Читать книгу My Life as an Author - Martin Farquhar Tupper - Страница 23

But there are many other sorts of peril in human life to which I may briefly advert, as we all have had some experiences of the same. Who does not know of his special financial temptation, some sanguine and unscrupulous speculator urging him from rock to rock across the rapids of ruin, till he is engulfed as by Niagara? Or of the manifestly disinterested and generous capitalist, who gives to some young legatee a junior partner's free arm-chair, only that he may utilise his money and keep the house solvent for yet a year or two, utterly unheeding that ere long the grateful beneficiaire must be dragged down with his chief to poverty? Or, which of us has not had experience of some unjust will, stealing our rights by evil influence? Or of the seemingly luckless accident killing off our intending benefactor just before that promised codicil? Or of the ruinous investment? Or of the bankrupt Life Assurance? Or of the unhappy fact of your autograph, "a mere matter of form," on the back of some dishonoured bill of one's defaulting friend? Yet all these are providences too—lessons of life, and parts of our schools and schoolmasters.

And there are many like social evils besides. Let me delicately touch one of them. I desire as an Ancient, now nearing the close of my career, at least in this the caterpillar and soon to be chrysalis condition of my being, to give my testimony seriously and practically to the fact (disputed by too many from their own worse experience) that it is quite possible to live from youth to age in many scenes and under many circumstantial difficulties, preserving still through them all the innocent purity of childhood. True, the crown of greater knowledge is added to the Man; but although it be a knowledge both of evil and of good, theoretically—it need not practically be a guilty knowledge. If one of any age, from the youngest to the oldest, has not the power of self-control perpetually in exercise, and the good mental help of prayer habitually at hand to be relied on, he is in danger, and may fall into sin or even crime, at any hour, unless the Highest Power intervene. But, if the senses are trained to resist the first inclinations to unchastity, by the eye that will not look and the ear that will not listen, then the doors of the mind are kept closed against the enemy, and even "hot youth" is safe.

We live in a co-operative cycle of society; and amongst other co-operations are all manner of guilds to encourage, by example, companionship and the like, divers great virtues, and some less important fads and fancies of the day: let me not be thought to disparage any gatherings for prayer, or temperance, or purity; though individual strong men may not need such congregated help as the weaker brethren yearn for. Many a veteran now, changed to good morals from a looser life in the past, may well hope to serve both God and man by preaching purity to the young men around, by vowing them to a white ribbon guild, and giving them the decoration of an ivory cross. But he is apt to forget what young blood is, his own having cooled down apace; anon he will find that Nature is not so easily driven back—usque recurrit—and he will soon have to acknowledge that if the higher and deeper influences of personal religion, earnest prayer, honest watchfulness, and sincere—though it be but incipient—love of God and desire to imitate Christ, are not chief motives towards the purification of human passion, this brotherhood of a guild may tend to little except self-righteousness, and it will be well if hypocrisy and secret sin does not accompany that open boastfulness of a White Cross Order. After all said and done, a man—or woman—or precocious child—must simply take the rules of Christ and Paul, and Solomon, as his guide and guard, by "Resisting," "Fleeing," "Cutting off—metaphorically—the right hand, and putting out the right eye;" so letting "discretion preserve him and understanding keep him;" but there is nothing like flight; it is easy and speedy, and more a courage than a cowardice. Take a simple instance. Some forty years ago, an author, well-known in both hemispheres, then living in London, received by post a pink and scented note from "an American Lady, a great admirer of his books, &c. &c.: would he favour her by a call" at such an hotel, in such a square? Much flattered he went, and was very gushingly received; but when the lady, probably not an American (though comely enough to be one), after a profusion of compliments went on to complain of a husband having deserted her, and to throw herself not without tears on the kindness of her favourite author, that individual thought it would be prudent to depart, and so promptly remembering another engagement he took up his hat and—fled. He had afterwards reason to be thankful for this escape, as for others. I, fac simile; as no doubt you have done, and you will do, for there are many Potipheras; ay, and there exist some Josephs too.

Other forms of evil in the way of heterodoxy and heresy have assailed your confessor, as is the common case with most other people, whether authors or not. The rashest Atheism or more cowardly Agnosticism are rampant monsters, but have only affected my own spirit into forcing me to think out and to publish my Essay on Probabilities, whereof I shall speak further when my books come under review. But beyond these open foes to one's faith, who has not met with zealous enthusiasts who urge upon his acceptance under penalty of the worst for all eternity if refused, any amount of strange isms—Plymouth, Southcote, Swedenborg, Irving, Mormon—and of the other 272 sects which affect (perhaps more truly infect) religion in this free land? I have had many of these attacking me by word or letter on the excuse of my books. Who, if he once weakly gives way to their urgent advice to "search and see for himself," will not soon be addled and muddled by all sorts of sophistical and controversial botherations, if even he is not tempted to accept—for lucre if not godliness—the office of bishop, or apostle, or prophet, or anything else too freely offered by zealots to new converts, if of notoriety enough to exalt or enrich a sect; such sect in every case proclaiming itself the one only true Church, all other sects being nothing but impostors? We have all encountered such spiritual perils—and happy may we feel that with whatever faults and failings, there is an orthodox and established form of religion amongst us in the land. For my own part, I go freely to any house of prayer, national or nonconformist, where the Gospel is preached and the preacher is capable: all I want is a good man for the good word and work—and if he has the true Spirit in him, I care next to nothing for his orders: though to many less independent minds human authorisation may be a necessity. From cradle hymns to the more serious prayings of senility, my own religion in two words is crystallised as "Abba, Father;" my only priest being my Divine Brother; and my Friend and Guide through this life and beyond it the Holy Spirit, who unites all the family of God. May I die, as I have lived, in this simple faith of childhood.

My "Probabilities" has, amongst others apposite, this sentence about the origin of evil, and the usefulness of temptation: "To our understanding, at least, there was no possible method of illustrating the amiabilities of Goodness and the contrivances of Wisdom but by the infused permission of some physical and moral evils; mercy, benevolence, design would in a universe of Best have nothing to do; that universe itself would grow stagnant, as incapable of progress; and the principal record of God's excellences, the book of redemption, would have been unwritten. Is not then the existence of evil justified in reason's calculation? and was not such existence an antecedent probability?"