oct. 22, 1898.
that is, so to speak, the outside of my life, the front that is turned to the world. may i for a brief moment open the doors that lead to the secret rooms of the spirit?
the greater part of mankind trouble themselves little enough about the eternal questions: what we are, and what we shall be hereafter. life to the strong, energetic, the full-blooded gives innumerable opportunities of forgetting. it is easy to swim with the stream, to take no thought of the hills which feed the quiet source of it, or the sea to which it runs; for such as these it is enough to live. but all whose minds are restless, whose imagination is constructive, who have to face some dreary and aching present, and would so gladly take refuge in the future and nestle in the arms of faith, if they could but find her—for these the obstinate question must come. like the wind of heaven it rises. we may shut it out, trim the lamp, pile the fire, and lose ourselves in[232] pleasant and complacent activities; but in the intervals of our work, when we drop the book or lay down the pen, the gust rises shrill and sharp round the eaves, the gale buffets in the chimney, and we cannot drown the echo in our hearts.
this is the question:—
is our life a mere fortuitous and evanescent thing? is consciousness a mere symptom of matter under certain conditions? do we begin and end? are the intense emotions and attachments, the joys and sorrows of life, the agonies of loss, the hungering love with which we surround the faces, the voices, the forms of those we love, the chords which vibrate in us at the thought of vanished days, and places we have loved—the old house, the family groups assembled, the light upon the quiet fields at evening, the red sunset behind the elms—all those purest, sweetest, most poignant memories—are these all unsubstantial phenomena like the rainbow or the dawn, subjective, transitory, moving as the wayfarer moves?
who can tell us?
some would cast themselves upon the gospel—but to me it seems that jesus spoke of these things rarely, dimly, in parables—and[233] that though he takes for granted the continuity of existence, he deliberately withheld the knowledge of the conditions under which it continues. he spoke, it is true, in the story of dives and lazarus, of a future state, of the bosom of abraham where the spirit rested like a tired child upon his father’s knee—of the great gulf that could not be crossed except by the voices and gestures of the spirits—but will any one maintain that he was not using the forms of current allegory, and that he intended this parable as an eschatological solution? again he spoke of the final judgment in a pastoral image.
identity
enough, some faithful souls may say, upon which to rest the hope of the preservation of human identity. alas! i must confess with a sigh, it is not enough for me. i see the mass of his teaching directed to life, and the issues of the moment; i seem to see him turn his back again and again on the future, and wave his followers away. is it conceivable that if he could have said, in words unmistakable and precise, “you have before you, when the weary body closes its eyes on the world, an existence in which perception is as strong or stronger, identity as clearly defined, memory as real,[234] though as swift as when you lived—and this too unaccompanied by any of the languors or failures or traitorous inheritance of the poor corporal frame,”—is it conceivable, i say, that if he could have said this, he would have held his peace, and spoken only through dark hints, dim allegories, shadowy imaginings. could a message of peace more strong, more vital, more tremendous have been given to the world? to have satisfied the riddles of the sages, the dream of philosophers, the hopes of the ardent—to have allayed the fears of the timid the heaviness of the despairing; to have dried the mourner’s tears—all in a moment. and he did not!
what then can we believe? i can answer but for myself.
i believe with my whole heart and soul in the indestructibility of life and spirit. even matter to my mind seems indestructible—and matter is, i hold, less real than the motions and activities of the spirit.
it has sometimes seemed to me that matter may afford us the missing analogy: when the body dies, it sinks softly and resistlessly into the earth, and is carried on the wings of the[235] wind, in the silent speeding fountains, to rise again in ceaseless interchange of form.
individuality
could it be so with life and spirit? as the fountain casts the jet high into the air over the glimmering basin, and the drops separate themselves for a prismatic instant—when their separate identity seems unquestioned—and then rejoin the parent wave, could not life and spirit slip back as it were into some vast reservoir of life, perhaps to linger there awhile, to lose by peaceful self-surrender, happy intermingling, by cool and tranquil fusion the dust, the stain, the ghastly taint of suffering and sin? i know not, but i think it may be so.
but if i could affirm the other—that the spirit passes onwards through realms undreamed of, in gentle unstained communion, not only with those whom one has loved, but with all whom one ever would have loved, lost in sweet wonder at the infinite tenderness and graciousness of god—would it not in one single instant give me the peace i cannot find, and make life into a radiant antechamber leading to a vision of rapturous delight?
