The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1897-11-07

After one of these moods, however, in the sum-
mer Of 1892. he exclaimed: yet God is love,
transccnding, all-pervading. We do not get this
faith from nature or the world. II we look at
nature alone. full Of perfection and imperfec-
ton, she tells US that God is disease, murder.
and rapine. We get this faith from ourselves,
from what is highest within ne. which recog-
nizes that there is not one ~fruitless pane. Just as
there is not one lost good" Upon his faith in
the Immortality OF tho soul he has dwelt fully in
his poems. II can hardly understand no
said. how any great. imaginative man.
who has deeply lived. suffered, thought.
and wrought can doubt Of tho souls
continuous progress In the after life.
More than once he said in conversation what
he has expressed In "vastness:" Hast thou
made all this for naughtl Is all this trouble of
life worth undergoing, IL we only end in our own
corpse-cofins at last II you allow a God. and
God allows this strong instinct and universal
yearning for another life. surely that is, in a
measure. a presumption OF it's truth. We can
not give up the mighty hopes that make US men:
my own dim life should teach me this
That life shall live forever more,
Else earth 10 darkness at the core,
And dust and ashes all that IL.
What. then. were God to such as -"
His son tells US that he has even heard the poet
say that he would rather know that he was to
be lost eternally than not know that the whole
human race was to live eternally." When he
spoke OF " family trusting the larger hope he
meant by "the larger hope" that the whole
human race would. through. perhaps. ages of
suffering, be. at length. purified and saved. even
those who now better not with time;' SO that,
at the end of THE Vision Of Sin we read,
God made Himself an awful rose Of dawn"
One day. toward the end of his life. Tennyson
I'D =. - l--f- t-A- A. =.
the Bible and see how tho revisers had trans
lated the passage. e Depart from me. ye cursed.
into everlasting fire." His disappointment. we
learn. was keen when he found that the transla.
tors had not altered everlasting" into "!Eon-
ian or some such word. For he never would
believe that Christ would preach everlasting
punishment" In two weli-known lines of Dante,
which he was fond OF quoting in connection with
this topic, he found u kind Of unconscious con-
fession that love must conquer at the last.
1t appears that letters were not infrequently
addressed to Tennyson asking what his opinions
were about evolution. about prayer. and about
Christ. or evolution he said: That makes no
difference to me, even il the Darwinians did not.
as they do, exasgerato Dirwinisn. To God
all is present. He sees present, past. and future
as ONE In the poem by an Evolutionist."
written in 1888. when he was dangerously
III. he defined his position. He conceived
that. the further science progressed. the
moro the unity OF nature and the pur-
pose hidden behind the cosmic process of
matter and motion. and changing forms of life.
would DO apparent. To Tyndall he once said:
mo evolutionist is able to explain the mind OF
man. or how any possible h astrological change
of tissue can produce conscious thought" Yet
he waa inclined to think that the theory Of evo-
luton caused the world to regard more clearly
the life of nature as a lower sta &c in the man.
Hesitation of q principle which is moro fully
manifested in the spiritual life of man, with the
idea that. In this process Of evolution, the lower
is 10 be regarded as a means to the higher In
Maud" he spoke Of the making of man:
As nine months go to the shaping an infant ripe for
his birth,
so many . million OF ages have gone to the making
OF man:
He now Is nrst, but u he tho last7
The answer he would give to this query was:
mo. mankind 10. as yet, on one OF the lowest
rungs OF the ladder. although every man has,
and has had. from everlasting. his true and per-
feet being in the Divine consciousness"
About prayer he said: THE reason why
men find 1t hard to regard prayer in the same
light in which IL was formerly regarded is that
tce seem to know more OF The undergraduates OF
law; but ! believe hat God Himself reveals Him.
self in each individual soul. Prayer is, to take a
mundane simile. like opening a sluIce between the
great ocean and our little channels when the
great sea gathers itself together and flows in at
full On other occasions he declared that
Prayer. on our part, 10 the highest aspiration
of tho soul:
breath that nsets beyond this Iron world
And touches Him who made it.
Speak to Him. thou. for He hears. and spirit with
anvil RAn nnAAN
Closer 10 He than b~reathiug and nearer than hands
and feet.
And More things are wrought by prayer than
this world dreams Of" He said that 20 thou
Infinite. amen" was the form OF prayer which
he himself used In the time OF trouble and sor-
row; and that 1t was better to suffer than to
lose the power Of suffering. The main testimony
to Christianity he found. not in miracles. but in
the revelation of what might be called Tho
mind OF God " in Christian morality. and its
correlation with the divine in man. He had.
1t seems. . measureless admiration for the
Sermon on the Mount; ard for the para
bles-" Perfection beyond compare" be called
them. The author OF the memoir tells US that
he heard q talk on the parallels between his
father and Browning, and Browning fully
agreed with Tennyson in his admiration.
Moreover, the latter expressed his conviction
that Christianity. with its divine morality,
but without the central figure OF Christ, the
Son OF Man. would become cold. and that 1t is
fatal for religion to lose its warmth" that the
"Son of Man was the most tremendous title
possible; that the forms OF Christian religion
would alter; but that the spirit OF Christ wouli
still grow from moro to more in /" the roll OF the
ages;
tut each man md his own In all mems good.
And all men work In noble brotherhood.
This Ii one Of my meanings" he said. LOT
Ring In the Christ that 10 to be- when Christiani-