SOLILOQUIES 
 
 OP A 
 
 HERMIT 
 
 THBODORB 
 FRANCIS 
 
 powys 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME 
 OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT 
 FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY 
 
 HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE 
 
Cornell University Library 
 BR125 .P88 1918 
 
 olin 
 
 3 1924 029 238 676 
 
The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
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SOLILOQUIES OF A HERMIT 
 
PEACE. OF MIND 
 
 Essays and Reflections, Aug. zgz4-Dec. 1917 
 
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SOLILOQUIES 
 OF A HERMIT 
 
 BY 
 
 THEODORE FRANCIS POWYS 
 
 LONDON: ANDREW MELROSE LTD. 
 
 3 YORK STREET, CovENT Garden, W.C. 2 
 1918 
 
SOLILOQUIES OF A 
 HERMIT 
 
 "He that acknowledgetb the S6n, bath 
 the Father also." 
 
 AM I a fool ? Is not a fool the best 
 title for a good priest ? And I 
 am a good priest. Though not of the 
 Church, I am of the Church. Though 
 not of the faith, I am of the faith. 
 Though not of the fold, I am of the 
 fold ; a priest in the cloud of God, 
 beside the Altar of Stone. Near beside 
 me is a flock of real sheep ; above me 
 a dloud of misty white embraces the 
 noonday light of the Altar. I am 
 without a belief ; — a belief is too easy 
 a road to God. 
 
 A priest has his roots in the deep 
 
, SOLILOQUIES 
 
 darkness of human desires ; his place is 
 beside the Altar, held to the earth by- 
 twisted roots ; the priest gives to man 
 whom he cannot love, and loves God 
 whom he cannot know. The priest 
 points ever to Christ, and tells the 
 people to love Him ; but to love one 
 another he does not tell them. How 
 can he ? The Master alone can com- 
 mand the impossible ; Christ, who 
 knows only Himself, He can say, 
 " Love one another." The priest can 
 only say, " Love Christ." He knows 
 that the people can never love one 
 another, and that if they could love 
 one another, there would be no need 
 for them to love Christ. 
 
 And I, the priest, will tell the story. 
 I know how men move under the shadow 
 of the moods of God, and I know how 
 I move. Some try to hide in the Gar- 
 den, and some try to hide in the beast's 
 belly. I have tried to hide amongst 
 grassy hills ; but the moods of God have 
 
 2 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 hunted me out. The proper place for 
 a priest is in a cave, a narrow cave 
 where he lies with his back against a 
 sharp rock. As I could not hide from 
 God, I tried to hide from myself, and 
 . watch the moods as they passed by. 
 To believe in God and not to believe 
 in yourself, is the first duty of a priest. 
 There is no need to fulfil a mood ; you 
 get far more of the truth of a mood if 
 you do not fulfil it, and a mood is often 
 good and kindly to you if you let it 
 enter without your doing anything that 
 it moves you to do. A priest is always 
 a priest, on a throne ; or if upon the 
 gallows, he is still a priest. A priest is 
 a man who knows the workings of the 
 moods of God. 
 
 The common man, the happy man, 
 the working man, the immortal man, 
 is dominated by one mood, so that he 
 never feels God but in one way, and 
 whatever condition he may be in, this 
 3 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 one mood holds him up. This kind of 
 man is everywhere ; he is the people ; 
 he talks about " having a drink," " get- 
 ting on in the world," " writing books," 
 "buying stocks and shares," " driving 
 pigs to market," " sowing red wheat." 
 He may be in a palace, or at the bottom 
 of a coal mine, or in a clover field, or 
 in a villa at Chiswick ; he is the people, 
 and his dominating mood is the getting 
 mood. 
 
 On the other side of the road is the 
 priest. He is vulnerable, he is mortal ; 
 this life is his only life, he is not im- 
 mortal like the other man ; the only 
 immortality that he gets is by believing 
 that he is immortal ; his children are 
 not his children, and his life is not his 
 life, it is God's. He is the soil in which 
 God practises His divine moods ; His 
 hating moods, His loving moods. His 
 cruel moods. The other man is domi- 
 nated by one mood all his life ; the 
 manner of his life never changes, he 
 4 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 moves in one small circle. The priest 
 is never under one mood for long ; he is 
 always breaking, or rather being broken, 
 by God. God takes him up and casts 
 him down, and pitches him from one 
 mood into another, taking care that no 
 mood lasts that the priest can live and 
 feed upon. The priest prays ; he tames 
 the moods by prayer, and he tries to 
 shut up the bad moods, the good moods, 
 all the moods, in the Bible ; and then 
 he tries to hide the Bible in the Church. 
 And he prays all through the bad moods, 
 even when they bite him (and moods 
 can bite), and he waits and prays till a 
 gentle mood comes like a dove from 
 heaven ; then he rejoices and quietly 
 eats his bread like any other man. 
 
 I am writing about myself. I am the 
 
 priest that I talk about. When I speak 
 
 about the priest or anything about the 
 
 priest, I mean myself I was never put 
 
 , into the fold, and I never climbed over 
 
 5 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 the wall ; I never knew Latin ; I have 
 never spoken to a Bishop, or helped a 
 Dean to put on his gaiters ; I have never 
 tried to convert any young lady in the 
 street. I am, speaking of Religion in a 
 book ; — that is not allowed, but what 
 else can I write about ? It is the only 
 subject I know anything about. 
 
 At the same time there are things 
 that interest me, and things that I love. 
 I love a broken chair that is worn 
 through to the wood ; it is a chair that 
 can tell its own tale ; I have a terror of 
 anything that is sound and whole. I 
 love a broken roller left in a field ; my 
 little boys come with me up a little hill 
 and play by it ; it is left in a field that 
 belongs to a crippled farmer, a weakly 
 tottering old man, crooked and bent ; 
 all his farm tools are broken and tied 
 up with string, and the roller is the 
 most broken, and that is why we love 
 it the best. It is much better, I have 
 found, to love a chair than to love a 
 6 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 person ; there is often more of God in 
 a chair, and God often rests «by the 
 side of the old roller and watches my 
 little boys play and the old farmer at 
 plough. 
 
 The moods pass over me and I must 
 act after their ruling. I hate when 
 they hate, I love when they love. The 
 wonderful moods carry me on, and do 
 with me what they will. When an evil 
 day comes, it is the mood from above 
 that is evil ; when the earth and sky 
 and my heart are bathed in sunbeams, 
 God is in a shining mood above. The 
 moods carry me away in the night and 
 they leap upon me in the day, and 
 they hold me down in the evening, or 
 perhaps let me wander a little way 
 under the stars. 
 
 , I have voted twice at the elections, 
 once for a conservative and once for a 
 liberal ; at each election I voted ac- 
 cording to the mood that I was in, as 
 7 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 everyone ought to. Just now I wear 
 a badge of an order of Socialism, and 
 when one day I broke my spade in 
 trying to lift up a dead cherry-tree in 
 the garden, I looked at my badge and 
 wondered what it meant by having an 
 arrow, the sun and the world upon it. 
 And then I thought of the people ; I 
 know a little about the people, the 
 people that slave and toil and tear at 
 each other with the claws of the beast, 
 and the beast has sharp claws. I know 
 their ways and how they steal the moods 
 of God ; they will not allow the moods 
 of God to pass freely through them 
 and go. 
 
 Once I said, '' I love poor men." 
 And I believed that they were true, 
 noble, simple, and kind, and of all men, 
 I loved most the men in the fields ; I 
 thought that the gentle life they led in 
 the country gave their minds the colour 
 of deep grey waters. I thought that 
 poor people dwelt so near the mud that 
 8 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 they were always clean ; I thought that 
 only spoilt children were cruel and ugly, 
 and that all the poetry of the world 
 came from the cottage. 
 
 It is the priest's duty to dig in the 
 clay through which the moods of God 
 pass ; he must foretell how the clay 
 pieces will behave when the mystic 
 winds that they cannot see blow them. 
 It is well that he preaches of one that 
 will take away the sins of the world ; 
 but if that One would take the good- 
 ness of the world, too, he would find 
 the load almost as hard to bear ; for 
 the good man often hides beneath his 
 goodness an ugly little devil that spits 
 out fire. 
 
 Man is a collection of atoms through 
 which pass the moods of God — a ter- 
 rible clay picture, tragic, frail, drunken, 
 but always deep rooted in the earth, 
 always with claws holding on to his 
 life while the n^oods pass over him 
 9 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 and change his face and his life every 
 moment. The people of the earth are 
 clay pieces that the moods of God 
 kindle into life. 
 
 To the priest every man is a rough 
 s6il that the moods of God pass through, 
 and the priest knows that every man 
 will clutch what he can hold like a 
 babe, and he knows that where the 
 moods of God are, strange things will 
 happen. He knows that the world is 
 a wild mad world, a world that cannot 
 settle into peace, that cannot quietly 
 tend its garden and plant the herbs of i 
 the field. In the moods, in my moods, 
 there are great and terrible happenings. 
 In the most quiet places the moods of 
 God rend and tear the heart. Every 
 mood that passes through me is terrible, 
 the most peaceful happy mood carries 
 the heartache beneath it. 
 
 In looking at my life, as indeed in 
 looking at anyone's life, I see the desire 
 to do something so that the moods may 
 
 ID 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 pass and the man still live. And I 
 think that I can also understand the 
 idea of the monk in a cell, or the her- 
 mit in a wood, for these allow the 
 moods freely to pass through them, in 
 order that they may catch God in His 
 own thought. In the common longing 
 to do something — I will not say to 
 work, I see the desire to escape from 
 God. When I want to go out and 
 work or even to help my neighbour, 
 my reason is that I want to hide myself 
 from the moods. I have never been 
 idle — no priest ever is ; my sin has 
 been that I have sought to do some- 
 thing ; not that I have worked — of 
 course there comes to the hand of every- 
 one something of the common burden 
 — but when I have sought work, it has 
 been as a means of escape, of escape 
 from the moods of God.„ There is only, 
 one way of escape and that is in prayer. 
 I will call it the monk's way ; only the 
 monk's way is no use to him from 
 II 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 \ , 
 
 whom God hides deep down at the 
 
 bottom of His moods. 
 
 All human laws are made to trap 
 and snare God's movements ; men are 
 always trying to get at ease with them- 
 selves and away from His terrible ways. 
 The priest learns the hard law of men, 
 and he feels the terrible presence of 
 God ; from men he is given poverty 
 and scorn, and from God, death. He 
 forgives men, and he takes God's gift, 
 that is to him God's best gift ; he trains 
 himself to become as clay in the hand 
 of the potter ; to take the mood and the 
 day and the chance as it opens out to 
 him ; to walk the road that is nearest 
 before him and to keep always to the 
 left-hand side of the way ; to accept as 
 they choose to come, the anger, the 
 fretfulness, the joy, the hunger ; for 
 each is a sign, if it be not the reality, 
 of the moods of God. I have learned 
 to know that though I cannot touch 
 
 12 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 the power, the power can touch me ; 
 that is as far as I dare probe into the 
 mystery. I am not evil nor good ; I 
 am just my own clay through which the 
 moods of God pass, and this is exactly 
 the case with my brothers, and with 
 everyone else ; no one is good or evil, 
 we are all just our own clay. 
 
 When I look at myself before a glass 
 I am not pleased ; I fear I cannot look 
 into the glass and say to myself, " What 
 a fine fellow ! " I wish I could. All the 
 same I am willing to put; up with . my- 
 self ; I am not yet tired of the sun ; I 
 like still to feel the movement of being, 
 and to know that another spring has 
 come ; I love myself enough to love 
 the world. 
 
 I have discovered that all movement 
 is a begetting and creating, and that 
 i when I only move my feet I bring to 
 birth new wonders. We cannot over- 
 's 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 rate too much mere existence. Simply 
 to be set dancing by the sun is some- 
 thing. I love to preach, but the only 
 person I ever preach to is myself, be- 
 cause I am the only person that I have 
 ever met who knows how to attend to 
 a sermon. I preach to myself, and I 
 am interested to get to the bottom of 
 my sins. I find my sins are deep 
 enough to be interesting. I love to 
 hate, to desire, to envy, to bear malice 
 in my heart. I am glad that I have 
 these feelings ; I do not want to love 
 my neighbour. , I prefer mildly to hate 
 him. When the mood of gentle toler- 
 ance comes to me I take it and love 
 even God. 
 
 I have not fallen into my worst sin. 
 My greatest temptation has always been 
 to work, to go with other men into 
 the great labour market of the world, 
 and be given my place. The priest is 
 lower than the lowest labourer, and if 
 14 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 he can only find men and no God in 
 the earth, woe be to him, he will 
 certainly find himself betrayed. 
 
 Once I thought I was wise, wiser 
 than the wise men of old. " It was not 
 for me," I said, "to come out from 
 the same door wherein I went." It is 
 well to break your head against all the 
 walls that you can, while you are 
 young, so that when you grow old you 
 can slay yourself quietly in your own 
 garden. 
 
 I wonder what to most men is the 
 pleasantest thing they do. I know that 
 I am happiest when I am mending my 
 garden railings ; they are very old and 
 very much out of repair ; every labourer 
 that has come past for the last ten years 
 has had something rude to say about 
 them ; and if they see me in the garden 
 they stop and advise me to have iron 
 railings ; and once a young sheep dealer 
 told me I ought to build a wall. But, 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 alas, I am no lover of walls that keep 
 out the sunshine, and I have a vast 
 hatred for iron railings, and why should 
 I not continue my happiness by mend- 
 ing my wooden ones with string ? But 
 people do not like my way. And if 
 the Parish Council had the power, it 
 would no doubt compel me either to 
 sell my cottage or to buy iron railings. 
 If no one drank any beer, if all were 
 self-respecting, if all wore badges with 
 a "world and an arrow," if everyone 
 went to Chapel, then would they force 
 me to mend my railings with iron nails 
 and barbed wire. 
 
 If George v. were not king, if the 
 people ruled, if these lovers of iron 
 railings and brick walls had the power, 
 there would be no life for me or any 
 lover of string upon .the earth. I 
 wonder whether if in America a disciple 
 of the god Pan is allowed to mend his 
 garden railings with string, or is he 
 badgered to use nails ? One day it will 
 i6 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 happen that everyone will be forced to 
 live exactly as his dullest neighbour 
 wishes him to, and we shall be com- 
 pelled to eat meat every day and to earn 
 the money to pay for it. An ir6n- 
 hearted world it is indeed, and in some 
 places even the daisies are made of 
 nail heads, so new that they shine quite 
 like real daisies. I pray that I may 
 always be allowed to keep my blood 
 cool by watching the cows and by 
 moving brown earth under the sun. 
 Must everyone here on earth be either 
 ordering or obeying, stealing or giving, 
 blessing or cursing .? 
 
 The kind of people that I find most 
 unpleasant to my taste, are the people 
 that look and smile and walk on. These 
 are they that find fault, — the fault- 
 finders, the people that point at your 
 thistles and count your nettles, that 
 wonder why you do not keep fowls, 
 or why you keep a row of five broken 
 B 17 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 buckets by your back door. These 
 are the people who think that to work 
 is to worship^ and who talk about 
 nothing else than what they can do, 
 and what you cannot do. I- lack their 
 ardour ; they say they kfeep the world 
 growing, but it is more likely that they 
 keep the world sinning. 
 
 It is now spring, with a dull mist and 
 rain coming over the hills, and a wind 
 that howls like Deceniber in the chim- 
 ney, and in the spring what memories 
 come to us who look backward ; to us 
 who prefer not to look forward. The 
 memories of spring, — that every spring 
 revives, and every autumn kills, and 
 every winter^ buries ! I know the /joy 
 of J looking backward, — and the tears,— 
 in order to find again the sun that once 
 shone ; and when found I can take and 
 eat the true joy now that I was not able 
 to take then. I can now pick up the 
 wind flowers that I missed by being too 
 i8 » ' 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 eager for them. Only the same kind of 
 day must come in order that I may be 
 able to remember the past, and I must 
 have the same kind of feelings that I 
 had on that same day ; the same old 
 crippled man must hobble past ; the 
 same wind must howl in the chimney ; 
 the same white cow must chew the cud 
 by my gate.^ and then ■ I remember. 
 And often it is something ugly that 
 brings me to this happiness. I have 
 never had the least objection to ugly 
 things. If my fire warms me, what do 
 I care if the grate is a square black 
 hole in the wall, with three varnished 
 iron sunflowers in a row above it ? 
 
