LINKS AND CLUES.*
Ir is long since we have read a book so full of the life of a true spiritual mind,—the mind which really dwells in the atmos- phere of the Christian revelation,—as this anonymous work. Indeed, it is not so much a book to read through, as to read and return to, as you do the Bible itself, from which its whole signi- ficance is derived, in passages .suited to the chief interest and difficulty of the moment. We do not mean that we are always satisfied with the terms in which the thoughts are ex- pressed ; indeed, we shall presently refer to one favourite idea from which we differ most profoundly, but whether we differ or agree, we are aware that the author has lifted us into a phase of thought into which it is impossible for any one to enter without being either convinced of the existence of the divine light,—or at least, if not so convinced, without becom- ing so fully aware of the new depth, and meaning, and luminousness of life from this point of view, that one must be driven to all sorts of unreal hypotheses, in order to avoid the natural inference that what we are looking at is a real divine world, within the world of appearances,—and yet a world which might have escaped our notice for ever, if it had not been for the voluntary act of God in unveiling himself to something in us which is too often inert, or asleep, or even paralysed. Many parts of Links and Clues might have been written by the late Frederiok Denison Maurice, so far as regards the mode of thought and feeling, though there is nothing in the style that specially reminds us of him. The book hardly touches a single subject which it does not render fresher or deeper, though now and then there is, for a sentence or two, the kind of over-expression which we are accustomed to shrink from amongst Evangelical writers, as something too familiar and too
• Links and Clues. By Vita. London: Macmillan and Co.
accommodated to a very different kind of language of the heart, for the subject dealt with. This is very rare, and almost as soon as it occurs, it disappears ; and we only mention it because in speaking of a book which seems to us so genuinely Christian, so full of the very essence of Christian teaching, we should not be justified in not mentioning the few notes which, even for a moment, seemed to strike a discord. To show of what sort of materials the book is really composed, let us take, first, a very fine passage on the power of the selfish will, as compared with the apparent powerlessness of God to conquer it :—
" We sometimes hear indignant protests against a view of the origin and work of sin and evil which seems to imply a marring or thwarting of the creation and purpose of God, and a vehement repu- diation of a theory of atonement representing it as a device or scheme for remedying a flaw or fault in the work of the essential source of perfectness. And, indeed, no words could be too strong as protests against such a travesty of a precious truth. But there is a precious truth behind words like these, which can neither be ignored nor done away. Its reality confronts us in painful form every day of our lives. The shadow of its death encompasses us, though the greater radiance of its light uplifts and blesses us. How strange and awful is the power of which we are each of us conscious to ' thwart ' or 'defeat' goodness ! It seems almost as if he had chosen love, and left us power; for he always refuses to win us by force, and we are always opposing force to love, either as passive resistance or in active assault. We have the power to turn each circumstance and surround- ing to our own and others' hurt, and to use his very blessings for poisoning with. We can, at little or no cost to ourselves, make our brothers' and sisters' lives an earthly hell of misery and evil ; nay, we have only to stand by, and let them do it for themselves. What despotism, what tyranny, what reign of terror was ever so awful as this our mighty empire ? We may and can sully and defile all that is lovely, innocent, pure, holy ; we may darken light with fcetid smoke, and foul the clean spring-water, and taint the fresh, sweet air. There at last we find the 'thus far and no farther.' There sacrilege finds its swift doom, its instant grave, and love conquers in a lightning-flash : lightening our longing eyes, and blasting only deadliness."
That expresses with great force the real teaching of the Christian revelation as to what we may call the non-resistance of God to human evil. It is not, of course, really weakness, though it looks like it; it is divine strength which gives our will its full scope, and opposes no physical resistance to our evil, beyond teaching the mind more and more to know the drift and significance of its own strivings, till at last we are face to face with ourselves, and see for the first time what we are. But whether Love does always conquer in the end, we can hardly say with anything like " Vita's " confidence. Here, again, is a very fine little parable, meant to illustrate the true meaning of a miracle :—
" There was once a child who first of all fancied that there was a fairy in his father's fiddle, and the music the fairy's voice. Then he outgrew childishness and saw the absurdity of that ; so he thought the sounds were nothing but the product of catgut in the fiddle brought into connection by vibration with the nerves of his own ear. So he denied the existence of a composer or of genies, and no longer believed in music. Lastly, come to maturer thought and recovered from the reaction, did he not discern that music was real, and came from the soul of genius through the instrument not normally but exceptionally handled, and made to convey abnormal combinations of sound ? Are we not now possibly in the ' catgut ' period, some of us ?"
