as 
 Lorenzo seats Jessica on a moonlit bank, and says : 
 
 Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven 
 
 Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold: 
 
 There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st 
 
 But in his motion like an angel sings, 
 
 Still quiring to the young-ey'd cherubins; 
 
 Such }mrmony is in immortal souls; 
 
 But whilst this muddy vesiure of decay 
 
 Doth grossly close it in, zvc cannot hear it. 
 
 The following may not claim inspiration from 
 any definite utterance in the New Testament, but 
 finds abundant confirmation in the place ordained 
 for music in our religion, specially indicated by the 
 angelic choirs and their singing heard throughout 
 the Book of Revelation : 
 
 Jessica. I am never merry when I hear sweet music. 
 Lorenzo. The reason is, your spirits are attentive: 
 For do but note a wild and wanton herd 
 Or race of youthful and unhandled colts, 
 Fetching mad bounds, bellowing and neighing loud, 
 Which is the hot condition of their blood; 
 If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound, 
 Or any air of music touch their ears, 
 You shall perceive them make a mutual stand, 
 Their savage eyes turn'd to a modest gaze 
 82 
 
" The Merchant of V^cnlce " Transjigurcd 
 
 By the sweet power of music: therefore the poet 
 Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones, and 
 
 floods; 
 Since naught so stockish, hard, and full of rage, 
 But music for the time doth change his nature. 
 The man that hath no music in himself, 
 Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds, 
 Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils ; 
 The motions of his spirit are dark as night 
 And his affections dark as Erebus: 
 Let no such man be trusted. 
 
 The following reminds us of our Lord's temp- 
 tation in the wilderness and Sermon on the 
 Mount : 
 
 The Devil can cite scripture for his purpose. 
 An evil soul, producing holy witness. 
 Is like a villain with a smiling cheek, 
 A goodly apple rotten at the heart: 
 Oh, what a godly outside falsehood hath! 
 
 The Merchant of Venice may be described 
 by declaring it a most artistic compound of me- 
 diieval folklore and legend, history, common 
 sense, and poetry, all thoroughly saturated with 
 th.e spirit of the gospel, making of it one of the 
 most magnificent productions of human genius. 
 83 
 
THE GOSPEL IN 
 "LALLA ROOKH" 
 
"The sacrifices of God are a 
 broken spirit : a broken and a con- 
 trite heart, O God. thou wilt not 
 despise " _Ps. ii. 17 
 
IX 
 
 Of the four story-songs, or light epics, which 
 make up Moore's "Lalla Rookh," the shortest 
 and brightest is "Paradise and the Peri." 
 Though a sort of fairy tale with a mythological 
 setting, yet it is instinct with the spirit of the 
 gospel. 
 
 The Peri, in Persian mythology, was one of a 
 race of fallen angels seeking and expecting res- 
 toration to their lost paradise. 
 
 One morn a Peri at the gate 
 
 Of Eden stood disconsolate; 
 And as she listened to the Springs 
 
 Of Life within, like music flowing, 
 And caught the light upon her wings 
 
 Through the half-open portal glowing, 
 She wept to think her recreant race 
 Should e'er have lost that glorious place. 
 
 Pier longing for the lost Eden grew intenser 
 as she lingered. She soliloquizes : 
 
 Go, wing thy flight from star to star, 
 From world to luminous world, as far 
 
 As the universe spreads its flaming wall; 
 Take all the pleasures of all the spheres, 
 And multiply each through endless years — 
 One minute of heaven is worth them all. 
 
 Tlie warder at the gate saw and heard her and 
 was touched : 
 
 i^7 
 
The Christ of Our Poets 
 
 "Nymph of a fair but erring line!" 
 
 Gently he said, "one hope is thine: 
 
 'Tis written in the book of fate, 
 
 ■ The Peri yet may be forgiven 
 
 WJw brings to this Eternal Gate 
 
 The gift that is tnost dear to Heaven." 
 
 She was delighted at the bare possibility of 
 earning entrance, and sped away to begin her 
 search : 
 
 Down the blue vault the Peri flies, 
 And, lighted earthward by a glance 
 
 That broke just then from morning's eyes, 
 Hung hovering o'er our world's expanse, 
 
 wondering just where to begin her search. She 
 
 knew the wealth 
 
 Of every urn 
 In which unnumbered rubies burn. 
 
 She knew also 
 
 Where the Isles of Perfume are 
 Many a fathom down in the sea 
 To the south of sun-bright Araby. 
 
 As she pondered the problem she flew aimless- 
 ly along : 
 
 While thus she mused her pinions fanned 
 The air of that sweet Indian land, 
 Whose air is balm, whose ocean spreads 
 O'er coral rocks and amber beds. 
 
 The smell of death 
 Came reeking from those spicy bowers, 
 88 
 
The Gospel in ^'Lalla Rookh''' 
 
 And man, the sacrifice of man, 
 
 Mingled his taint with every breath 
 Upwafted from the innocent flowers. 
 
 Mahmood of Gazna, the blood-thirsty conquer- 
 or of India, was in the midst of his awful work. 
 The Peri saw a youth dying rather than to become 
 traitor to his bleeding country; she gathered up 
 the last drop of his life's blood and flew away 
 with it, singing : 
 
 Oh ! if there be on this earthly sphere, 
 
 A boon, an offering that Heaven holds dear, 
 
 'Tis the last libation Liberty draws 
 
 From the heart that bleeds and breaks in her cause. 
 
 She bore it to heaven's gate, but it did not 
 avail. She was undaunted, however, and flew 
 away to continue her search. 
 
 On the banks of the Nile she found a lovely 
 youth dying of an awful pestilence, and his fair 
 young bride ministering to him and dying her- 
 self in the midst of her ministering. Such beau- 
 tiful love and self-sacrificing devotion seemed to 
 the Peri costlier than anything she had ever 
 known ; so she carried to the closed gate of heav- 
 en the dying sigh of the young wife. But the 
 charm failed, and the warder said : 
 
 True was the maiden — and her story, 
 Written in light o'er Allah's head, 
 By seraph eyes shall long be read. 
 
 But, Peri, see — the crystal bar 
 
 Of Eden moves not — holier far 
 89 
 
The Christ of Our Poets 
 
 Than even this sigh the boon must be 
 That opes the gates of Heaven for thee. 
 
 Then to "Syria's land of roses" the still tin- 
 .daunted Peri bent her flight and search, 
 
 If haply there may lie concealed 
 Beneath those chambers of the sun 
 
 Some amulet of gems annealed 
 
 In upper fires, some tablet sealed 
 With the great name of Solomon, 
 Which, spelled by her illumined eyes, 
 
 May teach her where, beneath the moon 
 
 In earth or ocean, lies the boon 
 
 slie was seeking. At length one afternoon, 
 
 When o'er the vale of Baalbec winging 
 
 Slowly, she saw a child at play, 
 Among the rosy wild flowers singing, 
 
 As rosj' and as wild as thej'. 
 
 Wlnle interestedly watching the boy, 
 
 She saw a wearied man dismount 
 From his hot steed. 
 
 With her more than human eyes the Peri read 
 from the man's black heart the long, dark record 
 of his fearfully wicked life — 
 
 Dark tales of many a ruthless deed: 
 The ruined maid, the shrine profaned. 
 Oaths broken, and the threshold stained 
 With blood of guests. 
 
 Just then "the vesper call to prayer" was heard. 
 90 
 
TJic Gospel i?i ^'■Lalla RookJi''' 
 
 The boy then started from the bed 
 Of flowers where he had laid his head, 
 And down upon the fragrant sod 
 
 Knelt with his forehead to the south, 
 'Lisping the eternal name of God 
 
 From purity's own cherub mouth, 
 And looking, while his hands and eyes ) 
 Were lifted to the glowing skies, 
 Like a stray babe of Paradise 
 
 Just lighted on the flowery plain, 
 
 And seeking for its home again. 
 
 The man of sin saw the child, and was touched 
 
 profoundly : 
 
 Memory ran 
 O'er many a year of guilt and strife, 
 Flew o'er the dark flood of his life, 
 
 back to the long-dead beautiful past when he was 
 a pure boy. He thought of what he once was, 
 and then of what he had become. 
 
 He hung his head — each noble aim 
 
 And hope and feeling which had slept 
 From boyhood's hour that instant came 
 
 Fresh o'er him, and he wept — he wept. 
 Blest tears of soulfelt penitence. 
 
 In whose benign, redeeming flow 
 Is felt the first, the only sense 
 
 Of guiltless joy that guilt can know. 
 
 The Peri caught the tear of penitence shed by 
 this man of sin, and bore it hopefully to the long- 
 closed gate of Eden. The charm prevailed, the 
 gate flew open, and slie passed through, shouting, 
 
 9' 
 
The Christ of Our Poets 
 
 Joy, joy forever! my task is done — 
 The gates are passed and Heaven is won. 
 
 Not the patriotism that would freely give life 
 itself to save one's native land — and God loves 
 patriotism; not the richest, purest love that ever 
 nestled in a human heart or expressed itself in 
 sublime self-sacrifice — and the very genius of our 
 religion is love ; but true, heartfelt contrition over 
 sin is 
 
 The gift that is most dear to Heaven. 
 
 So runs the poet's gorgeous song; and the 
 sweet singer of Israel, so long ago, under the 
 guidance of the Holy Spirit of inspiration, sang, 
 "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a 
 broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not 
 despise" ; and our Lord uttered his sv/eetest par- 
 able to prove and illustrate the truth "that joy 
 shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth 
 more than over ninety and nine just persons, 
 which need no repentance." It is the gladdest 
 note of the gospel ; for we are all by nature sin- 
 ners, and are most blessed in having a heavenly 
 Father and a redeeming Christ so ready to help 
 and save whenever we turn penitently seeking 
 salvation. The poet's thought here is as true as 
 his telling it is beautiful; and the truth he illus- 
 trates is as sweet as the almost matchless music of 
 his faultless rhyme and rhythm. 
 92 
 
MOORE'S 
 SONG OF SIN 
 
" To he carnally minded is death. 
 . . . Because the carnal mind is 
 enmity against God: for it is not 
 subject to the law of God, neither 
 indeed can be " —Rom. viii. 6, 7 
 
X 
 
 One of the gorgeous oriental songs that make 
 up Moore's "Lalla Rookh" is entitled "The Veiled 
 Prophet of Khorassan" : 
 
 In that delightful Province of the Sun, 
 The first of Persian lands he shines upon, 
 Where, all the loveliest children of his beam, 
 Flowerets and fruits blush over every stream, 
 And fairest of all streams, the Murga roves 
 Among Meron's bright palaces and groves — 
 There, on that throne to which the blind belief 
 Of millions raised him, sat the Prophet-chief, 
 The Great Mokanna. 
 
 The features of this gifted, unscrupulous man 
 were so utterly revolting, the result of a congeni- 
 tal deformity, that he was compelled to conceal 
 them. He made this necessity the occasion of a 
 
 fraud : 
 
 O'er his features hung 
 The Veil, the Silver Veil, which he had flung 
 In mercy there, to hide from mortal sight 
 His dazzling brow, till man could bear its light. 
 For far less luminous — his votaries said — 
 Were even the gleams miraculously shed 
 O'er Moses' face, when down the Mount he trod, 
 All glowing from the presence of his God. 
 
