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+Project Gutenberg Etext of The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford
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+Title: The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford
+
+Author: Mark Rutherford
+
+Release Date: June, 2002  [Etext #3269]
+[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]
+[The actual date this file first posted = 03/06/01]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Project Gutenberg Etext of The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford
+*****This file should be named mrkrt10.txt or mrkrt10.zip******
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+
+THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARK RUTHERFORD
+EDITED BY HIS FRIEND REUBEN SHAPCOTT
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
+
+
+
+The present edition is a reprint of the first, with corrections of
+several mistakes which had been overlooked.
+
+There is one observation which I may perhaps be permitted to make on
+re-reading after some years this autobiography.  Rutherford, at any
+rate in his earlier life, was an example of the danger and the folly of
+cultivating thoughts and reading books to which he was not equal, and
+which tend to make a man lonely.
+
+It is all very well that remarkable persons should occupy themselves
+with exalted subjects, which are out of the ordinary road which
+ordinary humanity treads; but we who are not remarkable make a very
+great mistake if we have anything to do with them.  If we wish to be
+happy, and have to live with average men and women, as most of us have
+to live, we must learn to take an interest in the topics which concern
+average men and women.  We think too much of ourselves.  We ought not
+to sacrifice a single moment's pleasure in our attempt to do something
+which is too big for us, and as a rule, men and women are always
+attempting what is too big for them.  To ninety-nine young men out of a
+hundred, or perhaps ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine
+out of a hundred thousand, the wholesome healthy doctrine is, "Don't
+bother yourselves with what is beyond you; try to lead a sweet, clean,
+wholesome life, keep yourselves in health above everything, stick to
+your work, and when your day is done amuse and refresh yourselves."
+
+It is not only a duty to ourselves, but it is a duty to others to take
+this course.  Great men do the world much good, but not without some
+harm, and we have no business to be troubling ourselves with their
+dreams if we have duties which lie nearer home amongst persons to whom
+these dreams are incomprehensible.  Many a man goes into his study,
+shuts himself up with his poetry or his psychology, comes out, half
+understanding what he has read, is miserable because he cannot find
+anybody with whom he can talk about it, and misses altogether the far
+more genuine joy which he could have obtained from a game with his
+children or listening to what his wife had to tell him about her
+neighbours.
+
+"Lor, miss, you haven't looked at your new bonnet to-day," said a
+servant girl to her young mistress.
+
+"No, why should I?  I did not want to go out."
+
+"Oh, how can you? why, I get mine out and look at it every night."
+
+She was happy for a whole fortnight with a happiness cheap at a very
+high price.
+
+That same young mistress was very caustic upon the women who block the
+pavement outside drapers' shops, but surely she was unjust.  They
+always seem unconscious, to be enjoying themselves intensely and most
+innocently, more so probably than an audience at a Wagner concert.
+Many persons with refined minds are apt to depreciate happiness,
+especially if it is of "a low type."  Broadly speaking, it is the one
+thing worth having, and low or high, if it does no mischief, is better
+than the most spiritual misery.
+
+Metaphysics and theology, including all speculations on the why and the
+wherefore, optimism, pessimism, freedom, necessity, causality, and so
+forth, are not only for the most part loss of time, but frequently
+ruinous.  It is no answer to say that these things force themselves
+upon us, and that to every question we are bound to give or try to give
+an answer.  It is true, although strange, that there are multitudes of
+burning questions which we must do our best to ignore, to forget their
+existence; and it is not more strange, after all, than many other facts
+in this wonderfully mysterious and defective existence of ours.  One
+fourth of life is intelligible, the other three-fourths is
+unintelligible darkness; and our earliest duty is to cultivate the
+habit of not looking round the corner.
+
+"Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry
+heart; for God hath already accepted thy works.  Let thy garments be
+always white, and let not thy head lack ointment.  Live joyfully with
+the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which
+He hath given thee under the sun, all the days of thy vanity:  for that
+is thy portion in life."
+
+R. S.
+
+
+This is the night when I must die,
+And great Orion walketh high
+In silent glory overhead:
+He'll set just after I am dead.
+
+A week this night, I'm in my grave:
+Orion walketh o'er the wave:
+Down in the dark damp earth I lie,
+While he doth march in majesty.
+
+A few weeks hence and spring will come;
+The earth will bright array put on
+Of daisy and of primrose bright,
+And everything which loves the light.
+
+And some one to my child will say,
+"You'll soon forget that you could play
+Beethoven; let us hear a strain
+From that slow movement once again."
+
+And so she'll play that melody,
+While I among the worms do lie;
+Dead to them all, for ever dead;
+The churchyard clay dense overhead.
+
+I once did think there might be mine
+One friendship perfect and divine;
+Alas! that dream dissolved in tears
+Before I'd counted twenty years.
+
+For I was ever commonplace;
+Of genius never had a trace;
+My thoughts the world have never fed,
+Mere echoes of the book last read.
+
+Those whom I knew I cannot blame:
+If they are cold, I am the same:
+How could they ever show to me
+More than a common courtesy?
+
+There is no deed which I have done;
+There is no love which I have won,
+To make them for a moment grieve
+That I this night their earth must leave.
+
+Thus, moaning at the break of day,
+A man upon his deathbed lay;
+A moment more and all was still;
+The Morning Star came o'er the hill.
+
+But when the dawn lay on his face,
+It kindled an immortal grace;
+As if in death that Life were shown
+Which lives not in the great alone.
+
+Orion sank down in the west
+Just as he sank into his rest;
+I closed in solitude his eyes,
+And watched him till the sun's uprise.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I--CHILDHOOD
+
+
+
+Now that I have completed my autobiography up to the present year, I
+sometimes doubt whether it is right to publish it.  Of what use is it,
+many persons will say, to present to the world what is mainly a record
+of weaknesses and failures?  If I had any triumphs to tell; if I could
+show how I had risen superior to poverty and suffering; if, in short, I
+were a hero of any kind whatever, I might perhaps be justified in
+communicating my success to mankind, and stimulating them to do as I
+have done.  But mine is the tale of a commonplace life, perplexed by
+many problems I have never solved; disturbed by many difficulties I
+have never surmounted; and blotted by ignoble concessions which are a
+constant regret.
+
+I have decided, however, to let the manuscript remain.  I will not
+destroy it, although I will not take the responsibility of printing it.
+Somebody may think it worth preserving; and there are two reasons why
+they may think so, if there are no others.  In the first place it has
+some little historic value, for I feel increasingly that the race to
+which I belonged is fast passing away, and that the Dissenting minister
+of the present day is a different being altogether from the Dissenting
+minister of forty years ago.
+
+In the next place, I have observed that the mere knowing that other
+people have been tried as we have been tried is a consolation to us,
+and that we are relieved by the assurance that our sufferings are not
+special and peculiar, but common to us with many others.  Death has
+always been a terror to me, and at times, nay generally, religion and
+philosophy have been altogether unavailing to mitigate the terror in
+any way.  But it has been a comfort to me to reflect that whatever
+death may be, it is the inheritance of the whole human race; that I am
+not singled out, but shall merely have to pass through what the weakest
+have had to pass through before me.  In the worst of maladies, worst at
+least to me, those which are hypochondriacal, the healing effect which
+is produced by the visit of a friend who can simply say, "I have
+endured all that," is most marked.  So it is not impossible that some
+few whose experience has been like mine may, by my example, be freed
+from that sense of solitude which they find so depressing.
+
+I was born, just before the Liverpool and Manchester Railway was
+opened, in a small country town in one of the Midland shires.  It is
+now semi-manufacturing, at the junction of three or four lines of
+railway, with hardly a trace left of what it was fifty years ago.  It
+then consisted of one long main street, with a few other streets
+branching from it at right-angles.  Through this street the mail-coach
+rattled at night, and the huge waggon rolled through it, drawn by four
+horses, which twice a week travelled to and from London and brought us
+what we wanted from the great and unknown city.
+
+My father and mother belonged to the ordinary English middle class of
+well-to-do shop-keepers.  My mother's family came from a little
+distance, but my father's had lived in those parts for centuries.  I
+remember perfectly well how business used to be carried on in those
+days.  There was absolutely no competition, and although nobody in the
+town who was in trade got rich, except the banker and the brewer,
+nearly everybody was tolerably well off, and certainly not pressed with
+care as their successors are now.  The draper, who lived a little way
+above us, was a deacon in our chapel, and every morning, soon after
+breakfast, he would start off for his walk of about four miles,
+stopping by the way to talk to his neighbours about the events of the
+day.  At eleven o'clock or thereabouts he would return and would begin
+work.  Everybody took an hour for dinner--between one and two--and at
+that time, especially on a hot July afternoon, the High Street was
+empty from end to end, and the profoundest peace reigned.
+
+My life as a child falls into two portions, sharply divided--week-day
+and Sunday.  During the week-day I went to the public school, where I
+learned little or nothing that did me much good.  The discipline of the
+school was admirable, and the headmaster was penetrated with a most
+lofty sense of duty, but the methods of teaching were very imperfect.
+In Latin we had to learn the Eton Latin Grammar till we knew every word
+of it by heart, but we did scarcely any retranslation from English into
+Latin.  Much of our time was wasted on the merest trifles, such as
+learning to write, for example, like copperplate, and, still more
+extraordinary, in copying the letters of the alphabet as they are used
+in printing.
+
+But we had two half-holidays in the week, which seem to me now to have
+been the happiest part of my life.  A river ran through the town, and
+on summer Wednesdays and Saturdays we wandered along its banks for
+miles, alternately fishing and bathing.  I remember whole afternoons in
+June, July, and August, passed half-naked or altogether naked in the
+solitary meadows and in the water; I remember the tumbling weir with
+the deep pool at the bottom in which we dived; I remember, too, the
+place where we used to swim across the river with our clothes on our
+heads, because there was no bridge near, and the frequent disaster of a
+slip of the braces in the middle of the water, so that shirt, jacket,
+and trousers were soaked, and we had to lie on the grass in the
+broiling sun without a rag on us till everything was dry again.
+
+In winter our joys were of a different kind but none the less
+delightful.  If it was a frost, we had skating; not like skating on a
+London pond, but over long reaches, and if the locks had not
+intervened, we might have gone a day's journey on the ice without a
+stoppage.  If there was no ice, we had football, and what was still
+better, we could get up a steeplechase--on foot straight across hedge
+and ditch.
+
+In after-years, when I lived in London, I came to know children who
+went to school in Gower Street, and travelled backwards and forwards by
+omnibus--children who had no other recreation than an occasional visit
+to the Zoological Gardens, or a somewhat sombre walk up to Hampstead to
+see their aunt; and I have often regretted that they never had any
+experience of those perfect poetic pleasures which the boy enjoys whose
+childhood is spent in the country, and whose home is there.  A country
+boarding-school is something altogether different.
+
+On the Sundays, however, the compensation came.  It was a season of
+unmixed gloom.  My father and mother were rigid Calvinistic
+Independents, and on that day no newspaper nor any book more secular
+than the Evangelical Magazine was tolerated.  Every preparation for the
+Sabbath had been made on the Saturday, to avoid as much as possible any
+work.  The meat was cooked beforehand, so that we never had a hot
+dinner even in the coldest weather; the only thing hot which was
+permitted was a boiled suet pudding, which cooked itself while we were
+at chapel, and some potatoes which were prepared after we came home.
+Not a letter was opened unless it was clearly evident that it was not
+on business, and for opening these an apology was always offered that
+it was possible they might contain some announcement of sickness.  If
+on cursory inspection they appeared to be ordinary letters, although
+they might be from relations or friends, they were put away.
+
+After family prayer and breakfast the business of the day began with
+the Sunday-school at nine o'clock.  We were taught our Catechism and
+Bible there till a quarter past ten.  We were then marched across the
+road into the chapel, a large old-fashioned building dating from the
+time of Charles II.  The floor was covered with high pews.  The roof
+was supported by three or four tall wooden pillars which ran from the
+ground to the ceiling, and the galleries by shorter pillars.  There was
+a large oak pulpit on one side against the wall, and down below,
+immediately under the minister, was the "singing pew," where the
+singers and musicians sat, the musicians being performers on the
+clarionet, flute, violin, and violoncello.  Right in front was a long
+enclosure, called the communion pew, which was usually occupied by a
+number of the poorer members of the congregation.
+
+There were three services every Sunday, besides intermitting prayer-
+meetings, but these I did not as yet attend.  Each service consisted of
+a hymn, reading the Bible, another hymn, a prayer, the sermon, a third
+hymn, and a short final prayer.  The reading of the Bible was
+unaccompanied with any observations or explanations, and I do not
+remember that I ever once heard a mistranslation corrected.
+
+The first, or long prayer, as it was called, was a horrible hypocrisy,
+and it was a sore tax on the preacher to get through it.  Anything more
+totally unlike the model recommended to us in the New Testament cannot
+well be imagined.  It generally began with a confession that we were
+all sinners, but no individual sins were ever confessed, and then
+ensued a kind of dialogue with God, very much resembling the speeches
+which in later years I have heard in the House of Commons from the
+movers and seconders of addresses to the Crown at the opening of
+Parliament.
+
+In all the religion of that day nothing was falser than the long
+prayer.  Direct appeal to God can only be justified when it is
+passionate.  To come maundering into His presence when we have nothing
+particular to say is an insult, upon which we should never presume if
+we had a petition to offer to any earthly personage.  We should not
+venture to take up His time with commonplaces or platitudes; but our
+minister seemed to consider that the Almighty, who had the universe to
+govern, had more leisure at His command that the idlest lounger at a
+club.  Nobody ever listened to this performance.  I was a good child on
+the whole, but I am sure I did not; and if the chapel were now in
+existence, there might be traced on the flap of the pew in which we sat
+many curious designs due to these dreary performances.
+
+The sermon was not much better.  It generally consisted of a text,
+which was a mere peg for a discourse, that was pretty much the same
+from January to December.  The minister invariably began with the fall
+of man; propounded the scheme of redemption, and ended by depicting in
+the morning the blessedness of the saints, and in the evening the doom
+of the lost.  There was a tradition that in the morning there should be
+"experience"--that is to say, comfort for the elect, and that the
+evening should be appropriated to their less fortunate brethren.
+
+The evening service was the most trying to me of all these.  I never
+could keep awake, and knew that to sleep under the Gospel was a sin.
+The chapel was lighted in winter by immense chandeliers with tiers of
+candles all round.  These required perpetual snuffing, and I can see
+the old man going round the chandeliers in the middle of the service
+with a mighty pair of snuffers which opened and shut with a loud click.
+How I envied him because he had semi-secular occupation which prevented
+that terrible drowsiness!  How I envied the pew-opener, who was allowed
+to stand at the vestry door, and could slip into the vestry every now
+and then, or even into the burial-ground if he heard irreverent boys
+playing there!  The atmosphere of the chapel on hot nights was most
+foul, and this added to my discomfort.  Oftentimes in winter, when no
+doors or windows were open, I have seen the glass panes streaming with
+wet inside, and women carried out fainting.
+
+On rare occasions I was allowed to go with my father when he went into
+the villages to preach.  As a deacon he was also a lay-preacher, and I
+had the ride in the gig out and home, and tea at a farm-house.
+
+Perhaps I shall not have a better opportunity to say that, with all
+these drawbacks, my religious education did confer upon me some
+positive advantages.  The first was a rigid regard for truthfulness.
+My parents never would endure a lie or the least equivocation.  The
+second was purity of life, and I look upon this as a simply
+incalculable gain.  Impurity was not an excusable weakness in the
+society in which I lived; it was a sin for which dreadful punishment
+was reserved.  The reason for my virtue may have been a wrong reason,
+but, anyhow, I was saved, and being saved, much more was saved than
+health and peace of mind.
+
+To this day I do not know where to find a weapon strong enough to
+subdue the tendency to impurity in young men; and although I cannot
+tell them what I do not believe, I hanker sometimes after the old
+prohibitions and penalties.  Physiological penalties are too remote,
+and the subtler penalties--the degradation, the growth of callousness
+to finer pleasures, the loss of sensitiveness to all that is most nobly
+attractive in woman--are too feeble to withstand temptation when it
+lies in ambush like a garrotter, and has the reason stunned in a
+moment.
+
+The only thing that can be done is to make the conscience of a boy
+generally tender, so that he shrinks instinctively from the monstrous
+injustice of contributing for the sake of his own pleasure to the ruin
+of another.  As soon as manhood dawns, he must also have his attention
+absorbed on some object which will divert his thoughts intellectually
+or ideally; and by slight yet constant pressure, exercised not by fits
+and starts, but day after day, directly and indirectly, his father must
+form an antipathy in him to brutish, selfish sensuality.  Above all,
+there must be no toying with passion, and no books permitted, without
+condemnation and warning, which are not of a heroic turn.  When the boy
+becomes a man he may read Byron without danger.  To a youth he is
+fatal.
+
+Before leaving this subject I may observe, that parents greatly err by
+not telling their children a good many things which they ought to know.
+Had I been taught when I was young a few facts about myself, which I
+only learned accidentally long afterwards, a good deal of misery might
+have been spared me.
+
+Nothing particular happened to me till I was about fourteen, when I was
+told it was time I became converted.  Conversion, amongst the
+Independents and other Puritan sects, is supposed to be a kind of
+miracle wrought in the heart by the influence of the Holy Spirit, by
+which the man becomes something altogether different to what he was
+previously.  It affects, or should affect, his character; that is to
+say, he ought after conversion to be better in every way than he was
+before; but this is not considered as its main consequence.  In its
+essence it is a change in the emotions and increased vividness of
+belief.  It is now altogether untrue.  Yet it is an undoubted fact that
+in earlier days, and, indeed, in rare cases, as late as the time of my
+childhood, it was occasionally a reality.
+
+It is possible to imagine that under the preaching of Paul sudden
+conviction of a life misspent may have been produced with sudden
+personal attachment to the Galilean who, until then, had been despised.
+There may have been prompt release of unsuspected powers, and as prompt
+an imprisonment for ever of meaner weaknesses and tendencies; the
+result being literally a putting off of the old, and a putting on of
+the new man.  Love has always been potent to produce such a
+transformation, and the exact counterpart of conversion, as it was
+understood by the apostles, may be seen whenever a man is redeemed from
+vice by attachment to some woman whom he worships, or when a girl is
+reclaimed from idleness and vanity by becoming a mother.
+
+But conversion, as it was understood by me and as it is now understood,
+is altogether unmeaning.  I knew that I had to be "a child of God," and
+after a time professed myself to be one, but I cannot call to mind that
+I was anything else than I always had been, save that I was perhaps a
+little more hypocritical; not in the sense that I professed to others
+what I knew I did not believe, but in the sense that I professed it to
+myself.  I was obliged to declare myself convinced of sin; convinced of
+the efficacy of the atonement; convinced that I was forgiven; convinced
+that the Holy Ghost was shed abroad in my heart; and convinced of a
+great many other things which were the merest phrases.
+
+However, the end of it was, that I was proposed for acceptance, and two
+deacons were deputed, in accordance with the usual custom, to wait upon
+me and ascertain my fitness for membership.  What they said and what I
+said has now altogether vanished; but I remember with perfect
+distinctness the day on which I was admitted.  It was the custom to
+demand of each candidate a statement of his or her experience.  I had
+no experience to give; and I was excused on the grounds that I had been
+the child of pious parents, and consequently had not undergone that
+convulsion which those, not favoured like myself, necessarily underwent
+when they were called.
+
+I was now expected to attend all those extra services which were
+specially for the church.  I stayed to the late prayer-meeting on
+Sunday; I went to the prayer-meeting on week-days, and also to private
+prayer-meetings.  These services were not interesting to me for their
+own sake.  I thought they were, but what I really liked was clanship
+and the satisfaction of belonging to a society marked off from the
+great world.
+
+It must also be added that the evening meetings afforded us many
+opportunities for walking home with certain young women, who, I am
+sorry to say, were a more powerful attraction, not to me only, but to
+others, than the prospect of hearing brother Holderness, the travelling
+draper, confess crimes which, to say the truth, although they were many
+according to his own account, were never given in that detail which
+would have made his confession of some value.  He never prayed without
+telling all of us that there was no health in him, and that his soul
+was a mass of putrefying sores; but everybody thought the better of him
+for his self-humiliation.  One actual indiscretion, however, brought
+home to him would have been visited by suspension or expulsion.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II--PREPARATION
+
+
+
+It was necessary that an occupation should be found for me, and after
+much deliberation it was settled that I should "go into the ministry."
+I had joined the church, I had "engaged in prayer" publicly, and
+although I had not set up for being extraordinarily pious, I was
+thought to be as good as most of the young men who professed to have a
+mission to regenerate mankind.
+
+Accordingly, after some months of preparation, I was taken to a
+Dissenting College not very far from where we lived.  It was a large
+old-fashioned house with a newer building annexed, and was surrounded
+with a garden and with meadows.  Each student had a separate room, and
+all had their meals together in a common hall.  Altogether there were
+about forty of us.  The establishment consisted of a President, an
+elderly gentleman who had an American degree of doctor of divinity, and
+who taught the various branches of theology.  He was assisted by three
+professors, who imparted to us as much Greek, Latin, and mathematics as
+it was considered that we ought to know.  Behold me, then, beginning a
+course of training which was to prepare me to meet the doubts of the
+nineteenth century; to be the guide of men; to advise them in their
+perplexities; to suppress their tempestuous lusts; to lift them above
+their petty cares, and to lead them heavenward!
+
+About the Greek and Latin and the secular part of the college
+discipline I will say nothing, except that it was generally
+inefficient.  The theological and Biblical teaching was a sham.  We had
+come to the college in the first place to learn the Bible.  Our whole
+existence was in future to be based upon that book; our lives were to
+be passed in preaching it.  I will venture to say that there was no
+book less understood either by students or professors.  The President
+had a course of lectures, delivered year after year to successive
+generations of his pupils, upon its authenticity and inspiration.  They
+were altogether remote from the subject; and afterwards, when I came to
+know what the difficulties of belief really were, I found that these
+essays, which were supposed to be a triumphant confutation of the
+sceptic, were a mere sword of lath.  They never touched the question,
+and if any doubts suggested themselves to the audience, nobody dared to
+give them tongue, lest the expression of them should beget a suspicion
+of heresy.
+
+I remember also some lectures on the proof of the existence of God and
+on the argument from design; all of which, when my mind was once
+awakened, were as irrelevant as the chattering of sparrows.  When I did
+not even know who or what this God was, and could not bring my lips to
+use the word with any mental honesty, of what service was the "watch
+argument" to me?  Very lightly did the President pass over all these
+initial difficulties of his religion.  I see him now, a gentleman with
+lightish hair, with a most mellifluous voice and a most pastoral
+manner, reading his prim little tracts to us directed against the
+"shallow infidel" who seemed to deny conclusions so obvious that we
+were certain he could not be sincere, and those of us who had never
+seen an infidel might well be pardoned for supposing that he must
+always be wickedly blind.
+
+About a dozen of these tracts settled the infidel and the whole mass of
+unbelief from the time of Celsus downwards.  The President's task was
+all the easier because he knew nothing of German literature; and,
+indeed, the word "German" was a term of reproach signifying something
+very awful, although nobody knew exactly what it was.
+
+Systematic theology was the next science to which the President
+directed us.  We used a sort of Calvinistic manual which began by
+setting forth that mankind was absolutely in God's power.  He was our
+maker, and we had no legal claim whatever to any consideration from
+Him.  The author then mechanically built up the Calvinistic creed, step
+by step, like a house of cards.  Systematic theology was the great
+business of our academical life.  We had to read sermons to the
+President in class, and no sermon was considered complete and proper
+unless it unfolded what was called the scheme of redemption from
+beginning to end.
+
+So it came to pass that about the Bible, as I have already said, we
+were in darkness.  It was a magazine of texts, and those portions of it
+which contributed nothing in the shape of texts, or formed no part of
+the scheme, were neglected.  Worse still, not a word was ever spoken to
+us telling us in what manner to strengthen the reason, to subdue the
+senses, or in what way to deal with all the varied diseases of that
+soul of man which we were to set ourselves to save.  All its failings,
+infinitely more complicated than those of the body, were grouped as
+"sin," and for these there was one quack remedy.  If the patient did
+not like the remedy, or got no good from it, the fault was his.
+
+It is remarkable that the scheme was never of the slightest service to
+me in repressing one solitary evil inclination; at no point did it come
+into contact with me.  At the time it seemed right and proper that I
+should learn it, and I had no doubt of its efficacy; but when the
+stress of temptation was upon me, it never occurred to me, nor when I
+became a minister did I find it sufficiently powerful to mend the most
+trifling fault.  In after years, but not till I had strayed far away
+from the President and his creed, the Bible was really opened to me,
+and became to me, what it now is, the most precious of books.
