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HOMILETIC.
Dear Friends,--I am beginning a new book like an old sermon; but, as you
know, I have been so accustomed to preach all my life, that whatever I say
or write will more or less take the shape of a sermon; and if you had not
by this time learned at least to bear with my oddities, you would not have
wanted any more of my teaching. And, indeed, I did not think you would want
any more. I thought I had bidden you farewell. But I am seated once again
at my writing-table, to write for you--with a strange feeling, however,
that I am in the heart of some curious, rather awful acoustic contrivance,
by means of which the words which I have a habit of whispering over to
myself as I write them, are heard aloud by multitudes of people whom I
cannot see or hear. I will favour the fancy, that, by a sense of your
presence, I may speak the more truly, as man to man.
But let me, for a moment, suppose that I am your grandfather, and that you
have all come to beg for a story; and that, therefore, as usually happens
in such cases, I am sitting with a puzzled face, indicating a more puzzled
mind. I know that there are a great many stories in the holes and corners
of my brain; indeed, here is one, there is one, peeping out at me like a
rabbit; but alas, like a rabbit, showing me almost at the same instant the
tail-end of it, and vanishing with a contemptuous thud of its hind
feet on the ground. For I must have suitable regard to the desires of my
children. It is a fine thing to be able to give people what they want, if
at the same time you can give them what you want. To give people what they
want, would sometimes be to give them only dirt and poison. To give them
what you want, might be to set before them something of which they could
not eat a mouthful. What both you and I want, I am willing to think, is a
dish of good wholesome venison. Now I suppose my children around me are
neither young enough nor old enough to care about a fairy tale, go
that will not do. What they want is, I believe, something that I know
about--that has happened to myself. Well, I confess, that is the kind of
thing I like best to hear anybody talk to me about. Let anyone tell me
something that has happened to himself, especially if he will give me a
peep into how his heart took it, as it sat in its own little room with the
closed door, and that person will, so telling, absorb my attention: he has
something true and genuine and valuable to communicate. They are mostly old
people that can do so. Not that young people have nothing happen to them;
but that only when they grow old, are they able to see things right, to
disentangle confusions, and judge righteous judgment. Things which at the
time appeared insignificant or wearisome, then give out the light that was
in them, show their own truth, interest, and influence: they are far enough
off to be seen. It is not when we are nearest to anything that we know best
what it is. How I should like to write a story for old people! The young
are always having stories written for them. Why should not the old people
come in for a share? A story without a young person in it at all! Nobody
under fifty admitted! It could hardly be a fairy tale, could it? Or a
love story either? I am not so sure about that. The worst of it would be,
however, that hardly a young person would read it. Now, we old people would
not like that. We can read young people's books and enjoy them: they would
not try to read old men's books or old women's books; they would be so sure
of their being dry. My dear old brothers and sisters, we know better, do we
not? We have nice old jokes, with no end of fun in them; only they cannot
see the fun. We have strange tales, that we know to be true, and which look
more and more marvellous every time we turn them over again; only
somehow they do not belong to the ways of this year--I was going to say
week,--and so the young people generally do not care to hear them. I have
had one pale-faced boy, to be sure, who will sit at his mother's feet, and
listen for hours to what took place before he was born. To him his mother's
wedding-gown was as old as Eve's coat of skins. But then he was young
enough not yet to have had a chance of losing the childhood common to the
young and the old. Ah! I should like to write for you, old men, old women,
to help you to read the past, to help you to look for the future. Now is
your salvation nearer than when you believed; for, however your souls may
be at peace, however your quietness and confidence may give you strength,
in the decay of your earthly tabernacle, in the shortening of its cords, in
the weakening of its stakes, in the rents through which you see the stars,
you have yet your share in the cry of the creation after the sonship. But
the one thing I should keep saying to you, my companions in old age, would
be, "Friends, let us not grow old." Old age is but a mask; let us not call
the mask the face. Is the acorn old, because its cup dries and drops it
from its hold--because its skin has grown brown and cracks in the earth?
Then only is a man growing old when he ceases to have sympathy with the
young. That is a sign that his heart has begun to wither. And that is a
dreadful kind of old age. The heart needs never be old. Indeed it should
always be growing younger. Some of us feel younger, do we not, than when
we were nine or ten? It is not necessary to be able to play at leapfrog to
enjoy the game. There are young creatures whose turn it is, and perhaps
whose duty it would be, to play at leap-frog if there was any necessity for
putting the matter in that light; and for us, we have the privilege, or if
we will not accept the privilege, then I say we have the duty, of enjoying
their leap-frog. But if we must withdraw in a measure from sociable
relations with our fellows, let it be as the wise creatures that creep
aside and wrap themselves up and lay themselves by that their wings may
grow and put on the lovely hues of their coming resurrection. Such a
withdrawing is in the name of youth. And while it is pleasant--no one knows
how pleasant except him who experiences it--to sit apart and see the drama
of life going on around him, while his feelings are calm and free, his
vision clear, and his judgment righteous, the old man must ever be ready,
should the sweep of action catch him in its skirts, to get on his tottering
old legs, and go with brave heart to do the work of a true man, none the
less true that his hands tremble, and that he would gladly return to his
chimney-corner. If he is never thus called out, let him examine himself,
lest he should be falling into the number of those that say, "I go, sir,"
and go not; who are content with thinking beautiful things in an Atlantis,
Oceana, Arcadia, or what it may be, but put not forth one of their fingers
to work a salvation in the earth. Better than such is the man who, using
just weights and a true balance, sells good flour, and never has a thought
of his own.
I have been talking--to my reader is it? or to my supposed group of
grandchildren? I remember--to my companions in old age. It is time I
returned to the company who are hearing my whispers at the other side of
the great thundering gallery. I take leave of my old friends with one word:
We have yet a work to do, my friends; but a work we shall never do aright
after ceasing to understand the new generation. We are not the men, neither
shall wisdom die with us. The Lord hath not forsaken his people because the
young ones do not think just as the old ones choose. The Lord has something
fresh to tell them, and is getting them ready to receive his message. When
we are out of sympathy with the young, then I think our work in this world
is over. It might end more honourably.
Now, readers in general, I have had time to consider what to tell you
about, and how to begin. My story will be rather about my family than
myself now. I was as it were a little withdrawn, even by the time of which
I am about to write. I had settled into a gray-haired, quite elderly, yet
active man--young still, in fact, to what I am now. But even then, though
my faith had grown stronger, life had grown sadder, and needed all my
stronger faith; for the vanishing of beloved faces, and the trials of them
that are dear, will make even those that look for a better country both for
themselves and their friends, sad, though it will be with a preponderance
of the first meaning of the word sad, which was settled,
thoughtful.
I am again seated in the little octagonal room, which I have made my study
because I like it best. It is rather a shame, for my books cover over every
foot of the old oak panelling. But they make the room all the pleasanter
to the eye, and after I am gone, there is the old oak, none the worse, for
anyone who prefers it to books.
I intend to use as the central portion of my present narrative the history
of a year during part of which I took charge of a friend's parish, while
my brother-in-law, Thomas Weir, who was and is still my curate, took the
entire charge of Marshmallows. What led to this will soon appear. I will
try to be minute enough in my narrative to make my story interesting,
although it will cost me suffering to recall some of the incidents I have
to narrate.
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