 Morbidly mortified over his revolting misfor- 
 tune, he had become a villainous misanthrope. 
 He spent his entire life, and used all of his su- 
 95 
 
The Christ of Oiw Poets 
 
 perior talents, in perpetuating this gigantic de- 
 ception ; luring the noblest youths of the land into 
 his ranks only to be slaughtered in his insane ex- 
 peditions for conquest; compelling, by the force 
 of superstitious fear, the loveliest maidens to en- 
 ter his harem only to die broken-hearted over 
 blighted lives ; conquering cities that dared to re- 
 sist his oppressive aggressions only to put even 
 the defenseless women and children to the sword 
 — thus gloating with demoniac delight over the 
 sufferings of his victims. The poet pictures the 
 wretch Soliloquizing thus : 
 
 "Yes, ye vile race, for hell's amusement given, 
 Too mean for earth, yet claiming kin vi^ith heaven. 
 
 Soon shall I plant this foot upon the neck 
 Of your foul race, and without fear or check. 
 Luxuriating in hate, avenge my shame, 
 My deepfclt, long nurst loathing of man's name: 
 
 I'll sweep my darkening, desolating way. 
 Weak man my instrument, cursed man my prey. 
 
 How shall I laugh, when trumpeted along 
 In lying speech and still more lying song!" 
 
 Among the many beautiful maidens lured into 
 his harem was the lovely Zelica, whose lover, the 
 brave, strong young warrior Azim, was repre- 
 sented to her as dead. In the wild delirium of 
 her grief, she had been induced to believe that by 
 96 
 
Afoorc's So7ig- of Sin 
 
 entering the harem of "the divine Mokanna" she 
 would fit herself for paradise and insure meeting 
 with Azim there. 
 
 These were the wildering dreams, whose curst deceit 
 Had chained her soul beneath the tempter's feet, 
 And made her think even damning falsehood sweet. 
 
 He had bound her to him with a fearful oath 
 over a goblet of blood in a charnel house. Her 
 superstition, or her semi-insanity, her grief, and 
 her helplessness made the awful oath a bond she 
 could not break; and when she discovered that 
 her Azim was not dead, and that IMokanna was 
 only a horrible fraud, she clung to him hope- 
 lessly, helplessly, insanely. When "The Veiled 
 Prophet" found that Zelica had discovered that 
 he was an impostor, he threw off, in her presence, 
 all semblance: 
 
 "Yes, my sworn bride, let others seek in bowers 
 
 Their bridal place — the charnel vault was ours! 
 
 Instead of scents and balms, for thee and me 
 
 Rose the rich steams of sweet mortality — 
 
 Gay, flickering death-lights shone while we were wed, 
 
 And for our guests a row of goodly dead. 
 
 One moment more — from what this n5ght hath passed, 
 I see thou knowest me, knowest me well at last: 
 
 And now thou seest my soul's angelic hue, 
 'Tis time these features were uncurtained too. 
 
 97 
 
2^iie Christ cf Gur Poets 
 
 Turn and look — then wonder, if thou wilt, 
 That I should hate, should take revenge, by guilt, 
 Upon the hand whose mischief or whose mirth 
 Sent me thus maimed and monstrous upon earth: 
 
 Here — judge if hell, with all its powers to damn. 
 Can add one curse to the foul thing I am!" 
 He raised his veil — the maid turned slowly round, 
 Look'd at him — shrieked — and sank upon the ground. 
 
 This fearful monster was soon defeated in 
 battle, and ended his wretched life by an aw- 
 ful suicide. 
 
 The literature of the world does not contain 
 the portraiture of a more repulsive character, nor 
 a deeper, darker, more degrading delusion, than 
 does this song of sin, "The Veiled Prophet of 
 Khorassan" ; and, whether the author so intended 
 it or not, nothing that v/as ever told more truly 
 and strikingly illustrates "the carnal mind" of 
 which Paul writes, "the corruption of the nature 
 of every man, that naturally is engendered of the 
 offspring of Adam, whereby man is very far gone 
 from original righteousness, and of his own na- 
 ture inclined to evil, and that continually." ^ Be- 
 hind a veil of superficial respectability, which 
 apes the airs of purity and nobility, there hides, 
 like the malformed face and black heart of the 
 
 'Article VH. of our Church. See Discipline, para- 
 graph 7. 
 
 98 
 
AToore's So7tg of Sin 
 
 "Veiled Prophet," all unsuspected by the unthink- 
 ing throng, "the carnal mind." Even those 
 whose better judgment compels them to confess 
 the existence of this "corruption of the nature" 
 can hardly be brought to see how foul and debas- 
 ing it is — the monster is veiled. We are inclined 
 to half believe that the monster hidden there is 
 not much of a monster after all — though a "car- 
 nal mind," not very carnal ; the monster is v.eiled 
 — a veritable Mokanna. 
 
 The saddest feature of this widespread, sad 
 delusion is, that the victims themselves, the very 
 tools of the "Veiled Prophet," are basely de- 
 ceived. They think and speak of sins as "little 
 sins," and freely confess them under euphemis- 
 tic pet names, making light of any effort to con- 
 sider them as serious, never dreaming at all that 
 they are but the normal outcroppings of a Mo- 
 kanna with the ugly name of "carnal mind" and 
 the repulsive characterization of "the corruption 
 of the nature." 
 
 Moore, in this song of sin, has painted sin very 
 faithfully; but there can be no objection to his 
 realism, because it is a realism faithfully revolt- 
 ing, uncondoned, and naturally meeting its meed 
 of retribution. The lesson he teaches is a very 
 righteous one, tending to make sin appear more 
 sinful. 
 
 99 
 
MOORE'S 
 
 LYRICS OF FAITH 
 
"O sing unto the Lord a new 
 song; for he hath done marvelous 
 things" — Ps. xcviji. i 
 
XI 
 
 Thomas Moore, the Irish Roman Catholic, 
 "the Httle perfumed Adonis," who wrote verse 
 which Jeffreys, of the Edinburgh Reviezv, pro- 
 nounced "Hcentious," who challenged Jeffreys 
 and Byron to fight duels, and who satirized 
 President Jefferson because he failed to give the 
 little poet the attention he claimed, nevertheless 
 wrote some sacred lyrics so strong with thought, 
 so warm with spiritual life, and so rich in melody 
 that we sing some of them yet in all of our 
 churches. Moore might be named "The Lyrist 
 of the English Tongue." He wrote national 
 lyrics, love lyrics, and drinking songs — he trans- 
 lated "The Odes of Anacreon" ; no poet was ever 
 more truly a singer; no singer ever sang more 
 sweetly. This singer, who often sang so wan- 
 tonly, sang also very truly and sweetly of faith in 
 God. How could this be? The true poet is the 
 historian of the human heart, recording and in- 
 terpreting its feelings ; as Bailey, in his "Festus," 
 says : 
 
 Poets are all who love, who feel great truths, 
 And tell them; and the truth of truths is love. 
 
 In a very essential sense, poets are inspired. 
 There must be an inspiration of great thought- 
 103 
 
The Christ of Our Poets 
 
 feeling, or there can be no real poetry. The au- 
 thor of "Festus" says again : 
 
 Poetry is itself a thing of God; 
 
 He made his prophets poets, and the more 
 
 We feel of poesie do we become 
 
 Like God. 
 
 And Browning confirms the utterance : 
 
 God is the perfect poet 
 Who in creation acts his own conceptions. 
 
 All of this means that God, v/ho sometimes 
 compels the wrath of man to praise him, uses the 
 true poet as the interpreter of human hearts, the 
 mouthpiece of great truths, and the inspirer of 
 noble aspirations. He sings because he is in- 
 spired to sing, and sometimes his song leads 
 others to heights himself has never reached. 
 This, evidently, is true of the gifted Irish poet, 
 Thomas Moore. He sings beautifully of God : 
 
 Thou art, O God, the Hfe and light 
 Of all this wondrous world we see; 
 
 Its glow by day, its smile by night. 
 Are but reflections caught from thee: 
 
 Where'er we turn thy glories shine. 
 
 And all things fair and bright are thine. 
 
 He thought of God, however, more as a great 
 victorious Warrior and Conqueror than as a 
 Father : 
 
 Sound the loud timbrel o'er Egypt's dark sea! 
 Jehovah has triumphed — his people are free. 
 
Moore's Lyrics of Faith 
 
 Praise to the Conqueror, praise to the Lord, 
 His word was our arrow, his breath was our 
 sword. 
 
 He seems to long for a God who is gentle and 
 fatherly, and prays that God will be gentle with 
 him : 
 
 Come not, O Lord, in the dread robe of splendor 
 Thou worcst on the Mount, in the day of thine ire! 
 
 Come veiled in those shadows, deep, awful, but tender. 
 Which mercy flings over thy features of fire! 
 
 So, when the dread clouds of anger infold thee, 
 From us, in thy mercy, the dark side remove; 
 
 While shrouded in terrors the guilty behold thee, 
 Oh, turn upon us the mild light of thy love! 
 
 His thought runs to the sterner notion of God 
 while pleading for the tenderer. Of his thirty- 
 two lyrics classified as sacred songs, at least five 
 are devoted to this notion of God. It is but the 
 natural outcome of the semi-mediceval Romanism 
 under whose shadows he was bom and reared. 
 A religion which gives to the Christ hardly more 
 consideration and worship than to ^Mary, and 
 whose theology has in it nearly as much Greek 
 philosophy and paganism as New Testament 
 teaching, could hardly be expected to yield any 
 notion of God other than this stern, cold semi- 
 pagan conception which pervades the sacred lyr- 
 ics of Tom Moore. 
 
The Christ of Our Poets 
 
 All of this does not mean tliat in his thought 
 religion was comfortless ; by no means. He sang 
 that lovely hymn so popular wherever the Eng- 
 lish tongue is spoken. It is in all of our hymnals ; 
 we all sing it, but not just as he wrote it. He 
 wTote it thus : 
 Come, ye disconsolate, where'er you languish; 
 Come, at the shrine of God fervently kneel; 
 Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your an- 
 guish — 
 Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal. 
 
 Joy of the desolate, light of the straying, 
 
 Hope, when all others die, fadeless and pure, 
 
 Here speaks the Comforter, in God's name, saying, 
 "Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot cure." 
 
 Go, ask the infidel what boon he brings us. 
 What charm for aching hearts he can reveal; 
 
 Sweet as the heavenly promise Hope sings us — 
 "Earth has no sorrow that God cannot heal." 
 
 These stanzas are very beautiful, very tender, 
 very true as an expression of the faith and hope 
 of hearts born of God. Yet if Whittier or Ten- 
 nyson or Browning had written them, the last 
 line of each stanza would have read somewhat 
 like this: 
 
 Earth has no sorrow that Christ cannot cure. 
 
