The Child of the Dawn

Child of the Dawn, The

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Title: The Child of the Dawn
Author: Arthur Christopher Benson
Release Date: May 31, 2005 [EBook #15964]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE CHILD OF THE DAWN
By ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON
FELLOW OF MAGDALENE COLLEGE CAMBRIDGE
[Greek: êdu ti tharsaleais ton makron teiein bion elpisin]
Author of THE UPTON LETTERS, FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW,

BESIDE STILL WATERS, THE ALTAR FIRE, THE
SCHOOLMASTER, AT LARGE, THE GATE OF DEATH, THE
SILENT ISLE, JOHN RUSKIN, LEAVES OF THE TREE, CHILD OF
THE DAWN, PAUL THE MINSTREL
1912

To MY BEST AND DEAREST FRIEND HERBERT FRANCIS
WILLIAM TATHAM IN LOVE AND HOPE

INTRODUCTION
I think that a book like the following, which deals with a subject so
great and so mysterious as our hope of immortality, by means of an
allegory or fantasy, needs a few words of preface, in order to clear
away at the outset any misunderstandings which may possibly arise in a
reader's mind. Nothing is further from my wish than to attempt any
philosophical or ontological exposition of what is hidden behind the
veil of death. But one may be permitted to deal with the subject
imaginatively or poetically, to translate hopes into visions, as I have
tried to do.
The fact that underlies the book is this: that in the course of a very sad
and strange experience--an illness which lasted for some two years,
involving me in a dark cloud of dejection--I came to believe practically,
instead of merely theoretically, in the personal immortality of the
human soul. I was conscious, during the whole time, that though the
physical machinery of the nerves was out of gear, the soul and the mind
remained, not only intact, but practically unaffected by the disease,
imprisoned, like a bird in a cage, but perfectly free in themselves, and
uninjured by the bodily weakness which enveloped them. This was not
all. I was led to perceive that I had been living life with an entirely
distorted standard of values; I had been ambitious, covetous, eager for
comfort and respect, absorbed in trivial dreams and childish fancies. I
saw, in the course of my illness, that what really mattered to the soul

was the relation in which it stood to other souls; that affection was the
native air of the spirit; and that anything which distracted the heart
from the duty of love was a kind of bodily delusion, and simply
hindered the spirit in its pilgrimage.
It is easy to learn this, to attain to a sense of certainty about it, and yet
to be unable to put it into practice as simply and frankly as one desires
to do! The body grows strong again and reasserts itself; but the blessed
consciousness of a great possibility apprehended and grasped remains.
There came to me, too, a sense that one of the saddest effects of what is
practically a widespread disbelief in immortality, which affects many
people who would nominally disclaim it, is that we think of the soul
after death as a thing so altered as to be practically unrecognisable--as a
meek and pious emanation, without qualities or aims or passions or
traits--as a sort of amiable and weak-kneed sacristan in the temple of
God; and this is the unhappy result of our so often making religion a
pursuit apart from life--an occupation, not an atmosphere; so that it
seems impious to think of the departed spirit as interested in anything
but a vague species of liturgical exercise.
I read the other day the account of the death-bed of a great statesman,
which was written from what I may call a somewhat clerical point of
view. It was recorded with much gusto that the dying politician took no
interest in his schemes of government and cares of State, but found
perpetual solace in the repetition of childish hymns. This fact had, or
might have had, a certain beauty of its own, if it had been expressly
stated that it was a proof that the tired and broken mind fell back upon
old, simple, and dear recollections of bygone love. But there was
manifest in the record a kind of sanctimonious triumph in the extinction
of all the great man's insight and wisdom. It seemed to me that the right
treatment of the