Christmas Eve | Page 7

eddying?On just before me, still to be followed,?As it carried me after with its motion,?--What shall I say?--as a path, were hollowed,?And a man went weltering through the ocean,?Sucked along in the flying wake?Of the luminous water-snake.
XIV
Alone! I am left alone once more--?(Save for the garment's extreme fold?Abandoned still to bless my hold)?Alone, beside the entrance-door?Of a sort of temple,-perhaps a college,?--Like nothing I ever saw before?At home in England, to my knowledge.?The tall old quaint irregular town!?It may be... though which, I can't affirm... any?Of the famous middle-age towns of Germany:?And this flight of stairs where I sit down,?Is it Halle, Weimar, Cassel, Frankfort?Or Gottingen, I have to thank for't??It may be Gottingen,--most likely.?Through the open door I catch obliquely?Glimpses of a lecture-hall;?And not a bad assembly neither,?Ranged decent and symmetrical?On benches, waiting what's to see there:?Which, holding still by the vesture's hem,?I also resolve to see with them,?Cautious this time how I suffer to slip?The chance of joining in fellowship?With any that call themselves his friends;?As these folk do, I have a notion.?But hist--a buzzing and emotion!?All settle themselves, the while ascends?By the creaking rail to the lecture-desk,?Step by step, deliberate?Because of his cranium's over-freight,?Three parts sublime to one grotesque,?If I have proved an accurate guesser,?The hawk-nosed high-cheek-boned Professor.?I felt at once as if there ran?A shoot of love from my heart to the man--?That sallow virgin-minded studious?Martyr to mild enthusiasm,?As he uttered a kind of cough-preludious?That woke my sympathetic spasm,?(Beside some spitting that made me sorry)?And stood, surveying his auditory?With a wan pure look, well-nigh celestial,--?Those blue eyes had survived so much!?While, under the foot they could not smutch,?Lay all the fleshly and the bestial.?Over he bowed, and arranged his notes,?Till the auditory's clearing of throats?Was done with, died into a silence;?And, when each glance was upward sent,?Each bearded mouth composed intent,?And a pin might be heard drop half a mile hence,--?He pushed back higher his spectacles,?Let the eyes stream out like lamps from cells,?And giving his head of hair--a hake?Of undressed tow, for colour and quantity--?One rapid and impatient shake,?(As our own Young England adjusts a jaunty tie?When about to impart, on mature digestion,?Some thrilling view of the surplice-question)?--The Professor's grave voice, sweet though hoarse,?Broke into his Christmas-Eve discourse.
XV
And he began it by observing?How reason dictated that men?Should rectify the natural swerving,?By a reversion, now and then,?To the well-heads of knowledge, few?And far away, whence rolling grew?The life-stream wide whereat we drink,?Commingled, as we needs must think,?With waters alien to the source;?To do which, aimed this eve's discourse;?Since, where could be a fitter time?For tracing backward to its prime?This Christianity, this lake,?This reservoir, whereat we slake,?From one or other bank, our thirst??So, he proposed inquiring first?Into the various sources whence?This Myth of Christ is derivable;?Demanding from the evidence,?(Since plainly no such life was livable)?How these phenomena should class??Whether 'twere best opine Christ was,?Or never was at all, or whether?He was and was not, both together--?It matters little for the name,?So the idea be left the same.?Only, for practical purpose' sake,?'Twas obviously as well to take?The popular story,--understanding?How the ineptitude of the time,?And the penman's prejudice, expanding?Fact into fable fit for the clime,?Had, by slow and sure degrees, translated it?Into this myth, this Individuum,--?Which, when reason had strained and abated it?Of foreign matter, left, for residuum,?A Man!--a right true man, however,?Whose work was worthy a man's endeavour:?Work, that gave warrant almost sufficient?To his disciples, for rather believing?He was just omnipotent and omniscient,?As it gives to us, for as frankly receiving?His word, their tradition,--which, though it meant?Something entirely different?From all that those who only heard it,?In their simplicity thought and averred it,?Had yet a meaning quite as respectable:?For, among other doctrines delectable,?Was he not surely the first to insist on?The natural sovereignty of our race?--?Here the lecturer came to a pausing-place.?And while his cough, like a drouthy piston,?Tried to dislodge the husk that grew to him,?I seized the occasion of bidding adieu to him,?The vesture still within my hand.
XVI
I could interpret its command.?This time he would not bid me enter?The exhausted air-bell of the Critic.?Truth's atmosphere may grow mephitic?When Papist struggles with Dissenter,?Impregnating its pristine clarity,?--One, by his daily fare's vulgarity,?Its gust of broken meat and garlic;?--One, by his soul's too-much presuming?To turn the frankincense's fuming?And vapours of the candle starlike?Into the cloud her wings she buoys on.?Each, that thus sets the pure air seething,?May poison it for healthy breathing--?But the Critic leaves no air to poison;?Pumps out with ruthless ingenuity?Atom by atom, and leaves you--vacuity.?Thus much of Christ does he reject??And what retain? His intellect??What is it I must reverence duly??Poor intellect for worship, truly,?Which tells me simply what was told?(If mere morality, bereft?Of the God in Christ, be all that's left)?Elsewhere by voices manifold;?With this advantage, that the stater?Made nowise the important stumble?Of adding, he, the