+
+There were several small chapels scattered in the villages near the
+college, and these chapels were "supplied," as the phrase is, by the
+students.  Those who were near the end of their course were also
+employed as substitutes for regular ministers when they were
+temporarily absent.  Sometimes a senior was even sent up to London to
+take the place, on a sudden emergency, of a great London minister, and
+when he came back he was an object almost of adoration.  The
+congregation, on the other hand, consisting in some part of country
+people spending a Sunday in town and anxious to hear a celebrated
+preacher, were not at all disposed to adore, when, instead of the great
+man, they saw "only a student."
+
+By the time I was nineteen I took my turn in "supplying" the villages,
+and set forth with the utmost confidence what appeared to me to be the
+indubitable gospel.  No shadow of a suspicion of its truth ever crossed
+my mind, and yet I had not spent an hour in comprehending, much less in
+answering, one objection to it.  The objections, in fact, had never met
+me; they were over my horizon altogether.  It is wonderful to think how
+I could take so much for granted; and not merely take it to myself and
+for myself, but proclaim it as a message to other people.  It would be
+a mistake, however, to suppose that theological youths are the only
+class who are guilty of such presumption.  Our gregarious instinct is
+so strong that it is the most difficult thing for us to be satisfied
+with suspended judgment.  Men must join a party, and have a cry, and
+they generally take up their party and their cry from the most
+indifferent motives.
+
+For my own part I cannot be enthusiastic about politics, except on rare
+occasions when the issue is a very narrow one.  There is so much that
+requires profound examination, and it disgusts me to get upon a
+platform and dispute with ardent Radicals or Conservatives who know
+nothing about even the rudiments of history, political economy, or
+political philosophy, without which it is as absurd to have an opinion
+upon what are called politics as it would be to have an opinion upon an
+astronomical problem without having learned Euclid.
+
+The more incapable we are of thorough investigations, the wider and
+deeper are the subjects upon which we busy ourselves, and still more
+strange, the more bigoted do we become in our conclusions about them;
+and yet it is not strange, for he who by painful processes has found
+yes and no alternate for so long that he is not sure which is final, is
+the last man in the world, if he for the present is resting in yes, to
+crucify another who can get no further than no.  The bigot is he to
+whom no such painful processes have ever been permitted.
+
+The society amongst the students was very poor.  Not a single
+friendship formed then has remained with me.  They were mostly young
+men of no education, who had been taken from the counter, and their
+spiritual life was not very deep.  In many of them it did not even
+exist, and their whole attention was absorbed upon their chances of
+getting wealthy congregations or of making desirable matches.  It was a
+time in which the world outside was seething with the ferment which had
+been cast into it by Germany and by those in England whom Germany had
+influenced, but not a fragment of it had dropped within our walls.  I
+cannot call to mind a single conversation upon any but the most trivial
+topics, nor did our talk ever turn even upon our religion, so far as it
+was a thing affecting the soul, but upon it as something subsidiary to
+chapels, "causes," deacons, and the like.
+
+The emptiness of some of my colleagues, and their worldliness, too,
+were almost incredible.  There was one who was particularly silly.  He
+was a blond youth with greyish eyes, a mouth not quite shut, and an
+eternal simper upon his face.  He never had an idea in his head, and
+never read anything except the denominational newspapers and a few
+well-known aids to sermonising.  He was a great man at all tea-
+meetings, anniversaries, and parties.  He was facile in public
+speaking, and he dwelt much upon the joys of heaven and upon such
+topics as the possibility of our recognising one another there.  I have
+known him describe for twenty minutes, in a kind of watery rhetoric,
+the passage of the soul to bliss through death, and its meeting in the
+next world with those who had gone before.
+
+With all his weakness he was close and mean in money matters, and when
+he left college, the first thing he did was to marry a widow with a
+fortune.  Before long he became one of the most popular of ministers in
+a town much visited by sick persons, with whom he was an especial
+favourite.  I disliked him--and specially disliked his unpleasant
+behaviour to women.  If I had been a woman, I should have spurned him
+for his perpetual insult of inane compliments.  He was always dawdling
+after "the sex," which was one of his sweet phrases, and yet he was not
+passionate.  Passion does not dawdle and compliment, nor is it nasty,
+as this fellow was.  Passion may burn like a devouring flame; and in a
+few moments, like flame, may bring down a temple to dust and ashes, but
+it is earnest as flame, and essentially pure.
+
+During the first two years at college my life was entirely external.
+My heart was altogether untouched by anything I heard, read, or did,
+although I myself supposed that I took an interest in them.  But one
+day in my third year, a day I remember as well as Paul must have
+remembered afterwards the day on which he went to Damascus, I happened
+to find amongst a parcel of books a volume of poems in paper boards.
+It was called Lyrical Ballads, and I read first one and then the whole
+book.  It conveyed to me no new doctrine, and yet the change it wrought
+in me could only be compared with that which is said to have been
+wrought on Paul himself by the Divine apparition.
+
+Looking over the Lyrical Ballads again, as I have looked over it a
+dozen times since then, I can hardly see what it was which stirred me
+so powerfully, nor do I believe that it communicated much to me which
+could be put in words.  But it excited a movement and a growth which
+went on till, by degrees, all the systems which enveloped me like a
+body gradually decayed from me and fell away into nothing.  Of more
+importance, too, than the decay of systems was the birth of a habit of
+inner reference and a dislike to occupy myself with anything which did
+not in some way or other touch the soul, or was not the illustration or
+embodiment of some spiritual law.
+
+There is, of course, a definite explanation to be given of one effect
+produced by the Lyrical Ballads.  God is nowhere formally deposed, and
+Wordsworth would have been the last man to say that he had lost his
+faith in the God of his fathers.  But his real God is not the God of
+the Church, but the God of the hills, the abstraction Nature, and to
+this my reverence was transferred.  Instead of an object of worship
+which was altogether artificial, remote, never coming into genuine
+contact with me, I had now one which I thought to be real, one in which
+literally I could live and move and have my being, an actual fact
+present before my eyes.  God was brought from that heaven of the books,
+and dwelt on the downs in the far-away distances, and in every cloud-
+shadow which wandered across the valley.  Wordsworth unconsciously did
+for me what every religious reformer has done--he re-created my Supreme
+Divinity; substituting a new and living spirit for the old deity, once
+alive, but gradually hardened into an idol.
+
+What days were those of the next few years before increasing age had
+presented preciser problems and demanded preciser answers; before all
+joy was darkened by the shadow of on-coming death, and when life seemed
+infinite!  Those were the days when through the whole long summer's
+morning I wanted no companion but myself, provided only I was in the
+country, and when books were read with tears in the eyes.  Those were
+the days when mere life, apart from anything which it brings, was
+exquisite.
+
+In my own college I found no sympathy, but we were in the habit of
+meeting occasionally the students from other colleges, and amongst them
+I met with one or two, especially one who had undergone experiences
+similar to my own.  The friendships formed with these young men have
+lasted till now, and have been the most permanent of all the
+relationships of my existence.  I wish not to judge others, but the
+persons who to me have proved themselves most attractive, have been
+those who have passed through such a process as that through which I
+myself passed; those who have had in some form or other an enthusiastic
+stage in their history, when the story of Genesis and of the Gospels
+has been rewritten, when God has visibly walked in the garden, and the
+Son of God has drawn men away from their daily occupations into the
+divinest of dreams.
+
+I have known men--most interesting men with far greater powers than any
+which I have possessed, men who have never been trammelled by a false
+creed, who have devoted themselves to science and acquired a great
+reputation, who have somehow never laid hold upon me like the man I
+have just mentioned.  He failed altogether as a minister, and went back
+to his shop, but the old glow of his youth burns, and will burn, for
+ever.  When I am with him our conversation naturally turns on matters
+which are of profoundest importance:  with others it may be
+instructive, but I leave them unmoved, and I trace the difference
+distinctly to that visitation, for it was nothing else, which came to
+him in his youth.
+
+The effect which was produced upon my preaching and daily conversation
+by this change was immediate.  It became gradually impossible for me to
+talk about subjects which had not some genuine connection with me, or
+to desire to hear others talk about them.  The artificial, the merely
+miraculous, the event which had no inner meaning, no matter how large
+externally it might be, I did not care for.  A little Greek
+mythological story was of more importance to me than a war which filled
+the newspapers.  What, then, could I do with my theological treatises?
+
+It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that I immediately became
+formally heretical.  Nearly every doctrine in the college creed had
+once had a natural origin in the necessities of human nature, and might
+therefore be so interpreted as to become a necessity again.  To reach
+through to that original necessity; to explain the atonement as I
+believed it appeared to Paul, and the sinfulness of man as it appeared
+to the prophets, was my object.  But it was precisely this reaching
+after a meaning which constituted heresy.  The distinctive essence of
+our orthodoxy was not this or that dogma, but the acceptance of dogmas
+as communications from without, and not as born from within.
+
+Heresy began, and in fact was altogether present, when I said to myself
+that a mere statement of the atonement as taught in class was
+impossible for me, and that I must go back to Paul and his century,
+place myself in his position, and connect the atonement through him
+with something which I felt.  I thus continued to use all the terms
+which I had hitherto used; but an uneasy feeling began to develop
+itself about me in the minds of the professors, because I did not rest
+in the "simplicity" of the gospel.  To me this meant its
+unintelligibility.
+
+I remember, for example, discoursing about the death of Christ.  There
+was not a single word which was ordinarily used in the pulpit which I
+did not use--satisfaction for sin, penalty, redeeming blood, they were
+all there--but I began by saying that in this world there was no
+redemption for man but by blood; furthermore, the innocent had
+everywhere and in all time to suffer for the guilty.  It had been
+objected that it was contrary to our notion of an all-loving Being that
+He should demand such a sacrifice; but, contrary or not, in this world
+it was true, quite apart from Jesus, that virtue was martyred every
+day, unknown and unconsoled, in order that the wicked might somehow be
+saved.  This was part of the scheme of the world, and we might dislike
+it or not, we could not get rid of it.  The consequences of my sin,
+moreover, are rendered less terrible by virtues not my own.  I am
+literally saved from penalties because another pays the penalty for me.
+The atonement, and what it accomplished for man, were therefore a
+sublime summing up as it were of what sublime men have to do for their
+race; an exemplification, rather than a contradiction, of Nature
+herself, as we know her in our own experience.
+
+Now, all this was really intended as a defence of the atonement; but
+the President heard me that Sunday, and on the Monday he called me into
+his room.  He said that my sermon was marked by considerable ability,
+but he should have been better satisfied if I had confined myself to
+setting forth as plainly as I could the "way of salvation" as revealed
+in Christ Jesus.  What I had urged might perhaps have possessed some
+interest for cultivated people; in fact, he had himself urged pretty
+much the same thing many years ago, when he was a young man, in a
+sermon he had preached at the Union meeting; but I must recollect that
+in all probability my sphere of usefulness would lie amongst humble
+hearers, perhaps in an agricultural village or a small town, and that
+he did not think people of this sort would understand me if I talked
+over their heads as I had done the day before.  What they wanted on a
+Sunday, after all the cares of the week, was not anything to perplex
+and disturb them; not anything which demanded any exercise of thought;
+but a repetition of the "old story of which, Mr. Rutherford, you know,
+we never ought to get weary; an exhibition of our exceeding sinfulness;
+of our safety in the Rock of Ages, and there only; of the joys of the
+saints and the sufferings of those who do not believe."
+
+His words fell on me like the hand of a corpse, and I went away much
+depressed.  My sermon had excited me, and the man who of all men ought
+to have welcomed me, had not a word of warmth or encouragement for me,
+nothing but the coldest indifference, and even repulse.
+
+It occurs to me here to offer an explanation of a failing of which I
+have been accused in later years, and that is secrecy and reserve.  The
+real truth is, that nobody more than myself could desire self-
+revelation; but owing to peculiar tendencies in me, and peculiarity of
+education, I was always prone to say things in conversation which I
+found produced blank silence in the majority of those who listened to
+me, and immediate opportunity was taken by my hearers to turn to
+something trivial.  Hence it came to pass that only when tempted by
+unmistakable sympathy could I be induced to express my real self on any
+topic of importance.
+
+It is a curious instance of the difficulty of diagnosing (to use a
+doctor's word) any spiritual disease, if disease this shyness may be
+called.  People would ordinarily set it down to self-reliance, with no
+healthy need of intercourse.  It was nothing of the kind.  It was an
+excess of communicativeness, an eagerness to show what was most at my
+heart, and to ascertain what was at the heart of those to whom I
+talked, which made me incapable of mere fencing and trifling, and so
+often caused me to retreat into myself when I found absolute absense of
+response.
+
+I am also reminded here of a dream which I had in these years of a
+perfect friendship.  I always felt that, talk with whom I would, I left
+something unsaid which was precisely what I most wished to say.  I
+wanted a friend who would sacrifice himself to me utterly, and to whom
+I might offer a similar sacrifice.  I found companions for whom I
+cared, and who professed to care for me; but I was thirsting for deeper
+draughts of love than any which they had to offer; and I said to myself
+that if I were to die, not one of them would remember me for more than
+a week.  This was not selfishness, for I longed to prove my devotion as
+well as to receive that of another.  How this ideal haunted me!  It
+made me restless and anxious at the sight of every new face, wondering
+whether at last I had found that for which I searched as if for the
+kingdom of heaven.
+
+It is superfluous to say that a friend of the kind I wanted never
+appeared, and disappointment after disappointment at last produced in
+me a cynicism which repelled people from me, and brought upon me a good
+deal of suffering.  I tried men by my standard, and if they did not
+come up to it I rejected them; thus I prodigally wasted a good deal of
+the affection which the world would have given me.  Only when I got
+much older did I discern the duty of accepting life as God has made it,
+and thankfully receiving any scrap of love offered to me, however
+imperfect it might be.
+
+I don't know any mistake which I have made which has cost me more than
+this; but at the same time I must record that it was a mistake for
+which, considering everything, I cannot much blame myself.  I hope it
+is amended now.  Now when it is getting late I recognise a higher
+obligation, brought home to me by a closer study of the New Testament.
+Sympathy or no sympathy, a man's love should no more fail towards his
+fellows than that love which spent itself on disciples who altogether
+misunderstood it, like the rain which falls on just and unjust alike.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III--WATER LANE
+
+
+
+I had now reached the end of my fourth year at college, and it was time
+for me to leave.  I was sent down into the eastern counties to a
+congregation which had lost its minister, and was there "on probation"
+for a month.  I was naturally a good speaker, and as the "cause" had
+got very low, the attendance at the chapel increased during the month I
+was there.  The deacons thought they had a prospect of returning
+prosperity, and in the end I received a nearly unanimous invitation,
+which, after some hesitation, I accepted.  One of the deacons, a Mr.
+Snale, was against me; he thought I was not "quite sound"; but he was
+overruled.  We shall hear more of him presently.  After a short holiday
+I entered on my new duties.
+
+The town was one of those which are not uncommon in that part of the
+world.  It had a population of about seven or eight thousand, and was a
+sort of condensation of the agricultural country round.  There was one
+main street, consisting principally of very decent, respectable shops.
+Generally speaking, there were two shops of each trade; one which was
+patronised by the Church and Tories, and another by the Dissenters and
+Whigs.  The inhabitants were divided into two distinct camps--of the
+Church and Tory camp the other camp knew nothing.  On the other hand,
+the knowledge which each member of the Dissenting camp had of every
+other member was most intimate.
+
+The Dissenters were further split up into two or three different sects,
+but the main sect was that of the Independents.  They, in fact,
+dominated every other.  There was a small Baptist community, and the
+Wesleyans had a new red-brick chapel in the outskirts; but for some
+reason or other the Independents were really the Dissenters, and until
+the "cause" had dwindled, as before observed, all the Dissenters of any
+note were to be found on Sunday in their meeting-house in Water Lane.
+
+My predecessor had died in harness at the age of seventy-five.  I never
+knew him, but from all I could hear he must have been a man of some
+power.  As he got older, however, he became feeble; and after a course
+of three sermons on a Sunday for fifty years, what he had to say was so
+entirely anticipated by his congregation, that although they all
+maintained that the gospel, or, in other words, the doctrine of the
+fall, the atonement, and so forth, should continually be presented, and
+their minister also believed and acted implicitly upon the same theory,
+they fell away--some to the Baptists, some to the neighbouring
+Independents about two miles off, and some to the Church, while a few
+"went nowhere."
+
+When I came I found that the deacons still remained true.  They were
+the skeleton; but the flesh was so woefully emaciated, that on my first
+Sunday there were not above fifty persons in a building which would
+hold seven hundred.  These deacons were four in number.  One was an old
+farmer who lived in a village three miles distant.  Ever since he was a
+boy he had driven over to Water Lane on Sunday.  He and his family
+brought their dinner with them, and ate it in the vestry; but they
+never stopped till the evening, because of the difficulty of getting
+home on dark nights, and because they all went to bed in winter-time at
+eight o'clock.
+
+Morning and afternoon Mr. Catfield--for that was his name--gave out the
+hymns.  He was a plain, honest man, very kind, very ignorant, never
+reading any book except the Bible, and barely a newspaper save Bell's
+Weekly Messenger.  Even about the Bible he knew little or nothing
+beyond a few favourite chapters; and I am bound to say that, so far as
+my experience goes, the character so frequently drawn in romances of
+intense Bible students in Dissenting congregations is very rare.  At
+the same time Mr. Catfield believed himself to be very orthodox, and in
+his way was very pious.  I could never call him a hypocrite.  He was as
+sincere as he could be, and yet no religious expression of his was ever
+so sincere as the most ordinary expression of the most trifling
+pleasure or pain.
+
+The second deacon, Mr. Weeley, was, as he described himself, a builder
+and undertaker; more properly an undertaker and carpenter.  He was a
+thin, tall man, with a tenor voice, and he set the tunes.  He was
+entirely without energy of any kind, and always seemed oppressed by a
+world which was too much for him.  He had depended a good deal for
+custom upon his chapel connection; and when the attendance at the
+chapel fell off, his trade fell off likewise, so that he had to
+compound with his creditors.  He was a mere shadow, a man of whom
+nothing could be said either good or evil.
+
+The third deacon was Mr. Snale, the draper.  When I first knew him he
+was about thirty-five.  He was slim, small, and small-faced, closely
+shaven, excepting a pair of little curly whiskers, and he was extremely
+neat.  He had a little voice too, rather squeaky, and the marked
+peculiarity that he hardly ever said anything, no matter how
+disagreeable it might be, without stretching as if in a smile his thin
+little lips.  He kept the principal draper's shop in the town, and even
+Church people spent their money with him, because he was so very
+genteel compared with the other draper, who was a great red man, and
+hung things outside his window.  Mr. Snale was married, had children,
+and was strictly proper.  But his way of talking to women and about
+them was more odious than the way of a debauchee.  He invariably called
+them "the ladies," or more exactly, "the leedies"; and he hardly ever
+spoke to a "leedy" without a smirk and some faint attempt at a joke.
+
+One of the customs of the chapel was what were called Dorcas meetings.
+Once a month the wives and daughters drank tea with each other; the
+evening being ostensibly devoted to making clothes for the poor.  The
+husband of the lady who gave the entertainment for the month had to
+wait upon the company, and the minister was expected to read to them
+while they worked.
+
+It was my lot to be Mr. Snale's guest two or three times when Mrs.
+Snale was the Dorcas hostess.  We met in the drawing-room, which was
+over the shop, and looked out into the town market-place.  There was a
+round table in the middle of the room, at which Mrs. Snale sat and made
+the tea.  Abundance of hot buttered toast and muffins were provided,
+which Mr. Snale and a maid handed round to the party.
+
+Four pictures decorated the walls.  One hung over the mantelpiece.  It
+was a portrait in oils of Mr. Snale, and opposite to it, on the other
+side, was a portrait of Mrs. Snale.  Both were daubs, but curiously
+faithful in depicting what was most offensive in the character of both
+the originals, Mr. Snale's simper being preserved; together with the
+peculiarly hard, heavy sensuality of the eye in Mrs. Snale, who was
+large and full-faced, correct like Mr. Snale, a member of the church, a
+woman whom I never saw moved to any generosity, and cruel not with the
+ferocity of the tiger, but with the dull insensibility of a cartwheel,
+which will roll over a man's neck as easily as over a flint.  The third
+picture represented the descent of the Holy Ghost; a number of persons
+sitting in a chamber, and each one with the flame of a candle on his
+head.  The fourth represented the last day.  The Son of God was in a
+chair surrounded by clouds, and beside Him was a flying figure blowing
+a long mail-coach horn.  The dead were coming up out of their graves;
+some were half out of the earth, others three-parts out--the whole of
+the bottom part of the picture being filled with bodies emerging from
+the ground, a few looking happy, but most of them very wretched; all of
+them being naked.
+
+The first time I went to Mrs. Snale's Dorcas gathering Mr. Snale was
+reader, on the ground that I was a novice; and I was very glad to
+resign the task to him.  As the business in hand was week-day and
+secular, it was not considered necessary that the selected subjects
+should be religious; but as it was distinctly connected with the
+chapel, it was also considered that they should have a religious
+flavour.  Consequently the Bible was excluded, and so were books on
+topics altogether worldly.  Dorcas meetings were generally, therefore,
+shut up to the denominational journal and to magazines.  Towards the
+end of the evening Mr. Snale read the births, deaths, and marriages in
+this journal.  It would not have been thought right to read them from
+any other newspaper, but it was agreed, with a fineness of tact which
+was very remarkable, that it was quite right to read them in one which
+was "serious."  During the whole time that the reading was going on
+conversation was not arrested, but was conducted in a kind of half
+whisper; and this was another reason why I exceedingly disliked to
+read, for I could never endure to speak if people did not listen.
+
+At half-past eight the work was put away, and Mrs. Snale went to the
+piano and played a hymn tune, the minister having first of all selected
+the hymn.  Singing over, he offered a short prayer, and the company
+separated.  Supper was not served, as it was found to be too great an
+expense.  The husbands of the ladies generally came to escort them
+home, but did not come upstairs.  Some of the gentlemen waited below in
+the dining-room, but most of them preferred the shop, for, although it
+was shut, the gas was burning to enable the assistants to put away the
+goods which had been got out during the day.
+
+When it first became my turn to read I proposed the Vicar of Wakefield;
+but although no objection was raised at the time, Mr. Snale took an
+opportunity of telling me, after I had got through a chapter or two,
+that he thought it would be better if it were discontinued.  "Because,
+you know, Mr. Rutherford," he said, with his smirk, "the company is
+mixed; there are young leedies present, and perhaps, Mr. Rutherford, a
+book with a more requisite tone might be more suitable on such an
+occasion."  What he meant I did not know, and how to find a book with a
+more requisite tone I did not know.
+
+However, the next time, in my folly, I tried a selection from George
+Fox's Journal.  Mr. Snale objected to this too.  It was "hardly of a
+character adapted for social intercourse," he thought; and furthermore,
+"although Mr. Fox might be a very good man, and was a converted
+character, yet he did not, you know, Mr. Rutherford, belong to us."  So
+I was reduced to that class of literature which of all others I most
+abominated, and which always seemed to me the most profane--religious
+and sectarian gossip, religious novels designed to make religion
+attractive, and other slip-slop of this kind.  I could not endure it,
+and was frequently unwell on Dorcas evenings.
+
+The rest of the small congregation was of no particular note.  As I
+have said before, it had greatly fallen away, and all who remained
+clung to the chapel rather by force of habit than from any other
+reason.  The only exception was an old maiden lady and her sister, who
+lived in a little cottage about a mile out of the town.  They were
+pious in the purest sense of the word, suffering much from ill-health,
+but perfectly resigned, and with a kind of tempered cheerfulness always
+apparent on their faces, like the cheerfulness of a white sky with a
+sun veiled by light and lofty clouds.  They were the daughters of a
+carriage-builder, who had left them a small annuity.
+
+Their house was one of the sweetest which I ever entered.  The moment I
+found myself inside it, I became conscious of perfect repose.
+Everything was at rest; books, pictures, furniture, all breathed the
+same peace.  Nothing in the house was new, but everything had been
+preserved with such care that nothing looked old.  Yet the owners were
+not what is called old-maidish; that is to say, they were not
+superstitious worshippers of order and neatness.
+
+I remember Mrs. Snale's children coming in one afternoon when I was
+there.  They were rough and ill-mannered, and left traces of dirty
+footmarks all over the carpet, which the two ladies noticed at once.
+But it made no difference to the treatment of the children, who had
+some cake and currant wine given to them, and were sent away rejoicing.
+Directly they had gone, the elder of my friends asked me if I would
+excuse her; she would gather up the dirt before it was trodden about.
+So she brought a dust-pan and brush (the little servant was out) and
+patiently swept the floor.  That was the way with them.  Did any
+mischief befall them or those whom they knew, without blaming anybody,
+they immediately and noiselessly set about repairing it with that
+silent promptitude of nature which rebels not against a wound, but the
+very next instant begins her work of protection and recovery.
