I.
THE PAGEANT THROUGH THE BUSH
A THING happened the other evening that charmed and captivated me. I was journeying in the express on my way from Melbourne to Sydney. The train was gliding slowly past an up-country siding. Not a house was in sight. Far as the eye could see was nothing but the dense virgin bush, with just a rough track thridding its way among the giant trees. Suddenly I heard a tremendous shouting. Looking quickly out, I saw a little boy—a typical child of the bush—standing by the siding, with his hands to his mouth, yelling at the pitch of his voice: ‘Paper! Paper! PAPER!’ Some of the passengers, more accustomed to this kind of thing than I was, instantly flung up the windows, and threw out copies of the Age and of the Argus. And as I looked out of the carriage window I saw the little fellow—his face wreathed in satisfied smiles—gather up the papers, tuck them under his arm, and set off along the tortuous and dusty track among the trees towards the tiny settlement of which I could just see the smoke over the distant hills.
Now, this, as I have said, greatly interested me, and plunged me into a whirl of pleasant thought. Why did the people of that small settlement want the paper, and send the boy right down to the express to shout for it? Why could Bulman’s Gully not be satisfied with Bulman’s Gully? Why could Horseshoe Creek not be content with Horse-shoe Creek? What do they want the paper for? The same phenomenon is nowhere to be seen beyond the limits of humanity. The sparrows of Australia show no spark of interest in their poorer kindred on the London house-tops. Our Tasmanian rabbits are coldly indifferent to the fate of their furry brethren on the mainland. The African lions never bother their heads about the tigers of Bengal. The brown kangaroos of our Australian wilds do not pine for tidings of the fallow deer on the upland lawns and in the forest glades of England. But with man it is quite otherwise. He must have his paper, and, even if he be buried in the deepest seclusion of the Never-Never Country, he will contrive some way of obtaining it. He wants the world, and he won’t be happy till he gets it. The Australian squatter sits outside his lonely humpy, and hungers for Europe and Asia and America and Africa, and for all the scattered islands of the rolling seas. He wants the Equator, and he wants the Poles. He craves for the Atlantic, and he thirsts for the Pacific. He must feel the throb of all your revolutions and tumults; he must know of all your inventions and discoveries; he must read of all your sports and politics; he must peer into all your Courts and Cabinets; he must follow all your travellers and explorers; he must keep in touch with all your commerce and your industries; he must see the list of your births and marriages and deaths. He hates to feel that any stick or stone or straw has really eluded him. He must have it all, all, ALL; and he must have it all, all the time. It is a fearful and a wonderful thing—this insatiable craving of the human heart for the whole wide world. As I watched that little urchin from out-back setting off along the dusty and rut-riddled track with his papers, each page crammed with cablegrams from everywhere, I saw all the nations on the face of the earth tramping in stately and imposing procession along that lonely path. It was one of the most gorgeous pageants that I have ever gazed upon. White men and black men, brown men and yellow men, pale men and swarthy men; men of the prairie and men of the veldt; men of the city and men of the woods; men from the deserts and men from the snows; men of all tribes and tongues, of all latitudes and languages, swept in their millions past the swaying blue-gums and vanished over the ridge! I beheld splendid empires, ancient dynasties, rising republics; all pouring their pulsing life, by means of these news-papers, into every little hut and homestead in that isolated settlement. It was grand I And more than this I saw. For it seemed to me that, just as a puddle may reflect a planet, I had mirrored in this rural idyll one of the most impressive and suggestive mysteries that the universe can hold.
The aching hunger of the human heart for the whole wide world! It is a positively fearsome thing. Many illustrations rush to memory, but the most clear and the most classical is that of David Livingstone. What a day that was when, after his long seclusion in the forests of Central Africa, he was at last found by Stanley! Let Stanley himself tell the great story:
‘The doctor asked me to tell him the news. “No, doctor,” said I, “read your home letters first; you must be impatient for them!”
‘“Ah,” said Livingstone, “I have waited for years for letters. I can wait a few hours longer. No, tell me general news: how’s the world getting on?”
And then, buried in that African jungle, the two men sat for hours whilst the one told the other of the completion of the great Pacific railroad, of Grant’s election to the Presidency, of the realization of electric cables, of the Franco-German war, of the siege of Paris, of the Cretan rebellion, of the sensational developments in Egypt, of the Spanish revolution which had driven Isabella from the throne, of the assassination of General Prim, and of a hundred other historic transformations. Even as Stanley told the story, Livingstone became a changed man. Fresh tides of vitality rushed into his frame; his appetite strangely returned to him; his haggard face simply shone with the glow of human enthusiasm. ‘You have brought me new life! You have brought me new life! You have brought me new life!’ he repeated again, and again, and again. What did it all mean? It meant this. The heart of a man cries out for the world, the whole wide world; and it is starved if you confine it to the African forest or the Australian bush. A geographical fragment will not appease its hunger. A continent isn’t enough. Stanley poured the world into the empty soul of Livingstone; and every fibre and sinew of his being tingled with new animation and fresh energy. It is a very wonderful thing—this restlessness that we feel in the morning until we have seen the newspaper, this hunger for the world, of which every tiny hamlet and each bush settlement is so deeply and intensely conscious.
