University of Virginia Library

Yes, he was there at the grave, and we
Eyed each other with meaning look,
Wondering what he had come to see;
Yet we pitied him, too, ere long, as he
Stood by himself alone, and shook
While the earth fell dull on the coffin lid.
But why had he come where he was not bid?
He might have known he would mar our meeting,
Who neither its love nor its grief could share.
And how could we give him a word of greeting?—
He! the last man that we looked for there.
So, lonely and silent he took his place,
And silent and lonely he went his way.
But what was the shadow that lay on his face?
Was it, maybe, some touch of the tender grace,
And the lingering love of a former day?
It puzzled us then; but we let him go
Lonely away, with his head bent low.

They had been friends in youth, had read
Together the words of the classic dead—
Epic and drama and lyric bold,
And sage discourse of the wise and true,
And the fabled tale, and the legend old
Where the faiths of a rank religion grew;
And many a close-writ notebook told
How well the past life of the world they knew,
How much of the gods and the wits of Greece,
And of Rome with its arts of war and peace.
Oft wandering, too, by brake and brook,
Or seated on lichened boulder stone,
They read as in an open book
How earth was fashioned, and rocks had grown,
By frost and ice, by fire and flood,
From the weltering slime of the primal mud;
And what the records of nature bore
Of the struggle of Life from less to more—
What mosses in the swamps grew rank,
What fishes stirred the long sea-weeds,
What great beasts on the river's bank
Went crashing through the giant reeds.
So they had searched, through ages vast,
The strange graveyards of the buried Past.
Later, their converse had mostly been
With Fathers and Schoolmen and knotty Creeds,
And Councils, where subtlest wits were seen
Busily sowing the fruitful seeds
Of faith and doubt, and love and hate,
And all that chequers our mortal fate.
The fall too of Empire, the dark sunset
Of learning, through lust of power and gold,
The mighty Popes, and the mightier yet
Who wrought reform in the days of old.
And martyr-sorrows by fire and cord,
And the glory and triumph of God's pure Word;
These, too, they pondered, laying up store
Of late born science and old world lore.
So had the Kirk for her sons designed
That the rich in faith should be full in mind.

They settled near each other,—this,
In a rural parish of easy bliss,
That, in a neighbouring city, rife
With the questionings of a keen young life—
They walked together side by side,
And each of the other would speak with pride:
How one had treasures of learning vast,
And one had thoughts that were sure to cast
A larger light upon life and death,
And gird up the loins of our dwindling faith.
Brothers first in the toils of youth,
Brothers now in the bonds of truth,
Each in the other was fain to see
The powers of the world that was to be.

But one man like a tree shall stand,
Leafing and fruiting year by year,
And cling to his little patch of land,
And cast a shade for the lazy steer,
With no more change than the passing breeze
Makes when it tosses the creaking bough;
And prosperous, plentiful, full of ease,
To-morrow he shall be the same as now.
Another shall flow like a freshening stream,
Flashing there where the sunbeam flies,
Eddying here in a brooding dream,
And all its life in its movement lies;
This the law of his being strange,
Ever he grows by flux and change.
What would you? Nature will have her way;
Will mend by night what you mar by day,
And laughs at the man that would say her Nay.
Tree cannot pluck up its roots and go,
Restless stream cannot cease to flow,
Each must obey the high Law, given
To the things of earth by the Lord of Heaven.

And some read many books, and grow
Wiser and better by all they know;
From thoughts of other men their own
Get warmth and colour and richer tone,
And what is old they make as new
From the shaping mind it passes through:
It was but a seed when it was sown,
But a goodly plant in their souls has grown,
For all that they gather with patient strife
Is penetrated with mystic life.
Another shall read and heap up lore,
Yet be no wiser than ever before;
Folios mighty he knows by rote,
And each edition, its date, and size,
Page and paragraph well can quote,
And where a word on the margin lies;
Hardly a question up shall spring,
Sudden as startled bird on wing,
But a loaded sentence is up to sight
With a score of quotations to settle it right;
Yet never a thought of his own has he,
Nor any mind but memory.

