[I] saw these two strands mingling to make the religion of man.
"A scale colossal, of which he sees glimpses." This, I think, is the first hint of the path that led Gilbert to full faith in Our Lord. In places in these notes he regards Him certainly only as Man--but even then as _The_ Man, the _Only_ Man in whom the colossal scale, the immense possibilities, of human nature could be dreamed of as fulfilled. Two notes on Marcus Aurelius are significant of the way his mind was moving.
A large-minded, delicate-witted, strong man, following the better thing like a thread between his hands.
Him we cannot fancy choosing the lower even by mistake; we cannot think of him as wanting for a moment in any virtue, sincerity, mercy, purity, self-respect, good manners.
Only one thing is wanting in him. He does not command me to perform the impossible.
The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. Yes: he was soliloquising, not making something. Do not the words of Jesus ring Like nails knocked into a board In his father's workshop?
On two consecutive pages are notes showing how his mind is wrestling with the question, the answer to which would complete his philosophy:
Good news: but if you ask me what it is, I know not; It is a track of feet in the snow, It is a lantern showing a path, It is a door set open.
I live in an age of varied powers and knowledge, Of steam, science, democracy, journalism, art: But when my love rises like a sea, I have to go back to an obscure tribe and a slain man To formulate a blessing.
"Vicisti Galilæe," he said, and sank conquered After wrestling with the most gigantic of powers, A dead man.
On a naked slope of a poor province A Roman soldier stood staring at a gibbet, Then he said, "Surely this was a righteous man," And a new chapter of history opened, Having that for its motto.
There was a man who dwelt in the east centuries ago, And now I cannot look at a sheep or a sparrow, A lily or a cornfield, a raven or a sunset, A vineyard or a mountain, without thinking of him; If this be not to be divine, what is it?
Cecil Chesterton tells us Gilbert read the Gospels partly because he was not forced to read them: I suppose this really means that he read them with a mature mind which had not been dulled to their reception by a childhood task of routine lessons. But I do not think at this date it had occurred to him to question the assumption of the period: that official Christianity, its priesthood especially, had travestied the original intention of Christ. This idea is in the _Wild Knight_ volume (published in 1900) and more briefly in a suggestion in the Notebook for a proposed drama: