Christmas Eve | Page 3

truths looked false to your eyes,?With his provings and parallels twisted and twined,?Till how could you know them, grown double their size?In the natural fog of the good man's mind,?Like yonder spots of our roadside lamps,?Haloed about with the common's damps??Truth remains true, the fault's in the prover;?The zeal was good, and the aspiration;?And yet, and yet, yet, fifty times over,?Pharaoh received no demonstration,?By his Baker's dream of Basket Three,?Of the doctrine of the Trinity,--?Although, as our preacher thus embellished it,?Apparently his hearers relished it?With so unfeigned a gust--who knows if?They did not prefer our friend to Joseph??But so it is everywhere, one way with all of them!?These people have really felt, no doubt,?A something, the motion they style the Call of them;?And this is their method of bringing about,?By a mechanism of words and tones,?(So many texts in so many groans)?A sort of reviving and reproducing,?More or less perfectly, (who can tell?)?The mood itself, which strengthens by using;?And how that happens, I understand well.?A tune was born in my head last week,?Out of the thump-thump and shriek-shriek?Of the train, as I came by it, up from Manchester;?And when, next week, I take it back again,?My head will sing to the engine's clack again,?While it only makes my neighbour's haunches stir,?--Finding no dormant musical sprout?In him, as in me, to be jolted out.?'Tis the taught already that profits by teaching;?He gets no more from the railway's preaching?Than, from this preacher who does the rail's office, I:?Whom therefore the flock cast a jealous eye on.?Still, why paint over their door "Mount Zion,"?To which all flesh shall come, saith the prophecy?
V
But wherefore be harsh on a single case??After how many modes, this Christmas Eve,?Does the self-same weary thing take place??The same endeavour to make you believe,?And with much the same effect, no more:?Each method abundantly convincing,?As I say, to those convinced before,?But scarce to be swallowed without wincing?By the not-as-yet-convinced. For me,?I have my own church equally:?And in this church my faith sprang first!?(I said, as I reached the rising ground,?And the wind began again, with a burst?Of rain in my face, and a glad rebound?From the heart beneath, as if, God speeding me,?I entered his church-door, nature leading me)?--In youth I look to these very skies,?And probing their immensities,?I found God there, his visible power;?Yet felt in my heart, amid all its sense?Of the power, an equal evidence?That his love, there too, was the nobler dower.?For the loving worm within its clod,?Were diviner than a loveless god?Amid his worlds, I will dare to say.?You know what I mean: God's all, man's nought:?But also, God, whose pleasure brought?Man into being, stands away?As it were a handbreadth off, to give?Room for the newly-made to live,?And look at him from a place apart,?And use his gifts of brain and heart,?Given, indeed, but to keep for ever.?Who speaks of man, then, must not sever?Man's very elements from man,?Saying, "But all is God's"--whose plan?Was to create man and then leave him?Able, his own word saith, to grieve him?But able to glorify him too,?As a mere machine could never do,?That prayed or praised, all unaware?Of its fitness for aught but praise and prayer,?Made perfect as a thing of course.?Man, therefore, stands on his own stock?Of love and power as a pin-point rock:?And, looking to God who ordained divorce?Of the rock from his boundless continent,?Sees, in his power made evident,?Only excess by a million-fold?O'er the power God gave man in the mould.?For, note: man's hand, first formed to carry?A few pounds' weight, when taught to marry?Its strength with an engine's, lifts a mountain,?--Advancing in power by one degree;?And why count steps through eternity??But love is the ever-springing fountain:?Man may enlarge or narrow his bed?For the water's play, but the water-head--?How can he multiply or reduce it??As easy create it, as cause it to cease;?He may profit by it, or abuse it,?But 'tis not a thing to bear increase?As power does: be love less or more?In the heart of man, he keeps it shut?Or opes it wide, as he pleases, but?Love's sum remains what it was before.?So, gazing up, in my youth, at love?As seen through power, ever above?All modes which make it manifest,?My soul brought all to a single test--?That he, the Eternal First and Last,?Who, in his power, had so surpassed?All man conceives of what is might,--?Whose wisdom, too, showed infinite,?--Would prove as infinitely good;?Would never, (my soul understood,)?With power to work all love desires,?Bestow e'en less than man requires;?That he who endlessly was teaching,?Above my spirit's utmost reaching,?What love can do in the leaf or stone,?(So that to master this alone,?This done in the stone or leaf for me,?I must go on learning endlessly)?Would never need that I, in turn,?Should point him out defect unheeded,?And show that God had yet to learn?What the meanest human creature