L. P. Jacks

“ Mad or sane, it is certain that Snarley, under a kinder Fate, might have been something more splendid than he was. Mystic, star-gazer, dabbler in black or blackish arts, he seemed in his lowly occupation of shepherd to represent some strange miscarriage of Nature's designs; but Mrs. Abel, who understood the secrets of many hearts, always maintained that Snarley, the breeder of the famous Perryman rams, had found the calling to which he had been fore-ordained from the foundation of the world. ”

“ The object beneath me was not my study chair, but a small iron bedstead on which there lay a boy, fast asleep. It passed in the twinkling of an eye, and I found myself seated as before at my desk; the half-finished report was before me, and, save myself, not a soul was in the room. 'It is certain,' thought I, 'that I am haunting somebody. In the name of all the secret Powers that guide the fates of men—whom am I haunting?'"
"A marvellous story," I cried; "and more significant than even you, Panhandle, are aware. I knew Billy Burst. ”

“ It will end in a radiant and joyous vision of the meaning of life. But it will not begin with that, will not give us that for nothing. The radiant and joyous vision will not come to us through listening to arguments, through proving that there is more happiness than misery in the world, through shutting our eyes to the dark side of things and looking only at the bright, through crying "Peace, peace" when there is no peace, nor by any of the cheap and shallow devices on which mere verbal optimism is made to rest. We must win our optimism at the sword's point. ”

“ Wherefore hast thou anointed thyself with radiance, and made thyself to shine like the sons of the morning? Where hast thou been? For thy fashion is passing strange, and my heart turns to water at the sight of thee."
"I have been," said Abdulla, "in the company of the wise, who have taught me the way of understanding, and shown me all knowledge, and opened the dark things that are hidden in the secret parts of the earth. All day have I conversed with enlightened and honourable men, and they have made me the chief of their company and the father of their sect." ”

“ Chandrapál, on his side, reflected thus: "Behold the misery of them that know not the Truth. This man flatters the people; but in his heart he despises them. Those whom he leads he knows to be blind, and his trade is to persuade them that they can see. The Illusion has made them mad; none sees whither he is going; the next step may plunge them all into the pit; they live for they know not what. All this is known to yonder man; and, being unenlightened, he has no way of escape, but yields to his destiny, which is, that he shall be the bond-servant of lies." ”

“ And so indeed they do, but to reason in a low stage of its development, to the half-born reason of the timid and unemancipated soul, to the unheroic side of human nature, treating us as beings whose ultimate interest is to save our own skins, and making use of the logic, admirable on its own field, which self-interest has worked out for that very purpose and which is incapable of reaching any other conclusion. Instead of raising reason to the full-grown stature of religion, they bring religion down to the level of reason while still at the stage of learning the alphabet of its business. ”

“ Billy's mater had died about a year ago. At the age of twelve I had been deeply in love with her, and to this hour her image remains with me as the type of all that is most lovely and commendable in woman. O Billy's mater, will these eyes ever see you again? How glad I am to remember you! I know where you lie buried, but I doubt if there lives another soul who could find your resting-place. ”

“ We are so made that until we "grasp the nettle of life" the best part of us has nothing to do, loitering, so to speak, at the street corners of life, like a starving labourer out of work. On that upper level, where the best that is in us confronts the highest that is demanded of us, we discover how finely the nature of man is adapted to the world in which he lives, how well the two accord, the noblest element in the one corresponding to the most challenging element in the other, so that deep answers unto deep and the two make music together. ”

“ For half a long lifetime John Scattergood had lived his earnest days with little aid from those sources of spiritual vitality upon which most of us depend. Love in all its finer essences had been denied him—denied him, as he knew better than anybody, by that very Universe whose friendliness he had set himself to prove. Among the many lonely souls who live in crowded places it would be hard to find one lonelier than he. Even the demonstrated friendliness of the Universe did not seem to thaw his heart, or to break down the barriers of his reserve. ”

“ Religion is one of those high things, and there are many such in life, which lose their meaning when they are over-defended, or over-explained. In explaining them we are apt to explain them away, and without being aware that we are doing so. Whenever the truths of religion are too much defended they are cheapened; and when cheapened they become incredible. Like the love of a man and a woman, or the belief we have in the loyalty of our dearest friends, or the joy we feel in the presence of beauty, or the grief of a broken heart, they resent being made into mere topics for discussion. ”

