SPIRITUAL

VOICES IN

MODERN

LITERATURE



TREVOR. H
D AVI E S



8

00



H

X






SPIRITUAL VOICES
IN MODERN LITERATURE



SPIRITUAL VOICES

IN

MODERN LITERATURE

BY
TREVOR H. DA VIES, D.D.




NEW ^SiT YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY



COPYRIGHT, 1918,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OP AMERICA



TO THE MEMBERS OF THE METROPOLITAN
CHURCH, TORONTO, CANADA, IN GRATEFUL
ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF A VERY GENEROUS
SYMPATHY AND A MOST HAPPY FELLOWSHIP



M545757



PREFACE

The lectures included in this volume were
delivered in the Metropolitan Church, Toronto,
in the winter of 1918-19, and are now published
in response to the request of many who heard
them.

My object in adopting the Series was to find
modern illustrations of some of the great truths
to which the Church stands committed. The
difficulty consisted in making a selection out of
the many influential voices which witness to the
yearning of men, and to the Divine response in
the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. The
Christian Faith and the Christian Ethic might be
reconstructed from the prophetic teachers of the
nineteenth century, some proclaiming one and
some another aspect of the full-orbed truth. It
is a far cry from Hawthorne to James Smetham,
from Ibsen to Francis Thompson, and yet each,
after his own genius, gave utterance to an au-
thentic Christian truth. There are few more re-

vii



viii PREFACE

markable facts in biographical literature than that
Lord Morley should have written, with such rever-
ence and insight, the Life of Gladstone, a life in
nothing more distinguished than in its luminous
religious certainties and character.

This was the viewpoint of the ten lectures.
The theme and the aim were fixed. I was not
attempting essays in literature, but the enforce-
ment of Christian truth. I have, however, used
my utmost care to avoid imputing my own con-
victions to others, and have striven to frankly
present the exposition of the truth as it was con-
ceived and portrayed by the selected author.

The lectures were written after they had been
publicly delivered, in the midst of the duties of
a city pastorate, and without opportunity for that
further revision which, in presenting them to a
larger public, I so much desire had been possible.

I am greatly indebted to my friend, Professor
J. H. Michael, M.A., for his careful reading of
the lectures in proof.

TREVOR H. DAVIES.



CONTENTS

PAQB

FRANCIS THOMPSON : "THE HOUND OF HEAVEN"
An Epic of the Love that Will not Let
Us Go 13

n

IBSEN : 1 1 PEER GYNT ' '

The Ignominy of Half-heartedness 41

m

JOHN BUSKIN: "THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHI-
TECTURE "

A Proclamation of The Laws of Life 73

IV

TENNYSON: "!N MEMORIAM"

A Poet's Plea for Faith 101

V

"THE LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM"

The Use of Imagination in Eeligion 131

VI

WORDSWORTH: "ODE TO DUTY"

Freedom and Eestraint 165

ix



CONTENTS



MORLEY: "LIFE OF GLADSTONE "

The Creative Power of the Christian Faith 195

vin

EGBERT BROWNING: "SAUL"

The Heart's Cry for Jesus Christ ....... 227

IX

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE: "THE SCARLET LET-
TER "
The Fact of Sin ........................ 255

X

JOHN MASEFIELD: "THE EVERLASTING MERCY"

The Fact of Conversion. , 285



FRANCIS THOMPSON: "THE HOUND
OF HEAVEN"



An Epic of the Love That Witt
Not Let Us Go



I



FRANCIS THOMPSON: ' THE HOUND
OF HEAVEN "

AN EPIC OF THE LOVE THAT WILL NOT LET US GO

" Whither shall I go from thy spirit ? or whither shall
I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven,
thou art there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art
there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in
the uttermost parts of the sea ; even there shall thy hand
lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say,
Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall
be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from
thee; but the night shineth as the day; the darkness and
the light are both alike to thee."

PSALM cxxxrx. 7-12.

" What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he
lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in
the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he
find it?"

ST. LUKE xv. 4s.

rpHEODORE WATTS DUNTON in his

* suggestive essay on " The Renascence of
Wonder " dwells upon the two impulses in the
human mind: "the impulse of acceptance, which
takes unchallenged and for granted all the phe-

13



14 SPIRITUAL VOICES

nomena of the outer world, and the impulse to
confront these phenomena with eyes of enquiry
and wonder." This impulse of wonder, he con-
tinues, becomes " a creative power " in literature
and art. When men take great things for
granted, their work lacks distinction and fresh-
ness. Elevation of thought and style demands
the lowly, reverent mind.