Now, what is it, this deep and terrible craving of ours? And whence came it? There is but one answer possible. Man is made in the image of God And this human hunger for the world is the image and echo and reflection of the divine hunger for the world. The child in a squalid London slum puts the shell to his ear, and his eyes sparkle as he listens to the roar and murmur of distant oceans. Uncrossed seas and unplumbed depths stir his imprisoned fancy. I turn my eyes in upon my own soul when I catch myself longing for the newspaper; and in that yearning for the world I catch a faint pulsation of the hunger of the Infinite. There is one noble and mountainous scripture that always looms largely on the horizon of inspiration. It stands boldly out from all its companions, as Mount Everest towers above the Himalayas. It is this, ‘God so loved the World…’ Is that not a wonderfully wonderful word? It takes God to love the world. An Englishman may love his dear old Mother-Country; a German may love his Fatherland; but who can love the World? Why, there are scores of tribes and peoples on the face of the earth whose very names would surprise us if we heard them. How can we love them? But God loves them because He knows them. We always love people if we know them. It is always safe to conclude, if we do not love a man, that it is because we do not know him. I like to think, as I walk down the crowded street, that every soul I meet, however commonplace or unattractive, is all the world to somebody. Somebody loves him because somebody knows him. And, to that somebody, heaven would be no heaven without him. The world is a very lovable place, and its people are very lovable people. We do not know the world, and therefore we do not love the world. But ‘God so knows the world’ and therefore ‘God so loved the world…’ I love God the more because He loves the world I live in; and I love the world the more because it is transfigured by the love of God.
There is no world, among all the worlds, to be compared with this world. I am sure of that. The most pressing and unanimous call to Jupiter or Venus or Mars or Saturn will not tempt me to go if I can, by any frantic argument or artifice or manoeuvre, induce my fellow mortals to allow me to remain here a little longer. This is the world; there can be no possible doubt about that, ‘God so loved the world’ — that is to say, He loved this one.
That is lovely ! I revel in that thought. God has sprinkled the world with beautiful and gracious women; but, whilst He has given each of us men the power to admire them all, we are each of us able to love only one of them supremely. May not this also be a reflection, an echo, an indication that we are fashioned after the image and similitude of the Most High? For God has sprinkled His universe with beautiful worlds, as He has sprinkled this world with beautiful women. There are millions upon millions of them. And when God gazed upon the galaxies of worlds that He had made, He saw that they were very good. He looked admiringly upon worldhood, as we men gaze admiringly upon woman-hood. And then with one of His worlds He fell in love. He loved it supremely, loved it with a love so fond, and so awful, and so deep, and so eternal, that we catch our breath as we think of it ! He loved it with a love that led to the inexpressible mystery of Bethlehem, to the unutterable anguish of Gethsemane, to the unspeakable tragedy of Calvary. ‘God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.’ In the light of that stupendous declaration the world seems a terrible place. It seems a solemn and a sacred thing to be living in that one world towards which God Himself felt so tenderly! The place whereon we stand is holy ground! And yet, after all, it is not the place. It is the people. It is ourselves. It is you. It is I. That is the rapture of it. ‘He loved me, and gave Himself for me!’ As Faber sings:
All this God is all for me,
A Saviour all my own.
True love is always the uttermost simplicity to the lover, and it is always the profoundest mystery to the loved. ‘God so loved the world.’ ‘He loved me.’ It may be all as plain as plain can be to Him; but to the world, to us—to you, to me—there must always abide a concentrated infinity of mystery in such amazing words as these.
I am just beginning to understand this longing of mine for the latest intelligence, this hunger that I feel for the world. I begin to comprehend the instinct that prompted that wayside cry for the newspapers. There is something sublime, something divine about it. The movement of a great steamer on the open sea causes a commotion on the waters that sends the wash of a wave to a distant shore. This cry of the heart for all the continents and islands is but the wash of the wave. And when I lift up my eyes to see what causes the foaming commotion by the surge, I see this stupendous fact, ‘God so loved the world … If this tremendous verity does not inspire and inflame our enthusiasm for the conquest of the world, nothing will. In a sweet and graceful Eastern story we are told how Abraham’s servant gazed with wistful eyes upon the beauty of Rebekah, and longed to win her for Isaac, his young lord. When the Church comes to understand the love with which God loved the worlds she will be restless and ill at ease until all the great empires have been captured, until every coral island has been won.
-F.W. Boreham
These essays fill my heart!