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                         THE CHILD OF THE DAWN

                     By ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON

                 FELLOW OF MAGDALENE COLLEGE CAMBRIDGE

      [Greek: edu ti tharsaleais ton makron teiein bion elpisin]

Author of THE UPTON LETTERS, FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW, BESIDE STILL WATERS,
THE ALTAR FIRE, THE SCHOOLMASTER, AT LARGE, THE GATE OF DEATH, THE
SILENT ISLE, JOHN RUSKIN, LEAVES OF THE TREE, CHILD OF THE DAWN, PAUL
THE MINSTREL

                                 1912




To MY BEST AND DEAREST FRIEND
HERBERT FRANCIS WILLIAM TATHAM
IN LOVE AND HOPE




INTRODUCTION


I think that a book like the following, which deals with a subject so
great and so mysterious as our hope of immortality, by means of an
allegory or fantasy, needs a few words of preface, in order to clear
away at the outset any misunderstandings which may possibly arise in a
reader's mind. Nothing is further from my wish than to attempt any
philosophical or ontological exposition of what is hidden behind the
veil of death. But one may be permitted to deal with the subject
imaginatively or poetically, to translate hopes into visions, as I have
tried to do.

The fact that underlies the book is this: that in the course of a very
sad and strange experience--an illness which lasted for some two years,
involving me in a dark cloud of dejection--I came to believe
practically, instead of merely theoretically, in the personal
immortality of the human soul. I was conscious, during the whole time,
that though the physical machinery of the nerves was out of gear, the
soul and the mind remained, not only intact, but practically unaffected
by the disease, imprisoned, like a bird in a cage, but perfectly free in
themselves, and uninjured by the bodily weakness which enveloped them.
This was not all. I was led to perceive that I had been living life
with an entirely distorted standard of values; I had been ambitious,
covetous, eager for comfort and respect, absorbed in trivial dreams and
childish fancies. I saw, in the course of my illness, that what really
mattered to the soul was the relation in which it stood to other souls;
that affection was the native air of the spirit; and that anything which
distracted the heart from the duty of love was a kind of bodily
delusion, and simply hindered the spirit in its pilgrimage.

It is easy to learn this, to attain to a sense of certainty about it,
and yet to be unable to put it into practice as simply and frankly as
one desires to do! The body grows strong again and reasserts itself; but
the blessed consciousness of a great possibility apprehended and grasped
remains.

There came to me, too, a sense that one of the saddest effects of
what is practically a widespread disbelief in immortality, which
affects many people who would nominally disclaim it, is that we think
of the soul after death as a thing so altered as to be practically
unrecognisable--as a meek and pious emanation, without qualities or aims
or passions or traits--as a sort of amiable and weak-kneed sacristan in
the temple of God; and this is the unhappy result of our so often making
religion a pursuit apart from life--an occupation, not an atmosphere; so
that it seems impious to think of the departed spirit as interested in
anything but a vague species of liturgical exercise.

I read the other day the account of the death-bed of a great statesman,
which was written from what I may call a somewhat clerical point of
view. It was recorded with much gusto that the dying politician took no
interest in his schemes of government and cares of State, but found
perpetual solace in the repetition of childish hymns. This fact had, or
might have had, a certain beauty of its own, if it had been expressly
stated that it was a proof that the tired and broken mind fell back upon
old, simple, and dear recollections of bygone love. But there was
manifest in the record a kind of sanctimonious triumph in the extinction
of all the great man's insight and wisdom. It seemed to me that the
right treatment of the episode was rather to insist that those great
qualities, won by brave experience and unselfish effort, were only
temporarily obscured, and belonged actually and essentially to the
spirit of the