TENNYSON'S WITNESS TO THE HIGHER HOPE.
[To THE EDITOR OF THZ "amccrwroR."] SIR,—You have finally disposed of the attempt of some of the Agnostic school, expressed in more than one journal, to diminish the force of Tennyson's magnificent testimony to the- Christian faith. The charge his poem lays upon the Pilot of directing him " far " upon that boundless ocean which recedes and expands before his eye, is surely too great to be fulfilled by any other than a divine presence. The expression,
"after that the dark," means no more than the vanished sun- light of the present. But the tide becomes speedily luminous with another radiance, so that the Pilot is seen "face to face."
The second stanza, without doubt the very finest of the poem, is as far removed from Agnosticism as from Pantheism :—
" But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep, Turns again home."
Do not the words convey the poet's thought that the divine effluence which bore his spiritual being into this "bourne of time and place," and remained ever vitally related to it, is the
same tranquil flood of energy that bears the clothed, equipped, and embarked spirit out upon the limitless ocean of immortal being ? That the tide may be full and yet gentle in its flow, is the prayer of his faith. The imagery reveals his fixed con- fidence in the permanent individuality of his nobler nature, and yet personality comes to its fullest realisation in vital union with the divine. And so the needs of the reason that seeks a personal Pilot, and of the soul that craves the up- lifting of an infinite life, are both met.—I am, Sir, Sze., Holmlea, High Barnet, October 24th. J. MATTHEWS.
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