So these twain took their several ways,
Though each was full of the other's praise,
Keeping ever a constant heart,
While drifting more and more far apart.
For he whom we laid in the grave that day—
Honoured and wept for his service—learned,
By change and sorrow, the sacred way
Which the dull, slow book-worm never discerned.

He had come among us in brilliant youth,
Eloquent, earnest, eager to tell
Just the old story we held for truth,
And we praised him for it, and liked him well;
Praised the round periods shaped with care,
And the brilliant tropes that he did not spare,
And liked the man and his modest air.
Praised him and liked him! What would he more?
Welcome his knock at the cottage door,
Welcome at school to the children gay,
Welcome his presence at wedding feast,
Welcome where sickness restless lay,
Welcome as Comforter, Prophet and Priest—
What would he more than already he had?
And why should his countenance now be sad?
Say, you are set to pasture sheep—
Taught where the short, sweet grasses grow,
And the tender ewes and the lambs to keep
From the wily fox and the hooded crow,
And how to shift them from hill to dale,
And how to bring healing to them that ail,
And when to fold them, and feed them well
While the snow lies deep upon field and fell.
And so you tend them with care, and they
Trust your shepherding, as you strive
To keep them safe in the good old way—
But somehow or other they do not thrive;
They do not grow as they ought to grow,
But pine where the quiet waters flow;
And many are ailing, and none grow fat—
Could you be well content with that?
Nay, you are not there to be liked and praised,
But to see that the sheep are fitly grazed.

Or say that you go a-fishing, well
Equipt with a handy rod and reel,
And the temptingest flies that ever fell,
Like light, where the rippling waters steal,
And you know all the likely casts and pools,
And to ply your art by the latest rules.
Could you be satisfied now to see
Shoals come sniffing about your hooks,
As it were a pleasure for them to be
Playing there, in the shining brooks,
With the golden wings and the scarlet dyes
Of all those beautiful summer flies,
If never a speckled trout would touch
The dainty things that they liked so much?

Greatly our Shepherd, then, we admired,
And greatly his fishing-craft we praised;
But that was not what his heart desired,
And therefore with sorrowing eyes he gazed
Round and down on the thronging pews,
As one who had failed in telling his news.
For our life went on as it did before,
Heaping up treasures from less to more,
Seeking our pleasure, and serving our sins,
And giving our honours to him that wins.

And so he began to ask, “What next?
Can I spend my years on a fruitless task?
My soul is weary and sore perplexed,
Will God not give me the boon I ask?
Better go plough a straight furrow, and reap,
Better the broom of as crosing-sweep,
Labour of any kind one can see
Good coming out of, than this for me.”
Some would have laid all the blame on the flock,
And called their hearts hard as a flinty rock;
But that was never his way; for he
Searched himself and his work, to find
What might the cause of his failure be,
And whether it were in his heart or mind.
Was it the good news of God he had spoken?
Was it the true Bread of life he had broken?
And the Christ he had preached, was He God's own Son?
Or only the Christ whom the school-men spun,
Part of the earth, and part of the air,
From the small fine threads of their logic bare?

Now came a season of deep unrest,
Of teaching thought to be lame and halt,
And meetings of elders with minds oppressed,
And meddling of ministers finding fault.
For the fight he was fighting all the week through,
As the Sabbath came round, he must fight it anew;
And now it went this way, now it went that,
Till we hardly could tell what he meant to be at;
But we felt he was real, and groping about
In search of a Faith that he had to find out.
Slowly the light came; slowly it grew;
Not without questionings, Could it be true?
And faint heart-misgivings, What might be the end?
Must he lose for the sake of it lover and friend?
Sometimes resisting it when it seemed clearest,
Sometimes afraid of it when it felt dearest,
Sometimes persuaded it could not be right,
Else the saints nearest God would have glowed in its light;
And sometimes defiant and scornful, he,
As one who knew what the cost must be,
Hurled it at us, and went his way,
To kneel in his closet, and weep and pray.
But he settled at last in the lucent calm
Of a restful faith which was sweet as a Psalm—
Calm and sweet as the waters blest
Where the Good Shepherd causeth His flock to rest.

