University of California • Berkeley 
 
 Gift of 
 Mrs, Robert Bruce Porter 
 ■in memory of 
 Bruce Porter 
 
^i^'? 
 
 ^'^ 
 
 

 MAEK EUTHEEFOED'S 
 
 DELIYEEA]^CE. 
 
93? t^t same ffiHitor* 
 
 Crown 8vo, doth, price ss. 
 
 ' THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY 
 
 OF 
 
 MARK RUTHERFORD, 
 
 DISSENTING MINISTER. 
 
 LONDON: 
 TRiJBNER & CO., LUDGATE HILL. 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S 
 . DELIVERANCE: 
 
 XTbe Second ipart ot bis Butobfoorapb^. 
 
 EDITED BY HIS FKIEND, 
 
 EEUBEN SHAPCOTT. 
 
 LONDON: 
 TRUBNER & CO., LUDGATE HILL. 
 
 1885. 
 [All rights reserved.] 
 
BAI-LANTYNE, HANSON AND CO. 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I, NEWSPAPERS I 
 
 11. M'KAY .31 
 
 III. MISS LEEOY 39 
 
 IV. A NECESSARY DEVELOPMENT 6 1 
 
 V. WHAT IT ALL CAME TO 8l 
 
 VI. DRURY LANE THEOLOGY IO4 
 
 VIL QUI DEDIT IN MARI VIAM "8 
 
 VIII. FLAGELLUM NON APPROQUINABIT TABERNACULO 
 
 TUO . 129 
 
 NOTES ON THE BOOK OF JOB 165 
 
 PRINCIPLES • • • 199 
 
"Ego doceo sine strepitu verborum, sine confusione opinionum, 
 sine fastu honoris, sine impugnatione argumentorum." 
 
 " I teach without noise of words, without confusion of opinions, 
 without the arrogance of honour, without the assault of argu- 
 ments." 
 
 De Imitatione Christi, chap, xliii. 
 
 " Come what come may. 
 Time and the hour runs through the roughest day." 
 
 Macbeth, Act. I. Sc. 3. 
 
 "A^Tjv d' ^xw ^ottOov 6v rpi/i<a aKia^. 
 
 " Having death for my friend, I tremble not at shadows." 
 
 Unknown Gi'eek Author. 
 
EDITOE'S NOTE. 
 
 "DEFOEE I continue my friend Eutherford's auto- 
 ■^ biography, I wish to correct a misunderstanding 
 in the minds of some of my reviewers. It has been 
 supposed that I set him up as hero. This is the very 
 last thing I should have thought of doing. I always 
 knew him to be weak, the victim of impressions, 
 especially of self-created impressions ; and I always 
 pitied him for his strange propensity to entangle 
 himself in problems which he had not the power 
 to solve. I knew also that he was morbid, and 
 defective in that gaiety of heart which is so necessary 
 to conquer the world. But I knew also that he had 
 great qualities, a deep sincerity, a capacity of almost 
 passionate affection ; and he was to me a type of many 
 excellent persons whom this century troubles with 
 ceaseless spe«ulations, yielding no conclusions and 
 no peace. After half a life had been passed in a 
 struggle in which he was well-nigh overcome, his 
 mind seemed to find rest, and his sinews became 
 
viii EDITOR'S NOTE. 
 
 thickened and invigorated. The questions which 
 had tormented him remained unanswered, but they 
 had lost their terrible urgency; and somehow or other, 
 by what means I can hardly tell, he had fought his 
 way to that victory which every man must in some 
 measure achieve if he is to live. 
 
 After the death of Mardon there is a blank of 
 many months in the Kutherford papers. WoUaston 
 and Theresa had emigrated to America, and nothing 
 was ever heard of them. Eutherford, once more 
 thrown out of employment, had taken one small 
 room in a street on the right-hand side of the Camden 
 Eoad,' a little short of the point where the North 
 London Eailway Station now is. It is here that 
 his story begins again. 
 
ERRATUM. 
 
 In Chapter IV., George, the Christian name of Butt's 
 t father, is given by mistake to the son. The son's 
 
 name was Clem. 
 
 .by writing descriptive accounts of the debates, throw- 
 ing in by way of supplement any stray scraps of 
 gossip which he was enabled to collect. The rules 
 of the "House as to the admission of strangers were 
 not so strict then as they are now, and he assured 
 me that if I could but secure a commission from a 
 newspaper, he could pass me into one of the galleries, 
 and, when there was nothing to be heard worth 
 
viii EDITOR'S NOTE. 
 
 thickened and invigorated. The questions which 
 had tormented him remained unanswered, but they 
 
MARK RUTHERFOED'S 
 
 DELIVERANCE. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 NEWSPAPERS. 
 
 "WHEN I had established myself in my new lodgings 
 in Camden Town, I found I had ten pounds 
 in my pocket, and again there was no outlook. I 
 examined carefully every possibility. At last I 
 remembered that a relative of mine, who held some 
 office in the House of Commons, added to his income 
 .by writing descriptive accounts of the debates, throw- 
 ing in by way of supplement any stray scraps of 
 gossip which he was enabled to collect. The rules 
 of the 'House as to the admission of strangers were 
 not so strict then as they are now, and he assured 
 me that if I could but secure a commission from a 
 newspaper, he could pass me into one of the galleries, 
 and, when there was nothing to be heard worth 
 
2 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 describing, I could remain in the lobby where I 
 should by degrees find many opportunities of picking" 
 up intelligence which would pay. So far, so good ; 
 but how to obtain the commission ? I managed to 
 get hold of a list of all the country papers, and I 
 wrote to nearly every one offering my services. I 
 am afraid that I somewhat exaggerated them, for 
 I had two answers, and, after a little correspond- 
 ence, two engagements. This was an unexpected 
 stroke of luck ; but alas ! both journals circulated in 
 the same district. I never could get together more 
 stuff than would fill about a column and a half, and 
 consequently I was obliged, with infinite pains, to 
 vary, so that it could not be recognised, the form of 
 what, at bottom, was essentially the same matter. 
 This was work which would have been disagreeable 
 enough, if I had not now ceased in a great measure 
 to demand what was agreeable. In years past I 
 coveted a life, not of mere sensual enjoyment — for 
 that I never cared — but a life which should be filled 
 with activities of the noblest kind, and it was intoler- 
 able to me to reflect that all my waking hours were 
 in the main passed in merest drudgery, and that only 
 for a few moments at the beginning or end of the 
 day could it be said that the higher sympathies 
 were really operative. Existence to me was nothing 
 but these few moments, and consequently flitted like 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 3 
 
 a shadow. I was now, however, the better of what 
 was half disease and half something healthy and 
 good. In the first place, I had discovered that my 
 appetite was far larger than my powers. Consumed 
 by a longing for continuous intercourse with the best, 
 I had no ability whatever to maintain it, and I had 
 accepted as a fact, however mysterious it might be, 
 that the human mind is created with the impulses of 
 a seraph and the strength of a man. Furthermore, 
 what was I that I should demand exceptional treat- 
 ment? Thousands of men and women superior to 
 myself, are condemned, if that is the proper word 
 to use, to almost total absence from themselves. The 
 roar of the world for them is never lulled to rest, 
 nor can silence ever be secured in which the voice 
 of the Divine can be heard. 
 
 My letters were written twice a week, and as each 
 contained a column and a half, I had six columns 
 • weekly to manufacture. These I was in the habit 
 of writing in the morning, my evenings being spent 
 at the House. At first I was rather interested, but 
 after a while the occupation became tedious beyond 
 measure, and for this reason. In a discusssion of any 
 importance about fifty members perhaps would take 
 part, and had made up their minds beforehand to 
 speak. There could not possibly be more than three 
 or four reasons for or against the motion, and as the 
 
4 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 knowledge that what the intending orator had to urge 
 had been urged a dozen times before on that very 
 night never deterred him from urging it again, the 
 same arguments, diluted, muddled, and mis-presented, 
 recurred with the most wearisome iteration. 
 
 The public outside knew nothing or very little 
 of the real House of Commons, and the manner in 
 which time was squandered there, for the reports 
 were all of them much abbreviated. In fact, I doubt 
 whether anybody but the Speaker and one or two 
 other persons in the same position as myself really 
 felt with proper intensity what the waste was, and 
 how profound was the vanity of members and the 
 itch for expression; for even the reporters were 
 relieved at stated intervals, and the impression on 
 their minds was not continuous. Another evil result 
 of these attendances at the House was a kind of 
 political scepticism. Over and over again I have 
 seen a Government arraigned for its conduct of 
 foreign affairs. The evidence lay in masses of corre- 
 spondence which it would have required some days 
 to master, and the verdict, after knowing the facts, 
 ought to have depended upon the application of 
 principles, each of which admitted a contrary prin- 
 ciple for which much might be pleaded. There were 
 not fifty members in the House with the leisure or 
 the ability to understand what it was which had 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 5 
 
 actually happened, and if they had understood it, 
 they would not have had the wit to see what was 
 the rule which ought to have decided the case. Yet, 
 whether they understood or not, they were obliged to 
 vote, and what was worse, the constituencies also had 
 to vote, and so the gravest matters were settled in 
 utter ignorance. This has often been adduced as an 
 argument against an extended suffrage, but, if it is 
 an argument against anything, it is an. argument 
 against intrusting the aristocracy and even the 
 House itself with destinies of the nation ; for 
 no dock labourer could possibly be more entirely 
 empty of all reasons for action than the noble lords, 
 squires, lawyers, and railway directors whom I have 
 seen troop to the division bell. There is something 
 deeper than this scepticism, but the scepticism is the 
 easiest and the most obvious conclusion to an open 
 mind dealing so closely and practically with politics 
 as it was my lot to do at this time of my life. Men 
 must be governed, and when it comes to the question, 
 by whom ? I, for one, would far sooner in the long 
 run trust the people at large than I would the few, 
 who in all that relates to Government are as little 
 instructed as the many and more difficult to move. 
 The very fickleness of the multitude, the theme of 
 such constant declamation, is so far good that it 
 proves a susceptibility to impressions to which men 
 
6 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 hedged round by impregnable conventionalities can- 
 not yield.i 
 