This principle is supremely true in religion
and character: we suffer when there is no wonder
in our hearts. There are some truths which can-
not even be seen until we have learnt to take
the shoes from off our feet, knowing that the
place whereon we stand is holy ground. The
Bible is the most wonderful book in the world
because its seers and teachers are amazed at the
grace of God, finding it almost too good to be
true. ef Unto me" cried St. Paul, " who am less
than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that
I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearch-
able riches of Christ." It is not the holiness of
God alone which so impresses the heart, but the
spectacle of Infinite holiness crossing the gulf to
abide among the outlaws. That He should for-
give those who have so greatly sinned might well



IN MODERN LITERATURE 15

amaze the awakened heart, but far more wonder-
ful is the mercy that " lays forgiveness at our
feet, and pleads with us to take it." Our familiar-
ity with the messages of grace is a peril: we need
to recover the apostolic impulse of wonder. The
mind which takes for granted that which " angels
desire to look into " condemns itself to dullness
and mediocrity in character.

Evangelical wonder is born of the Divine quest
for man. We have sometimes spoken as if the
search were on our side. ' The history of philoso-
phy," wrote George Henry Lewes, " is the
history of man's quest for God." We pursue, it
would seem, One who eludes our groping
thought; we hear the sweep of His garment, but
when we go forward He is not there. It is of
very deep significance that we have never been
able to give up the quest. Emerson tells of two
of his friends, who for twenty-five years sought
to prove the immortality of the soul. And he
adds that the most powerful proof of the doctrine
was in the impulse which sustained that prolonged
endeavour. One proof that God is seeking man
lies in the fact that man is ever seeking God.
The pursuer is actually the pursued. " We should



16 SPIRITUAL VOICES

j not seek Him," said Pascal, " had we not found

1 Him."

That Divine quest is the constant theme of
the Bible. It tells the great story of God's in-
sistent pursuit of the human soul. The Universe,
vast as it is, gives no safe hiding-place from Him ;
it affords no single spot where we may feel secure
from His all-searching presence. " Even there
shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall
hold me." We are like that wanderer of old
coming along the trail at the close of day, faint
and lonely, who thought he had left his father's
\ God behind him because he had left his father's
tent, but discovered, as he lay down to rest upon
the hillside, that he was pursued. " Lo, God is
here and I knew it not," was his astonished cry.
For the shepherd is out after the sheep, and though
it seek to escape the inexorable pursuer, he does
not give up the quest until he finds it. That, we
say again, is the truth which has smitten, with
ever deepening wonder, the heralds of the gospel
in every age. " There is mercy with God that He
may be feared." Augustine, Francis of Assisi,
Luther, Wesley, Newman, Spurgeon never could
become accustomed to this tremendous message



IN MODERN LITERATURE 17

given to them. Their words pulsate with wonder.
Amazement only deepens in those great souls as
they go out to persuade men to turn and find God
not another, but Himself, in very truth by
their side.

This ceaseless quest is the burden of Francis
Thompson's greatest poem " The Hound of
Heaven." The poem is the product of an ex-
perience. He had been lost and was found. It
is the cry of a penitent and reclaimed soul. He
stands overwhelmed by wonder; he cannot take
it for granted; he is spellbound in a Universe
that was transfigured by the Cross of our
Saviour. In the heart of this man there abides
the cry which rings to one clear note throughout
the ages:

"Amazing love., immense and free,
For, O my God, it found out me."

Thompson could not look upon a sunset without
being reminded of the Cross, nor hail the sunrise
without seeing the glory of our Lord's resurrec-
tion. The " Hound of Heaven " is an epic of
the love that would not let him go. He confesses
that be had sought to evade the " tremendous



18 SPIRITUAL VOICES

Lover," but found no escape until at last he
gave up the attempt and was found, content then,
as he had never been content before.