 Of the thirty-two sacred songs, but one seems 
 to recognize the Christ at all, and in this he is not 
 named; but the conception is so tender and so 
 io6 
 
Moore's Lyrics of Faith 
 
 true to the Christ idea that we inadvertently think 
 of the "Thou" and the "Thee" of the song as 
 Christ; and yet Moore places before it as a text 
 Psalm cxlvii. 3, instead of something from the 
 words of the Christ. The song, however, is in- 
 tensely beautiful, possibly the best thing Moore 
 ever wrote, and rarely has it been excelled by any 
 poet : 
 
 O Thou who driest the mourner's tear, 
 How dark this world would be, 
 
 If, when deceived and wounded here. 
 We could not fly to Thee! 
 
 The friends who in our sunshine live. 
 
 When winter comes are flown; 
 And he who has but tears to give, 
 
 Must weep those tears alone. 
 
 But Thou wilt heal that broken heart, 
 Which, like the plants that throw 
 
 Their fragrance from the wounded part. 
 Breathes sweetness out of woe. 
 
 When joy no longer soothes or cheers. 
 
 And e'en the hope that threw 
 A moment's sparkle o'er our tears 
 
 Is dimmed and vanished too. 
 
 Oh! who could bear life's stormy doom. 
 
 Did not thy wing of love 
 Come brightly wafting through the gloom 
 
 Our peace-branch from above? 
 
 Then sorrow, touched by Thee, grows bright 
 With more than rapture's ray, 
 
 107 
 
The Christ of Otir Poets 
 
 As darkness shows us worlds of light 
 We never saw by day. 
 
 Like all whose faith is weak and whose visions 
 of religion's realities are dim, his religion was 
 more a matter of the future tense than of the 
 present. He uses the word "Comforter" in 
 "Come, ye disconsolate" ; but there is no reason 
 to believe that he intended to allude most remote- 
 ly to the Holy Ghost, so named by our Lord in 
 John xiv. 1 6, 26. He evidently never dreamed 
 of the "Witness of the Spirit," nor of the "Guid- 
 ance of the Holy Ghost," as taught by the evan- 
 gelical Churches of to-day. With little or no 
 conception of a present-tense salvation, a heaven- 
 on-earth religion, he naturally turned to the fu- 
 ture, and the far-off future ; he sang sweetly and 
 rapturously of heaven : 
 
 This world is all a fleeting show 
 
 For man's illusion given; 
 The smiles of joy, the tears of woe 
 Deceitful shine, deceitful Aoav — 
 
 There's nothing true but Heaven. 
 
 Taken in its bald literalness, as a matter of 
 course, this stanza is utterly false. This world 
 is not a fleeting show, nor was it given for man's 
 illusion. Smiles and tears are not all deceitful, 
 and there are other things than heaven that are 
 true. We must not take Moore's words here 
 too literally ; but making due allowance for poet- 
 loS 
 
Moore's Lyrics oj Faith 
 
 ical hyperbole, we get a beautiful truth strongly 
 and beautifully told. The next stanza is a little 
 less extreme: 
 
 And false the light on glory's plume 
 
 As fading hues of even; 
 And Love, and Hope, and Beauty's bloom 
 Are blossoms gathered for the tomb — 
 
 There's nothing bright but Heaven. 
 
 Understanding, as he intended we should, that 
 the terms glov^, love, hope, and beauty refer only 
 to temporal conditions, the stanza is as true as it 
 is musical. The next is utterly unobjectionable; 
 its sense is plain, its statement strong and true, 
 its spirit the best : 
 
 Poor wanderers of a stormy day, 
 
 From wave to wave we are driven; 
 And fancy's flash and reason's ray 
 Serve but to light the troubled way — 
 There's nothing calm but Heaven. 
 
 He sang a yet truer, sweeter thought of heav- 
 en: 
 Weep not for those whom the veil of the tomb 
 
 In life's happy morning hath hid from our eyes, 
 Ere sin threw a blight o'er the spirit's young bloom, 
 
 Or earth had profaned what was born for the skies. 
 
 Death chill'd the fair fountain, ere sorrow had stain'd it, 
 
 'Twas frozen in all the pure light of its course, 
 And but sleeps, till the sunshine of heaven has un- 
 chain'd it, 
 To water that Eden, where first was its source. 
 109 
 
The Christ of Our Poets 
 
 Weep not for her — in her springtime she flew 
 
 To that land where the wings of the soul are un- 
 furled; 
 
 And now, like a star beyond evening's cold dew, 
 Looks radiantly down on the tears of the world. 
 
 As shown in another chapter, Moore's thought 
 of sin was true and strongly expressed; his no- 
 tion of hohness was also true, and his ideal very 
 high: 
 
 The bird, let loose in eastern skies, 
 
 When hastening fondly home, 
 Ne'er stoops to earth her wing, nor flies 
 Where idle warblers roam. 
 
 So grant me, God, from every care 
 ■ And stain of passion free, 
 
 Aloft through Virtue's purer air 
 To hold my course to thee! 
 
 No sin to cloud — no lure to stay 
 My soul, as home she springs — 
 
 Thy sunshine on her joyful way, 
 Thy freedom in her wings. 
 
 What poet has sung a nobler aspiration in 
 sweeter phrasing than the following ? 
 
 As down in the sunless retreats of the ocean 
 Sweet flowers are springing no mortal can see, 
 
 So, deep in my soul the still prayer of devotion, 
 Unheard by the world, rises silent to Thee. 
 
 no 
 
Moore's Lyrics of Paith 
 
 As still to the star of its worship, though clouded. 
 The needle points faithfully o'er the dim sea, 
 
 So, dark as I roam, in this wintry world shrouded, 
 The hope of my spirit turns trembling to Thee. 
 
 What singer has sung a truer aspiration than 
 this? 
 
 Oh, teach me to !ove Thee, to feel that Thou art. 
 Till, filled with the one sacred image, my heart 
 
 Shall all other passions disown — 
 Like some pure temple that shines apart 
 
 Reserved for Thy worship alone! 
 
 The following has an evangehcal air about it 
 that we can hardly look for in a Roman Catholic, 
 least of all in one so very worldly as Moore is re- 
 puted to have been : 
 
 Since first Thy word awaked my heart, 
 
 Like new life dawning o'er me. 
 Whene'er I turn mine eyes, Thou art 
 
 All light and love before me. 
 Naught else I feel, or hear or see — 
 
 All bonds of earth I sever — 
 Thee, O God, and only Thee, 
 
 I live for now and ever. 
 
 To sum up the whole of this study and put its 
 result into one sentence, we would say: Moore's 
 thoughts of sin and holiness were in the main true, 
 and his dreams of heaven were beautiful and in- 
 spiring; but his conceptions of God were gro- 
 tesquely distorted, and he knew almost nothing 
 of the Christ. 
 
 Ill 
 
WHITTIER'S 
 CREED 
 
"Let not your heart be trovbled: 
 ye believe in God. believe also in 
 me" —John xiv. i 
 
XII 
 
 Everybody knows that Whittier was a Quak- 
 er. While the Quakers do not accept the harsh- 
 er tenets of Calvinism, yet, like many others who 
 are not really Calvinists, they stress the sover- 
 eignty of God to such an extent that his father- 
 hood and his fatherly love and tenderness are al- 
 most forgotten. Whittier's protest against this 
 view is strong and beautiful, yet tender and 
 sweet : 
 
 O friends! with whom my feet have trod 
 
 The quiet aisles of prayer, 
 Glad witness to your zeal for God 
 
 And love of man I bear. 
 
 But still my human hands are weak 
 
 To hold your iron creeds: 
 Against the words ye bid me speak 
 
 My heart within me pleads. 
 
 I walk with bare hushed feet the ground 
 Ye tread with boldness shod; 
 
 I dare not fix with mete and bound 
 The love and power of God. 
 
 Ye praise his justice; even such 
 
 His pitying love I deem: 
 Ye seek a king; I fain would touch 
 
 The robe that hath no seam. 
 
 »'5 
 
The Christ of Our Poets 
 
 He does not ignore the fact of sin and the hate- 
 fulness of it; and he would not be misunder- 
 stood — he speaks clearly and honestly : 
 
 More than your schoolmen teach, within 
 
 Myself, alas! I know: 
 Too dark ye cannot paint the sin, 
 
 Too small the merit show. 
 
 I bow my forehead to the dust, 
 
 I veil mine eyes for shame, 
 And urge, in trembling self-distrust, 
 
 A prayer without a claim. 
 
 I see the wrong that round me lies, 
 
 I feel the guilt within; 
 I hear, with groan and travail cries, 
 
 The world confess its sin. 
 
 No stronger, clearer, truer statement of the 
 fact and tendency and result of sin was ever ut- 
 tered. The meaning of sin, its deep, dark guilt, 
 its awful deservings, its revolting nature, arc 
 all fully and honestly recognized. Yet the "Eter- 
 nal Goodness" sheds a light over the whole dark 
 picture ; the star of hope burns brightly : 
 
 Yet in the maddening maze of things, 
 And tossed by storm and flood. 
 
 To one fixed stake my spirit clings: 
 / know that God is good. 
 
 Then he sings an argument sweet and musical 
 as it is strong and logical : 
 ii6 
 
Whilticr's Creed 
 
 The wrong that pains my soul below 
 
 I dare not throne above: 
 I know not of his hate — I know 
 
 His goodness and his love. 
 
 He sings his faith in the providence of a God 
 so tender in love, so positive in goodness : 
 
 I know not what the future hath 
 
 Of marvel or surprise, 
 Assured alone that life and death 
 
 His mercy underlies. 
 
 And so beside the Silent Sea 
 
 I wait the muffled oar; 
 No harm from him can come to me 
 
 On ocean or on shore. 
 
 I know not where his islands lift 
 
 Their fronded palms in air; 
 I only know I cannot drift 
 
 Beyond his love and care. 
 
 This lyric of twenty-two quatrains is entitled 
 "The Eternal Goodness," and is devoted to tliis 
 protest against the false and this presentation of 
 the true conception of God. Other of his poems 
 speak the same protest and presentation. In 
 "Snow-Bound" he says: 
 
 All hearts confess the saints elect 
 Who, twain in faith, in love agree, 
 
 And melt not in an acid sect 
 The Christian pearl of charity. 
 
 117 
 
The Christ of Our Poets 
 
 Thus he premises universal acceptance of the 
 truth that a God of love will count as "elect" ail 
 v^ho love. In "The Legend of St. Mark," he 
 sings the same beautiful thought of God's love 
 for us children of earth : 
 
 Unheard no burdened heart's appeal 
 Moans up to God's inclining ear; 
 
 Unheeded by his tender eye, 
 Falls to the earth no sufferer's tear. 
 
 While the love and tenderness of God are so 
 strongly stressed, Whittier did not lean in the 
 least toward that namby-pamby sentim.entality 
 which would argue that God is too good to per- 
 mit a soul to be lost. In "The Answer," he 
 states the truth of human responsibility very 
 strongly and clearly : 
 
 Though God be good and free be heaven, 
 No force divine can love compel; 
 
 And, though the song of sins forgiven 
 May sound through lowest hell, 
 
 The sweet persuasion of his voice 
 Respects thy sanctity of will — 
 
 He giveth day: thou hast thy choice 
 To walk in darkness still. 
 
