Verse 9
Chapter 59
The Use and Abuse of Parables
It is thus that love multiplies itself by many images. Love consecrates all things beautiful by turning them into symbols and pictures and suggestions of its own idol. There is no end to the creations and appropriations of love. Love sees the image of its dearest one everywhere, and claims it as its own. As Jesus Christ has found in this chapter images of the kingdom of heaven everywhere, so love in all ages and in all places has created for itself new heavens and a new earth, and has given a new reading to all the things therein, and has thus multiplied the literature which no eyes but its own can accurately read. I want to look at the power of fancy, this creative and symbolising power, this power of reading the inner mysticism and ideality of things, as a Joy, a Danger, and a Responsibility. Let us look at it first as a joy.
In finding new symbols we find new pleasures, and in the inspiration of our love we turn all things visible to new and sacred uses. Love turns water into wine at every feast: that which was a miracle at the first is a commonplace in the long run: love widens ever. We give a language to flowers, we make the stars talk, we turn the horses in Pharaoh's chariots into meanings which the proud Pharaoh never saw. We make business itself into a religion, and write upon our gold an image better and purer than the image and superscription of Cæsar. This love embodies itself in all things lovable. We own what we love. We have only the meanest property in things that we do not love. Now this is the joy of Christ himself in this thirteenth chapter of the Gospel by Matthew. The object of his love was the kingdom of heaven, and day by day he compared it with new comparisons, and so gave his Church the treasure of his parables. Jesus Christ said, "The kingdom of heaven is like unto..." That is the entrance to the great picture-gallery, the great paradisaic beauty by which he imaged that wondrous and immeasurable quantity. Like unto a sower, a goodly pearl, treasure hid in a field, a hidden haven, a grain of mustard seed, a net cast into the sea, a king travelling into a far country, virgins going forth to meet the bridegroom by so many images did he make plain to us that manifold kingdom of his.
This is the way of love: it is a parable-making power, it lives in poetry, it delights in the creation of new images, it yokes itself into new relationships, and calls all ministries and agencies to yoke themselves into its chariot, and draw its chariot forward in triumphant and right royal progress. Wondrous in this way have been the creations and adaptations of love. Who could pluck a little rosemary and make anything of it but rosemary? Love could. Love says, "You shall be a symbol of remembrance and affection." Thus poor Ophelia gathers to her madness a new pathos she plucks and gives the rosemary. What is a pansy? Nothing to him who has nothing in him, but to the man who has the seeing eye, the cunning, all-interpreting love, the pansy is the English for pensee , the French thought. So when I cannot tell you all I want to say I slip the little meek-eyed pansy, pensee , into my envelope, and you read all the meaning, great utterances of heart speech you understand the little parable of the pansy.
The timid youth whose love almost chokes him when he is going to speak it does not know what to do till the florist tells him to pluck an acacia leaf, and he says to him, "She will understand that parable. The acacia leaf stands for platonic love the acacia leaf which stands for such love does not admit of vulgar interpretation. You slip in the acacia leaf, and she will understand all about it."
I cannot speak to my friend yonder, bowed down with a thousand distresses, burdened with affliction. He has lost again and again the lives he loved most, and his life is now a process of grave-digging, and any words of mine would but augment the grief which I would seek to alleviate. But I am cunning in the use of floral eloquence: I know what I will do, I will pluck a sprig of amaranth, and send it to him. When he sees it he will see in that sprig of amaranth a symbol of the everlastingness of God, the immortality and unquenchableness of the true life, and in that amaranth he will see revelation and parable and sacred vision. When I cannot tell all my affliction to my dearest friend I will put in some bitter aloes, and the heart that receives the token will understand the sad sign.
So we too have our parables. I have compared thee, O my love, to a company of horses in Pharaoh's chariots. The kingdom of heaven is like unto a sower, like unto treasure, like unto a goodly pearl, like unto a net, like unto virgins going forth to meet the bridegroom. My love hath ten thousand images and symbols, infinite jewellery of expression who then can be poor who really loves? If we loved more we should have more. This is the alchemy that transforms the base into the real and intrinsically valuable. Encourage the soul in its love of beauty. You cannot go too often into the garden if you go to turn every flower into a speaking angel. It will be a dark day for you when beauty ceases to talk to your heart and preach the sweet gospel of hope. Well said Festus, "Some souls lose all things but the love of beauty: by that love they are redeemable, for in love and beauty they acknowledge good, and good is God, the great Necessity."