+
+The Misses Arbour (for that was their name) mixed but little in the
+society of the town.  They explained to me that their health would not
+permit it.  They read books--a few--but they were not books about which
+I knew very much, and they belonged altogether to an age preceding
+mine.  Of the names which had moved me, and of all the thoughts
+stirring in the time, they had heard nothing.  They greatly admired
+Cowper, a poet who then did not much attract me.
+
+The country near me was rather level, but towards the west it rose into
+soft swelling hills, between which were pleasant lanes.  At about ten
+miles distant eastward was the sea.  A small river ran across the High
+Street under a stone bridge; for about two miles below us it was locked
+up for the sake of the mills, but at the end of the two miles it became
+tidal and flowed between deep and muddy banks through marshes to the
+ocean.  Almost all my walks were by the river-bank down to these
+marshes, and as far on as possible till the open water was visible.
+Not that I did not like inland scenery:  nobody could like it more, but
+the sea was a corrective to the littleness all round me.  With the
+ships on it sailing to the other end of the earth it seemed to connect
+me with the great world outside the parochialism of the society in
+which I lived.
+
+Such was the town of C-, and such the company amidst which I found
+myself.  After my probation it was arranged that I should begin my new
+duties at once, and accordingly I took lodgings--two rooms over the
+shop of a tailor who acted as chapel-keeper, pew-opener, and sexton.
+There was a small endowment on the chapel of fifty pounds a year, and
+the rest of my income was derived from the pew-rents, which at the time
+I took charge did not exceed another seventy.
+
+The first Sunday on which I preached after being accepted was a dull
+day in November, but there was no dullness in me.  The congregation had
+increased a good deal during the past four weeks, and I was stimulated
+by the prospect of the new life before me.  It seemed to be a fit
+opportunity to say something generally about Christianity and its
+special peculiarities.  I began by pointing out that each philosophy
+and religion which had arisen in the world was the answer to a question
+earnestly asked at the time; it was a remedy proposed to meet some
+extreme pressure.  Religions and philosophies were not created by idle
+people who sat down and said, "Let us build up a system of beliefs upon
+the universe; what shall we say about immortality, about sin?" and so
+on.  Unless there had been antecedent necessity there could have been
+no religion; and no problem of life or death could be solved except
+under the weight of that necessity.  The stoical morality arose out of
+the condition of Rome when the scholar and the pious man could do
+nothing but simply strengthen his knees and back to bear an inevitable
+burden.  He was forced to find some counterpoise for the misery of
+poverty and persecution, and he found it in the denial of their power
+to touch him.  So with Christianity.
+
+Jesus was a poor solitary thinker, confronted by two enormous and
+overpowering organisations--the Jewish hierarchy and the Roman State.
+He taught the doctrine of the kingdom of heaven; He trained Himself to
+have faith in the absolute monarchy of the soul, the absolute monarchy
+of His own; He tells us that each man should learn to find peace in his
+own thoughts, his own visions.  It is a most difficult thing to do;
+most difficult to believe that my highest happiness consists in my
+perception of whatever is beautiful.  If I by myself watch the sun
+rise, or the stars come out in the evening, or feel the love of man or
+woman,--I ought to say to myself, "There is nothing beyond this."  But
+people will not rest there; they are not content, and they are for ever
+chasing a shadow which flies before them, a something external which
+never brings what it promises.
+
+I said that Christianity was essentially the religion of the unknown
+and of the lonely; of those who are not a success.  It was the religion
+of the man who goes through life thinking much, but who makes few
+friends and sees nothing come of his thoughts.  I said a good deal more
+upon the same theme which I have forgotten.
+
+After the service was over I went down into the vestry.  Nobody came
+near me but my landlord, the chapel-keeper, who said it was raining,
+and immediately went away to put out the lights and shut up the
+building.  I had no umbrella, and there was nothing to be done but to
+walk out in the wet.  When I got home I found that my supper,
+consisting of bread and cheese with a pint of beer, was on the table,
+but apparently it had been thought unnecessary to light the fire again
+at that time of night.  I was overwrought, and paced about for hours in
+hysterics.  All that I had been preaching seemed the merest vanity when
+I was brought face to face with the fact itself; and I reproached
+myself bitterly that my own creed would not stand the stress of an
+hour's actual trial.
+
+Towards morning I got into bed, but not to sleep; and when the dull
+daylight of Monday came, all support had vanished, and I seemed to be
+sinking into a bottomless abyss.  I became gradually worse week by
+week, and my melancholy took a fixed form.  I got a notion into my head
+that my brain was failing, and this was my first acquaintance with that
+most awful malady hypochondria.  I did not know then what I know now,
+although I only half believe it practically, that this fixity of form
+is a frequent symptom of the disease, and that the general weakness
+manifests itself in a determinate horror, which gradually fades with
+returning health.
+
+For months--many months--this dreadful conviction of coming idiocy or
+insanity lay upon me like some poisonous reptile with its fangs driven
+into my very marrow, so that I could not shake it off.  It went with me
+wherever I went, it got up with me in the morning, walked about with me
+all day, and lay down with me at night.  I managed, somehow or other,
+to do my work, but I prayed incessantly for death; and to such a state
+was I reduced that I could not even make the commonest appointment for
+a day beforehand.  The mere knowledge that something had to be done
+agitated me and prevented my doing it.
+
+In June next year my holiday came, and I went away home to my father's
+house.  Father and mother were going, for the first time in their
+lives, to spend a few days by the seaside together, and I went with
+them to Ilfracombe.  I had been there about a week, when on one
+memorable morning, on the top of one of those Devonshire hills, I
+became aware of a kind of flush in the brain and a momentary relief
+such as I had not known since that November night.  I seemed, far away
+on the horizon, to see just a rim of olive light low down under the
+edge of the leaden cloud that hung over my head, a prophecy of the
+restoration of the sun, or at least a witness that somewhere it shone.
+It was not permanent, and perhaps the gloom was never more profound,
+nor the agony more intense, than it was for long after my Ilfracombe
+visit.  But the light broadened, and gradually the darkness was
+mitigated.  I have never been thoroughly restored.  Often, with no
+warning, I am plunged in the Valley of the Shadow, and no outlet seems
+possible; but I contrive to traverse it, or to wait in calmness for
+access of strength.
+
+When I was at my worst I went to see a doctor.  He recommended me
+stimulants.  I had always been rather abstemious, and he thought I was
+suffering from physical weakness.  At first wine gave me relief, and
+such marked relief that whenever I felt my misery insupportable I
+turned to the bottle.  At no time in my life was I ever the worse for
+liquor, but I soon found the craving for it was getting the better of
+me.  I resolved never to touch it except at night, and kept my vow; but
+the consequence was, that I looked forward to the night, and waited for
+it with such eagerness that the day seemed to exist only for the sake
+of the evening, when I might hope at least for rest.  For the wine as
+wine I cared nothing; anything that would have dulled my senses would
+have done just as well.
+
+But now a new terror developed itself.  I began to be afraid that I was
+becoming a slave to alcohol; that the passion for it would grow upon
+me, and that I should disgrace myself, and die the most contemptible of
+all deaths.  To a certain extent my fears were just.  The dose which
+was necessary to procure temporary forgetfulness of my trouble had to
+be increased, and might have increased dangerously.
+
+But one day, feeling more than usual the tyranny of my master, I
+received strength to make a sudden resolution to cast him off utterly.
+Whatever be the consequence, I said, I will not be the victim of this
+shame.  If I am to go down to the grave, it shall be as a man, and I
+will bear what I have to bear honestly and without resort to the base
+evasion of stupefaction.  So that night I went to bed having drunk
+nothing but water.  The struggle was not felt just then.  It came
+later, when the first enthusiasm of a new purpose had faded away, and I
+had to fall back on mere force of will.  I don't think anybody but
+those who have gone through such a crisis can comprehend what it is.  I
+never understood the maniacal craving which is begotten by ardent
+spirits, but I understood enough to be convinced that the man who has
+once rescued himself from the domination even of half a bottle, or
+three-parts of a bottle of claret daily, may assure himself that there
+is nothing more in life to be done which he need dread.
+
+Two or three remarks begotten of experience in this matter deserve
+record.  One is, that the most powerful inducement to abstinence, in my
+case, was the interference of wine with liberty, and above all things
+its interference with what I really loved best, and the transference of
+desire from what was most desirable to what was sensual and base.  The
+morning, instead of being spent in quiet contemplation and quiet
+pleasures, was spent in degrading anticipations.  What enabled me to
+conquer, was not so much heroism as a susceptibility to nobler joys,
+and the difficulty which a man must encounter who is not susceptible to
+them must be enormous and almost insuperable.  Pity, profound pity, is
+his due, and especially if he happen to possess a nervous, emotional
+organisation.  If we want to make men water-drinkers, we must first of
+all awaken in them a capacity for being tempted by delights which
+water-drinking intensifies.  The mere preaching of self-denial will do
+little or no good.
+
+Another observation is, that there is no danger in stopping at once,
+and suddenly, the habit of drinking.  The prisons and asylums furnish
+ample evidence upon that point, but there will be many an hour of
+exhaustion in which this danger will be simulated and wine will appear
+the proper remedy.  No man, or at least very few men, would ever feel
+any desire for it soon after sleep.  This shows the power of repose,
+and I would advise anybody who may be in earnest in this matter to be
+specially on guard during moments of physical fatigue, and to try the
+effect of eating and rest.  Do not persist in a blind, obstinate
+wrestle.  Simply take food, drink water, go to bed, and so conquer not
+by brute strength, but by strategy.
+
+Going back to hypochondria and its countless forms of agony, let it be
+borne in mind that the first thing to be aimed at is patience--not to
+get excited with fears, not to dread the evil which most probably will
+never arrive, but to sit down quietly and WAIT.  The simpler and less
+stimulating the diet, the more likely it is that the sufferer will be
+able to watch through the wakeful hours without delirium, and the less
+likely is it that the general health will be impaired.  Upon this point
+of health too much stress cannot be laid.  It is difficult for the
+victim to believe that his digestion has anything to do with a disease
+which seems so purely spiritual, but frequently the misery will break
+up and yield, if it do not altogether disappear, by a little attention
+to physiology and by a change of air.  As time wears on, too, mere
+duration will be a relief; for it familiarises with what at first was
+strange and insupportable, it shows the groundlessness of fears, and it
+enables us to say with each new paroxysm, that we have surmounted one
+like it before, and probably a worse.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV--EDWARD GIBBON MARDON
+
+
+
+I had now been "settled," to use a Dissenting phrase, for nearly
+eighteen months.  While I was ill I had no heart in my work, and the
+sermons I preached were very poor and excited no particular suspicion.
+But with gradually returning energy my love of reading revived, and
+questions which had slumbered again presented themselves.  I continued
+for some time to deal with them as I had dealt with the atonement at
+college.  I said that Jesus was the true Paschal Lamb, for that by His
+death men were saved from their sins, and from the consequences of
+them; I said that belief in Christ, that is to say, a love for Him, was
+more powerful to redeem men than the works of the law.  All this may
+have been true, but truth lies in relation.  It was not true when I,
+understanding what I understood by it, taught it to men who professed
+to believe in the Westminster Confession.  The preacher who preaches it
+uses a vocabulary which has a certain definite meaning, and has had
+this meaning for centuries.  He cannot stay to put his own
+interpretation upon it whenever it is upon his lips, and so his hearers
+are in a false position, and imagine him to be much more orthodox than
+he really is.
+
+For some time I fell into this snare, until one day I happened to be
+reading the story of Balaam.  Balaam, though most desirous to prophesy
+smooth things for Balak, had nevertheless a word put into his mouth by
+God.  When he came to Balak he was unable to curse, and could do
+nothing but bless.  Balak, much dissatisfied, thought that a change of
+position might alter Balaam's temper, and he brought him away from the
+high places of Baal to the field of Zophim, to the top of Pisgah.  But
+Balaam could do nothing better even on Pisgah.  Not even a compromise
+was possible, and the second blessing was more emphatic than the first.
+"God," cried the prophet, pressed sorely by his message, "is not a man,
+that He should lie; neither the son of man, that He should repent:
+hath He said, and shall He not do it? or hath He spoken, and shall He
+not make it good?  Behold, I have received commandment to bless:  and
+He hath blessed; and I cannot reverse it."
+
+This was very unsatisfactory, and Balaam was asked, if he could not
+curse, at least to refrain from benediction.  The answer was still the
+same.  "Told not I thee, saying, All that the Lord speaketh, that I
+must do?"  A third shift was tried, and Balaam went to the top of Peor.
+This was worse than ever.  The Spirit of the Lord came upon him, and he
+broke out into triumphal anticipation of the future glories of Israel.
+Balak remonstrated in wrath, but Balaam was altogether inaccessible.
+"If Balak would give me his house full of silver and gold, I cannot go
+beyond the commandment of the Lord, to do either good or bad of mine
+own mind; but what the Lord saith, that will I speak."
+
+This story greatly impressed me, and I date from it a distinct
+disinclination to tamper with myself, or to deliver what I had to
+deliver in phrases which, though they might be conciliatory, were
+misleading.
+
+About this time there was a movement in the town to obtain a better
+supply of water.  The soil was gravelly and full of cesspools, side by
+side with which were sunk the wells.  A public meeting was held, and I
+attended and spoke on behalf of the scheme.  There was much opposition,
+mainly on the score that the rates would be increased, and on the
+Saturday after the meeting the following letter appeared in the
+Sentinel, the local paper:
+
+"Sir,--It is not my desire to enter into the controversy now raging
+about the water-supply of this town, but I must say I was much
+surprised that a minister of religion should interfere in politics.
+Sir, I cannot help thinking that if the said minister would devote
+himself to the Water of Life -
+
+
+'that gentle fount
+Progressing from Immanuel's mount,' -
+
+
+it would be much more harmonious with his function as a follower of him
+who knew nothing save Christ crucified.  Sir, I have no wish to
+introduce controversial topics upon a subject like religion into your
+columns, which are allotted to a different line, but I must be
+permitted to observe that I fail to see how a minister's usefulness can
+be stimulated if he sets class against class.  Like the widows in
+affliction of old, he should keep himself pure and unspotted from the
+world.  How can many of us accept the glorious gospel on the Sabbath
+from a man who will incur spots during the week by arguing about
+cesspools like any other man?  Sir, I will say nothing, moreover, about
+a minister of the gospel assisting to bind burdens--that is to say,
+rates and taxation--upon the shoulders of men grievous to be borne.
+Surely, sir, a minister of the Lamb of God, who was shed for the
+remission of sins, should be AGAINST burdens.--I am sir, your obedient
+servant,
+
+"A CHRISTIAN TRADESMAN."
+
+
+I had not the least doubt as to the authorship of this precious
+epistle.  Mr. Snale's hand was apparent in every word.  He was fond of
+making religious verses, and once we were compelled to hear the Sunday-
+school children sing a hymn which he had composed.  The two lines of
+poetry were undoubtedly his.  Furthermore, although he had been a
+chapel-goer all his life, he muddled, invariably, passages from the
+Bible.  They had no definite meaning for him, and there was nothing,
+consequently, to prevent his tacking the end of one verse to the
+beginning of another.  Mr. Snale, too, continually "failed to see."
+Where he got the phrase I do not know, but he liked it, and was always
+repeating it.  However, I had no external evidence that it was he who
+was my enemy, and I held my peace.  I was supported at the public
+meeting by a speaker from the body of the hall whom I had never seen
+before.  He spoke remarkably well, was evidently educated, and I was
+rather curious about him.
+
+It was my custom on Saturdays to go out for the whole of the day by the
+river, seawards, to prepare for the Sunday.  I was coming home rather
+tired, when I met this same man against a stile.  He bade me good-
+evening, and then proceeded to thank me for my speech, saying many
+complimentary things about it.  I asked who it was to whom I had the
+honour of talking, and he told me he was Edward Gibbon Mardon.  "It was
+Edward Gibson Mardon once, sir," he said, smilingly.  "Gibson was the
+name of a rich old aunt who was expected to do something for me, but I
+disliked her, and never went near her.  I did not see why I should be
+ticketed with her label, and as Edward Gibson was very much like Edward
+Gibbon, the immortal author of the Decline and Fall, I dropped the 's'
+and stuck in a 'b.'  I am nothing but a compositor on the Sentinel, and
+Saturday afternoon, after the paper is out, is a holiday for me, unless
+there is any reporting to do, for I have to turn my attention to that
+occasionally."
+
+Mr. Edward Gibbon Mardon, I observed, was slightly built, rather short,
+and had scanty whiskers which developed into a little thicker tuft on
+his chin.  His eyes were pure blue, like the blue of the speedwell.
+They were not piercing, but perfectly transparent, indicative of a
+character which, if it possessed no particular creative power, would
+not permit self-deception.  They were not the eyes of a prophet, but of
+a man who would not be satisfied with letting a half-known thing alone
+and saying he believed it.  His lips were thin, but not compressed into
+bitterness; and above everything there was in his face a perfectly
+legible frankness, contrasting pleasantly with the doubtfulness of most
+of the faces I knew.  I expressed my gratitude to him for his kind
+opinion, and as we loitered he said:
+
+"Sorry to see that attack upon you in the Sentinel.  I suppose you are
+aware it was Snale's.  Everybody could tell that who knows the man."
+
+"If it is Mr. Snale's, I am very sorry."
+
+"It is Snale's.  He is a contemptible cur and yet it is not his fault.
+He has heard sermons about all sorts of supernatural subjects for
+thirty years, and he has never once been warned against meanness, so of
+course he supposes that supernatural subjects are everything and
+meanness is nothing.  But I will not detain you any longer now, for you
+are busy.  Good-night, sir."
+
+This was rather abrupt and disappointing.  However, I was much absorbed
+in the morrow, and passed on.
+
+Although I despised Snale, his letter was the beginning of a great
+trouble to me.  I had now been preaching for many months, and had met
+with no response whatever.  Occasionally a stranger or two visited the
+chapel, and with what eager eyes did I not watch for them on the next
+Sunday, but none of them came twice.  It was amazing to me that I could
+pour out myself as I did--poor although I knew that self to be--and yet
+make so little impression.  Not one man or woman seemed any different
+because of anything I had said or done, and not a soul kindled at any
+word of mine, no matter with what earnestness it might be charged.  How
+I groaned over my incapacity to stir in my people any participation in
+my thoughts or care for them!
+
+Looking at the history of those days now from a distance of years,
+everything assumes its proper proportion.  I was at work, it is true,
+amongst those who were exceptionally hard and worldly, but I was
+seeking amongst men (to put it in orthodox language) what I ought to
+have sought with God alone.  In other, and perhaps plainer phrase, I
+was expecting from men a sympathy which proceeds from the Invisible
+only.  Sometimes, indeed, it manifests itself in the long-postponed
+justice of time, but more frequently it is nothing more and nothing
+less than a consciousness of approval by the Unseen, a peace
+unspeakable, which is bestowed on us when self is suppressed.
+
+I did not know then how little one man can change another, and what
+immense and persistent efforts are necessary--efforts which seldom
+succeed except in childhood--to accomplish anything but the most
+superficial alteration of character.  Stories are told of sudden
+conversions, and of course if a poor simple creature can be brought to
+believe that hell-fire awaits him as the certain penalty of his
+misdeeds, he will cease to do them; but this is no real conversion, for
+essentially he remains pretty much the same kind of being that he was
+before.
+
+I remember while this mood was on me, that I was much struck with the
+absolute loneliness of Jesus, and with His horror of that death upon
+the cross.  He was young and full of enthusiastic hope, but when He
+died He had found hardly anything but misunderstanding.  He had written
+nothing, so that He could not expect that His life would live after
+Him.  Nevertheless His confidence in His own errand had risen so high,
+that He had not hesitated to proclaim Himself the Messiah:  not the
+Messiah the Jews were expecting, but still the Messiah.  I dreamed over
+His walks by the lake, over the deeper solitude of His last visit to
+Jerusalem, and over the gloom of that awful Friday afternoon.
+
+The hold which He has upon us is easily explained, apart from the
+dignity of His recorded sayings and the purity of His life.  There is
+no Saviour for us like the hero who has passed triumphantly through the
+distress which troubles US.  Salvation is the spectacle of a victory by
+another over foes like our own.  The story of Jesus is the story of the
+poor and forgotten.  He is not the Saviour for the rich and prosperous,
+for they want no Saviour.  The healthy, active, and well-to-do need Him
+not, and require nothing more than is given by their own health and
+prosperity.  But every one who has walked in sadness because his
+destiny has not fitted his aspirations; every one who, having no
+opportunity to lift himself out of his little narrow town or village
+circle of acquaintances, has thirsted for something beyond what they
+could give him; everybody who, with nothing but a dull, daily round of
+mechanical routine before him, would welcome death, if it were
+martyrdom for a cause; every humblest creature, in the obscurity of
+great cities or remote hamlets, who silently does his or her duty
+without recognition--all these turn to Jesus, and find themselves in
+Him.  He died, faithful to the end, with infinitely higher hopes,
+purposes, and capacity than mine, and with almost no promise of
+anything to come of them.
+
+Something of this kind I preached one Sunday, more as a relief to
+myself than for any other reason.  Mardon was there, and with him a
+girl whom I had not seen before.  My sight is rather short, and I could
+not very well tell what she was like.  After the service was over he
+waited for me, and said he had done so to ask me if I would pay him a
+visit on Monday evening.  I promised to do so, and accordingly went.
+
+I found him living in a small brick-built cottage near the outskirts of
+the town, the rental of which I should suppose would be about seven or
+eight pounds a year.  There was a patch of ground in front and a little
+garden behind--a kind of narrow strip about fifty feet long, separated
+from the other little strips by iron hurdles.  Mardon had tried to keep
+his garden in order, and had succeeded, but his neighbour was
+disorderly, and had allowed weeds to grow, blacking bottles and old tin
+cans to accumulate, so that whatever pleasure Mardon's labours might
+have afforded was somewhat spoiled.
+
+He himself came to the door when I knocked, and I was shown into a kind
+of sitting-room with a round table in the middle and furnished with
+Windsor chairs, two arm-chairs of the same kind standing on either side
+the fireplace.  Against the window was a smaller table with a green
+baize tablecloth, and about half-a-dozen plants stood on the window-
+sill, serving as a screen.  In the recess on one side of the fireplace
+was a cupboard, upon the top of which stood a tea-caddy, a workbox,
+some tumblers, and a decanter full of water; the other side being
+filled with a bookcase and books.  There were two or three pictures on
+the walls; one was a portrait of Voltaire, another of Lord Bacon, and a
+third was Albert Durer's St. Jerome.  This latter was an heirloom, and
+greatly prized I could perceive, as it was hung in the place of honour
+over the mantelpiece.
+
+After some little introductory talk, the same girl whom I had noticed
+with Mardon at the chapel came in, and I was introduced to her as his
+only daughter Mary.  She began to busy herself at once in getting the
+tea.  She was under the average height for a woman, and delicately
+built.  Her head was small, but the neck was long.  Her hair was brown,
+of a peculiarly lustrous tint, partly due to nature, but also to a
+looseness of arrangement and a most diligent use of the brush, so that
+the light fell not upon a dead compact mass, but upon myriads of
+individual hairs, each of which reflected the light.  Her eyes, so far
+as I could make out, were a kind of greenish grey, but the eyelashes
+were long, so that it was difficult exactly to discover what was
+underneath them.  The hands were small, and the whole figure
+exquisitely graceful; the plain black dress, which she wore fastened
+right up to the throat, suiting her to perfection.  Her face, as I
+first thought, did not seem indicative of strength.  The lips were
+thin, but not straight, the upper lip showing a remarkable curve in it.
+Nor was it a handsome face.  The complexion was not sufficiently
+transparent, nor were the features regular.
+
+During tea she spoke very little, but I noticed one peculiarity about
+her manner of talking, and that was its perfect simplicity.  There was
+no sort of effort or strain in anything she said, no attempt by
+emphasis of words to make up for the weakness of thought, and no
+compliance with that vulgar and most disagreeable habit of using
+intense language to describe what is not intense in itself.  Her yea
+was yea, and her no, no.  I observed also that she spoke without
+disguise, although she was not rude.  The manners of the cultivated
+classes are sometimes very charming, and more particularly their
+courtesy, which puts the guest so much at his ease, and constrains him
+to believe that an almost personal interest is taken in his affairs,
+but after a time it becomes wearisome.  It is felt to be nothing but
+courtesy, the result of a rule of conduct uniform for all, and verging
+very closely upon hypocrisy.  We long rather for plainness of speech,
+for some intimation of the person with whom we are talking, and that
+the mask and gloves may be laid aside.