" Every poet," said Thompson in a letter
quoted by Mr. Everard Meynell in his biography
of the poet, " should be able to give a clear and
logical prose resume of his teaching as terse as
a page of scholastic philosophy." Sometimes such
might be desirable to readers his poetry; but
we need no prose resume here. The haunting
stanza which with slight variations is five times
repeated in " The Hound of Heaven " sums up
the message:

"But with unhurrying chase >
And unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat and a Voice beat
More, instant than the Feet
e All things betray thee, who betray est Me.*"

\ Some one is out after the Soul of man! Most
of us are made aware of this in one way or an-
other. We go on heedless until something occurs
which startles us by a sense of being overlooked.
Men behave themselves in different ways when
such an impression comes to them, for it is pos-



IN MODERN LITERATURE 19

sible to dismiss the whole conception as the fan-
tasy of the mind, a scruple of a too-sensitive
conscience, or to accept it as a summons to the
best that is in us. In any case such hours are
epoch-making in the soul's history. What Thomp-
son would have us believe is that the experience
has objective reality: there is One by our side;
and our happiness depends upon making full use
of those special moments in life when His coming
makes the heart soft and tender. It is love not
hate which pursues us mercy and not judgment,
Christ and not the devil.

The life story of the poet explains much in
his work. Francis Thompson was born in Lan-
cashire, England, the son of a medical practi-
tioner who purposed for him the same profession.
He was actually qualified for nothing except
letters; a more helpless being than the poet out-
side his art it would be difficult to find. After
years of the most desultory study, he left home
and went to London, where he rapidly descended
to the lowest strata of poverty and impotence.
He frequently slept on the Thames Embankment
or in the public parks, and was dependent upon
the few coppers he picked up by selling matches



\



20 SPIRITUAL VOICES

and bootlaces or opening cab-doors in the city
streets. One day Mr. Wilfrid Meynell, then the
Editor of " Merry England," to whom, together
with his gifted wife, English Literature owes so
much for the unwearied patience with which they
sought and reclaimed the derelict poet, received
an essay entitled " Paganism " signed by Francis
Thompson. Soiled as it was, with words almost
obliterated here and there, it bore the unmistak-
able stamp of genius upon it, and after months
of investigation Mr. Meynell managed to obtain
an interview with the author. The meeting is
described by the editor: " The door opened and
a strange hand was thrust in. The door closed
but Thompson had not entered. Again it opened;
again it phut. At the third attempt a waif of a
man came in. No such figure had been looked for,
more ragged and unkempt than the average beg-
gar, with no shirt beneath his coat, and bare feet
in broken shoes." Try to realize what it meant
to such a man to have been so jealously followed
by the Love of God!

Love is never so wonderful as when it is be-
stowed upon those who know themselves to be



IN MODERN LITERATURE 21

objects of indifference, if not of contempt, to
the world in which they live. It may be casually
esteemed by the man who abounds in the esteem
and consideration of others; but to those who
are condemned to carry the shafts of obloquy
and still retain any proper measure of self-
respect, love becomes the pearl of great price.
Thompson had been despised even among the
despised. He had accustomed himself to indif-
ference. And yet he had been sought out as
one would seek for what was rare and precious.
No wonder that to this delivered soul, the Cross
of our blessed Lord became the sum and em-
bodiment of all his universe, mental, moral and
spiritual. For Francis Thompson was the prodi-
gal, who had been sent out into the fields to feed
the swine, and could not rest there because some-
thing continually stirred up within him recollec-
tions of a great heritage, and who, knowing full
well that the lot of a servant was too good for
him, nevertheless heard the all-pitying voice cry:
"Bring forth the best robe and put it on him;
and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his
feet, and bring hither the fatted calf and kill it,



22 SPIRITUAL VOICES

for this my son was dead and is alive again; he
was lost and is found."

It is strange to some critics that Francis
Thompson, having lived in the streets of London,
and having seen that vast city without any of
those concealments which make it unknown to
many who have spent their years there did not
become a poet of the city streets. How he could
have portrayed it all, the glare, the vice, the
riotous profanity, the barbarous passion, the
squalor and all that sum of wrong inflicted and
endured! But we find his memories of London,
as of other places, aflame with one luminous
image. He saw:

"The traffic of Jacob's ladder
Pitched between Heaven and Charing Cross"

And lo, Christ walking on the water,
Not of Genesareth, but Thames.

