PASSAGES FROM F. D. M_AURICE.* LLEWELYN DAVIES admits that this
delightful volume of selections from the writings of Frederick Denison Maurice has not been named Lessons of Hope in consequence of any deliberate intention of confining the passages chosen to sub- jects bearing upon hope. Indeed, he says very justly that Mr. Maurice's temperament was not what would usually be called hopeful. He was very far indeed from an optimist. What struck him first in the events of his time, was not their happiest aspect, but rather that aspect which illustrated most impressively the moral deficiencies over which, whether in himself or others,—and whatever was wanting in others he always appeared to find still more profoundly wanting in him- self,—he especially grieved. But the more sombre was his view of his own and his contemporaries' needs and shortcomings, the more ardently did his theology bid him turn to the hope which was not founded on any symptom of human perfectibility or even of human improvement, but on what he held to be the express revelation of God's will. "In the diffi- dent and somewhat despondent nature which he had inherited, he found a continually urgent motive for clinging to the reasons for hope which he saw revealed in Christ. As with all deep thinkers, paradox was not unwelcome to him in the form and expression of his thoughts ; and in an apparently hopeless state of things, he could most confidently discover suggestions of hope." The consequence is, that though this volume of extracts has been selected rather with a view to illustrate all his deepest convictions so far as that can be done in isolated passages of no great length, the characteristic which perhaps most impresses the reader as connecting and dominating the whole series, is the lesson of hope which they read to us,—a hope not derived from any tendency to see the brighter side of human affairs, but from the indelible belief that in the darkest conceivable aspect of human affairs the • Le:14one of. Hope: Headings front the Works of F. D. Maurice. selected by J. Llewelyn Dames. London : Macmillan and Co.
love of God is most certain to be close upon us, and to be imperiously demanding recognition from us.
And certainly this characteristic does come out very impressively in the great majority of these selections.
Frederick Maurice may be said to have had more hope in God, and less hope in man apart from his hope in God, than any preacher of this century. Sometimes it seems almost as if, the more man disappointed him, the more confident he became that God would not disappoint him, almost as if the theological basis of his hope increased in depth and volume the more conspicuously the evidence of any actual verifica- tion of it in human affairs dwindled away. For example, in one of these passages Mr. Maurice deals with the listlessness and hopelessness of the new generation that was growing up under his eyes. His object was to convince them that listless- ness and hopelessness are evils of the first magnitude, that they lead to all kinds of frivolity and insincerity, instead of rescuing men from the disappointments to which a sanguine spirit appears likely to subject them. But this is how Mr.
Maurice treated the subject :—
" According to the ethics in Pope's Essay on Man- ' Hope springs immortal in the human breast, Man never is, but always to be, blest.'
There is a truth in that statement; the experience of the world shows how it has been kept alive by hope ; how men have always been pursuing some object or another ; how it seems always to be a little in advance of them, like the end of the rainbow of the boy who is in chase of it. The poet is right in speaking of hope as immortal. It is the very witness and pledge of immortality, to be without it is the sign of death. And yet there is something un- speakably sad in such a view of human existence ; that we are cheated into the only good which is possible for us ; that what is has no worth ; that shadows have more power over us than sub- stances ; that if we could only know the truth of things, we should fold our hands and give over all earnestness and enterprise. Alas ! I sometimes think we are not very unlikely to make that experiment. When I see the listless faces of some of our young men, and hear them declare that they have exhausted all sources of enjoyment, almost before the down is off their cheeks, it seems as if we might be permitted to try whether we shall be more sincere, and less frivolous, when we no longer anticipate good from anything to come; when we have armed ourselves against disappointment by giving up hope. Depend upon it, there is no frivolity, there is no insincerity, like that into which a nation falls when this kind of exhaustion overtakes it; there is no such terrible curse for a man. The only resources left for either are the dice- box and the bottle ; one to keep up that excitement which is the bastard form of hope, the other to produce unconsciousness and torpor. But how can these perils which are threatening us so very nearly be escaped ? I believe we must turn from Pope's or Bolingbroke's ethics to St. John's, that we may find why 'hope springs immortal in the human breast,' that we may perceive how the blessedness which is to be has a ground in the blessedness that is. 'Now are we the sons of God' is the revelation of that ground. That is the true glory of man, the glory which Christ has vindicated for him by taking his nature ; a glory which, ever since the Gospel has been received in our land, we have declared to be the possession of little children. But that possession is the commencement of a long hope. The discovery of a Father is not like the discovery of a bag of gold, which we can hold fast against all claimants, and which enables us to eat, drink, and be merry. It is the opening of worlds which that Father has called into existence, which He invites us to explore, of which each may in- vestigate some little portion, of which, after ages upon ages, the wisest will only know a little. It is the opening of wonders deeper than these worlds contain ; the wonders of His mind and purpose who created them; depths of love in which men and angels must be content to be lost. 'We shall see him as he is' is the short summary, the only one that can be given, of the future revelation with which man can never say that he is, but always that he is to be, blest, because there will be something beyond what he has apprehended, for which what he has apprehended makes him long. —St. John's Epistles, p. 178."
