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brilliance of the milky way, has not felt affrighted, overwhelmed by the immensity of the physical universe over against the littleness and loneliness of human life? Or, turning from the outer to the inner sphere, who that has wandered even for a brief space in the corridors of memory, haunted with the ghosts of the past, the apparitions conjured up by unhappiness or guilt, has not felt like some wretched prisoner condemned to solitary confinement, which turns existence into a horror, and which, if not relieved by a healing presence, may end in the madness of despair? These are the moments when the soul breaks through the conventionalities, the small and petty round of trivial thought, and stands face to face with infinite mystery, and feels like the ancient mariner:

O Wedding-guest! this soul hath been
Alone on a wide, wide sea;

So lonely 'twas, that God himself
Scarce seemed there to be.

As we grow intellectually and spiritually our loneliness deepens, we yearn for some kindred spirit to look into our hearts and to read us as we are, but too often no such spirit answers the call. Some who have come to us with the promise of deliverance have failed us. They are too self-centered, too prosaic, too lacking in imaginative insight, or they have not that mystic gift before which every door of the soul flies open, and we enter into the joy of a passionate comradeship that fills life with satisfaction, brings strength to every burden, and unity to all our sundered powers. Every sincere and thoughtful spirit must long for someone with whom to open up intercourse of thought and feeling, by whom to have itself understood, to have all its inner complexities and contradictions cleared up, and all its secrets brought nto the clear light of

consciousness. Modern physicians tell

us

how the maladies of a "shutin personality," hidden fears, desires, distresses, irrationalities-in brief thoughts and wishes which the sufferer drives out of his conscious life, only to keep them alive and active in the unconscious-how these founts of mischief may be dried up by simply convincing him that he is understood, that these intimate experiences are no longer his own private possession, but are shared by another. This cleansing and healing process, so necessary to the abnormal, is not less necessary to the normal. The great and formative experiences of the spiritual life are essentially lonely-sin, sorrow, temptation, and the growth of a moral or spiritual purpose. Temptation may have its occasion, but not its cause, in an object which appeals to others as well as to oneself, yet the real force of the trial depends upon one's own character, and the special appeal which challenges one's own desires. Each man must fight his own battle; he must fight it alone. The tempter and the tempted must struggle in a wilderness where no mortal eye can mark the tragedy or the triumph. And so, too, is it with the experience of sorrow. The instinct of the newly smitten heart is to go apart in silence and retirement; in the dark hour of desolation the soul knows that it is beyond the sympathy of its fellows. "The heart knoweth its own bitterness." It is in moral solitude also that we dream every noble dream of being and of doing good. Our dreams seem the most shadowy of wraiths when confronted by the harsh realities of waking experience. Yet to these visions we must be loyal even if our loyalty should cause us to taste the experience of a great Christian soul of the fourth century, of whom it was said that "he had only two friends, God and death; the one the

defender of his innocence, the other the finisher of his troubles."

III.

With the dropping away of human associations we turn by instinct to a superhuman Companionship. In the experience of moral failure it becomes possible for us, through free and open speech with God, to bear the vision of ourselves in the strength that comes from the belief that He is at once the embodiment of justice and sympathy, the "All-knowing," who is also the All-loving, in whose unerring insight we take refuge alike from our selfdespair and our self-complacency. In the strain and stress of moral trial, one has but to turn the attention from the pleasant sin with all its tawdry attraction, and fix it upon the invisible and silent Presence that sees all and notes all, and out of the subconscious will rise sacred and beautiful memories to rob evil of its glamour, and lift the soul in triumphant energy above its enemies. In the pressure of grief, let the prayer of affliction rise to the mighty fatherhood of God, and the burden is eased, we cherish a faith stronger than death, we no longer despair of life, we distrust our fears and believe our hopes. The realization that God is the ally of our ideals is itself no small guarantee of victory, for it strengthens us to meet the frowns of the world and the negative feeling of our own weakness; and even if the fears that beset us remain in undiminished strength, we know that they are vanquished.

Suppose it could be shown that the "great Companion is dead," as a distinguished man of science of an earlier generation imagined, that He is only the creation of our hopes and fears, that on this earth man is the only divinity there is-what a night of despair would fall upon millions of lonely and burdened hearts! A modern