THE SOUL IN FLIGHT

E HOUND OF HEAVEN" describes
the soul's attempt to escape from God. Later
on the poet will face the question: How is it



IN MODERN LITERATURE 23

that, being made aware of God's presence, our
first instinct is to seek some shelter? Meantime,
he insists upon the fact. The poem opens with
the soul in flight, and it portrays some of the
attempted roads along which the fugitive sped in
this unnatural desire. Every man makes his own
refuge, and there is not one interest in all his
life, whether good or evil, which has not been
sought by the hunted soul as a refuge from the
pursuing Love of God. It should be carefully
noted that Thompson does not name anything
essentially evil as one of his hiding places. We
have all said to sin " Cover thou me," but we
have also made the same appeal to things in them-
selves lawful and good. Man has the power of
making the good an enemy to the best, and of
turning what should be a means of communion
with God into a screen which His grace has to
make luminous by fiery burnings.

(a) He retreats within himself thinking to
bar the door of his own life against the Great
Seeker. "I fled him down the labyrinthine
ways of my own mind ... in the mist of tears,
and under running laughter, up vistaed hopes,
down chasmed fears." But he found, as our



24 SPIRITUAL VOICES

Lord declared, that when a man comes to him-
self he is not far from God. There is no single
realm of the human mind which is without its
witness. The laws of thought imply a Lawgiver
as certainly as do those outward laws by which
the material universe is fashioned and controlled.
Passing from the world of thought into that of
the emotions j with " its vistaed hopes, and
chasmed fears," we are made still more vividly
aware of that awful Presence. Many profound
students of life have found the sources of reli-
gious faith in our ultimate sense of dependence.
Human need is a cry of the heart for God. We
do not pray because we have argued ourselves into
the reasonableness of prayer; when we pray we
obey an impulse of our nature which goes deeper
than any system of thought by which it has been
defended. And who can hope to flee from God
by turning to meet his own conscience? That
inward monitor speaks with an authority which
is derived from no human source. The human
soul is no place for one to escape God. He
knows those " labyrinthine ways " far better than
we know them ourselves, and treads with sure
foot where we falter and stumble. The key



IN MODERN LITERATURE 25

of every door hangs upon his girdle. Others we
may shut out, but He passes by unobserved. We
have scarcely shut the door than we catch the
steady footfall of " those strong Feet that follow,
follow after."

(b) Driven from within himself, the hunted
soul sought covert in human love. " I pled by
many a hearted casement." " But, if one little
casement parted wide, the gust of His approach
would clash it to." He hears, as so many have
heard, in the beating of the human heart the
gentle patter of the following feet. " God is
Love, and every one that loveth . . . knoweth
God." The heart "parted wide" admits Him
whose love is the source of all human love. Once
again the fugitive is dislodged and must seek
fresh cover.

(c) The wonders of the vast universe, he
thinks, will surely be sufficient to satisfy his
human need. Like the Psalmist he ascends into
heaven, and " smites for shelter at the gold gate-
ways of the stars," he " clings to the whistling
mane of every wind," but only to find, that " even
there God's hand held him." There is no lawless
place in all the world except where the will of



26 SPIRITUAL VOICES

man clashes with the will of his Maker. And
that thought drives him back to earth with the
unperturbed and deliberate patter of the feet
ever behind him.

(d) Coming back to earth he seeks a hiding
place in the innocent life of little children. There
is some kinship between the poet and the child,
and Thompson was never quite at home save
with children. He approached them, not as a
psychologist anxious to analyse or study the child
mind, but as one in whom the child-spirit had
been kept alive. He was one of them in their
glee and knew the wonderful world in which they
live. In an Ode to his godchild he counsels where
he may be found in Paradise should the grace of
God bring him there at last.

"Turn not your tread along the Uranian sod
Among the, bearded counsellors of God."



Pass where majestical the eternal peers,

The stately choice of the great Saintdom meet.

Look for me in the nurseries of heaven"

But the nursery is no place for the man who
would escape God. "And Enoch walked with



IN MODERN LITERATURE 27

God after he begat Methusaleh," declares the
ancient writer, suggesting that it was the child
that led the patriarch to that " walk with God "
which has so filled our hearts with desire. "Out
of the mouth of children and of little children
hast Thou made a fortress for Thyself" is one
of the great utterances of the Psalmist a state-
ment which afterwards received the sanction of
our Lord Himself. The child heart is a favourite
hunting ground of the Celestial Huntsman.