 No word of doom may shut thee out. 
 No wind of wrath may downward whirl. 
 
 No swords of fire keep watch about 
 The open gates of pearl; 
 ii8 
 
Whit tier's Creed 
 
 A tenderer light than moon or sun, 
 Than song of earth a sweeter hymn, 
 
 May shine and sound forever on, 
 And thou be deaf and dim. 
 
 Forever round the Mercy seat 
 The guiding hghts of love shall burn; 
 
 But what if, habit-bound, thy feet 
 Should lack the will to turn? 
 
 What if thine eye refuse to see. 
 
 Thine ear of heaven's free welcome fail, 
 
 And thou a willing captive be, 
 Thyself thy own dark jail? 
 
 Could any statement be clearer? could any ar- 
 gument be stronger? could thought of God be 
 sweeter? The two closing quatrains are a sol- 
 emn, awful warning, still saturated with his love- 
 ly conception of God : 
 
 O doom beyond the saddest guess, 
 As the long years of God unroll 
 
 To make thy dreary selfishness 
 The prison of a soul! 
 
 To doubt the love that fain would break 
 The fetters from thy self -bound limb; 
 
 And dream that God can thee forsake 
 As thou forsakest him! 
 
 This high and intensely true and beautiful con- 
 ception of God comes to no man except as a rev- 
 elation through Jesus Christ ; hence it is to be ex- 
 pected that Whittier's notion of the Christ would 
 119 
 
The Christ of Our Poets 
 
 be equally elevated and lovely. This he sings in 
 "Our Master," which Dr. Philip Schaff declared 
 to be "the finest Christian ode produced in Amer- 
 ica." Has a finer one been produced in England 
 or Germany or France or Italy? Its opening 
 stanza is specially lofty in thought and feeling : 
 
 Immortal Love, forever full, 
 
 Forever flowing free, 
 Forever shared, forever whole, 
 
 A never-ebbing sea ! 
 
 Here and there through the lyric are scattered 
 stanzas of like wing — e. g.: 
 
 O Lord and Master of us all! 
 
 Whate'er our name or sign, 
 We own thy sway, we hear thy call, 
 
 We test our lives by thine! 
 
 The following are still loftier, stronger-winged, 
 and richer: 
 
 O Love! O Life! Our faith and sight 
 
 Thy presence maketh one: 
 As through transfigured clouds of white 
 
 We trace the noonday sun. 
 
 So to our mortal eyes subdued, 
 
 Flesh-veiled but not concealed. 
 We know in thee the fatherhood 
 
 And heart of God revealed. 
 
 Christ was vastly more in Whittier's thought 
 than a magnificent historic personage claiming 
 the admiration of a wondering world. He was, 
 120 
 
Whttticr^s Ci'ced 
 
 as he should be in the thought of every one of us, 
 a real personal Saviour: 
 
 Alone, O Love ineffable! 
 
 Thy saving name is given: 
 To turn aside from thee is hell, 
 
 To walk with thee is heaven! 
 
 Not only did he think of Christ as a Saviour, 
 but as a real living personality with whom he 
 could come into conscious touch : 
 
 No fable old, nor mystic lore, 
 No dream of bards and seers, 
 
 No dead fact stranded on the shore 
 Of the oblivious years; 
 
 But warm, sweet, tender, even yet 
 
 A present help is he; 
 And faith has still its Olivet, 
 
 And love its Galilee. 
 
 The healing of his seamless dress 
 
 Is by our beds of pain; 
 We touch him in life's throng and press. 
 
 And we are whole again. 
 
 Whittier was very practical in his religion, anil 
 recognized that our relation to such a Christ in- 
 volved very practical and positively Christlike 
 service : 
 
 Our Friend, our Brother, and our Lord, 
 
 What may thy service be? 
 Nor name, nor form, nor ritual word. 
 
 But simply following thee. 
 
 121 
 
The Christ of Our Poets 
 
 We bring no ghastly holocaust, 
 We pile no graven stone; 
 
 He serves thee best who lovest most 
 His brothers and thine own. 
 
 Thy litanies, sweet offices 
 
 Of love and gratitude; 
 Thy sacramental liturgies 
 
 The joy of doing good. 
 
 The heart must ring thy Christmas bells, 
 
 Thy inward altars raise; 
 Its faith and hope thy canticles, 
 
 And its obedience praise. 
 
 Whittier was very fond of this view of service 
 to God and the Christ. In his poem entitled 
 "Worship," he says : 
 
 O brother man! fold to thy heart thy brother; 
 
 Where pity dwells the peace of God is there; 
 To worship rightly is to love each other, 
 
 Each smile a hymn, each kindly deed a prayer. 
 
 In "]\Tary Garvin" he sings : 
 
 Christ's love rebukes no home love, 
 
 Breaks no tie of kin apart; 
 Better heresy of doctrine 
 
 Than heresy of heart. 
 
 Whittier did not at all believe in Calvinism, 
 yet he taught a divine sovereignty, which respect- 
 ing our "sanctity of will" claimed nevertheless a 
 perfect submission to the divine — claimed, but did 
 
 122 
 
Whitticr* s Creed 
 
 not compel it. He sang his own heart and creed 
 Avhen he wrote : 
 
 Strike, Thou the Master, we Thy keys 
 The anthem of the destinies! 
 The minor of thy loftier strain, 
 Our hearts shall breathe, the old refrain: 
 Thy will be done! 
 
 That such faith in God and the Christ should 
 have filled Whittier's life with joyous hopeful- 
 ness needs not to be proved. It could have no 
 other effect. While his muse did not soar so 
 high as did the muse of Tennyson, yet his strong, 
 pure faith, his simple-heartedness, his transparent 
 purity of life and thought gave to his simple ut- 
 terances a strength and beauty that very few 
 singers have ever reached. 
 123 
 
THE RELIGION 
 OF LONGFELLOW 
 
" God anointed Jesus of Naza- 
 reth with the Holy Ghost and with 
 power; who went about doing good" 
 —Acts x, jS 
 
Kill 
 
 Years ago some one in England declared that 
 Longfellow had not only written no line which 
 dying he would wish to blot, but not one which 
 living he had not a right to be proud of. The 
 son of a noble father and pious mother, and sur- 
 rounded from childhood by conditions favorable 
 to the highest development of manhood, Long- 
 fell ov/ grew up from a pure, good boy to a noble 
 man with a white life, and, like Whittier, pre- 
 eminently a Christian. His religious notions 
 were, like his life, elevated, refined, correct, and 
 utterly free from eccentricities. There seems to 
 liave been no purpose with him, save in his 
 "Christus," to write what may be called "sacred 
 poetry," though he named at least three of his 
 poems "hymns"; yet the Christ spirit, which 
 molded the beautiful life of the man, pervaded 
 his verse throughout, giving it spirit and bright- 
 ness. This Christ spirit sometimes found very 
 clear, outspoken utterance, beautiful and inspir- 
 ing. 
 
 In his "Hymn" for his brother's ordination, lie 
 sings thus of the Christ : 
 
 Christ to the young man said: "Yet one thing 
 more; 
 If thou wouldst perfect be, 
 Sell all thou hast and give it to the poor. 
 And come and follow me!" 
 127 
 
T'he Christ cf Our Pods 
 
 Within this temple Christ again, unseen, 
 
 Those sacred words hath said, 
 And his invisible hands to-day have been 
 
 Laid on a young man's head. 
 
 And evermore beside him on his vi^ay 
 
 The unseen Christ shall move, 
 That he may lean upon his arm and say, 
 
 "Dost Thou, dear Lord, approve?" 
 
 O holy trust! O endless sense of restl 
 
 Like the beloved John 
 To lay his head upon the Saviour's breast. 
 
 And thus to journey on! 
 
 The conception of a personal, living Christ in 
 conscious touch with the soul that trusts, sung in 
 these lines, is as refreshing as it is true, as beauti- 
 ful as it is inspiriting. 
 
 In his "Divine Tragedy," which as a work of 
 art was not a great success, he nevertheless sings 
 sweetly and truly the story of Jesus. In "Evan- 
 geline" he pictures exquisitely a Christly human 
 life that had its seeking after the lost, its service 
 of helpfulness, its years of loneliness, and at last 
 its Gethsemane of utter disappointment and won- 
 derful resignation. In these especially the Christ 
 spirit is pervasive, felt rather than seen, intimated 
 oftener than spoken. 
 
 Longfellow was not inclined to make public 
 
 the sacred secrets of his soul ; but there is told in 
 
 "The Bridge" an experience which Methodists 
 
 especially understand and appreciate: 
 128 
 
The Religion of Longfellow 
 
 How often, oh how often, 
 
 I had wished that the ebbing tide 
 
 Would bear me away on its bosom 
 O'er the ocean wild and wide! 
 
 For my heart was hot and restless, 
 And my life was full of care, 
 
 And the burden laid upon me 
 Seemed greater than I could bear. 
 
 But now it Juis fallen from me, 
 
 It is buried in the sea; 
 And only the sorrow of others 
 
 Throws its shadow over me. 
 
 It is only the religion of Jesus that can roll off 
 burdens too heavy for human hearts ; and it is 
 only when the life has been transfigured to the 
 Christly that it is shadowed alone by "the sorrow 
 of others." The doctrine is re-sung in "The Be- 
 leagured City" : 
 
 Down the broad Vale of Tears afar 
 
 The spectral camp is fled; 
 Faith shineth as a morning star, 
 
 Our ghastly fears are dead. 
 
 His faith in the Christ-taught doctrine of the 
 ministry of sorrow is beautifully told in "Resig- 
 nation" : 
 
 These severe afflictions 
 Not from the ground arise, 
 But oftentimes celestial benedictions 
 Assume this dark disguise. 
 
 9 129 
 
The Chi'lst of Our Poets 
 
 Wc see but dimly through the mists and vapors; 
 
 Amid these earthly damps 
 What seem to us sad, funereal tapers 
 
 May be heaven's distant lamps. 
 
 In the same sweet lyric he sings his strong, 
 clear-eyed belief in immortality: 
 
 There is no death ! What seems so is transition ; 
 
 This life of mortal breath 
 Is but a suburb of the life Elysian, 
 
 Whose portal we call Death. 
 
 She is not dead — the child of our affection — 
 
 But gone unto that school 
 Where she no longer needs our poor protection, 
 
 And Christ himself doth rule. 
 
 In "God's Acre" he sings this faith linked with 
 his belief in the resurrection : 
 
 I like that ancient Saxon phrase, which calls 
 The burial ground God's Acre ! It is just ; 
 
 It consecrates each grave within its walls, 
 And breathes a benison o'er the sleeping dust. 
 
 Into its furrows shall we all be cast, 
 In the sure faith that we shall rise again 
 
 At the great harvest, when the archangel's blast 
 Shall winnow, like a fan, the chaflf and grain. 
 
