these papers, written in the intervals of parish work, have appeared in the pages of the leisure hour and the sunday at home. their publication in a collected form having been decided upon by others, it only remained for me, by careful revision and excision, to render them as little unworthy as might be of starting for themselves in the wide world.
i shall not say that i am sorry that they are thus sent forth on their humble mission. indeed, i am glad. “brief life is here our portion”:—and surely the wish is one natural to all earnest hearts, that our work for our master in this sad and sinful world should not have its term together with thex quick ending of our short day’s labour here:—and a book has the possibility of a longer life than that of a man. the night cometh, when none can work; how sweet, if it might be, that when the day is ended, when the warfare, for us, is over, we may have left some strong watchwords, or some comfortable and cheering utterances, still ringing in the ears of those who stepped into our place in the unbroken ranks.
yes, the evening soon falls on the field; the day is brief, nor fully employed; inanimate things seem to have an advantage over us; streams flow on, and mountains stand;
“while we, the brave, the mighty, and the wise, we men, who, in our morn of youth, defied the elements, must vanish:—be it so! enough, if something from our hands have power to live, and act, and serve the future hour.”
and i may be permitted to hope that possibly these meditations may have such power and perform such, service in their modest way. they have but the ambition of a flower that looks up to cheer, or a bird’s note that tranquilly, amid storms, continues a simple melody from the heart of its tree. they will, like these, be easily passed by, but, like these, may have a message for hearts that will look and listen.
there is certainly, in the present age, a want of writing that shall rest and brace the mind; of meditative writing of a tendency merely holy and practical, rather shunning than plungingxi into controversy:—not the cry of the angry or startled bird, but its evening and morning orisons rather. a contemplative strain; one linked with things of earth, and hallowing them—one heard beside “the common path that common men pursue”:—one rising from the common work-a-day experiences, joys, and pains—rising from these and carrying them up with it heavenward, until even earth’s exhalations catch the light of an unearthly glory. we want more of this spiritual rest; more of this standing apart from the perturbations of the day; more of retirement and retired thought—thought that shall leave the throng, with its absorbed purpose and pushing and jostling, always eager, often angry; and having secured a lonely standing-point apart from it all, become better able to judge of the real truth and importance, also of the just relation of things.
i cannot claim to have done more than make a slight attempt towards the supply of this want. nay, i would rather lay claim not to have attempted. this is the age of effort and strain; it were well that thought were sometimes permitted to be natural, spontaneous, and simply expressive of that which the heart’s meditations have laid by in store. a stream thus welling up will want the precision and the single aim of the artificial jet, but it will have its modest use and value to cheer and to refresh lowly grasses, and perhaps to water the roots of loftier growths in its vagaries and meanderings.
in these times men will be held nothing if not controversial;xii and rival parties will skim the book for shibboleths before they read or throw it by. assuredly fixed principles and definite teaching are (if ever at one time more than another) of special importance in the present day; and i am not one who think it well to blow both hot and cold at pleasure. only i would ask, is there absolute need that we be always blowing either? may we not sometimes be permitted simply to breathe? there are occasions on which i find myself compelled to blow one or the other, but i grudge the good breath spent in the exertion, and prefer to return to the normal state of even respiration. a story, told of archbishop leighton’s youth, is to the point:—“in a synod he was publicly reprimanded for not ‘preaching up the times.’ ‘who,’ he asked, ‘does preach up the times?’ it was answered that all the brethren did it. ‘then,’ he rejoined, ‘if all of you preach up the times, you may surely allow one poor brother to preach up christ jesus and eternity.’”
no doubt, we must be militant here on earth, militant against every form of error—old error undisguised, and old error in a new dress; but the more need that we should secure breathing times when we may sheathe the biting sword and lay the heavy armour by. perhaps many with whom we war, or from whom we stand aloof in suspicion, would be found, when the vizors were raised, to be brothers, and henceforth warriors by our side.
xiii one word as to the title of this book. “the harvest of a quiet eye.” this has always been a favourite line with me, and now i take it to describe my unpretentious volume, though this be rather a handful gleaned than a harvest got in. with some people this gleaning by the way would be contemned, in their single-eyed advance upon some goal; with some it is a thing continual and habitual, this instinctive gathering and half-unconscious storing of hints and touches of wayside beauty—a process so well described in wordsworth’s verses. to have an eye for the wide pictures and slight studies of nature; to gather them up, in solitary walks which thus are not lonely; to lay them by, together with the heart’s deeper thoughts, its associations, meditations, and reminiscences;—this is to fashion common things into a beauty which, to the fashioner at least, may be a joy for ever.
“to see the heath-flower withered on the hill, to listen to the woods’ expiring lay, to note the red leaf shivering on the spray, to mark the last bright tints the mountain stain, on the waste fields to trace the gleaner’s way, and moralise on mortal joy and pain,”
—this has been with me the secondary occupation of many a walk, solitary or in company. a rosy sunbeam slanting down a bank, and catching the stems of the ferns and the tops of the grasses; a coral twist of briony berries; a daisy inxiv december;—the eye would be caught, and the train of grave or anxious musing intermitted without being broken off, by the ever-allowed claim of nature’s silent poetry. and often the deeper meaning of such poetry would run parallel with the mind’s thought—sometimes suggest for it a new path.
“few ears of scattered grain.” though this be all my harvest, yet if that be grain at all which has been collected, it may have its use. he who with a very little fed a great multitude, has a ministry for even our humble handfuls. at his feet be this laid: may he accept and bless it, and deign to refresh and hearten by its means some few at least of those who, faint and weary, are following him in the wilderness of this world!