I find the following lyric among the Truro papers; the symbolism presents a certain superficial difficulty, but I have thought it interesting to include it. THE BAWEN ROCK. A little low rock by the westerly strand, My hyacinth bulb with its purpling spire, My clay-smirched poet, my dead, dead jay, I was sure they would straighten and ruffle and shine, Ah Mother! thy sigh and thy smile! 'twas in vain. The following is a lyric that belongs to the same period: Vows. Every day a milk-white steer One to Joy, or one to Pride, Thus I am for many a year: Oh but had I with my Queen Though my rivals warp my will, Reach thy hand to me, my Queen CHAPTER XIV. TRURO LIFE. "While grace fills up uneven nature." GEO. HERBERT. I SELECT a few of the many letters of the Truro period: To the Rev. J. A. Reeve. DEAR SON, Jan. 18, 1878. Thou art hereby commanded to lie abed on the morrow, being Saturday, until half-past eight of the clock-I shall myself offer the morning sacrifice on thy behalf, and on behalf of all them qui propter rationabiles causas absunt. Witness our hand and seal this eighteenth day of January in the year 1878 A.D. and of our Consecration the First. Your letter is constantly with me and all the thoughts of it more constantly, if one may say so. I can realise well all the strangeness of the sorrow that is about you, and can realise that you realise the "exceeding" counterbalancing "weight." I give God thanks for you both. But I am a long time before what I know becomes part of my inner self—and I take a deal of teaching to think that it will still be the same world answering the same purposes, when those I know, and have always reverently loved, are gone to other duties and other joys. 24 Jan.-St Paul doesn't say "the things seen are temporal" in any disparagement. He says they are πрóσкaɩрa' adapted to a great critical kapós2 in the history of all things. And his kapós is so immensely vast and important (as the Apocalypse tried in vain to teach most people), that the aluvia3 appear to me to be exigeant-the aiŵves will have all at last. Why then not wait and let those who can improve the kapós do so a little, little longer? All this doesn't sound ẞéßnλa to you I hope. It isn't really, but I can't make it out, and if it were not for a certain despised Faith, one would have neither the difficulty nor the solution. "Thanks be" as they say in Cornwall, that the solution a little overlaps the difficulty. It overlaps it just so much as to leave us the fringe of Peace. Peace be with you both in the love of Jesus Christ. Amen. Mrs Sidgwick, you know, is gone into peace-with a stillness of days. Her spirit went long before the body ceased its working. Lightfoot was here just the day I began this. Arthur went to school to-day, Fred to-morrow. We don't like partings now-yet show that less. We all as it were involuntarily brace ourselves for them, and each knows the others do so. I have had some heavy work. Be sure you call soon on Jas. Wilson if you can. Arthur Sidgwick's wife is his sister. He will be of great value in the fight of Science for the Faith. Ask Norris to know him soon. Our many loves to you both. Ever your loving friend, E. W. TRURON. To Canon Westcott, on a certain text. KENWYN. 3 Feb. 1879. MY DEAR WESTCOTT, The loss is such, I thought we were almost obliged to "weep apart," or I should have written earlier. But I felt how exactly we should agree about this. The motives for taking Temporal, "for the time." 2 Time, in the sense of season or opportunity. 3 Eternal things, "for the ages." 5 Irreligious. "Ages" eternity. 6 Bishop Lightfoot's appointment to Durham. Durham do just out-top those for staying in Cambridge, and yet one ought to be impressed deeply with the Durham work to be able to say so with a good conscience. It is the "Spirit of Counsel" (or his pépiopa' thereof) which with me makes itself felt as preeminently needful in Conciliar work-and surely the Church is languid for want of the sense that there is great counsel at work in us, reflecting something from what in Cornwall we call "Uppards." The early knowledge that you thought the balance tilted that way has been a great strength. There is a point of which I want to speak to you as to the "Revision." It is scarcely possible to put it strongly enough, because unless you have actual experience of it, it is almost incredible. But from every part of Cornwall I hear it. There is a perverted text which men quote on their dying beds to prevent themselves from repenting (namely 1 Cor. vii. 36); young men quote it to the clergy to defend themselves, fathers and mothers excuse their daughters, for pre-nuptial sin. There can be no sense of, or Desire for Discipline where this sin reigns"Assurance" and "Perfection" are of course possible where this thing is treated as not worth thinking about as an offence. And of course the morals of the young people are immensely affected by the knowledge that their parents had no kind of shame for themselves or their children. On Missions, just as amongst earnest parish workers, this same text has its perpetual reappearance, and when they are with difficulty convinced that the clergyman does not think it means what they do, they still think that other people will agree with their interpretation, not his. I own that I was not in the least aware until I came here that this particular text was in every mouth to justify the sin, but I find almost every one else does know it. I want to express my fervent hope that, by the use of italics, you will clear the meaning of the words as they stand. For incontestable and universal witness does assure me that (wherever the tradition may have sprung up) it is fast rooted, here at least, and that it will continue unless the plain, unmistakeably plain, meating forces itself on every reader by your help in the new rendering. "Let him (the future husband) do what he will; he does not sin (by such fornication). Let them marry." (That puts all right.) This is the accepted interpretation. It has been mentioned to me in many clerical 1 Lit. "part," used of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, Heb. ii. 4. |