 Then shall the good stand in immortal bloom, 
 
 In the fair gardens of that second birth; 
 And each bright blossom mingle its perfume 
 With that of flowers which never bloomed on 
 earth. 
 
 130 
 
The Religion of Longfellotv 
 
 His conception of the Christian Hfe is told in 
 'The Legend Beautiful'': 
 
 In his chamber all alone, 
 Kneeling on the floor of stone, 
 Prayed the Monk — 
 
 Suddenly, as if it lightened, 
 
 An unwonted splendor brightened^ — 
 
 And he saw the Blessed Vision 
 Of our Lord, with light Elysian 
 Like a vesture wrapt about him. 
 
 Naturally the Monk exulted in the Vision, won- 
 dering how it was that such superlative honor 
 had come to him. 
 
 Then amid his exaltation, 
 Loud the convent bell 
 
 Rang through court and corridor 
 With persistent iteration 
 He had never heard before. 
 It was now the appointed hour 
 When alike in shine or shower 
 
 To the convent portals came 
 All the blind and halt and lame, 
 All the beggars of the street, 
 For their daily dole of food 
 Dealt them by the brotherhood; 
 And their almoner was he 
 Who upon his bended knee 
 • ••••••• 
 
 i3» 
 
The Christ of Our Pods 
 
 Saw the Vision and the Splendor. 
 
 Whether to go and deal bread to the poor rab- 
 ble, or to stay with the delightful Vision, was a 
 perplexing problem for the Monk. He hesitated. 
 If he went, 
 
 Would the Vision there remain? 
 Would the Vision come again? 
 
 Conscience whispered : 
 
 "Do thy duty ; that is best ; 
 Leave unto thy Lord the rest !" 
 
 He went, leaving the Splendor, and fed the 
 hungry at the convent gate. When he returned 
 to his cell he found that 
 
 Through the long hour intervening 
 It had waited his return, 
 And he felt his bosom burn, 
 Comprehending all the meaning, 
 When the Blessed Vision said, 
 "Hadst thou stayed, I must have fled!" 
 
 Like all real Christians, Longfellow was very 
 optimistic. He believed in God profoundly, and 
 in providence, in the Christ sweetly, and in heav- 
 en; and he believed in m.an, and in the large 
 possibilities of humanity. His 'Tsalni of Life," 
 too well aiid v/idely known to require quoting, is 
 abundant and strong proof of his faith in hu- 
 manity. In "The Builders" he sings the same 
 faith : 
 
 132 
 
The Religion of Longfellow 
 
 All are architects of Fate, 
 
 Working in these walls of Time; 
 
 Some with massive deeds and great, 
 Some with ornaments of rhyme. 
 
 Nothing useless is, or low; 
 
 Each thing in its place is best; 
 And what seems but idle show 
 
 Strengthens and supports the rest. 
 
 His finest expression of his optimism is possi- 
 bly a stanza in "The Bells of San Bias," which 
 was the last poem that lie wrote : 
 
 O Bells of San Bias, in vain 
 Ye call back the Past again! 
 
 The Past is deaf to our prayer; 
 Out of the shadows of night 
 The world rolls into light; 
 
 It is daybreak everywhere. 
 
 In his "Nuremberg" he sang: 
 The nobility of labor — the long pedigree of toil; 
 and of Albrecht Dtirer : 
 
 Emigrovit is the inscription on the tombstone where he 
 
 lies; 
 Dead he is not — but departed — for the artist never 
 
 dies. 
 
 In "The Norman Baron" he re-sings his faith 
 in the Christ: 
 
 Born and cradled in a manger! 
 King, like David, priest, like Aaron, 
 Christ is born to set us free! 
 
 00 
 
The Christ of Our Poets 
 
 Thus throughout his lyrics and epics and dra- 
 mas, these sparkhng gems gleam with the fire of 
 the Christ spirit which pervades his work, as it 
 molded the man and guided his life. 
 134 
 
HOLLAND'S 
 
 *' BITTER-SWEET' 
 
" Whom the Lord lovctk he chas- 
 teneth, and scourgeth every son 
 whom he receivcth " — Heb. xH. 6 
 
XIV 
 
 Dr. J. G. Holland's finest work is his "Bit- 
 ter-Sweet," a beautiful poem, dramatic in form, 
 though evidently never intended for the stage, 
 whose theme is the ministry of suffering. The 
 scene is laid in a New England farmhouse; the 
 time is "Winter's wild birthnight," the eve of 
 Thanksgiving Day; the dramatis personcs are: 
 
 A Puritan 
 Who reads his Bible daily, loves his God, 
 And lives serenely in the faith of Christ; 
 
 who is a widower, for 
 
 His gentle wife, a dozen summers since, 
 Passed from his faithful arms and w^ent to heaven; 
 And her best gift — a maiden sweetly named — 
 His daughter Ruth; 
 
 and other children who are married, and grand- 
 children : 
 
 John comes with Prudence and her little girls, 
 And Peter matched with Patience brings his 
 
 boys — 
 Fair boys and girls with good old Scripture 
 
 names — 
 Joseph, Rebekah, Paul, and Samuel; 
 And Grace, young Ruth's companion in the house, 
 Till wrested from her last Thanksgiving Day, 
 By the strong hand of Love, brings home her babe 
 
The Christ of Our Poets 
 
 And the tall poet David, at whose side 
 She went away. And seated in the midst, 
 Mary, a foster-daughter of the house, 
 Of alien blood — self-aliened many a year. 
 
 The plot of the drama involves the arguing of 
 the question and the illustration of the doctrine ; 
 and the denouement presents an illustration of it 
 strong, thrilling, and all-convincing. In the Pre- 
 lude the doctrine is very strongly, even startling- 
 ly, stated : 
 
 Evil is only the slave of Good; 
 Sorrow, the servant of Joy; 
 And the soul is mad that refuses food 
 From the meanest in God's employ. 
 
 The fountain of Joy is fed with tears. 
 And love is lit by the breath of sighs 
 
 The deepest griefs and wildest fears 
 Have holiest ministries. 
 
 The first quatrain, as a matter of course, must 
 not be understood in its most literal, unmodified 
 sense : let us not forget that it is poetry. The sec- 
 ond quatrain explains the first ; then follows a 
 beautiful illustration of the truth: 
 
 Strong grows the oak in the sweeping storm; 
 
 Safely the flower sleeps under the snow; 
 And the farmer's hearth is never warm 
 
 Till the cold wind starts to blow. 
 
 Ruth is skeptical, and she honestly confesses it : 
 
 I know 
 That care has iron crowns for many brows; 
 
 '3^ 
 
HollajuVs ^'■Btitcr-Swcct''^ 
 
 That Calvaries are everywhere, whereon 
 
 Virtue is crucified, and nails and spears 
 
 Draw guiltless blood; that sorrow sits and drinks 
 
 At sweetest hearts, till all their life is dry; 
 
 That gentle spirits on the rack of pain 
 
 Grow faint or fierce, and pray and curse by turns ; 
 
 That HeU's temptations, clad in heavenly guise 
 
 And armed with might, lie evermore in wait 
 
 Along life's path, giving assault to all, 
 
 Fatal to most; that Death stalks through the earth, 
 
 Choosing his victims, sparing none at last; 
 
 That in each shadow of a pleasant tree 
 
 A grief sits sadly sobbing to its leaves. 
 
 God forgive me! but I've thought 
 A thousand times that if I had his power, 
 Or he m.y love, we'd have a different world 
 From this we live in. 
 
 David, the poet and philosopher, meets Ruth's 
 skepticism with argument and illustration. He 
 urges : 
 
 God seeks for virtue, and that it may live 
 It must resist, and that which it resists 
 Must live. Believe me, God has other thought 
 Than restoration of our fallen race 
 To its primeval innocence and bliss. 
 
 He argues with strong reason that Christ 
 Was slain that we might be transformed — 
 Not into Adam's sweet similitude. 
 But the more glorious image of Himself, 
 A resolution of our destiny 
 As high transcending Eden's life and lot 
 As He surpasses Eden's fallen lord. 
 
The Christ of Our Poets 
 
 Pointing to the cider, he sings a striking para- 
 ble: 
 
 Hearts like apples are hard and sour 
 Til] crushed by Pain's resistless power, 
 And yield their juices rich and bland 
 To none but Sorrow's heavy hand. 
 The purest streams of human love 
 
 Flow naturally never, 
 But gush by pressure from above 
 With God's hand on the lever. 
 
 Pointing to the beef, he sings another : 
 
 Life evermore is fed by death 
 
 In earth and sea and sky; 
 And that a rose may breathe its breath 
 
 Something must die. 
 Earth is a sepulcher of flowers 
 
 Whose vitalizing mold 
 Through boundless transmutation towers 
 
 In green and gold. 
 
 The milk-haired heifer's life must pass 
 
 That it may fill your own, 
 As passed the sweet life of the grass 
 
 She fed upon. 
 
 Pointing to the apples, he sang still another : 
 
 The native orchard's fairest trees, 
 
 Wild springing on the hill 
 Bear no such precious fruits as these. 
 
 And never will 
 Till ax and saw and pruning knife 
 
 Cut from them every bough. 
 And they receive a gentler life 
 
 Than crowns them now. 
 140 
 
Holland's ''Biltcr-Szvcci " 
 
 Sorrow must crop each passion shoot, 
 
 And Pain each lust infernal, 
 Or human life can bear no fruit 
 
 To life eternal. 
 For angels wait on Providence, 
 
 And mark the sundered places. 
 To graft with gentlest instruments 
 
 The heavenly graces. 
 
 He closes his argument with these strong mu- 
 sical lines, as logical as they are melodious : 
 
 All common good has common price; 
 
 Exceeding good, exceeding; 
 Christ bought the keys of Paradise 
 
 By cruel bleeding; 
 And that every soul that wins a place 
 
 Upon its hills of pleasure 
 Must give its all and beg for grace 
 
 To fill the measure. 
 
 Were every hill a precious mine. 
 
 And golden all the mountains; 
 Were all the rivers fed with wine 
 
 By tireless fountains; 
 Life would be ravished of its zest, 
 
 And shorn of its ambition, 
 And sink into the dreamless rest 
 
 Of inanition. 
 Up the broad stairs that Value rears 
 
 Stand motives beckoning earthward 
 To summon men to nobler spheres, 
 
 And lead them worthward. 
 
 The plot involves a sad domestic problem 
 141 
 
"Ilic Christ of Our Poets 
 
 which finds in the denouement a solution sweet 
 and pathetic that confirms the argument resist- 
 lessly. The drama closes with a death scene so 
 beautiful that one asks : 
 
 And this is death! Think you that raptured soul 
 Now walking humbly in the golden streets, 
 Bearing the precious burden of a love 
 Too great for utterance, or with hushed heart 
 Drinking the music of the ransomed throng, 
 Counts death an evil? 
 