Whilst most of us have entered somewhat, or at some time, into the passion of this rapture, and have created a thousand images and symbols by which to typify our love and our supreme ambition, I have now to remind all such that not only is this power of fancy a keen and thrilling joy, but it is a positive and an immediate danger. The danger arises from the fact that we may consider our duty done when we have instituted a beautiful comparison. Our religion may perish in sentimental expressions you may die in words you may say, "A bundle of myrrh is my beloved unto me: my beloved is unto me as a cluster of camphire in the vineyards of En-gedi." Christ is the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley as an apple-tree among the trees of the woods. We may see him coming out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense, with all powders of the merchantman, and yet our love may pass off as an evaporation, and never embody itself in one act of sacrifice or in one attempt at service. That is the danger of living wholly in the fancy, or largely in the higher range of the creative faculties of the soul. We may create wit for the laughter of others and forget to keep any of it for the rejoicing of our own house. The danger is that if we live the parabolical life, contenting ourselves with making parables, that we may never advance to Gethsemane and Golgotha. We may create a kind of artificial life and thus miss the great utilities of our being. Not the heart that is swiftest and surest in the creation of symbols is always to be trusted in the hour of pain and distress. This love-sick woman in the Canticles writes her own condemnation as the victim of supineness and indolence. How lovingly she yearns over the absent one, how she charges others to take care of him and watch for him, and yet once he came to the door and knocked, saying "Open to me, for my head is filled with the dew, and my locks with the drops of the night," he was actually at the door, his hand upon it, his voice sounded through it, and what answered she? This was her mean reply. "I have put off my coat, and how can I put it on?" See how great is the danger of the fancy-power, of the parable-making faculty, how possible it is to get into high ecstasy of poetry, and to forget the courtesies and rigid duties of life. Says she, "I have put off my coat, and how can I put it on?" and though finally she roused herself, and put on her coat, her beloved had withdrawn, and was gone. She called, but she could not find him, she sought him, but no answer came back through the air, and the watchmen mocked, and the keepers of the walls joined with the watchmen, and they smote her and wounded her, and tore off her veil, and left her she who was wild in poetry, so grand in the creation of high sentiment she who lay in the midst of the gardens of flowers, and spoke beautiful things about her absent one, saying, "I have compared thee, O my love, to a company of horses in the king's chariot."
There is then a great danger in living the poetical life. You praise your parents do you obey them? You sentimental, rhyming, filial poet, do you obey your venerable father, your aged and loving mother? I do not ask if you send them a little blank verse now and then, or a verse of rhyme do you study their comfort, anticipate their wishes, and show the devotion of real sympathy, gratitude, and love? I have heard many a young man talk about his parents in polysyllables, and thus make a fool's ineloquent speech about them, who has yet not had the grace to obey a single commandment. Take away your poetry, eat it and choke yourself with it it is a lie. We seek for one poetry only, and that the blossoming and the fragrance, and the fruitfulness of real duty and obedience.
There is also another danger which many young men would do well to take heed to, and that is the danger of reciting poetry and living prose. Be very careful, you devotees of poetry and you reciters and treasurers of miles of jingling rhyme, take care that you do not recite your poetry and live your sapless prose. It would be a disastrous irony, it would be the most perfect and cruel sarcasm. Rather on the other hand say no poetry but live much. If it must come to a choice of one or the other, let this course be mine to live the poetry, to prove the sublimity by many a gentle, loving action. If I can unite the two and be as eloquent in service, so be it; but if the one only can be adopted, let me urge you to adopt the eloquence of loving obedience and noble self-sacrifice.