+
+Tea being over, Miss Mardon cleared away the tea-things, and presently
+came back again.  She took one of the arm-chairs by the side of the
+fireplace, which her father had reserved for her, and while he and I
+were talking, she sat with her head leaning a little sideways on the
+back of the chair.  I could just discern that her feet, which rested on
+the stool, were very diminutive, like her hands.
+
+The talk with Mardon turned upon the chapel.  I had begun it by saying
+that I had noticed him there on the Sunday just mentioned.  He then
+explained why he never went to any place of worship.  A purely orthodox
+preacher it was, of course, impossible for him to hear, but he doubted
+also the efficacy of preaching.  What could be the use of it, supposing
+the preacher no longer to be a believer in the common creeds?  If he
+turns himself into a mere lecturer on all sorts of topics, he does
+nothing more than books do, and they do it much better.  He must base
+himself upon the Bible, and above all upon Christ, and how can he base
+himself upon a myth?  We do not know that Christ ever lived, or that if
+He lived His life was anything like what is attributed to Him.  A mere
+juxtaposition of the Gospels shows how the accounts of His words and
+deeds differ according to the tradition followed by each of His
+biographers.
+
+I interrupted Mardon at this point by saying that it did not matter
+whether Christ actually existed or not.  What the four evangelists
+recorded was eternally true, and the Christ-idea was true whether it
+was ever incarnated or not in a being bearing His name.
+
+"Pardon me," said Mardon, "but it does very much matter.  It is all the
+matter whether we are dealing with a dream or with reality.  I can
+dream about a man's dying on the cross in homage to what he believed,
+but I would not perhaps die there myself; and when I suffer from
+hesitation whether I ought to sacrifice myself for the truth, it is of
+immense assistance to me to know that a greater sacrifice has been made
+before me--that a greater sacrifice is possible.  To know that somebody
+has poetically imagined that it is possible, and has very likely been
+altogether incapable of its achievement, is no help.  Moreover, the
+commonplaces which even the most freethinking of Unitarians seem to
+consider as axiomatic, are to me far from certain, and even
+unthinkable.  For example, they are always talking about the
+omnipotence of God.  But power even of the supremest kind necessarily
+implies an object--that is to say, resistance.  Without an object which
+resists it, it would be a blank, and what, then, is the meaning of
+omnipotence?  It is not that it is merely inconceivable; it is
+nonsense, and so are all these abstract, illimitable, self-annihilative
+attributes of which God is made up."
+
+This negative criticism, in which Mardon greatly excelled, was all new
+to me, and I had no reply to make.  He had a sledge-hammer way of
+expressing himself, while I, on the contrary, always required time to
+bring into shape what I saw.  Just then I saw nothing; I was stunned,
+bewildered, out of the sphere of my own thoughts, and pained at the
+roughness with which he treated what I had cherished.
+
+I was presently relieved, however, of further reflection by Mardon's
+asking his daughter whether her face was better.  It turned out that
+all the afternoon and evening she had suffered greatly from neuralgia.
+She had said nothing about it while I was there, but had behaved with
+cheerfulness and freedom.  Mentally I had accused her of slightness,
+and inability to talk upon the subjects which interested Mardon and
+myself; but when I knew she had been in torture all the time, my
+opinion was altered.  I thought how rash I had been in judging her as I
+continually judged other people, without being aware of everything they
+had to pass through; and I thought, too, that if I had a fit of
+neuralgia, everybody near me would know it, and be almost as much
+annoyed by me as I myself should be by the pain.
+
+It is curious, also, that when thus proclaiming my troubles I often
+considered. my eloquence meritorious, or, at least, a kind of talent
+for which I ought to praise God, contemning rather my silent friends as
+something nearer than myself to the expressionless animals.  To parade
+my toothache, describing it with unusual adjectives, making it felt by
+all the company in which I might happen to be, was to me an assertion
+of my superior nature.  But, looking at Mary, and thinking about her as
+I walked home, I perceived that her ability to be quiet, to subdue
+herself, to resist the temptation for a whole evening of drawing
+attention to herself by telling us what she was enduring, was heroism,
+and that my contrary tendency was pitiful vanity.  I perceived that
+such virtues as patience and self-denial--which, clad in russet dress,
+I had often passed by unnoticed when I had found them amongst the poor
+or the humble--were more precious and more ennobling to their possessor
+than poetic yearnings, or the power to propound rhetorically to the
+world my grievances or agonies.
+
+Miss Mardon's face was getting worse, and as by this time it was late,
+I stayed but a little while longer.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V--MISS ARBOUR
+
+
+
+For some months I continued without much change in my monotonous
+existence.  I did not see Mardon often, for I rather dreaded him.  I
+could not resist him, and I shrank from what I saw to be inevitably
+true when I talked to him.  I can hardly say it was cowardice.  Those
+may call it cowardice to whom all associations are nothing, and to whom
+beliefs are no more than matters of indifferent research; but as for
+me, Mardon's talk darkened my days and nights.  I never could
+understand the light manner in which people will discuss the gravest
+questions, such as God and the immortality of the soul.  They gossip
+about them over their tea, write and read review articles about them,
+and seem to consider affirmation or negation of no more practical
+importance than the conformation of a beetle.  With me the struggle to
+retain as much as I could of my creed was tremendous.  The dissolution
+of Jesus into mythologic vapour was nothing less than the death of a
+friend dearer to me then than any other friend whom I knew.
+
+But the worst stroke of all was that which fell upon the doctrine of a
+life beyond the grave.  In theory I had long despised the notion that
+we should govern our conduct here by hope of reward or fear of
+punishment hereafter.  But under Mardon's remorseless criticism, when
+he insisted on asking for the where and how, and pointed out that all
+attempts to say where and how ended in nonsense, my hope began to fail,
+and I was surprised to find myself incapable of living with proper
+serenity if there was nothing but blank darkness before me at the end
+of a few years.
+
+As I got older I became aware of the folly of this perpetual reaching
+after the future, and of drawing from to-morrow, and from to-morrow
+only, a reason for the joyfulness of to-day.  I learned, when, alas! it
+was almost too late, to live in each moment as it passed over my head,
+believing that the sun as it is now rising is as good as it will ever
+be, and blinding myself as much as possible to what may follow.  But
+when I was young I was the victim of that illusion, implanted for some
+purpose or other in us by Nature, which causes us, on the brightest
+morning in June, to think immediately of a brighter morning which is to
+come in July.  I say nothing, now, for or against the doctrine of
+immortality.  All I say is, that men have been happy without it, even
+under the pressure of disaster, and that to make immortality a sole
+spring of action here is an exaggeration of the folly which deludes us
+all through life with endless expectation, and leaves us at death
+without the thorough enjoyment of a single hour.
+
+So I shrank from Mardon, but none the less did the process of
+excavation go on.  It often happens that a man loses faith without
+knowing it.  Silently the foundation is sapped while the building
+stands fronting the sun, as solid to all appearance as when it was
+first turned out of the builder's hands, but at last it falls suddenly
+with a crash.  It was so at this time with a personal relationship of
+mine, about which I have hitherto said nothing.
+
+Years ago, before I went to college, and when I was a teacher in the
+Sunday-school, I had fallen in love with one of my fellow-teachers, and
+we became engaged.  She was the daughter of one of the deacons.  She
+had a smiling, pretty, vivacious face; was always somehow foremost in
+school treats, picnics, and chapel-work, and she had a kind of piquant
+manner, which to many men is more ensnaring than beauty.  She never
+read anything; she was too restless and fond of outward activity for
+that, and no questions about orthodoxy or heresy ever troubled her
+head.  We continued our correspondence regularly after my appointment
+as minister, and her friends, I knew, were looking to me to fix a day
+for marriage.  But although we had been writing to one another as
+affectionately as usual, a revolution had taken place.  I was quite
+unconscious of it, for we had been betrothed for so long that I never
+once considered the possibility of any rupture.
+
+One Monday morning, however, I had a letter from her.  It was not often
+that she wrote on Sunday, as she had a religious prejudice against
+writing letters on that day.  However, this was urgent, for it was to
+tell me that an aunt of hers who was staying at her father's was just
+dead, and that her uncle wanted her to go and live with him for some
+time, to look after the little children who were left behind.  She said
+that her dear aunt died a beautiful death, trusting in the merits of
+the Redeemer.  She also added, in a very delicate way, that she would
+have agreed to go to her uncle's at once, but she had understood that
+we were to be married soon, and she did not like to leave home for
+long.  She was evidently anxious for me to tell her what to do.
+
+This letter, as I have said, came to me on Monday, when I was exhausted
+by a more than usually desolate Sunday.  I became at once aware that my
+affection for her, if it ever really existed, had departed.  I saw
+before me the long days of wedded life with no sympathy, and I
+shuddered when I thought what I should do with such a wife.  How could
+I take her to Mardon?  How could I ask him to come to me?  Strange to
+say, my pride suffered most.  I could have endured, I believe, even
+discord at home, if only I could have had a woman whom I could present
+to my friends, and whom they would admire.  I was never unselfish in
+the way in which women are, and yet I have always been more anxious
+that people should respect my wife than respect me, and at any time
+would withdraw myself into the shade if only she might be brought into
+the light.  This is nothing noble.  It is an obscure form of egotism
+probably, but anyhow, such always was my case.
+
+It took but a very few hours to excite me to distraction.  I had gone
+on for years without realising what I saw now, and although in the
+situation itself the change had been only gradual, it instantaneously
+became intolerable.  Yet I never was more incapable of acting.  What
+could I do?  After such a long betrothal, to break loose from her would
+be cruel and shameful.  I could never hold up my head again, and in the
+narrow circle of Independency, the whole affair would be known and my
+prospects ruined.
+
+Then other and subtler reasons presented themselves.  No men can expect
+ideal attachments.  We must be satisfied with ordinary humanity.
+Doubtless my friend with a lofty imagination would be better matched
+with some Antigone who exists somewhere and whom he does not know.  But
+he wisely does not spend his life in vain search after her, but settles
+down with the first decently sensible woman he finds in his own street,
+and makes the best of his bargain.  Besides, there was the power of use
+and wont to be considered.  Ellen had no vice of temper, no meanness,
+and it was not improbable that she would be just as good a helpmeet for
+me in time as I had a right to ask.  Living together, we should mould
+one another, and at last like one another.  Marrying her, I should be
+relieved from the insufferable solitude which was depressing me to
+death, and should have a home.
+
+So it has always been with me.  When there has been the sternest need
+of promptitude, I have seen such multitudes of arguments for and
+against every course that I have despaired.  I have at my command any
+number of maxims, all of them good, but I am powerless to select the
+one which ought to be applied.
+
+A general principle, a fine saying, is nothing but a tool, and the wit
+of man is shown not in possession of a well-furnished tool-chest, but
+in the ability to pick out the proper instrument and use it.
+
+I remained in this miserable condition for days, not venturing to
+answer Ellen's letter, until at last I turned out for a walk.  I have
+often found that motion and change will bring light and resolution when
+thinking will not.  I started off in the morning down by the river, and
+towards the sea, my favourite stroll.  I went on and on under a leaden
+sky, through the level, solitary, marshy meadows, where the river began
+to lose itself in the ocean, and I wandered about there, struggling for
+guidance.  In my distress I actually knelt down and prayed, but the
+heavens remained impassive as before, and I was half ashamed of what I
+had done, as if it were a piece of hypocrisy.
+
+At last, wearied out, I turned homeward, and diverging from the direct
+road, I was led past the house where the Misses Arbour lived.  I was
+faint, and some beneficent inspiration prompted me to call.  I went in,
+and found that the younger of the two sisters was out.  A sudden
+tendency to hysterics overcame me, and I asked for a glass of water.
+Miss Arbour, having given it to me, sat down by the side of the
+fireplace opposite to the one at which I was sitting, and for a few
+moments there was silence.  I made some commonplace observation, but
+instead of answering me she said quietly, "Mr. Rutherford, you have
+been upset; I hope you have met with no accident."
+
+How it came about I do not know, but my whole story rushed to my lips,
+and I told her all of it with quivering voice.  I cannot imagine what
+possessed me to make her my confidante.  Shy, reserved, and proud, I
+would have died rather than have breathed a syllable of my secret if I
+had been in my ordinary humour, but her soft, sweet face altogether
+overpowered me.
+
+As I proceeded with my tale, the change that came over her was most
+remarkable.  When I began she was leaning back placidly in her large
+chair, with her handkerchief upon her lap; but gradually her face
+kindled, she sat upright, and she was transformed with a completeness
+and suddenness which I could not have conceived possible.  At last,
+when I had finished, she put both her hands to her forehead, and almost
+shrieked out, "Shall I tell him?--O my God, shall I tell him?--may God
+have mercy on him!"  I was amazed beyond measure at the altogether
+unsuspected depth of passion which was revealed in her whom I had never
+before seen disturbed by more than a ripple of emotion.  She drew her
+chair nearer to mine, put both her hands on my knees, looked right into
+my eyes, and said, "Listen."  She then moved back a little, and spoke
+as follows:
+
+"It is forty-five years ago this month since I was married.  You are
+surprised; you have always known me under my maiden name, and you
+thought I had always been single.  It is forty-six years ago this month
+since the man who afterwards became my husband first saw me.  He was a
+partner in a cloth firm.  At that time it was the duty of one member of
+a firm to travel, and he came to our town, where my father was a well-
+to-do carriage-builder.  My father was an old customer of his house,
+and the relationship between the customer and the wholesale merchant
+was then very different from what it is now.  Consequently, Mr. Hexton-
+-for that was my husband's name--was continually asked to stay with us
+so long as he remained in the town.  He was what might be called a
+singularly handsome man--that is to say, he was upright, well-made,
+with a straight nose, black hair, dark eyes, and a good complexion.  He
+dressed with perfect neatness and good taste, and had the reputation of
+being a most temperate and most moral man, much respected--amongst the
+sect to which both of us belonged.
+
+"When he first came our way I was about nineteen and he about three-
+and-twenty.  My father and his had long been acquainted, and he was of
+course received even with cordiality.  I was excitable, a lover of
+poetry, a reader of all sorts of books, and much given to enthusiasm.
+Ah! you do not think so, you do not see how that can have been, but you
+do not know how unaccountable is the development of the soul, and what
+is the meaning of any given form of character which presents itself to
+you.  You see nothing but the peaceful, long since settled result, but
+how it came there, what its history has been, you cannot tell.  It may
+always have been there, or have gradually grown so, in gradual progress
+from seed to flower, or it may be the final repose of tremendous
+forces.
+
+"I will show you what I was like at nineteen," and she got up and
+turned to a desk, from which she took a little ivory miniature.
+"That," she said, "was given to Mr. Hexton when we were engaged.  I
+thought he would have locked it up, but he used to leave it about, and
+one day I found it in the dressing-table drawer, with some brushes and
+combs, and two or three letters of mine.  I withdrew it, and burnt the
+letters.  He never asked for it, and here it is."
+
+The head was small and set upon the neck like a flower, but not bending
+pensively.  It was rather thrown back with a kind of firmness, and with
+a peculiarly open air, as if it had nothing to conceal and wished the
+world to conceal nothing.  The body was shown down to the waist, and
+was slim and graceful.  But what was most noteworthy about the picture
+was its solemn seriousness, a seriousness capable of infinite
+affection, and of infinite abandonment, not sensuous abandonment--
+everything was too severe, too much controlled by the arch of the top
+of the head for that--but of an abandonment to spiritual aims."
+
+Miss Arbour continued:  "Mr. Hexton after a while gave me to understand
+that he was my admirer, and before six months of acquaintanceship had
+passed my mother told me that he had requested formally that he might
+be considered as my suitor.  She put no pressure upon me, nor did my
+father, excepting that they said that if I would accept Mr. Hexton they
+would be content, as they knew him to be a very well-conducted young
+man, a member of the church, and prosperous in his business.  My first,
+and for a time my sovereign, impulse was to reject him, because I
+thought him mean, and because I felt he lacked sympathy with me.
+
+"Unhappily I did not trust that impulse.  I looked for something more
+authoritative, but I was mistaken, for the voice of God, to me at
+least, hardly ever comes in thunder, but I have to listen with perfect
+stillness to make it out.  It spoke to me, told me what to do, but I
+argued with it and was lost.  I was guiltless of any base motive, but I
+found the wrong name for what displeased me in Mr. Hexton, and so I
+deluded myself.  I reasoned that his meanness was justifiable economy,
+and that his dissimilarity from me was perhaps the very thing which
+ought to induce me to marry him, because he would correct my failings.
+I knew I was too inconsiderate, too rash, too flighty, and I said to
+myself that his soberness would be a good thing for me.
+
+"Oh, if I had but the power to write a book which should go to the ends
+of the world, and warn young men and women not to be led away by any
+sophistry when choosing their partners for life!  It may be asked, How
+are we to distinguish heavenly instigation from hellish temptation?  I
+say, that neither you nor I, sitting here, can tell how to do it.  We
+can lay down no law by which infallibly to recognise the messenger from
+God.  But what I do say is, that when the moment comes, it is perfectly
+easy for us to recognise him.  Whether we listen to his message or not
+is another matter.  If we do not--if we stop to dispute with him, we
+are undone, for we shall very soon learn to discredit him.
+
+"So I was married, and I went to live in a dark manufacturing town,
+away from all my friends.  I awoke to my misery by degrees, but still
+rapidly.  I had my books sent down to me.  I unpacked them in Mr.
+Hexton's presence, and I kindled at the thought of ranging my old
+favourites in my sitting-room.  He saw my delight as I put them on some
+empty shelves, but the next day he said that he wanted a stuffed dog
+there, and that he thought my books, especially as they were shabby,
+had better go upstairs.
+
+"We had to give some entertainments soon afterwards.  The minister and
+his wife, with some other friends, came to tea, and the conversation
+turned on parties and the dullness of winter evenings if no amusements
+were provided.  I maintained that rational human beings ought not to be
+dependent upon childish games, but ought to be able to occupy
+themselves and interest themselves with talk.  Talk, I said--not
+gossip, but talk--pleases me better than chess or forfeits; and the
+lines of Cowper occurred to me -
+
+
+'When one, that holds communion with the skies,
+Has filled his urn where these pure waters rise,
+And once more mingles with us meaner things,
+'Tis even as if an angel shook his wings;
+Immortal fragrance fills the circuit wide,
+That tells us whence his treasures are supplied.'
+
+
+I ventured to repeat this verse, and when I had finished, there was a
+pause for a moment, which was broken by my husband's saying to the
+minister's wife who sat next to him, 'Oh, Mrs. Cook, I quite forgot to
+express my sympathy with you; I heard that you had lost your cat.'  The
+blow was deliberately administered, and I felt it as an insult.  I was
+wrong, I know.  I was ignorant of the ways of the world, and I ought to
+have been aware of the folly of placing myself above the level of my
+guests, and of the extreme unwisdom of revealing myself in that
+unguarded way to strangers.  Two or three more experiences of that kind
+taught me to close myself carefully to all the world, and to beware how
+I uttered anything more than commonplace.  But I was young, and ought
+to have been pardoned.  I felt the sting of self-humiliation far into
+the night, as I lay and silently cried, while Mr. Hexton slept beside
+me.
+
+"I soon found that he was entirely insensible to everything for which I
+most cared.  Before our marriage he had affected a sort of interest in
+my pursuits, but in reality he was indifferent to them.  He was cold,
+hard, and impenetrable.  His habits were precise and methodical, beyond
+what is natural for a man of his years.  I remember one evening--
+strange that these small events should so burn themselves into me--that
+some friends were at our house at tea.  A tradesman in the town was
+mentioned, a member of our congregation, who had become bankrupt, and
+everybody began to abuse him.  It was said that he had been
+extravagant; that he had chosen to send his children to the grammar-
+school, where the children of gentlefolk went; and finally, that only
+last year he had let his wife go to the seaside.
+
+"I knew what the real state of affairs was.  He had perhaps been living
+a little beyond his means, but as to the school, he had rather refined
+tastes, and he longed to teach his children something more than the
+ciphering, as it was called, and bookkeeping which they would have
+learned at the academy at which men in his position usually educated
+their boys; and as to the seaside, his wife was ill, and he could not
+bear to see her suffering in the smoky street, when he knew that a
+little fresh air and change of scene would restore her.
+
+"So I said that I was sorry to hear the poor man attacked; that he had
+done wrong, no doubt, but so had the woman who was brought before
+Jesus; and that with me, charity or a large heart covered a multitude
+of sins.  I added that there was something dreadful in the way in which
+everybody always seemed to agree in deserting the unfortunate.  I was a
+little moved, and unluckily upset a teacup.  No harm was done; and if
+my husband, who sat next to me, had chosen to take no notice, there
+need have been no disturbance whatever.  But he made a great fuss,
+crying, 'Oh, my dear, pray mind!  Ring the bell instantly, or it will
+all be through the tablecloth.'  In getting up hastily to obey him, I
+happened to drag the cloth, as it lay on my lap; a plate fell down and
+was broken; everything was in confusion; I was ashamed and degraded.
+
+"I do not believe there was a single point in Mr. Hexton's character in
+which he touched the universal; not a single chink, however narrow,
+through which his soul looked out of itself upon the great world
+around.  If he had kept bees, or collected butterflies or beetles, I
+could have found some avenue of approach.--But he had no taste for
+anything of the kind.  He had his breakfast at eight regularly every
+morning, and read his letters at breakfast.  He came home to dinner at
+two, looked at the newspaper for a little while after dinner, and then
+went to sleep.  At six he had his tea, and in half-an-hour went back to
+his counting-house, which he did not leave till eight.  Supper at nine,
+and bed at ten, closed the day.
+
+"It was a habit of mine to read a little after supper, and occasionally
+I read aloud to him passages which struck me, but I soon gave it up,
+for once or twice he said to me, 'Now you've got to the bottom of that
+page, I think you had better go to bed,' although perhaps the page did
+not end a sentence.  But why weary you with all this?  I pass over all
+the rest of the hateful details which made life insupportable to me.
+Suffice to say, that one wet Sunday evening, when we could not go to
+chapel and were in the dining-room alone, the climax was reached.  My
+husband had a religious magazine before him, and I sat still, doing
+nothing.  At last, after an hour had passed without a word, I could
+bear it no longer, and I broke out -
+
+"'James, I am wretched beyond description!"
+
+"He slowly shut the magazine, tearing a piece of paper from a letter
+and putting it in as a mark, and then said -
+
+"'What is the matter?'
+
+"'You must know.  You must know that ever since we have been married
+you have never cared for one single thing I have done or said; that is
+to say, you have never cared for me.  It is NOT being married.'
+
+"It was an explosive outburst, sudden and almost incoherent, and I
+cried as if my heart would break.
+
+"'What is the meaning of all this?  You must be unwell.  Will you not
+have a glass of wine?'
+
+"I could not regain myself for some minutes, during which he sat
+perfectly still, without speaking, and without touching me.  His
+coldness nerved me again, congealing all my emotion into a set resolve,
+and I said -
+
+"'I want no wine.  I am not unwell.  I do not wish to have a scene.  I
+will not, by useless words, embitter myself against you, or you against
+me.  You know you do not love me.  I know I do not love you.  It is all
+a bitter, cursed mistake, and the sooner we say so and rectify it the
+better.'
+
+"The colour left his face; his lips quivered, and he looked as if he
+would have killed me.
+
+"'What monstrous thing is this?  What do you mean by your
+tomfooleries?'
+
+"I did not speak.
+
+"'Speak!' he roared.  'What am I to understand by rectifying your
+mistake?  By the living God, you shall not make me the laughing-stock
+and gossip of the town!  I'll crush you first.'
+
+"I was astonished to see such rage develop itself so suddenly in him,
+and yet afterwards, when I came to reflect, I saw there was no reason
+for surprise.  Self, self was his god, and the thought of the damage
+which would be done to him and his reputation was what roused him.  I
+was still silent, and he went on -
+
+"'I suppose you intend to leave me, and you think you'll disgrace me.
+You'll disgrace yourself.  Everybody knows me here, and knows you've
+had every comfort and everything to make you happy.  Everybody will say
+what everybody will have the right to say about you.  Out with it and
+confess the truth, that one of your snivelling poets has fallen in love
+with you and you with him.'
+
+"I still held my peace, but I rose and went into the best bedchamber,
+and sat there in the dark till bedtime.  I heard James come upstairs at
+ten o'clock as usual, go to his own room, and lock himself in.  I never
+hesitated a moment.  I could not go home to become the centre of all
+the chatter of the little provincial town in which I was born.  My old
+nurse, who took care of me as a child, had got a place in London as
+housekeeper in a large shop in the Strand.  She was always very fond of
+me, and to her instantly I determined to go.  I came down, wrote a
+brief note to James, stating that after his base and lying sneer he
+could not expect to find me in the morning still with him, and telling
+him I had left him for ever.  I put on my cloak, took some money which
+was my own out of my cashbox, and at half-past twelve heard the mail-
+coach approaching.  I opened the front door softly--it shut with an
+oiled spring bolt; I went out, stopped the coach, and was presently
+rolling over the road to the great city.
