The Test Of Faith

We had no need of faith in those young days When we went forth on the world’s unknown ways, When joy from every fount of life welled out, And beauty over-ran its crystal springs. We could not ask if life were good or ill When all our dreams it promised to fulfil, We could not fear the unknown road, nor doubt That love divine was at the heart of things.

All is the same, all but ourselves, and we! Do our eyes fail or but too clearly see? For we remember how our hearts leapt up With each new day that dawned upon the earth. Was it then but a vision we beheld, And but our youthful spirits that out-welled, That now the fountain is an unfilled cup, And where we looked for harvest there is dearth?

We know not when our faith began to wane, Or whether ’twas the sight of wrong and pain, The knowledge of a world wherein the strong Preyed on the weak, that wakened our distrust; Whether it was the torture that we saw, Dealt in obedience to Nature’s law, That made us ask if such a world of wrong From dust evolved should not return to dust.

Was God, we asked, the shaper of that plan Of brutal strife from which the soul of man Emerged? could man, a creature born of earth, Find beyond earth a place to house his soul? Or was it all a pattern chance had traced, A pattern that would be again erased; Were strife, and wrong, and love, and death, and birth, But motions of a force without a goal?

Give us, we cry, a pilgrimage of pain, However long, so it be not in vain! Show us a task, however desperate, So that our labour be not all for nought! We would not mourn a lot, however hard, If we were sure we had a trust to guard; We could fight on, careless of our own fate, If we were sure that not in vain we fought.

But we have looked upon the ants and bees, And asked ourselves if we be more than these, Who haply find their sunlit hours sweet, And for their common weal their lives lay down. We! we who claim to be the Lord’s elect; We! we the vile, the outcast, and the wrecked; We! the gay rabble of a Paris street; We! the low millions of a Chinese town.

Then, in disdain of all the shame and strife, We wish no more to be a part of life. The vital force that we miscalled a soul Ebbs, and our feet grow weary; we would rest. Since toil and sacrifice can but avail To nurse a hope that in the end must fail, Better, we cry, the graveyard for a goal Than any further hopeless, aimless quest.

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Now is the test of faith: there was no room For faith when life put forth its vernal bloom, And brave adventures promised to fulfil Our dreams, and danger made us long to prove Our fighting strength; but now that we have spent Our treasure and beheld our punishment, Oh! now, when we already feel the chill Of death, and hear the passing bell of love,

Now while the laws no deeds nor prayers can move Bear witness against all we long to prove, Now is the test of faith:--still to be true To those great purposes our dreams have shown; And, as a son defends a mother’s name Although a thousand voices cry her shame, Because he knows the heart they never knew, Still, still to trust the life whence springs our own.

We have beheld the evil and the good, And know, ourselves, the strength of wrong withstood. May it not be that God is everywhere Striving Himself against eternal wrong? May it not be that on that battle-field He needs the help of those His love would shield? May not His arm be bound by our despair? May not our courage help to make it strong?

Come! ere strength fail us, be it ours to guard That good which now can be upheld or marred,-- Tending, it may be, in our earth-born dust, The mortal seed of some immortal bloom. Come! can we dare to pause or hesitate When we may be the conquerors of fate,-- When fighting on God’s side for life’s great trust Our victory may break the bonds of doom?

And if no hope appears, yet having seen Dreams of what should be and what might have been,-- If as a crippled battle-ship that sinks, Flying her fighting colours to the fleet, We face the end,--is there no fountain-head Of strength divine from which such strength is fed? Must not our lives be bound with unseen links To some great heart that cannot know defeat.