Again, take the opening passage of the book, in which " Vita " finds the foundation for every human virtue,—even those which seem most characteristic of limited and finite natures,—in the Eternal Nature :— " There is of course an absolute Perfection unknowable to us. It mast embrace elements beyond our present faculties to grasp, yet more beyond our power to copy or to be in any sense. But (1) There is a per- fectness which we can both know and have; and (2) we know what that perfectness is (i.e., what God is towards ns, what our conception of him may be and ought to be) by our Lord's life and death, and by his com- mands to us. In these we have the true picture of perfect goodness, of our heavenly Father, and thus an unfailing test of doctrine and thought. He always Is and Does, what he would hare us be and do. He always says, 'Follow me.' At first sight, and on the surface, it might seem an insuperable objection to this (or at least a difficulty) that some of the commands to us are applicable only to the creature and the sinner ; and thus cannot be included in the divine perfection. But if we look below the surface, surely we shall find that every one of such elements of perfection contained in our Lord's own picture of holiness for us must be contained in a higher form or aspect in the Father, as seen through and shown to us by the Son. Take belief. That, as generally used, implies defect of knowledge. But its highest form, the highest meaning of the word ' faith ' is faithfulness : our Father is faithful. Take prayer. That implies need. But we know that not only the Lord of all prayed even unto agony, but that there is a sense in which he, in his spirit, prayeth in us now, and maketh intercession for us as representing us in the Heart of God, who is Love. There is something divine which corresponds to our 'prayer' (though perhaps not to be expressed by human words), and of that we are conscious when we feel that he draws us, asks us for our hearts,
pleads for our love and our obedience. He that 'needs' nothing, being the Source of all things, yet ' needs ' his children, and tells their innermost hearts so. Let us be sure that whether we can under- stand how or not, all that is good in us is in some sense first in him, so that we can indeed and in truth be perfect even as' he is, that is, after the same manner. All forms of good in us can only be reflec- tions of the one sole good. The specific action, though good, may apply only to the created, the creature ; the principle which under- lies it, on which it is done, if good, must be included in the complete- ness of the one only true good, the divine perfection. Instance : condemn not. In any given case, we are not to condemn or judge, because the sinner has no right to cast the first stone, and he cannot see into another's heart. Will he, does he, then cast any stone ? When the sinners had slunk out one by one, where was the sinless, the divine stone ? Neither do I condemn thee ; go and sin no more.' That stone must have struck home surely, just as the coals of fire burn to the quick."
The only assumption here as to which weihave any difficulty, is the asserted identity of faith with faithfulness. In another passage we find this remark :—
" Faith, that by which we discern rather than live ; faithfulness, that by which we live rather than discern. Justification by faith ? Yes ; but are we not grudging and poor in our comments on this and our inferences from it ? Let us add fulness' to the word, and verily we shall find in faithfulness the true fulness of faith and of God. So, as He is faithful and just to forgive us, we shall be faithful and just to live unto Him."
It is clear that faithfulness should come out of faith, but is it so clear that the faithfulness of God and the faith of man are characteristics of the same etock ? If it is,—and we believe it to be true at bottom, though not at all clear on the first glance, —it is because the spontaneous life of the active part of man is the root of belief, instead of belief the root of action, so that even a man who might say of himself that he had no faith, would, if he acted truly in accordance with his own highest moral im- pulse, find that the only way of explaining his action to himself was that he was trying to be faithful to some higher principle, in which he had untruly- fancied that he had no belief. If "Vita's " accountof faith be true, then we act before we believe, and find our belief as the explanation of our ill-understood action. And, for that view of the case we could say much.
But we cannot in the same way reconcile the distinction which the author of this book takes between "the sinner " and "the sin" with any teaching of our Lord's. Here is the author's view :—
"What, then, is the fruit of all punishment of God ? (1.) Vindication of justice, of holiness, of parity. (2.) The good of the punished. Vengeance executed on sin, not sinner : justice vindi-
cated at the expense of sin, not sin-stained soul Surely one fertile source of divergence and misapprehension is the using sin and sinner as equivalent words. We thus confuse and identify two distinct ideas. The only one case in which they could be rightly identified would be that of evil personified. Thus, while truly and rightly insisting on the inherent necessity of the eternity, change- lessness, hopelessness, endlessness of the condemnation, the 'damna- tion' of sin we drift into, or unconsciously cross over into, the very different region of applying the same thoughts to the sinner. I suppose nothing less than the Cross could have convinced any of us of the depth of the impassable gulf which in the eyes of divine love, in the eyes of the consuming Fire of Loving Holiness, lies between sin and sinner, and which, alas ! with our natural readi- ness to dislike or detest our brother, we so lightly step over. He came not to save sin from the uttermost extremity of its own ever- lasting curse. He came to rivet that curse upon it ; and to show, in the strongest and most vivid manner possible, the contrast between what God eternally is towards sin, and what He eternally is towards the sinner :-1. Intense abhorrence. 2. Intense Love. Let us go back to Isaiah, xlix., 13-17. A mother may forget to have compassion —not on her child's sin, but on her child—yet He cannot !"
It seems to us that "Vita" has, for once, missed the true mark. No true man can hate his own sin, and yet distinguish that sin from himself who committed it. For his sin is nothing in the world but one of the issues of his own will, and the evil in it is that it need not have been the issue of his own will, that it was he who made it what it was ; if it had not come from him, he would have no reason to be so much ashamed ; he might then have fairly ascribed it to the Creator, or to the long course of circum- stances which issued in it, and might have justly exonerated himself, who had really nothing to do with it, unless it is he who is to be responsible for it, and he who is to stiffer for it. "It," as distinguished from "him," is nothing in the world. "It" is so bad because, and only because, " he " manifested himself in it, and needed not to have done so, and ought not to have done so. When "Vita" goes on to show that, in spite of sin, God and Christ so loved the sinners as to yearn after their redemption from sin, we quite agree; but, then, it is clear that the love shown to them was shown because they were not mere sinners, not wholly sinners, but had something in them which rebelled against their sin, and was capable of being purified from it. It is not to the sinner because he is a sinner that God shows love. It is to the sinner because he is not a mere sinner, because there is some- thing in him which rebels helplessly against sin, and which, by God's help, can be made to throw off sin, that God shows such love. Divine love is shown to the sinner, not on account of his sin, but in spite of his sin, and in order to make him loathe himself for his sin. To say that God does not destroy the sinner, only means that he does not destroy one who has sinned, but who is capable of repenting himself of his sin. We may, then, assume that no redemption is possible for any one—if such there be —who has no horror of sin, no desire to be redeemed from it, who never for one moment feels its bondage, and never for one moment sickens of its burden. We cannot admit that God, or we ourselves, either can distinguish or ever did distinguish between the sinner and the sin. The sin is not, of course, the whole of the sinner, not, we may hope, but a very small part and,—after long suffering,—a very separable part of him. Bat while it is part of him at all, it is he, and not it, that is to be condemned, to be punished, and, if it is possible, to be purified. There is, to our minds, absolutely no meaning in bating a sin and yet not hating the sinner, in so far as he did the sin. What " Vita " is trying to express is, we believe, that God sees much more truly than men do how much of the sinner rebels against his sin and is redeemable from it, and that he loves much more truly than man does, that part of man which is not expressed by the sin, and is for the moment hidden by it. To discriminate the sin as something which you could destroy, without destroying something also in the sinner, is to, take away the true evil of sin. But though there is one vein of doctrine in this beautiful little book from which,—at least as it is here expressed,—we profoundly differ,—and even here we doubt whether " Vita " really means anything different from what we mean,—we cannot too cordially recommend a book which awakens the spirit, as hardly any book of the last few years has awakened it, to the real meaning of the Christian life.
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