 I like things beautiful to keep at a 
 distance, and even art can very well 
 keep shut up in a book. It is a worry 
 to me to have too precious works near 
 by. I can look at good things too 
 much ; it is better to have a certain 
 cheapness of ordinary and common 
 19 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 things about, that one need never 
 look at. 
 
 No labour has made the delicate 
 visions that come to me from the past, 
 and require only the same kind of day 
 to awaken ; no hard chisel formed the 
 look of affection that I, saw once in the 
 eyes of a sick man ; no brush can show 
 me the first celandine lying in the dust 
 of the road, thrown down by a tiny 
 child, though a brush may be able to 
 show me one, smiling gaily, almost too 
 gaily, from a bank of canvas. Ah, but 
 to him that painted the picture these 
 are memories ; all the money in the 
 world cannot buy them., 
 
 I have found a use for every one of 
 the moods that pass through nie. There 
 is one of depression that is common to 
 all men, and I compel this mood to 
 carry me down to the earth and even 
 below the earth, so that it may give me 
 peace. When I speak of God, I mean 
 20 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 the mystic fear that I share in common 
 with all men, who do not give their 
 lives utterly up into the claws of 
 Mammon. 
 
 When I began to write this — shall I 
 say tract ? — I spoke of myself as a priest 
 without a God ; but it is quite impos- 
 sible to be a priest at all without the 
 mystic fear showing itself somewhere, 
 showing itself ^perhaps in the way I 
 walk down the road, or put on my 
 overcoat, shall I say ? The fear of God, 
 calm, persistent, triumphant, must show 
 itself to the priest at last. It is impos- 
 sible to ignore it ; it is in life, it has to 
 open a way for itself although we may 
 try to bar it out. " I went down into 
 Hell and behold he was there." It is 
 futile to try to go gaily along for ever 
 and. chat and smoke cigarettes, and talk 
 about the pleasure of the spring, or 
 about a young lady who lives on the 
 other side of the valley and is no better 
 
 21 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 than she should be. The fear of God 
 is sure to break in upon you ; the very 
 winds bring it ; it comes out of the 
 stones ; I dig it up in the garden ; I 
 hear it in the sound of a train far off; 
 there is fear in the sound of a train. 
 I see it moving in the flight of a bird ; 
 I cannot escape it. No one can save 
 himself from the Fear by work ; you 
 must stop somewhere, and the Fear 
 can wait for you outside the door,— 
 he has plenty of time. I have always 
 lived near great empty spaces, great 
 empty fields and huge solitary downs ; 
 often I walk miles without meeting 
 anyone, and the moods that come to 
 me are often as empty and void as the 
 hills around ; and the very emptiness 
 is dreadful. No wonder that honest 
 labourers crowd to the taverns ; no 
 wonder the priest likes to have his 
 church full of human flesh and blood 
 rather than to be alone with the fear 
 of God. 
 
 22 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 I love light. I love to light the lamp 
 on a winter's evening when the sun sets 
 red in a mist behind our low hills, for 
 in the summer the sun climbs up our 
 highest hill. I like to light a fire, and 
 to smell the smoke of burning wood 
 and to feel the first warmth that comes 
 when the sticks burn. I love the sun ; 
 and if I were to worship an Idol, I 
 would certainly worship a star ; and 
 when I dig in the garden I like to turn 
 my face to the sun. For the moon I 
 have no love, except for the child with 
 torn long hair that runs over his face 
 when he is full, and was discovered by 
 one of my brothers ; no doubt she is 
 always | fleeing from the horrible old 
 man with the sticks. There lived just 
 such an old man in our village. 
 
 I take my life as I find it, and live it 
 to myself as everyone does. As I am a 
 priest, I never give anything away ; it 
 is a natural law of my nature not to 
 give, but always to receive. I once 
 23 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 asked a tramp why he did not beg 
 me for anything, and I inquired of hi 
 whether I looked a mean fellow, or 
 I looked as if I had not anything 
 give away. He said he did not knc 
 why he had not asked, but that soil 
 how he knew that I was not the ki 
 of gentleman to beg from ; he also add 
 as he went on, " The woman behind i 
 will ask you," and so she did, b^ut g 
 nothing. 
 
 Looking backward, looking forwai 
 looking around me in search of e 
 greatest pleasure next to mending e 
 railings, I can say without lying th 
 I find it in reading a good book. I 
 not know any good thing that is 
 good as this. But I must have a bo( 
 to my mind. I do not object to ai 
 kind of story, — to travel, to pig-stickii 
 even ; but it must be something with 
 soul. If it be a story, let it have a toui 
 of human blood about it ; what I wa 
 24 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 is a real mind's battleground, with 
 sweat and agony. I like an author 
 who has seen— who |has lived, what he 
 is writing about ; I hate a book that 
 tells only half the m^n does and in- 
 vents the other half : I like the whole 
 man in his work, — his body, his hands 
 and his eyes, and even his Ijelly. And 
 I like best to read of actual .moving, 
 working life ; of ships as Conrad writes 
 of them, or anything else that has a 
 real touch of moving, itching, speaking 
 life about it. Let me have the whole 
 •body of the man as well as his brain 
 in his book. 
 
 A book that I love, and of all books 
 the most intensely human, is Wesley's 
 Journal. He is a worshipful priest of 
 his hands, as Malory would have said ; 
 he speaks with the fervour of God and 
 rides with the fervour of the Devil. 
 There are no cobwebs about his> ser- 
 mons even ; he let the winds of heaven 
 into his life, the sly old heathen ! He 
 
 25 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 was called, I suppose, as many bad 
 names as any person upon earth or in 
 heaven. But how human he was ; how 
 his human hatred and malice show up 
 the man as a man, and not a pitiful 
 humbug as most of us are ; and he 
 could bring down his fist when he 
 wished to. He was a bad husband, 1 
 know it ; but let any young lady with 
 a white fur muff and neat ankles, who 
 wants to marry a John — more John 
 than Wesley — find out a little what 
 manner of man he is, before she trips 
 up to the altar beside him ; and if she 
 is wise, she will turn back and find 
 "some sober bank-manager instead, whose 
 name 'may very well be something else 
 than John. John Bunyan would have 
 called Wesley a cock of the right kind, 
 but a wild cock, a cock that stra:yed, 
 a cock that would ride without a wink 
 sixty miles before breakfast, "with a 
 driving rain in our faces," rather than 
 listen to the gentle upbraidings of a 
 
 2.6 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 sober partner at home. And this other 
 John who is the true saint — whereas 
 Wesley is the sinner— this other John 
 had ever that strange quaint love of 
 all weak things ; he might well have 
 been a Russian peasant ; a marvellously 
 loving man he must have been and very 
 tender too to all ^bout him ; it would 
 have been a hellish thing to have cast 
 stones at this man's belief. The thing 
 was life and death to him ; he could not 
 defend it like John Wesley, who knew 
 the little hidden ways of his Lord. 
 
 Everyone treated Bunyan with kind- 
 ness, with tolerance; there must be 
 some good in man. It is true that 
 they put informers like black rooks 
 into the trees, but they did not run 
 mad bulls at his meetings, or drag his 
 preachers through ponds. I suspect 
 one had to be a brave man to take 
 John Wesley into a corner and tell 
 him quietly in his ear that one did not 
 believe in a God. Some of the young 
 27 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 gentlemen who broke in drunk to his 
 meetings wei^e sometimes pretty roughly 
 handled. 
 
 Wesley's humour is always bubbling 
 over, try as he might to keep it down. 
 And how he loved to make the people 
 fall and rave at his meetings ; and he 
 went about afterwards counting them 
 as though they were so many dead 
 sheep. I would have walked miles to 
 have heard him, arid, by heaven, I 
 would have tumbled over, too, if I 
 could have done it. It is no small 
 thing to be taken out of this careworn, 
 weary, everyday life, and behold instead 
 a vision of yourself as a damned sinner 
 with the fire of Hell at your feet, and 
 to roar out, feeling that the very devils 
 had hold of you. And after all this, as 
 they almost always did, to receive the 
 pardon ; to hear the voice from above ; 
 and to sleep in peace with the Grace 
 of God upon your pillows. It was 
 no small thing that Wesley could fill 
 28 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 thousands of death-beds with immortal 
 longings and a certainty of salvation ; 
 if they were all lies and cheating, they 
 were certainly romantic lies and joyful 
 madness ; and if death can be cheated 
 of its sting, why, then, let us cheat it, if 
 we can ! Wesley could give hope at 
 the last, even if it were a mad hope ; 
 and who of us has not said many times, 
 " What must I do to be saved ? " It is 
 one of the most curious feelings that I 
 know, this one of being on the ^ide of 
 God, on the safe side. Sometimes in 
 my life I have been able to go a little 
 towards this feeling, and to know what 
 it is like ; to go just near enough to 
 the door to want to get in, and to be 
 made quite ill-tempered when my old 
 doubts drove me away. 
 
 Another book that sometimes pleases 
 me, and I like the sober colour of its 
 binding, is the Bible ; and what a book 
 of blood and tears ! Think of all the 
 human eyes that have read all this very 
 29 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 Strange matter ; think of all the humai 
 hearts that have read terror and hop< 
 and death into these pages. Thi 
 human element must make the boot 
 at least of interest to everyone. Hov 
 it has eaten into the heart of man, hov 
 it has torn at his vitals and lashed hin 
 with his blood. How it utters th( 
 moods of God with a great and dee| 
 voice, crying, weeping, hating, and end- 
 ing up in utter madness. The divine 
 fear flows in great waves through its 
 pages, drowning many that meet ii 
 there, and even a child sees something 
 terrible about this book. It tells ol 
 men walking in dreams in the garder 
 of God, singing and praying and telling 
 Eastern tales under the moods of God 
 And how well it keeps ( to the eartl 
 and the things of the earth, the poetrj 
 of the belly of life. We can see the 
 dark men wandering under the sun oj 
 the desert, walking in the cool of the 
 evening, throwing a spear and shooting 
 30 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 with an arrow. It shows you a man 
 breaking a hole in his own wall, as a 
 sign from God ; — what a mood to be 
 in ! Another eating honey out of the 
 bones of a lion ; and at the end man 
 comes to Christ, the human child, the 
 child of the moods of God ; and then 
 the Agony in the Garden, 
 
 We all read our own life in this 
 book, our beginning and our end. The 
 world is a garden to us all at first,, 
 and thorns and nettles come only too 
 quickly ; but we may find a good poet 
 among the nettles, and perhaps a Ruth. 
 Or it may be our destiny under some 
 mood or other to marry a harlot, and 
 when, as no doubt the Prophet did, we 
 make her an honest woman, she will 
 have plenty of time to preach to us 
 of our own failings. 
 
 It was not easy for man to bear the 
 heavy weight of the moods without 
 Christ, and He is welcomed by all the 
 31 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 weak ones in the earth, and not withoi 
 cause, for the end must be the agon 
 in the garden that only very old sinnei 
 seem to escape. And how can th 
 play be acted without the last scene 
 It cannot be complete without the em 
 If man had been able to sneak int 
 another life the Bible would never hav 
 been needed. The moods of Hii 
 above are too great and terrible to carr 
 the soul of man with them, when the 
 pass the dark waters. It is well thi 
 our end should be perfect and utter, an 
 we know it is well. We poor mortal 
 ^ — at least the weak ones amongst u 
 the others don't care, — we poor morta 
 play with the romance of another li: 
 as a babe would with a celluloid to' 
 and when the fire touches it, in 
 moment it is gone. 
 
 Everything that we do and thin 
 
 under the moods is put into the Bible 
 
 the Bible tells us all we can ev( 
 
 know about ourselves. In our liv 
 
 32 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 the Prophets sing wild songs ; Ruth 
 lies down by Boaz ; David steals the 
 cakes ; Mary washes Christ's feet with 
 her hair ; and Samuel hews Agag to 
 pieces before the Lord. All the 
 cruelty, all the terror, all the poetry 
 of the Bible is acted in our lives ; that 
 is why it is the religious book that will 
 live ; it is true, because it is true to lif(^ 
 and true to man. We may well sorrow 
 over the sorrows of our Lord, for one 
 day the nails will be driven into our 
 own hands. A little pain that we feel 
 in our bodies may be the beginning of 
 a fatal disease ; a thought that anchors 
 in our minds may be the prelude to a 
 fierce madness. We pass our days ^ as 
 gaily as we can, but the Bible is always 
 near, and try how we may to escape, 
 God will win. The book of our 
 tragedy is in our doors, open it and know 
 what we are and how we shall end. 
 
 And our best books follow the same 
 c 33 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 plan, and try to show the same sai 
 story with a gay laugh. Shakespear( 
 plays in the field of our follies with ; 
 light hand, and like the Bible he wouh 
 show us pur heart's blood held up b] 
 a gay fool in cap and bells ; only h 
 Shakespeare, there is a great deal mori 
 of the love of the Devil than of th< 
 fear of God. Shakespeare took awaj 
 the clouds of God and put the sunshin< 
 of his own head and pointed beard ir 
 their place. As a matter of fact al 
 books tell the same tale, and advisf 
 men to look into all kinds of holes anc 
 corners for honey to make their lives 
 sweet. 
 
 If ever I wrote a book I would like 
 to show that the continued touch ol 
 life gives us a joy that we may well try 
 to understand, and in books this touch 
 of life is what pleases me most. There 
 is something in the spirit of these 
 modern days that makes me feel that 
 I am wasting time when I am reading, 
 34 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 and that "something" must be the 
 iron-eyed, restless, nail-making devil 
 that tries to put petrol into every man's 
 belly, and would turn the world into 
 a scurvy heap of scurrying ants, all 
 running every way inside large white 
 eggs that move themselves, a great 
 many times bigger than the little ants. 
 And even I that live in the wilderness, 
 sitting in my own hut between the 
 hills that are now covered with yellow 
 gorse flowers, — even I, with brown 
 t)read and tea upon the table, and my 
 feet to the fire, — even I, sitting thus in 
 the desert, feel the devil tugging at my 
 coat and shouting in my ear that I 
 ought to be doing something in order 
 to help the nail-makers to iron over 
 the whole world. It is terrible to 
 think th^t the evil smell of modern oil 
 has got to me, and that the vile working 
 devils would even try to pump petrol 
 into my soul. In heaven's name let 
 those that make work into a god with 
 35 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 Brummagem name, take him out of 
 ly way ; I do not like that kind of 
 od. 
 
 Do not think, O reader, that I mean 
 ) revile the kind of work that I see 
 ass my garden. I see an old cart 
 ■undling along filled with turnips, 
 oing about a mile an hour ; I see a 
 ibbit-catcher half hidden in a rabbit 
 ole, quietly wondering where to set 
 is next snare, and turning at last his 
 !ow steps to the inn to exchange a 
 ibbit for beer. No, it is the work 
 liat bites you that I hate — work with 
 foreman biting behind ; not the work 
 f a ploughboy who has plenty of time 
 D think of his dinner and to sing a 
 ang ; but the work that has no song 
 ti it at all, the work tliat is sheer, bare, 
 ile toil. 
 
 And let us all bless religion, for it 
 an, like a pleasant timely illness, take 
 fien away from their cursed everlasting 
 36 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 toil. Where work is the most, religion 
 is the least thing in the land. And 
 religion, so the task-masters say, might 
 very well do more harm than the 
 drink, if it takes the line of least resist- 
 ance. In their heart of hearts the task- 
 masters 'fear the priest ; that is why 
 they try so hard and succeed so well 
 in making a false priest ; they do not 
 mind the Lord God, but they do not 
 like the Son of Man. I wonder if we 
 shall ever understand that the world is 
 not made for work but for Joy, And 
 I who am trying to understand, why 
 should not I be left in peace to eat 
 and walk amongst the clean rain-swept 
 hills and to try to get under the moods 
 of God ? 
 
 Come and take and eat this morning 
 with me, a bowl of porridge with salt, 
 bread crisped by the fire, tea, the virgin 
 herb of the sun, and brown sugar, 
 the sweetness of our Mother's breast. 
 Shall we go out and slay a lamb of the 
 37 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 flock if we have a mind to a feast ? 
 Why should we not cut a throat or 
 stick a pig, and cook it over a great 
 fire ? But I prefer parched corn ; I 
 prefer to grow some genial honest sea- 
 cabbage in my garden, or to transform 
 some ugly worn bits of copper into 
 shining white eggs. It is well to leave 
 too many dinners alone, and too big 
 feasts ; for if we eat a great many very 
 large dinners, the dinners will most 
 likely end by eating us. 
 