 When I was living in the country, the pure sky 
 and the landscape formed a large portion of my ex- 
 istence, so large that much of myself depended on it, 
 and I wondered how men could be worth anything if 
 they could never see the face of nature. For this 
 belief my early training on the Lyrical Ballads is 
 answerable. When I came to London the same 
 creed survived, and I was for ever thirsting for inter- 
 course with my ancient friend. Hope, faith, and 
 God seemed impossible amidst the smoke of the 
 streets. It was now very difficult for me, except at 
 rare opportunities, to leave London, and it was neces- 
 sary for me, therefore, to understand that all that was 
 essential for me was obtainable there, even thoufih I 
 should never see anything more than was to be seen in 
 journeying through the High Street Camden Town, 
 Tottenham Court Eoad, the Seven Dials, and White- 
 hall. I should have been guilty of a simple sur- 
 render to despair if I had not forced myself to make 
 this discovery. I cannot help saying, with all my 
 love for the literature of my own day, that it has an 
 evil side to it which none know except the millions 
 of sensitive persons who are condemned to exist in 
 
 * This was written many years ago, but is curiously pertinent 
 to the discussions of this year. — Editor, 1884. 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 7 
 
 great towns. It might be imagined from much of 
 this literature that true humanity and a belief in 
 God are the offspring of the hills or the ocean; and 
 by implication, if not expressly, the vast multitudes 
 who hardly ever see the hills or the ocean must be 
 without a religion. The long poems which turn alto- 
 gether upon scenery, perhaps in foreign lands, and 
 the passionate devotion to it which they breathe, may 
 perhaps do good in keeping alive in the hearts of men 
 a determination to preserve air, earth, and water from 
 pollution; but speaking from experience as a Lon- 
 doner, I can testify that they are most depressing, 
 and I would counsel everybody whose position is what 
 mine was to avoid these books and to associate with 
 those which will help him in his own circumstances. 
 Half of my occupation soon came to an end. One 
 of my editors sent me a petulant note telling me that 
 all I wrote he could easily find out himself, and that 
 he required something more " graphic and personal." 
 I could do no better, or rather I ought to say, no 
 worse than I had been doing. These letters were a 
 great trouble to me. I was always conscious of writ- 
 incr so much of which I was not certain, and so much 
 which was indifferent to me. The unfairness of 
 parties haunted me. But I continued to write, 
 because I saw no other way of getting a living, and 
 surely it is a baser dishonesty to depend upon the 
 
8 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 charity of friends because some pleasant, clean, ideal 
 employment has not presented itself, than to soil 
 one's hands with a little of the inevitable mud. I 
 don't think I ever felt anything more keenly than I 
 did a sneer from an acquaintance of mine who was 
 in the habit of borrowing money from me. He was 
 a painter, whose pictures were never sold because he 
 never worked hard enough to know how to draw, and 
 it came to my ears indirectly that he had said that 
 " he would rather live the life of a medieval ascetic 
 than condescend to the degradation of scribbling a 
 dozen columns weekly of utter trash on subjects with 
 which he had no concern." At that very moment he 
 owed me five pounds. God knows that I admitted 
 my dozen columns to be utter trash, but it ought to 
 have been forgiven by those who saw that I was 
 struggling to save myself from the streets and to 
 keep a roof over my head. Degraded, however, as I 
 might be, I could not get down to the " graphic and 
 • personal," for it meant nothing less than the abso- 
 lutely false. I therefore contrived to exist on the 
 one letter, which, excepting the mechanical labour of 
 writing a second, took up as much of my time as if 
 I had to write two. 
 
 Never, but once or twice at the most, did my 
 labours meet with the slightest recognition beyond 
 payment. Once I remember that I accused a member 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 9 
 
 of a discreditable manceuvre to consume the time of 
 the House, and as he represented a borough in my 
 district, he wrote to the editor denying the charge. 
 The editor without any inquiry — and I believe I was 
 mistaken — instantly congratulated me on having 
 " scored." At another time, when Parliament was 
 not sitting, I ventured, by way of filling up my 
 allotted space, to say a word on behalf of a now 
 utterly forgotten novel. I had a letter from the 
 authoress thanking me, but alas! the illusion vanished, 
 I was tempted by this one novel to look into others 
 which I found she had written, and I discovered that 
 they were altogether silly. The attraction of the one 
 of which I thought so highly, was due not to any real 
 merit which it possessed, but to something I had 
 put into it. It was dead, but it had served as a wall 
 to re-echo my own voice. Excepting these two occa- 
 sions, I don't think that one solitary human being ever 
 applauded or condemned one solitary word of which 
 I was the author. All my friends knew where my 
 contributions were to be found, but I never heard 
 that they looked at them. They were never worth 
 reading, and yet such complete silence was rather 
 lonely. The tradesman who makes a good coat 
 enjoys the satisfaction of having fitted and pleased 
 his customer, and a bricklayer, if he be diligent, is 
 rewarded by knowing that his master understands 
 
lo MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 his value, but I never knew what it was to receive a 
 single response. I wrote for an abstraction; and 
 spoke to empty space. I cannot help claiming some 
 pity and even respect for the class to which I be- 
 longed. I have heard them called all kinds of hard 
 names, hacks, drudges, and something even more 
 contemptible, but the injustice done to them is 
 monstrous. Their wage is hardly earned ; it is 
 peculiarly precarious, depending altogether upon 
 their health, and no matter how ill they may be 
 they must maintain the liveliness of manner which is 
 necessary to procure acceptance. I fell in with one 
 poor fellow whose line was something like my own. 
 I became acquainted with him through sitting side 
 by side with him at the House. He lived in lodgings 
 in Goodge Street, and occasionally I walked with 
 him as far as the corner of Tottenham Court Eoad, 
 where I caught the last omnibus northward. He 
 wrote like me a "descriptive article" for the country, 
 but he also wrote every now and then — a dignity 
 to which I never attained — a " special " for London. 
 His " descriptive articles " were more political than 
 mine, and he was obliged to be violently Tory. His 
 creed, however, was such a pure piece of profes- 
 sionalism, that though I was Eadical, and was ex- 
 pected to be so, we never jarred, and often as we 
 wandered homewards, we exchanged notes, and were 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. ii 
 
 mutually useful, his observations appearing in my 
 paper, and mine in his, with proper modifications. 
 How he used to roar in the Gazette against the 
 opposite party, and yet I never heard anything from 
 him myself but what was diffident and tender. He 
 had acquired, as an instrument necessary to him, an 
 extraordinarily extravagant style, and he laid about 
 him with a bludgeon, which inevitably descended on 
 the heads of all prominent persons if they happened 
 not to be Conservative, no matter what their virtues 
 might be. One peculiarity, however, I noted in hira. 
 Although he ought every now and then, when the 
 subject was uppermost, to have flamed out in the 
 Gazette on behalf of the Church, I never saw a word 
 from him on that subject. He drew the line at 
 religion. He did not mind acting his part in things 
 secular, for his performances were, I am sure, mostly 
 histrionic, but there he stopped. The unreality of 
 his character was a husk surrounding him, but it 
 did not touch the core. It was as if he had said to 
 himself, " Political controversy is nothing to me, and, 
 what is more, is so uncertain that it matters little 
 whether I say yes or no, nor indeed does it matter 
 if I say yes a7id no, and I must keep my wife and 
 children from the workhouse ; but when it comes to 
 the relationship of man to God, it is a different 
 matter." His altogether outside vehemence and 
 
12 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 hypocrisy did in fact react upon him, and so far 
 from affecting harmfully what lay deeper, produced 
 a more complete sincerity and transparency extend- 
 ing even to the finest verbal distinctions. Over and 
 over again have I heard him preach to his wife, 
 almost with pathos, the duty of perfect exactitude 
 in speech in describing the commonest occurrences. 
 " Now, my dear, is that so ? " was a perpetual remon- 
 strance with him; and he always insisted upon it 
 that there is no training more necessary for children 
 than that of teaching them, not merely to speak the 
 truth in the ordinary, vulgar sense of the term, but 
 to speak it in a much higher sense, by rigidly com- 
 pelling, point by point, a correspondence of the words 
 with the fact external or internal. He never would 
 tolerate in his own children a mere hackneyed, 
 borrowed expression, but demanded exact portrai- 
 ture ; and nothing vexed him more than to hear one 
 of them spoil and make worthless what he or she 
 had seen, by reporting it in some stale phrase which 
 had been used by everybody. This refusal to take 
 the trouble to watch the presentment to the mind of 
 anything which had been placed before it, and to 
 reproduce it in its own lines and colours was, as he 
 said, nothing but falsehood, and he maintained that 
 the principal reason why people are so uninteresting 
 is not that they have nothing to say. It is rather 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 13' 
 
 that they will not face the labour of saying in their 
 own tongue what they have to say, but cover it up and 
 conceal it in commonplace, so that we get, not what 
 they themselves behold and what they think, but a 
 hieroglyphic or symbol invented as the representative 
 of a certain class of objects or emotions, and as ineffi- 
 cient to represent a particular object or emotion as 
 33 or ?/ to set forth the relation of Hamlet to Ophelia. 
 He would even exercise his children in this art of 
 the higher truthfulness, and would purposely make 
 them give him an account of something which he 
 had seen and they had seen, checking them the 
 moment he saw a lapse from originality. Such was 
 the Tory correspondent of the Gazette. 
 
 I ought to say, by way of apology for him, that in 
 his day it signified little or nothing whether Tory or 
 Whig was in power. Politics had not become what 
 they will one day become, a matter of life or death, 
 dividing men with really private love and hate. 
 What a mockery controversy was in the House ! 
 How often I have seen members, who were furious at 
 one another across the floor, quietly shaking hands 
 outside, and inviting one another to dinner ! I have 
 heard them say that we ought to congratulate our- 
 selves that parliamentary differences do not in this 
 country breed personal animosities. To me this 
 seemed anything but a subject of congratulation. 
 