How possible it is to sing hymns and to be acting blasphemies. It is possible. Consider that for one moment, because at the first blush it would seem to be utterly beyond the bounds of possibility to sing in an oratorio and then to act dishonestly, to sing an anthem and then to tell a lie, to utter a hymn and then to perpetrate a cruelty. The poetry is at the wrong end in such cases. O let me have prose climbing up into poetry and not poetry sinking down into contemptible prose; see to it that though you have many crucifixes in the house you have a cross in the heart, though you compare your beloved to a company of horses in Pharaoh's chariot, you also transfer that love into noble charity and sacrifice and sweet service which will benefit mankind, as well as enchant their fancy and please their literary taste.
Not only is this power of making parables and comparisons a joy and a danger, it is also a responsibility. To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin. If the Master is beautiful, so must the servant be. Shall the Master be a sweet rose and the servant a stinging nettle? Is that not very often the case? Shall the master be a fruitful tree making the city glad and the servant be as a upas, casting its deadly shade upon all living things? Let us understand that every compliment we pay to Christ is an obligation we lay upon ourselves if we are his faithful followers. Every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself even as he is pure, that is the sacred law. Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. We are to be transformed by the beauty we admire. This is the great law, namely, we shall be like him, for mark the reason we shall see him as he is. The sight will be transfiguring: to look at beauty will be to be made beautiful; to see God will be to be made divine, the fair vision shall make us also fair, otherwise it is wasted upon us, and we do not really see it. It will be impossible to see Christ as he is without being transformed into his beauty. But do we not all see Christ as he is when we come into the sanctuary? Far from it. We see sections of Christ, phases of Christ, we hear something about Christ, but we do not see the whole Christ in the absoluteness of his integrity and the ineffable-ness of his beauty, or we should be caught in a transfiguring and transforming power, and the very visage of our face would be changed.
Here, then, are abundant lessons for us all. The power of comparison is to be cherished and developed. Compare your living Saviour to all things beautiful, make every flower of the field into a parable, the summer will grow too few flowers to set forth all his beauties. Go out this coming summer and attach to every flower some name that shall indicate some beauty in your Lord; watch for the coming stars, and according to the beauty of each name it, and, so to speak, baptise it in the Lord's name, that when you see it again it may remind you of some high ecstasy of the soul. All that is wise, beautiful, legitimate, it gives ennoblement to the mind and enlargement to the whole sphere of the imagination, it refines and elevates the taste by great purification and enrichment, but do not rest there. Not every one that saith unto me "Lord, Lord," shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Are we not all witnesses to the wasting power of rapture, to the enervating reaction of high rhapsody in any service? Have we not been on the hill of transfiguration and desired to build tabernacles there, and never to come down into the cold and tumultuous world again? Mark the danger. Life is real, sad, tragical, a great daily pain, as well as an occasional rapture and a high realisation of the noblest intellectual conceptions and experiences.
In comparing Christ with things beautiful, noble, grand, we are writing a heavy indictment against ourselves if we profess to be his followers, and do not rise to the grandeur of the occasion. Shall we be found in the king's procession who have about us anything that is mean, worthless, vile, corrupting? Shall we not make it our endeavour to be in some sort worthy of the royal procession and worthy of its high meaning? Herein is the responsibility arising from the power we have of seeing the beautiful and acknowledging it. This is our calling in Christ Jesus: as he was so are we in this world. Men are to take knowledge of us that we have been with Jesus and have learned of him. As he who passes through a garden of roses brings with him part of the fragrance breathed from the beauteous flowers, so we who come forth from the fellowship of Christ are to show somewhat of the radiance of his countenance, and to speak somewhat with the eloquence of his accent. This is the incarnation which he desires at our hands, not only to compare him with things royal and beautiful but to incarnate him in actions more eloquent than the pomp of speech or the melody of music.
Who can carry out that high vocation? Who would not rather sit in his garden and make parables and blow them from the pipe of his imagination like gilded bubbles into the summer air? That would be easy, that would be a pious luxury; but to cut off the right hand, to pluck out the right eye, to slay the inner offence, to test the soul as by fire, who can submit to this inexorable discipline? And yet, if we fail here it will but go to the aggravation of the account against us that we have compared our Saviour to a company of horses in Pharaoh's chariot, and have talked about him in foaming poetry, but have lived mean, petty, worthless lives. The God of the heavens give us wisdom.
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