“ But before it could happen I was suddenly brought to my senses by the fortissimo e prestissimo of Jeremy's conclusion. "He cannot be saved," he roared out, banging his prayer-book down on the book-rest, with a defiant look around him, as though the whole Liberal Party were in church. "He cannot be saved,"—and visions of all sorts of people boiling in coppers filled the mental eye.
Jeremy, for a farmer, was the most outrageous optimist I have ever met. He never grumbled, save at politicians, and the worst weather could hardly disconcert him. ”

“ As Carlyle was never tired of repeating, the ultimate question which every man has to face and answer for himself is this: "Wilt thou be a hero or a coward?" No philosophy can relieve us from the responsibility of having to make that choice. All that philosophy can do, and it is a great thing to accomplish even this, is to bring us to the point where we see that the choice has to be made. This it does by forcing us to raise the question: "Why am I here? For what end have I been sent into the world?" ”

“ Suddenly he realised that his path was blocked by a crowd, and looking up he saw above him, on the other side of the street, the lattice of Zobeida. "Verily," he thought, "I have made a long circuit; for this house lieth not in the way."
Loud cries were coming from the house, mingled with curses and the sound of hands beaten against the wall. As soon as Abdulla appeared, one of the crowd called out towards the lattice:
"O woman that cursest in the darkness, come now to the light, that we may hear thy maledictions more plainly, and be refreshed by the beauty of thy countenance. ”

“ When the hero asks for a world fit for him to live in he is thinking of something wholly different. He desires no satisfaction save that which is the direct fruit of his own loyalty and self-devotion. He wants continuous employment on the level of his highest self, where love never sleeps at her task, and where the voices of faith and hope, whispering of new worlds to conquer, are never silent. A divine universe is, for him, just that; it breeds ideals for great souls to pursue; gives them incentives to the pursuit; shares with them in the perils of it ”

“ All through life John Scattergood had been a deeply conscientious man. But conscience—or rather something that called itself conscience, but was in reality nothing of the kind,—which had served him so well in other respects, had been his undoing in the matter of Ethelberta. At the age of twenty-five he was not aware that a man's evil genius, bent on doing its victim the deadliest turn, will often disguise itself in the robes of his heavenly guide. ”

“ All the problems it suggests, all the questions it raises, were equally contained in the lesser wars that went before it, and even if the great one had never occurred, there would still be enough suffering in the world to challenge the strongest faith. An age which has needed the Great War to rouse it to a sense of tragedy must have been living in a fool's paradise up to date. Every problem suggested by the Great War has been there, plain for all ages to see, since suffering and death, since folly and wickedness, first came into the world. ”

“ I have heard also the short and stumbling prayers of the honest, of the Salvationist kneeling in the thoroughfare of a town full of sin, of the mother with her arms round the neck of a dying child; but none even of these have dealt so shrewd a thrust at my self-satisfaction as did the prayer of Farmer Jeremy. What strange secrets, I thought, are hidden in the human heart! Verily, the ways of man, like the ways of God, are past finding out. ”

“ This insight, this sure and firm apprehension of a spirit at hand, swiftly responsive to any trust we have in its answering fidelity, coming our way the moment we beckon it, motionless and irresponsive till we hoist the flag of our faith and claim its fellowship, but then mighty to save—this is the centre, the kernel, the growing point of the Christian religion, which, when we have it all else is secure, and when we have it not all else is precarious. God, said Jesus, is spirit: man is spirit no less; and when the two meet in fellowship there is religion. ”

“ Great is the error which deemeth that the number of the worlds is but two, and that death, therefore, cometh once only to a man, when he passeth from the first to the second. Of death, as of life, the kinds are innumerable; and of these, that which destroyeth the body at the end is only one, and perhaps not the chief. Whatsoever changeth into its contrary must needs die in the act; so that except one die, grief cannot pass into joy, nor darkness into light, nor evil into good; neither can the lost be found, nor the sleeper awake. Wherefore it may be that thou and I are in Paradise even now. ”

“ But alongside the authorized version, and sometimes hidden within it as an inextinguishable spark of life, Christianity has an unauthorized version, which the former has often repressed, persecuted and condemned to the hangman or to the eternal flames. Of this unauthorized version a fair copy exists in the hearts of men, a fairer copy in the hearts of women, and the fairest copy of all in the hearts of children—for Christianity is preeminently a religion of the young. It is the unauthorized version which has kept Christianity alive through the ages and defied the smotherers even to this day. ”

“ Up then, thou quaking carrion, for thy hour is come.—Well done! Those behind thee are taking note that thou tremblest no more! By Allah, I have conquered thee and have thee utterly in my power!"
Every man was in his place. Abdulla, firm and ready, the rebuking voice now silent within him, sat on the leading gun-horse; the traces that bound it to the gun were already taut, and the whip-hand of the driver was aloft in air. The word is given, the whips descend, and the whole thundering train of men and beasts, with Abdulla at its head, sweeps forward to the place of sacrifice. ”

“ Faith is neither a substitute for reason nor an addition to it. Faith is nothing else than reason grown courageous—reason raised to its highest power, expanded to its widest vision. Its advent marks the point where the hero within the man is getting the better of the coward, where safety, as the prime object of life, is losing its charm and another Object, hazardous but beautiful, dimly seen but deeply loved, has begun to tempt the awakened soul. ”

“ Only a dream of the night season has troubled me, and even now it seemeth to mingle with the things that God makes visible, so that the desert floats like a yellow cloud, and thine own form undulates before me like the morning mist."
"Thy confusion," said the woman, "is caused by the intermingling of the worlds, which few among the sons of men are permitted to note; and the undulations that bewilder thee are made by the river of Time. What thou seest is the passing of that which was into that which is, and of that which is into that which is to be. ”

“ As the mere plaything of professional controversialists the fate of religion can never be decided. The professional controversialists themselves do not desire that it should be; their interest is to keep the game up for ever; for if a final issue were reached their occupation would be gone. Happily for religion, its fate does not depend on the fortunes of this ever-swaying battle. It depends on the answer given by individual men and women to the question which faces them all over the gateway of life—"Wilt thou be a hero or a coward?" ”

“ By this time a crowd, attracted by the cries and the cursing, had gathered round the speakers, and so thick was the press that Abdulla had much ado to move his hands that he might press the water-skin as he was bidden.
"O wise and much-enduring woman," he cried, "I greatly fear me that thy prayer is vain. But I will even do as thou biddest, if only these foolish ones will make room that I may pass my hands craftily over the skin. ”

“ Religion is a power which develops the hero in the man at the expense of the coward in the man. As the change proceeds there comes a moment when the cowardly method of reasoning, with its eye on safety, ceases to dominate the soul. At the same moment the heroic element awakes and looks with longing towards the dangerous mountain-tops. Thenceforward the man's reason becomes the organ of the new spirit that is in him, no longer fettered to the self-centre, but mounting up with wings as an eagle. ”

“ To explain why human units exist, does not explain the existence of any single individual we choose to name—of Julius Cæsar, of Napoleon, of Mr Lloyd George, whose significance in the universe, it will be admitted, consists not in their being mere human units required to make up a certain number, but in their being just the kind of men they happen to be. So too the proof that a human unit must needs be there to fill the niche in time and space you now occupy is no proof that you, and no other, must needs be the unit in question. ”

“ And I tell thee, O thou seller of water, that between this world and its next fellow the difference is so faint that none save the enlightened can discern it. A man may live a thousand lives, as thou hast already done, and dream but of one. Again thou shalt sleep and again thou shalt awake, and the world of thy sleeping shall differ from the world of thy waking no more than thy full water-skin differs from itself when two drops of water have fallen from its mouth. ”

“ Unless the sceptic believed that Truth is better than its opposite why should he take the trouble to convict his opponent of error or to satisfy himself of the soundness of his own opinions? Clearly he has made his choice at that point—a truly heroic choice if we consider it—committing himself to a position which needs courage to maintain, and thereby proving that he is no coward. In his own way he has faced and bravely answered the question which, in one form or another, has to be faced and answered by everyone. He has chosen to be a hero. ”

“ It will not teach us to see no evil in the world; but immensely increase our resources for dealing with evil when seen. A power in the world which is for ever on the side of those who are brave enough to trust it, causing all things to work together for their ultimate good, and making them conquerors, and more than conquerors, over whatever confronts them, whether in life or in death,—this, and nothing less than this, is what we have to expect and to ask for. Our mistake has been not that we have asked for too much, but that we have asked for too little.
A true religion will be optimistic. ”

