“HE BUILT THE HIGHER GATE”

Evening Star, Issue 20322, 2 November 1929, Page 2

“HE BUILT THE HIGHER GATE”

What epitaph would one desire for oneself %ad he the power to choose? Is there a more beautiful one than that on General Gordon’s tomb in St. Paul’s: “Sacred to the memory, etc., who, at all times and everywhere, gave his strength to the weak, his substance to the poor, his sympathy to the suffering, and his heart to God ” ? Or, if one were a woman and a wife, she might covet such an one as this: She was—but words are wanting to say what. Think what a wife should be—she was that. , The reverence and reticence of the one that follows are to be admired. On a marble slab in a parish church in Gloucestershire there is this inscription “In a vault underneath lie several ol the Saundersons, late of this parish Particulars the last day will disclose.’' The words whicli form the caption of this article a very popular writer, to whom we shall be indebted for some suggestions, calls “ a shining • epitaph —one of the most beautiful epitaphs in the world.” And many will be inclined to agree with him when he says: “ This be the verso you grave for me if it Lave aught of truth in it at the end of the working day.” It certainly does seem an epitaph worth living and dying for. Let us consider. V » « $ “.He built the higher gate.” We are all builders. We are building bouses, and habits, and characters, and we are building gates into these—our own and others. The quality of the gates and doors is a mark of the standing of people. The savage, the uncivilised, have poor entrances. They have to creep into their huts on all fours, as an animal crawls into its burrow. In Oriental countries in ancient times the gates of a city, were the specialty of the place. They were massive, ornate, imposing. Of Jotham, the Jewish King whoso record is thus preserved—he built the higher gate—we do not know much. But the nation had a prosperous time during his reign. And it is significant that among the brief annals that history preserves of him this comes among the first—he built the higher gate. Why he did it we do not know. Perhaps it was to let in a little more light and air. where it was badly needed; perhaps to make a near and easy way to the Temple, the centre of the nation’s life and worship. But anyway it is surely a fine ambition to make openings for others into the higher joys and lights of life. How much it is needed! Wise is the advice: “ Don’t be content to acquiesce in the general level of talk about you. People are shaking their heads in suspicion over So-and-so’s conduct. Things certainly do look black. But is it impossible to put a kindlier construction on what he did? Is there not another explanation and a way out? Build you the higher gate, even though it should lead nowhere.” Nevertheless, it is not only the safe hut the right thing to do.

The Same thing is true in other spheres of life. Take, e.g., business. How greatly needed here are the men who will build the higher gate—men who by their being and doing will make it easier to do the right—to see it and love it; men who “refuse to get on with the world, and instead propose to get the world on.” Or take literature. How many are the low, broad gates that invite us into the world of books! How fortunate are they who have been introduced into that world by the higher gatel And the introducer may not be a very notable or famous person. Here, e.g., is Wordsworth. He was one of those no inconsiderable number who owed the realisation of himself to his sister. When he was bewildered and disillusioned by the turn of events in the French Revolution, when all lus hopes and ideals regarding it fell into ruin around him, when ho lost the clue into the right understanding and spiritual significance of things; in fact, lost, as he says, ,

All feeling of conviction, and, in fine, Sick wearied out with contrarieties, Yielded up moral questions m despair— then it was that his sister came to S like an angel of light. What she did for him ho tells in numerous poems. And over and over again he records his gratitude to her. Says Principal Shairp: “With original powers which, had she chosen to set up on her own account, might have won for her high literary fame, she was content to forget herself, to merge all her gifts and interests in those of her brother. As the brother himself says in ‘The Prelude,’ she Maintained for me a saving intercourse With my true self. • • • . She whispered still that brightness would return; She, in the midst of all, preserved me ‘ , , ~ . A Poet, made me seek beneath that name, , And that alone my office upon earth. She built for him the higher gate. And since then how many have passed in through that gate into peace and power? As Sir Wm. Watson says in his memorable poem ‘ Wordsworth’s Grave,’ and he is telling his own experience: “Thou hadst for weary mortals the gift of peace.” And it was not poets only for whom he opened the higher gate. Sir Leslie Stephen, the eminent critic, was not given to sentimentalism, but he records how the spiritual atmosphere of Wordsworth’s poetry laid its spell upon him. “Other poetry becomes trifling when we are making our inevitable passage through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Wordsworth’s alone retains its power. We love him the more as we grow older and become more deeply impressed with the sadness and the seriousness of life.” John Stuart Mill was a hard-headed.logician. He drew up schemes, of civil and political order. He lived to be disillusioned, to ■ see hishopes for society defeated, and to find his constant occupation of analysis and reasoning to be. as he says, “ a. perpetual worm gnawing at all happiness.” He tells in his ‘Autobiography’ how, when ho was despondent and bewildered, |7orda-