14 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 Men who are totally at variance ought not to be 
 friends, and if Eadical and Tory are not totally, but 
 merely superficially at variance, so much the worse 
 for their Eadicalism and Toryism. It is possible, and 
 even probable, that the public fury and the subsequent 
 amity were equally absurd. Most of us have no real 
 loves and no real hatreds. Blessed is love, less 
 blessed is hatred, but thrice accursed is that indiffer- 
 ence which is neither one nor the other, the muddy 
 mess which men call friendship. 
 
 M'Kay — for that was his name — lived, as I have 
 said, in Goodge Street, where he had unfurnished 
 apartments. I often spent part of the Sunday with 
 him, and I may forestall obvious criticism by saying 
 that I do not pretend for a moment to defend myself 
 from inconsistency in denouncing members of Parlia- 
 ment for their duplicity, M'Kay and myself being 
 also guilty of something very much like it. But 
 there was this difference between us and our parlia- 
 mentary friends, that we always divested ourselves of 
 all hypocrisy when we were alone. We then dropped 
 the stage costume which members continued to wear 
 in the streets and at the dinner-table, and in which 
 some of them even slept and said their prayers. 
 
 London Sundays to persons who are not attached 
 to any religious community, and have no money to 
 spend, are rather dreary. We tried several ways of 
 
MARK RUTHEREORD'S DELIVERANCE. 15 
 
 getting throiigh the morning. If we heard that there 
 was a preacher with a reputation, we went to hear 
 him. As a rule, however, we got no good in that 
 way. Once we came to a chapel where there was a 
 minister supposed to be one of the greatest orators of 
 the day. We had much difficulty in finding standing 
 room. Just as we entered we heard him say, " My 
 friends, I appeal to those of you who are parents. 
 You know that if you say to a child ' go,' he goeth, 
 
 and if you say ' come,' he cometh. So the Lord " 
 
 But at this point M'Kay, who had children, nudged 
 me to come out ; and out we went. Why does this 
 little scene remain with me ? I can hardly say, but 
 here it stands. It is remembered, not so much by 
 reason of the preacher as by reason of the apparent 
 acquiescence and admiration of the audience, who 
 seemed to be perfectly willing to take over an experi- 
 ence from their pastor — if indeed it was really an 
 experience — which was not their own. Our usual 
 haunts on Sunday were naturally the parks and 
 Kensington Gardens ; but artificial limited enclosures 
 are apt to become wearisome after a time, and we 
 longed for a little more freedom if a little less trim. 
 So we would stroll towards Hampstead or Highgate, 
 the only drawback to these regions being the squalid, 
 ragged, half town, half suburb, through which it was 
 necessary to pass. The skirts of London, when the 
 
1 6 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. ! 
 
 air is filled with north-easterly soot, grit, and filth, 
 are cheerless, and the least cheerful part of the 
 scene is the inability of the vast wandering masses of 
 people to find any way of amusing themselves. At 
 the corner of one of the fields in Kentish Town, 
 just about to be devoured, stood a public-house, and 
 opposite the door was generally encamped a man who 
 sold nothing but Brazil nuts. Swarms of people 
 lazily wandered past him, most of them waiting for 
 the public-house to open. Brazil nuts on a cold 
 black Sunday morning are not exhilarating, but the 
 costermonger found many customers who bought his 
 nuts, and ate them, merely because they had nothing 
 better to do. We went two or three times to a free- 
 thinking hall, where we were entertained with 
 demonstrations of the immorality of the patriarchs 
 and Jewish heroes, and arguments to prove that the 
 personal existence of the devil was a myth, the 
 audience breaking out into uproarious laughter at 
 comical delineations of Noah and Jonah, One morn- 
 ing we found the place completely packed. A 
 "celebrated Christian," as he was described to us, 
 having heard of the hall, had volunteered to engage 
 in debate on the claims of the Old Testament to 
 Divine authority. He turned out to be a preacher 
 whom we knew quite well. He was introduced by 
 his free-thinking antagonist, who claimed for him a 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 17 
 
 respectful hearing. The preacher said that before 
 beginning he should like to "engage in prayer." 
 Accordingly he came to the front of the platform, 
 lifted up his eyes, told God why he was there, and 
 besought Him to bless the discussion in the conver- 
 sion " of these poor wandering souls, who have said in 
 their hearts that there is no God, to a saving faith in 
 Him and in the blood of Christ." I expected that 
 some resentment would be displayed when the 
 wandering souls found themselves treated like errant 
 sheep, but to my surprise they listened with perfect 
 silence ; and when he had said " Amen," there were 
 great clappings of hands, and cries of " Bravo." They 
 evidently considered the prayer merely as an elocu- 
 tionary show-piece. The preacher was much discon- 
 certed, but he recovered himself, and began his 
 sermon, for it was nothing more. He enlarged on the 
 fact that men of the highest eminence had believed 
 in the Old Testament, Locke and Newton had 
 believed in it, and did it not prove arrogance in us to 
 doubt, when the "gigantic intellect which had swept 
 the skies, and had announced the law which bound 
 the universe together was satisfied " ? The witness of 
 the Old Testament to the New was another argument, 
 but his main reliance was upon the prophecies. From 
 Adam to Isaiah there was a continuous prefigurement 
 of Christ. Christ w^as the point to which everything 
 
l8 MARK EUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 tended; and "now, my friends," he said, "I can- 
 not sit down without imploring you to turn your 
 eyes on Him who never yet repelled the sinner, 
 to wash in that eternal Fountain ever open for the 
 remission of sins, and to flee from the wrath to come. 
 I believe the sacred symbol of the cross has not 
 yet lost its efficacy. For eighteen hundred years, 
 whenever it has been exhibited to the sons of men, 
 it has been potent to reclaim and save them. I, if 
 I be lifted up, cried the Great Sufferer, will draw 
 all men unto me, and He has drawn not merely 
 the poor and ignorant but the philosopher and the 
 sage. Oh, my brethren, think what will happen if 
 you reject Him. I forbear to paint your doom. And 
 think, again, on the other hand, of the bliss wliich 
 awaits you if you receive Him, of the eternal com- 
 panionship with the Most High and with the spirits 
 of just men made perfect." His hearers again 
 applauded vigorously, and none less so than 
 their appointed leader, who was to follow on the 
 other side. He was a little man with small eyes ; his 
 shaven face was dark with a black beard lurking 
 under the skin, and his nose was slightly turned up. 
 He was evidently a trained debater who had prac- 
 tised under railway arches, discussion " forums," and 
 in the classes promoted by his sect. He began by 
 saying that he could not compliment his friend who 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 19 
 
 had just sat down on the inducements which he had 
 offered them to become Christians. The New Cut 
 was not a nice place on a wet day, but he had rather 
 sit at a stall there all day long with his feet on a 
 basket than lie in the bosom of some of the just men 
 made perfect portrayed in the Bible. Nor, being 
 married, should he feel particularly at ease if he had 
 to leave his wife with David, David certainly ought 
 to have got beyond all that kind of thing, con- 
 sidering it must be over 3000 years since he first saw 
 Bathsheba ; but we are told that the saints are for 
 ever young in heaven, and this treacherous villain, 
 who would have been tried by a jury of twelve men 
 and hung outside Newgate if he had lived in the 
 nineteenth century, might be dangerous now. He 
 was an amorous old gentleman up to the very last. 
 (Koars of laughter.) Nor did the speaker feel parti- 
 cularly anxious to be shut up with all the bishops, 
 who of course are amongst the elect, and on their 
 departure from this vale of tears tempered by ten 
 thousand a -year, are duly supplied with wings. 
 Much more followed in the same strain upon the 
 immorality of the Bible heroes, their cruelty, and the 
 cruelty of the God who sanctioned it. Then followed 
 a clever exposition of the inconsistencies of the Old 
 Testament history, the impossibility of any reference 
 to Jesus therein, and a really earnest protest against 
 
20 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 the quibbling by which those who believed in the 
 Bible as a revelation sought to reconcile it with 
 science. " Finally," said the speaker, " I am sure we 
 all of us will pass a vote of thanks to our reverend 
 friend for coming to see us, and we cordially invite 
 him to come again. If I might be allowed to offer a 
 suggestion, it would be that he should make himself 
 acquainted with our case before he pays us another 
 visit, and not suppose that we are to be persuaded 
 with the rhetoric which may do very well for the 
 young women of his congregation, but won't go down 
 here." This was fair and just, for the eminent 
 Christian was nothing but an ordinary minister, who 
 when he was prepared for his profession, had never 
 been allowed to see what are the historical difficulties 
 of Christianity, lest he should be overcome by them. 
 On the other hand, his sceptical opponents were 
 almost devoid of the faculty for appreciating the 
 great remains of antiquity, and would probably have 
 considered the machinery of the Prometheus Bound 
 or of the Iliad a sufficient reason for a sneer. ^ That 
 they should spend their time in picking the Bible to 
 pieces when there was so much positive work for 
 them to do, seemed to me as melancholy as if they 
 had spent themselves upon theology. To waste a 
 Sunday morning in ridiculing such stories as that of 
 Jonah was surely as imbecile as to waste it in 
 proving their verbal veracity. 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 M'KA Y. 
 
 It was foggy and overcast as we walked home to- 
 Goodge Street. The churches and chapels were 
 emptying themselves, but the great mass of the 
 population had been " nowhere." I had dinner with 
 M'Kay, and as the day wore on the fog thickened. 
 London on a dark Sunday afternoon, more especially 
 about Goodge Street, is depressing. The inhabitants 
 drag themselves hither and thither in languor and 
 uncertainty. Small mobs loiter at the doors of the 
 gin palaces. Costermongers wander aimlessly, call- 
 ing "walnuts" with a cry so melancholy that it 
 sounds as the wail of the hopelessly lost may be 
 imagined to sound when their anguish has been 
 deadened by the monotony of a million years. 
 
 About two or three o'clock decent working men in 
 their best clothes emerge from the houses in such 
 streets as Nassau Street. It is part of their duty to 
 go out after dinner on Sunday with the wife and 
 children. The husband pushes the perambulator out 
 
22 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 of the dingy passage, and gazes doubtfully this way 
 and that way, not knowing whither to go, and evi- 
 dently longing for the Monday, when his work, 
 however disagreeable it may be, will be his plain 
 duty. The wife follows, carrying a child, and a boy 
 and girl in unaccustomed apparel walk by her side. 
 They come out into Mortimer Street. There are no 
 shops open; the sky over their heads is mud, the 
 earth is mud under their feet, the muddy houses 
 stretch in long rows, black, gaunt, uniform. The 
 little party reach Hyde Park, also wrapped in 
 impenetrable mud-grey. The man's face brightens 
 for a moment as he says, " It is time to go back," and 
 so they return, without the interchange of a word, 
 unless perhaps they happen to see an omnibus horse 
 fall down on the greasy stones. What is there worth 
 thought or speech on such an expedition ? Nothing ! 
 The tradesman who kept the oil and colour establisli- 
 ment opposite to us was not to be tempted outside. 
 It was a little more comfortable than Nassau Street, 
 and, moreover, he was religious and did not encourage 
 Sabbath-breaking. He and his family always moved 
 after their mid-day Sabbath repast from the little 
 back room behind the shop up to what they called 
 the drawing-room overhead. It was impossible to 
 avoid seeing them every time we went to the win- 
 dow. The father of the family, after his heavy meal, 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 23 
 
 invariably sat in the easy- chair with a handkerchief 
 over his eyes and slept. The children were always 
 at the windows, pretending to read books, but in 
 reality watching the people below. At about four 
 o'clock their papa generally awoke, and demanded a 
 succession of hymn tunes played on the piano. When 
 the weather permitted, the lower sash was opened a 
 little, and the neighbours indulged with the per- 
 formance of " Vital Spark," the father " coming in " 
 now and then with a bass note or two at the end 
 where he was tolerably certain of the harmony. At 
 live o'clock a prophecy of the incoming tea brought 
 us some relief from the contemplation of the land- 
 scape or brick-scape. I say " some relief," for meals 
 at M'Kay's were a little disagreeable. His wife was 
 an honest, good little woman, but so much attached 
 to him and so dependent on him that she was his 
 mere echo. She had no opinions which were not his, 
 and whenever he said anything which went beyond 
 the ordinary affairs of the house, she listened with 
 curious effort, and generally responded by a weakened 
 repetition of M'Kay's own observations. He per- 
 petually, therefore, had before him an enfeebled 
 reflection of himself, and this much irritated him, 
 notwithstanding his love for her ; for who could help 
 loving a woman who, without the least hesitation, 
 would have opened her veins at his command, and 
 
24 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 have given up every drop of blood in her body for 
 him ? Over and over again I have heard him ofter 
 some criticism on a person or event, and the cus- 
 tomary chime of approval would ensue, provoking 
 him to such a degree that he would instantly con- 
 tradict himself with much bitterness, leaving poor 
 Mrs. M'Kay in much perplexity. Such a shot as 
 this generally reduced her to timid silence. As 
 a rule, he always discouraged any topic at his 
 house which was likely to serve as an occasion for 
 showing his wife's dependence on him. He de- 
 signedly talked about her household affairs, asked 
 her whether she had mended his clothes and ordered 
 the coals. She knew that these things were not 
 what was upon his mind, and she answered him 
 in despairing tones, which showed how she felt the 
 obtrusive condescension to her level. I greatly 
 pitied her, and sometimes, in fact, my emotion at the 
 sight of her struggles with her limitations almost 
 overcame me and I was obliged to get up and go. 
 She was childishly affectionate. If M'Kay came in 
 and happened to go up to her and kiss her, her face 
 brightened into the sweetest and happiest smile. I 
 recollect once after he had been unusually annoyed 
 with her he repented just as he was leaving home, 
 and put his lips to her head, holding it in both his 
 hands. I saw her gently take the hand from her 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 25 
 
 forehead and press it to her mouth, the tears falling 
 down her cheek meanwhile. Nothing would ever 
 tempt her to admit anything against her husband. 
 M'Kay was violent and unjust at times. His occupa- 
 tion he hated, and his restless repugnance to it fre- 
 quently discharged itself indifferently upon every- 
 thing which came in his way. His children often 
 thought him almost barbarous, but in truth he did not 
 actually see them when he was in one of these 
 moods. What was really present with him, exclud- 
 ing everything else, was the sting of something more 
 than usually repulsive of which they knew nothing. 
 Mrs. M'Kay's answer to her children's remonstrances 
 when they were alone with her always was, " He is 
 so worried," and she invariably dwelt upon their 
 faults which had given him the opportunity for his 
 wrath. 
 
 I think M'Kay's treatment of her wholly wrong. 
 I think that he ought not to have imposed himself 
 upon her so imperiously. I think he ought to have 
 striven to ascertain what lay concealed in that 
 modest heart, to have encouraged its expression and 
 development, to have debased himself before her 
 that she might receive courage to rise, and he would 
 have found that she had something which he had 
 not; not Ms something perhaps, but something 
 
26 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 which would have made his life happier. As it was, 
 he stood upon his own ground above her. If she 
 could reach him, well and good ; if not, the helping 
 hand was not proffered, and she fell back, hopeless. 
 Later on he discovered his mistake. She became 
 ill very gradually, and M'Kay .began to see in the 
 distance a prospect of losing her. A frightful pit 
 came in view. He became aware that he could not 
 do without her. He imagined what his home would 
 have been with other women whom he knew, and he 
 confessed that with them he would have been less 
 contented. He acknowledged that he had been 
 guilty of a kind of criminal epicurism ; that he had 
 rejected in foolish, fatal, nay, even wicked indiffer- 
 ence, the bread of life upon which he might have . 
 lived and thriven. His whole effort now was to 
 suppress himself in his wife. He would read to her, 
 a thing he never did before, and when she misunder- 
 stood, he would patiently explain ; he would take 
 her into his councils and ask her opinion ; he would 
 abandon his own opinion for hers, and in the 
 presence of her children he always deferred to her, 
 and delighted to acknowledge that she knew more 
 than he did, that she was right and he was wrong. 
 She was now confined to her house, and the end was 
 near, but this was the most blessed time of her 
 
MAKK KUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 27 
 
 married life. She grew under the soft rain of his 
 loving care, and opened out, not, indeed, into an 
 oriental flower, rich in profound mystery of scent 
 and colour, but into a blossom of the chalk down. 
 Altogether concealed and closed she would have 
 remained if it had not been for this beneficent and 
 heavenly gift poured upon her. He had just time 
 enough to see what she really was, and then she 
 died. There are some natures that cannot unfold 
 under pressure or in the presence of unregarding 
 power. Hers was one. They require a clear space 
 round' them, the removal of everything which may 
 overmaster them, and constant delicate attention. 
 They require too a recognition of the fact, which 
 M'Kay for a long time did not recognise, that it is 
 folly to force them and to demand of them that they 
 shall be what they cannot be. I stood by the grave 
 this morning of my poor, pale, clinging little friend 
 now for some years at peace, and I thought that the 
 tragedy of Promethean torture or Christ-like cruci- 
 fixion may indeed be tremendous, but there is a 
 tragedy too in the existence of a soul like hers, con- 
 scious of its feebleness and ever striving to overpass 
 it, ever aware that it is an obstacle to the return of 
 the affection of the man whom she loves. 
 
 Meals, as I have said, were disagreeable at M'Kay's, 
 
28 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCll. 
 
 and when we wanted to talk we went out of doors. 
 The eveuin" after our visit to the debating hall we 
 moved towards Portland Place, and walked up and 
 down there for an hour or more. M'Kay had a 
 passionate desire to reform the world. The spectacle 
 of the misery of London, and of the distracted sway- 
 ing hither and thither of the multitudes who inhabit 
 it, tormented him incessantly. He always chafed at 
 it, and he never seemed sure that he had a right 
 to the enjoyment of the simplest pleasures so long as 
 London was before him. What a farce, he would cry, 
 is all this poetry, philosophy, art, and culture, when 
 millions of wretched mortals are doomed to the 
 eternal darkness and crime of the city ! Here are 
 the educated classes occupying themselves with 
 exquisite emotions, with speculations upon the 
 Infinite, with addresses to flowers, with the worship 
 of waterfalls and flying clouds, and with the incessant 
 portraiture of a thousand moods and variations of 
 love, while their neighbours lie grovelling in the mire, 
 and never know anything more of life or its duties 
 than is afforded them by a police report in a bit of 
 newspaper picked out of the kennel. We went one 
 evening to hear a great violin player, who played such 
 music, and so exquisitely, that the limits of life were 
 removed. But we had to walk up the Haymarket 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 29 
 
 home, between eleven and twelve o'clock, and the 
 violin-playing became the merest trifling, M'Kay 
 had been brought up upon the Bible. He had before 
 him, not only there, but in the history of all great 
 religious movements, a record of the improvement of 
 the human race, or of large portions of it, not merely 
 by gradual civilisation, but by inspiration spreading 
 itself suddenly. He could not get it out of his head 
 that something of this kind is possible again in our 
 time. He longed to try for himself in his own poor 
 way in one of the slums about Drury Lane. I 
 sympathised with him, but I asked him what he had 
 to say. I remember telling him that I had been 
 into St. Paul's Cathedral, and that I pictured to 
 myself the cathedral full, and myself in the pulpit. 
 I was excited while imagining the opportunity offered 
 me of delivering some message to three or four 
 thousand persons in such a building, but in a minute 
 or two I discovered that my sermon would be very 
 nearly as follows : " Dear friends, I know no more 
 than you know ; we had better go home." I admitted 
 to him that if he could believe in hell- fire, or if he 
 could proclaim the Second Advent, as Paul did to 
 the Thessalonians, and get people to believe, he might 
 change their manners, but otherwise he could do 
 nothing but resort to a much slower process. With 
 
30 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. ' ' 
 
 the departure of a belief in the supernatural departs 
 once and for ever the chance of regenerating the race 
 except by the school and by science.^ However, 
 M'Kay thought he would try. His earnestness was 
 rather a hindrance than a help to him, for it prevented 
 his putting certain important questions to himself, 
 or at anyrate it prevented his waiting for distinct 
 answers. He recurred to the apostles and Bunyar, 
 and was convinced that it was possible even now to 
 touch depraved men and women with an idea which 
 should recast their lives. So it is that the main 
 obstacle to our success is a success which has pre- 
 ceded us. We instinctively follow the antecedent 
 form, and consequently we either pass by, or deny alto- 
 gether, the life of our own time, because its expression 
 has changed. "We never do practically believe that 
 the Messiah is not incarnated twice in the same flesh. 
 He came as Jesus, and we look for Him as Jesus 
 now, overlooking the manifestation of to-day, and 
 dying, perhaps, without recognising it. 
 