 Ruth, midway in the argument, saw the force 
 of David's logic and was convinced, and con- 
 fessed it very sweetly : 
 
 Thank God for light! 
 These truths are slowly dawning on my soul — 
 
 Dear Lord! what visions crowd before my eyes — 
 
 Visions drawn forth from memory's mysteries 
 
 By the sweet shining of these holy lights! 
 
 I see a girl, once lightest in the dance. 
 
 And maddest with the gayety of life, 
 
 Grow pale and pulseless, wasting day by day — 
 
 A sweet smile sits upon her angel face. 
 And peace, with downy bosom, nestles close — 
 
 Closer still. 
 As on white wings the outward-going soul 
 Flies to a home it never would have sought, 
 Had a great evil failed to point the way. 
 I see a youth whom God has crowned with power 
 And cursed with poverty. With bravest heart 
 142 
 
Holland'' s ^''B liter-Sweet'^ 
 
 He struggles with his lot, through toilsome 
 
 years — 
 Kept to his task by daily want of bread. 
 And kept to virtue by his daily task — 
 Till gaining manhood in the manly strife, 
 The fire that fills him smitten from a flint, 
 The strength that arms him wrested from a fiend: 
 He stands, at last, a master of himself. 
 And in that grace a master of his kind. 
 
 Like the hand 
 Of a strong angel on the shoulder laid 
 Touching the secrets of the spirit's wings. 
 My heart grows brave. I'm ready now to work — 
 To work with God, and suffer with his Christ. 
 
 The English language has voiced few hymns 
 truer, stronger, and sweeter than the Thanksgiv- 
 ing Hymn they sang that night, the first stanza 
 of which runs thus : 
 
 For Summer's bloom and Autumn's blight, 
 For bending wheat and blasting maize, 
 
 For health and sickness, Lord of light. 
 And Lord of darkness, hear our praise! 
 
 H3 
 
**THE MARBLE 
 PROPHECY" 
 
" For toe wrestle" — Ern. vi. 12 
 
 " O wretched man that I am! who 
 
 shall deliver me from the body of 
 
 this death?" — Rom. vU. 24 
 
XV 
 
 An old Greek myth, recited by Virgil in his 
 "^neid," tells of Laocoon, an old priest, who, 
 while sacrificing assisted by his two sons, on 
 the sea beach, near Troy, was seized, with his 
 sons, and crushed to death by two gigantic sea 
 serpents, which had glided unobserved from the 
 water. In the Vatican at Rome there is a sculp- 
 tured group, recovered from the ruins of the Pal- 
 ace of Titus, which pictures with startling real- 
 ness this fatal conflict of Laocoon and his sons 
 with tlie twin serpents at Troy. It was a favor- 
 ite theme with Greek and Roman artists and 
 poets. It so vividly expressed a universal spirit- 
 ual experience that every soul of humankind 
 readily understood its mystic meaning. Our 
 American poet. Dr. J. G. Holland, when in the 
 Vatican Museum, came face to face with this 
 Rhodian group of the Laocoon, and was inspired 
 to sing what he aptly calls "The Marble Proph- 
 ecy" ; and thus he sang it : 
 
 Laocoon! thou great embodiment 
 Of human life and human history! 
 Thou record of the past, thou prophecy 
 Of the sad future, thou majestic voice, 
 Pealing along the ages from old time! 
 Thou wail of agonized humanity! 
 
 ^47 
 
The Christ of Our Poets 
 
 There lives no thought in marble like to thee! 
 
 Thou hast no kindred in the Vatican, 
 
 But standest separate among the dreams 
 
 Of old mythologies — alone — alone! 
 
 The beautiful Apollo at thy side 
 
 Is but a marble dream: and dreams are all 
 
 The gods and goddesses and fauns and fates 
 
 That populate these wondrous halls; but thou, 
 
 Standing among them, liftest up thyself 
 
 In majesty of meaning, till they sink 
 
 Far from thy sight, no more significant 
 
 Than the poor toys of children: for tlion art 
 
 A voice from out the world's experience, 
 
 Speaking of all the generations past 
 
 To all the generations yet to come 
 
 Of the long struggle, the sublime despair, 
 
 The wild and weary agony of man. 
 
 Aye — Adam and his offspring in the toils 
 Of the twin serpents. Sin and Suffering, 
 Thou dost impersonate; and as I gaze 
 Upon the tv/ining monsters that infold 
 In unrelaxing, unrelenting coils 
 Thy awful energies, and plant their fangs 
 Deep in thy quivering flesh, while still thy might 
 In fierce convulsion foils the fateful wrench 
 That would destroy thee, I am overwhelmed 
 With a strange sympathy of kindred pain, 
 And see through gathering tears the tragedy, 
 The curse and conflict of a ruined race. 
 
 This fact of human history and experience, 
 
 which had come moaning down more than forty 
 
 centuries, which had been so vividly voiced in 
 
 art and poetrv, which had been written in every 
 
 148 
 
<-^ The Marble Prophecy'' 
 
 nation's annals, which had been taught in phi- 
 losophy and carved in marble, finds inspired ex- 
 pi-ession strong and simple in the New Testa- 
 ment. Paul, looking back to the time when he, 
 like Laccoon, fought this fearful battle, wrote to 
 the Romans : "When we were in the flesh" — i. e., 
 when we were unregenerate — "the sinful passions 
 . . . wrought in our members to bring forth 
 fruit unto death." Revoicing a famous dictum 
 of Plato, he continues : "For that which I do I 
 allow not: for what I would that I do not; but 
 what I hate that I do. ... I see a law" — i. 
 e., a force — "in my members, warring against the 
 law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to 
 the lav/ of sin. . . . O wretched man that I 
 am ! who shall deliver me from the body of this 
 death?" To the Ephesians he wrote: "We 
 wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against 
 principalities, against powers, against the world 
 rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts 
 of wickedness." Paul could hardly have used 
 other language had he been sitting, as he wrote 
 those words to the Romans, at the very foot of 
 the Rhodian Laocoon drawing his inspiration 
 and suggestion from it. He wrote of that strug- 
 gle, which has come to every man and woman 
 that ever lived, not excepting even the incarnate 
 Son of God — that gigantic and awful struggle 
 of the Godlike and aspiring human soul against 
 149 
 
The Christ of Our Pods 
 
 sin, whose effort and purpose are to drag down 
 and befoul and utterly ruin. 
 
 Sin is a veritable Proteus, now coming- to the 
 attack in the form of selfishness cold and hard 
 and grasping, now as some sudden strong pas- 
 sion, now as a gross growing habit that day by 
 day wraps serpent-like fold on fold about the soul 
 getting ready for the final fatal crush, and 
 now as a flaming temper leaping upon the soul 
 with hghtning quickness and transfixing it 
 with the stare of its blazing eyes. It sometimes 
 comes up to us in the garb of beauty, or in the 
 form of some lovely virtue, ^'deceiving the very 
 elect" and luring to ruin the purest-minded 
 among us. Whatever its form or appearance, it 
 is the same "old serpent," Sin, accompanied by 
 its twin brother, Suffering, which have battled 
 with the race for at least six thousand years. In 
 the dewy morning of the world it glided into Eden 
 and ruined man's home, and so it is, 
 
 Some flow'rets of Eden we still inherit, 
 But the trail of the Serpent is over them all. 
 
 It has followed the sons of Adam to every 
 shore of earth and left its slime on the loveliest, 
 loftiest of men and women. It loves a shining 
 mark. Its delight is to befoul the purest, mar 
 the most beautiful, and drag dov/n the loftiest. 
 It would, if it could, climb to the very throne of 
 
''The Marble Prophecy''' 
 
 all worlds and wrap the Creator himself in the 
 
 tragedy of Laocoon, 
 
 Dr. Holland says of tlie Rhodian Laocoon that 
 
 inspired his song, and of the legend which the 
 
 marble tells : 
 
 Be sure it was no fable that inspired 
 
 So grand an utterance. Perchance some leaf 
 
 From the Hebrew record had conveyed 
 
 The knowledge of the genesis of sin 
 
 And woe. 
 
 Thousands of years before the Rhodian Lao- 
 coon was carved, or Paul wrote, or Holland sang, 
 it was told on earth that God's Son in human 
 form should some day meet the serpent of Eden's 
 ruin in mortal conflict and should bruise his head, 
 and be bruised him.self. Old Egypt heard the 
 glad story, and we read on her ruined temple 
 walls, in crude symbolic picturing, the story of 
 Horus crusliing the head of the serpent of evil. 
 Persia of old heard the story beautiful, and, 
 translating it into her own speech, tells of a war 
 between Mithras, the savior, and Ahriman, the 
 god of sin. Greece heard the story, and retold 
 it in two of her poetic legends : one was of Her- 
 cules slaying the Hydra of Lake Loerna, and the 
 other told of Apollo, the sun god, slaying the 
 dreadful Python. Thus over the whole w^orld 
 the story went ; and men everywhere learned that 
 only a God could overcome the serpent of sin ; and 
 
The Christ of Our Poets 
 
 yet so many thousands to-day have not learned 
 the story, though they have heard it so often. 
 V/ill not Greeks and Romans, Persians and Egyp- 
 tians, out of the dead centuries of that distant pa- 
 gan age, rise up on that great Judgment Day and 
 condemn the un faith in Christ and the insane folly 
 of these thousands born in the glorious evening 
 of the nineteenth century or early morning of the 
 twentieth ? 
 
 Let us stress "the old, old story" of a Christ who 
 is able to save, and as willing as he is able. It is an 
 old story indeed. It was whispered in Eden, and 
 it has been many times retold, often in distorted 
 form it is true. It has been sung, often in mys- 
 terious measures, by the bards of all lands. It 
 has been cut in stone by men who built Babylon 
 and piled the Pyramids and carved the marvelous 
 statuary of Greece. But nowhere has it been 
 told so simply, so strongly, and so sweetly as in 
 the New Testament. 
 
 152 
 
EPICS 
 OF JESUS 
 
"I am Alpha and Omega, the be- 
 ginning and the end. the first and the 
 
 last" — Rev. xxii. 13 
 
XVP 
 
 An epic is a song with a hero for its theme. 
 We are all hero worshipers ; hence the epic is uni- 
 versally popular. For nearly twenty centuries 
 Jesus has stood unparalleled in greatness, receiv- 
 ing from millions a worship transcending tlie 
 loftiest "hero worship" ever paid to Ulysses or 
 ^neas. The keen-witted, infidelic Renan is led 
 to say : 
 
 Whatever may be the surprises of the future, Jesus 
 will never be surpassed. His worship will grow young 
 without ceasing; his legend will call forth tears with- 
 out end; his sufferings will melt the noblest heart; all 
 ages will proclaim that among the sons of men there 
 is none born greater than Jesus. 
 
 The great heart of humanity has demanded 
 for him who is the grandest of all heroes the sub- 
 limest of all epics. For centuries past the great 
 singers, recognizing this demand, have been 
 striving to tune their lyres to melodies sublime 
 enough to meet it. All have failed ; the ideal epic 
 of Jesus remains to be written. 
 
