Thomas Hughes

“ He never for one moment accommodates his life or teaching to any standard but the highest: never lowers or relaxes that standard by a shade or a hair’s-breadth, to make the road easy to rich or powerful questioners, or to uphold the spirit of his poorer followers when they are startled and uneasy, as they begin half-blindly to recognize what spirit they are of. This unbending truthfulness is, then, what we have chiefly to look for in this period of triumphant progress and success, questioning each act and word in turn whether there is any swerving in it from the highest ideal. ”

“ And when we have made this faith our own, when we believe it, and not merely believe that we believe it, we have in our hand the clue to all human history. Mysteries in abundance will always remain. We may not be able to trace the workings of the law of righteousness in the confusions and bewilderments of our own day, or through the darkness and mist which shrouds so much of the life of other times and other races. But we know that it is there, and that it has its ground in a righteous will, which was the same a thousand years ago as it is to-day, which every man and nation can get to know ”

“ The more we canvass and sift and weigh and balance the materials, the more clearly and grandly does his figure rise before us, as the true Head of humanity, the perfect Ideal, not only of wisdom and tenderness and love, but of courage also, because He was and is the simple Truth of God—the expression, at last, in flesh and blood of what He who created us means each one of our race to be. ”

“ But whoever will study this great master of practical life will acknowledge that it is only superficially true, and that if he never lifts us above the earth or beyond the dominion of experience and common sense, he retained himself a strong hold on the invisible which underlies it, and would have been the first to acknowledge that it was this which enabled him to control the accidents of birth, education, and position, and to earn the eternal gratitude and reverence of the great nation over whose birth he watched so wisely, and whose character he did so much to form. ”

“ Aye! and though we may have followed other voices, have we not, while following them, confessed in our hearts that all true strength, and nobleness, and manliness was to be found in the other path. Do I say that most of us have had to tread this path and fight this battle? Surely I might have said all of us; all, at least, who have passed the bright days of their boyhood. The clear and keen intellect no less than the dull and heavy; the weak, the cold, the nervous, no less than the strong and passionate of body. ”

“ As a rule, the more thoroughly disciplined and fit a man may be for any really great work, the more conscious will he be of his own unfitness for it, the more distrustful of himself, the more anxious not to thrust himself forward. It is only the zeal of the half-instructed when the hour of a great deliverance has come at last—of those who have had a glimpse of the glory of the goal, but have never known or counted the perils of the path which leads to it—which is ready with the prompt response, “Yes—we can drink of the cup, we can be baptized with the baptism.” ”

“ At first it will be hard work; our will and spirits will be like a lump of ice in a man’s hand, which yields but slowly to the warm pressure. But do not despair; throw yourselves on his guidance, and he will guide you, he will hide you under his wings, you shall be safe under his feathers, his faithfulness and truth shall be your shield and buckler.
The ice will melt into water, and the water will lie [43] there in the hollow of the hand, moving at the slightest motion, obeying every impulse which is given to it. ”

“ The mind and heart of the nation was full of the expectation of a coming Messiah—a King who should break every yoke from off the necks of his people, and should rule over the nations, sitting on the throne of David. The intensity of this expectation had, in the opening days of his ministry, drawn crowds into the wilderness beyond Jordan from all parts of Judea and Galilee, at the summons of a preacher who had caught up the last cadence of the song of their last great prophet, and was proclaiming that both the deliverance and the kingdom which they were looking for were at hand. ”

“ I know how deeply many of you feel and mourn over the miseries and disorder of England and the world—how you long to do something towards lightening ever [239] so small a part of those miseries, rescuing ever so small a corner of the earth from that disorder. I know well how earnestly many of you are working in one way or another for your country and your brethren. I know what high hopes many of you have for the future of the world and the destiny of man. I say, mourn on, work on; abate not one jot of any hope you have ever had for the world or for man. ”

“ Yes, he who has the word of the living God to rule himself by—who can fall back on the strength of Him who has had the victory over the world, the flesh and the devil—may even in this strange disjointed time of ours carry his manhood pure and unsullied through the death-grips to which he must come with “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life.” He who will take the world, the flesh, and the devil by the throat in his own strength, will find them shrewd wrestlers. ”

“ The world is clear and bright, and ever becoming clearer and brighter to the humble, and true, and pure of heart—to every man and woman who will live in it as the children of the Maker and Lord of it, their Father. To them, and to them alone, is that world, old and new, given, and all that is in it, fully and freely to enjoy. All others but these are occupying where they have no title; “they are sowing much, but bringing in little; they eat, but have not enough; they drink but are not filled with drink; they clothe themselves, but there is none warm; ”

“ And in this life-long fight, to be waged by every one of us single-handed against a host of foes, the last requisite for a good fight, the last proof and test of our courage and manfulness, must be loyalty to truth—the most rare and difficult of all human qualities. For such loyalty, as it grows in perfection, asks ever more and more of us, and sets before us a standard of manliness always rising higher and higher. ”

“ Whenever it came, a heavy numbing throb seemed to take hold of my heart, and say ‘Dead—dead, dead.’ And I cried out, ‘The living, the living shall praise thee O God; the dead cannot praise Thee. There is no work in the grave; in the night no man can work. But I can work. I can do great things. I will do great things. Why wilt Thou slay me.’ And so I struggled and plunged, deeper and deeper, and went down into a living black tomb. ”

“ It is only through our mysterious human relationships—through the love and tenderness and purity of mothers and sisters and wives—through the strength and courage and wisdom of fathers and brothers and teachers—that we can come to the knowledge of Him in whom alone the love, and the tenderness, and the purity, and the strength, and the courage, and the wisdom of all these dwell for ever and ever in perfect fulness. ”

“ It is said by some, as I think, unwise defenders of the faith, that a colorless Christianity is no Christianity at all, that you can have no church without a definite creed. To the first I would reply that, after all, the bright white light is, in its purity, better than all color. To the second, I admit that every church must have a definite creed, but the more simple and broad that creed is the better. It is only the simplest creed which can give us the unity, or the tolerance in diversity, for which all good men are longing. ”

“ Every ruler who ignores or defies it saps the national life and prosperity, and brings trouble on his country, sometimes swiftly, but always surely. There is the perpetual presence of a King, with whom rulers and people must come to a reckoning in every national crisis and convulsion, and who is no less present when the course of affairs is quiet and prosperous. The greatest and wisest men of the nation are those in whom this faith burns most strongly. ”

“ The Bible has come to us from the Jewish nation, which was chosen by God as the one best fitted to receive for all mankind, and to give forth to all mankind, the revelation of Him—to teach them His name and character—that is, to enable them to know Him and in knowing Him, to feel how they and the world need redemption, and to understand how they and the world have been redeemed. ”

“ But on the other hand, the daily life of every one of us teems with occasions which will try the temper of our courage as searchingly, though not as terribly, as battle-field or fire or wreck. For we are born into a state of war; with falsehood and disease, and wrong and misery in a thousand forms lying all around us, and the voice within calling on us to take our stand as men in the eternal battle against these. ”

“ Is it not also becoming clearer every day that they will continue to rage more and more fiercely—that there can be no rest or peace possible for mankind—until all things are subdued to him, and brought into harmony with his life?
It is to this work that all churches and sects, that all the leading nations of the world, known collectively as Christendom, are pledged: and the time for redeeming that pledge is running out rapidly, as the distress and perplexity, the threatening disruption and anarchy of Christendom too clearly show. ”

“ Do we not also believe that men are under a divine order as much as natural things? that there is a law of righteousness founded on the will of God, as sure and abiding as the law of gravitation? that this law of righteousness, this divine order, under which human beings are living on this earth, must and does assert and vindicate itself through and by the acts and lives of men, as surely as the divine order in nature asserts itself through the agency of the invisible power in earth and sea and air? ”

“ It is this most tender and sensitive of the sons of men—with fibres answering to every touch and breath of human sympathy or human hate—who has borne with absolutely unshaken steadfastness the distrust and anger of kinsfolk, the ingratitude of converts, the blindness of disciples, the fitful and purblind worship and [57] hatred, and fear, of the nation of the Jews. So far, we can estimate to some extent the burden and the strain, and realize the strength and beauty of the spirit which could bear it all. Beyond and behind lie depths into which we can but glance. ”

“ Show us your power over some of them—the meanest, if you will, the common food which keeps men alive. There are spiritual invisible forces too, which are supposed to be the ministers of God, and should therefore be under the control of his Son—give us some sign that you can guide or govern the least of them. Why pause or delay? Is the burden growing lighter on this people? Is the Roman getting year by year less insolent, the publican less fraudulent and exacting, the Pharisees and rulers less godless, the people, your own kin amongst them, less degraded and less brutal? ”

“ The true work of the Liberal Party in a Liberal age is, with singleness of purpose and all its might, to lift the people to a fair and full share of all the best things of this life,—its highest culture, hopes, aspirations, burdens—as well as its loaves and fishes—and, setting before them a truly noble ideal of citizenship, to help them to attain it. ”

“ In Christ-church meadows and the college gardens the birds are making sweet music in the tall elms. You may almost hear the thick grass growing, and the buds on tree and shrub are changing from brown, red, or purple, to emerald green under your eyes; the glorious old city is putting on her best looks and bursting out into laughter and song. In a few weeks the races begin, and Cowley marsh will be alive with white tents and joyous cricketers. ”

