Christmas Eve | Page 8

truly,
Which tells me simply what was told

(If mere morality, bereft

Of the God in Christ, be all that's left)

Elsewhere by voices manifold;
With this advantage, that the stater

Made nowise the important stumble
Of adding, he, the sage and
humble,
Was also one with the Creator.
You urge Christ's
followers' simplicity:
But how does shifting blame, evade it?
Have
wisdom's words no more felicity?
The stumbling-block, his

speech--who laid it?
How comes it that for one found able
To sift
the truth of it from fable,
Millions believe it to the letter?
Christ's
goodness, then--does that fare better?
Strange goodness, which upon
the score
Of being goodness, the mere due
Of man to fellow-man,
much more
To God,--should take another view
Of its possessor's
privilege,
And bid him rule his race! You pledge
Your fealty to
such rule? What, all--
From heavenly John and Attic Paul,
And that
brave weather-battered Peter,
Whose stout faith only stood completer

For buffets, sinning to be pardoned,
As, more his hands hauled nets,
they hardened,--
All, down to you, the man of men,
Professing here
at Gottingen,
Compose Christ's flock! They, you and I,
Are sheep
of a good man! And why?
The goodness,--how did he acquire it?

Was it self-gained, did God inspire it?
Choose which; then tell me, on
what ground
Should its possessor dare propound
His claim to rise
o'er us an inch?
Were goodness all some man's invention,
Who
arbitrarily made mention
What we should follow, and whence
flinch,--
What qualities might take the style
Of right and
wrong,--and had such guessing
Met with as general acquiescing
As
graced the alphabet erewhile,
When A got leave an Ox to be,
No
Camel (quoth the Jews) like G*,--
*[Footnote: Gimel, the Hebrew G,
means camel.]
For thus inventing thing and title
Worship were that
man's fit requital.
But if the common conscience must
Be ultimately
judge, adjust
Its apt name to each quality

Already known,--I would
decree
Worship for such mere demonstration
And simple work of
nomenclature,
Only the day I praised, not nature,
But Harvey, for
the circulation.
I would praise such a Christ, with pride
And joy,
that he, as none beside,
Had taught us how to keep the mind
God
gave him, as God gave his kind,
Freer than they from fleshly taint:
I
would call such a Christ our Saint,
As I declare our Poet, him

Whose insight makes all others dim:
A thousand poets pried at life,

And only one amid the strife
Rose to be Shakespeare: each shall take

His crown, I'd say, for the world's sake--
Though some
objected--"Had we seen
"The heart and head of each, what screen


"Was broken there to give them light,
"While in ourselves it shuts the
sight,
"We should no more admire, perchance,
"That these found
truth out at a glance,
"Than marvel how the bat discerns
"Some
pitch-dark cavern's fifty turns,
"Led by a finer tact, a gift
"He boasts,
which other birds must shift
"Without, and grope as best they can."

No, freely I would praise the man,--
Nor one whit more, if he
contended
That gift of his, from God descended.
Ah friend, what
gift of man's does not?
No nearer something, by a jot,
Rise an
infinity of nothings
Than one: take Euclid for your teacher:

Distinguish kinds: do crownings, clothings,
Make that creator which
was creature?
Multiply gifts upon man's head,
And what, when all's
done, shall be said
But--the more gifted he, I ween!
That one's
made Christ, this other, Pilate,
And this might be all that has been,--

So what is there to frown or smile at?
What is left for us, save, in
growth
Of soul, to rise up, far past both,
From the gift looking to
the giver,
And from the cistern to the river,
And from the finite to
infinity,
And from man's dust to God's divinity?
XVII
Take all in a word: the truth in God's breast
Lies trace for trace upon
curs impressed:
Though he is so bright and we so dim,
We are
made in his image to witness him:
And were no eye in us to tell,

Instructed by no inner sense,
The light of heaven from the dark of hell,

That light would want its evidence,--
Though justice, good and
truth were still
Divine, if, by some demon's will,
Hatred and wrong
had been proclaimed
Law through the worlds, and right misnamed.


No mere exposition of morality
Made or in part or in totality,

Should win you to give it worship, therefore:
And, if no better proof
you will care for,
--Whom do you count the worst man upon earth?

Be sure, he knows, in his conscience, more
Of what right is, than
arrives at birth
In the best man's acts that we bow before:
This last
knows better--true, but my fact is,
'Tis one thing to know, and another

to practise.
And thence I conclude that the real God-function
Is to
furnish a motive and injunction
For practising what we know already.

And such an injunction and such a motive
As the God in Christ, do
you waive, and "heady,
"High-minded," hang your tablet-votive

Outside the fane on a finger-post?
Morality to the uttermost,

Supreme in Christ as we all confess,
Why need we prove would avail
no jot
To make him God, if God he were not?
What is the point
where himself lays stress?
Does the precept run "Believe in good,

"In justice, truth, now understood
"For the first time?"--or, "Believe
in me,
"Who lived and died, yet essentially
"Am Lord of Life?"
Whoever can take
The same to