The "True and Perfect Knight."

477

revealing the workings of his own mind, may make his teaching of the truths which were most precious to him on earth more intelligible, if such a revelation should only help one poor struggling soul to light, and strength, and comfort, in the sore dark battle of life.

Some, again, may be inclined to say that this character is drawn in too fair colours to be absolutely truthful. But "we speak that we do know, and testify to that we have seen." outside world must judge him as an author, a preacher, a member of society; but those only who lived with him in the intimacy of everyday life at home can tell what he was as a man. Over the real romance of his life, and over the tenderest, loveliest passages in his private letters, a veil must be thrown; but it will not be lifting it too far to say, that if in the highest, closest of earthly relationships, a love that never failed-pure, patient, passionate, for six-and-thirty years-a love which never stooped from its own lofty level to a hasty word, an impatient gesture, or a selfish act, in sickness or in health, in sunshine or in storm, by day or by night, could prove that the age of chivalry has not passed away for ever, then Charles Kingsley fulfilled the ideal of a "most true and perfect knight" to the one woman blest with that love in time and to eternity. To eternity—for such love is eternal; and he is not dead. He himself, the man, lover, husband, father, friend, he still lives in God, who is not the God of the dead, but of the living. He is not dead; for to use his own inspiring words *

"Those who die in the fear of God and in the faith of Christ do not really taste death; to them there is no death, but only a change of place, a change of state; they pass at once into some new life, with all their powers, all their feelings, unchanged; still the same living, thinking, active beings, which they were here on earth. I say active. .. Rest they may; rest they will, if they need rest. But what is the true rest? Not idleness, but peace of mind. To rest from sin, from sorrow, from fear, from doubt, from care; this is true rest. Above all to rest from the worst weariness of all-knowing one's duty, and yet not being able to do it. That is true rest; the rest of God, who works

*"The Victory of Life," preached at the Chapel Royal in 1861. Milton's "Ode to Time" was the last he read to his wife before his death.

for ever, and yet is at rest for ever; as the stars over our heads move for ever, thousands of miles a day, and yet are at perfect rest, because they move orderly, harmoniously, fulfilling the law which God has given them. Perfect rest, in perfect work; that surely is the rest of blessed spirits, till the final consummation of all things, when Christ shall have made up the number of his elect. I hope that this is so. I trust that this is so. I think our Lord's great words can mean nothing less than this. And if it be so, what comfort for us who must die! What comfort for us who have seen others die, if death be but a new birth into some higher life; if all that it changes in us is our body-the mere shell and husk of us-such a change as comes over the snake when he casts his old skin, and comes out fresh and gay, or even the crawling caterpillar, which breaks its prison, and spreads its wings to the sun as a fair butterfly. Where is the sting of death, then, if death can sting and poison and corrupt nothing of us, for which our friends have loved us; nothing of us with which we could do service to men or God? Where is the victory of the grave, if, so far from the grave holding us down, it frees us from the very thing which holds us down--the mortal body?

"Death is no death then, if it kills no part of us save that which hindered us from perfect life. Death is not death, if it raises us from darkness into light, from weakness into strength, from sinfulness into holiness. Death is not death, if it brings us nearer to Christ, who is the fount of life. Death is not death, if it perfects our faith by sight, and lets us behold Him in whom we have believed. Death is not death, if it gives us to those whom we have loved and lost, for whom we have lived, for whom we long to live again. Death is not death, if it rids us of doubt and fear, of chance and change, of space and time, and all which space and time bring forth, and then destroy. Death is not death; for Christ has conquered death, for Himself, and for those who trust in Him. And to those who say, 'You were born in Time, and in Time you must die, as all other creatures do; Time is your king and lord, as he has been of all the old worlds before this, and of all the races of beasts, whose bones and shells lie fossil in the rocks of a thousand generations;' then we can answer them in the words of the wise Poet, and in the name of Christ, who conquered death:

"Fly envious Time, till thou run out thy race,
And glut thyself with what thy womb devours,
Which is no more than what is false and vain
And merely mortal dross.

So little is our loss, so little is thy gain.

For when as each bad thing thou hast entombed,
And, last of all, thy greedy self consumed,

The Victory of Life.

Then long eternity shall greet our bliss

With an individual kiss,

And joy shall overtake us as a flood,

When everything that is sincerely good
And perfectly divine,

And truth, and peace, and love shall ever shine
About the supreme throne

Of Him, unto whose happy-making sight alone
When once our heavenly-guided soul shall climb,
Then all this earthly grossness quit,

Attired with stars, we shall for ever sit

Triumphing over death, and chance, and thee, O Time!"

479

Jan 19 1577

APPENDIX.

VOL. II.