“ To whom are men wielding great powers to be taught that they are responsible? If they can learn that there is still a King ruling in England through them, whom if they will fear they need fear no other power in earth or heaven, whom if they can love and trust they will want no other guide or helper, all will be well, and we may look for a reign of justice in England such as she has never seen yet, whatever form our government may take. But, in any case, those who hold the old faith will still be sure that the order of God’s kingdom will not change. ”

“ In these days when our wise generation, weighed down with wealth and its handmaid vices on the one hand, and exhilarated by some tiny steps it has managed to make on the threshold of physical knowledge of various kinds on the other, would seem to be bent on ignoring its Creator and God altogether—or at least of utterly denying that he has revealed, or is revealing himself, unless it be through the laws of nature—one of the commonest demurrers to Christianity has been, that it is no faith for fighters, for the men who have had to do the roughest and hardest work for the world. ”

“ There will be always crowds ready to fall in with the dapper, pliant ways which lead most readily to success in every community. Society has been said to be “always and everywhere in conspiracy against the true manhood of every one of its members,” and the saying, though bitter, contains a sad truth. So the faithful idealist will have to learn, without arrogance and with perfect good [66] temper, to treat society as a child, and never to allow it to dictate. So treated, society will surely come round to those who have a high ideal before them, and therefore firm ground under their feet. ”

“ The first aim for your time and your generation should be, to foster, each in yourselves, a simple and self-denying life—your ideal to be a true and useful one, must have these two characteristics before all others. Of course purity, courage, truthfulness are as absolutely necessary as ever, without them there can be no ideal at all. But as each age and each country has its own special needs and weaknesses, so the best mind of its youth should be bent on serving where the need is sorest, and bringing strength to the weak places. ”

“ What man among us all, if he will think the matter over calmly and fairly, can honestly say that there is any spot on the earth’s surface in which he has enjoyed so much real, wholesome, happy life as in a hay field? He may have won on horseback or on foot at the sports and pastimes in which Englishmen glory; he may have shaken off all rivals, time after time, across the vales of Aylesbury, or of Berks, or any other of our famous hunting counties; he may have stalked the oldest and shyest buck in Scotch forests, and killed the biggest salmon of the year in the Tweed, and trout in the Thames ”

“ One is too apt to fancy, from the photographs of the nation’s life which one gets day by day, that the old ship has lost the ballast which has stood her in such good stead for a thousand years, and is rolling more and more helplessly, in a gale which shows no sign of abating, for her or any other national vessel, until at last she must roll over and founder. ”

“ The 10th of April muster may be perhaps accepted as a sign that the reverence for the constable’s staff has not quite died out amongst us. But let no one think that for this reason democracy is one whit less inevitable in England than on the Continent, or that its sure and steady advance, and the longing for its coming, which all thoughtful men recognize, however little they may sympathize, with them, in the least incompatible with the equally manifest longing for what our people intend by this much-worshipped and much-hated name. ”

“ For many years I have been thrown very much into the society of young men of all ranks. I spend a great part of my time with them, I like being with them, and I think they like being with me. I know well, therefore, how rare anything like a living faith—a faith in and by which you can live, and for which you would die—is amongst them. ”

“ For what does democracy mean to Englishmen? Simply an equal chance for all; a fair field for the best men, let them start from where they will, to get to the front; a clearance out of sham governors, and of unjust privilege, in every department of human affairs. It cannot be too often repeated, that they who suppose the bulk of our people want less government, or fear the man who “can rule and dare not lie,” know little of them. Ask any representative of a popular constituency, or other man with the means of judging, what the people are ready for in this direction. ”

“ To crown all, long vacation, beginning with the run to Henley regatta, or up to town to see the match with Cambridge at Lord’s, and taste some of the sweets of the season before starting on some pleasure tour or reading-party, or dropping back into the quiet pleasures of English country life! Surely the lot of young Englishmen who frequent our universities is cast in pleasant places. The country has a right to expect something from those for whom she finds such a life as this in the years when enjoyment is keenest. ”

“ Grey winced at being appealed to, but remarked that he hoped the Church would yet be able to save England from the fate of Tyre and Carthage, the great trading nations of the old world: and then, swallowing his tea, and looking as if he had been caught robbing a hen-roost, he made a sudden exit, and hurried away out of college to the night-school. ”

“ I think you will find it all you are in search of and are longing for. Above all, you will find in it and nowhere else, rest, peace—“not a peace which depends upon compacts and bargains among men, but which belongs to the very nature and character and being of God. Not a peace which is produced by the stifling and suppression of activities and energies, but the peace in which all activities and energies are perfected and harmonized. Not a peace which comes from the toleration of what is base or false, but which demands its destruction. ”