766.5. EBB to William Merry
Addendum to The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 4.
Torquay
23rd June 1840.
My dear Friend
Your letter has been by in a long silence but not without thought. The length was measured out by no choice of mine– Sudden affliction having fallen upon me & resulting in fever & debility so that I was long unable to write at all, & have indeed up to the present time been straightened in doing so. The sting of death is sin. No wonder that the sting of sorrow should be sin too, that it should lie in the shock & the struggle & our own want of passiveness before the Divine energy. We try to stand up in the “Simoom”.
I gratefully appreciate the kindness of your remarks nor less that of your “Curiosity.” The curiosity may have sunk in the socket by this time, but if it still gives light enough to read a letter by, I am ready to put down my thoughts one by one, right or wrong, & let you judge “the rights of them.”
I think, then, that all men out of Christ are equally, because altogether unworthy of Heaven & God’s love. I think that all men in Christ are equally worthy of the same being bought by one price, being one Cross’s-worth—the worth being not of a multitude and multiform & of many degrees, but Christs—& one He who is “less unworthy” must “be more worthy”—turn it as you please & he who is “more worthy” is a fortiori worthy—worthy is a measure; which confronts the scriptural doctrine of Justification & my Hooker & your Church articles. So I do venture to hold that the term “less worthy” is an exceptionable term & if you begin with it & walk straight forward you come to the ‘bad word’ Supererogation– Why not say “less unholy” & let me agree with you? I would. For there are ‘Differences of Ministration but the same Lord’ differences of holiness here, & of corresponding glory thereafter which I should be very sorry to deny—glory of correspondence not meaning glory of debt. Holiness is a capacity for glory; & in the Hereafter glory of the Saints my thought is—if thought be too far, to[o] high, permissible,—that they all will be glorious according to their capacity for glory, the capacity being honored of course to that extent. My impression is that the word ‘reward’ as used in scripture in relation to the Saved of Christ, is not to be understood by us in a straight worldly acceptation and that the shrinkingness with which Theologians should touch any term involving or seeming to involve the idea of ‘Eight of payment’ is obvious in the example of the Apostle Paul who after denominating death “the wages of sin” escapes from the antithesis by a perceptible violence & calls Eternal life ‘no wages but a gift’—the gift of God in Christ Jesus.
I am besides, anxious dear Mr Merry to assure you earnestly that you are quite wrong in believing me to believe in the oblivion of the world they left, as entering into the Condition of Departed Spirits. Oh no no! I never did believe or fancy so. God forbid it should be. No they look down the valley of death through it into the valley of this weeping. They behold all the way step by step which the Lord their God hath led them thanking him in the knowledge as well as the leading. But my idea is, my hope is that it is in remembrance they behold these things, & not in present consciousness—that they are not presently conscious of our doings & our sufferings & Sinnings, for all that tenderly pitiful & retrospective look I say my hope is. Just because I do know their tears to be for ever wiped away & that therefore they must witness tearlessly my tears if they witness them at all which denotes a cutting off of sympathies more painful to me than any temporary separation of locality—to Me who care for sympathy at all times more than I might do. There—I give up my reasons to you. Call them selfish & human because they are. But when you have called them so let us who have differed, unite in making the very circumstances of our differences a ground of praise & confession of the infinite reasonableness of the Divine Mind which has hid these things from our eyes. There might be something in the realities if opened now before us, hard to, and uncongenial with our idiosyncrasies of infirmity. However it may prove to be Hereafter, we shall say then not only ‘well’ but ‘Best.’
So ‘Best’ to wait for the knowledge until then—until death’s darkness shall give clearness to our vision. In the mean time I hope it may [not] be wrong to say ‘Blessed be His name who doeth all things well.’
I rejoice in the circulation & usefulness of your little book. May God bless it & you & yours.
In reply to your kind wishes for my improvement in health, I am able to call myself something stronger week by week, altho’ that I should not yet have left my bed room—& this June does not I confess sound very promising.
Publication: None traced.
Docket: Note The conclusion of this Miss Barrett’s last letter has been mislaid but there were only a few more lines. W.M.
Source: Transcript at Armstrong Browning Library.
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