 M'Kay had found a room near Parker Street, 
 
 ' 1 Not exactly untrue, but it sounds strangely now when 
 socialism, nationalisation of the land, and other projects have 
 renewed in men the hope of regeneration by political processes. 
 The reader will, however, please remember the date of these 
 memoirs. — Editor, 1884. 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 31 
 
 Drury Lane, in which he proposed to begin, and that 
 night, as we trod the pavement of Portland Place, he 
 propounded his plans to me, I listening without much 
 confidence, but loth nevertheless to take the office of 
 Time upon myself, and to disprove what experience 
 would disprove more effectually. His object was 
 nothing less than gradually to attract Drury Lane 
 to come and be saved. 
 
 The first Sunday I went with him to the room. 
 As we walked over the Drury Lane gratings of the 
 cellars a most foul stench came up, and one in par- 
 ticular I remember to this day. A man half dressed 
 pushed open a broken window beneath us, just as we 
 passed by, and there issued such a blast of corruption, 
 made up of gases bred by filth, air breathed and 
 rebreathed a hundred times, charged with odours of 
 unnameable personal uncleanness and disease, that I 
 staggered to the gutter with a qualm which I could 
 scarcely conquer. At the doors of the houses stood 
 grimy women with their arms folded and their hair 
 disordered. Grimier boys and girls had tied a rope 
 to broken railings, and were swinging on it. The 
 common door to a score of lodgings stood ever open, 
 and the children swarmed up and down the stairs 
 carrying with them patches of mud every time they 
 came in from the street. The wholesome practice 
 
32 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 which amongst the decent poor marks off at least one 
 day in the week as a day on which there is to be a 
 change ; when there is to be some attempt to procure 
 order and cleanliness ; a day to be preceded by soap 
 and water, by shaving, and by as many clean clothes 
 as can be procured, was unknown here. There was no 
 break in the uniformity of squalor ; nor was it even 
 possible for any single family to emerge amidst such 
 altogether suppressive surroundings. All self-respect, 
 all effort to do anything more than to satisfy somehow 
 the grossest wants, had departed. The shops were 
 open ; most of them exhibiting a most miscellaneous 
 collection of goods, such as bacon cut in slices, fire- 
 wood, a few loaves of bread, and sweetmeats in dirty 
 bottles. Fowls, strange to say, black as the flagstones, 
 walked in and out of these shops, or descended into 
 the dark areas. The undertaker had not put up his 
 shutters. He had drawn down a yellow blind, on 
 which was painted a picture of a suburban cemetery. 
 Two funerals, the loftiest effort of his craft, were 
 depicted approaching the gates. When the gas was 
 alight behind the blind, an effect was produced which 
 was doubtless much admired. He also displayed in 
 his window a model coffin, a work of art. It was 
 about a foot long, varnished, studded with little brass 
 nails, and on the lid was fastened a rustic cross 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 33 
 
 stretching from end to end. The desire to decorate 
 existence in some way or other with more or less care 
 is nearly universal. The most sensual and the 
 meanest almost always manifest an indisposition 
 to be content with mere material satisfaction. I 
 have known selfish, gluttonous, drunken men spend 
 their leisure moments in trimming a bed of scarlet 
 geraniums, and the vulgarest and most commonplace 
 of mortals considers it a necessity to put a picture in 
 the room or an ornament on the mantelpiece. The 
 instinct, even in its lowest forms, is divine. It is the 
 commentary on the text that man shall not live by 
 bread alone. It is evidence of an acknowledged com- 
 pulsion — of which art is the highest manifestation — 
 to escape. In the alleys behind Drury Lane this 
 instinct, the very salt of life, was dead, crushed out 
 utterly, a symptom which seemed to me ominous, 
 and even awful to the last degree. The only house 
 in which it survived was in that of the undertaker, 
 who displayed the willows, the black horses, and the 
 coffin. These may have been nothing more than an 
 advertisement, but from the care with which the cross 
 was elaborated, and the neatness with which it was 
 made to resemble a natural piece of wood, I am inclined 
 to believe that the man felt some pleasure in his work 
 for its own sake, and that he was not utterly sub- 
 merged. The cross in such dens as these, or, worse 
 
34 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 than dens, in such sewers ! If it be anything, it is a 
 symbol of victory, of power to triumph over resistance, 
 and even death. Here was nothing but sullen sub- 
 jugation, the most grovelling slavery, mitigated only 
 by a tendency to mutiny. Here was a strength of cir- 
 cumstance to quell and dominate which neither Jesus 
 nor Paul could have overcome — worse a thousand- 
 fold than Scribes or Pharisees, or any form of perse- 
 cution. The preaching of Jesus would have been 
 powerless here ; in fact, no known stimulus, nothing 
 ever held up before men to stir the soul to activity, 
 can do anything in the back streets of great cities so 
 long as they are the cesspools which they are now. 
 
 We came to the room. About a score of M'Kay's 
 own friends were there, and perhaps half-a-dozen 
 outsiders, attracted by the notice which had been 
 pasted on a board at the entrance. M'Kay announced 
 his errand. The ignorance and misery of London 
 he said were intolerable to him. He could not take 
 any pleasure in life when he thought upon them. 
 What could he do ? that was the question. He was 
 not a man of wealth. He could not buy up these 
 hovels. He could not force an entrance into them 
 and persuade their inhabitants to improve themselves. 
 He had no talents wherewith to found a great organi- 
 sation or create public opinion. He had determined, 
 after much thought, to do what he was now doing. 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 35 
 
 It was very little, but it was all lie could undertake. 
 He proposed to keep this room open as a place to 
 which those who wished mighty resort at different 
 times, and find some quietude, instruction, and what 
 fortifying thoughts he could collect to enable men to 
 endure their almost unendurable sufferings. He did 
 not intend to teach theology. Anything which would 
 be serviceable he would set forth, but in the main 
 he intended to rely on holding up the examples of 
 those who were greater than ourselves and were our 
 redeemers. He meant to teach Christ in the proper 
 sense of the word. Christ now is admired pro- 
 bably more than He had ever been. Everybody 
 agrees to admire Him, but where are the people who 
 really do what He did ? There is no religion now- 
 a-days. Eeligion is a mere literature. Cultivated 
 persons sit in their studies and write overfiowingly 
 about Jesus, or meet at parties and talk about Him ; 
 but He is not of much use to me unless I say to my- 
 self, how is it with thee ? unless I myself become what 
 He was. This was the meaning of Jesus to the 
 Apostle Paul. Jesus was in him ; he had put on 
 Jesus ; that is to say, Jesus lived in him like a second 
 soul, taking the place of his own soul and direct- 
 ing him accordingly. That was religion, and it is 
 absurd to say that the English nation at this moment, 
 or any section of it, is religious. Its educated 
 
36 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 classes are inhabited by a hundred minds. We are 
 in a state of anarchy, each of us with a different aim 
 and shaping himself according to a different type ; 
 while the uneducated classes are entirely given over 
 to the "natural man." He was firmly persuaded 
 that we need religion, poor and rich alike. We 
 need some controlling influence to bind together our 
 scattered energies. We do not know what we are 
 doing. We read one book one day and another 
 book another day, but it is idle wandering to right 
 and left ; it is not advancing on a straight road. 
 It is not possible to bind ourselves down to a 
 certain defined course, but still it is an enormous, 
 an incalculable advantage for us to have some irre- 
 versible standard set up in us by which everythino- 
 we meet is to be judged. That is the meaning of 
 the prophecy — whether it will ever be fulfilled God 
 only knows — that Christ shall judge the world. All 
 religions have been this. They have said that in the 
 midst of the infinitely possible — infinitely possible 
 evil and infinitely possible good too — we become dis- 
 tracted. A thousand forces good and bad act upon 
 us. It is necessary, if we are to be men, if we are to 
 be saved, that we should be rescued from this tumult, 
 and that our feet should be planted upon a path. 
 His object, therefore, would be to preach Christ, as 
 before said, and to introduce into human life His 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 37 
 
 unifying influence. He would try and get them to 
 see things with the eyes of Christ, to love with His 
 love, to judge with His judgment. He believed 
 Christ was fitted to occupy this place. He delibe- 
 rately chose Christ as worthy to be our central, 
 shaping force. He would try by degrees to prove 
 this ; to prove that Christ's way of dealing with life 
 is the best way, and so to create a genuine Christian 
 spirit, which, when any choice of conduct is presented 
 to us, will prompt us to ask first of all, how would 
 Christ have it ? or, when men and things pass before 
 us, will decide through Him what we have to say 
 about them. M'Kay added that he hoped his efforts 
 would not be confined to talking. He trusted to be 
 able, by means of this little meeting, gradually to 
 gain admittance for himself and his friends into the 
 houses of the poor and do some practical good. At 
 present he had no organisation and no plans. He 
 did not believe in organisation and plans preceding 
 a clear conception of what was to be accomplished. 
 Such, as nearly as I can now recollect, is an outline 
 of his discourse. It was thoroughly characteristic of 
 him. He always talked in this fashion. He was for 
 ever insisting on the aimlessness of modern life, on 
 the powerlessness of its vague activities to mould 
 men into anything good, to restrain them from evil 
 or moderate their passions, and he was possessed by 
 
38 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 a vision of a new Christianity which was to take the 
 place of the old and dead theologies. I have reported 
 him in my own language. He strove as much as he 
 could to make his meaning plain to everybody. Just 
 before he finished, three or four out of the half-a- 
 dozen outsiders who were present whistled with all 
 their might and ran down the stairs shouting to one 
 another. As we went out they had collected about 
 the door, and amused themselves by pushing one 
 another against us, and kicking an old kettle behind 
 us and amongst us all the way up the street, so that 
 we were covered with splashes, Mrs. M'Kay went 
 with us, and when we reached home, she tried to say 
 something about what she had heard. The cloud 
 came over her husband's face at once ; he remained 
 silent for a minute, and getting up and going to the 
 window, observed that it ought to be cleaned, and that 
 he could hardly see the opposite house. The poor 
 woman looked distressed, and I was just about to 
 come to her rescue by continuing what she had been 
 saying, when she rose, not in anger, but in trouble, 
 and went upstairs. 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 39 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 M/SS LEROY. 
 
 DuEiNG the great French war there were many 
 French prisoners in my native town. They led a 
 strange isolated life, for they knew nothing of our 
 language, nor, in those days, did three people in 
 the town understand theirs. The common soldiers 
 amused themselves by making little trifles and sell- 
 ing them. I have now before me a box of coloured 
 straw with the date 1799 on the bottom, which was 
 bought by my grandfather. One of these prisoners 
 was an officer named Leroy. Why he did not go 
 back to France I never heard, but I know that before 
 I was born he was living near our house on a small 
 income ; that he tried to teach French, and that he 
 had as his companion a handsome daughter who 
 grew up speaking English. What she was like 
 when she was young I cannot say, but I have had 
 her described to me over and over again. She 
 had rather darkish brown hair, and she was tall 
 and straight as an arrow. This she was, by the way, 
 
40 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 even into old age. She surprised, shocked, and 
 attracted all the sober persons in our circle. Her 
 ways were not their ways. She would walk out by 
 herself on a starry night without a single companion, 
 and cause thereby infinite talk, which would have 
 converged to a single focus if it had not happened 
 that she was also in the habit of walking out at four 
 o'clock on a summer's morning, and that in the 
 church porch of a little village not far from us, which 
 was her favourite resting-place, a copy of the De 
 Imitatione Ghristi was found which belonged to her. 
 So the talk was scattered again and its convergence 
 prevented. She used to say doubtful things about 
 love. One of them struck my mother with horror. 
 Miss Leroy told a male person once, and told him to 
 his face, that if she loved him and he loved her, and 
 they agreed to sign one another's foreheads with a 
 cross as a ceremony, it would be as good to her as 
 marriage. This may seem a trifle, but nobody now 
 can imagine what was thought of it at the time it 
 was spoken. My mother repeated it every now and 
 then for fifty years. It may be conjectured how 
 easily any other girls of our acquaintance would have 
 been classified, and justly classified, if they had 
 uttered such barefaced Continental immorality. Miss 
 Leroy 's neighbours were remarkably apt at classifying 
 their fellow-creatures. They had a few, a very few 
 
MARK RUTHERFOED'S DELIVERANCE. 41 
 
 holes, into which they dropped their acquaintances, 
 and they must go into one or the other. Nothing 
 was more distressing than a specimen which, notwith- 
 standing all the violence which might be used to it, 
 would not fit into a hole, but remained an exception. 
 Some lout, I believe, reckoning on the legitimacy of 
 his generalisation, and having heard of this and other 
 observations accredited to Miss Leroy, ventured to 
 be slightly rude to her. What she said to him was 
 never known, but he was always shy afterwards of 
 mentioning her name, and when he did he was wont 
 to declare that she was "a rum un." She was not par- 
 ticular, I have heard, about personal tidiness, and this 
 I can well believe, for she was certainly not distin- 
 guished when I knew her for this virtue. She cared 
 nothing for the linen-closet, the spotless bed-hang- 
 in f^s, and the bright poker, which were the true house- 
 hold gods of the respectable women of those days. 
 She would have been instantly set down as " slut," and 
 as having "nasty dirty forrin ways," if a peculiar habit 
 of hers had not unfortunately presented itself, most 
 irritating to her critics, so anxious promptly to gratify 
 their philosophic tendency towards scientific grouping. 
 Mrs. Mobbs, who lived next door to her, averred that 
 she always slept with the window open. Mrs. Mobbs, 
 like everybody else, never opened her window except 
 to "air the room." Mrs. Mobbs's best bed-room 
 
42 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 was carpeted all over, and contained a great four- 
 post bedstead, hung round with heavy hangings, 
 and protected at the top from draughts by a kind of 
 firmament of white dimity. Mrs. Mobbs stuffed a sack 
 of straw up the chimney of the fireplace, to prevent 
 the fall of the " sutt," as she called it. Mrs. Mobbs, 
 if she had a visitor, gave her a hot supper, and ex- 
 pected her immediately afterwards to go upstairs', 
 draw the window curtains, get into this bed, draw the 
 bed curtains also, and wake up the next morning 
 " bilious." That was the proper thing to do. Miss 
 Leroy's sitting-room was decidedly disorderly; the 
 chairs were dusty ; " yer might write yer name on the 
 table," Mrs. Mobbs declared ; but, nevertheless, the 
 casement was never closed night nor day ; and, more- 
 over. Miss Leroy was believed by the strongest cir- 
 cumstantial evidence to wash herself all over every 
 morning, a habit which Mrs. Mobbs thought " weaken- 
 ing," and somehow connected with ethical impro- 
 priety. When Miss Leroy was married, and first as 
 an elderly woman became known to me, she was 
 very inconsequential in her opinions, or at least 
 appeared so to our eyes. She must have been much 
 more so when she was younger. In our town we 
 were all formed upon recognised patterns, and if a 
 man or woman possessed any one mark of the pattern, 
 he had all. The wine merchant, for example, who 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 43 
 
 went to church, eminently respectable, Tory, by no 
 means associating with the tradesfolk who displayed 
 their goods in the windows, knowing no "experience," 
 and who had never felt the outpouring of the Spirit, 
 was a specimen of a class all like him. Another 
 class was represented by the dissenting ironmonger, 
 deacon, presiding at prayer-meetings, strict Sabba- 
 tarian, and believer in eternal punishments ; while a 
 third was set forth by " Guffy," whose real name was 
 unknown, who got drunk, unloaded barges, assisted at 
 the municipal elections, and was never once seen 
 inside a place of worship. These patterns had 
 existed amongst us from the dimmest antiquity, and 
 were acce]3ted as part of the eternal order of things ; so 
 much so, that the deacon, although he professed to be 
 sure that nobody who had not been converted would 
 escape the fire — and the wine merchant certainly 
 had not been converted — was very far from admitting 
 to himself that the wine merchant ought to be con- 
 verted, or that it would be proper to try and convert 
 him. I doubt, indeed, whether our congregation 
 would have been happy, or would have thought any 
 the better of him, if he had left the church. Such 
 an event, however, could no more come within the 
 reach of our vision than a reversal of the current of 
 our river. It would have broken up our foundations 
 and party-walls, and would have been considered as 
 
44 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 ominous, and anything but a subject of thankfulness. 
 But Miss Leroy was not the wine merchant, nor the 
 ironmonger, nor Guffy, and even now I cannot trace 
 the hidden centre of union from which sprang so 
 much that was apparently irreconcileable. She was 
 a person whom nobody could have created in writing 
 a novel, because she was so inconsistent. As I have 
 said before, she studied Thomas a Kempis, and her 
 little French Bible was brown with constant use. 
 But then she read much fiction in which there were 
 scenes which would have made our hair stand on end. 
 The only thing she constantly abhorred in books was 
 what was dull and opaque. Yet, as we shall see 
 presently, her dislike to dulness, once at least in her 
 life, notably failed her. She was not Catholic, and 
 professed herself Protestant, but such a Protestan- 
 tism ! She had no sceptical doubts. She believed 
 implicitly that the Bible was the Word of God, and 
 that everything in it was true, but her interpretation 
 of it was of the strangest kind. Almost all our great 
 doctrines seemed shrunk to nothing in her eyes, 
 while others, which were nothing to us, were all- 
 important to her. The atonement, for instance, I 
 never heard her mention, but Unitarianism was hate- 
 ful to her, and Jesus was her God in every sense of 
 the word. On the other ,hand, she was partly Pagan, 
 for she knew very little of that consideration for the 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 45 
 
 feeble, and even for the foolish, which is the glory of 
 Christianity, She was rude to foolish people, and 
 she instinctively kept out of the way of all disease 
 and weakness, so that in this respect she was far 
 below the commonplace tradesman's wife, who visited 
 the sick, would sit up with them, and, in fact, never 
 seemed so completely in her element as when she 
 could be with anybody who was ill in bed. 
 
 Miss Leroy's father was republican, and so was 
 my grandfather. My grandfather and old Leroy 
 were the only people in our town who refused to 
 illuminate when a victory was gained over the French. 
 Leroy's windows were spared on the ground that he 
 was not a Briton, but the mob endeavoured to show 
 my grandfather the folly of his belief in democracy 
 by smashing every pane of glass in front of his house 
 with stones. This drew him and Leroy together, and 
 the result was, that although Leroy himself never set 
 foot inside any chapel or church, Miss Leroy was 
 often induced to attend our meeting-house in com- 
 pany with a maiden aunt of mine, who rather " took 
 to her." Now comes the for ever mysterious passage 
 in her history. There was amongst the attendants 
 at that meeting-house a young man who was 
 apprentice to a miller. He was a big, soft, quiet, 
 plump-faced, awkward youth, very good, but nothing 
 more. He wore on Sunday a complete suit of light 
 