At first we heard him with growing fear.
Was he hitting indeed at our cherished beliefs?
Was he sapping the truth, to our fathers dear?
Was he shooting heretical arrows in sheafs?
Was he driving shafts through the Catechism
To undermine our old Calvinism?
Some held it was only the truth he sought,
Truth which at any price must be bought:
And some, that he ne'er should have come to preach
If he had not already the truth to teach.
And so, at each fireside the battle raged
Which he with himself in anguish waged;
And we searched the Book, and we gathered store
Of other books, and we deemed them good,
Not for the wealth of their learned lore,
But for help that they gave us in living more
Nobly and truly, as Christians should;
That was his test for every thought,
Will it lift you up nearer to God or not?

Oh, that was a springtime of sowing seed—
Seed of the better life surely—for mind
Was quickened by him, and the soul was freed
From dead traditions that bind and blind;
It was a time too of tears and prayers,
And bearing of crosses by high and low;
If the enemy also sowed his tares,
He warned us well that it must be so.
In the end, when his way at length was clear,
And the light shone quietly forth in power,
And he came to us speaking good words of good cheer
That dropt on our souls like a summer shower,
How we waited for Sunday then, eager to listen
To a message that made the heart glow and eye glisten!
Oh, the hush of the multitude, breathless and still,
As their souls bowed before him, and moved at his will!

Meanwhile, his friend in his rural home
Read many a clasped, white-vellumed tome,
Black-lettered, and with red-edged leaf,
And never a sentence clear and brief.
Mickle he read, but little he grew;
A dwarf in giant's armour he;
And all that was old he held for true,
And all that was new must error be;
Fresh lights indeed on the earth might shine,
But nothing fresh upon things divine;
And little he heeded the voice which said,
I am living, and these are dead.
Then some came to him, whispering, “Lo!
The hour is come, and the man we know.
The friend of thy youth has gone astray
From the beaten path of the narrow way,
And leadeth others to do likewise,
As there are always silly sheep
Will follow the bell-wether, when he tries
O'er his own shadow in vain to leap.
That which the Fathers held for truth
In the faith-sure days of the Church's youth,
That which divines at a later stage,
With the learning ripe of a thoughtful age,
Fashioned into a Creed compact,
Every link of it strong as fact,
Every joint of it fitting tight
As Scripture and Reason could shape them right—
That, like another blind Samson, he,
Making sport for the Philistine,
Would fain pull down on our heads, that we
May die like men crushed in a falling mine.
But now is the harvest come at last
Of all thy sowing of fruitless seed;
God has been guiding thee in the past
To help His Church in her hour of need.
He is thy friend, and dear to thee,
But not so dear as the Truth should be;
Up, then, and gird thine armour on,
Or take thy sling and the pebble stone,
And smite this giant of carnal doubt.
The Church must deal with him; but without
The lore of the ages, known to thee,
Hardly her way shall be plain to see;
For the critical, carping spirit abroad
Lies ever in wait for the Church's tripping,
If she miss but a turn of the changing road,
Or a chance wrong word from her mouth come slipping,
And they scoff and mock, and fleer and flout
If a date be wrong, or a jot left out.
Heaven trained thee for this task. And see,
There is glory and honour awaiting thee,
When the true champion of the faith
Has stricken this heresy unto death.”

They were not many-thoughted men,
Nor wise at winning souls, but yet
Fitly and well they reasoned then
To snare this soul in their wily net;
And this was how the leaven wrought
As he sat down by the fire, and thought—
“How can I do it? He is my friend,
Tender and true, and a saintly spirit,
Living, by work and prayer, to mend
The ills and woes that we all inherit.
They'll call me a Balaam, a Judas,—what not?
If I meddle with that which concerns me not.
Yet should not a warning word be spoken,
Even at the risk of a friendship broken?
Can I in faithfulness let him go
Unrebuked in his erring way,
Marring the ancient doctrine so,
And leading others, too, far astray?
'Tis pleasant to find my work at last
Appreciated as it should be;
And what if, indeed, through the busy Past,
God for this has been training me?
So they read it as men of sense,
Skilled in the ways of Providence.
It is right to do what the Church requires,
And to tend the flame of her altar fires,
How painful soever, then, I must speak;—
And, besides, he is clearly all wrong in his Greek.”