 All praise be to Wine, but should 
 not wine be kept for those selected 
 moments when we meet the ones that 
 we love, the children of our hearts ? 
 I do not like always to see wine on 
 the table ; it is often stale, and the 
 decanter not overfull ; and there are 
 often dregs that the unwary guest has 
 to finish ; and worst of all the host 
 wonders if there will be just enough. 
 Throw such dregs to the pigs. When 
 38 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 I take wine I like bottles, or better still 
 a goodly hooped barrel in the cellar 
 and the wine drawn in fantastic jugs. 
 I like there to be around the table 
 three or four companions, but no more 
 than the number of the bottles, and 
 no women. And there ought to be a 
 ritual, a crowning of the cups ; cups 
 of silver and gold ; a feast of wine is 
 quite worth the trouble of reading the 
 writing upon the wall. 
 
 Sometimes, but alas only too seldom, 
 comes to me out of the heavenly pres- 
 ence the mood of loving Tolerance, 
 that most gentle of the moods of God. 
 It is then that I regard the world as a 
 garden and the people as good children ; 
 it is the mood in which everyone is 
 forgiven ; it is the mood that makes 
 me say to myself, " It is good for me 
 to be here," and to say to other people, 
 "It is good for you to be near me." 
 It is a mood that would pick out of 
 39 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 every man's life pearls, and see joy in 
 every hardship. It is a mood that 
 whispers joy to the sick man and tells 
 him of the wonderful stillness of death. 
 This mood is full of summer blessed- 
 ness, of cool places amidst great and 
 fair trees ; of rich banks of summer 
 flowers ; of the noontide when the 
 labourer lays him down to rest. Under 
 this blessed mood the winds of heaven 
 are still, and the mind of man is filled 
 with peace, that is truly and really the 
 Peace of God. Alas, this mood stays 
 with me but a short time. 
 
 I want to manage myself as well as 
 I can, but it is not easy to manage 
 myself when I am tired ; when I am 
 tired I can do nothing else but walk 
 up and down. At those times I am a 
 great trouble, a great worry to myself; 
 I do not obey the rules that I have set 
 up' to guide me ; I do not even obey 
 myself. If I say, " Go out for a walk 
 40 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 in the rain," I do not go. If I order 
 myself to write letters, I do not write 
 them. It is no good. This kind of 
 "being tired" is a mood of despair, 
 and when despair gets hold of you there 
 is no escape till the ugly thing lets go. 
 Perhaps it is possible for some to get 
 good even out of this mood, for God 
 hides His gold in queer places ; despair 
 may be a kind of winter in the summer 
 of your day. The sap has sunk like 
 lead into your heels and you feel as 
 though you could howl like a winter's 
 wolf. This hopeless despair, by bring- 
 ing you to the earth, raises you again ; 
 it changes your blood, and drives you 
 with vicious kicks forward into a new 
 pasture. It makes a way for you out 
 of your . own misery, and creates a new 
 mind out of your unrest : that — with 
 a new beginning. But I can never 
 escape, I can only wait until the mood 
 lets go, and meanwhile the teeth of the 
 mood bite me to the bone, and the 
 41 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 black cruelty cuts at the very roots 
 my being ; and when it has hold of i 
 I can do nothing ; I cannot even « 
 The City oj Dreadful Night. When 
 am like that I know there is noth 
 to be done — nothing. When I 
 like that I feel as if mind and body 
 hemmed in by black darkness, and tl 
 if I move I shall touch the jag^ 
 edges of a rusty knife, held in the cla 
 of an ugly round-headed demon ; a 
 so I wait and hope that this mood 
 God will not last long. 
 
 When we were all of us quite natu 
 beasts of, the earth, we were able 
 take and enjoy the life near to us ; 1 
 being grown into men, we have got ii 
 the bad habit of looking forward, a 
 by ^looking forward we quite lose i 
 present. I want to take every momi 
 as a fact in itself of special inten 
 and as a moment that belongs to r 
 Every moment that I have to spe 
 42 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 does belong to me, and the moments 
 may be gold or dross as I choose to make 
 them. Why should I let a moment pass 
 me without taking it and finding a 
 fairy food for my thought ? I like to 
 have a plan [to fit the kind of day that 
 I expect to come ; I like to know a 
 little how I want to treat the day, be- 
 fore I find out how the day will treat 
 me. So that if I am bitten by one hour, 
 I have got a muzzle ready for the next. 
 And I like to remind myself very often 
 that the day ends in sleep, and that 
 sleep is a passing good thing for a man. 
 To me by no means seldom comes the 
 thought (that is, in truth, only the push 
 of the old animal behind), that the day 
 is wasted — I have done nothing ; and a 
 good thing too if I have done nothing — 
 the most pleasant and the most useful 
 way that anyone can spend a day is to 
 do nothing. 
 
 May my pride help me, poor foolish 
 43 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 mortal that I am, with my insane de- 
 sire to do things ! Has not all this 
 same sad day the breath of life passed 
 into my lungs — is it then nothing to 
 breathe ? And I have eaten and touched 
 the fruits of the earth. How do I 
 know that some God may not have 
 rested beside me during my idleness, and 
 His breath may have mingled with 
 my breath, and His thought with my 
 thought ? How can I tell that even in 
 this sad day of nothing done, a wave of 
 thought, beginning in a tiny ripple,'may 
 not have been conceived in me ? And, 
 besides, what man, what king, what 
 priest can do anything more than live ? 
 It has taken long enough to make a 
 man, and now a man sits in disgrace and 
 hates himself because in one day he has 
 done nothing. What after all are thq 
 very wonderful doings of man worth ? 
 Very likely by doing nothing we may 
 be going a little way on the right road, 
 and by doing a great deal we may only 
 44 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 36 going round the same old way 
 igain, the same old way that leads to 
 ;ommon ugly rows of houses, munici- 
 pal buildings, and petrol-filled machines. 
 I, too, for a long while, have looked 
 round this corner and that corner for 
 God's secret, and at last I have dis- 
 covered that I can do very well if I 
 loiter through my life without knowing 
 any secret at all ; and who can say 
 that there is ahy secret to know ? It is 
 quite clear, and quite proven, that men 
 breathe when they are born and not 
 when they die ; and there are other 
 matters quite as clear to me. It is my 
 wish to be an intelligent creature that, 
 has no desire to get more than just the 
 plain grass and sun that are quite easy 
 to get, and to wrap myself up in winter 
 in a woollen blanket. The excitement 
 of going out to pick up a few sticks is 
 all the hunting that I want ; and all 
 the gallantry that I want is sometimes 
 to see in summer a little piece of pink 
 45 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 or white on the side of a hill a mile or 
 two away. I am easy to please and I 
 never want to do anything that hurts 
 anyone ; — why should I ? I should not 
 like to see the blood of my neighbour if 
 I dug at him with a knife. And why 
 should I want to hurt anyone when 
 I can enjoy reading Tristram Shandy ? 
 The uttermost I can do is to try my 
 best to hate. But I do not like to hate 
 anyone that is too near ; there ought to 
 be a good wide space between a man 
 and his neighbour. 
 
 It is my business to find out what I 
 value in the world, and by no means 
 to pay any regard to what other people 
 value. Christian — Bunyan's pilgrim — 
 all of a sudden, while he was walking in 
 the fields, became aware that he was of 
 value ; and it was then that he became 
 for the first time in his life a really 
 proud man, and a man who could walk 
 his own way whatever Church and 
 46 
 
OF A .HERMIT 
 
 State and family chose to say to him. 
 I only require to believe in myself, and 
 then everything that I do will be well 
 done. No two people look even at the 
 same daisies in the same way, and my 
 way is the best way for me. I have 
 the moments of my life to spend, I 
 have myself, what more can I want ? 
 
 In the old days I used to tie myself 
 up in a mystic knot, that I never could 
 undo ; neither could I ever explain what 
 it meant. Now I leave all mystery to 
 come and go with the moods. If a mood 
 comes and therein is hidden a vision, 
 I welcome it and believe ; for there 
 is a mood in which God even believes 
 in Himself, and in that mood He begets 
 the belief of the world. And I am will- 
 ing to believe, too, when it comes to me. 
 I take and eat of the mystic fruit ; only 
 when the fruit is taken away I do not 
 pretend that I have it still. How often 
 has my body been the home of carking 
 care, and vile, dire forebodings, or silly 
 47 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 ignorance, or turbid folly ! And I have 
 had to live a long time before I was 
 able to open my eyes and see myself. 
 
 To have the soul and teeth of a lion 
 and the body of a tramp, is the way to 
 tread on this world as it ought to be 
 trodden on. I know that I am an 
 enemy to the people of the world as 
 they are. I do not like the way they 
 look at me. Why is it that when I am 
 doing my work, the people of the world 
 look at me as though I were doing 
 something wrong ? " There he is again, 
 digging in his garden." 
 
 I suppose that I am the kind of per- 
 son that whatever I do is a criminal 
 offence. I must not even water my 
 flowers, or walk down the road, or throw 
 a stone at a rat, or read the paper in a 
 corner under a little bush of May. 
 No one ever likes to be understood ; 
 perhaps that is why there is a jeering 
 twinkle in the eyes of those that look 
 48 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 at me as I cut my grass. Perhaps the 
 people think that I understand them. 
 If they do think so, they are certainly 
 to be excused for the way they look 
 at me, but they are wrong. I do not 
 pretend to understand them, for to 
 understand the people would be to 
 understand God, at least to understand 
 what God ought never to be. 
 
 To give too good heed to God's 
 njioods often gets a man shut up inside 
 prison walls. That is why it is well 
 to understand one's own mind, so that 
 when we find a mood pulls us along a 
 road to destruction, we can hold back 
 a little before it is too late. I have 
 never found that God plays at His 
 moods. If He does jest at all, it is a 
 very monstrous jest, and the sort of 
 jest that does not appeal to me person- 
 ally, though I like to read about it in 
 the papers. 
 
 I very much dislike people who are 
 p 49 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 always the same ; for no man can be 
 always the same unless he is so much 
 of an animal that the moods pass over 
 him like the clouds. 
 
 I notice in this tract that I am now 
 writing, that sometimes I appear to be 
 an infidel and sometimes a believer, 
 sometimes a Christian and sometimes a 
 heathen, and every brave man is just 
 the same as I am ; for no one but a 
 coward hides his head in the sand when 
 the mood that he is afraid to see -goes 
 by. If a man is sincere he will change 
 his opinion with every mood, at least 
 about the things that belong to the 
 spirit. I do not change my ideas in 
 some things, because God is a spirit, 
 and though in the earth we have the 
 Son of God to live with, God Him- 
 self keeps always in the spirit of His 
 moods. I change my mind most in 
 what I believe ; but as a rule I do 
 the same thing. I am always polite 
 50 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 to the world, and I try not to tell 
 anyone when God's moods break in 
 upon me ; or when a tongue of fire sud- 
 denly devours all the thought that I love 
 best ; this is what I expect to happen. 
 But it is a little hard when God's 
 moods shatter my belief in Him, though 
 no mood of God can take away the 
 love of Christ ; for that kind of love 
 that Christ first planted is the only 
 flower that can live under all the 
 moods ; and so it is possible, nay de- 
 sirable, for the greatest infidel upon 
 earth to love Christ ; for in some 
 curious way the Son of Man is in Earth 
 and in Heaven, though this double life 
 is rather obscure. However, His love 
 has been felt by men even under the 
 Garment of God, and in the darkest 
 terrors of His moods ; and also I have 
 felt it while I have been quite quietly 
 picking buttercups #with my two little 
 boys in the fields. 
 
 51 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 All priests ought to be trained as 
 unbelievers, for unbelief is the only 
 good soil for the believing mood to 
 grow in ; so long as unbelief is not 
 fixed to that foolish "idea that we are all 
 so proud of, the idea, I mean, that we 
 know the Truth. How, I should like 
 to know, can I know thg Truth when 
 God Himself is always contradicting 
 it ? If I say anything is true, then a 
 mood comes and casts the thing called 
 Truth to the winds, and my idea of 
 God goes with it. If I say I believe 
 only in matter, I have to be alwa)rs 
 proving it to myself in order to keep 
 out the belief in God. 
 
 That is why so many people are 
 arguing whether one belief or another 
 is true ; because each knows that if he 
 does not keep it up, his side of the 
 question will slip through his fingers. 
 And a man is most unhappy when he 
 has always to be fighting the mood of 
 belief or unbelief, in order to keep the 
 52 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 one or the other simply because he 
 happens to think that one or other of 
 the ideas belongs to him ; it doesn't. 
 Like all other ideas, it belongs to God. 
 It is just man's conceit. He stands 
 like a cock upon a dunghill and crows 
 out his belief; or else he holds his 
 watch in his hand and says, "Let God 
 strike me dead, if he is a God, in ten 
 minutes." And perhaps the next day 
 this very man believes in God, for the 
 liiood of belief is upon him before he 
 takes out his watch again to prove ih6 
 contrary, and then he has to do all he 
 can to pretend to himself tha,t he does 
 not believe. 
 
 It is not for me to say how long the 
 different moods are wont to stay ; every- 
 one in this matter must judge for him- 
 self. And it is no use crying out against 
 the mood that hurts you ; it is better 
 to go and dig in the garden. 
 
 I can see, and so can any other who 
 S3 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 can think for himself, how good a thing 
 it is that God lives in us in no fixed 
 mood. If He did, it would render the 
 Advent of Christ an impossibility. And 
 how cruelly Christ was treated by the 
 men who had fixed the moods by their 
 law shows that if man could keep God 
 out of his life, he would gladly do it ; 
 just as he would like to keep out death, 
 war, plague, earthquake, love, wisdom, 
 pity, or any other state that hurts his 
 appetite, and prevents him from gather- 
 ing together the things of this world, 
 and from leaving them to his children. 
 And it is easy to see how man, with 
 his instinctive cunning, caught at the 
 fixed belief in a distant God as some- 
 thing tangible that would get this near 
 God and His upsetting moods quite 
 out of his life. Man thought — foolish 
 fellow — that if he always held on to the 
 tail of the bull it would not gore him, 
 but this bull has not got a tail. 
 
 S4 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 I am ashamed at the way we eat and 
 drink and sleep as if none of these 
 things concern us in the least. We 
 take our dinner just as if it were no 
 great matter, when every sitting down 
 to meat should be a feast to the Lord. 
 We cast our bread into the dust to the 
 dogs, when we ought to hand it to them 
 in silver dishes. Everything that we 
 eat should be sacred to our palates. I 
 like to make a wonder out of every 
 little act, because every little act is a 
 wonder. 
 
 The 'Simple life — so called — is not 
 the simple life at all ; it is the deeper 
 life. Th§ simple life is the life of 
 motor cars, of divorces, of monkey 
 dances, of hunting cats and hares and 
 foxes, of shooting people and playing 
 games like ferrets. All these things 
 are the natural, the simple life of a 
 man. Anyone can get pleasure in 
 these ways ; put a man on a horse, and 
 55 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 a fox or a cat before him running away, 
 and the man will be simple and happy. 
 And the other pleasures are just as 
 simple. 
 
 The best joy is not got quite so easily. 
 I want to cultivate the kind of mind 
 that can turn stones into bread, a dull 
 hour into heavenly glory, and a dull 
 life into the life of a king. For what 
 we call dullness is really the best soil 
 we can dig in, because the gold that it 
 yields is very precious and very lasting. 
 I like to know that I am getting rich, 
 not by stealing from the poor, but by 
 getting something more out of myself ; 
 I want to get all I can out of myself, 
 and what I want to get is the thing 
 that shall please me. 
 
 The fact that it is hard to get any- 
 thing out of oneself drives people to 
 go and get what they can out of others. 
 I do not blame them. I never blame 
 anybody ; I never even blame myself. 
 The light of my lamp gives light to the 
 56 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 moods of God that overshadow me as 
 I write ; the air surrounds the moods 
 when it surrounds me ; and the moods 
 rest in me when I sleep. I try to 
 dpepen, to broaden, to open my life in 
 every way ; to stand no more wondering 
 how to be happy, but to see and feel 
 and touch. I like to touch the waves 
 of the sea and the mould in my garden ; 
 I like to touch the heart of man ; I like 
 to touch the grass and moss of the fields. 
 
 It is only when I meet men that I 
 am ashamed, and it is when I am 
 ashamed that my love bites me, and I 
 feel pain as though I had been bitten 
 by an adder. Sometimes when I walk 
 along the street of our little toWn and 
 men pass me, and I see them talking 
 to each other, I feel ashamed. There 
 is something very ugly about the im- 
 mortal part of a man, — his greed, his 
 getting on, his self-sacrifice, his giving 
 to the poor. I suppose there can be 
 S7 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 nothing beautiful in anything that has 
 gone on a long while without changing ; 
 it is only the ugly part of us that can 
 live through so many generations of 
 flesh and blood. I long for man to 
 repent and to be saved from his im- 
 iportality, so that I may not feel 
 ashamed when I get into the road to 
 let him pass on the pavement. 
 
