After all, where was
he? What had he accomplished? Had any of it been worthwhile? Had
he not been out of the world all his life! Out of the world!
'Croker's "Life and Letters", and Hayward's "Letters",' he notes,
'are so full of politics, literature, action, events, collision
of mind with mind, and that with such a multitude of men in every
state of life, that when I look back, it seems as if I had been
simply useless.' And again, 'The complete isolation and exclusion
from the official life of England in which I have lived, makes me
feel as if I had done nothing'. He struggled to console himself
with the reflexion that all this was only 'the natural order'.
'If the natural order is moved by the supernatural order, then I
may not have done nothing. Fifty years of witness for God and His
Truth, I hope, has not been in vain.' But the same thoughts
recurred. 'In reading Macaulay's life I had a haunting feeling
that his had been a life of public utility and mine a vita
umbratilis, a life in the shade.' Ah! it was God's will. 'Mine
has been a life of fifty years out of the world as Gladstone's
has been in it. The work of his life in this world is manifest. I
hope mine may be in the next. I suppose our Lord called me out of
the world because He saw that I should lose my soul in it.'
Clearly, that was the explanation.
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