 Of those who have, each in his own v/ay, arid 
 from his own one-sided point of view, attempted 
 
 ^This chapter appeared in the Quaricrly Rcviciu of 
 the M. E. Church, South. January, 1892. 
 
The Christ of Our Poets 
 
 it, only Dante and Tasso, Milton and Pollok, Bick- 
 ersteth and Arnold, are worthy of mention. 
 
 Had Tasso's "Jerusalem Delivered" been writ- 
 ten in the nineteenth century, instead of the six- 
 teenth, it could no more be mentioned in this con- 
 nection than can Longfellow's "Divine Tragedy" 
 or Pope's "Messiah" ; but as chivalry was the 
 only expression of the world's Christ-love left to 
 the dark ages, out of which Tasso sang, and as 
 Christian theology had degenerated Into a con- 
 fused and contemptible mixture of Roman pagan- 
 ism, Grecian philosophy, and New Testament 
 doctrines, it is evident that Tasso, the blind dev- 
 otee of an unknown Christ, intended his song 
 to be an epic of Christianity on its human side — 
 in a sense an epic of Christ. It serves as an il- 
 lustrious example of the utter inability of mediae- 
 val Christianity to produce anything worthy of 
 the name of a Christian ode, much less a Chris- 
 tian epic. Aping Virgil introducing his "^^neid," 
 Tasso begins : 
 
 I sing the pious arms and Chief, who freed 
 The Sepulcher of Christ from thrall profane. 
 
 His hero then is not the Christ really, but Duke 
 Godfrey : 
 
 Godfrey burns to v/rest 
 From hand profane the consecrated town, 
 And, heaven affecting, in what slight request 
 i=;6 
 
Epics of Jesus 
 
 He holds the meaner joys of earth — renown, 
 Treasure, and purple power, and glory's meteor 
 crown. 
 
 Dante, more learned and with broader mental 
 sweep than Tasso, out of the same medieval 
 gloom, three centuries earlier, sang his "Divina 
 Comedia," which he by no means meant to be a 
 comedy in the modern sense ; although its absurd- 
 ity would be comic if it did not wear such an air 
 of profound earnestness. Dante wrote from tlie 
 theological side of Christianity, as Tasso from the 
 human or common life side ; or, to be more exact, 
 Dante dealt with Christian mythology and Tasso 
 with Christian chivalry. Neither has touched the 
 great heart of humanity, and neither has in any 
 true sense written an epic of Jesus. 
 
 Milton's twin songs, "Paradise Lost" and 
 "Paradise Regained," constitute the first real 
 Christian epic ever written. Tliat Milton did 
 not plan to write an epic of Jesus, but rather of 
 humanity, is evident from the fact that "Para- 
 dise Lost" was written before he thought of writ- 
 ing its companion ; and "Paradise Regained" 
 closes with the temptation scene, which Milton 
 seems to have considered the crowning act of Mes- 
 sianic conquest, the complete assurance of a re- 
 deemed humianlty ; although it occurs at the very 
 opening of the v/onderful drama, and sh.ould fall 
 in the first or second canto of an epic of Jesus. 
 157 
 
The Christ of Oiw Poets 
 
 Nor did lie end liis work in sheer despair of ac- 
 complishing the task lie had planned ; for he was 
 so well pleased with his work that he insisted on 
 ranking- it with "Paradise Lost," and was dis- 
 pleased that many of his readers preferred the 
 earlier poem. 
 
 Milton's twin songs are intensely theological. 
 He sings 
 
 Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit 
 Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste 
 Brought death into our world and all our woe. 
 
 He teaches man's m.oral agency, declaring that 
 
 God 
 
 Made him just and right, 
 Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall. 
 
 He sings of redemption, of 
 
 Recovered Paradise to all mankind, 
 By one man's firm obedience fully tried 
 Through all temptation, and the tempter foiled 
 In all his wiles, defeated and repulsed, 
 And Eden raised in the waste wilderness. 
 
 He sings of God — 
 
 Immutable, immortal, infinite, 
 Eternal King, Author of all being, 
 Fountain of Light ! 
 
 And of the 
 
 Begotten Son, divine similitude. 
 
 In whose conspicuous countenance, without cloud 
 
 Made visible, the Almichty Father shines. 
 
Efics of Jcsjis 
 
 He sings of 
 
 Angels, progeny of light. 
 Thrones, dominations, princedoms, 
 Virtues, powers — 
 
 both fallen and imfallen — and of heaven, the 
 beautiful ; and of hell, those 
 
 Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace 
 And rest can never dwell. 
 
 . Milton, though reared a Calvinist, had risen 
 above the stern and awful liyper-Calvinism of his 
 day. He makes God say of the fallen angels : 
 
 They therefore, as to right belonged, 
 So were created; nor can justly accuse 
 Their Maker or their making or their fate. 
 As if predestination overruled 
 Their will disposed by absolute decree 
 Or high foreknowledge; they themselves decreed 
 Their own revolt — not I; if I foreknew. 
 Foreknowledge had no influence on their fault, 
 Which had no less proved certain unforeknown. 
 
 Nevertheless his conception of God is intense- 
 ly Calvinistic. Divine sovereignty was, in his 
 view, so autocratic, or rather despotic, that 
 
 He 
 Who now is Sovereign can dispose and bid 
 Wliat shall be right. 
 
 Although these words occur in a speech made 
 by Satan, yet they express the current belief of 
 Milton's day ; and if he had not believed it, he 
 would certainly have expressed his dissent. 
 159 
 
The Christ of Ou7- Poets 
 
 The one preeminent feature of Milton's songs 
 is grandeur; but it is cold and stately, generally 
 dreadful — never softened. His very efforts at the 
 beautiful are cold, rigidly elegant — never warm, 
 tender. He speaks of "amarant," not amaranth. 
 
 The spirits elect 
 Bind their resplendent locks inwreathed with beams: 
 
 The bright 
 Pavement, that like a sea of jasper shone, 
 Impurpled with celestial roses smiled. 
 
 Shining pavement of jasper and purple roses — 
 what regal, elegant, stately beauty! yet without 
 a touch of tenderness or a hint of sweetness ; a 
 smile, but cold and glistening. 
 
 This utter want of tenderness, the result of the 
 cold, stern theology of his day — that which made 
 him a Puritan much more than a Christian ; that 
 which taught him to hate sin with a hatred itself 
 akin to sin, but could not teach him to love the 
 sinner; that which glorified the justice of God 
 and forgot his mercy; that which painted in re- 
 gal magnificence the Divine King, and could not 
 say "Our Father, who art in heaven" — that was 
 the one fatal defect in this poet, who would sing 
 of Jesus. If he had tried to write an epic of Je- 
 sus instead of an epic of redeemed humanity, he 
 w^ould have failed most signally. Possibly he 
 knew this. His picture of Christ ^ makes him a 
 
 *See "Paradise Lost," Book III. 
 1 60 
 
Epics of Jcsiis 
 
 veritable Mars, as utterly unlike the Christ of the 
 Gospels as the Grecian war god is unlike the 
 wrestler in Gethsemane, or the guest of the Beth- 
 any home : 
 
 Thou that day 
 Thy Father's dreadful thunder didst not spare, 
 Nor stop thy flaming chariot wheels, that shook 
 Heaven's everlasting frame, while o'er the necks 
 Thou drovest of warring angels disarrayed. 
 Back from pursuit thy powers, with loud acclaim, 
 Thee only extolled. Son of thy Father's might 
 To execute fierce vengeance on his foes. 
 
 The common people of Milton's day were not 
 a reading people ; hence he made no effort to write 
 for any but the learned. Therefore we find his 
 songs obscure with learned allusions, and bur- 
 dened with similes and metaphors mythologic 
 and scientific. This gives his verse an air of 
 Dedantry which renders harsh and stiff what 
 might otherwise be somewhat tender. It must 
 be remembered, also, that he wrote at a time 
 when the English language was far less volumi- 
 nous and flexible than now ; and no writer could 
 shade his word-pictures and give to his thoughts 
 a dress in such harmony with the nature of the 
 thought as the poet of to-day may do. All of, 
 these things conspire to rob Milton's twin songs 
 of the tender sweetness and melting melody in- 
 dispensable to the ideal epic of Jesus. 
 
 Of Pollok's "Course of Time" but little need 
 II i6i 
 
The Christ of Our Poets 
 
 be said. Like the songs of Milton, it is rather an 
 epic of humanity than aught else. It deals with 
 Christ and Christianity only as these are insep- 
 arably intertwined with human origin, life, and 
 destiny. With less of grandeur and more adapt- 
 ability to the common people than Milton's songs, 
 it deals largely with the same or cognate matters. 
 It is better arranged, but not so well expressed, 
 often descending to the puerile. It talks some- 
 what of our Christ, but fails to be a real epic of 
 Jesus. 
 
 In September, 1866, there appeared in England 
 — and five years later in America — an extended 
 epic from the pen of Rev. Edward Henry Bick- 
 ersteth, entitled "Yesterday, To-day, and For- 
 ever." It sings of heaven and hell, time and 
 eternity, of sin and redemption, of Christ and his 
 Church, of the millennium and the judgment. 
 It is an epic of Time, an epic of God, an epic of 
 Man, but more than all an epic of Jesus. It has 
 little of Milton's grandeur, but has a wealth of 
 tender sweetness and delicate beauty of which 
 Milton never dreamed. His very efforts at 
 grandeur are so softened that strength is sacri- 
 ficed to tenderness — it Is but beauty slightly sub- 
 limated. Witness the following: 
 
 My soul 
 Was lit up with a clearer, purer light, 
 The daybreak of a near eternity, 
 162 
 
Epics of Jcsiis 
 
 Which cast its penetrating beams across 
 The isthmus of my life, and fringed with gold 
 The mists of childhood, and revealed beyond 
 The outline of the everlasting hills. 
 
 Was there ever painted a sweeter picture of 
 something great than this ? 
 
 Once, when night was listening for the dawn, 
 Aloof upon the brow of Olivet 
 I gazed on sleeping Salem. In the east 
 Flashed a faint streak of pearl: the distant hills 
 Slumbered in the shadov/ and the vales in mist. 
 
 His very conception of a conquering Christ is 
 softened with an ever-abiding thought of a suf- 
 fering Christ : 
 
 On Olivet 
 The weary Saviour rested and forecast 
 The anguish coming on Jerusalem, 
 The birth-pangs of evangel life, nor left 
 That mountain's brow, nor limited the range 
 Of his prophetic vision, till he spake 
 Of his great advent in the clouds of heaven. 
 
 Milton, with his Calvinistic Puritanism, could 
 never have written anything like this : 
 
 It was not only grace we saw, but grace 
 That failed not in a world of selfishness; 
 Nor only light, but light in poisonous air 
 Miraculously burning, self-sustained; 
 Nor faith alone, but faith emptying itself. 
 Itself to strengthen in another's might; 
 Self-limited omnipotence, that deigned. 
 Weak even as man is weak, to lean on God. 
 163 
 
TJic Christ of Our Poets 
 
 Emmanuel tabernacled among men 
 To solace and sustain his orphan Church, 
 To heal the bleeding heart of penitence, 
 To cheer the downcast wayfarers to stand 
 Suddenly as a spirit, but every man 
 Among his brethren, and imbreathe on them 
 The benediction of his peace and power. 
 To transform human fear to heavenly faith, 
 To conquer doubt by love; a second time 
 To teach his chosen fishermen to cast 
 The dragnet of the kingdom, to reveal 
 Himself unto his own in Galilee. 
 