 At last, thank goodness, I have not 
 the slightest value for my own opinion 
 or for anything that I may say, or 
 think, or write. I now take it for 
 granted that I am nearly always as far 
 from the Truth as Mr. Gladstone was, 
 and I do not care if I am. I am not 
 here to do right or wrong, or to teach 
 anyone ; I am here to live. And at 
 last I have found out where the 
 pleasure of living hides ; I know now 
 the moments that I have most enjoyeil, 
 and these moments may come again ; 
 there is not one that may not come 
 again, even in old age. 
 58 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 Youth is silly and selfish ; it is often 
 miserable and foolish ; its good looks 
 are stuffed with foolish feelings that are 
 often as old as the world ; and its mind 
 is narrow, — it is always thinking a 
 thousand things too many about itself, 
 when one thing would do. Youth has 
 too many irons in the fire to be able 
 really to live. It is best to have before 
 you only two roads. This or That, this 
 life as it is, or nothingness. 
 
 I will try to remember a few of the 
 fairy hours that I have enjoyed most. 
 I remember one evening in late autumn, 
 when I walked with two very dear 
 companions into the shining lights of 
 a town, out of the dark country lanes. 
 The first lamp that we passed might 
 have been an immortal star. The first 
 street, the first moving creature, an old 
 woman carrying a bundle of gloves in 
 a black cloth bag, — no sinner entering 
 heaven could have had so much joy. 
 S9 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 The Streets grew broader and the lamps 
 brighter and the passers-by more gay, 
 and the whole town was a fairy palace 
 made for our delight, and we had only 
 to walk about and enjoy it. 
 
 And I remember under a white clifF, 
 where the sand was too hot to touch 
 and the sun's kiss kissed deep into my 
 soul. With a dear friend I partook of 
 a little bread and a tiny hard piece of 
 cheese and a little bottle of lime-juice, 
 and we parted it between us, and broke 
 the bread with a priest's hands, and ate 
 and drank as though we shared only 
 one child's heart between us ; and after- 
 wards we each smoked a cigarette that 
 tasted of cool woods. 
 
 And one other walk, that I liope in 
 my last hour to remember ; it was in a 
 cold February, and we walked far over 
 the downs, over the white dead grass, 
 dry and crisp in the wind ; and we 
 rested a little and ate in a place where 
 a little mound rose above the hill. 
 60 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 And we watched, in the valley beneath 
 us, tiny children running to school 
 beside a little blue trickle of water, 
 and large gulls were washing and flap- 
 ping their wings in the water. The 
 children called to them and waved their 
 arms, and the gulls rose and spread like 
 snowflakes over the valley, and the 
 children ran on, holding each othfer's 
 hands and singing. 
 
 The cup I wish to drink is the, cup 
 of the earth's blood. I wish to drink 
 deep of the silence, the deep mists, the 
 growing corn, ^nd the movements of 
 birds. The very life that I feel around 
 me should drug me, and each motion 
 and movement and tongue of fire that 
 I feel ought to pass like rich wine into 
 my being. The very stones of the road 
 should yield up to me their thoughts. 
 And no doubt that was what Christ 
 meant, when He spoke about the stones 
 becoming men. To force upon our 
 <5i 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 wonderful bodies the drunkenness of 
 prepared wine is to sour the imagina- 
 tion and to prevent us from ever getting . 
 the ddicious joy of real drunkenness. 
 
 I try to be at peace with all my 
 thoughts and to welcome even my anger 
 when it breaks out upon me. I watch 
 myself as if I were far away, as if I 
 were a cloud passing in the sky, or a 
 distant sheep feeding upon the hillside. 
 I have yet to change a great deal before 
 I can reach the goal of happiness. I 
 still feel that I am in part immortal. 
 I still find a curious pleasure in possess- 
 ing a handful of bright gold coins. I 
 still desire cunningly to defraud. And 
 often, however much I disbelieve in 
 my opinion, I think I am right. And 
 feeling as I do the very movements of 
 God, I do not like to be treated as a 
 poor man who cannot afford a day 
 labourer to dig his garden. 
 
 62 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 I suppose my class, the priest class, 
 craves for love more than any other 
 kind of human, as it feels itself sink- 
 ing into extinction. I do not possess 
 enough of the attributes of immortality, 
 — greed, hardness of heart, cunning — 
 all the biting instincts of the animal. 
 I have them enough to pain, but not 
 enough to save. I cannot help think- 
 ing that the immortal man out of his 
 abundance might give me a kindly look 
 as he passes me in the road, a kindly 
 look out of the body of hatred. This 
 is my last priestly affliction ; I desire to 
 be loved, and loved for nothing. This 
 is my last foolish hope ; I want to be 
 Ipve^d by men. 
 
 Love is the last sadness of the priest, 
 and men turn away from him because 
 he tries to love them ; for have not the 
 people that immortal hatred that is 
 better than love ? 
 
 My wish is that I may understand 
 63 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 myself. I know quite enough about 
 other people ; they show me their ways 
 only too clearly. I want to appear 
 interesting in my own eyes ; I want to 
 be something of value to myself. I do 
 not want to love. I want to study 
 myself, because I am the nearest and 
 most interesting creature that I know. 
 I would like to be believed in, so that I 
 might have some ' guide to the belief in 
 myself. Left quite alone, my interest 
 in myself is apt to dwindle. 
 
 I like to be contented with myself in 
 every way, and to mistrust everything 
 that is not mine. I am sure that my 
 sour grapes are not so very sour, nor 
 are the sweet grapes of my neighbours 
 so very sweet ; and it is indeed possible 
 that all kinds of grapes have very much 
 the same taste ; the best fruit can only 
 give out so much sweetness and no 
 mbre. 
 
 With the terrible moods of God 
 64 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 moving about me, as dark clouds, and 
 then the lightning, and sometimes the 
 ominous silence and calm, I turn to the 
 stranger upon earth that once learned 
 to bear the burden of God, calling Him 
 Father, and holding Him, as Atlas 
 held the world, upon His shoulders. I 
 turn to the stranger upon earth, He 
 who was not afraid to call the terrible 
 moods " Father," to take them into 
 His life, to bear with them, to love 
 them. And still more than that. He 
 dared also to become the shepherd of 
 men ; to live Himself as a man and to 
 fall before His Father's terrible mood 
 of blind rage working in men. He 
 alone dared to become one with the 
 spoiler and the spoiled. I bow my 
 head before this stranger of the Earth ; 
 and why should not I too sing a song 
 of belief in Him ? 
 
 It is the spring, and the apple- 
 blossom is beautiful because He is thero 
 E 65 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 in it. To love Him is the only good 
 thing in this world. It does not matter 
 if He is true ; He is beyond all Truth. 
 All things have breath in Him ; I feel 
 Him in the earth. When I hammer at 
 the rocks and break away fossils that 
 have been there for millions of yeJrs, 
 I am only going a little way into His 
 love. When I look up in the night 
 and see the light that has left a star 
 thousands of years ago, I can only see 
 a little way into His love. His love is 
 a terrible love — terrible and deep, hard 
 for a man to bear ; I have lived in it, 
 I know it. I hear people say, " Why 
 did He come here to this little Planet ; 
 why did He not leave it out ? " I 
 answer, " He leaves nothing out ; He 
 cannot give anything better than His 
 love ; it is of more worth than im- 
 mortality." 
 
 A future life is nothing to me ; His 
 love is everything. I study the rocks 
 and the stars ; I love old, very old his- 
 66 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 tory ; it gives me a breatli of Him. I 
 love to know that matter is infinite, for 
 His love is in all matter. A stone 
 that has never been touched by man is 
 touched by Him. The world says it is 
 not possible to believe like this, but I 
 know it is possible. I would never 
 dispute as to whether Christ lived or 
 not ; that does not matter. It does 
 not matter whether we live. Life is 
 wonderful, but we only feel alive when 
 we get near Him, for near Him even 
 Death liveth. He is the life stream of 
 the worlds ; we are all in that stream, 
 only we do not know that we are fed 
 every day by Him. 
 
 I know quite well He is the inost 
 unreal, the most unthilikable of ideas ; 
 but to feel Him is All ; to believe in 
 Him is nothing. We send His love to 
 the fartliermost star, and He will be 
 formed in that star. When He is near, 
 very near to us, then we feel His ter- 
 rible love and we kill Him. 
 67 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 Even now the mood of belief is gone 
 and I turn upon myself and cry out 
 against what I am writing ; I shake all 
 the thoughts of love about my ears, 
 and turn Christ into a worm again. I 
 look out again into the mist ; I sit and 
 watch the dim evening light that sad- 
 dens the hills ; I see the days pass, the 
 winter days ; and I taste the creatures, 
 the bread and the wine ; and I do not 
 feel His body in them, the bread and 
 the wine ! I feel the emptiness,^ the 
 unutterable emptiness of all the thoughts 
 in the world ; and I hearken to the re- 
 mote sounds of the sea. I wonder why 
 we can ever leave the simple clearness 
 of our lives, in order to crawl into the 
 underworld of mystery. I see all things , 
 common again and myself the com- 
 monest of all. I see the Eternal moods 
 casting men over and over again into 
 the same pit, and I see the Christ, a 
 poor dark Arab, lying beaten by the 
 rods of the Roman soldiers, because the 
 6S 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 wicked sisters of poetry chose him out 
 of all men to teach Truth — Truth that 
 is hateful to men. Christ, like the 
 first swallow, is a promise of summer, 
 but only too well we know that the 
 summer ends, and then comes "the 
 winter of our discontent." 
 
 Who can blame the men who choose 
 to live the simple life of swagger and 
 bluster and shame ? For all those who 
 step into other ways know what they 
 see, but they do not often dare to tell it 
 to others. I ought to be glad when I 
 see in every eye the cunning of deceit ; 
 "the getting eye," I might call it, for 
 in the lowest cunning there is the only 
 abiding happiness for man. That kind 
 of life can alone give him joy, under 
 the rule of the moods of God. The 
 lowest creatures alone have happiness, 
 and the children that do not know ; 
 and why should we teach them ? 
 When I look back at the past, I do not 
 6g 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 regard the moods of God at all ; I do 
 not care whether I have done good or 
 evil ; I do not care whether I cursed 
 or whether I blessed ; I do not care 
 whether I have been good or wise ; or 
 whether I have ever learned Latin ; I 
 do not care whether as a priest I have 
 kicked over my own altar. 
 
 This is what I care to remember. I 
 can feel now the warmth of a perfect 
 day in June ; I can see the bugloss on 
 the cliff, growing in little patches of 
 blue below the white chalk. And I 
 remember a night in winter when I 
 saw a white lamb lying quite dead 
 under a clear moon. I see now the 
 rough old black dog, blind of one eye, 
 that used to be asleep on the green in 
 the dog-days that are past ; and its 
 master, a wild old man with a great 
 stride and long beard who was always 
 hammering up pigsties. 
 
 I look back and see the common 
 70 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 things, the human things ; not God's 
 moods, or Christ, or the wonder that 
 is called man's soul. I believe that I 
 have shed more tears over my little 
 boy's broken engine that I dug up one 
 day in the garden, than over all the 
 killing of the Son of Man. I re- 
 member how I used to carry a little jug 
 and fetch the milk across the green ; 
 and I see now the daisies that came out 
 altogether one spring day ; and the 
 mild look of the red and white cow 
 that was always milked first and fed 
 upon the green before the others came 
 out. I look back again to the long 
 winters, to the caressing white mists 
 and silvery hoar-frosts ; and afterwards 
 the white May that always came but 
 first on our hedge. 
 
 No doubt, I, like everyone else who 
 knows, would gladly rid myself of the 
 deep, fierce, hidden feelings ; of the 
 wild moods of God that tear and baffle 
 us. How I wish that I could bring all 
 
 n 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 the dark moods up into the clear air 
 of a high mountain, and prevent them 
 from ever entering into man again ! I 
 long to bring all the hidden thoughts, 
 the gnashing of secret teeth into the 
 sun. God must come out of His 
 heaven, the devil out of his hell, and 
 Christ out of the soul, into the light of 
 the sun. 
 
 Let the terrible Gods come down 
 from on high. If they have prepared 
 a future life for us, let us prepare a 
 present life for them. And indeed that 
 is just what Christ the Son of God 
 would have us do. He is willing to 
 live with us in the sun ; let us open 
 our door to Him. I will take Him, 
 and all the rest of the heavenly hosts 
 can go, and He will not refuse to 
 come. All the deep thought and the 
 dread marvels of God can go ; all the 
 hidden fears and these secret terrors can 
 go. With the Son of Man beside me 
 ;2 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 I can defy the moods ; and even the 
 old Devil will cast his darts at me in 
 vain. 
 
 It is impossible for me, who am only 
 mortal, to keep away from the Son of 
 Man ; He is always ready to come in, 
 and I am not able to shut Him out ; 
 only those who have the immortal 
 cravings for life can do that. He will 
 not allow me to put Him away ; He 
 comes in because it is His right ; He 
 comes in because the heart of man is 
 His home. 
 
 It is well that I have reached this 
 silence, this quiet haven that I longed 
 for as a child, and could not find. As 
 a young man walking home in the 
 dusk of' the evening, I longed for it 
 then. And as a man, when I struck 
 about me breaking up old thoughts, 
 burning, thrusting, tearing, and at last 
 leaving myself naked, I longed for the 
 silence then. I have feared it ; I 
 thought that to reach it meant death, 
 73 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 the first step towards death, and I 
 struggled. I have tried to piece the 
 old thoughts together that as a man I 
 had broken. I was like a child, who, 
 thinking that she was too old to play 
 with her doll, had long ago left it at 
 the bottom of the cupboard ; but was 
 forced on a rainy day to find it again, 
 and to tie on its broken arna and find 
 it a new head. I sought for my broken 
 God again ; and put it together as it 
 used to be, before as a man I broke it 
 to pieces. 
 
 At last I begin to know myself; I 
 can now love the wonder that is be- 
 coming myself I live now as I wish 
 to live ; I take every day as it is, I 
 do not try to break the day to pieces as 
 I used to do. The days pass me like 
 hurrying girls on light feet. Years 
 ago I longed to hold them and find out 
 whajt secrets they had under their cloud 
 ^nd sunshine ; and now I know that it 
 74 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 is the days that long to find out my 
 secret. They cannot find it out ; they 
 are bound to the wheel, they must 
 dance on and on and make the young 
 men follow them. And they are caught 
 sometimes, these girl days ; they are 
 torn and broken and their evenings are 
 muddy. 
 
 In my life there is human life, that 
 is all — ^human life. If anyone wants 
 more than that, he must go beyond me 
 to find it. The moods hide God as 
 with a garment, but He can find me. 
 And He has found me ; and He speaks 
 His terrible words in the moods of my 
 life. It is no good to try to get out of 
 His way. Everywhere the hand of the 
 Devastator is upon Man, to press him 
 down to the earth. 
 
 Only at times under His yoke I have 
 
 been allowed to take a little nectar 
 
 from the flowers ; I have hidden my 
 
 hand in a waterfall of brown hair ; 1 
 
 75 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 have caught a hurried' kiss from a 
 breathing sunbeam. This is all we can 
 have — all. It is impossible to get 
 more out of the world than it can give. 
 It is ibest to ruminate like a cow. 
 
 The world is always, rain-swept and 
 sun-cracked, soaked with salt mists and 
 splashed with mud ; and our lives at 
 the best are broken and threadbare, 
 while death ever clings to life, slowly 
 devouring it. That is how we are 
 made ; and always the moods of God 
 fill us with madness, for that is how 
 He is made. 
 
 I have always longed to show to 
 myself and to make myself see where 
 true joy is to be found ; and I want to 
 really believe that life can be made a 
 beautiful thing. In the old days when 
 I held my head in the sand of mystery, 
 I thought that something wonderful 
 would happen to me ; and now I be- 
 lieve that the most wonderful thing is 
 76 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 that nothing wonderful happens. We 
 are, just as we are, and nothing else ; 
 are we not wonderful ' enough ? By 
 just holding up my hand I am often- 
 times filled by a divine vision ; by only 
 hearing the wind howl in the chimney, 
 I am filled with all the harmony of 
 m!usic. By eating bread I am fed with 
 the whole goodness and fullness of the 
 earth. And when the silent mood comes, 
 the calmness of immense seas and eter- 
 nal spaces fills me. 
 