Followed a sharp Remonstrance, charged
With high authorities, and enlarged
With customary polemic hits—
The shallow trick of barren wits—
As “love of novelty—fickle mind—
Failure of logic, if beauty of art—
Hunger for fame of the emptiest kind—
Itch of vanity in the heart—
Knowledge that had not a touch of grace,
Not accurate either, and out of place.
You know the style; it was commoner once
Than it is to-day, when the learned dunce
Is of little account. As he read the “proof,”
Though he knew how unkindly his words must seem,
Like a pigeon perched on a high house-roof,
He crooned and swelled in a vain fond dream
Of all the honours that he should win,
When scholars his learned volume read,
And the wealth of praise that it might bring in,
And the name that should live when he was dead;
But he did not remember the love he lost—
The broken seal of the Holy Ghost.
One word only he spoke out plain,
But that word measured the bulk of his brain:
“That Aorist, now; he is clearly wrong;
I have touched him there, and my point is strong.”
For the faith and the hope of men, he wist.
All hinged on the turn of an Aorist.

Remonstrance led to Rejoinder, of course,
Deftly handled with point and force,
And equal learning and dainty wit,
And there was not an unkind word in it.
“Pleasant,” he writ, “was a quiet life
Spent among big-margined folio books,
Far from the town with its busy strife,
'Mid the singing of larks, and the cawing of rooks;
And well for his friend to have lettered ease,
For the Church to have scholars ripe and good,
Though it is not for any themselves to please,
And sit in brown study, and dream and brood,
Fighting the battles of long ago
With ghosts that are wandering to and fro,
When they ought of rights to be lying low.
For himself, his task had been plainly set
Where the eager throng in the market met,
And the rush of thoughts into men's vexed minds
Was borne like the dust on the wild March winds,
And would not be settled by tense or mood,
Or aught that the nice grammarian could.
He must serve his time, for he did not think
God had mistaken the time of day,
And set him forth, like an owl to blink
At noon instead of the evening grey;
But to look in the face of man, and see
What was aching his heart and brow,
And where the shadow of Mystery
Lay on the face of the dial now.

“Fresh lights had shone upon earth and heaven,
And time had its ancient secrets given
Up to our search, from the earth and stone
That held the story of Babylon.
Not now could any one wholly read
The truth aright, if he gave no heed
To that which the Fathers could not know—
The lights which out of the ages grow.
And ere the brief hours of his day were run,
He would like to feel that his task was done
With clear intelligence of the time,
Wasting nothing on mere by-play,
But filling his place in the plan sublime
God worked out in His own great way.
Others might come to mend it soon,
To-morrow a different work might need,
Men must change with the changing moon,
And life be sung to another tune,
And shape itself to a larger Creed.
Faith in God was the only way,
And there was no last word on that to say.
“What have I done? I have only told
My flock of the boundless love of God,
Which is not straitened, but doth enfold
All that on earth have their abode,
All in the Universe that dwell
In the heights of heaven, or the depths of hell;
For there is no shore where that ocean breaks
And finds its limit: God is not there
Where Love is not, that our burden takes;
For God is love, and is every where.
And I told them, that God and His grace and work
Are not tied fast to a Bishop's crook,
Are not shut up in an ordered kirk,
Nor yet bound up in a printed book,
For all good thoughts that visited them,
All longings for the pure and true,
All from His inspiration came;
And there was not an erring soul but knew
The pleading tones of the Father's love
Calling—calling him from above.
And I taught moreover that they who hear,
And turn from the evil of their ways,
Shall find that His mercy is ever near,
And sing to Him yet in a song of praise;
For among the living, among the dead,
Yesterday, to-day, and for ever,
He is still the same, as the Spirit said,
Pouring forth love as a flowing river.
Is it heresy to have taught them so?
I glory in it, and ever must,
Ever with Christ my faith must go,
When He seeks the living to make them just,
Or joins the dead where they lie in dust;
For He must be doing His Father's will,
Bearing the message of mercy still.”
Process of heresy then began,
And who but his ancient friend was fit,
Since the heretic too was a learned man,
With competent knowledge to handle it?
Oh they were grieved, for well they wot
The man was good, and the work he did;—
A saintly spirit in deed and thought,
Though he plainly taught what the Church forbid:
But never a heresy yet had thriven
But what some holy man had given
A tone to it that appeared from Heaven.
It was all the worse for the Church, they said,
When a man of God from the old paths broke;
But there was little to fear or dread,
When the heretic was like other folk.