+
+"Oh, that night!  I was the sole passenger inside, and for some hours I
+remained stunned, hardly knowing what had become of me.  Soon the
+morning began to break, with such calm and such slow-changing splendour
+that it drew me out of myself to look at it, and it seemed to me a
+prophecy of the future.  No words can tell the bound of my heart at
+emancipation.  I did not know what was before me, but I knew from what
+I had escaped; I did not believe I should be pursued, and no sailor
+returning from shipwreck and years of absence ever entered the port
+where wife and children were with more rapture than I felt journeying
+through the rain into which the clouds of the sunrise dissolved, as we
+rode over the dim flats of Huntingdonshire southwards.
+
+"There is no need for me to weary you any longer, nor to tell you what
+happened after I got to London, or how I came here.  I had a little
+property of my own and no child.  To avoid questions I resumed my
+maiden name.  But one thing you must know, because it will directly
+tend to enforce what I am going to beseech of you.  Years afterwards, I
+might have married a man who was devoted to me.  But I told him I was
+married already, and not a word of love must he speak to me.  He went
+abroad in despair, and I have never seen anything more of him.
+
+"You can guess now what I am going to pray of you to do.  Without
+hesitation, write to this girl and tell her the exact truth.  Anything,
+any obloquy, anything friends or enemies may say of you must be faced
+even joyfully rather than what I had to endure.  Better die the death
+of the Saviour on the cross than live such a life as mine."
+
+I said:  "Miss Arbour, you are doubtless right, but think what it
+means.  It means nothing less than infamy.  It will be said, I broke
+the poor thing's heart, and marred her prospects for ever.  What will
+become of me, as a minister, when all this is known?"
+
+She caught my hand in hers, and cried with indescribable feeling -
+
+"My good sir, you are parleying with the great Enemy of Souls.  Oh! if
+you did but know, if you COULD but know, you would be as decisive in
+your recoil from him, as you would from hell suddenly opened at your
+feet.  Never mind the future.  The one thing you have to do is the
+thing that lies next to you, divinely ordained for you.  What does the
+119th Psalm say?--'Thy word is a lamp unto my feet.'  We have no light
+promised us to show us our road a hundred miles away, but we have a
+light for the next footstep, and if we take that, we shall have a light
+for the one which is to follow.  The inspiration of the Almighty could
+not make clearer to me the message I deliver to you.  Forgive me--you
+are a minister, I know, and perhaps I ought not to speak so to you, but
+I am an old woman.  Never would you have heard my history from me, if I
+had not thought it would help to save you from something worse than
+death."
+
+At this moment there came a knock at the door, and Miss Arbour's sister
+came in.  After a few words of greeting I took my leave and walked
+home.  I was confounded.  Who could have dreamed that such tragic
+depths lay behind that serene face, and that her orderly precision was
+like the grass and flowers upon volcanic soil with Vesuvian fires
+slumbering below?  I had been altogether at fault, and I was taught,
+what I have since been taught, over and over again, that unknown
+abysses, into which the sun never shines, lie covered with commonplace
+in men and women, and are revealed only by the rarest opportunity.
+
+But my thoughts turned almost immediately to myself, and I could bring
+myself to no resolve.  I was weak and tired, and the more I thought the
+less capable was I of coming to any decision.  In the morning, after a
+restless night, I was in still greater straits, and being perfectly
+unable to do anything, I fled to my usual refuge, the sea.  The whole
+day I swayed to and fro, without the smallest power to arbitrate
+between the contradictory impulses which drew me in opposite
+directions.
+
+I knew what I ought to do, but Ellen's image was ever before me, mutely
+appealing against her wrongs, and I pictured her deserted and with her
+life spoiled.  I said to myself that instinct is all very well, but for
+what purpose is reason given to us if not to reason with it; and
+reasoning in the main is a correction of what is called instinct, and
+of hasty first impressions.  I knew many cases in which men and women
+loved one another without similarity of opinions, and, after all,
+similarity of opinions upon theological criticism is a poor bond of
+union.  But then, no sooner was this pleaded than the other side of the
+question was propounded with all its distinctness, as Miss Arbour had
+presented it.
+
+I came home thoroughly beaten with fatigue, and went to bed.
+Fortunately I sank at once to rest, and with the morning was born the
+clear discernment that whatever I ought to do, it was more manly of me
+to go than to write to Ellen.  Accordingly, I made arrangements for
+getting somebody to supply my place in the pulpit for a couple of
+Sundays, and went home.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI--ELLEN AND MARY
+
+
+
+I now found myself in the strangest position.  What was I to do?  Was I
+to go to Ellen at once and say plainly, "I have ceased to care for
+you"?  I did what all weak people do.
+
+I wished that destiny would take the matter out of my hands.  I would
+have given the world if I could have heard that Ellen was fonder of
+somebody else than me, although the moment the thought came to me I saw
+its baseness.  But destiny was determined to try me to the uttermost,
+and make the task as difficult for me as it could be made.
+
+It was Thursday when I arrived, and somehow or other--how I do not
+know--I found myself on Thursday afternoon at her house.  She was very
+pleased to see me, for many reasons.  My last letters had been doubtful
+and the time for our marriage, as she at least thought, was at hand.
+I, on my part, could not but return the usual embrace, but after the
+first few words were over there was a silence, and she noticed that I
+did not look well.  Anxiously she asked me what was the matter.  I said
+that something had been upon my mind for a long time, which I thought
+it my duty to tell her.  I then went on to say that I felt she ought to
+know what had happened.  When we were first engaged we both professed
+the same faith.  From that faith I had gradually departed, and it
+seemed to me that it would be wicked if she were not made acquainted
+before she took a step which was irrevocable.  This was true, but it
+was not quite all the truth, and with a woman's keenness she saw at
+once everything that was in me.  She broke out instantly with a sob -
+
+"Oh, Rough!"--a nickname she had given me--"I know what it all means--
+you want to get rid of me."
+
+God help me, if I ever endure greater anguish than I did then.  I could
+not speak, much less could I weep, and I sat and watched her for some
+minutes in silence.  My first impulse was to retract, to put my arms
+round her neck, and swear that whatever I might be, Deist or Atheist,
+nothing should separate me from her.  Old associations, the thought of
+the cruel injustice put upon her, the display of an emotion which I had
+never seen in her before, almost overmastered me, and why I did not
+yield I do not know.  Again and again have I failed to make out what it
+is which, in moments of extreme peril, has restrained me from making
+some deadly mistake, when I have not been aware of the conscious
+exercise of any authority of my own.  At last I said -
+
+"Ellen, what else was I to do?  I cannot help my conversion to another
+creed.  Supposing you had found out that you had married a Unitarian
+and I had never told you!"
+
+"Oh, Rough! you are not a Unitarian, you don't love me," and she sobbed
+afresh.
+
+I could not plead against hysterics.  I was afraid she would get ill.
+I thought nobody was in the house, and I rushed across the passage to
+get her some stimulants.  When I came back her father was in the room.
+He was my aversion--a fussy, conceited man, who always prated about "my
+daughter" to me in a tone which was very repulsive--just as if she were
+his property, and he were her natural protector against me.
+
+"Mr. Rutherford," he cried, "what is the matter with my daughter?  What
+have you said to her?"
+
+"I don't think, sir, I am bound to tell you.  It is a matter between
+Ellen and myself."
+
+"Mr. Rutherford, I demand an explanation.  Ellen is mine.  I am her
+father."
+
+"Excuse me, sir, if I desire not to have a scene here just now.  Ellen
+is unwell.  When she recovers she will tell you.  I had better leave,"
+and I walked straight out of the house.
+
+Next morning I had a letter from her father to say, that whether I was
+a Unitarian or not, my behaviour to Ellen showed I was bad enough to be
+one.  Anyhow, he had forbidden her all further intercourse with me.
+When I had once more settled down in my solitude, and came to think
+over what had happened, I felt the self-condemnation of a criminal
+without being able to accuse myself of a crime.  I believe with Miss
+Arbour that it is madness for a young man who finds out he has made a
+blunder, not to set it right; no matter what the wrench may be.  But
+that Ellen was a victim I do not deny.  If any sin, however, was
+committed against her, it was committed long before our separation.  It
+was nine-tenths mistake and one-tenth something more heinous; and the
+worst of it is, that while there is nothing which a man does which is
+of greater consequence than the choice of a woman with whom he is to
+live, there is nothing he does in which he is more liable to self-
+deception.
+
+On my return I heard that Mardon was ill, and that probably he would
+die.  During my absence a contested election for the county had taken
+place, and our town was one of the polling-places.  The lower classes
+were violently Tory.  During the excitement of the contest the mob had
+set upon Mardon as he was going to his work, and had reviled him as a
+Republican and an Atheist.  By way of proving their theism they had
+cursed him with many oaths, and had so sorely beaten him that the shock
+was almost fatal.  I went to see him instantly, and found him in much
+pain, believing that he would not get better, but perfectly peaceful.
+
+I knew that he had no faith in immortality, and I was curious beyond
+measure to see how he would encounter death without such a faith; for
+the problem of death, and of life after death, was still absorbing me
+even to the point of monomania.  I had been struggling as best I could
+to protect myself against it, but with little success.  I had long
+since seen the absurdity and impossibility of the ordinary theories of
+hell and heaven.  I could not give up my hope in a continuance of life
+beyond the grave, but the moment I came to ask myself how, I was
+involved in contradictions.  Immortality is not really immortality of
+the person unless the memory abides and there be a connection of the
+self of the next world with the self here, and it was incredible to me
+that there should be any memories or any such connection after the
+dissolution of the body; moreover, the soul, whatever it may be, is so
+intimately one with the body, and is affected so seriously by the
+weaknesses, passions, and prejudices of the body, that without it my
+soul would not be myself, and the fable of the resurrection of the
+body, of this same brain and heart, was more than I could ever swallow
+in my most orthodox days.
+
+But the greatest difficulty was the inability to believe that the
+Almighty intended to preserve all the mass of human beings, all the
+countless millions of barbaric, half-bestial forms which, since the
+appearance of man, had wandered upon the earth, savage or civilised.
+Is it like Nature's way to be so careful about individuals, and is it
+to be supposed that, having produced, millions of years ago, a creature
+scarcely nobler than the animals he tore with his fingers, she should
+take pains to maintain him in existence for evermore?  The law of the
+universe everywhere is rather the perpetual rise from the lower to the
+higher; an immortality of aspiration after more perfect types; a
+suppression and happy forgetfulness of its comparative failures.
+
+There was nevertheless an obstacle to the acceptance of this negation
+in a faintness of heart which I could not overcome.  Why this ceaseless
+struggle, if in a few short years I was to be asleep for ever?  The
+position of mortal man seemed to me infinitely tragic.  He is born into
+the world, beholds its grandeur and beauty, is filled with unquenchable
+longings, and knows that in a few inevitable revolutions of the earth
+he will cease.  More painful still; he loves somebody, man or woman,
+with a surpassing devotion; he is so lost in his love that he cannot
+endure a moment without it; and when he sees it pass away in death, he
+is told that it is extinguished--that that heart and mind absolutely
+are NOT.
+
+It was always a weakness with me that certain thoughts preyed on me.  I
+was always singularly feeble in laying hold of an idea, and in the
+ability to compel myself to dwell upon a thing for any lengthened
+period in continuous exhaustive reflection.  But, nevertheless, ideas
+would frequently lay hold of me with such relentless tenacity that I
+was passive in their grasp.  So it was about this time with death and
+immortality, and I watched eagerly Mardon's behaviour when the end had
+to be faced.  As I have said, he was altogether calm.  I did not like
+to question him while he was so unwell, because I knew that a
+discussion would arise which I could not control, and it might disturb
+him, but I would have given anything to understand what was passing in
+his mind.
+
+During his sickness I was much impressed by Mary's manner of nursing
+him.  She was always entirely wrapped up in her father, so much so,
+that I had often doubted if she could survive him; but she never
+revealed any trace of agitation.  Under the pressure of the calamity
+which had befallen her, she showed rather increased steadiness, and
+even a cheerfulness which surprised me.  Nothing went wrong in the
+house.  Everything was perfectly ordered, perfectly quiet, and she rose
+to a height of which I had never suspected her capable, while her
+father's stronger nature was allowed to predominate.  She was
+absolutely dependent on him.  If he did not get well she would be
+penniless, and I could not help thinking that with the like chance
+before me, to say nothing of my love for him and anxiety lest he should
+die, I should be distracted, and lose my head; more especially if I had
+to sit by his bed, and spend sleepless nights such as fell to her lot.
+But she belonged to that class of natures which, although delicate and
+fragile, rejoice in difficulty.  Her grief for her father was
+exquisite, but it was controlled by a sense of her responsibility.  The
+greater the peril, the more complete was her self-command.
+
+To the surprise of everybody Mardon got better.  His temperate habits
+befriended him in a manner which amazed his more indulgent neighbours,
+who were accustomed to hot suppers, and whisky-and-water after them.
+Meanwhile I fell into greater difficulties than ever in my ministry.  I
+wonder now that I was not stopped earlier.  I was entirely unorthodox,
+through mere powerlessness to believe, and the catalogue of the
+articles of faith to which I might be said really to subscribe was very
+brief.  I could no longer preach any of the dogmas which had always
+been preached in the chapel, and I strove to avoid a direct conflict by
+taking Scripture characters, amplifying them from the hints in the
+Bible, and neglecting what was supernatural.  That I was allowed to go
+on for so long was mainly due to the isolation of the town and the
+ignorance of my hearers.  Mardon and his daughter came frequently to
+hear me, and this, I believe, finally roused suspicion more than any
+doctrine expounded from the pulpit.  One Saturday morning there
+appeared the following letter in the Sentinel:
+
+"Sin,--Last Sunday evening I happened to stray into a chapel not a
+hundred miles from Water Lane.  Sir, it was a lovely evening, and
+
+
+'The glorious stars on high,
+Set like jewels in the sky,'
+
+
+were circling their courses, and, with the moon, irresistibly reminded
+me of that blood which was shed for the remission of sins.  Sir, with
+my mind attuned in that direction I entered the chapel.  I hoped to
+hear something of that Rock of Ages in which, as the poet sings, we
+shall wish to hide ourselves in years to come.  But, sir, a young man,
+evidently a young man, occupied the pulpit, and great was my grief to
+find that the tainted flood of human philosophy had rolled through the
+town and was withering the truth as it is in Christ Jesus.  Years ago
+that pulpit sent forth no uncertain sound, and the glorious gospel was
+proclaimed there--not a GERMAN GOSPEL, sir--of our depravity and our
+salvation through Christ Jesus.  Sir, I should like to know what the
+dear departed who endowed that chapel, and are asleep in the Lord in
+that burying-ground, would say if they were to rise from their graves
+and sit in those pews again and hear what I heard--a sermon which might
+have been a week-day lecture.  Sir, as I was passing through the town,
+I could not feel that I had done my duty without announcing to you the
+fact as above stated, and had not raised a humble warning from -
+
+Sir, Yours truly,
+
+"A CHRISTIAN TRAVELLER."
+
+
+Notwithstanding the transparent artifice of the last paragraph, there
+was no doubt that the author of this precious production was Mr. Snale,
+and I at once determined to tax him with it.  On the Monday morning I
+called on him, and found him in his shop.
+
+"Mr. Snale," I said, "I have a word or two to say to you."
+
+"Certainly, sir.  What a lovely day it is!  I hope you are very well,
+sir.  Will you come upstairs?"
+
+But I declined to go upstairs, as it was probable I might meet Mrs.
+Snale there.  So I said that we had better go into the counting-house,
+a little place boxed off at the end of the shop, but with no door to
+it.  As soon as we got in I began.
+
+"Mr. Snale, I have been much troubled by a letter which has appeared in
+last week's Sentinel.  Although disguised, it evidently refers to me,
+and to be perfectly candid with you, I cannot help thinking you wrote
+it."
+
+"Dear me, sir, may I ask WHY you think so?"
+
+"The internal evidence, Mr. Snale, is overwhelming; but if you did not
+write it, perhaps you will be good enough to say so."
+
+Now Mr. Snale was a coward, but with a peculiarity which I have marked
+in animals of the rat tribe.  He would double and evade as long as
+possible, but if he found there was no escape, he would turn and tear
+and fight to the last extremity.
+
+"Mr. Rutherford, that is rather--ground of an, of an--what shall I
+say?--of an assumptive nature on which to make such an accusation, and
+I am not obliged to deny every charge which you may be pleased to make
+against me."
+
+"Pardon me, Mr. Snale, do you then consider what I have said is an
+accusation and charge?  Do you think that it was wrong to write such a
+letter?"
+
+"Well, sir, I cannot exactly say that it was; but I must say, sir, that
+I do think it peculiar of you, peculiar of you, sir, to come here and
+attack one of your friends, who, I am sure, has always showed you so
+much kindness--to attack him, sir, with no proof."
+
+Now Mr. Snale had not openly denied his authorship.  But the use of the
+word "friend" was essentially a lie--just one of those lies which, by
+avoiding the form of a lie, have such a charm for a mind like his.  I
+was roused to indignation.
+
+"Mr. Snale, I will give you the proof which you want, and then you
+shall judge for yourself.  The letter contains two lines of a hymn
+which you have misquoted.  You made precisely that blunder in talking
+to the Sunday-school children on the Sunday before the letter appeared.
+You will remember that in accordance with my custom to visit the
+Sunday-school occasionally, I was there on that Sunday afternoon."
+
+"Well, sir, I've not denied I did write it."
+
+"Denied you did write it!" I exclaimed, with gathering passion; "what
+do you mean by the subterfuge about your passing through the town and
+by your calling me your friend a minute ago?  What would you have
+thought if anybody had written anonymously to the Sentinel, and had
+accused you of selling short measure?  You would have said it was a
+libel, and you would also have said that a charge of that kind ought to
+be made publicly and not anonymously.  You seem to think, nevertheless,
+that it is no sin to ruin me anonymously."
+
+"Mr. Rutherford, I AM sure I am your friend.  I wish you well, sir,
+both here"--and Mr. Snale tried to be very solemn--"and in the world to
+come.  With regard to the letter, I don't see it as you do, sir.  But,
+sir, if you are going to talk in this tone, I would advise you to be
+careful.  We have heard, sir"--and here Mr. Snale began to simper and
+grin with an indescribably loathsome grimace--"that some of your
+acquaintances in your native town are of opinion that you have not
+behaved quite so well as you should have done to a certain young lady
+of your acquaintance; and what is more, we have marked with pain here,
+sir, your familiarity with an atheist and his daughter, and we have
+noticed their coming to chapel, and we have also noticed a change in
+your doctrine since these parties attended there."
+
+At the word "daughter" Mr. Snale grinned again, apparently to somebody
+behind me, and I found that one of his shopwomen had entered the
+counting-house, unobserved by me, while this conversation was going on,
+and that she was smirking in reply to Mr. Snale's signals.  In a moment
+the blood rushed to my brain.  I was as little able to control myself
+as if I had been shot suddenly down a precipice.
+
+"Mr. Snale, you are a contemptible scoundrel and a liar."
+
+The effort on him was comical.  He cried:
+
+"What, sir!--what do you mean, sir?--a minister of the gospel--if you
+were not, I would--a liar"--and he swung round hastily on the stool on
+which he was sitting, to get off and grasp a yard-measure which stood
+against the fireplace.  But the stool slipped, and he came down
+ignominiously.  I waited till he got up, but as he rose a carriage
+stopped at the door, and he recognised one of his best customers.
+Brushing the dust off his trousers, and smoothing his hair, he rushed
+out without his hat, and in a moment was standing obsequiously on the
+pavement, bowing to his patron.  I passed him in going out, but the
+oily film of subserviency on his face was not broken for an instant.
+
+When I got home I bitterly regretted what had happened.  I never regret
+anything more than the loss of self-mastery.  I had been betrayed, and
+yet I could not for the life of me see how the betrayal could have been
+prevented.  It was upon me so suddenly, that before a moment had been
+given me for reflection, the words were out of my mouth.  I was
+distinctly conscious that the _I_ had not said those words.  They had
+been spoken by some other power working in me which was beyond my
+reach.  Nor could I foresee how to prevent such a fall for the future.
+The only advice, even now, which I can give to those who comprehend the
+bitter pangs of such self-degradation as passion brings, is to watch
+the first risings of the storm, and to say "Beware; be watchful," at
+the least indication of a tempest.  Yet, after every precaution, we are
+at the mercy of the elements, and in an instant the sudden doubling of
+a cape may expose us, under a serene sky, to a blast which, taking us
+with all sails spread, may overset us and wreck us irretrievably.
+
+My connection with the chapel was now obviously at an end.  I had no
+mind to be dragged before a church meeting, and I determined to resign.
+After a little delay I wrote a letter to the deacons, explaining that I
+had felt a growing divergence from the theology taught heretofore in
+Water Lane, and I wished consequently to give up my connection with
+them.  I received an answer stating that my resignation had been
+accepted; I preached a farewell sermon; and I found myself one Monday
+morning with a quarter's salary in my pocket, a few bills to pay, and a
+blank outlook.
+
+What was to be done?  My first thought was towards Unitarianism, but
+when I came to cast up the sum-total of what I was assured, it seemed
+so ridiculously small that I was afraid.  The occupation of a merely
+miscellaneous lecturer had always seemed to me very poor.  I could not
+get up Sunday after Sunday and retail to people little scraps suggested
+by what I might have been studying during the week; and with regard to
+the great subjects--for the exposition of which the Christian minister
+specially exists--how much did I know about them?  The position of a
+minister who has a gospel to proclaim; who can go out and tell men what
+they are to do to be saved, was intelligible; but not so the position
+of a man who had no such gospel.
+
+What reason for continuance as a preacher could I claim?  Why should
+people hear me rather than read books?  I was alarmed to find, on
+making my reckoning, that the older I got the less I appeared to
+believe.  Nakeder and nakeder had I become with the passage of every
+year, and I trembled to anticipate the complete emptiness to which
+before long I should be reduced.
+
+What the dogma of immortality was to me I have already described, and
+with regard to God I was no better.  God was obviously not a person in
+the clouds, and what more was really firm under my feet than this--that
+the universe is governed by immutable laws?  These laws were not what
+is commonly understood as God.  Nor could I discern any ultimate
+tendency in them.  Everything was full of contradiction.  On the one
+hand was infinite misery; on the other there were exquisite adaptations
+producing the highest pleasure; on the one hand the mystery of life-
+long disease, and on the other the equal mystery of the unspeakable
+glory of the sunrise on a summer's morning over a quiet summer sea.
+
+I happened to hear once an atheist discoursing on the follies of
+theism.  If he had made the world, he would have made it much better.
+He would not have racked innocent souls with years of torture, that
+tyrants might live in splendour.  He would not have permitted the
+earthquake to swallow up thousands of harmless mortals, and so forth.
+But, putting aside all dependence upon the theory of a coming
+rectification of such wrongs as these, the atheist's argument was
+shallow enough.
+
+It would have been easy to show that a world such as he imagines is
+unthinkable directly we are serious with our conception of it.  On
+whatever lines the world may be framed, there must be distinction,
+difference, a higher and a lower; and the lower, relatively to the
+higher, must always be an evil.  The scale upon which the higher and
+lower both are makes no difference.  The supremest bliss would not be
+bliss if it were not definable bliss--that is to say, in the sense that
+it has limits, marking it out from something else not so supreme.
+Perfectly uninterrupted, infinite light, without shadow, is a physical
+absurdity.  I see a thing because it is lighted, but also because of
+the differences of light, or, in other words, because of shade, and
+without shade the universe would be objectless, and in fact invisible.
+The atheist was dreaming of shadowless light, a contradiction in terms.
+Mankind may be improved, and the improvement may be infinite, and yet
+good and evil must exist.  So with death and life.  Life without death
+is not life, and death without life is equally impossible.
+
+But though all this came to me, and was not only a great comfort to me,
+but prevented any shallow prating like that to which I listened from
+this lecturer, it could not be said that it was a gospel from which to
+derive apostolic authority.  There remained morals.  I could become an
+instructor of morality.  I could warn tradesmen not to cheat, children
+to honour their parents, and people generally not to lie.  The mission
+was noble, but I could not feel much enthusiasm for it, and more than
+this, it was a fact that reformations in morals have never been
+achieved by mere directions to be good, but have always been the result
+of an enthusiasm for some City of God, or some supereminent person.
+Besides, the people whom it was most necessary to reach would not be
+the people who would, unsolicited, visit a Unitarian meeting-house.  As
+for a message of negations, emancipating a number of persons from the
+dogma of the Trinity or future punishment, and spending my strength in
+merely demonstrating the nonsense of orthodoxy, my soul sickened at the
+very thought of it.  Wherein would men be helped, and wherein should I
+be helped?
