Christmas Eve | Page 8

sage and humble,?Was also one with the Creator.?You urge Christ's followers' simplicity:?But how does shifting blame, evade it??Have wisdom's words no more felicity??The stumbling-block, his speech--who laid it??How comes it that for one found able?To sift the truth of it from fable,?Millions believe it to the letter??Christ's goodness, then--does that fare better??Strange goodness, which upon the score?Of being goodness, the mere due?Of man to fellow-man, much more?To God,--should take another view?Of its possessor's privilege,?And bid him rule his race! You pledge?Your fealty to such rule? What, all--?From heavenly John and Attic Paul,?And that brave weather-battered Peter,?Whose stout faith only stood completer?For buffets, sinning to be pardoned,?As, more his hands hauled nets, they hardened,--?All, down to you, the man of men,?Professing here at Gottingen,?Compose Christ's flock! They, you and I,?Are sheep of a good man! And why??The goodness,--how did he acquire it??Was it self-gained, did God inspire it??Choose which; then tell me, on what ground?Should its possessor dare propound?His claim to rise o'er us an inch??Were goodness all some man's invention,?Who arbitrarily made mention?What we should follow, and whence flinch,--?What qualities might take the style?Of right and wrong,--and had such guessing?Met with as general acquiescing?As graced the alphabet erewhile,?When A got leave an Ox to be,?No Camel (quoth the Jews) like G*,--?*[Footnote: Gimel, the Hebrew G, means camel.]?For thus inventing thing and title?Worship were that man's fit requital.?But if the common conscience must?Be ultimately judge, adjust?Its apt name to each quality?Already known,--I would decree?Worship for such mere demonstration?And simple work of nomenclature,?Only the day I praised, not nature,?But Harvey, for the circulation.?I would praise such a Christ, with pride?And joy, that he, as none beside,?Had taught us how to keep the mind?God gave him, as God gave his kind,?Freer than they from fleshly taint:?I would call such a Christ our Saint,?As I declare our Poet, him?Whose insight makes all others dim:?A thousand poets pried at life,?And only one amid the strife?Rose to be Shakespeare: each shall take?His crown, I'd say, for the world's sake--?Though some objected--"Had we seen?"The heart and head of each, what screen?"Was broken there to give them light,?"While in ourselves it shuts the sight,?"We should no more admire, perchance,?"That these found truth out at a glance,?"Than marvel how the bat discerns?"Some pitch-dark cavern's fifty turns,?"Led by a finer tact, a gift?"He boasts, which other birds must shift?"Without, and grope as best they can."?No, freely I would praise the man,--?Nor one whit more, if he contended?That gift of his, from God descended.?Ah friend, what gift of man's does not??No nearer something, by a jot,?Rise an infinity of nothings?Than one: take Euclid for your teacher:?Distinguish kinds: do crownings, clothings,?Make that creator which was creature??Multiply gifts upon man's head,?And what, when all's done, shall be said?But--the more gifted he, I ween!?That one's made Christ, this other, Pilate,?And this might be all that has been,--?So what is there to frown or smile at??What is left for us, save, in growth?Of soul, to rise up, far past both,?From the gift looking to the giver,?And from the cistern to the river,?And from the finite to infinity,?And from man's dust to God's divinity?
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Take all in a word: the truth in God's breast?Lies trace for trace upon curs impressed:?Though he is so bright and we so dim,?We are made in his image to witness him:?And were no eye in us to tell,?Instructed by no inner sense,?The light of heaven from the dark of hell,?That light would want its evidence,--?Though justice, good and truth were still?Divine, if, by some demon's will,?Hatred and wrong had been proclaimed?Law through the worlds, and right misnamed.?No mere exposition of morality?Made or in part or in totality,?Should win you to give it worship, therefore:?And, if no better proof you will care for,?--Whom do you count the worst man upon earth??Be sure, he knows, in his conscience, more?Of what right is, than arrives at birth?In the best man's acts that we bow before:?This last knows better--true, but my fact is,?'Tis one thing to know, and another to practise.?And thence I conclude that the real God-function?Is to furnish a motive and injunction?For practising what we know already.?And such an injunction and such a motive?As the God in Christ, do you waive, and "heady,?"High-minded," hang your tablet-votive?Outside the fane on a finger-post??Morality to the uttermost,?Supreme in Christ as we all confess,?Why need we prove would avail no jot?To make him God, if God he were not??What is the point where himself lays stress??Does the precept run "Believe in good,?"In justice, truth, now understood?"For the first time?"--or, "Believe in me,?"Who lived and died, yet essentially?"Am Lord of Life?" Whoever can take?The same to his heart and for mere love's sake?Conceive of the love,--that man obtains?A new truth; no conviction gains?Of an old one only, made intense?By a fresh appeal to his faded sense.
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Can it be that