psychologist once put to a number of persons this question, "If you became thoroughly convinced that there was no God, would it make any great difference in your life?" One reply was, "If I were convinced that there was no God, I fear a sense of loneliness would become intolerable." "As for any responsibility or ability to face life and death with composure," wrote another correspondent, “any incentive to be perfect in things hidden from outsiders, any exhilaration in life to try, to do my best—I could not conceive it without the idea of God." Another writer described God as "the hidden strength of my strength and the stay of my weakness—someone to understand me, requiring, reproving, but loving." These testimonies point to a typical human experience. The psychologist is right, therefore, when he says that the "religious consciousness values God chiefly as a companion. The need of Him is a social need. . . . The Godconsciousness even in its superficial and conventional forms is a defense against the feeling of utter loneliness and solitude that comes upon most of us at times." We are alone, and yet we are not alone, around and about and within our loneliness is the companionship of God if we but open our hearts to receive it. This is no expression of an over-strained spiritualism; on the contrary, it has been verified in the experience of men in every age, the mystics, the reformers, the seers and prophets, a Socrates, a Paul, a Luther, and a Lincoln, and myriads of lesser spirits who bear witness that to them through communion with the Unseen have come comfort, strength, and insight which no human fellowship could impart. Though we ourselves as yet have had no direct and mystic contact with the Divine, *Psychology of Religious Belief, by J. B. Pratt, pages 266-7.

fIbid., pages 268-9.

let us at least believe it to be possible

on the testimony of other souls, and we, too, in due season will know that God has broken silence to us.

We need divine companionship to enable us to bear the pains and griefs of life. We know how human companionship in suffering changes the quality of the suffering, so that what else were unendurable can be borne, and can even be made a matter of rejoicing. Who has not experienced the healing, unifying, and strengthening power of sympathy, even though the sympathy is powerless to move by a hair's breath the causes of the anguish? "The grief which all hearts share grows less for one," said Buddha. Yet in all human consolation there is a defect. Between the closest friends the barriers of the flesh intervene a thousand imperfections, give rise to misunderstanding and estrangement that often end in the bitterness of death. Not here can the heart find permanent comfort or an abiding triumph over the sharpness of pain. We need another and a greater Companion. "In God," says Professor Hocking in his masterly work, The Meaning of God in Human Experience, "we have the union of an Other-thanall-men, and an Other whose relation to me is not subject to evil through its own defect; one from whom, therefore, I can anticipate no pain that must refer me to still another for its transmuting. It is not the power of God as mighty, in comparison with other forces in their own fields, that is of value to us; it is not God as miracle worker, tumbling Nature-masses about through Herculean or Jovian command of energy; it is not even God as vindicator, doer of particular justice, meeting and overcoming the inequities of men's judgment by a more penetrating judgment; it is rather God as intimate, infallible associate who is present in all experience as That by

which I too may firmly conceive that experience from the outside. It is God in this personal relation (not exclusive of the others that alone is capable of establishing human peace of mind, and thereby human happiness.'

There is a fruitful truth in the belief of all mystics that in some way, not to be conceived by us, God is afflicted in all the affliction of His children. We realize this in some small measure through our own experience of vicarious suffering. The innocent, we say, suffer for the guilty. We should rather say that they suffer with them. But this suffering which seems to us intolerable, so utterly irrational, is the most redeeming and cleansing force in history. Not a pang is fruitless of its due. Thus, to a certain extent, we can rise to the thought of God sharing with us our grief, and by this participation we are lifted above it into confidence and peace. Pain takes its place as only a transient element in a larger and abiding Reality. Just as in the life of God it is always passing into joy, so in the life of the human soul its function is temporary and its goal supreme blessedness. Viewed from this standpoint, suffering ceases to be local or accidental; it takes on a "cosmic," universal significance, and by the vision of this truth we are reconciled and at rest. To know that God knows my pain, and, in some sense, feels it, is itself a relief. I am no longer in some lone desert, racked with a private distress, shut up to endure as best I can the agony which Nature or man, or my own ignorance inflicts upon me. I am in God's world, bound up in a bundle of life with One infinitely greater and stronger than I, and, therefore, Master of every evi that can befall. This conviction robs pain of half its sting. It is this truth that Augustine expresses in his prayer, "Thou didst know that I was suffering, *Pages 335-6.

and no man knew. Thou findest pleasure in us, and so regardest each of us as if Thou hadst him alone to care for."

There are many who, while acceding to what has just been said, are discouraged by the seeming unreality of the spiritual world, by the transcendent greatness of the universal Mind, and turn away as though such a God were too high for them, His abstractness and loftiness removing Him from warm and living contact with the soul. The idea of the Divine companionship does not find them; they cannot realize it. Now, speaking broadly, man needs the help of a mediatorial spirit whom he recognizes to be perfectly loving and perfectly good. Through the contemplation of such a personality a sense of the unutterable reality of the Divine nature is born. For God's most majestic revelations shine forth in a soul consecrated to the ideal, expending itself in creative acts of self-sacrifice, possessed by the pure spirit of love. Now such a mediator is enshrined in the heart of the Christian religion. In Christ is portrayed as nowhere else, all that the The Contemporary Review.

heart of man can conceive as most worthy of God. It is by fixing the attention on the historical image of Christ, by letting it work freely on heart and imagination that we gain the conviction of a living and dynamic Love at the center of the universe. We feel instinctively that no real catastrophe can overtake us in a world where He is present, that He can hear us when we pray, and that this thought is a more powerful defense and a more urgent incentive than all the pronouncements of the logical understanding. Not by struggling and straining after an experience which baffles the most ardent pursuit, but by surrender to the mystic spell which Christ's personality forever exercises on the receptive spirit, do we enter into the secret of blessedness, the sense of fellowship with Him who, from one point of view, is our ideal Self, and yet from another, is greater than any self. He is the ever living Presence that brings serenity and peace amid life's tragic sorrows and disillusionments, and transfigures the last despairs of guilt and shame with the hope of reconciliation and victory.