+
+There were only two persons in the town who had ever been of any
+service to me.  One was Miss Arbour, and the other was Mardon.  But I
+shrank from Miss Arbour, because I knew that my troubles had never been
+hers.  She belonged to a past generation, and as to Mardon, I never saw
+him without being aware of the difficulty of accepting any advice from
+him.  He was perfectly clear, perfectly secular, and was so definitely
+shaped and settled, that his line of conduct might always be predicted
+beforehand with certainty.  I knew very well what he thought about
+preaching, and what he would tell me to do, or rather, what he would
+tell me not to do.
+
+Nevertheless, after all, I was a victim to that weakness which impels
+us to seek the assistance of others when we know that what they offer
+will be of no avail.  Accordingly, I called on him.  Both he and Mary
+were at home, and I was received with more than usual cordiality.  He
+knew already that I had resigned, for the news was all over the town.
+I said I was in great perplexity.
+
+"The perplexities of most persons arise," said Mardon, "as yours
+probably arise, from not understanding exactly what you want to do.
+For one person who stumbles and falls with a perfectly distinct object
+to be attained, I have known a score whose disasters are to be
+attributed to their not having made themselves certain what their aim
+is.  You do not know what you believe; consequently you do not know how
+to act."
+
+"What would you do if you were in my case?"
+
+"Leave the whole business and prefer the meanest handicraft.  You have
+no right to be preaching anything doubtful.  You are aware what my
+creed is.  I profess no belief in God, and no belief in what hangs upon
+it.  Try and name now, any earnest conviction you possess, and see
+whether you have a single one which I have not got."
+
+"I DO believe in God."
+
+"There is nothing in that statement.  What do you believe about Him?--
+that is the point.  You will find that you believe nothing, in truth,
+which I do not also believe of the laws which govern the universe and
+man."
+
+"I believe in an intellect of which these laws are the expression."
+
+"Now what kind of an intellect can that be?  You can assign to it no
+character in accordance with its acts.  It is an intellect, if it be an
+intellect at all, which will swallow up a city, and will create the
+music of Mozart for me when I am weary; an intellect which brings to
+birth His Majesty King George IV., and the love of an affectionate
+mother for her child; an intellect which, in the person of a tender
+girl, shows an exquisite conscience, and in the person of one or two
+religious creatures whom I have known, shows a conscience almost
+inverted.  I have always striven to prove to my theological friends
+that their mere affirmation of God is of no consequence.  They may be
+affirming anything or nothing.  The question, the all-important
+question is, WHAT can be affirmed about Him?"
+
+"Your side of the argument naturally admits of a more precise statement
+than mine.  I cannot encompass God with a well-marked definition, but
+for all that, I believe in Him.  I know all that may be urged against
+the belief, but I cannot help thinking that the man who looks upon the
+stars, or the articulation of a leaf, is irresistibly impelled, unless
+he has been corrupted by philosophy, to say, There is intellect there.
+It is the instinct of the child and of the man."
+
+"I don't think so; but grant it, and again I ask, WHAT intellect is
+it?"
+
+"Again I say, I do not know."
+
+"Then why dispute?  Why make such a fuss about it?"
+
+"It really seems to me of immense importance whether you see this
+intellect or not, although you say it is of no importance.  It appears
+to be of less importance than it really is, because I do not think that
+even you ever empty the universe of intellect.  I believe that mind
+never worships anything but mind, and that you worship it when you
+admire the level bars of cloud over the setting sun.  You think you
+eject mind, but you do not.  I can only half imagine a belief which
+looks upon the world as a mindless blank, and if I could imagine it, it
+would be depressing in the last degree to me.  I know that I have mind,
+and to live in a universe in which my mind is answered by no other
+would be unbearable.  Better any sort of intelligence than none at all.
+But, as I have just said, your case admits of plainer statement than
+mine.  You and I have talked this matter over before, and I have never
+gained a logical victory over you.  Often I have felt thoroughly
+prostrated by you, and yet, when I have left you, the old superstition
+has arisen unsubdued.  I do not know how it is, but I always feel that
+upon this, as upon many other subjects, I never can really speak
+myself.  An unshapen thought presents itself to me, I look at it, and I
+do all in my power to give it body and expression, but I cannot.  I am
+certain that there is something truer and deeper to be said about the
+existence of God than anything I have said, and what is more, I am
+certain of the presence of this something in me, but I cannot lift it
+to the light."
+
+"Ah, you are now getting into the region of sentiment, and I am unable
+to accompany you.  When my friends go into the clouds, I never try to
+follow them."
+
+All this time Mary had been sitting in the arm-chair against the
+fireplace in her usual attitude, resting her head on her hand and with
+her feet crossed one over the other on the fender.  She had been
+listening silently and motionless.  She now closed her eyes and said -
+
+"Father, father, it is not true."
+
+"What is not true?"
+
+"I do not mean that what you have said about theology is not true, but
+you make Mr. Rutherford believe you are what you are not.  Mr.
+Rutherford, father sometimes tells us he has no sentiment, but you must
+take no notice of him when he talks in that way.  I always think of our
+visit to the seaside two years ago.  The railway-station was in a
+disagreeable part of the town, and when we came out we walked along a
+dismal row of very plain-looking houses.  There were cards in the
+window with 'Lodgings' written on them, and father wanted to go in to
+ask the terms.  I said that I did not wish to stay in such a dull
+street, but father could not afford to pay for a sea view, and so we
+went in to inquire.  We then found that what we thought were the fronts
+of the houses were the backs, and that the fronts faced the bay.  They
+had pretty gardens on the other side, and a glorious sunny prospect
+over the ocean."
+
+Mardon laughed and said -
+
+"Ah, Mary, there is no sea front here, and no garden."
+
+I took up my hat and said I must go.  Both pressed me to stop, but I
+declined.  Mardon urged me again, and at last said -
+
+"I believe you've never once heard Mary sing."
+
+Mary protested, and pleaded that as they had no piano, Mr. Rutherford
+would not care for her poor voice without any accompaniment.  But I,
+too, protested that I should, and she got out the "Messiah."  Her
+father took a tuning-fork out of his pocket, and having struck it, Mary
+rose and began, "He was despised."  Her voice was not powerful, but it
+was pure and clear, and she sang with that perfect taste which is
+begotten solely of a desire to honour the Master.  The song always had
+a profound charm for me.  Partly this was due to association.  The
+words and tones, which have been used to embody their emotions by those
+whom we have loved, are doubly expressive when we use them to embody
+our own.  The song is potent too, because with utmost musical
+tenderness and strength it reveals the secret of the influence of the
+story of Jesus.  Nobody would be bold enough to cry, THAT TOO IS MY
+CASE, and yet the poorest and the humblest soul has a right to the
+consolation that Jesus was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
+
+For some reason or the other, or for many reasons, Mary's voice wound
+itself into the very centre of my existence.  I seemed to be listening
+to the tragedy of all human worth and genius.  The ball rose in my
+throat, the tears mounted to my eyes, and I had to suppress myself
+rigidly.
+
+Presently she ceased.  There was silence for a moment.  I looked round,
+and saw that Mardon's face was on the table, buried in his hands.  I
+felt that I had better go, for the presence of a stranger, when the
+heart is deeply stirred, is an intrusion.  I noiselessly left the room,
+and Mary followed.  When we got to the door she said:  "I forgot that
+mother used to sing that song.  I ought to have known better."  Her own
+eyes were full; I thought the pressure of her hand as she bade me good-
+bye was a little firmer than usual, and as we parted an over-mastering
+impulse seized me.  I lifted her hand to my lips; without giving her
+time to withdraw it, I gave it one burning kiss, and passed out into
+the street.  It was pouring with rain, and I had neither overcoat nor
+umbrella, but I heeded not the heavens, and not till I got home to my
+own fireless, dark, solitary lodgings, did I become aware of any
+contrast between the sphere into which I had been exalted and the
+earthly commonplace world by which I was surrounded.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII--EMANCIPATION
+
+
+
+The old Presbyterian chapels throughout the country have many of them
+become Unitarian, and occasionally, even in an agricultural village, a
+respectable red-brick building may be seen, dating from the time of
+Queen Anne, in which a few descendants of the eighteenth century
+heretics still testify against three Gods in one and the deity of Jesus
+Christ.  Generally speaking, the attendance in these chapels is very
+meagre, but they are often endowed, and so they are kept open.
+
+There was one in the large, straggling half-village, half-town of D-,
+within about ten miles of me, and the pulpit was then vacant.  The
+income was about 100 pounds a year.  The principal man there was a
+small general dealer, who kept a shop in the middle of the village
+street, and I had come to know him slightly, because I had undertaken
+to give his boy a few lessons to prepare him for admission to a
+boarding-school.  The money in my pocket was coming to an end, and as I
+did not suppose that any dishonesty would be imposed on me, and
+although the prospect were not cheering, I expressed my willingness to
+be considered as a candidate.
+
+In the course of a week or two I was therefore invited to preach.  I
+was so reduced that I was obliged to walk the whole distance on the
+Sunday morning, and as I was asked to no house, I went straight to the
+chapel, and loitered about in the graveyard till a woman came and
+opened a door at the back.  I explained who I was, and sat down in a
+Windsor chair against a small kitchen table in the vestry.  It was
+cold, but there was no fire, nor were any preparations made for one.
+On the mantel-shelf were a bottle of water and a glass, but as the
+water had evidently been there for some time, it was not very tempting.
+
+I waited in silence for about twenty minutes, and my friend the dealer
+then came in, and having shaken hands, and remarked that it was chilly,
+asked me for the hymns.  These I gave him, and went into the pulpit.  I
+found myself in a plain-looking building designed to hold about two
+hundred people.  There was a gallery opposite me, and the floor was
+occupied with high, dark, brown pews, one or two immediately on my
+right and left being surrounded with faded green curtains.  I counted
+my hearers, and discovered that there were exactly seventeen, including
+two very old labourers, who sat on a form near the door.  The gallery
+was quite empty, except a little organ, or seraphine, I think it was
+called, which was played by a young woman.  The dealer gave out the
+hymns, and accompanied the seraphine in a bass voice, singing the air.
+A weak whisper might be perceived from the rest of the congregation,
+but nothing more.
+
+I was somewhat taken aback at finding in the Bible a discourse which
+had been left by one of my predecessors.  It was a funeral-sermon,
+neatly written, and had evidently done duty on several occasions,
+although the allusions in it might be considered personal.  The piety
+and good works of the departed were praised with emphasis, but the
+masculine pronouns originally used were altered above the lines all
+throughout to feminine pronouns, and the word "brother" to "sister," so
+that no difficulty might arise in reading it for either sex.  I was
+faint, benumbed, and with no heart for anything.  I talked for about
+half-an-hour about what I considered to be the real meaning of the
+death of Christ, thinking that this was a subject which might prove as
+attractive as any other.
+
+After the service the assembly of seventeen departed, save one thin
+elderly gentleman, who came into the vestry, and having made a slight
+bow, said:  "Mr. Rutherford, will you come with me, if you please?"  I
+accordingly followed him, almost in silence, through the village till
+we reached his house, where his wife, who had gone on before, received
+us.  They had formerly kept the shop which the dealer now had, but had
+retired.  They might both be about sixty-five, and were of about the
+same temperament, pale, thin, and ineffectual, as if they had been fed
+on gruel.
+
+We had dinner in a large room with an old-fashioned grate in it, in
+which was stuck a basket stove.  I remember perfectly well what we had
+for dinner.  There was a neck of mutton (cold), potatoes, cabbage, a
+suet pudding, and some of the strangest-looking ale I ever saw--about
+the colour of lemon juice, but what it was really like I do not know,
+as I did not drink beer.  I was somewhat surprised at being asked
+whether I would take potatoes OR cabbage, but thinking it was the
+custom of the country not to indulge in both at once, and remembering
+that I was on probation, I said "cabbage."
+
+Very little was spoken during dinner-time by anybody, and scarcely a
+word by my hostess.  After dinner she cleared the things away, and did
+not again appear.  My host drew near the basket stove, and having
+remarked that it was beginning to rain, fell into a slumber.  At twenty
+minutes to two we sallied out for the afternoon service, and found the
+seventeen again in their places, excepting the two labourers, who were
+probably prevented by the wet from attending.
+
+The service was a repetition of that in the morning, and when I came
+down my host again came forward and presented me with nineteen
+shillings.  The fee was a guinea, but from that two shillings were
+abated for my entertainment.  He informed me at the same time that a
+farmer, who had been hearing me and who lived five miles on my road,
+would give me a lift.  He was a very large, stout man, with a rosy
+countenance, which was somewhat of a relief after the gruel face of my
+former friend.  We went round to a stable-yard, and I got into a four-
+wheeled chaise.  His wife sat with him in front, and a biggish boy sat
+with me behind.
+
+When we came to a guide-post which pointed down his lane, I got out,
+and was dismissed in the dark with the observation--uttered good-
+naturedly and jovially, but not very helpfully--that he was "afraid I
+should have a wettish walk."  The walk certainly was wettish, and as I
+had had nothing to eat or drink since my midday meal, I was miserable
+and desponding.  But just before I reached home the clouds rolled off
+with the south-west wind into detached, fleecy masses, separated by
+liquid blue gulfs, in which were sowed the stars, and the effect upon
+me was what that sight, thank God, always has been--a sense of the
+infinite, extinguishing all mean cares.
+
+I expected to hear no more from my Unitarian acquaintances, and was
+therefore greatly surprised when, a week after my visit, I received an
+invitation to "settle" amongst them.  The usual month's trial was
+thought unnecessary, as I was not altogether a stranger to some of
+them.  I hardly knew what to do, I could not feel any enthusiasm at the
+prospect of the engagement, but, on the other hand, there was nothing
+else before me.  There is no more helpless person in this world than a
+minister who is thrown out of work.  At any rate, I should be doing no
+harm if I went.
+
+I pondered over the matter a good deal, and then reflected that in a
+case where every opening is barred save one, it is our duty not to
+plunge at an impassable barrier, but to take that one opening, however
+unpromising it may be.  Accordingly I accepted.  My income was to be a
+hundred a year, and it was proposed that I should lodge with my friend
+the retired dealer, who had the only two rooms in the village which
+were available.
+
+I went to bid Mardon and Mary good-bye.  I had not seen either of them
+since the night of the song.  To my surprise I found them both away.
+The blinds were down and the door locked.  A neighbour, who heard me
+knocking, came out and told me the news.  Mardon had had a dispute with
+his employer, and had gone to London to look for work.  Mary had gone
+to see a relative at some distance, and would remain there until her
+father had determined what was to be done.
+
+I obtained the addresses of both of them, and wrote to Mardon, telling
+him what my destiny for the present was to be.  To Mary I wrote also,
+and to her I offered my heart.  Looking backward, I have sometimes
+wondered that I felt so little hesitation; not that I have ever doubted
+since, that what I did then was the one perfectly right thing which I
+have done in my life, but because it was my habit so to confuse myself
+with meditative indecision.  I had doubted before.  I remember once
+being so near engaging myself to a girl that the desk was open and the
+paper under my hand.  But I held back, could not make up my mind, and
+happily was stayed.  Had I not been restrained, I should for ever have
+been miserable.  The remembrance of this escape, and the certain
+knowledge that of all beings whom I knew I was most likely to be
+mistaken in an emergency, always produced in me a torturing tendency to
+inaction.  There was no such tendency now.  I thought I chose Mary, but
+there was no choice.  The feeblest steel filing which is drawn to a
+magnet, would think, if it had consciousness, that it went to the
+magnet of its own free will.  My soul rushed to hers as if dragged by
+the force of a loadstone.
+
+But she was not to be mine.  I had a note from her, a sweet note,
+thanking me with much tenderness for my affectionate regard for her,
+but saying that her mind had long since been made up.  She was an only
+child of a mother whom her father had loved above everything in life,
+and she could never leave him nor suffer any affection to interfere
+with that which she felt for him and which he felt for her.  I might
+well misinterpret him, and think it strange that he should be so much
+bound up in her.  Few people knew him as she did.
+
+The shock to me at first was overpowering, and I fell under the
+influence of that horrible monomania from which I had been free for so
+long.  For weeks I was prostrate, with no power of resistance; the evil
+being intensified by my solitude.  Of all the dreadful trials which
+human nature has the capacity to bear unshattered, the worst--as,
+indeed, I have already said--is the fang of some monomaniacal idea
+which cannot be wrenched out.  A main part of the misery, as I have
+also said, lies in the belief that suffering of this kind is peculiar
+to ourselves.  We are afraid to speak of it, and not knowing,
+therefore, how common it is, we are distracted with the fear that it is
+our own special disease.
+
+I managed to get through my duties, but how I cannot tell.  Fortunately
+our calamities are not what they appear to be when they lie in
+perspective behind us or before us, for they actually consist of
+distinct moments, each of which is overcome by itself.  I was helped by
+remembering my recovery before, and I was able now, as a reward of
+long-continued abstinence from wine, to lie much stiller, and wait with
+more patience till the cloud should lift.
+
+Mardon having gone to London, I was more alone than ever, but my love
+for Mary increased in intensity, and had a good deal to do with my
+restoration to health.  It was a hopeless love, but to be in love
+hopelessly is more akin to sanity than careless, melancholy
+indifference to the world.  I was relieved from myself by the anchorage
+of all my thoughts elsewhere.  The pain of loss was great, but the main
+curse of my existence has not been pain or loss, but gloom; blind
+wandering in a world of black fog, haunted by apparitions.  I am not
+going to expand upon the history of my silent relationship to Mary
+during that time.  How can I?  All that I felt has been described
+better by others; and if it had not been, I have no mind to attempt a
+description myself, which would answer no purpose.
+
+I continued to correspond with Mardon, but with Mary I interchanged no
+word.  After her denial of me I should have dreaded the charge of
+selfishness if I had opened my lips again.  I could not place myself in
+her affection before her father.
+
+My work at the chapel was of the most lifeless kind.  My people really
+consisted of five families--those of the retired dealer, the farmer who
+took me home the first day I preached, and a man who kept a shop in the
+village for the sale of all descriptions of goods, including ready-made
+clothing and provisions.  He had a wife and one child.
+
+Then there was a super-annuated brass-founder, who had a large house
+near, and who nominally was a Unitarian, having professed himself a
+Unitarian in the town in which he was formerly in business, where
+Unitarianism was flourishing.  He had come down here to cultivate, for
+amusement, a few acres of ground, and play the squire at a cheap rate.
+Released from active employment, he had given himself over to eating
+and drinking, particularly the drinking of port wine.  His wife was
+dead, his sons were in business for themselves, and his daughters all
+went to church.  His connection with the chapel was merely nominal, and
+I was very glad it was so.  I was hardly ever brought into contact with
+him, except as trustee, and once I was asked to his house to dinner;
+but the attempt to make me feel my inferiority was so painful, and the
+rudeness of his children was so marked, that I never went again.
+
+There was also a schoolmaster, who kept a low-priced boarding-school
+with a Unitarian connection.  He lived, however, at such a distance
+that his visits were very unfrequent.  Sometimes on a fine summer's
+Sunday morning the boys would walk over--about twenty of them
+altogether, but this only happened perhaps half-a-dozen times in a
+year.
+
+Although my congregation had a freethought lineage, I do not think that
+I ever had anything to do with a more petrified set.  With one
+exception, they were meagre in the extreme.  They were perfectly
+orthodox, except that they denied a few orthodox doctrines.  Their
+method was as strict as that of the most rigid Calvinist.  They plumed
+themselves, however, greatly on their intellectual superiority over the
+Wesleyans and Baptists round them; and so far as I could make out, the
+only topics they delighted in were demonstrations of the unity of God
+from texts in the Bible, and polemics against tri-theism.  Sympathy
+with the great problems then beginning to agitate men they had none.
+Socially they were cold, and the entertainment at their houses was pale
+and penurious.  They never considered themselves bound to contribute a
+shilling to my support.  There was an endowment of a hundred a year,
+and they were relieved from all further anxiety.  They had no
+enthusiasm for their chapel, and came or stayed away on the Sunday just
+as it suited them, and without caring to assign any reason.
+
+The one exception was the wife of the shopkeeper.  She was a contrast
+to her husband and all the rest.  I do not think she was a Unitarian
+born and bred.  She talked but little about theology, but she was
+devoted to her Bible, and had a fine sense for all the passages in it
+which had an experience in them.  She was generous, spiritual, and
+possessed of an unswerving instinct for what was right.  Oftentimes her
+prompt decisions were a scandal to her more sedate friends, who did not
+believe in any way of arriving at the truth except by rationalising,
+but she hardly ever failed to hit the mark.  It was in questions of
+relationship between persons, of behaviour, and of morals, that her
+guidance was the surest.  In such cases her force seemed to keep her
+straight, while the weakness of those around made it impossible for
+them not to wander, first on one side and then on the other.  She was
+unflinching in her expressions, and at any sacrifice did her duty.  It
+was her severity in obeying her conscience which not only gave
+authority to her admonitions, but was the source of her inspirations.
+
+She was not much of a reader, but she read strange things.  She had
+some old volumes of a magazine--a "Repository" of some kind; I have
+forgotten what--and she picked out from them some translations of
+German verses which she greatly admired.  She was not a well educated
+woman in the school sense of the word, and of several of our greatest
+names in literature had heard nothing.  I do not think she knew
+anything about Shakespeare, and she never entered into the meaning of
+dramatic poetry.  At all points her path was her own, intersecting at
+every conceivable angle the paths of her acquaintances, and never
+straying along them except just so far as they might happen to be hers.
+
+While I was in the village an event happened which caused much
+commotion.  Her son was serving in the shop, and there was in the house
+at the time a nice-looking, clean servant-girl.  Mrs. Lane, for that
+was my friend's name, had meditated discharging her, for, with her
+usual quickness, she thought she saw something in the behaviour of her
+son to the girl which was peculiar.  One morning, however, both her son
+and the girl were absent, and there was a letter upon the table
+announcing that they were in a town about twenty miles off and were
+married.
+
+The shock was great, and a tumult of voices arose, confusing counsel.
+Mrs. Lane said but little, but never wavered an instant.  Leaving her
+husband to "consider what was best to be done," she got out the gig,
+drove herself over to her son's lodging, and presented herself to her
+amazed daughter-in-law, who fell upon her knees and prayed for pity.
+"My dear," said Mrs. Lane, "get up this instant; you are my daughter.
+Not another word.  I've come to see what you want."  And she kissed her
+tenderly.  The girl was at heart a good girl.  She was so bound to her
+late mistress and her new mother by this behaviour, that the very depth
+in her opened, and she loved Mrs. Lane ever afterwards with almost
+religious fervour.  She was taught a little up to her son's level, and
+a happier marriage I never knew.  Mrs. Lane told me what she had done,
+but she had no theory about it.  She merely said she knew it to be the
+right thing to do.
+
+She was very fond of getting up early in the morning and going out, and
+in such a village this was an eccentricity bordering almost on lunacy.
+At five o'clock she was often wandering about her garden.  She was a
+great lover of order in the house, and kept it well under control, but
+I do not think I ever surprised her when she was so busy that she would
+not easily, and without any apparent sacrifice, leave what she was
+doing to come and talk with me.
+
+As I have said, the world of books in which I lived was almost
+altogether shut to her, but yet she was the only person in the village
+whose conversation was lifted out of the petty and personal into the
+region of the universal.  I have been thus particular in describing
+her--I fear without raising any image of her--because she was of
+incalculable service to me.  I languished from lack of life, and her
+mere presence, so exuberant in its full vivacity, was like mountain
+air.  Furthermore, she was not troubled much with my philosophical
+difficulties.  They had not come in her path.  Her world was the world
+of men and women--more particularly of those she knew--and it was a
+world in which it did me good to dwell.  She was all the more important
+to me, because outside our own little circle there was no society
+whatever.  The Church and the other Dissenting bodies considered us
+non-Christian.
+
+I often wondered that Mr. Lane retained his business, and, indeed, he
+would have lost it if he had not established a reputation for honesty,
+which drew customers to him, who, notwithstanding the denunciations of
+the parson, preferred tea with some taste in it from a Unitarian to the
+insipid wood-flavoured stuff which was sold by the grocer who believed
+in the Trinity.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII--PROGRESS IN EMANCIPATION
+
+
+
+I was with my Unitarian congregation for about a twelvemonth.  My life
+during that time, save so far as my intercourse with Mrs. Lane, and one
+other friend presently to be mentioned, was concerned, was as sunless
+and joyless as it had ever been.  Imagine me living by myself, roaming
+about the fields, and absorbed mostly upon insoluble problems with
+which I never made any progress, and which tended to draw me away from
+what enjoyment of life there was which I might have had.
+
+One day I was walking along under the south side of a hill, which was a
+great place for butterflies, and I saw a man, apparently about fifty
+years old, coming along with a butterfly-net.  He did not see me, for
+he looked about for a convenient piece of turf, and presently sat down,
+taking out a sandwich-box, from which he produced his lunch.  His
+occupation did not particularly attract me, but in those days, if I
+encountered a new person who was not repulsive, I was always as eager
+to make his acquaintance as if he perchance might solve a secret for
+me, the answer to which I burned to know.  I have been disappointed so
+many times, and have found that nobody has much more to tell me, that
+my curiosity has somewhat abated, but even now, the news that anybody
+who has the reputation for intelligence has come near me, makes me
+restless to see him.  I accordingly saluted the butterfly-catcher, who
+returned the salutation kindly, and we began to talk.
+
+He told me that he had come seven miles that morning to that spot
+because he knew that it was haunted by one particular species of
+butterfly which he wished to get; and as it was a still, bright day, he
+hoped to find a specimen.  He had been unsuccessful for some years.
+Presupposing that I knew all about his science, he began to discourse
+upon it with great freedom, and he ended by saying that he would be
+happy to show me his collection, which was one of the finest in the
+country.
+
+"But I forget," said he, "as I always forget in such cases, perhaps you
+don't care for butterflies."
+
+"I take much interest in them.  I admire exceedingly the beauty of
+their colours."
+
+"Ah, yes, but you don't care for them scientifically, or for collecting
+them."
+
+"No, not particularly.  I cannot say I ever saw much pleasure in the
+mere classification of insects."
+
+"Perhaps you are devoted to some other science?"
+
+"No, I am not."
+
+"Well, I daresay it looks absurd for a man at my years to be running
+after a moth.  I used to think it was absurd, but I am wiser now.
+However, I cannot stop to talk; I shall lose the sunshine.  The first
+time you are anywhere near me, come and have a look.  You will alter
+your opinion."
+
+Some weeks afterwards I happened to be in the neighbourhood of the
+butterfly-catcher's house, and I called.  He was at home, and welcomed
+me cordially.  The first thing he did was to show me his little museum.
+It was really a wonderful exhibition, and as I saw the creatures in
+lines, and noted the amazing variations of the single type, I was
+filled with astonishment.  Seeing the butterflies systematically
+arranged was a totally different thing from seeing a butterfly here and
+there, and gave rise to altogether new thoughts.  My friend knew his
+subject from end to end, and I envied him his mastery of it.  I had
+often craved the mastery of some one particular province, be it ever so
+minute.  I half or a quarter knew a multitude of things, but no one
+thing thoroughly, and was never sure, just when I most wanted to be
+sure.  We got into conversation, and I was urged to stay to dinner.  I
+consented, and found that my friend's household consisted of himself
+alone.  After dinner, as we became a little more communicative, I asked
+him when and how he took to this pursuit.
+
+"It will be twenty-six years ago next Christmas," said he, "since I
+suffered a great calamity.  You will forgive my saying anything about
+it, as I have no assurance that the wound which looks healed may not
+break out again.  Suffice to say, that for some ten years or more my
+thoughts were almost entirely occupied with death and our future state.
+There is a strange fascination about these topics to many people,
+because they are topics which permit a great deal of dreaming, but very
+little thinking:  in fact, true thinking, in the proper sense of the
+word, is impossible in dealing with them.  There is no rigorous advance
+from one position to another, which is really all that makes thinking
+worth the name.  Every man can imagine or say cloudy things about death
+and the future, and feel himself here, at least, on a level with the
+ablest brain which he knows.
+
+"I went on gazing gloomily into dark emptiness, till all life became
+nothing for me.  I did not care to live, because there was no assurance
+of existence beyond.  By the strangest of processes, I neglected the
+world, because I had so short a time to be in it.  It is with absolute
+horror now that I look back upon those days, when I lay as if alive in
+a coffin of lead.  All passions and pursuits were nullified by the
+ever-abiding sense of mortality.  For years this mood endured, and I
+was near being brought down to the very dust.
+
+"At last, by the greatest piece of good fortune, I was obliged to go
+abroad.  The change, and the obligation to occupy myself about many
+affairs, was an incalculable blessing to me.  While travelling I was
+struck with the remarkable and tropical beauty of the insects, and
+especially of the butterflies.  I captured a few, and brought them
+home.  On showing them to a friend, learned in such matters, I
+discovered that they were rare, and I had a little cabinet made for
+them.  I looked into the books, found what it was which I had got, and
+what I had not got.
+
+"Next year it was my duty to go abroad again, and I went with some
+feeling akin to pleasure, for I wished to add to my store.  I increased
+it considerably, and by the time I returned I had as fine a show as any
+private person might wish to possess.  A good deal of my satisfaction,
+perhaps, was unaccountable, and no rational explanation can be given of
+it.  But men should not be too curious in analysing and condemning any
+means which Nature devises to save them from themselves, whether it be
+coins, old books, curiosities, butterflies, or fossils.  And yet my
+newly-acquired passion was not altogether inexplicable.  I was the
+owner of something which other persons did not own, and in a little
+while, in my own limited domain, I was supreme.  No man either can
+study any particular science thoroughly without transcending it; and it
+is an utter mistake to suppose that, because a student sticks to any
+one branch, he necessarily becomes contracted.
+
+"However, I am not going to philosophise; I do not like it.  All I can
+say is, that I shun all those metaphysical speculations of former years
+as I would a path which leads to madness.  Other people may be able to
+occupy themselves with them and be happy; I cannot.  I find quite
+enough in my butterflies to exercise my wonder, and yet, on the other
+hand, my study is not a mere vacant, profitless stare.  When you saw me
+that morning, I was trying to obtain an example which I have long
+wanted to fill up a gap.  I have looked for it for years, but have
+missed it.  But I know it has been seen lately where we met, and I
+shall triumph at last."
+
+A good deal of all this was to me incomprehensible.  It seemed mere
+solemn trifling compared with the investigation of those great
+questions with which I had been occupied, but I could not resist the
+contagion of my friend's enthusiasm when he took me to his little
+library and identified his treasures with pride, pointing out at the
+same time those in which he was deficient.  He was specially exultant
+over one minute creature which he had caught himself, which he had not
+as yet seen figured, and he proposed going to the British Museum almost
+on purpose to see if he could find it there.
+
+When I got home I made inquiries into the history of my entomologist.
+I found that years ago he had married a delicate girl, of whom he was
+devotedly fond.  She died in childbirth, leaving him completely broken.
+Her offspring, a boy, survived, but he was a cripple, and grew up
+deformed.  As he neared manhood he developed a satyr-like lustfulness,
+which was almost uncontrollable, and made it difficult to keep him at
+home without constraint.  He seemed to have no natural affection for
+his father, nor for anybody else, but was cunning with the base,
+beastly cunning of the ape.  The father's horror was infinite.  This
+thing was his only child, and the child of the woman whom he
+worshipped.  He was excluded from all intercourse with friends; for, as
+the boy could not be said to be mad, he could not be shut up.  After
+years of inconceivable misery, however, lust did deepen into absolute
+lunacy, and the crooked, misshapen monster was carried off to an
+asylum, where he died, and the father well-nigh went there too.
+
+Before I had been six months amongst the Unitarians, I found life even
+more intolerable with them than it had been with the Independents.  The
+difference of a little less belief was nothing.  The question of
+Unitarianism was altogether dead to me; and although there was a phase
+of the doctrine of God's unity which would now and then give me an
+opportunity for a few words which I felt, it was not a phase for which
+my hearers in the least cared or which they understood.
+
+Here, as amongst the Independents, there was the same lack of personal
+affection, or even of a capability of it--excepting always Mrs. Lane--
+and, in fact, it was more distressing amongst the Unitarians than
+amongst the orthodox.  The desire for something like sympathy and love
+absolutely devoured me.  I dwelt on all the instances in poetry and
+history in which one human being had been bound to another human being,
+and I reflected that my existence was of no earthly importance to
+anybody.  I could not altogether lay the blame on myself.  God knows
+that I would have stood against a wall and have been shot for any man
+or woman whom I loved, as cheerfully as I would have gone to bed, but
+nobody seemed to wish for such a love, or to know what to do with it.
+
+Oh, the humiliations under which this weakness has bent me!  Often and
+often I have thought that I have discovered somebody who could really
+comprehend the value of a passion which could tell everything and
+venture everything.  I have overstepped all bounds of etiquette in
+obtruding myself on him, and have opened my heart even to shame.  I
+have then found that it was all on my side.  For every dozen times I
+went to his house, he came to mine once, and only when pressed:  I have
+languished in sickness for a month without his finding it out; and if I
+were to drop into the grave, he would perhaps never give me another
+thought.  If I had been born a hundred years earlier, I should have
+transferred this burning longing to the unseen God and have become a
+devotee.  But I was a hundred years too late, and I felt that it was
+mere cheating of myself and a mockery to think about love for the only
+God whom I knew--the forces which maintained the universe.
+
+I am now getting old, and have altered in many things.  The hunger and
+thirst of those years have abated, or rather, the fire has had ashes
+heaped on it, so that it is well-nigh extinguished.  I have been
+repulsed into self-reliance and reserve, having learned wisdom by
+experience; but still I know that the desire has not died, as so many
+other desires have died, by the natural evolution of age.  It has been
+forcibly suppressed, and that is all.  If anybody who reads these words
+of mine should be offered by any young dreamer such a devotion as I
+once had to offer, and had to take back again refused so often, let him
+in the name of all that is sacred accept it.  It is simply the most
+precious thing in existence.  Had I found anybody who would have
+thought so, my life would have been redeemed into something which I
+have often imagined, but now shall never know.
+
+I determined to leave, but what to do I could not tell.  I was fit for
+nothing, and yet I could not make up my mind to accept a life which was
+simply living.  It must be a life, through which some benefit was
+conferred upon my fellow-creatures.  This was mainly delusion.  I had
+not then learned to correct this natural instinct to be of some service
+to mankind by the thought of the boundlessness of infinity and of
+Nature's profuseness.  I had not come to reflect that, taking into
+account her eternities, and absolute exhaustlessness, it was folly in
+me to fret and fume, and I therefore clung to the hope that I might
+employ myself in some way which, however feebly, would help mankind a
+little to the realisation of an ideal.  But I was not the man for such
+a mission.  I lacked altogether that concentration which binds up the
+scattered powers into one resistless energy, and I lacked faith.  All I
+could do was to play the vagrant in literature, picking up here and
+there an idea which attracted me, and presenting it to my flock on the
+Sunday; the net result being next to nothing.
+
+However, existence like that which I had been leading was intolerable,
+and change it I must.  I accordingly resigned, and with ten pounds in
+my pocket, which was all that remained after paying my bills, I came to
+London, thinking that until I could settle what to do, I would try and
+teach in a school.  I called on an agent somewhere near the Strand, and
+after a little negotiation, was engaged by a gentleman who kept a
+private establishment at Stoke Newington.
+
+Thither I accordingly went one Monday afternoon in January, about two
+days before the term commenced.  When I got there, I was shown into a
+long schoolroom, which had been built out from the main building.  It
+was dark, save for one candle, and was warmed by a stove.  The walls
+were partly covered with maps, and at one end of the room hung a
+diagram representing a globe, on which an immense amount of wasted
+ingenuity had been spent to produce the illusion of solidity.  The
+master, I was told, was out, and in this room with one candle I
+remained till nine o'clock.  At that time a servant brought me some
+bread and cheese on a small tray, with half-a-pint of beer.  I asked
+for water, which was given me, and she then retired.  The tray was set
+down on the master's raised desk, and sitting there I ate my supper in
+silence, looking down upon the dimly-lighted forms, and forward into
+the almost absolute gloom.
+
+At ten o'clock a man, who seemed as if he were the knife and boot-
+cleaner, came and said he would show me where I was to sleep.  We
+passed through the schoolroom into a kind of court, where there was a
+ladder standing against a trap-door.  He told me that my bedroom was up
+there, and that when I got up I could leave the ladder down, or pull it
+up after me, just as I pleased.
+
+I ascended and found a little chamber, duly furnished with a chest of
+drawers, bed, and washhand-stand.  It was tolerably clean and decent;
+but who shall describe what I felt!  I went to the window and looked
+out.  There were scattered lights here and there, marking roads, but as
+they crossed one another, and now and then stopped where building had
+ceased, the effect they produced was that of bewilderment with no clue
+to it.  Further off was the great light of London, like some unnatural
+dawn, or the illumination from a fire which could not itself be seen.
+I was overcome with the most dreadful sense of loneliness.  I suppose
+it is the very essence of passion, using the word in its literal sense,
+that no account can be given of it by the reason.
+
+Reflecting on what I suffered, then, I cannot find any solid ground for
+it, and yet there are not half-a-dozen days or nights of my life which
+remain with me like that one.  I was beside myself with a kind of
+terror, which I cannot further explain.  It is possible for another
+person to understand grief for the death of a friend, bodily suffering,
+or any emotion which has a distinct cause, but how shall he understand
+the worst of all calamities, the nameless dread, the efflux of all
+vitality, the ghostly, haunting horror which is so nearly akin to
+madness?
+
+It is many years ago since that evening, but while I write I am at the
+window still, and the yellow flare of the city is still in my eyes.  I
+remember the thought of all the happy homes which lay around me, in
+which dwelt men who had found a position, an occupation, and, above all
+things, affection.  I know the causelessness of a good deal of all
+those panic fears and all that suffering, but I tremble to think how
+thin is the floor on which we stand which separates us from the
+bottomless abyss.
+
+The next morning I went down into the schoolroom, and after I had been
+there for some little time, the proprietor of the school made his
+appearance.  He was not a bad man, nor even unkind in his way, but he
+was utterly uninteresting, and as commonplace as might be expected
+after having for many years done nothing but fight a very uphill battle
+in boarding the sons of tradesfolk, and teaching them, at very moderate
+rates, the elements of Latin, and the various branches of learning
+which constitute what is called a commercial education.  He said that
+he expected some of the boys back that day; that when they came, he
+should wish me to take my meals with them, but that meanwhile he would
+be glad if I would breakfast with him and his wife.  This accordingly I
+did.  What his wife was like I have almost entirely forgotten, and I
+only saw her once again.  After breakfast he said I could go for a
+walk, and for a walk I went; wandering about the dreary, intermingled
+chaos of fields with damaged hedges, and new roads divided into
+building plots.
+
+Meanwhile one or two of the boys had made their appearance, and I
+therefore had my dinner with them.  After dinner, as there was nothing
+particular to do, I was again dismissed with them for a walk just as
+the light of the winter afternoon was fading.  My companions were
+dejected, and so was I!  The wind was south-easterly, cold, and raw,
+and the smoke came up from the region about the river and shrouded all
+the building plots in fog.  I was now something more than depressed.
+It was absolutely impossible to endure such a state of things any
+longer, and I determined that, come what might, I would not stop.  I
+considered whether I should leave without saying a word--that is to
+say, whether I should escape, but I feared pursuit and some unknown
+legal proceedings.
+
+When I got home, therefore, I sought the principal, and informed him
+that I felt so unwell that I was afraid I must throw up my engagement
+at once.  He naturally observed that this was a serious business for
+him; that my decision was very hasty--what was the matter with me?  I
+might get better; but he concluded, after my reiterated asseverations
+that I must go, with a permission to resign, only on one condition,
+that I should obtain an equally efficient substitute at the same
+salary.  I was more agitated than ever.  With my natural tendency to
+believe the worst, I had not the least expectation of finding anybody
+who would release me.
+
+The next morning I departed on my errand.  I knew a poor student who
+had been at college with me, and who had nothing to do, and to him I
+betook myself.  I strove--as even now I firmly believe--not to make the
+situation seem any better than it was, and he consented to take it.  I
+have no clear recollection of anything that happened till the following
+day, excepting that I remember with all the vividness of actual and
+present sensuous perception lugging my box down the ladder and sending
+for a cab.  I was in a fever lest anything should arrest me, but the
+cab came, and I departed.  When I had got fairly clear of the gates, I
+literally cried tears of joy--the first and the last of my life.  I am
+constrained now, however, to admit that my trouble was but a bubble
+blown of air, and I doubt whether I have done any good by dwelling upon
+it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX--OXFORD STREET
+
+
+
+Until I had actually left, I hardly knew where I was going, but at last
+I made up my mind I would go to Reuben Shapcott, another fellow-
+student, whom I knew to be living in lodgings in one of the streets
+just then beginning to creep over the unoccupied ground between Camden
+Town and Haverstock Hill, near the Chalk Farm turnpike gate.  To his
+address I betook myself, and found him not at home.  He, like me, had
+been unsuccessful as a minister, and wrote a London letter for two
+country papers, making up about 100 or 120 pounds a year by preaching
+occasionally in small Unitarian chapels in the country.  I waited till
+his return, and told him my story.  He advised me to take a bed in the
+house where he was staying, and to consider what could be done.
+
+At first I thought I would consult Mardon, but I could not bring myself
+to go near him.  How was I to behave in Mary's presence?  During the
+last few months she had been so continually before me, that it would
+have been absolutely impossible for me to treat her with assumed
+indifference.  I could not have trusted myself to attempt it.  When I
+had been lying alone and awake at night, I had thought of all the
+endless miles of hill and valley that lay outside my window, separating
+me from the one house in which I could be at peace; and at times I
+scarcely prevented myself from getting up and taking the mail train and
+presenting myself at Mardon's door, braving all consequences.  With the
+morning light, however, would come cooler thoughts and a dull sense of
+impossibility.
+
+This, I know, was not pure love for her; it was a selfish passion for
+relief.  But then I have never known what is meant by a perfectly pure
+love.  When Christian was in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and,
+being brought to the mouth of hell, was forced to put up his sword, and
+could do no other than cry, O Lord, I beseech Thee, deliver my soul, he
+heard a voice going before him and saying, Though I walk through the
+Valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear none ill, for Thou art with
+me.  And by and by the day broke.  "Then," said Christian, "He hath
+turned the Shadow of Death into morning.  Whereupon Christian sang -
+
+
+"Oh, world of wonders! (I can say no less)
+That I should be preserved in that distress
+That I have met with here! Oh, blessed be
+That hand that from it hath delivered me!"
+
+
+This was Christian's love for God, and for God as his helper.  Was that
+perfectly pure?  However, this is a digression.  I determined to help
+myself in my own way, and thought I would try the publishers.  One
+morning I walked from Camden Town to Paternoster Row.  I went
+straightway into two or three shops and asked whether they wanted
+anybody.  I was ready to do the ordinary work it of a publisher's
+assistant, and aspired no higher.  I met with several refusals, some of
+them not over-polite, and the degradation--for so I felt it--of
+wandering through the streets and suing for employment cut me keenly.
+I remember one man in particular, who spoke to me with the mechanical
+brutality with which probably he replied to a score of similar
+applications every week.  He sat in a little glass box at the end of a
+long dark room lighted with gas.  It was a bitterly cold room, with no
+contrivances for warming it, but in his box there was a fire burning
+for his own special benefit.  He surveyed all his clerks unceasingly,
+and woe betide the unhappy wretch who was caught idling.  He and his
+slaves reminded me of a thrashing-machine which is worked by horses
+walking round in a ring, the driver being perched on a high stool in
+the middle and armed with a long whip.
+
+While I was waiting his pleasure he came out and spoke to one or two of
+his miserable subordinates words of directest and sharpest rebuke,
+without anger or the least loss of self-possession, and yet without the
+least attempt to mitigate their severity.  I meditated much upon him.
+If ever I had occasion to rebuke anybody, I always did it
+apologetically, unless I happened to be in a flaming passion--and this
+was my habit, not from any respectable motive of consideration for the
+person rebuked, but partly because I am timid, and partly because I
+shrink from giving pain.  This man said with perfect ease what I could
+not have said unless I had been wrought up to white heat.  With all my
+dislike to him, I envied him:  I envied his complete certainty; for
+although his language was harsh in the extreme, he was always sure of
+his ground, and the victim upon whom his lash descended could never say
+that he had given absolutely no reason for the chastisement, and that
+it was altogether a mistake.  I envied also his ability to make himself
+disagreeable and care nothing about it; his power to walk in his own
+path, and his resolve to succeed, no matter what the cost might be.
+
+As I left him, it occurred to me that I might be more successful
+perhaps with a publisher of whom I had heard, who published and sold
+books of a sceptical turn.  To him I accordingly went, and although I
+had no introductions or recommendatory letters, I was received, if not
+with a cordiality, at least with an interest which surprised me.  He
+took me into a little back shop, and after hearing patiently what I
+wanted, he asked me somewhat abruptly what I thought of the miracles in
+the Bible.  This was a curious question if he wished to understand my
+character; but his mind so constantly revolved in one circle, and
+existed so completely by hostility to the prevailing orthodoxy, that
+belief or disbelief in it was the standard by which he judged men.  It
+was a very absurd standard doubtless, but no more absurd than many
+others, and not so absurd then as it would be now, when heresy is
+becoming more fashionable.
+
+I explained to him as well as I could what my position was; that I did
+not suppose that the miracles actually happened as they are recorded,
+but that, generally speaking, the miracle was a very intense statement
+of a divine truth; in fact, a truth which was felt with a more than
+common intensity seemed to take naturally a miraculous expression.
+Hence, so far from neglecting the miraculous stories of the Bible as
+simply outside me, I rejoiced in them more, perhaps, than in the plain
+historical or didactic prose.
+
+He seemed content, although hardly to comprehend, and the result was
+that he asked me if I would help him in his business.  In order to do
+this, it would be more economical if I would live in his house, which
+was too big for him.  He promised to give me 40 pounds a year, in
+addition to board and lodging.  I joyously assented, and the bargain
+was struck.
+
+The next day I came to my new quarters.  I found that he was a
+bachelor, with a niece, apparently about four or five and twenty years
+old, acting as a housekeeper, who assisted him in literary work.  My
+own room was at the top of the house, warm, quiet, and comfortable,
+although the view was nothing but a wide reaching assemblage of
+chimney-pots.  My hours were long--from nine in the morning till seven
+in the evening; but this I did not mind.  I felt that if I was not
+happy, I was at least protected, and that I was with a man who cared
+for me, and for whom I cared.  The first day I went there, he said that
+I could have a fire in my bedroom whenever I chose, so that I could
+always retreat to it when I wished to be by myself.  As for my duties,
+I was to sell his books, keep his accounts, read proofs, run errands,
+and in short do just what he did himself.
+
+After my first morning's work we went upstairs to dinner, and I was
+introduced to "my niece Theresa."  I was rather surprised that I should
+have been admitted to a house in which there lived a young woman with
+no mother nor aunt, but this surprise ceased when I came to know more
+of Theresa and her uncle.  She had yellowish hair which was naturally
+waved, a big arched head, greyish-blue eyes, so far as I could make
+out, and a mouth which, although it had curves in it, was compressed
+and indicative of great force of character.  She was rather short, with
+square shoulders, and she had a singularly vigorous, firm walk.  She
+had a way, when she was not eating or drinking, of sitting back in her
+chair at table and looking straight at the person with whom she was
+talking.
+
+Her uncle, whom, by the way, I had forgotten to name--his name was
+Wollaston--happened to know some popular preacher whom I knew, and I
+said that I wondered so many people went to hear him, for I believed
+him to be a hypocrite, and hypocrisy was one of the easiest of crimes
+to discover.  Theresa, who had hitherto been silent, and was reclining
+in her usual attitude, instantly broke out with an emphasis and
+directness which quite startled me.
+
+"The easiest to discover, do you think, Mr. Rutherford?  I think it is
+the most difficult, at least for ordinary persons; and when they do
+discover it, I believe they like it, especially if it is successful.
+They like the sanction it gives to their own hypocrisy.  They like a
+man to come to them who will say to them, 'We are all hypocrites
+together,' and who will put his finger to his nose and comfort them.
+Don't you think so yourself?"
+
+In conversation I was always a bad hand at assuming a position contrary
+to the one assumed by the person to whom I might be talking--nor could
+I persistently maintain my own position if it happened to be opposed.
+I always rather tried to see as my opponent saw, and to discover how
+much there was in him with which I could sympathise.  I therefore
+assented weakly to Theresa, and she seemed disappointed.  Dinner was
+just over; she got up and rang the bell and went out of the room.
+
+I found my work very hard, and some of it even loathsome.  Particularly
+loathsome was that part of it which brought me into contact with the
+trade.  I had to sell books to the booksellers' assistants, and I had
+to collect books myself.  These duties are usually undertaken in large
+establishments by men specially trained, who receive a low rate of
+wages and who are rather a rough set.  It was totally different work to
+anything I had ever had to do before, and I suffered as a man with soft
+hands would suffer who was suddenly called to be a blacksmith or a
+dock-labourer.