46 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 pepper-and-salt clothes, and continued to wear pepper- 
 and-salt on Sunday all his life. He taught in the 
 Sunday-school, and afterwards, as he got older, he 
 ■was encouraged to open his lips at a prayer-meeting, 
 and to " take the service " in the village chapels on 
 Sunday evening. He was the most singularly placid, 
 even-tempered person I ever knew. I first became 
 acquainted with him when I was a child and he was 
 past middle life. What he was then, I am told, he 
 always was ; and I certainly never heard one single 
 violent word escape his lips. His habits, even when 
 young, had a tendency to harden. He went to sleep 
 after his mid-day dinner with the greatest regularity, 
 and he never could keep awake if he sat by a fire 
 after dark. I have seen him, when kneeling at 
 family worship and praying with his family, lose 
 himself for an instant and nod his head, to the con- 
 fusion of all who were around him. He is dead now, 
 but he lived to a good old age, which crept upon him 
 gradually, with no pain, and he passed away from this 
 world to the next in a peaceful doze. He never read 
 anything, for the simple reason that whenever he was 
 not at work or at chapel he slumbered. To the utter 
 amazement of everybody, it was announced one fine 
 day that Miss Leroy and he — George Butts — were to 
 be married. They were about the last people in 
 the world who, it was thought, could be brought to- 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 47 
 
 gether. My mother was stunned, and never completely 
 recovered. I have seen her, forty years after George 
 Butts' wedding-day, lift up her hands, and have heard 
 her call out with emotion, as fresh as if the event 
 were of yesterday, "What made that girl have George 
 I can not think — but there ! " What she meant by 
 the last two words we could not comprehend. Many 
 of her acquaintances interpreted them to mean that 
 she knew more than she dared communicate, but I 
 think they were mistaken. I am quite certain if she 
 had known anything she must have told it, and, 
 in the next place, the phrase " but there " was not 
 uncommon amongst women in our town, and was 
 supposed to mark the consciousness of a prudently 
 restrained ability to give an explanation of mysterious 
 phenomena in human relationships. For my own 
 part, I am just as much in the dark as my mother. 
 My father, who was a shrewd man, was always 
 puzzled, and could not read the riddle. He used to 
 say that he never thought George could have " made 
 up " to any young woman, and it was quite clear that 
 Miss Leroy did not either then or afterwards display 
 any violent affection for him. I have heard her 
 criticise and patronise him as a "good soul," but 
 incapable, as indeed he was, of all sympathy with her. 
 After marriage she went her way and he his. She 
 would get up early, as she was wont to do, and take 
 
48 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 her Bible into the fields while he was snoring. She 
 would then very likely suffer from a terrible head- 
 ache during the rest of the day, and lie down for 
 hours, letting the house manage itself as best it could. 
 What made her selection of George more obscure was 
 that she was much admired by many young fellows, 
 some of whom were certainly more akin to her 
 than he was ; and I have heard from one or two 
 reports of encouraging words, and even something 
 more than words, which she had vouchsafed to them. 
 A solution is impossible. The affinities, repulsions, 
 reasons in a nature like that of Miss Leroy's are so 
 secret and so subtle, working towards such incalcu- 
 lable and not-to-be predicted results, that to attempt 
 to make a major and minor premiss and an inevi- 
 table conclusion out of them would be useless. One 
 thing was clear, that by marrying George she gained 
 great freedom. If she had married anybody closer 
 to her, she might have jarred with him ; there might 
 have been collision and wreck as complete as if they 
 had been entirely opposed ; for she was not the kind 
 of person to accommodate herself to others even 
 in the matter of small differences. But George's road 
 through space lay entirely apart from hers, and there 
 was not the slightest chance of interference. She 
 was under the protection of a husband ; she could do 
 things that, as an unmarried woman, especially in a 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 49 
 
 foreign land, she could not do, and the compensatory- 
 sacrifice to her was small. This is really the only 
 attempt at elucidation I can give. She went regularly 
 all her life to chapel with George, but even when he 
 became deacon, and " supplied " the villages round, 
 she never would join the church as a member. She 
 never agreed with the minister, and he never could 
 make anything out of her. They did not quarrel, but 
 she thought nothing of his sermons, and he was per- 
 plexed and uncomfortable in the presence of a non- 
 descript who did not respond to any dogmatic state- 
 ment of the articles of religion, and who yet could 
 not be put aside as " one of those in the gallery " — that 
 is to say, as one of the ordinary unconverted, for she 
 used to quote hymns with an amazing fervour, and 
 she would quote them to him with a freedom and a 
 certain superiority which he might have expected 
 from an aged brother minister, but certainly not from 
 one of his own congregation. He was a preacher of 
 the Gospel, it was true ; and it was his duty, a duty 
 on which he insisted, to be " instant in season and 
 out of season " in saying spiritual things to his flock ; 
 but then they were things proper, decent, conven- 
 tional, uttered with gravity at suitable times — such 
 as were customary amongst all the ministers of the 
 denomination. It was not pleasant to be outbid in his 
 own department, especially by one who was not a 
 
50 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 communicant, and to be obliged, when he went on a 
 pastoral visit to a house in which Mrs. Butts hap- 
 pened to be, to sit still and hear her, regardless of 
 the minister's presence, conclude a short mystical 
 monologue with Cowper's verse — 
 
 " Exults our rising soul, 
 Disburdened of her load, 
 And swells unutterably full 
 Of glory and of God." 
 
 This was not pleasant to our minister, nor was it 
 pleasant to the minister's wife. But George Butts 
 held a responsible position in our community, and the 
 minister's wife held also a responsible position, so 
 that she taxed all her ingenuity to let her friends 
 understand at tea-parties what she thought of Mrs. 
 Butts without saying anything which could be the 
 ground of formal remonstrance. Thus did Mrs. Butts 
 live amongst us, as an Arabian bird with its peculiar 
 habits, cries, and plumage might live in one of our 
 barnyards with the ordinary barn-door fowls. 
 
 I was never happier when I was a boy than when 
 I was with Mrs. Butts at the mill, which George had 
 inherited. There was a grand freedom in her house. 
 The front door leading into the garden was always 
 open. There was no precise separation between the 
 house and the mill. The business and the dwelling- 
 place were mixed up together, and covered with flour. 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 51 
 
 Mr. Butts was in the habit of walking out of his mill 
 into the living-room every now and then, and never 
 dreamed when one o'clock came that it was necessary 
 for him to change his floury coat before he had his 
 dinner. His cap he would also often retain, and in 
 any weather, not extraordinarily cold, he would sit in 
 his shirt-sleeves. The garden was large and half- wild. 
 A man from the mill, if work was slack, gave a day 
 to it now and then, but it was not trimmed and 
 raked and combed like the other gardens in the town. 
 It was full of gooseberry trees, and I was permitted 
 to eat the gooseberries without stint. The mill-life, 
 too, was inexpressibly attractive — the dark chamber 
 with the great, green, dripping wheel in it so awfully 
 mysterious as the central life of the whole structure ; 
 the machinery connected with the wheel — I knew 
 not how ; the hole where the roach lay by the side 
 of the mill-tail in the eddy ; the haunts of the water- 
 rats which we used to hunt with Spot, the black and 
 tan terrier, and the still more exciting sport with 
 the ferrets — all this drew me down the lane perpetu- 
 ally. I liked, and even loved, Mrs. Butts, too, for her 
 own sake. Her kindness to me was unlimited, and 
 she was never overcome with the fear of " spoiling 
 me," which seemed the constant dread of most of my 
 hostesses. I never lost my love for her. It grew as 
 I grew, despite my mother's scarcely suppressed 
 
52 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 hostility to her, and .when I heard she was ill, and 
 was likely to die, I went to be with her. She was 
 eighty years old then. I sat by her bedside with her 
 hand in mine. I was there when she passed away, 
 and — but I have no mind and no power to say any 
 more, for all the memories of her affection and of the 
 sunny days by the water come over me and prevent 
 the calmness necessary for a chronicle. She with all 
 her faults and eccentricities will always have in my 
 heart a little chapel with an ever-burning light. She 
 was one of the very very few whom I have ever seen 
 who knew how to love a child. 
 
 Mrs. Butts and George had one son who was 
 named Clement. He was exactly my own age, and 
 naturally we were constant companions. We went 
 to the same school. He never distinguished himself 
 at his books, but he was chief amongst us. He had 
 a versatile talent for almost every accomplishment in 
 which we delighted, but he was not supreme in any 
 one of them. There were better cricketers, better 
 football players, better hands at setting a nightline, 
 better swimmers than Clem, but he could do some- 
 thing, and do it well, in all these departments. He 
 generally took up a thing with much eagerness for 
 a time, and then let it drop. He was foremost in 
 introducing new games and new fashions, which he 
 would permit to flourish for a time, and then super- 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 53 
 
 sede. As he grew up he displayed a taste for drawing 
 and music. He was soon able to copy little paintings 
 of flowers, or even little country scenes, and to play 
 a piece of no very great difficulty with tolerable 
 effect. But he never was taught by a master, and 
 never practised himself in elementary exercises and 
 studies, so that he was deficient in accuracy. When 
 the question came what was to be done with him 
 after he left school, his father naturally wished him 
 to go into the mill. Clem, however, set his face 
 steadily against this project, and his mother, who was 
 a believer in his genius, supported him. He actually 
 wanted to go to the University, a thing unheard of 
 in those days amongst our people ; but this was not 
 possible, and after dangling about for some time at 
 home, he obtained the post of usher in a school, an 
 occupation which he considered more congenial and 
 intellectual than that of grinding flour. Strange to 
 say, although he knew less than any of his colleagues, 
 he succeeded better than any of them. He managed 
 to impress a sense of his own importance upon every- 
 body, including the head-master. He slid into a 
 position of superiority above three or four colleagues 
 who would have shamed him at an examination, and 
 who uttered many a curse because they saw them- 
 selves surpassed and put in the shade by a stranger, 
 who, they were confident, could hardly construct a 
 