Samuel McComb.

THE VINDICATION OF DRIVER THOMAS TOMKINS.

Number 53896271 Driver Thomas Tomkins was, according to all report, the worst man in the entire British Army. So, at least, thought his Number One. Such, with even greater intensity, was the opinion of the Sergeant-major; and the verdict of the sergeants' mess found an echo in the breast of every man Jack in the battery.

After nine months in France he was still without a pal. The reasons for his comrades' dislike were various as their natures. A few appeared to consider the fact that he was a con

script was sufficient to render him taboo. Many, themselves none too squeamish, regarded with an aversion almost amounting to horror his lavish obscenity. It must be admitted, too, that their objection was not without foundation, for none could remember a single occasion on which he had delivered himself of two words untinctured with expletives. But by far the greater number were of the type that judges a man by his actions rather than his words.

"If 'e'd only be'ave decent, I'd easy put up with 'is talk," remarked

Driver Weeks one day to his friend Jerry Wild. The latter fully agreed.

"'E ain't got no notion o' selfrespect," continued Weeks. "I never seen 'im wash 'isself prop'ly, and 'is chin's always like a bloomin' packet o' needles. An' can't 'e just swing the lead?"

"Aye," chimed in Bill Waters, "did yer see 'im on groomin' this mornin'? 'E did nowt but look up at old Jimmy Pollard yonder." And he indicated an observation balloon up aloft with a contemptuous jerk of the thumb.

"H'm," exclaimed Jerry, "no doubt 'e is a fool. 'E might at least 'ave pretended to work, eh, Bill?"

Waters grinned sheepishly. "Well, s'long as the orficer don't notice, what's the odds? I say, 'e don't arf think somethin' of 'imself, that new orficer, don't 'e?"

But Weeks was not thus to be diverted. "Funny, ain't it," he said, "but some'ow, though 'e don't do much groomin', 'e seems to care for 'is 'orses in a way."

Here the wheezy notes of a trumpet that had evidently known better days broke in upon their talk.

"Fall-in," said Waters. And so they turned in to afternoon stables, which (let us hope) prevented any further conversation for the next hour or so.

The Sergeant-major waxed eloquent that evening upon the same theme.

"I don't know what's the matter with him," he exclaimed, for at least the thousandth time. "Can't get anything out of him, nor smarten up his ideas nohow. I'm dead sick of putting him on fatigues. He's never been really tidy on main parade. This morning it was that he hadn't shaved, and said he hadn't any stuff to clean his buttons. I can't do nothing with him!"

"I'd like to find the beggar as could,"

was Sergeant Jenkins' acid retort. "E takes no notice o' words, and you can't knock no sense into 'im. I'm about at my wits' end what to do. This very blessed mornin', when Mr. Ellis went round the tents, an' comes to my sub., 'e finds there, wrapped up in the brailin', a pair o' spurs I never seen the likes of. There warn't no steel visible, only rust, an' I'll bet it were an eighth of an inch thick. An' 'is bandolier——" Here his wrath boiled over and choked further utterance for a minute. Then he proceeded with his plaint.

"I'm tired of bein' strafed for 'is shortcomin's, and the orficers don't seem to understand the job you've got. It's 'Sergeant Jenkins this' and 'Sergeant Jenkins that.' I'm fed up with the whole blamed business. If Mr. Duckworth 'ad only let 'em put 'im in the trough t'other day, 'twould 'ave done 'im a sight o' good. 'Stead o' that, 'e interferes. But there! they never understands.'

"H'm," said the Sergeant-major, "I reckon he ought to be a Christmaspudding maker: one job a year, and fifty-two weeks to do it in. Maybe he might do something as an Easteregg decorator. But he's no good in the Army."

"Wonder what 'e really was in civvy life? 'E's down as a hawker, but strikes me 'e was a rose-maker for Alexandra Day." With which cutting sarcasm Sergeant Jenkins relapsed into silence and betook him to a cigarette.

Indeed Driver Tomkins was notorious. His harness was the dirtiest in the brigade, and he himself the most disreputable individual that could have been found in the whole of the British Expeditionary Force. Titanic efforts to impart to him some slight knowledge of the benefits of cleanliness met with only a temporary result. Within a few days further exhortation

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