“ All this apparatus of defence and apology, of preaching and propaganda, of church policies and chapel oppositions,—things which have given a form so strangely artificial to our conceptions of Christianity—are here either secondary or absent altogether. Religion, instead of being concentrated into strong Sunday doses, is here a pervasive, unobtrusive presence, that cometh not with observation, the luminous background of human conduct, the hiding-place of the light which irradiates the whole picture of man's life. ”

“ So, then, in expecting religion to reconcile the world with our notions of a "good time"; to smooth and simplify our path; to accommodate itself to what we, in our weaker moments, desire—in looking for this we look for what is not forthcoming. Religion will meet us, not on the level of our weakest moments, but on the level of our strongest. It will give us power rather than satisfaction; courage to face danger rather than safeguards against it; inspiration rather than explanation. Whatever satisfaction it brings will come through the power ”

“ The idea that I do find seems to have originated in a very intimate and loving comradeship with man and with nature. Indeed, the religion of Jesus is precisely this spirit of comradeship raised to its highest power, the spirit which perceives itself to be "not alone," but lovingly befriended and supported, extending its intuitions to the heart of the world, to the core of reality, and finding there the fellowship, the loyalty, the powerful response, the love, of which the finest fellowships and loyalties of earth are the shadows and the foretaste. ”

“ Pain and suffering it will not remove; but it will quicken a divine substance within us, which is more than conqueror over these things. And, lastly, when courage, faith and love have won the victory at the supreme point of their trial, and so established themselves as the ruling powers, it will turn these qualities back upon life as a whole, will interpenetrate everything with their energy, and transfigure everything with their radiance, and raise everything to their level, and so fill the world with music and beauty and joy. ”

“ Turning to the sources of Christianity in the first three Gospels we are struck by an immense contrast. There is no money in the purse, no victuals in the wallet, no munitions in the magazine, no baggage-train, no commissariat, no provision for trench warfare, and no thought of it. We are in the presence of elemental realities, more beautiful than Solomon in all his glory, more majestic than the successor of St Peter in all his pomp. ”

“ But, illogical though it be in that construction, I nevertheless regard it—this value which each man finds in his being the man he is—as the growing point of the higher logic which, when fully born, reveals the Kingdoms of the Real. This is the root of the intuition of value, the first point of contact between the human mind and the things that are eternal, Beauty, Goodness and Truth. Morally it takes the form of courage, which is the foundation of virtue. ”

“ If, as some affirm, the universe is the dwelling-place of the All Perfect, what reason can be given for the existence, side by side with that All Perfect one, or within him, of a multitude of imperfect images of his Perfection—like you and me? In the presence of One who has all purposes already fulfilled in himself what purpose can be served by our introduction into the scheme of things? ”

“ In stressing the difficulties that come from science and criticism, are we not in danger of losing sight of those greater and permanent difficulties that enter into the very structure of human life, and "abide with men across the ages"? A broken heart is the same in one age, in one place, as in another: and wherever it exists the soul of man has all that it can bear. Those who have faced these major perplexities and conquered them, those who have passed through the Valley of Humiliation and emerged victorious at the other end, will not be greatly troubled by science and the higher criticism. ”

“ Christianity is big enough to find room for both of us. The more devout you are in holding and practising what you believe the more you help me in being faithful to what I profess. There is only one way in which the truth or falsity of any creed can be demonstrated—that is, by trying whether we can live up to it and observing what happens. What is needed, therefore, first of all, is not that we should destroy our neighbour's creed, but that we should help him to live up to it by living up to our own. ”

“ Through the power that is given me, through the fellowship I have with the heart of a Divine universe, I can turn that evil into good, and transfigure that sorrow into joy, and draw the stream of a deeper life from the very thing that threatens to slay me. ”

“ But I will not submit until I have tested the universe in the only way that is open to me. I will trust it as a friend. There are those about me who say that my trust will not be betrayed, having made the same experiment themselves. They remind me that the world I am living in is not any kind of world, but just the one particular kind needed by a soul whose business it is to create new values, in the way of Truth, Beauty and Goodness ”

“ But were I forced to admit that the universe, as a whole, is quite indifferent to this desire of mine to achieve a better-than-what-is, that there is nothing in its nature which shares my interest in that matter, nothing there that backs me up, nothing to which the failure or success of my attempt makes the slightest difference, then indeed a dark and cruel blight would fall upon my soul. ”