No More Learning

When one contemplates all this from the point
of view of art alone one cannot but be grateful that the supreme office
of the Church should be the playing of the tragedy without the shedding
of blood: the mystical presentation, by means of dialogue and costume and
gesture even, of the Passion of her Lord; and it is always a source of
pleasure and awe to me to remember that the ultimate survival of the
Greek chorus, lost elsewhere to art, is to be found in the servitor
answering the priest at Mass.

Yet the whole life of Christ--so entirely may sorrow and beauty be made
one in their meaning and manifestation--is really an idyll, though it
ends with the veil of the temple being rent, and the darkness coming over
the face of the earth, and the stone rolled to the door of the sepulchre.
One always thinks of him as a young bridegroom with his companions, as
indeed he somewhere describes himself; as a shepherd straying through a
valley with his sheep in search of green meadow or cool stream; as a
singer trying to build out of the music the walls of the City of God; or
as a lover for whose love the whole world was too small. His miracles
seem to me to be as exquisite as the coming of spring, and quite as
natural. I see no difficulty at all in believing that such was the charm
of his personality that his mere presence could bring peace to souls in
anguish, and that those who touched his garments or his hands forgot
their pain; or that as he passed by on the highway of life people who had
seen nothing of life's mystery, saw it clearly, and others who had been
deaf to every voice but that of pleasure heard for the first time the
voice of love and found it as 'musical as Apollo's lute'; or that evil
passions fled at his approach, and men whose dull unimaginative lives had
been but a mode of death rose as it were from the grave when he called
them; or that when he taught on the hillside the multitude forgot their
hunger and thirst and the cares of this world, and that to his friends
who listened to him as he sat at meat the coarse food seemed delicate,
and the water had the taste of good wine, and the whole house became full
of the odour and sweetness of nard.

Renan in his _Vie de Jesus_--that gracious fifth gospel, the gospel
according to St. Thomas, one might call it--says somewhere that Christ's
great achievement was that he made himself as much loved after his death
as he had been during his lifetime. And certainly, if his place is among
the poets, he is the leader of all the lovers. He saw that love was the
first secret of the world for which the wise men had been looking, and
that it was only through love that one could approach either the heart of
the leper or the feet of God.

And above all, Christ is the most supreme of individualists. Humility,
like the artistic, acceptance of all experiences, is merely a mode of
manifestation. It is man's soul that Christ is always looking for. He
calls it 'God's Kingdom,' and finds it in every one. He compares it to
little things, to a tiny seed, to a handful of leaven, to a pearl. That
is because one realises one's soul only by getting rid of all alien
passions, all acquired culture, and all external possessions, be they
good or evil.
I bore up against everything with some stubbornness of will and much
rebellion of nature, till I had absolutely nothing left in the world but
one thing. I had lost my name, my position, my happiness, my freedom, my
wealth. I was a prisoner and a pauper. But I still had my children
left. Suddenly they were taken away from me by the law. It was a blow
so appalling that I did not know what to do, so I flung myself on my
knees, and bowed my head, and wept, and said, 'The body of a child is as
the body of the Lord: I am not worthy of either. ' That moment seemed to
save me. I saw then that the only thing for me was to accept everything.
Since then--curious as it will no doubt sound--I have been happier. It
was of course my soul in its ultimate essence that I had reached. In
many ways I had been its enemy, but I found it waiting for me as a
friend. When one comes in contact with the soul it makes one simple as a
child, as Christ said one should be.

It is tragic how few people ever 'possess their souls' before they die.
'Nothing is more rare in any man,' says Emerson, 'than an act of his
own. ' It is quite true. Most people are other people.