(e) The last attempt to escape is made in
Nature this time the Nature, not of the scientific
observer, but of the artist, into the changeful
moods of which he seeks to enter by sympathy.

f< I triumphed and I saddened with all weather.
Heaven and I wept together.
And its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine.
Against the red throb of its sunset-heart
I laid my own to beat,
And share commingling heat;
But not by that, by that, was eased my human
smart"

Lover of Nature as he was he discovered, as
he wrote to a friend, that there is no heart there.



28 SPIRITUAL VOICES

They " make believe " who say there is. She
"speaks by silences, we speak in sound;" the sea
is salt unwittingly and unregretfully, our tears
are of the soul which suffers and which cries.
Nature is not our dwelling-place, though it has
pointed the way home to many. Its splendid sun-
sets, its shimmering streams, its giant hills, its
summer fields are open roads to Him Who calls
us to His fellowship. And so, seeking to escape
in these things, the soul hears again the footfall
and the voice:

"Nigh and nigh draws the chase,

With unperturbed pace,

Deliberate speed, majestic instancy;

And past those noised Feet

A voice comes yet more fleet

f Lo! naught contents thee, who content 'st not



me!"



And so the chase comes to an end. The poet
had sought to escape God in God's own world,
and, naturally, had failed. He is like the prophet,
in that little understood book of our sacred scrip-
tures, who thought to put the seas between him
and Jehovah, but found Him walking on the
waters; who imagined that human life outside



IN MODERN LITERATURE 29

Israel would be a secure hiding-place, but found
Him in the kindness of untutored sailors, and in
the penitent people of Nineveh; and who, when he
turned in bitterness to the labyrinthine ways of
his own mind, heard even there the voice, " Doest
thou well to be angry, Jonah?"

There is no up nor down in all the Universe
where we can finally escape this " tremendous
Lover." Meister Eckhart has well said, " He
who will escape Him, only runs to His bosom ; for
all corners are open to Him."

THE FEAR OF THE BEST

NOW THAT he is brought ' to bay, the poet
tells why he had sought to flee from the
Love of God. A father who tried to explain this
poem to his children was suddenly confronted
by the question asked by the youngest of his hear-
ers " But why did he want to run away from
God? " Who could explain to the little child why
the very thought of God does not fill our hearts
with confidence and peace ? ' What has God
done," ask Faber, " that men should not trust
Him? "



30 SPIRITUAL VOICES

The poet's explanation is that he was afraid
so high a fellowship would make such de-
mands upon him as would be intolerable. Every
pure friendship has an austere side challenging
our indolence and summoning us to spiritual af-
finity. Thompson had as he puts it:

"Heard the trumpet sound
From the kid battlements of Eternity/'

And turning hastily, he had obtained a half
glimpse of the Summoner:

rf With glooming robes purpureal, cypress-
crowned."

The trumpet called to heroic sacrifice, and it was
from that dread call he had turned so persistently
away.

It is this half glimpse of Christianity which
chills the blood. " The love of Jesus, what it is,
none but His loved ones know." There are houses
in London, owned by great families, which have
no outward attractions, but within hold treasures
of art and exquisite forms of beauty and colour.
Christianity does not disclose its secret to the



IN MODERN LITERATURE 31

outsider, and it is for ever true that " eye hath not
seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into
the heart of man to conceive the things which
God hath laid up for those that love Him.'* But
these things are revealed to us, continues the
apostle, " by His Spirit." To the Court of Charles
II, John Milton was an object of pity if not of
contempt. He held aloof from its pleasures
though he might have been a participator, so de-
sirable was his powerful pen. But had they seen
all with any understanding, the courtiers would
have found no occasion for their pity in that
noble mind. He had " solid joys and lasting
pleasures " of which they knew nothing. Minions
of that Court came one day, with bribes in their
hands, to seduce him from his high allegiance,
but when they found the blind poet seated at the
organ pouring forth his soul in praise and wor-
ship, even they understood that they could make
no appeal to him with the things they valued,
and returned without making their offer. He
wfaj^eard "the sevenfold hallelujahs of the
angels " would not be perverted by the ribaldry
of Rochester and his peers.

In obedience to Christ every "nay" has its



32 SPIRITUAL VOICES

compensating " yea." Renunciation is life not
death. Sacrifice to Christ and for His sake is to
joy and not to sorrow. There is a cross at the
heart of human blessedness. Grim and inexorable