+
+Specially, too, did I miss the country.  London lay round me like a
+mausoleum.  I got into the habit of rising very early in the morning
+and walking out to Kensington Gardens and back before breakfast,
+varying my route occasionally so as even to reach Battersea Bridge,
+which was always a favourite spot with me.  Kensington Gardens and
+Battersea Bridge were poor substitutes for the downs, and for the level
+stretch by the river towards the sea where I first saw Mardon, but we
+make too much of circumstances, and the very pressure of London
+produced a sensibility to whatever loveliness could be apprehended
+there, which was absent when loveliness was always around me.  The
+stars seen in Oxford Street late one night; a sunset one summer evening
+from Lambeth pier; and, above everything, Piccadilly very early one
+summer morning, abide with me still, when much that was more romantic
+has been forgotten.  On the whole, I was not unhappy.  The constant
+outward occupation prevented any eating of the heart or undue brooding
+over problems which were insoluble, at least for my intellect, and on
+that very account fascinated me the more.
+
+I do not think that Wollaston cared much for me personally.  He was a
+curious compound, materialistic yet impulsive, and for ever drawn to
+some new thing; without any love for anybody particularly, as far as I
+could see, and yet with much more general kindness and philanthropy
+than many a man possessing much stronger sympathies and antipathies.
+There was no holy of holies in him, into which one or two of the elect
+could occasionally be admitted and feel God to be there.  He was no
+temple, but rather a comfortable, hospitable house open to all friends,
+well furnished with books and pictures, and free to every guest from
+garret to cellar.  He had "liberal" notions about the relationship
+between the sexes.  Not that he was a libertine, but he disbelieved in
+marriage, excepting for so long as husband and wife are a necessity to
+one another.  If one should find the other uninteresting, or somebody
+else more interesting, he thought there ought to be a separation.
+
+All this I soon learned from him, for he was communicative without any
+reserve.  His treatment of his niece was peculiar.  He would talk on
+all kinds of subjects before her, for he had a theory that she ought to
+receive precisely the same social training as men, and should know just
+what men knew.  He was never coarse, but on the other hand he would say
+things to her in my presence which brought a flame into my face.  What
+the evil consequences of this might be, I could not at once foresee,
+but one good result obviously was, that in his house there was nothing
+of that execrable practice of talking down to women; there was no
+change of level when women were present.
+
+One day he began to speak about a novel which everybody was reading
+then, and I happened to say that I wished people who wrote novels would
+not write as if love were the very centre and sum of human existence.
+A man's life was made up of so much besides love, and yet novelists
+were never weary of repeating the same story, telling it over and over
+again in a hundred different forms.
+
+"I do not agree with you," said Theresa.  "I disagree with you utterly.
+I dislike foolish, inane sentiment--it makes me sick; but I do believe,
+in the first place, that no man was ever good for anything who has not
+been devoured, I was going to say, by a great devotion to a woman.  The
+lives of your great men are as much the history of women whom they
+adored as of themselves.  Dante, Byron, Shelley, it is the same with
+all of them, and there is no mistake about it; it is the great fact of
+life.  What would Shakespeare be without it? and Shakespeare is life.
+A man, worthy to be named a man, will find the fact of love perpetually
+confronting him till he reaches old age, and if he be not ruined by
+worldliness or dissipation, will be troubled by it when he is fifty as
+much as when he was twenty-five.  It is the subject of all subjects.
+People abuse love, and think it the cause of half the mischief in the
+world.  It is the one thing that keeps the world straight, and if it
+were not for that overpowering instinct, human nature would fall
+asunder; would be the prey of inconceivable selfishness and vices, and
+finally, there would be universal suicide.  I did not intend to be
+eloquent:  I hate being eloquent.  But you did not mean what you said;
+you spoke from the head or teeth merely."
+
+Theresa's little speech was delivered not with any heat of the blood.
+There was no excitement in her grey eyes, nor did her cheek burn.  Her
+brain seemed to rule everything.  This was an idea she had, and she
+kindled over it because it was an idea.  It was impossible, of course,
+that she should say what she did without some movement of the organ in
+her breast, but how much share this organ had in her utterances I never
+could make out.  How much was due to the interest which she as a
+looker-on felt in men and women, and how much was due to herself as a
+woman, was always a mystery to me.
+
+She was fond of music, and occasionally I asked her to play to me.  She
+had a great contempt for bungling, and not being a professional player,
+she never would try a piece in my presence of which she was not
+perfectly master.  She particularly liked to play Mozart, and on my
+asking her once to play a piece of Beethoven, she turned round upon me
+and said:  "You like Beethoven best.  I knew you would.  He encourages
+a luxurious revelling in the incomprehensible and indefinably sublime.
+He is not good for you."
+
+My work was so hard, and the hours were so long, that I had little or
+no time for reading, nor for thinking either, except so far as
+Wollaston and Theresa made me think.  Wollaston himself took rather to
+science, although he was not scientific, and made a good deal of what
+he called psychology.  He was not very profound, but he had picked up a
+few phrases, or if this word is too harsh, a few ideas about
+metaphysical matters from authors who contemned metaphysics, and with
+these he was perfectly satisfied.  A stranger listening to him would at
+first consider him well read, but would soon be undeceived, and would
+find that these ideas were acquired long ago; that he had never gone
+behind or below them, and that they had never fructified in him, but
+were like hard stones, which he rattled in his pocket.  He was totally
+unlike Mardon.  Mardon, although he would have agreed with many of
+Wollaston's results, differed entirely from him in the processes by
+which they had been brought about; and a mental comparison of the two
+often told me what I had been told over and over again, that what we
+believe is not of so much importance as the path by which we travel to
+it.
+
+Theresa too, like her uncle, eschewed metaphysics, but she was a woman,
+and a woman's impulses supplied in her the lack of those deeper
+questionings, and at times prompted them.  She was far more original
+than he was, and was impatient of the narrowness of the circle in which
+he moved.  Her love of music, for example, was a thing incomprehensible
+to him, and I do not remember that he ever sat for a quarter of an hour
+really listening to it.  He would read the newspaper or do anything
+while she was playing.  She never resented his inattention, except when
+he made a noise, and then, without any rebuke, she would break off and
+go away.  This mode of treatment was the outcome of one of her
+theories.  She disbelieved altogether in punishment, except when it was
+likely to do good, either to the person punished or to others.  "A good
+deal of punishment," she used to say, "is mere useless pain."
+
+Both Theresa and her uncle were kind and human, and I endeavoured to my
+utmost to repay them by working my hardest.  My few hours of leisure
+were sweet, and when I spent them with Wollaston and Theresa, were
+interesting.  I often asked myself why I found this mode of existence
+more tolerable than any other I had hitherto enjoyed.  I had, it is
+true, an hour or two's unspeakable peace in the early morning, but, as
+I have said, at nine my toil commenced, and, with a very brief interval
+for meals, lasted till seven.  After seven I was too tired to do
+anything by myself, and could only keep awake if I happened to be in
+company.
+
+One reason certainly why I was content, was Theresa herself.  She was a
+constant study to me, and I could not for a long time obtain any
+consistent idea of her.  She was not a this or a that or the other.
+She could not be summarily dismissed into any ordinary classification.
+At first I was sure she was hard, but I found by the merest accident
+that nearly all her earnings were given with utmost secrecy to support
+a couple of poor relatives.  Then I thought her self-conscious, but
+this, when I came to think upon it, seemed a mere word.  She was one of
+those women, and very rare they are, who deal in ideas, and
+reflectiveness must be self-conscious.  At times she appeared
+passionless, so completely did her intellect dominate, and so superior
+was she to all the little arts and weaknesses of women; but this was a
+criticism she contradicted continually.
+
+There was very little society at the Wollastons', but occasionally a
+few friends called.  One evening there was a little party, and the
+conversation flagged.  Theresa said that it was a great mistake to
+bring people together with nothing special to do but talk.  Nothing is
+more tedious than to be in a company assembled for no particular
+reason, and every host, if he asks more than two persons at the
+outside, ought to provide some entertainment.  Talking is worth nothing
+unless it is perfectly spontaneous, and it cannot be spontaneous if
+there are sudden and blank silences, and nobody can think of a fresh
+departure.  The master of the house is bound to do something.  He ought
+to hire a Punch and Judy show, or get up a dance.
+
+This spice of bitterness and flavour of rudeness was altogether
+characteristic of Theresa, and somebody resented it by reminding her
+that SHE was the hostess.  "Of course," she replied, "that is why I
+said it:  what shall I do?"  One of her gifts was memory, and her
+friends cried out at once that she should recite something.  She
+hesitated a little, and then throwing herself back in her chair, began
+The Lass of Lochroyan.  At first she was rather diffident, but she
+gathered strength as she went on.  There is a passage in the middle of
+the poem in which Lord Gregory's cruel mother pretends she is Lord
+Gregory, and refuses to recognise his former love, Annie of Lochroyan,
+as she stands outside his tower.  The mother calls to Annie from the
+inside -
+
+
+"Gin thou be Annie of Lochroyan
+   (As I trow thou binna she),
+Now tell me some of the love tokens
+   That passed between thee and me."
+
+"Oh, dinna ye mind, Lord Gregory,
+   As we sat at the wine,
+We changed the rings frae our fingers,
+   And I can show thee thine?
+
+"Oh, yours was gude, and gude enough,
+   But aye the best was mine;
+For yours was o' the gude red gowd,
+   BUT MINE O' THE DIAMOND FINE."
+
+
+The last verse is as noble as anything in any ballad in the English
+language, and I thought that when Theresa was half way through it her
+voice shook a good deal.  There was a glass of flowers standing near
+her, and just as she came to an end her arm moved and the glass was in
+a moment on the floor, shivered into twenty pieces.  I happened to be
+watching her, and felt perfectly sure that the movement of her arm was
+not accidental, and that her intention was to conceal, by the apparent
+mishap, an emotion which was increasing and becoming inconvenient.  At
+any rate, if that was her object it was perfectly accomplished, for the
+recitation was abruptly terminated, there was general commiseration
+over the shattered vase, and when the pieces were picked up. and order
+was restored, it was nearly time to separate.
+
+Two of my chief failings were forgetfulness and a want of thoroughness
+in investigation.  What misery have I not suffered from insufficient
+presentation of a case to myself, and from prompt conviction of
+insufficiency and inaccuracy by the person to whom I in turn presented
+it!  What misery have I not suffered from the discovery that explicit
+directions to me had been overlooked or only half understood!
+
+One day in particular, I had to take round a book to be "subscribed"
+which Wollaston had just published--that is to say, I had to take a
+copy to each of the leading booksellers to see how many they would
+purchase.  Some books are sold "thirteen as twelve," the thirteenth
+book being given to the purchaser of twelve, and some are sold "twenty-
+five as twenty-four."  This book was to be sold "twenty-five as twenty-
+four," according to Wollaston's orders.  I subscribed it thirteen as
+twelve.  Wollaston was annoyed, as I could see, for I had to go over
+all my work again, but in accordance with his fixed principles, he was
+not out of temper.
+
+It so happened that that same day he gave me some business
+correspondence which I was to look through; and having looked through
+it, I was to answer the last letter in the sense which he indicated.  I
+read the correspondence and wrote the letter for his signature.  As
+soon as he saw it, he pointed out to me that I had only half mastered
+the facts, and that my letter was all wrong.  This greatly disturbed
+me, not only because I had vexed him and disappointed him, but because
+it was renewed evidence of my weakness.  I thought that if I was
+incapable of getting to the bottom of such a very shallow complication
+as this, of what value were any of my thinkings on more difficult
+subjects, and I fell a prey to self-contempt and scepticism.  Contempt
+from those about us is hard to bear, but God help the poor wretch who
+contemns himself.
+
+How well I recollect the early walk on the following morning in
+Kensington Gardens, the feeling of my own utter worthlessness, and the
+longing for death as the cancellation of the blunder of my existence!
+I went home, and after breakfast some proofs came from the printer of a
+pamphlet which Wollaston had in hand.  Without unfastening them, he
+gave them to me, and said that as he had no time to read them himself,
+I must go upstairs to Theresa's study and read them off with her.
+Accordingly I went and began to read.  She took the manuscript and I
+took the proof.  She read about a page, and then she suddenly stopped.
+"Oh, Mr. Rutherford," she said, it, "what have you done?  I heard my
+uncle distinctly tell you to mark on the manuscript when it went to the
+printer, that it was to be printed in demy octavo, and you have marked
+it twelvemo."
+
+I had had little sleep that night, I was exhausted with my early walk,
+and suddenly the room seemed to fade from me and I fainted.  When I
+came to myself, I found that Theresa had not sought for any help; she
+had done all that ought to be done.  She had unfastened my collar and
+had sponged my face with cold water.  The first thing I saw as I
+gradually recovered myself, was her eyes looking steadily at me as she
+stood over me, and I felt her hand upon my head.  When she was sure I
+was coming to myself, she held off and sat down in her chair.
+
+I was a little hysterical, and after the fit was over I broke loose.
+With a storm of tears, I laid open all my heart.  I told her how
+nothing I had ever attempted had succeeded; that I had never even been
+able to attain that degree of satisfaction with myself and my own
+conclusions, without which a man cannot live; and that now I found I
+was useless, even to the best friends I had ever known, and that the
+meanest clerk in the city would serve them better than I did.  I was
+beside myself, and I threw myself on my knees, burying my face in
+Theresa's lap and sobbing convulsively.  She did not repel me, but she
+gently passed her fingers through my hair.  Oh, the transport of that
+touch!  It was as if water had been poured on a burnt hand, or some
+miraculous Messiah had soothed the delirium of a fever-stricken
+sufferer, and replaced his visions of torment with dreams of Paradise.
+
+She gently lifted me up, and as I rose I saw her eyes too were wet.
+"My poor friend," she said, "I cannot talk to you now.  You are not
+strong enough, and for that matter, nor am I, but let me say this to
+you, that you are altogether mistaken about yourself.  The meanest
+clerk in the city could not take your place here."  There was just a
+slight emphasis I thought upon the word "here."  "Now" she said, "you
+had better go.  I will see about the pamphlet."
+
+I went out mechanically, and I anticipate my story so far as to say
+that, two days after, another proof came in the proper form.  I went to
+the printer to offer to pay for setting it up afresh, and was told that
+Miss Wollaston had been there and had paid herself for the
+rectification of the mistake, giving special injunctions that no notice
+of it was to be given to her uncle.  I should like to add one more
+beatitude to those of the gospels and to say, Blessed are they who heal
+us of self-despisings.  Of all services which can be done to man, I
+know of none more precious.
+
+When I went back to my work I worshipped Theresa, and was entirely
+overcome with unhesitating, absorbing love for her.  I saw no thing
+more of her that day nor the next day.  Her uncle told me that she had
+gone into the country, and that probably she would not return for some
+time, as she had purposed paying a lengthened visit to a friend at a
+distance.  I had a mind to write to her; but I felt as I have often
+felt before in great crises, a restraint which was gentle and
+incomprehensible, but nevertheless unmistakable.  I suppose it is not
+what would be called conscience, as conscience is supposed to decide
+solely between right and wrong, but it was none the less peremptory,
+although its voice was so soft and low that it might easily have been
+overlooked.  Over and over again, when I have purposed doing a thing,
+have I been impeded or arrested by this same silent monitor, and never
+have I known its warnings to be the mere false alarms of fancy.
+
+After a time, the thought of Mary recurred to me.  I was distressed to
+find that, in the very height of my love for Theresa, my love for Mary
+continued unabated.  Had it been otherwise, had my affection for Mary
+grown dim, I should not have been so much perplexed, but it did not.
+It may be ignominious to confess it, but so it was; I simply record the
+fact.
+
+I had not seen Mardon since that last memorable evening at his house,
+but one day as I was sitting in the shop, who should walk it in but
+Mary herself.  The meeting, although strange, was easily explained.
+Her father was ill, and could do nothing but read.  Wollaston published
+free-thinking books, and Mardon had noticed in an advertisement the
+name of a book which he particularly wished to see.  Accordingly he
+sent Mary for it.  She pressed me very much to call on him.  He had
+talked about me a good deal, and had written to me at the last address
+he knew, but the letter had been returned through the dead-letter
+office.
+
+It was a week before I could go, and when did go, I found him much
+worse than I had imagined him to be.  There was no virulent disease of
+any particular organ, but he was slowly wasting away from atrophy, and
+he knew, or thought he knew, he should not recover.  But he was
+perfectly self-possessed.
+
+"With regard to immortality," he said, "I never know what men mean by
+it.  WHAT self is it which is to be immortal?  Is it really desired by
+anybody that he should continue to exist for ever with his present
+limitations and failings?  Yet if these are not continued, the man does
+not continue, but something else, a totally different person.  I
+believe in the survival of life and thought.  People think is not
+enough.  They say they want the survival of their personality.  It is
+very difficult to express any conjecture upon the matter, especially
+now when I am weak, and I have no system--nothing but surmises.  One
+thing I am sure of--that a man ought to rid himself as much as possible
+of the miserable egotism which is so anxious about self, and should be
+more and more anxious about the Universal."
+
+Mardon grew slowly worse.  The winter was coming on, and as the
+temperature fell and the days grew darker, he declined.  With all his
+heroism and hardness he had a weakness or two, and one was, that he did
+not want to die in London or be buried there.  So we got him down to
+Sandgate near Hythe, and procured lodging for him close to the sea, so
+that he could lie in bed and watch the sun and moon rise over the
+water.  Mary, of course, remained with him, and I returned to London.
+
+Towards the end of November I got a letter, to tell me that if I wished
+to see him alive again, I must go down at once.  I went that day, and I
+found that the doctor had been and had said that before the morning the
+end must come.  Mardon was perfectly conscious, in no pain, and quite
+calm.  He was just able to speak.  When I went into his bedroom, he
+smiled, and without any preface or introduction he said:  "Learn not to
+be over-anxious about meeting troubles and solving difficulties which
+time will meet and solve for you."  Excepting to ask for water, I don't
+think he spoke again.
+
+All that night Mary and I watched in that topmost garret looking out
+over the ocean.  It was a night entirely unclouded, and the moon was at
+the full.  Towards daybreak her father moaned a little, then became
+quite quiet, and just as the dawn was changing to sunrise, he passed
+away.  What a sunrise it was!  For about half-an-hour before the sun
+actually appeared, the perfectly smooth water was one mass of gently
+heaving opaline lustre.  Not a sound was to be heard, and over in the
+south-east hung the planet Venus.  Death was in the chamber, but the
+surpassing splendour of the pageant outside arrested us, and we sat
+awed and silent.  Not till the first burning-point of the great orb
+itself emerged above the horizon, not till the day awoke with its
+brightness and brought with it the sounds of the day and its cares, did
+we give way to our grief.
+
+It was impossible for me to stay.  It was not that I was obliged to get
+back to my work in London, but I felt that Mary would far rather be
+alone, and that it would not be proper for me to remain.  The woman of
+the house in which the lodgings were was very kind, and promised to do
+all that was necessary.  It was arranged that I should come down again
+to the funeral.
+
+So I went back to London.  Before I had got twenty miles on my journey
+the glory of a few hours had turned into autumn storm.  The rain came
+down in torrents, and the wind rushed across the country in great
+blasts, stripping the trees, and driving over the sky with hurricane
+speed great masses of continuous cloud, which mingled earth and heaven.
+I thought of all the ships which were on the sea in the night, sailing
+under the serene stars which I had seen rise and set; I thought of
+Mardon lying dead, and I thought of Mary.  The simultaneous passage
+through great emotions welds souls, and begets the strongest of all
+forms of love.  Those who have sobbed together over a dead friend, who
+have held one another's hands in that dread hour, feel a bond of
+sympathy, pure and sacred, which nothing can dissolve.
+
+I went to the funeral as appointed.  There was some little difficulty
+about it, for Mary, who knew her father so well, was unconquerably
+reluctant that an inconsistency should crown the career of one who, all
+through life, had been so completely self-accordant.  She could not
+bear that he should be buried with a ceremony which he despised, and
+she was altogether free from that weakness which induces a compliance
+with the rites of the Church from persons who avow themselves sceptics.
+
+At last a burying-ground was found, belonging to a little half-forsaken
+Unitarian chapel; and there Mardon was laid.  A few friends came from
+London, one of whom had been a Unitarian minister, and he "conducted
+the service," such as it was.  It was of the simplest kind.  The body
+was taken to the side of the grave, and before it was lowered a few
+words were said, calling to mind all the virtues of him whom we had
+lost.  These the speaker presented to us with much power and sympathy.
+He did not merely catalogue a disconnected string of excellences, but
+he seemed to plant himself in the central point of Mardon's nature, and
+to see from what it radiated.
+
+He then passed on to say that about immortality, as usually understood,
+he knew nothing; but that Mardon would live as every force in nature
+lives--for ever; transmuted into a thousand different forms; the
+original form utterly forgotten, but never perishing.  The cloud breaks
+up and comes down upon the earth in showers which cease, but the clouds
+and the showers are really undying.  This may be true,--but, after all,
+I can only accept the fact of death in silence, as we accept the loss
+of youth and all other calamities.  We are able to see that the
+arrangements which we should make, if we had the control of the
+universe, would be more absurd than those which prevail now.  We are
+able to see that an eternity of life in one particular form, with one
+particular set of relationships, would be misery to many and
+mischievous to everybody, however sweet those relationships may be to
+some of us.  At times we are reconciled to death as the great
+regenerator, and we pine for escape from the surroundings of which we
+have grown weary; but we can say no more, and the hour of illumination
+has not yet come.  Whether it ever will come to a more nobly developed
+race we cannot tell.
+
+
+Thus far goes the manuscript which I have in my possession.  I know
+that there is more of it, but all my search for it has been in vain.
+Possibly some day I may be able to recover it.  My friend discontinued
+his notes for some years, and consequently the concluding portion of
+them was entirely separate from the earlier portion, and this is the
+reason, I suppose, why it is missing.
+
+Miss Mardon soon followed her father.  She caught cold at his funeral;
+the seeds of consumption developed themselves with remarkable rapidity,
+and in less than a month she had gone.  Her father's peculiar habits
+had greatly isolated him, and Miss Mardon had scarcely any friends.
+Rutherford went to see her continually, and during the last few nights
+sat up with her, incurring not a little scandal and gossip, to which he
+was entirely insensible.
+
+For a time he was utterly broken-hearted; and not only broken-hearted,
+but broken-spirited, and incapable of attacking the least difficulty.
+All the springs of his nature were softened, so that if anything was
+cast upon him, there it remained without hope, and without any effort
+being made to remove it.  He only began to recover when he was forced
+to give up work altogether and take a long holiday.  To do this he was
+obliged to leave Mr. Wollaston, and the means of obtaining his much-
+needed rest were afforded him, partly by what he had saved, and partly
+by the kindness of one or two whom he had known.
+
+I thought that Miss Mardon's death would permanently increase my
+friend's intellectual despondency, but it did not.  On the contrary, he
+gradually grew out of it.  A crisis seemed to take a turn just then,
+and he became less involved in his old speculations, and more devoted
+to other pursuits.  I fancy that something happened; there was some
+word revealed to him, or there was some recoil, some healthy horror of
+eclipse in this self-created gloom which drove him out of it.
+
+He accidentally renewed his acquaintance with the butterfly-catcher,
+who was obliged to leave the country and come up to London.  He,
+however, did not give up his old hobby, and the two friends used every
+Sunday in summer time to sally forth some distance from town and spend
+the whole live-long day upon the downs and in the green lanes of
+Surrey.  Both of them had to work hard during the week.  Rutherford,
+who had learned shorthand when he was young, got employment upon a
+newspaper, and ultimately a seat in the gallery of the House of
+Commons.  He never took to collecting insects like his companion, nor
+indeed to any scientific pursuits, but he certainly changed.
+
+I find it very difficult to describe exactly what the change was,
+because it was into nothing positive; into no sect, party, nor special
+mode.  He did not, for example, go off into absolute denial.  I
+remember his telling me, that to suppress speculation would be a
+violence done to our nature as unnatural as if we were to prohibit
+ourselves from looking up to the blue depths between the stars at
+night; as if we were to determine that nature required correcting in
+this respect, and that we ought to be so constructed as not to be able
+to see anything but the earth and what lies on it.  Still, these things
+in a measure ceased to worry him, and the long conflict died away
+gradually into a peace not formally concluded, and with no specific
+stipulations, but nevertheless definite.  He was content to rest and
+wait.  Better health and time, which does so much for us, brought this
+about.  The passage of years gradually relaxed his anxiety about death
+by loosening his anxiety for life without loosening his love of life.
+
+But I would rather not go into any further details, because I still
+cherish the hope that some day or the other I may recover the contents
+of the diary.  I am afraid that up to this point he has misrepresented
+himself, and that those who read his story will think him nothing but a
+mere egoist, selfish and self-absorbed.  Morbid he may have been, but
+selfish he was not.  A more perfect friend I never knew, nor one more
+capable of complete abandonment to a person for whom he had any real
+regard, and I can only hope that it may be my good fortune to find the
+materials which will enable me to represent him autobiographically in a
+somewhat different light to that in which he appears now.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg eText The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford
+
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