 For a long time I hid my head under 
 the sand, and no wonder I could not 
 understand my own words. I know 
 now that the things of greatest value 
 can be had for the asking. I go into 
 the Palace of the Day, that Christ 
 opened, the Palace of True Joy. How 
 delicately and with what gladness should 
 everyone take part in the great festival ! 
 Thfe centre of life is always near ; it h 
 77 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 only the outer parts that are afar o 
 and hard to understand. 
 
 For a long while I have run aft( 
 the Chariot, and now I have climbed ii 
 I know now that the smallest hand] 
 will do to hold to any part of life, and 
 million bodies like mine can be forme 
 of one thought. All my little exper: 
 ences can be easily acted in any pai 
 of the earth. We have built up fc 
 ourselves such grotesque buildings c 
 thought, so high that when we reac 
 the top we have to fall off to th 
 ground. We are always forming sue 
 high destinies for ourselves, that w 
 have quite lost count of the creature c 
 the moods of God, that is ourself. 
 
 Whenever a vision has come to m( 
 it has always taken me and shown m 
 the delight of just living, — the joy c 
 things as they are, — of the earth as it ii 
 I have Seen only too clearly that m 
 happiness is taken from me because c 
 78 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 my desire to become something unut- 
 terable. How often has my wish been 
 to pretend to be something that I am 
 not, and to leave myself in the shade 
 while I follow my shadow in the sun. 
 I can see in every page of my life that 
 my happiness has been taken away be- 
 cause of my desire to get into another 
 life, rather than to live my own. No 
 doubf one day we shall find all the 
 mystic writers leaving their pens and 
 their burrowings into the unutterable 
 mystery of God's being, and instead 
 busy themselves all day long peacefully 
 planting cabbages. 
 
 God himself has been raised up on 
 high, like a stone cdlumn that has 
 only its mass to be proud of, and man 
 is always content to knock his foolish 
 head against the base. 
 
 I know that we have His moods to 
 
 create us, and the love of the Son of 
 
 Man to save us from ourselves, and' 
 
 that i^ All I know. Everyone is bound 
 
 19 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 to set his net in the sea of his life, and 
 to bring home in his net the fish that 
 he deserves or desires, as the case may 
 be ; and he devours them, or what is 
 more likely, they devour him. 
 
 I have described myself, and have 
 told of my hopes - and aspirations, of 
 my fears and of the way I dig in my 
 garden. But I am afraid I have given 
 quite a wrong idea, because in writing, 
 it is impossible to forget that you are 
 writing. When you are writing there 
 is always the wish to stab the heart of 
 the matter ; you want to get to the 
 exciting part of your thought, the part 
 of your thought that excites you. That 
 is why I have thrown all my stones at 
 one dog and left my hands empty. I 
 would like to think how a friend would 
 write about me, and it must be a friend 
 with a little wit, arid not a soul that 
 loves. 
 
 The first part of my confessions, tell- 
 So 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 ing haw I touch the earth and sky, 
 and the thoughts of tnan, are finished ; 
 and I would like to know what I look 
 like from their point of view. The 
 earth loves me, I think I may say that ; 
 the great divine Mother presence tells 
 quite clearly of her love. The hills do 
 not turn away ; they have no other pur- 
 suits, other wars, other things to make, 
 so that they must leave me alone. 
 There is something in being able to 
 laugh at a million years, and being 
 able to laugh at the proud overgrown 
 giants in Switzerland — that is what our 
 chalk downs can do. And they can 
 bear me up in their arms for my little 
 while, and not so much as feel that a 
 shadow of life has passed over them. 
 In them the moods of God burn hidden 
 like spent lightning, a dread forsaken 
 fire burning underground. 
 
 A few million years gives our hills 
 time to reflect upon the moods, and we 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 t 
 men need a little of the spirit of their 
 
 long-suffering, so that God Himself may 
 sink deep for a while, nay, may even be 
 buried in us. And were men ever to 
 act together as one man, which was 
 once dreamed of, then we should pre- 
 sent to the gods that calm upper sur- 
 face, that unperturbed grassy height, 
 and low meadow land, and upland fal- 
 low, so that the moods themselves could 
 sink deep into our matter. But alas, 
 our surface is weak and each little man 
 must needs be a bearer of good tidings ; 
 each little man must needs set himself 
 under the hammer, so that he on a very 
 dark night emits a spark, and cries out 
 in the night that he is saved, and in 
 the morning that he is damned. 
 
 The hills I love have a noble out- 
 ward presence like a faithful comrade ; 
 they stay with me even when it rains, 
 and they stay for more than two 
 nights ; I thank them for their silence 
 and their gifts. The flowers have an- 
 82 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 Other way with them ; they are not 
 so friendly. And I fear, it is sad to 
 think of it, that they have learned 
 from their creator how to hate. Ah ! 
 the pleasure to a rose when it can get 
 a thorn into a human finger ; and 
 think of the joy of a red berry when it 
 poisoned little Betsey ; or the merry 
 jests of a bunch of Mary buds that 
 once attracted a little boy into the 
 middle of a swamp, where he was 
 drowned. Flowers can speak almost 
 like women ; I have seen a very angry 
 look in the eyes of a white nettle, be- 
 cause it could not sting me ; and the 
 rage of a musk thistle when I steal its 
 fragrance without being pricked is quite 
 ladylike. 
 
 Above the flowers are the beasts, or 
 below them — there is always a little 
 doubt which to say. The beast loves 
 the man that has. tamed him ; yes, 
 sometimes. And the gentle creatures, 
 are they gentle ? Will not a dove fight 
 83 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 in its own way, as fiercely as a lion, for 
 all its pink eyes ? Take up a wild live 
 hare and hold it, and see ifj your 
 hands are not torn by its claws. The 
 moods are beginning to have claws in 
 the beasts ; but wait till we get to man. 
 I wonder what these beings, that are 
 made of the same fetufF as myself, make 
 of me. I do not think it would be much 
 good to take the opinion of a country- 
 man in this matter. A ploughman 
 critic would indeed speak his mind after 
 his own manner, and that not unworldly, 
 for the earthy wit of the peasant brines 
 the art of the critic to a very lean 
 level indeed, by judging simply by what 
 a man has. I own a cottage, therefore 
 my value to the clown is exa,ctly the 
 value of my cottage, plus the value of 
 my overcoat and the value of my 
 boots. I notice that the passers-by of 
 the fields always look at my boots. Do 
 they expect to see the cloven hoof, I 
 wonder ? 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 A gentleman came here qnce for the 
 shooting ; he came from town.- I may 
 as well say here that he belonged to 
 the immortal type of man ; and when 
 he was not shooting he attached him- 
 self to me, and he found me very ready 
 to listen to his bans mots, although 
 they were not quite in the same style 
 as our Saviour's. I will now, for a 
 little while, try to become this im- 
 mortal young man, who has now gone 
 somewhere else for the shooting. And 
 I will write a little story about myself 
 from the watch-tower of this young 
 man. In so doing I hope to get at the 
 other side of myself, that I could not 
 very well touch in the first part of my 
 confessions. 
 
 And now, soul of my soul, child of 
 the moon, I will begin ; I am trans- 
 formed. 
 
 " Mr. Thomas is the only name that 
 will suit the occupier of the red house 
 85 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 in the village of , Mr. Thomas is 
 
 so utterly different from his own name, 
 it would be a cap with a wrong colour 
 for him. His name should have come 
 from a simple man who once upon a 
 time, in a fit of sadness, begat a son. 
 I can never think of Mr. Thomas by 
 his real name. If I were to call out 
 ' Powys, Powys,' as I might to my 
 dog, I very much doubt whether I 
 should get any answer. If I were to 
 call him by his real name, this story 
 about him would appear to the public 
 to be quite untrue, for people would 
 say that such a name could not have 
 such a story. That is why I call him 
 Mr. Thomas. 
 
 " I would like to say, at the begin- 
 ning, that this type, the type of Mr. 
 Thomas, is not a type that I approve 
 of. I cannot say that I think that God 
 has expressed His divine purpose very 
 well in this kind of man — a man that 
 does not even know how to treat a 
 S6 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 tradesman, and who will thank a porter 
 for doing what he is paid to do. Mr. 
 Thomas has what I will call a very 
 careworn conscience, a conscience that 
 is quite unable to look after its own 
 interests. 
 
 " I am writing about him only ' as a 
 person that I have met ' — for Heaven's 
 sake understand that, good people. I 
 do not regard him as my friend, be- 
 cause no one could be that, unless he 
 were born under the same star. I used 
 to see him sometimes, that was all, and 
 walk with him a little, and allow him 
 to listen to a few little stories of my 
 own, and perhaps to gently instruct 
 him in the art of living a good life. 
 I may say here that I have no wish to 
 be damned with him ; neither do I 
 wish to be caught up in a cloud with 
 him and carried to heaven. 
 
 " Mr. Thomas is married, and he digs 
 in his garden. He looks rather like 
 a landscape artist who has spent ten 
 87 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 summers in trying to draw an old foot- 
 bridge, two willow trees, and a cow,, 
 and could never finish his picture be- 
 cause the cow would never lie down. 
 He looks as if he has spent all these 
 years in wondering why the cow would 
 never lie down ; and last of all, his 
 patience being quite exhausted, he 
 packed up his canvas and, after walk- 
 ing slowly home in deep thought, 
 began to dig in his garden. 
 
 " The garden that Mr. Thomas culti- 
 vated was round about his :house ; and 
 his house was in the middle of a grass 
 field ; and. anyone going past could see 
 the lines of potatoes when Mr. Thomas 
 planted them. And round the garden 
 were very old railings. I was talking 
 to Mr. Thomas one day, and leaning 
 over the railings, and they fell in 
 pieces. I said I was very sorry ; Mr. 
 Thomas only smiled. And I said, 
 being annoyed, ' Why can't you get 
 some good iron railings round your 
 88 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 garden ? ' Mr, Thomas looked at me 
 in extreme sorrow. 
 
 " I remember first seeing Mr. Thomas 
 under the great white nose of the Giant 
 ClifF, for his village is near the sea. I 
 had been shooting rabbits with a rifle, 
 and I was beginning to climb the 
 narrow path that leads to the top of 
 the cliff, when I noticed a man rfioving 
 along by the rocks towards the path. 
 While I was on the shore he must have 
 been amongst the rocks, and now he 
 began to climb the cliff behind me, 
 taking care to keep a good distance 
 away. When I rested, he rested, and 
 he seemed most unwilling to catch me 
 up. He no doubt said to himself, 
 ' There is no hurry ; I will wait here 
 until that person is gone.' Well, I 
 waited just over the brow of the cliff, 
 where he could not see me, and when 
 he did appear I inquired of him the 
 way to his , village. And like all 
 nervous people he could not give me 
 89 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 a direct answer ; he spoke as if he 
 did not know. And then he told 
 me the different attributes of the 
 ways that I might take ; and last of 
 all he offered to show me the way 
 himself. 
 
 " As we walked I knew Mr. Thomas 
 was what we call in the polite world' 
 a ' crank ' ; he walked as if at any 
 moment the earth might give way ; 
 and as we looked across, the bay to- 
 wards the Isle of Slingers, he kept a 
 very proper distance from the cliff 
 edge. 
 
 " My first impression of Mr. Thomas 
 was a curious feeling that he was hid- 
 ing sorriething ; or that he was the 
 guardian of a treasure of which he was 
 not allowed to speak. And he seemed 
 to fear me, and when I pointed out to 
 him the beauty of the green seaweed 
 far below lis he turned hurriedly to- 
 wards the setting sun. I belong myself 
 to one of the liberal professions, and I 
 90 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 have cultivated a proper manner to use 
 with my inferiors. Mr. Thomas spoke 
 rather quickly, in a low tone, and I did 
 not often reply ; he wanted to say fool- 
 ish things about the weather, and I let 
 him. I could tell how nervous he was 
 by his hurried way of speaking, and by 
 the way he fell over the white stones 
 that coastguards put along the path and 
 whitewash, so that they may see the 
 way on a dark night ; and I walked in 
 the path, there being only room for 
 one. 
 
 " Mr. Thomas talked of his favourite 
 snug corners by the sea, as a bird would 
 of his resting places, with the fear all 
 the time in his heart that I might rob 
 him of them. And then he talked 
 about the working people that are 
 called labourers, because he happened 
 to see one. We passed a tumulus 
 covered with brambles, the chief 
 growth in that part of the country. 
 Between the brambles there was a way, 
 91 » 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 as though someone was in the habit of 
 climbing up, — no doubt Mr. Thomas 
 himself, — and Mr. Thomas found his 
 way to the top and looked towards the 
 distant hills, and then at me. And he 
 told me about a clump of trees (I never 
 looked, though he pointed at it) that 
 marked a deep pit like the upper part 
 of a funnel, so he said, that an old 
 botanist called Culpepper used to boil 
 his potions in, and he told me that in 
 a certain direction there was a line of 
 hills that marked the middle of the 
 county ; and a tower that was some- 
 body's ' folly,' — goodness knows where 
 that was. We talked of poetry ; Mr. 
 Thomas told me about one of his 
 favourite poems, a poem that could be 
 loved, he said, by a saint and by a 
 sinner. He had the book in his pocket 
 and read me one verse as we walked. 
 He said it was virginal, a verse for a 
 child to learn. Here is the verse ; he 
 read only one. 
 
 92 
 
OF A HERMIT. 
 
 "The dew no more will weep 
 The primrose's pale cheek to deck ; 
 
 The dew no more will sleep 
 Nuzzled in the lily's neck ; 
 Much rather would it tremble here 
 And leave them both to be thy tear. 
 
 "And thus we walked over great fields, 
 filled, every one of them, with stones, 
 everlasting stones ; not smooth shining 
 pebbles — sharp zigzag flints. And the 
 chalk of the hills in places broke 
 through the thin covering of grass, 
 like the skin of a beggar showing 
 through her ragged clothing. We 
 went through a gate that a man whom 
 we had seen slouching along in front 
 of us had left half open. Mr. Thomas 
 persisted in spending quite ten minutes 
 to fasten some barbed wire round the 
 top of this gate ; and in answer to my 
 question as to why he did it, he said, 
 ' These people never shut the gates ; 
 the sheep will get in, and when I come 
 this way again, I shall have to drive 
 93 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 them out.' 'The farmer ought to 
 put up a notice about the gate,' I said. 
 ' It was the farmer who left the gate 
 open,' Mr. Thomas gently replied. 
 
 " I left Mr. Thomas by his own door, 
 or rather by his railings, and I walked 
 through the village street to the inn. 
 The innkeeper was feeding his pigs, 
 and after he had finished feeding them, 
 he showed me a badger that he kept 
 in a barrel. Mr. Thomas' house was 
 visible from the inn-yard, and I could 
 see that he was hoeing in his garden. 
 1 looked around me. The land was 
 not a fat land ; the grass, like the thin 
 clothes of the labourers, only just 
 covered up the poverty beneath. I 
 asked the landlord about Mr. Thomas, 
 but he had not much to tell me, beyond 
 the fact that 'he lived over there,' 
 pointing to the house. 
 
 " Mr. Thomas did not give me a very 
 cordial welcome when I called in the 
 morning, and he did not want to come 
 94 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 out ; but I dragged him from whatever 
 he was doing, I don't know what it 
 was, and compelled him to co'me out 
 with me. We walked along the cold 
 hills, cold as if the ice that made and 
 modelled them still froze the ground. 
 We went along a path going continu- 
 ally uphill, like the narrow path that 
 leads to heaven. And in a hollow 
 place near a pond we came upon an 
 empty cottage, near a tumble-down 
 barn ; we looked through the broken 
 window at the stone floor and open 
 grate of the living-room — an English- 
 man's home in Arcadia. 'No one 
 lives here now,' he said ; ' that is why 
 I like to come this way.' 
 
 " The next thing that we did was to 
 tramp across a heavy ploughed field, 
 and then along by a hedge filled with 
 nettles and sharp thorns, and' in one 
 place I saw the half-eaten carcass of a 
 sheep ; and in a pit there were the 
 bones of a horse among the cowslips. 
 95 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 Mr. Thomas regarded these phenomena 
 with the same gentle look, as being 
 part of the accepted order of things. 
 After a while Mr. Thomas grew less 
 shy of me, and he began to confide to 
 me some of his ideas — ideas about God 
 and the weather. We will take his 
 ideas abovtt the weather first. He 
 thought the raindrops beat with per- 
 sistent spite upon him ; and that the 
 wind buffeted him as if it loved doing 
 it. He thought the storms always 
 waited until he wanted to go out, and 
 then fell merrily upon his head. And 
 yet I think he was in a better mood on 
 a dull day than when the sun shone. 
 He did not like to turn away from the 
 sun, and was never easy with his back 
 to it. This may have been the in- 
 stinctive willing of some plant in him, 
 for his nature belonged to the plant 
 tribe that grows in wild places. He 
 used to lie oh the long withered cliff 
 grass in the winter and take in to his 
 96 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 body the little warmth that came from 
 the sun, like a beaten elder tree that 
 waited for the spring. 
 