You see there exactly how it is that this apparent hopelessness of a situation fed the spring of hope in Maurice's breast. Even the very evil against which he was struggling he regarded as permitted in order that men might learn that listlessness and hopelessness, instead of saving them from disappointment, would sow the seeds of evils deeper even than listlessness and hopelessness themselves. Listless men would grow frivolous ; hopeless men would grow insincere. The gambling passion would gain on the former, as the only chance of filling up the dreary void in their lives ; the men who feel no hope of accomplishing their ends would soon cease to exert themselves seriously for those ends, and yet continue to give themselves as much credit for their indolent wishes as they had previously given themselves for their honest efforts. Yet the lesson that listlessness and hopelessness lead to things much worse than either of these, would be a divine lesson, and out of that would grow a new life of earnestness and hope. Mr. Maurice seldom took a very cheerful view of the human tendencies he saw around him ; but then, he always recognised in human failures, and even sins, the evidence of a divine government that was teaching us to correct those failures and repent of those sins ; and therefore the greater the need, the greater also was his conviction that help was at hand. How can the depth of this last conviction be more powerfully illustrated than by the following impressive passage on the almost total deficiency in the Bible of what are called happy death-beds P-
" We must turn elsewhere than to the Books of the Old or of the New Testament for deathbed scenes. One beautiful record of the first deacon of the Church, who prayed for his countrymen, 'Lord, lay not this sin to their charge,' is all that we have of martyrology in the Bible. Its warriors fight the good fight. We know that in some battle or other they finish their course. Where or how, under what circumstances of humiliation or triumph, we are not told. If it pleased God that their lamp should shine out brightly at the last, that was well, for He was glorified in their strength. If it pleased Him that the light should sink and go out in its socket, that was well too ; for He was glorified in their weak- ness. Not by momentary flashes does God bid us judge of our fellow-creatures ; for He who reads the heart and sees the mean- ing and purpose of it, judges not of them by these. And never be it forgotten that at the death which has redeemed all other deaths and made them blessed, there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour, and that a cry came out of the dark- ness, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ?'—Prophets and Sings, p. 69."
In other words, where the momentary shadow was deepest, there the human race have found the one inexhaustible spring of hope. And so it was always with Mr. Maurice. The deeper the discouragement, the more intense was his confidence that help was near.
In exactly the same spirit, Mr. Maurice found idolatry worse than atheism, because it was unacknowledged atheism, insincere atheism, atheism glossed over, atheism disguising a shrinking from God under the form of elaborate worship :— " It could not but appear to him atheism—living without God —for men to have ten thousand gods in the world, on the outside of them, while the God of their spirits, in whom they were living and moving and having their being, this Lord and Ruler of them- selves, was not known. St. Paul did not slight, as his speech in Lycaonia, so clearly shows, any of the tokens which God was bear- ing by rains and fruitful seasons of His presence with men in one country or another. But these tokens, as he said, were so many calls and messages to the spirit of man to turn from dumb idols to Him who was feeding the body with bread and the heart with gladness. He did not slight, as his speech at Athens shows still more evidently, the testimonies of poets, of philosophers or mythologers, to the truth that men were God's offspring, or that there was un unknown God, and that He was not far from any of them. But all these testimonies were so many proofs that to make God in the likeness of art and man's device was to project Him to a distance that they might flee from Him and not be haunted by His presence. It was the impulse of an atheistical spirit ; the more that impulse was obeyed the more atheistical, the more alienated from the righteous God, the God of the hearts and reins, they must become.—The Doctrine of Sacrifice, p. 202."
There you see the true temper of the man. An evil boldly confronted and avowed was to him not greater but less than an evil with which the mind trifles, and over which it manages to spread a false show of reverence and ceremonious observance. The most hopeless situation holds out more promise of divine help, than a situation the hopelessness of which is disguised from view by insincere and self-deceiving pretences of adora- tion. Maurice's trust in God was deepened, not shaken, by the appearance of failure and desolation ; it was most, we will not say shaken, for in a sense even that which shook it roused and deepened it, but most self-distrustful, when all seemed smoothest and plainest sailing. As he himself says in one of these impressive passages :—" The more dreary and hopeless the condition of the world looks, and the more we are reminded how utterly weak and unfit we are to do any- thing for its renovation, the more confident we shall be that the help which is done upon the earth, He doeth it Himself ; that He who died for mankind must care for man more than we can ; and that our highest ambition must be in some little sphere to be His ministers, not fulfilling our ends, but His."
Previous page