Weekly they met in hot debate,
And weekly they preached on the business too,
Daily also, and early and late,
We all debated the case anew.
Never such stir was known in the place;
Never such searching of chapter and verse;
Never such talk of election and grace,
Never such arguments clear and terse;
Never such stores of theology, brought
From hiding-places in old men's heads,
Never such troubled and anxious thought,
As we walked by the way, or lay still in our beds,
To think of the man, that we held so dear,
Badgered as if he were fool or rogue:
But at length, in the cold dark end of the year,
They cast him out of their synagogue.
I was there on that chill December night
When they gave their verdict, and spake his doom
By a single candle's glimmering light
That was only just seen in the dusky gloom.
Many were weeping, and some men swore,
But a low laugh rose when the light died out,
And we said, “Here we seek for the truth no more,
They have left us in darkness to wander about.”
Yet were we glad that the end had come,
And the torrents of foolishest speech were dumb.

But in the name of God to smite
Him that was walking with God in light!
And in the name of God to wreak
Wrath on the lowly heart and meek!
And in the name of God to pray
O'er such a work as they did that day,
Little witting what they were at!—
In God's name what is the end of that?

Outcast now from its fellowship,
Still to the Kirk he fondly clung,
And often he said, with quivering lip,
How good it was, when the bell was rung,
To go where the grand old Psalms were sung,
And to be where lowly hearts were bent
In prayer and holy Sacrament;
For the Kirk made brave and earnest men,
And he loved her now as he loved her then.
So he lived on, the meekest saint,
Nor wasted his life in vain complaint,
Nor formed another sect to claim
That it was the true Jerusalem,
And rear its altars in his name;
But gathered around him thoughtful youth,
Inspiring them with the love of truth,
And to look for guidance from above,
And to believe that God is Love.

At first, of course, we were only few—
Just one here, and another there—
Suspected and distrusted too,
And work was scanty, and calls were rare.
But soon the leaven spread, and we
Became a goodly company:
And many a pulpit in the land
Ere long was quickened by his faith,
And sounded forth the message grand
That Love had vanquished sin and death,
That God had been a little Child,
And walked with sinners, undefiled,
And with the wicked had made His grave,
That grace and hope might come to all,
And all might join the battle brave
Who heard, and would obey His call.
And we grew bold, and dared to greet
The outcast in his failing years
With words of love and honour meet,
That filled his wistful eyes with tears—
Never a task I laboured at
So much to my liking as writing that—
For he had meekly born the yoke,
And now behold the seed had sprung,
And over all the Church awoke
The same glad strain which he had sung.
O mystery of truth, whose hour
Of sorrow is its day of power,
Which but accepts its cross, and then
Rides forth in its might to conquer men!
But who was the heretic kept apart
From the truth and life by his faith-less heart?
He who was loser, but still loved on?
Or he who gave up his love, and won?
Ah! would you read God's meaning? look
Not on the bright, shining page of His Book,
But where the shadow lies dark on the face
Of some tragic failure, some proud disgrace.
For the loss is gain, and the gain is loss,
And the shame is glory when He wills
That thou shouldst shine in the healing Cross,
Which all the Law by love fulfils.