 Here again we have strength sacrificed to 
 sweetness; and Milton would have undoubtedly 
 sacrificed sweetness to strength : the writer of the 
 ideal epic of Jesus must do neither. Tennyson 
 in his "In Memoriam" does neither; and had he 
 written an epic of Jesus as exhaustivel}'^ and care- 
 fully as he wrote "In Memoriam," I believe the 
 world would have recognized in it the longed-for 
 ideal, unless it had failed to reach the height of 
 grandeur required, which is quite possible ; for 
 strength is not always grandeur, and Tennyson 
 is not a theologian. 
 
 Just ten years ago there appeared in England 
 — and a little later in America — an epic of Jesus, 
 entitled "The Light of the World," written by 
 Sir Edwin Arnold, who had won his fame a doz- 
 en years earlier by his epic of Buddha, entitled 
 "The Light of Asia." Here we have what at- 
 164 
 
Epics of Jesus 
 
 tempts to be simply and only an epic of Jesus — 
 nothing more, nothing less. Milton aimed at 
 something more, Pollok at something a little else, 
 Bickersteth at that and something more ; but Ar- 
 nold only at that. He has succeeded in so far 
 that he has written a veritable epic of Jesus, but 
 his work lacks much of the ideal epic of Jesus. 
 
 The one peculiar feature of Sir Edwin's work, 
 and its greatest charm, is naturalness — the sweet 
 simplicity of naturalness. Witness the follow- 
 ing: 
 
 So many hallsides crowned with rugged rocks! 
 
 So many simple shepherds keeping flocks, 
 
 In many moonlit fields! but only they — 
 
 So lone, so long ago, so far away — 
 
 On that one winter's night at Bethlehem, 
 
 To have white angels singing lauds for them! 
 
 Here we have but one word, "lauds," that any 
 child might not comprehend — all so simple, so 
 natural, and yet beautiful. His verse has the 
 charm of rhyme and rhythm, alliteration and mel- 
 ody. What can be sweeter than this ? 
 
 Meek and sweet in the sun he stands, 
 
 Drinking the cool of his Syrian skies, 
 Lifting to heaven toil-wearied hands, 
 
 Seeing his Father with those pure eyes. 
 Gazing from trestle and bench and saw 
 
 To the kingdom kept for his rule above; 
 O Jesus, Lord, we see with awe! 
 
 O Mary's Son, we look with love! 
 
 165 
 
The Christ of Our Poets 
 
 His theology, though not so profound, so grand 
 in its sweep, so philosophic as Milton's, and in 
 some respects very faulty, is yet, in its concep- 
 tion of God, vastly truer, lacking every tinge of 
 the Calvinistic harshness of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury theology : 
 
 God's love runneth faster than our feet, 
 To meet us stealing back to him and peace, 
 And kisses dumb our shame — nay, and puts on 
 The best robe, bidding angels bring it forth, 
 While heaven makes festival. 
 
 The Christ he paints is all tenderness, divine 
 tenderness ; strong, yet tenderer than strong : 
 
 This Godlike One — 
 This spotless, stainless, sinless, blameless Christ^ 
 Whom none did once convince of one small 
 
 swerve 
 From perfectness; nor ever shall! So strong 
 The elements obey him; so divine 
 The devils worshiped; so with virtue charged 
 The touch of him was health; so masterful 
 The dead came back upon his call; so mild 
 The little children clustered at his knee, 
 And nestled trustful locks on that kind breast 
 Which leans to-day on God's. 
 
 The following is his description of Jesus' per- 
 sonal appearance : 
 
 One 
 Of a commanding stature — beautiful — 
 Bearing such countenance as whoso gazed 
 Must love or fear. Wine-color shone his hair. 
 
Epics of Jesus 
 
 Glittering and waved, an aureole folded down, 
 
 Its long rays lighted locks which fell and flowed 
 
 Fair parted from the midle of his head, 
 
 After the manner of the Nazaritcs. 
 
 Of dignity surpassing, pure and pale 
 
 As lightning leaping sudden from the sky, 
 
 As the Greek's marble, but flushed frequently 
 
 With the bright blood of manhood. Nose and 
 
 mouth 
 Faultless for grace, and full and soft the beard, 
 Forked, the hazel color of his hair; 
 The great eyes blue and radiant, mild as sky; 
 Even and clear his forehead; and the face 
 Of springtime after rain, yet terrible 
 When he rebuked. In admonition calm; 
 In tender hours each word like music's soul 
 Plcard past the sound! Not ofttimes seen to smile, 
 More oft to weep; yet of a lofty cheer 
 Commonly — yea, of playful raillery 
 And swift wit, softened with sweet gravity. 
 Straight standing like a palm tree; hands and limits 
 So molded that the noblest copy of them 
 Among the sons of men fairest and first. 
 
 The naturalness of Sir Edwin's song is great- 
 ly enhanced by a positive orientalism very marked 
 throughout the whole poem. He talks of 
 
 The high-capped Median bringing stallions in. 
 The Indian traders with the spice and silk. 
 The negro men from Cush and Elamites, 
 The Red Sea sailors; and from the shores of Nile 
 The blue-gowned, swart Egyptian — 
 
 frequent feet 
 
 Of Tyrian traders and dark desert men 
 167 
 
The Christ of Our Poets 
 
 Rocking upon their camels, with wild eyes 
 Glittering like lance points; and Sidonians, 
 Syrians and Greeks and Jews — a motley crowd. 
 
 He sings, now and then, his vague, wild In- 
 dian philosophy : 
 
 Om A mil ay a! O 
 The Immeasurable ! What word but doeth wrong, 
 Clothing the Eternal in the forms of now? 
 
 Notwithstanding all of this naturalness and 
 beauty, all of this tenderness, this truest concep- 
 tion of God, and this presentation of the human 
 Jesus superior to any ever before drawn by poet, 
 yet his work lacks much of the ideal epic of Je- 
 sus. Its defects are grave and numerous. The 
 plot is very defective, many important events be- 
 ing entirely overlooked, and unimportant and 
 often imaginary scenes largely elaborated. His- 
 tory and biography are very rudely handled. 
 For instance, he makes Mary of Magdala identi- 
 cal with Mary of Bethany, and both with the 
 fallen one who came to Jesus in the house of .Si- 
 mon of Galilee. His orientalism, which is so 
 charming, would be more so Avere it not Indian 
 orientalism instead of Syrian, which the setting 
 of the Christ history demands. The most glar- 
 ing defect, however, is his manifest and disap- 
 pointing want of grandeur. The Jesus he draws 
 in "The Light of the World" is only about as 
 much greater than the Gautama of his "Light of 
 168 
 
Epics of Jesus 
 
 Asia" as the earth is larger than Asia. Now our 
 Christ is just as tender, and just as human, and 
 just as loving and lovable, sweet and beautiful as 
 Sir Edwin paints him, but he is also as grand as 
 God, as much greater than Buddha as the uni- 
 verse is greater than Asia. Calvary and Geth- 
 semane, Hermon and Olivet were not pretty gar- 
 den scenes, lapped with lullaby breezes and odor- 
 ous with roses ; but they were tremendous in their 
 sweep, reaching to the stars, touching the throne 
 of Omnipotence, enlisting the universe, and echo- 
 ing into the ages of eternity. Sir Edwin seems 
 to have no sort of a conception of this, but deals 
 with all of them as if they were merely exquisite 
 passages in the history of a man whose life and 
 character were a little too angelic and wonderful 
 to be classed as human. I do not suppose that 
 Sir Edwin doubts the divinity of Jesus, but he has 
 never learned what that divinity means. An epic 
 of Jesus with the element of redemption left out 
 as as defective as would be the play of Hamlet 
 with Hamlet's part eliminated. Sir Edwin has 
 given us a picture of a gentle, loving, teaching, 
 healing, suffering, dying, and rising Jesus; but 
 utterly ignores the fact that he is also a world-re- 
 deeming Jesus. Milton made so much of the di- 
 vine Christ that he lost sight of the human ; Sir 
 Edwin, on the other hand, makes so much of the 
 human that he loses sight of the divine. 
 1 6^ 
 
The Christ of Our Poets 
 
 The English language has now attained a rich- 
 ness and fullness which enables it to express all 
 the delicate shades of thought and feeling, and 
 with all degrees of intensity. Such was never 
 attained by any tongue of antiquity, and is un- 
 known to any other dialect of to-day. With more 
 simplicity than the old Hebrew, more strength 
 than the Latin of Caesar and Cicero, more melody 
 than classic Greek, and more volume than all put 
 together, it has never been equaled and will never 
 be surpassed. The language, then, is ready to 
 word the ideal epic of Jesus, Nineteenth century 
 research has turned a strong light on the history 
 and chronology, philology and bibliography of 
 the New Testament; and on the topography and 
 geography, ethnology and folklore of the land of 
 Jesus; and the world to-day knows more about 
 the wonderful "Son of Man" than ever before, 
 and possibly nearly as much as will be known un- 
 til the light of eternity falls on the events of time. 
 Now, if some poet would arise, with the grand- 
 eur of Milton, the elegance of Tennyson, the ten- 
 derness of Bickersteth, the naturalness of Sir Ed- 
 win Arnold, and the learning of a Geikie, he 
 might write an epic of Jesus which would de- 
 light earth's millions a thousand years to come. 
 
 Almost every great epic in the English lan- 
 guage bears on its face a painful confession of 
 weakness in its author. Milton did not dare to 
 170 
 
Epics of Jesus 
 
 attempt rhyme, and knew nothing of aUiteration ; 
 Bickcrsteth attempts alliteration now and then, 
 but shuns the rhyme, although in his lyrics and 
 lesser epics he uses it with marked success; Ar- 
 nold uses rhyme to some extent, and alliteration 
 more freely ; but all seemed to fear that it might 
 so trammel them that their verse would be con- 
 strained and weak. For the very same reason 
 hundreds of others write only in prose. A first- 
 class poet is one who is able to write easy, 
 smooth, elegant, and strong verse, adorned with 
 rhyme as Avell as rhythm, alliteration as well as 
 figures, and yet resort to as few inversions as ele- 
 gance or force requires, and shun as sin every- 
 thing known as poetic license. The less inver- 
 sion the more naturalness, and the less license 
 the more elegance, should be his motto. The 
 ideal epic of Jesus must come to us grand in 
 thought, rich in figure, tender in spirit, true as 
 the Gospels in its narrative, and clothed in the 
 choicest English, with rhyme and rhythm and al- 
 literation and every other charm known to poetry. 
 Who will write it, and when ? It will be writ- 
 ten, though we who live to-day may never read it. 
 171 
 

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