The Dyers Hand and Other Essays

An Apostle, on the other hand, is called by God direcdy. Jehovah says to Abraham: "Go get thee up out of the land"; Christ says to Matthew, the tax-collector; "Follow me!" If one asks, "Why Abraham or Matthew and not two other people?" there is no human answer; one cannot speak of a talent for being an Aposde or of the apostolic temperament. Whatever ultimate spiritual rewards there may be for an Aposde, they are unknowable and unimaginable; all he knows is that he is called upon to forsake everything he has been, to venture into an unknown and probably unpleasant future. Hence it is impossible to imagine the apostolic call­ing's being echoed by a man's natural desire. Any genuine Aposde must, surely, say, "I would not but, alas, I must." The prospective sculptor can correcdy be said to will to become a sculptor—that is to say, to submit himself to the study, toil and discipline which becoming a sculptor involves—but an Aposde cannot correcdy be said to will anything; he can only say, "Not as I will, but as Thou wilt." It is possible for a man to be deceived about a secular calling—he imagines he has a talent when in fact he has none—but there is an objective test to prove whether his calling is genuine or imag­inary: either he produces valuable works or he does not. A great sculptor may die with his works totally unrecognized by the public but, in the long run, the test of his greatness is worldly recognition of his work. But in the case of an Aposde there is no such objective test: he may make a million converts or he may make none, and we are still no nearer knowing whether his vocation was genuine or not. He may give his body to be burned and still we do not know. What makes an apostle a hero in a religious sense is not what he does or fails to do for others, but the constancy of his faith that God has called him to speak in His name.

The message Brand has to deliver is drawn for the most part from Kierkegaard and may be summed up in two passages from Kierkegaard's Journals.

The Christianity of the majority consists roughly of what may be called the two most doubtful extremities of Christianity Cor, as the parson says, the two things which must be clung to in life and death), first of all the saying about the little child, that one becomes a Christian as a little child and that of such is the King­dom of Heaven; the second is the thief on the cross. People live by virtue of the former—in death they reckon upon consoling themselves with the example of the thief.

This is the sum of their Christianity; and, correctly defined, it is a mixture of childishness and crime. . . .

Most people think that the Christian commandments, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, etc." are in­tentionally oversevere, like putting one's clock ahead to make sure of getting up in the morning.

In some of Brand's speeches, however, there is an emphasis on the human will which is Nietzschean rather than Kierke-

A whole shall rise which God shall recognize, Man, His greatest creation, His close heir, Adam, young and strong.

It is not

Martyrdom to die in agony upon a cross But to will that you shall die upon a cross.

These are not statements which Kierkegaard would have made. Indeed, he expressly says that there is a great difference between willing a martyrdom which God has willed for you and willing one for yourself before you know whether or not it is required of you, and that to will the second is spiritual pride of an extreme kind.

Brand's prophetic denunciations are directed against three kinds of life, the aesthetic life governed by the mood of the moment, the conventional life of social and religious habit, and the insane life of "The wild of heart in whose broken mind evil seems beautiful," which, presumably, refers to the criminal as well as to the clinically insane.

Ibsen did not, as Shaw might have done, make his play an intellectual debate. Brand has no trouble in demolishing the arguments of his opponents. There is a great deal more to be said for the aesthetic life than a ninny like Ejnar can put forward, and a belief in the value of habit, both in social and religious life, can and is held by wise good people; it is not confined to cowardly crooks like the Mayor and the Provost. The only antagonist who is in any way his equal is the doctor.

doctor: I've got to visit a patient.

brand: My mother?

doctor: Yes . . . You've been to see her already per­haps?

brand: No.

doctor: You're a hard man. I've struggled all the

way.

Across the moor, through mist and sleet, Although I know she pays like a pauper.

brand: May God bless your energy and skill.

Ease her suffering, if you can. . . . doctor: Don't wait for ber to send for you.

Come now, with me. brand: Until she sends for me, I know no duty there. doctor: . . . your credit account

For strength of will is full, but, priest, Your love account is a white virgin page,