 " I liked to torment him and drive 
 him out of his last stronghold, and 
 then see what he would say ; and how 
 he would try to escape me. Mr. 
 Thomas belonged to the type of man 
 that can be cut down in a moment 
 with words. He could be put out of 
 action with one or two simple remarks 
 that touched his pride ; and then he 
 would simply go into his shell like a 
 hermit crab ; he would detach himself 
 from all that he had and keep only his 
 skin. And then if the attack were 
 pushed, which was always worth doing, 
 that last hope in his own life would be 
 taken away, and he would feel himself 
 completely gone into nothingness. 
 This condition of his completed the 
 jest, and he would walk home across 
 the stony fields, a little tired. 
 
 " But after a day or two he would pos- 
 97 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 sess himself again, fully clothed and in 
 his right mind, believing in himself, and 
 even going , so far as to think that he 
 had in his soul a few little things of 
 which he might be proud, and also 
 that he had a few more cigarettes to 
 smoke. And the next time I saw hini 
 I would give him a hint about the good 
 that he might find in himself if he ate 
 a little of the apple that grows in the 
 middle of the garden. And I ex- 
 plained, as well as I could, that every- 
 thing is made by God for the amusement 
 of man ; and that the good and evil in 
 life should be kept very separate, other- 
 wise we should never enjoy being evil, 
 or ever be bored by being good. 
 
 "I tried in this way to teach Mr. 
 Thomas a little about the ethics of the 
 Christian churches, especially the Anglir 
 can Church of Great Britain. I told 
 him that popular opinion, the opinion 
 of the butchers and their customers, 
 would be for ever unto the end against 
 P8 
 
,OF A HERMIT 
 
 • that horrid German,' and ' that 
 wicked Jew,' who both tried to untie 
 the priestly knot that hangs up the 
 world, and not only hangs it up, but 
 holds it up. 
 
 " I tried to explain to Mr. Thomas 
 that the mass of humanity loves to be 
 good and to sin, by turns — to sin and 
 repent and to sin again, just as the sun 
 repents and covers the earth with its 
 glory after the dark rains of the night. 
 It is necessary, I said, for the priest to 
 invent every morning new sins for the 
 people ; golden calves and pretty 
 dancers. And the priest must show 
 the people how to enjoy them. And 
 sometimes for a change he can throw 
 into the cup of -their gladness one or 
 two little pills of virtue, for the sake of 
 their bowels. 
 
 " ' And now, my good Mr. Thomas,' 
 
 I said, ' for Heaven's sake do not throw 
 
 me into that ice water of beyond 
 
 thought that your mad German loved 
 
 99 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 SO well.' Mr. Thomas used to wait 
 for a shining light to come ; he used to 
 wait like a hen brooding over her eggs ; 
 he used to brood in odd corners and 
 try to hatch a little god out of his eggs 
 — a little god that would save his type, 
 the outcast monk type, from the well- 
 deserved stones and jeers of the people. 
 I need not say that all his eggs were 
 addled, for he never got anything out 
 of them, sit as long as he might. 
 
 " He would not believe, although I 
 told him over and over again, that it is 
 the weight of the mass of humanity 
 that bears the world along ; and that 
 nothing can change its course, not even 
 the lightning of the gods, nor the 
 thoughts of little monk priests. Mr. 
 Thomas never even hatched a little devil 
 out of the eggs that he brooded over, 
 and he knew it. He knew that he had 
 found nothing ; he knew that he had 
 searched the orchard and had not even 
 found the crab ; he knew that all his 
 
 100 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 life he had lived in a mystic alley that 
 leads no whi,ther. 
 
 " I tried to show him what life is, as 
 we know it, as we the happy ones have 
 niade it ; and I told him that the one 
 thing to avoid, the one thing that 
 really gives pain, is what is called ' the 
 serious state of mind ' — -the brooding, 
 the dark brooding of the dead stars. 
 'The good God looks down from on 
 high.' ' The priests say so, and that 
 is all we want to know about Him.' 
 And when I said this Mr. Thomas 
 gently stroked his beard, and smiled, 
 and inquired whether I had a cigarette 
 in my case, as he had left his at 
 home. 
 
 " Standing on the cliff top one day and 
 •looking towards the town over the sea, 
 I asked Mr. Thomas why he did not 
 live down there, instead of the dreary 
 spot that he had chosen. He waited 
 for a little while and then said, ' I like 
 the langiiage of these hills better ; they 
 
 lOI 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 are higher up ' (which indeed was 
 true), ' and amongst those church spires 
 I fear that the people do not always 
 speak the truth,' 'But,' I said, 
 'their lies are public lies ; they live by 
 public opinion ; they all have one 
 object in life, and what that is, the 
 smallest servant girl knows best.' 
 
 " Human life is only innocent when it 
 lives in the fairyland of fancy ; if it 
 goes running after the gods, it becomes 
 mad ; if it goes running back to the 
 beasts, it becomes like a nation at war ; 
 the best thing it can do is to stay 
 where it is. Humanity reached its 
 goal when it became man ; and it is in 
 the same world now, because this is the 
 only world it can have ; it must go on 
 just as it has gone on, and that for ever. 
 ' That German ' thought of something 
 more wonderful than Man, and he ran 
 to the* gods — mad. ' That Jew ' 
 thought of something wonderful ; He 
 thought of adopting a Father ; and He 
 1 02 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 thought of mankind loving one another ; 
 and He went to the Cross. 
 
 "Man develops" on certain lines, and 
 then explodes and goes on again on the 
 same lines. If he tries to climb up to 
 the gods, he goes mad, and a vulture 
 devours him. He is only right if he 
 remains just what he is, simply a man. 
 He has scholarships, science, and a 
 million industries. He has municipal 
 gardens, and school playgrounds. His 
 priests are now grown quite hig enough 
 to drive away the little gods that come 
 in the night ; and he can always enjoy 
 excitement in the body politic by 
 pinching the ears of the women. He 
 can believe in a future life ; he can 
 believe in a future death ; he can be- 
 lieve that Christ is God, and that God 
 is Christ, and that Christ is man, but 
 he can never fill the cup fuller than his 
 manhood will hold. 
 
 " See how genius at a certain point 
 always breaks down. ' That German ' 
 103 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 went a little too far, and when he came 
 to the two kings and the last Pope, he 
 went mad. And the other one, ' the 
 Jew ' — He went on preaching very 
 we|l to the people, until by a sad mis- 
 chance, the people began to understand 
 what He said, and when the people 
 understood, instead of going mad them- 
 selves, they killed Him. 
 
 " That is the way of the world, and it 
 happens like that because man's mind 
 can only go to a certain point, and 
 then it breaks. Every mind breaks 
 when it does more than a man can do, 
 and it breaks in unexpected ways. The 
 duty of a philosopher (and the modern 
 philosopher knows his duty) is to keep 
 the sheep ; that is to say, to drive the 
 wolves of thought away from the 
 ■people, and hang the wolves up — in 
 hard and long words, in the philo- 
 sophers' complex minds that are fitted 
 out with little hooks to hang each wolf 
 up by. 
 
 104 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 "The priests who also know their 
 duty have to keep the gods away from 
 the flock, for fear the flock might give 
 away some of its wool, or perhaps even 
 a ewe lamb, here and there, without a 
 priest's blessing. 
 
 " If either of these guardians neglects 
 his duty, the people quite rightly de- 
 vour him. ' It looks like that — that 
 is how the world looks,' answered Mr. 
 Thomas. And yet why should we not 
 believe a little and love a little, even if 
 we do go mad ? 
 
 " I think sometimes when I come 
 home tired to my gate, that I must not 
 come in. I think that I must go on 
 walking past my gate, through the one 
 or two villages where I am known, and 
 then on and on and on. 
 
 "When Jesus adopted God as His 
 Father, He made God begin again as 
 a Babe. When He took everything 
 away , from Himself, He look every- 
 thing away from His Father ; we that 
 105 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 are fathers know that a son can do that. 
 No one need try to take God and put 
 Him upon a great white throne, when 
 His Son has taken Him down. When 
 the Son gave up all power, the Father 
 had to give up all power too ; when 
 the Son gave up life, it was the Father's 
 life that He gave up, as well as His 
 own. 
 
 " There is no need for us to become 
 aaything more than what we are, in 
 order to believe in the Son of Man. 
 We can enter all that He has entered ; 
 we can give up all that He has given 
 up, without being a superman or a 
 brute beast. It is not in extremes that 
 the road to heaven lies ; the way to 
 life is the same now as it has ever 
 been ; it is in the meaning of things. 
 Surely the Son of God has shown Him- 
 self in a form that we, even we, can 
 understand. 
 
 "The people markpd Him as an 
 enemy, and His presence in us will one 
 1 06 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 day make the impossible come to pass ; 
 that day will come. We feel that we 
 are at an end ; we feel that we are 
 come to our goal ; but at the same time 
 we know that there is 'that other' 
 belonging to us, ' that other one ' who 
 is with us and knows no end. 
 
 " Every day I look at the fields as 
 though I am soon to bid them an 
 eternal farewell. Perhaps my life has 
 passed through many bodies and I am 
 the last. A star of life with its own 
 colour, its own raiment, and its own 
 joys has entered into me to die. But 
 the star has still its desires and its long- 
 ings ; I do not want its light to go out 
 like a snuffed candle. I would like it 
 to live again in some other body ; I 
 would like it to feel the earth through 
 many, many other ^lives. I do not wish 
 to be the grave for the death of a star. 
 I want it to carry my life on, and on, 
 and on. And yet it is only when a star 
 is dying in you that you can feel its 
 107 
 
SOLILOQUrES 
 
 life ; and it is only when a star is dying 
 in you that you can feel the sorrows of 
 the Son of Man. 
 
 " And this is the way that Mr. Thomas 
 used to talk. I waved my stick as I 
 passed his gate on my way back to 
 town. He held a spade in his hand, 
 and was digging a hole in the ground 
 for a new post to hold up his railings. 
 I waved my stick, and he, taking very 
 little notice, went on with his work." 
 
 When anyone reads a confession like 
 this they should express no philistine 
 reflection such as, " This good man 
 might have done better with his life " ; 
 or," " If we all start writing confessions, 
 what a world it would be ! " I sup-r 
 pose I have the priest's instinctive de- 
 light — or love, shall we say — of hearing 
 a tale that comes from a man's fear 
 rather than from his wits ; and in 
 speaking or writing a confession, one is 
 always coniing near to something ugly 
 io8 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 in the dark of oneself. I touch the 
 hoof, or the fur, or the horns, or the 
 tuskd, as I write. 
 
 It is this ugly thing that has a way 
 of peeping out at us when we talk 
 about ourselves ; and the sight of half 
 its head, not a very pretty half, makes 
 most people begin to talk about some- 
 thing else. If you, my dear child or 
 brother, begin to tell a few secrets of 
 your own being, you will know what 
 I mean. You will find, dear friend, 
 when you take your pen to begin, and 
 poke about with your finger and thumb 
 into your own heart, that you touch 
 something not at all nice, not exactly 
 what you thought. 
 
 It is the custom, I know, not to con- 
 fess ; to let that inside of you remain 
 hidden under a well-ordered life ; and 
 besides it does not do to risk being 
 laughed at by the people. I know that 
 in every confession there is always 
 worse left behind than what is said ; 
 109 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 for we none of us dare to utter the 
 whole of our wickedness, I cannot 
 help thinking that many of the pangs 
 of human life were quieted and stilled 
 by the use of the confessional. Any- 
 how, to look at oneself with rather 
 more than a critical eye is a good 
 thing ; if only to show the gods that 
 they could do a little better with our 
 substance another day. 
 
 One can see, while writing odd 
 things about oneself, that inside the 
 mob still rules, just as it does outside in 
 the world. And the mob may be riot- 
 ing quite merrily under a policeman's 
 jacket, or corrupting innocence under 
 lawn sleeves in a cathedral. I think 
 that the mob, — I know them, even 
 hidden in a snug English village, — I 
 think that the mob' will always rule ; 
 for it is by the law of hate and not by 
 the law of love that the world lives and 
 has its being. 
 
 no 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 In the world there will never be 
 security, but there will always be ex- 
 citement ; and there is no reason why 
 we should not sometimes get excited 
 about ourselves, and by so doing reveal 
 ourselves as something more than crea- 
 tures to be fed. 
 
 I think every father would do very 
 well to write a book of his own short- 
 comings for his children to read. And 
 perhaps so many fathers, who nowa- 
 days appear so very foolish to their 
 families, might by writing their confes- 
 sions, show their children that they did 
 not sign cheques and say family prayers 
 by clockwork, being wound up every 
 evening by the cook in the best par- 
 lour. The fear of looking a fool has 
 cost the world more good lives than it 
 wots of. 
 
 We go about the world being 
 friendly, but the mob always tells us 
 m 
 
where to go, and how to confine our 
 friendliness to the railway carriage, and 
 our morals to our homes. The mob 
 soon breaks our windows, if we do not 
 behave after its manner. All our little, 
 moral sensations are upon the surface of 
 our lives ; it is the great immoralist 
 that lies beneath. And you have not 
 got to go very far into the lives of the 
 people before you come upon him. 
 
 In writing my confessions I began to 
 take notice of my pride. I found niy- 
 self so proud that I preferred to leave 
 the camel drivers and suffer cold, rather 
 than endure their loud laughter. And 
 I see quite well that there is no getting 
 to the bottom of the pride of a nian. 
 We cannot take cover from our pride. 
 I think it quite likely that the least 
 pride is found in the busiest man, and 
 the most, in an idle slave. We cannot 
 get away from our pride, do what we 
 will. And my pride is quite a plain 
 
 112 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 thing to see even in these pages. I 
 show it on purpose ; I am proud ; I 
 like to be proud ; I intend to be proud. , I 
 know the pride of a saint when he shuts 
 himself up away from the world ; I know 
 the pride of >a sinner when he boasts to 
 the mob of what he can do. The very 
 fact that I love those Jines of Bunyan, 
 
 " He that is down need fear no fall, 
 He that is low no pride." 
 
 shows how proud I am. Ah ! shep- 
 herd boy in the valley, I know thy 
 ways, and it is quite possible that the 
 Lord Mayor of London has a heatt less 
 proud than thine. 
 
 We that love to be at the bottom, 
 we saints in the wilderness, we humble 
 people in the fields, we peaceful people 
 in leafy lanes — it is with reason that 
 the city man, the wicked sinner, should 
 treat us somewhat roughly, for he fears 
 us. He fears that if he did not speak 
 very loud, we might make him take 
 H "3 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 off his shoes when he comes into our 
 garden, and stand in the mud with bare 
 feet. Perhaps if we of the saintly tribe, 
 we exempt ones, — if we were compelled 
 to be iron kings, or wheat kings, or 
 petrol kings, — it is possible that we 
 saints might relinquish some of our 
 abominable pride. The very size of 
 our palaces would then diminish some of 
 our bigness. I can make myself out to 
 be a saint, I can pull myself to pieces as 
 a sinner, I can show myself as a fool in 
 a world of folly, We are all little men 
 that eat off the earth's crust ; I am one 
 of the mob, that is all that can be said. 
 
 I am told by one wiser than I that I 
 must throw more light upon this sub- 
 ject of immortality that I have alluded 
 to here and there. I am quite willing 
 to make my meaning more clear ; I do 
 not want to be misunderstood, and this 
 ' is what I think. I believe that the 
 more dead anything is the more it 
 114 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 lasts ; and the more ignoble a thing is 
 the longer it lasts. The most base 
 thing in me longs the most to liye for 
 ever. I may as well say that it is from ' 
 my own feelings that I get my thoughts 
 upon immortality. And I know my- 
 self a little. I also know that I get the 
 thought from Him. 
 
 The most wonderful idea that has 
 ever come to man came to Jesus. It 
 came to Him silent, subtile, and like 
 the lightning. The idea that came to 
 Hiiii was this : He wished to create 
 for a moment a state of vision with no 
 earthly everlasting deadness about it ; 
 to create a new heaven and a new earth. 
 The longer anything lasts, the worse it 
 always becomes, but the divine idea 
 came to Jesus without beginning and 
 without end ; and in a moment it be- 
 came Himself 
 
 We cannot conceive the lightning 
 rapidity in which the vision of true 
 , "5 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 life enters in and passes out of our 
 minds. Our minds do not like this 
 kind of thing ; they are not used to it ; 
 only by a strange chance Jesus held 
 the new idea for a moment, and that 
 moment gave Him time to understand, 
 because He was the one that was ready 
 to understand. 
 
 Just such a wonderful moment may 
 have come by a happy or an unhappy 
 chance to a beast, and that was the 
 moment that made the beast into a 
 man. • What Jesus saw and lived, we 
 may see and live ; only we prefer the 
 immortality of our earth that we have 
 always had, to the new heaven of Jesus. 
 We would rather live in part dead for 
 a great many lives, than share with 
 Jesus His kingdom for a moment. His 
 vision. His idea, was the frailest begin- 
 ning, the most delicate and the most 
 quickly killed, of any idea that has ever 
 come to man. 
 
 ii6 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 Our immortal baseness is trained and 
 schooled ; is organized to cast out at 
 once this kind of vision. We know 
 only too well that our old happiness, 
 our old Godhead, our old immortality, 
 is imperilled by it. We know the 
 danger of a vision that filled one man 
 so suddenly with burning light, 
 burning Him up in a moment, and 
 leaving Him only a wild mad thing, 
 crying out desperate and loving words. 
 We know the danger of a vision that 
 burnt the immortal man in Him right 
 out in a moment, and left a new man 
 with a strange, a wild, and unearthly 
 courage, a man from whom the mob 
 took toll and laughter, and then after 
 a little while, fearing for themselvfes, 
 hanged Him upon the cross. 
 
 The whole atmosphere of our lives 
 bursts out in rage against this other 
 sense, this new vision, that ends in a 
 moment our immortality. We cannot 
 graft our everlasting life into the vision 
 117 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 that He beheld ; our immortality goes 
 on and on, and if we want to enter the 
 Vision of Jesus, we must stop our 
 chariot. This vision, this new heaven, 
 is life in a moment ; but our way of 
 life is everlasting years. 
 
 The result of the vision is quite clear 
 in the kind of man that Jesus was. 
 Though the vision died down in Him 
 at times, all the signs of our immortal 
 greed for life, in His life, are dead. 
 He begins to eat of the earth as a 
 sacrament, and, wonder of wonders, He 
 can love and bless men instead of turn- 
 ing fiercely upon the will to devour, — 
 He must have seen that in the mob, — 
 instead of cursing .the base lives of men, 
 and their hungry laughter, instead of 
 casting all the thoughts of man away. 
 He blesses them. He opened the way 
 to a new life, and He longed that the 
 vision that will free man from his im- 
 ii8 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 mortality may come to all, and be 
 received by all. 
 
 No wonder man fled from this kind 
 of freedom ; for we prefer to retain the 
 immortality that is our right. I can 
 hear many people declaim, being quite 
 amazed at my utter disregard for estab- 
 lished beliefs. I can hear them shout, 
 " We do not want to end, thou thrice 
 foolish Mr. Thomas, we do not want to 
 end ; we will all most willingly, without 
 any asking of questions, take the im- 
 mortality that you in your folly so 
 roundly cry out upon. Give us that 
 immortality ; it is just what we all, pray 
 for. Remove from us, take out of our 
 sight for ever, this vision that takes 
 away our precious lives ; do not leave 
 us alone with Jesus ; perhaps some good 
 kind pastor will come between. Do not 
 take anything more away from us ; we 
 want more than our lives, we want to 
 go on living," I can hear people of 
 the world shout out at me like this ; 
 119 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 and I say to them, " Goodly people, 
 kindly livers, who sometimes offer life- 
 belts to women when the ship is sink- 
 ing, I hear all your loud shouting, I 
 answer quite calmly, 'You will go on 
 living, dear children ; did not your 
 fathers hate, just as you hate ; did not 
 they get things, just as you get things ; 
 did not they eat their dinners and leave 
 the beggars outside, just as you and I 
 eat our dinners ? ' " 
 
 I can promise that our pretending at 
 little games of Virtue never in the 
 least hampers' our real lives ; our real 
 lives go on through many years just 
 in the same way. Your thoughts, 
 exactly your thoughts and not an- 
 other's, will be always here ; the im- 
 mortal part of you, your man-self, must 
 go on, because it does not desire to be 
 anything else than itself It is never 
 worn out ; it has the best of systems — 
 1 20 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 separate bodies to live in ; when you 
 are old, or perhaps before that time, 
 you will die ; but that will mean 
 nothing to you, and your immortality 
 will just dance away as merrily as 
 ever. 
 
 All this is very easy to explain ; but 
 the way of Jesus is not so easy. He 
 made a way that opposed everything 
 that we have seen or heard of, and most 
 of all, it undermined our immortality. 
 His way ends our old lives in a moment ; 
 because if you take away our anger, our 
 greed, our hatred, our getting on, our 
 eating the black man, our biting the 
 white woman, our sermon-preaching, 
 our amusements with young ladies, our 
 walking to church, our throat-cutting, 
 our afternoon tea-parties, and all the 
 tools we have made for killing other 
 people, and the medicine for killing 
 ourselves, — if you take away all our 
 good deeds, — we know what they are, 
 — if you take all these arts and fancies 
 
 121 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 away from a man, if you take them 
 away you will leave no man at all, you 
 will leave nothing. 
 
 "Ah ! but my soul, Mr. Thomas, you 
 have quite forgotten my soul ; surely 
 when the labours and little amusements 
 of my life are taken away, my soul 
 will live. When, as a good man tired 
 with all my self-sacrifice, tired with 
 all my good deeds, tired with all my 
 kind treatment of little children, I 
 leave my poor worn-out body, is not 
 that the proper moment for my soul to 
 save me ? " Our souls, my good people, 
 are the least certain of all our posses- 
 sions ; our souls are not possessions at 
 all. I will tell you what my soul is. 
 My soul is a waiting, hesitating, long- 
 ing silence ; it is the most delicate, the 
 most ethereal, the most ready to die 
 away of all the silent noiseless feet 
 that we feel moving in our lives. And 
 it waits, and often its flame goes out 
 while it waits. It is not chained to 
 
 122 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 the moods ; it is' the waiting silence in 
 us that is free. 
 
 The life of the world is as it is made 
 to be ; it can never be anything else ; 
 it can never really change. The little 
 children of the world are happy some- 
 times, when they get what they want. 
 But there is not so very much happi- 
 ness to be given away between the 
 stars, and there is a very vast deal of 
 misery. 
 
 This is our immortality, because all 
 the feelings are really exactly the same 
 to everyone, though some of course feel 
 more and some less. 
 
 When a Prime Minister succeeds in 
 negotiating a secret Treaty of Alliance 
 somewhere or other, for the good of 
 the war-outfit trade of his country, and 
 the other names, and seals are duly set 
 to it, the exalted feelings of this good 
 Prime Minister are exactly the same 
 123 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 as those of our chimney-sweep — dead 
 now, honest man — when he has brought 
 down from our parlour chimney with 
 one good jerk a large quantity of soot. 
 And when an old lean woman, the 
 leanest in the village, slinks home with 
 a few stolen sticks from the squire's 
 wood, her feeling of exultation is just 
 
 the same as Mr. 's feeling when he 
 
 has made a corner in wheat, in Wall 
 Street, a place I seem to Have heard of. 
 A Gentleman Farmer riding home from 
 market in his motor, after having sold 
 a cow at a good war price, that has 
 gored one of his milk hands the day 
 before, feels just like a naughty girl 
 who has successfully robbed a foolish 
 young man of his gold watch, in a flat 
 in Houndsditch. 
 
 We share all our good actions with 
 
 other people, just as we share the air 
 
 that we breathe. All our actions are 
 
 made of exactly the same stuff, like 
 
 124 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 the Stars — the eternal stuff out of 
 which everything is made, everything 
 except the lightning that destroys them. 
 To that lightning Jesus opened His 
 bosom ; it struck dead all His im- 
 mor'tality ; in one flash it sent a new 
 wonder through the old immortal stuff 
 of which He was made. Ah ! there was 
 irony in that shaft of light from that 
 other place, for it left only one feeling 
 the same in Jesus ; one feeling it could 
 not kill,; one feeling that He had in 
 common with all men even unto the 
 end — I mean the feeling of sorrow. 
 
 So great is the charm of really dying 
 that the ordinary death of a man is a 
 little thing in comparison. The feelings 
 are gay or sad, wicked or good in every 
 man : they are over all the earth. Of 
 course, the bodies that hold them 
 change because the bodies wear out ; 
 but the feelings are always hungry, 
 always the same, always yourself. When 
 125 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 the squire's new motor makes you skip 
 into a muddy ditch, the squire feels 
 just like you feel when you make Mr. 
 Thomas walk by your side in the 
 gutter ; and the feelings of men do not 
 die. 
 
 The feelings or the moods of God, as 
 I used to call them — it is natural to 
 me to change my words a litile — must 
 have some kind of bottle to hold them ; 
 they have you, with your beating heart, 
 your brain, your nerves, and your bones, 
 that are, I fear, getting a little too stiff 
 to enjoy dancing. They have you, 
 and they make you dance, as they do 
 everyone else. They even made Him 
 dance a little round a barren fig-tree, 
 but not in a way that pleased the 
 people. 
 
 At first the people thought Him a 
 
 quack doctor that did not want to be 
 
 paid for His work, that went about 
 
 healing for fun ; and then they thought 
 
 126 
 
OF A HERMIT , 
 
 Him a crank ; and then a mischief- 
 maker ; and last of all an alien in the 
 world. 
 
 Is it not strange that only a man who 
 has felt the lightning and who has felt 
 the immortal moods fall from him, — 
 all save the mood of sorrow, — is it not 
 strange that this is the sort of man that 
 loves the world, that really understands 
 the world, and accepts the world ? 
 And He can even love the people who 
 think they are good ; and what must be 
 more easy. He can also love the bold 
 sinner ; and He alone can kiss without 
 fear the shamed form of tired outraged 
 bitterness. He can love all of it — He 
 the One that bled so soon. The most 
 terrible pang of all, pity — the flower of 
 sorrow — that we who have the ever- 
 lasting feelings dare not endure. He 
 endured it. And pity for the jackal. 
 It is easier, far easier, to pity a white 
 sick child than a red monster of greed. 
 127 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 He could pity us because we all feel 
 so safe in the world. 
 
 How we" all enjoy the sense of secur- 
 ity that it gives to know that everyone 
 has the same feelings as oneself. We 
 know all the kindly, loving feelings of 
 our friends ; they are the same feelings 
 as ours, because they are ours ; and we 
 are all quite safe with one another. 
 Sometimes, perhaps, in an ill hour, a 
 mass of men who have had bad dreams 
 in the night about bears and lions want 
 to march to the seaside ; and another 
 mass of men, feeling their interests lie 
 in another direction, oppose them ; and 
 they all feel just alike. The others 
 may have dreamt of great eagles. All 
 these proceed quite calmly to casting 
 each his millions through the fire of 
 Hell itself. 
 
 These moving coloured pictures of 
 Human Madness make a ghastly show 
 when they happen to come to pass; 
 128 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 only we all learn from watching them 
 what our feelings are and what they 
 can do. They can tear our bodies to 
 pieces en masse ; and instead of going 
 out with swords and spears to judge 
 the moods of God, we only talk to 
 each other about the wickedness of 
 other countries. 
 
 Yes, there is something in the desire 
 of Jesus to escape and to die. And to 
 this desire, and to this longing, do the 
 priest natures of the world come ; here 
 and there out of all manner of holes in 
 the rocks, out of all manner of minds, 
 they move towards the annihilation of 
 themselves. 
 
 From whence comes the lightning 
 that stings to death the feelings that 
 live for ever ? So asks the young man 
 void of understanding with the leer of 
 an angler over the dark waters. Ah ! 
 that is easier asked than answered. 
 But it may be, — I am not s^ire, — but it 
 I ' 129 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 may be that even the mdods of God 
 end somewhere ! Shall not the im- 
 mortal feelings have an end somewhere 
 iii some men ? Or is it the beginning 
 of a new heaven and a new earth that 
 passeth man's understanding ? I do 
 not know ; in this place even the 
 priest must do what other little foolish 
 children do ; he must go out into the 
 garden by the big door. • 
 
 What I do know is, that there is 
 something more godlike about the 
 lightning that kills in a moment, than 
 about all the feelings that live for 
 ever. Sometimes I think that it is the 
 glorious presence of utter absolute ex- 
 tinction, of death — that is, real death — 
 that gives the magic to the lightning. 
 
 I wonder, do the moods of God tire 
 of their manifold disguises in man ? 
 Do they begin to find the eternal mo- 
 tion in clay bodies hard to bear ? Does 
 He desire to die ? And did He choose 
 130 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 the man who called Him Father for 
 His last home ? Did the everlasting 
 moods that are God will a grave as 
 well as a birthplace in man ? Did He 
 at last desire His own end, and did He 
 begin to die in Jesus ? Perhaps, who 
 can say ? 
 
 The moods may themselves want to 
 turn aside and to sleep — never to rise 
 again, never again to torment them- 
 selves and the clay that they live in. 1 
 do not know ; the exultation that the 
 lightning vision brings into being can- 
 not be explained in words ; it may 
 be an end or it may be a beginning. 
 To Jesus it certainly gave sometimes 
 one and sometimes another of these 
 thoughts. I think He longed for it 
 to be a token, a promise of something 
 more wonderful even, than the end of 
 God. He longed for it to be a pro- 
 mise of new life. It may have been 
 such a promise, or it may have been a 
 promise of death. One thing seems to 
 131 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 be quite sure, and that is that the vision 
 has more in it than the simple death or 
 life of one creature. Everyone feels 
 that the body and the life of Jesus were 
 a battleground more terrible than that ; 
 and that the happenings in Him sur- 
 passed anything that has ever before 
 happened in man. If the everlasting 
 moods did indeed find in Him a willing 
 sacrifice, an altar where they could be 
 quite burnt out, no wonder that His 
 Ways were very little understood by 
 the people. 
 
 Why Jesus is a figure of such in- 
 tensely human interest to mankind is 
 because He stands always at the parting 
 of the ways. In Him end, it may be, 
 the everlasting moods ; in Him, it may 
 be, God Himself ends ; or the sudden 
 lightning of a supreme joy begins. And 
 His kind of life was ever the opposite 
 of man's doings and sayings. He lived 
 in order to destroy man's immortal 
 132 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 ways, and He stabbed everywhere, 
 wherever He saw human greed ever- 
 lasting. 
 
 If anyone deserved a blessing upon 
 earth, it was in His eyes the sinner. 
 .He saw that sin ends quicker and 
 changes quicker than righteousness ; and 
 the righteousness of the leaders of the 
 people was to Him the most lasting 
 and the most intolerable ugliness that 
 He saw anywhere. 
 
 Everyone knows how His words have 
 been twisted and turned exactly and 
 completely inside out. Of course they 
 have ; men do not give up their greed 
 for nothing ; and they soon began to 
 think that His Heaven was a shadow 
 in the water, a large shadow of that 
 hunk of meat that they with their dog- 
 like teeth held in their half-opened- 
 mouths. And some amongst men, the 
 good saints and hermits, the good 
 Bishops of the flock, let their hunk of 
 meat drop for the shadow, like the dog 
 133 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 in the fable ; and then there was no 
 help for it. They had to believe in 
 Heaven, and so they waved the fairy 
 wand of immortality over the place 
 where their hunk of meat sank ; and 
 they present to us — these very good 
 ones — rather an odd, and not, I fear, 
 very noble picture ; for while they pre- 
 tend to believe in the shadow of another 
 life, all the time they are digging their 
 snouts in the mud (they have now 
 changed to swine), and searching for 
 their lost meat as the money-lenders in 
 that old French book searched for rusty 
 nails. They are not altogether beautiful 
 objects for our contemplation here upon 
 earth. We prefer the more honest 
 sinners. Avoid the good ones, little 
 girls and boys of the earth, and go and 
 •dance with those that take and eat 
 honestly the lion's share. We know 
 that Lion ; there is something honest 
 and open about him ; the immortal 
 laughters surround him as he gambols 
 134 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 and frolics in new-mown hay. High 
 up to his godlike mouth he lifts the 
 holy bottle of human life. He drinks. 
 His life is not here nor there ; he lives 
 truly and entirely himself in every 
 moment.. 
 
