From a College Window, Arthur Christopher Benson [best novels to read for beginners TXT] 📗

have spoken is not to be directly attacked. The true concern of the believer is to be his own attitude to life, his relations with the circle, small or great, in which he finds himself. He knows that if indeed the spirit of Christ could truly leaven the world, the pomps, the glories, the splendours which veil it, would melt like unsubstantial wreaths of smoke. He need not trouble himself about traditional ordinances, elaborate ceremonials, subtle doctrines, metaphysical definitions. He must concern himself with far different things. Let him be sure that no sin is allowed to lurk unresisted in the depths of his spirit; let him be sure that he is patient, and just, and tender-hearted, and sincere; let him try to remedy true affliction, not the affliction which falls upon men through their desire to conform to the elaborate usage of society, but the affliction which seems to be bound up with God's own world. Let him be quiet and peaceable; let him take freely the comfort of the holy influences which Churches, for all their complex fabric of traditions and ceremony, still hold out to the spirit; let him drink largely from all sources of beauty, both natural and human; the Churches themselves have gained, by age, and gentle associations, and artistic perception, a large treasure of things that are full of beauty--architecture and music and ceremony--that are only hurtful when held to be special and peculiar channels of holiness and sweetness, when they are supposed to have a definite sanctification which is opposed to the sanctification of the beauty exterior to them. Let the Christian be grateful for the beauty they hold, and use it freely and simply. Only let him beware of thinking that what is the open inheritance of the world is in the possession of any one smaller circle. Let him not even seek to go outside of the persuasion, as it is so strangely called, in which he was born. Christ spoke little of sects, and the fusion of sects, because He contemplated no Church, in the sense in which it is now too often used, but a unity of feeling which should overspread the earth. The true Christian will recognize his brethren not necessarily in the Church or sect to which he belongs, but in all who live humbly, purely, and lovingly, in dependence on the Great Father of all living.

For after all, disguise it from ourselves as we will, we are all girt about with dark mysteries, into which we have to look whether we dare or not. We fill our life as full as we can of occupation and amusements, of warmth and comfort; yet sometimes, as we sit in our peaceful room, the gust pipes thin and shrill round the corners of the court, the rain rustles in the tree; we drop the book which we hold, and wonder what manner of things we indeed are, and what we shall be. Perhaps one of our companions is struck down, and goes without a word or sign on his last journey; or some heavy calamity, some loss, some bereavement hangs over our lives, and we enter into the shadow; or some inexplicable or hopeless suffering involves one whom we love, from which the only deliverance is death; and we realize that there is no explanation, no consolation possible. In such moments we tend to think that the world is a very terrible place, and that we pay a heavy price for our share in it. How unsubstantial then appear our hopes and dreams, our little ambitions, our paltry joys! In such a mood we feel that the most definite creed illumines, as it were, but a tiny streak of the shadowy orb; and we are visited, too, by the fear that the more definite the creed, the more certain it is that it is only a desperate human attempt to state a mystery which cannot be stated, in a world where all is dark.

In such a despairing mood, we can but resign ourselves to the awful Will of God, who sets us here, we know not why, and hurries us hence, we know not whither. Yet the very sternness and inexorability of that dread purpose has something that sustains and invigorates. We look back upon our life, and feel that it has all followed a plan and a design, and that the worst evils we have had to bear have been our faithless terrors about what should be; and then we feel the strength that ebbed from us drawing back to sustain us; we recognize that our present sufferings have never been unbearable, that there has always been some residue of hope; we read of how brave men have borne intolerable calamities, and have smiled in the midst of them, at the reflection that they have never been so hard as was anticipated; and then we are happy if we can determine that, whatever comes, we will try to do our best, in our small sphere, to live as truly and purely as we can, to practise courage and sincerity, to help our fellow-sufferers along, to guard innocence, to guide faltering feet, to encourage all the sweet and wholesome joys of life, to be loving, tender-hearted, generous, to lift up our hearts; not to be downcast and resentful because we do not understand everything at once, but humbly and gratefully to read the scroll as it is unrolled.

* * * * *


The night grows late. I rise to close my outer door to shut myself out from the world; I shall have no more visitors now. The moonlight lies cold and clear on the little court; the shadow of the cloister pillars falls black on the pavement. Outside, the town lies hushed in sleep; I see the gables and chimneys of the clustered houses standing in a quiet dream over the old ivy-covered wall. The college is absolutely still, though one or two lights still burn in studious rooms, and peep through curtained chinks. What a beautiful place to live one's life in, a place which greets one with delicate associations, with venerable beauty, at every turn! The moonlight falls through the tall oriel of the Hall, and the armorial shields burn and glow with rich points of colour. I pace to and fro, wondering, musing. All here seems so permanent, so still, so secure, and yet we are spinning and whirling through space to some unknown goal. What are the thoughts of the mighty unresting Heart, to whose vastness and agelessness the whole mass of these flying and glowing suns are but as a handful of dust that a boy flings upon the air? How has He set me here, a tiny moving atom, yet more sure of my own minute identity than I am of all the vast panorama of things which lie outside of me? Has He indeed a tender and a patient thought of me, the frail creature whom He has moulded and made? I do not doubt it; I look up among the star-sown spaces, and the old aspiration rises in my heart, "Oh, that I knew where I might find Him! that I might come even into His presence!" How would I go, like a tired and sorrowful child to his father's knee, to be comforted and encouraged, in perfect trust and love, to be raised in His arms, to be held to His heart! He would but look in my face, and I should understand without a question, without a word.

Now in its mouldering turret the old clock wakes and stirs, moves its jarring wires, and the soft bell strikes midnight. Another of my few short days gone, another step nearer to the unseen. Slowly but not sadly I return, for I have been for a moment nearer God; the very thought that rises in my mind, and turns my heart to His, comes from Him. He would make all plain, if He could; He gives us what we need; and when we at last awake we shall be satisfied.


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Publication Date: 08-20-2010

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