worth’s poetry camo as a healing medicine to his sick soul. ' “I seemed to learn from it what would bo the perennial sources of happiness. . . . I felt myself at once hotter and happier as I came under its influence.” So great a thing it is to build the higher gates into literature and to load others in through them. He built the higher gate. The historic reference is to the gate into the Temple. After all, the higher gates of life are those that. lead into the country of the spirit. The true epochmaker, says Mr Myers, “in the his--tory of the human soul is the man who. educes from this bewildering universe a new and elevating joy.” And in the end of the day the only elevating, enduring joys are those that belong to the region of the spirit. One is glad. for all the higher gates that lead out into larger literary, political, social, and industrial life. Yet unless this larger life be spiritualised the expected happiness will not emerge. Mill had to ask himself supposing he saw all his schemes for social reform realised,' Would he really be any happier? And he had to confess that he did not think he would. For liappiness does not lie in the satisfaction of our wants nor in the amount of our bank balances. Those who have all. this and nothing more are probably among the most restless and discontented people on the face of the earth. Francis Xavier had no bank balance .at all, but his biographer says: “Sometimes it happened if any of the brothers were sad the way they took to become happy was to go and look at him.” We were celebrating the other day the centenary of the Salvation Army. Was there ever anyone who built the higher gate for such needy multitudes as did General Booth? Vachell Lindsay has a wonderful poem describing Booth’s entrance into heaven at the head of the crowd that passed in there through the higher gate ho built for them. Walking lepers followed rank on rank, Lurching bravos from the ditches dank, Drabs from the alleyways and drug fiends pale, Vermin-eaten saints with mouldy breath, Unwashed legions with the ways of death. . . . Oh, shout Salvation! it was good to see Kings and princes of the Lamb set free, ' ■ The banjos rattled and the tambourines Jing-jing—jingled in the hands of , queens. ’ - • * » • It is not so difficult to build the higher gate, but it-is a grace given to few—if any—to induce such multitudes to pass through it as did William Booth. Yet the powers which enabled Booth to do it—faith, love, self-sacri-fice, devotion, and the like—are within the possibilities of the humblest. The duty of building the higher gate does not require anyone to quit the sphere in which they live and work. Let them do it there. Said a visitor to a workman in a factory: “You make pretty good hammers here.” Came the swift answer: “ No, sir, we make the best hammers that can be made.” That is how the higher gate can be built into our occupation, whatever it be, from cooking to kingship. Only it is still lo be remembered that it is the gate that opens into the spiritual country which is the highest gate of all. We need to remind ourselves often of the remark of the ancient lame Phrygian slave Epictetus; “ You will do the best service to the State, not by raising the roofs of the dwellings, but the souls of the dwellers. For it is better that great souls should live in mean houses than that mean souls should live in great houses.” So we come back to where we set out. We aro all builders of gates, high or low. Ho who built for us the highest gate of all has warned us that there will never be an inconvenient crowd pressing through it. The crowd will be about the wide gate and the broad way. Happy are they who ask themselves: “Years after this, when our opportunity is for ever gone, how will they think of us, the comrade at our side, the child in our home, the mate at our bench, the friend in our set? As they recall the way we handled the problems of life and spoke of the deep things of experience and faced the mystery of the future, will they thank God upon every remembrance of us and say : * For me, at any rate, he built the higher gate.’ ”