 There is no cry in his heart, " What 
 can I do to be saved ? " He is content ; 
 the earth is good enough for him. He 
 spends his treasure ; he does not hide it, 
 as a certain country did their treasure in 
 a fortress, until the next war ; he spends 
 it all, ancf when the next war comes, he 
 dies ; that is the end of the lion. 
 
 Between the lion of life and Jesus, 
 that sad Stranger, there are innumer- 
 able moving pictures of little men and 
 women. Children of the earth, I 
 would have you go to the sad Stranger 
 when the moods of the Father get their 
 claws full of your blood. In one way 
 this Stranger is like the lion ; He is 
 not afraid of the Father. Go to Him ; 
 I3S 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 He will give to you what no other man 
 has ever dared to give; He will give, 
 you Himself. 
 
 Remember before you take Him 
 what He has done. Remember His 
 crime ; remember His sin ; remember 
 that He has in a moment put an end 
 to the world. No wonder that when 
 the animal instinct of the herd becanie 
 awake, when they began to understand 
 what He was doing, that , they killed 
 Him and freed Barabbas. " To the 
 cross with Him ! " they cried out, " He 
 threatens our very Jehovah," which was 
 only too true. And he did more than 
 threaten ; He slew. He broke in upon 
 God with a fierce fire, a fire more fierce 
 than God's when He breaks in upon 
 men. He knows, this Son of Man, 
 that a moment of destruction is better 
 than many years of creating ; for the 
 soul of a great work of art feels more 
 of its life when the shells are bursting 
 upon it than when the sober eyes of 
 136 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 good sightseers peer and blink about it 
 and the beads of the prayers rattle in its 
 long nave. 
 
 Then the destroyer meets the creator 
 in the great awakening ; these two 
 heroic ones hold hands at last ; their 
 souls meet and end. Nothing, not even 
 the moods of God, can find its true soul 
 until it is destroyed ; and even the lion 
 of laughter that drinks for ever the cup 
 of earth's richest wine becomes a little 
 fat clown with pink cheeks, like a 
 dancer in a show, when the two terrible 
 ones meet, the creator and the destroyer. 
 
 When we see the work that Jesus has 
 done, when we see the great white 
 throne rent and torn and lying like any 
 other broken chair at our feet, when 
 we see the temple whereon the creative 
 mind a little overstepped its mark in 
 decoration nothing but scarred walls, 
 when we see all this as we do see it, 
 137 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 we know that a soul has felt its life 
 burn, and its death cool it for ever. 
 
 This is what we come to in His life. 
 He seemingly had no fear of the great, 
 the powerful, the almighty ; the im- 
 mense terrible coils of the immortal 
 snake had no terrors for Him. The 
 moods fierce and utterly blind stayed 
 their fatalistic dancing in Him ; He 
 died to break the power of God. And 
 now the moods creep silently in the 
 earth ; they cannot sting as they used 
 to ; they can live immortal as they 
 used to live in man ; but here lies the 
 difference — they have been conquered. 
 
 Many an artist no doubt looks with 
 sorrow at the fall of the great wild 
 monster moods, the Old Testament of 
 man's history, the blind fierce hidden 
 history of his beginning ; the old Crea- . 
 tor creating out of the bottom of the 
 sea and upwards, through all times, 
 through all minds. How wildly He 
 138 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 created, and with what wasteful profu- 
 sion, we all know. We all know the 
 blindness of Him that used to sit on 
 High, and now it may be that He of 
 His own free will has entered into the 
 Son of Man in order to end His long 
 reign ; perhaps He has become tired of 
 Himself, and His tiredness at some time 
 or another we all feel. 
 
 And what do any of us know about 
 ending and beginning ? I see that it 
 may have happened like that ; I see a 
 difference in the world since He lived ; 
 I even think I see the moods themselves 
 begin to take a new turn, consoling, 
 liberating, and even becoming free men. 
 I see in the new order, the Babe of 
 Joy, that takes the place of the terrible 
 Majesty of the past ; I see the awful 
 Majesty of the Creator come into our 
 own Grange mead, and lie down amidst 
 a joyous crowd of buttercups and red 
 clover, dimly conscious of a new be- 
 ginning, and of the laughter of the 
 139 
 
SOLILOyUlKS 
 
 maidens in the village near by. There 
 is, I may tell you, a higher art in the 
 Babe of Joy than in all the deep wild 
 cruelty of the old order ; and after all is 
 said, there was too much of a bully's 
 rod and not enough of a child's laughter 
 in those old days. And surely no one 
 is better pleased than God Himself to 
 come up and find that His terrible 
 moods have not destroyed all the Babe- 
 like laughter upon earth. 
 
 We can bless life when we see that 
 the moods have lost their grip upon the 
 mind ; we can bless life when we see 
 man's immortality end and true joy 
 begin ; we can bless life when we see 
 daisies and buttercups grow between 
 the walls of our best works of art, that 
 the shells have let a little light into. 
 Do you remember He talked about 
 destroying the temple and building it 
 in three days — the Golden temple of 
 Solomon, filled with the labour of a 
 140 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 million artists ? He came like a shell 
 into that old great habitation of fierce 
 Godhead — that old temple built up in 
 the mind of man, filled with the work 
 of countless builders ; and everywhere, 
 where His heart's blood fell, the temple 
 was destroyed. What cared He for 
 the decorations round the base of the 
 columns ? What cared He for here a 
 pomegranate and there a pomegranate 
 at the hem of the garment ? What 
 cared He for the golden rods and 
 brackets ? 
 
 A sigh of great content comes up 
 from our Grange mead, where God lies 
 amongst buttercups and listens to the 
 naughty laughter of little village boys ; 
 I cannot see" the least willingness on 
 His part to leave the scent of the May 
 clover, in order to go and look at old 
 churches ; but I do notice that He turns 
 a little on one side to watch a young 
 man and maid take the path that leads 
 141 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 to the taverii ; and He looks at them 
 as though they really were His children. 
 They loiter a little by the gate, and He 
 lies back again with His white hands 
 gently resting j upon the warm red 
 clover. 
 
 In the Old Testament, the old Order, 
 the moods were hemmed in and not 
 allowed to live a natural life in the free 
 air ; they were hemmed in until they 
 gathered strength to burst ; they were 
 like a terrible lake of black waters that 
 filled and filled from beneath, until it at 
 last burst all doors ; the old story of 
 the flood may have had a meaning of 
 this kind. 
 
 The hatred and malice, the ungovern- 
 able rage of man, — the rage of getting 
 more than his neighbour, — that v no 
 painted lying civilization can assuage ; 
 the rage of a stippressed country, being 
 denied a proper proportion of the earth's 
 surface ; the rage of another country 
 that the first should want any more ; 
 142 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 the immortal greed shut up under the 
 supposed tameness of man ; all the black 
 terrible moods have a way of bursting 
 their chains at times ; of getting loose 
 with, a sound and a horrible cry of 
 bloody rage. The old prophets de- 
 lighted in it ; they wallowed up to their 
 necks in the black waters and enjoyed 
 it. The people did not listen ; do the 
 people ever listen until it is too late ? 
 And then their mangled bodies strew 
 the earth, in the day when the black 
 waters rush out with a horrible sound, 
 and over all the- Earth there is black 
 smoke and death and an evil stench. 
 
 Jesus saw the danger of all ill con- 
 tent being saved up and prepared in 
 man's mind, and He advised men to 
 act naturally like the flowers ; and to 
 hate and to love like children, forget- 
 ting everyone his quarrel when the 
 night comes. He turned the sword 
 with wise justice into the heart of Him 
 that created it. 
 
 143 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 But, alas, the moods are a many- 
 headed monster, and to-day the black 
 waters have burst out again amongst 
 men. He could only give to men the 
 charm that can slay them. I want to 
 be able to bless all life truly and whole- 
 heartedly as He blessed it ; I want to 
 be able to bless the sinner as well as 
 the victim of sin ; I want, as every good 
 priest should want, to be glad when I 
 see any sign of Joy anywhere in the 
 earth. 
 
 I want to bless all the moods of God, 
 for these too, immortal as they are, will 
 one day desire to end. 
 
 I do not say wicked things when I 
 speak of God coming down from His 
 great white Throne of Majesty and 
 Power, and resting in our mead beside 
 the dairy cows, who look at Him with 
 their quiet soft eyes ; I mean no harm. 
 To those who prefer to keep Him as 
 He once was in order to preserve a 
 144 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 more artistic effect, I have nothing to 
 say ; no doubt they know best ; but I 
 prefer to think of Him as watching 
 with a true Father's love the Babe of 
 Joy that will one day grow up out of 
 His old creation — The Babe of Joy 
 that has taught Him already that a 
 child's laughter is of more value than 
 everlasting life. 
 
 This is a day of new Values ; the old 
 days of greed, of getting and keeping, 
 will end ; the old days of holding one's 
 self, of hugging one's self, of living 
 one's self, will end. What a time it 
 was when man's whole hope of happi- 
 ness was to live for ever ; to always go 
 on helping the same body out of the 
 same dish for ever and ever ; and to 
 that happiness the immortal moods have 
 trained the clay-pots. They have put 
 •into us their immortal feelings so 
 strong, that even now as. I write, I want 
 to go on living for another day, till 
 
 K 145 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 to-morrow. And this is what we all 
 say — " till to-morrow." I cannot 
 welcome extinction, because for millions 
 of years the immortal feelings have 
 been desiring more and more hours, 
 more and more to-morrows. 
 
 When I think of Jesus, the burden 
 falls. I do not think of extinction. I 
 think of the moment ; I think of how 
 He, in one life, ended the stagnation of 
 immortality. I long to live a moment 
 in Him unfettered and free. Have I 
 explained myself enough now ? Or 
 have I left only a mist about the eyes 
 and a madness 'in the heart ? I can as- 
 sure you now, if you have not guessed 
 it before, little and great brethren, that 
 instead of meaning no harm, I mean a 
 great deal of harm. Have we not had 
 nearly enough of the everlasting feuds, 
 of the everlasting jealousy of the moods 
 of God ; would it not be better to use 
 our own minds and to reason away 
 146 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 from these things ? Which is better, I 
 wonder, to lie for a moment where all 
 our finest buttercups grow, or to go on 
 with our greed and getting and hating 
 for ever ? If we took His road, and 
 gave up our eternal occupations, our 
 everlasting work, our immortal getting ; 
 and in a moment spent that which we 
 did not gather, in a moment of Joy— ^a 
 moment that cannot be lost because it 
 is true Joy — would it not be better to 
 spend ourselves for it, for such a 
 moment ? But, dear brothers, the 
 pleasure of our lives is in hating. We 
 know a little about the merry goblins 
 in the bottom of our hearts ; we don't 
 want to cast them out in a hurry. The 
 moods are with us^ we play on their 
 side when we amuse ourselves with our 
 little frolics. 
 
 It is most easy to call everything 
 degeneration that is not found in the 
 heart of a cruel man. It is most easy 
 147 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 to call everything madness that is out- 
 side the pompous throned power of 
 man's immortal belief. It is really 
 quite easy to call everything mystic 
 stupidity, because it just happens to be 
 not exactly our way of treating dancing 
 girls in the night. I do not dispute 
 with this ; I do not want to slay any 
 child's joy ; neither did He. He came 
 to free the world and to give Joy ; not 
 afterwards, — He knew no afterwards, — 
 but now. I know my hatred of others ; 
 I know my greed for myself; and I 
 know, my masters, that we all have the 
 same feelings ; I want to break up these 
 feelings and take hold of the new Joy^ 
 
 When we feel the gladness of our 
 greed, when we feel we have managed 
 well a good business matter after the 
 manner of the world, when we feel we 
 have done something very well indeed, 
 perhaps robbed a few million homes of 
 their halfpence, how the greed goblins, 
 old as God Himself, cringe and lick and 
 148 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 -fawn upon us ; for have we not been 
 carrying on their game a little further ? 
 " And a very good game too," you will 
 say. Well, is it ? 
 
 I seem to hear at this moment the 
 clamour of something not altogether 
 good ; I see torn bodies, broken, buried 
 in blood, that were a year ago very 
 thoughtless young men ; and I see the 
 evil eye of our greed blinking and cruel ; 
 you have not got to go far from where 
 I write to see its work. Your little 
 happy ways, your little business ways, 
 your little rather long immortal ways, 
 are a cause of all this, my brothers. 
 Without the feelings that you guard so 
 jealously from madness (why are you 
 all so afraid of madness ?) this could 
 not have happened. Without the feel- 
 ings you enjoy, the shocking face of a 
 woman I once saw in an alley of a great 
 town could never have had written upon 
 it agony unquenchable, agony eternal. 
 149 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 The moods of God have caused all this ; 
 they are causing it still. 
 
 And our feelings that go on for ever- 
 — that we enjoy so much, — are they 
 worth all this terror and horror and 
 blood ; do they not after all lick up 
 with their evil tongues all the waters 
 of real joy out of our lives ; do they 
 not take in the cruel grip of their 
 eternal desires all our best children ? 
 
 Look at the boldness of Jesus ; He 
 too was terrible, like a burning of the 
 firmament amongst the worlds ; think 
 of His courage, this lion in the desert ; 
 the disputes He had with the lawyers 
 were nothing ; what He really did was 
 to st^nd in the way of the eternal 
 moods. He bade them get out of His 
 way ; He would have a New Heaven 
 and a New Earth ; He would have the 
 feelings of a flower ; childlike laughter, 
 like one of these little ones, to whom 
 L 150 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 every moment is an eternity and whose 
 every hour is a life everlasting. 
 
 He stood alone to stem the torrent 
 of greed, the greed of living for ever. 
 " He that saveth his soul shall lose it." 
 And instead of the greed of living, He 
 built up out of the fire of His heart 
 the joy of life. 
 
 Consider the day of joy that He 
 created for us ; how freely and light- 
 heartedly we can now cull the flowers 
 after He has shown us the way. The 
 deep hidden waters of the inner dark- 
 ness that lived underground like a 
 great earth monster, he brought out 
 into the sun. And how like snails the 
 eternal feelings creep and creep in our 
 lives ; how they force us to hide, and 
 to plan and to corrupt ; how they force 
 us to pass the day in gloom, because 
 we are thinking of the morrow, because 
 of the year that is to come. " Take 
 no thought for the morrow." I cannot 
 help seeing almost a vision, as I write 
 151 
 
SOLILOQUIES 
 
 of the wonder that He did. And when 
 I think of the fears ; the heavy long- 
 ings for good things ; our eternal look- 
 ing forward ; our cringing to time ; 
 our continual longing for future gain ; 
 when I think how oppressed we all 
 are, how filled to the brim with the 
 feelings that want to go on for ever ; 
 I do not know how I can thank Him 
 enough, that opened a way for our 
 freedom. 
 
 I cannot think how anyone can re- 
 gard immortality as anything else but 
 an endless and sad ordeal of the sanie 
 feelings ; they go on and on, and 
 always serve us the same. They bring 
 simple peasants and quiet homely 
 gentlemen in line as fodder for the 
 cannon ; they let off the poisonous 
 gas; they drop the bombs in the 
 night ; our little best feelings, yours 
 and mine, are doing it. Our feelings 
 do all this now ; and in the past they 
 152 
 
OF A HERMIT 
 
 pinned Him to the Cross. But not 
 before He had sown His life's blood in 
 the earth ; not before His death-cry 
 for Freedom had gone out and been 
 heard. 
 
 No doubt the great Artists, the 
 happy portrayers of man's deeds and 
 ways, will scream out with a great 
 rage at the thought of their old 
 occupation being gone. What will 
 happen to bloody rage and blind lust 
 that gave them all such good copy 
 for their long nails ? For was it not 
 ever the moods and the feelings of 
 man's deep black nature that gave the 
 good workers in their creative art the 
 chance to get human-kind on the point 
 of their pen ? 
 
 Well, they will have to change, that 
 is all. Jesus did not consider their love 
 of God and His ways when He stood 
 alone in all the: earth to face and 
 destroy the moods. The artists that 
 »53 
 
SOLILOQUIES OF A HERMIT 
 
 have for so long lived like vultures 
 upon the broken flesh and rotten 
 carcass of human despair must now 
 learn a new trade ; they must try to 
 rest awhile in our Grange mead beside 
 the dairy cows, and write poems, until 
 a little of the New Heaven and the 
 New Earth enter into them. 
 
 And meanwhile let them bless the 
 maiden and the young man that again 
 loiter through the mead, for it is now 
 evening, on their way home from the 
 tavern ; and let them bless the naughty 
 child that lingered for one more solitary 
 dance alone on the Green after all the 
 others had gone. 
 
 THE END 
 
 PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB LTD., EDINBURQli