54 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 hexameter. He never quarrelled with them nor did 
 he grossly patronise them, but he always let them 
 know that he considered himself above them. His 
 reading was desultory ; in fact, everything he did was 
 desultory. He was not selfish in the ordinary sense 
 of the word. Kather was he distinguished by a large 
 and liberal open-handedness ; but he was liberal also 
 to himself to a remarkable degree, dressing himself 
 expensively, and spending a good deal of money in 
 luxuries. He was specially fond of insisting on his 
 half Trench origin, made a great deal of his mother, 
 was silent as to his father, and always signed him- 
 self C. Leroy Butts, although I don't believe the 
 second Christian name was given him in baptism. 
 Notwithstanding his generosity he was egotistical 
 and hollow at heart. He knew nothing of friendship 
 in the best sense of the word, but had a multitude 
 of acquaintances, whom he invariably sought amongst 
 those who were better off than himself. He was 
 popular with them, for no man knew better than he 
 how to get up an entertainment, or to make a success 
 of an evening party. He had not been at his school 
 for two years before he conceived the notion of 
 setting up for himself. He had not a penny, but he 
 borrowed easily what was wanted from somebody he 
 knew, and in a twelvemonth more he had a dozen 
 pupils. He took care to get the ablest subordinates 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 55 
 
 he could find, and he succeeded in passing a boy for 
 an open scholarship at Oxford, against two com- 
 petitors prepared by the very man whom he had 
 formerly served. After this he prospered greatly, 
 and would have prospered still more, if his love of 
 show and extravagance had not increased with his 
 income. His talents were sometimes taxed when 
 people who came to place their sons with him sup- 
 posed ignorantly that his origin and attainments 
 were what might be expected from his position ; and 
 poor Chalmers, a Glasgow M.A., who still taught, for 
 ;^8o a year, the third class in the establishment in 
 which Butts began life, had some bitter . stories on 
 that subject. Chalmers was a perfect scholar, but 
 he was not agreeable. He had black finger nails, 
 and wore dirty collars. Having a lively remembrance 
 of his friend's " general acquaintance " with Latin 
 prosody, Chalmers's opinion of Providence was much 
 modified when he discovered what Providence was 
 doing for Butts. Clem took to the Church when he 
 started for himself. It would have been madness 
 in him to remain a Dissenter. But in private, if it 
 suited his purpose, he could always be airily sceptical, 
 and he had a superficial acquaintance, second-hand, 
 with a multitude of books, many of them of an infidel 
 turn. I once rebuked him for his hypocrisy, and 
 his defence was that religious disputes were indif- 
 
56 MARK EUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 ferent to him, and that at any rate a man associates 
 with gentlemen if he is a churchman. Cultivation 
 and manners he thought to be of more importance 
 than Calvinism. I believe that he partly meant 
 what he said. He went to church because the 
 school would have failed if he had gone to chapel ; 
 but he was sufficiently keen-sighted and clever to be 
 beyond the petty quarrels of the sects, and a song 
 well sung was of much greater moment to him than 
 an essay on psedo-baptism. It was all very well of 
 Chalmers to revile him for his shallowness. He was 
 shallow, and yet he possessed in some mysterious 
 way a talent which I greatly coveted, and which in 
 this world is inestimably precious — the talent of 
 making people give way before him — a capacity of 
 self-impression. Chalmers could never have com- 
 manded anybody. He had no power whatever, even 
 when he was right, to put his will against the wills 
 of others, but yielded first this way and then the 
 other. Clem, on the contrary, without any difficulty 
 or any effort, could conquer all opposition, and 
 smilingly force everybody to do his bidding. 
 
 Clem had a peculiar theory with regard to his own 
 rights and those of the class to which he considered 
 that he belonged. He al ways j held implicitly and 
 sometimes explicitly that gifted people live under 
 a kind of dispensation of grace; the law existing 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 57 
 
 soMy for dull souls. "What in a clown is a crime 
 punishable by the laws of the land might in a man 
 of genius be a necessary development, or at any rate 
 an excusable offence. He had nothing to say for 
 the servant girl who had sinned with the shop- 
 man, but if artist or poet were to carry off another 
 man's wife, it might not be wrong. 
 
 He believed, and acted upon the belief, that the 
 inferior ought to render perpetual incense to the 
 superior, and that the superior should receive it as a 
 matter of course. When his father was ill he never 
 waited on him or sat up a single night with him. If 
 duty was disagreeable to him Clem, paid homage to it 
 afar off, but pleaded exemption. He admitted that 
 waiting on the sick is obligatory on people who are 
 fitted for it, and is very charming. Nothing was more 
 beautiful to him than tender, filial care spending itself 
 for a beloved object. But it was not his vocation. 
 His nerves were more finely ordered than those of 
 mankind generally, and the sight of disease and 
 suffering distressed him too much. Everything was 
 surrendered to him in the houses of his friends. If 
 any inconvenience was to be endured, he was the first 
 person to be protected from it, and he accepted the 
 greatest sacrifices, with a graceful acknowledgment, it 
 is true, but with no repulse. To what better purpose 
 could the best wine be put than in cherishing his 
 
58 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 imagination ? It was simple waste to allow it to be 
 poured out upon the earth, and to give it to a fool 
 was no better. After he succeeded so well in the 
 world, Clem, to a great extent, deserted me, although 
 I was his oldest friend and the friend of his child- 
 hood. I heard that he visited a good many rich 
 persons, that he made much of them, and they made 
 much of him. He kept up a kind of acquaintance 
 with me, not by writing to me, but by the very cheap 
 mode of sending me a newspaper now and then with 
 a marked paragraph in it announcing the exploits of 
 his school at a cricket-match, or occasionally with a 
 report of a lecture which he had delivered. He was 
 a decent orator, and from motives of business if from 
 no other, he not unfrequently spoke in public. One 
 or two of these lectures wounded me a good deal. 
 There was one in particular on As You Like It, in 
 which he held up to admiration the fidelity which is 
 so remarkable in Shakespeare, and lamented that in 
 these days it was so rare to find anything of the kind. 
 He thought that we were becoming more indifferent 
 to one another. He maintained, however, that man 
 should be everything to man, and he then enlarged 
 on the duty of really cultivating affection, of its 
 superiority to books, and the pleasure and profit of 
 self-denial. I do not mean to accuse Clem of down- 
 right hypocrisy. I have known many persons come 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 59 
 
 up from the country and go into raptures over a 
 playhouse sun and moon who have never bestowed 
 a glance or a thought on the real sun and moon to 
 be seen from their own doors ; and we are all aware 
 it by no means follows because we are moved to our 
 very depths by the spectacle of unrecognised, uncom- 
 plaining endurance in a novel, that therefore we can 
 step over the road to waste an hour or a sixpence 
 upon the unrecognised, uncomplaining endurance of 
 the poor lone woman left a widow in the little villa 
 there. I was annoyed with myself because Clem's 
 abandonment of me so much affected me. I wished 
 I could cut the rope and carelessly cast him adrift as 
 he had cast me adrift, but I could not. I never 
 could make out and cannot make out what was the 
 secret of his influence over me ; why I was unable to 
 say, " if you do not care for me I do not care for 
 you." I longed sometimes for complete rupture, so 
 that we might know exactly where we were, but it 
 never came. Gradually our intercourse grew thinner 
 and thinner, until at last I heard that he had been 
 spending a fortnight with some semi-aristocratic 
 acquaintance within five miles of me, and during the 
 whole of that time he never came near me. I met 
 him in a railway-station soon afterwards, when he 
 came up to me effusive and apparently affectionate. 
 " It was a real grief to me, my dear fellow," he said, 
 " that I could not call on you last month, but the truth 
 
6o MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 was I was so driven : they would make me go here and 
 go there, and I kept putting off my visit to you till it 
 was too late." Fortunately my train was just start- 
 ing, or I don't know what might have happened. I 
 said not a word ; shook hands with him ; got into the 
 carriage ; he waved his hat to me, and I pretended not 
 to see him, but I did see him, and saw him turn 
 round immediately to some well-dressed officer-like 
 gentleman with whom he walked laughing down the 
 platform. The rest of that day was black to me. I 
 cared for nothing. I passed away from the thought 
 of Clem, and dwelt upon the conviction which had 
 long possessed me that I was insignificant, that there 
 was nothing much in me, and it was this which 
 destroyed my peace. We may reconcile ourselves to 
 poverty and suffering, but few of us can endure the 
 conviction that there is nothing in us, and that con- 
 sequently we cannot expect anybody to gravitate 
 towards us with any forceful impulse. It is a bitter 
 experience. And yet there is consolation. The uni- 
 verse is infinite. In the presence of its celestial 
 magnitudes who is there who is really great or small, 
 and what is the difference between you and me, my 
 work and yours? I sought refuge in the idea of 
 GOD, the God of a starry night with its incompre- 
 hensible distances; and I was at peace, content to 
 be the meanest worm of all the millions that crawl 
 on the earth. 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 6i 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 A NECESSARY DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 The few friends M'ho have read the first part of my 
 autobiography may perhaps remember that in my 
 younger days I had engaged myself to a girl named 
 Ellen, from whom afterwards I parted. After some 
 two or three years she was left an orphan, and came 
 into the possession of a small property, over which 
 unfortunately she had complete power. She was 
 attractive and well-educated, and I heard long after 
 I had broken with her, and had ceased to have inter- 
 course with Butts, that the two were married. They, 
 of course, living so near together, had known one 
 another well, and Butts found her money useful. 
 How they agreed I knew not save by report, but 
 I was told that after the first child was born, the 
 only child they ever had, Butts grew indifferent 
 to her, and that she, to use my friend's expression, 
 "went off," by which I suppose he meant that 
 she faded. There happened in those days to live 
 
62 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 near Butts a small squire, married, but with no 
 family. He was a lethargic creature, about five- 
 and-thirty years old, farming eight hundred acres 
 of his own land. He did not, however, belong to 
 the farming class. He had been to Harrow, was 
 on the magistrates' bench, and associated with the 
 small aristocracy of the country, round. He was 
 like every other squire whom I remember in 
 my native county, and I can remember scores 
 of them. He read no books and tolerated the 
 usual conventional breaches of the moral law, but 
 was an intense worshipper of respectability, and 
 hated a scandal. On one point he differed from 
 his neighbours. He was a "Whig and they were 
 all Tories. I have said he read no books, and 
 this, on the whole, is true, but nevertheless he did 
 know something about the history of the early 
 part of the century, and he was rather fond at 
 political gatherings of making some allusion to Mr. 
 Fox. His father had sat in the House of Commons 
 when Fox was there, and had sternly opposed the 
 French war. I don't suppose that anybody not 
 actually in it — no Londoner certainly — can under- 
 stand the rigidity of the bonds which restricted 
 county society when I was young, and for ought I 
 know may restrict it now. There was with us one 
 huge and dark exception to the general uniformity. 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 63 
 
 The earl had broken loose, had ruined his estate, had 
 defied decorum and openly lived with strange women 
 at home and in Paris, but this black background 
 did but set off the otherwise universal adhesion to 
 the church and to authorised manners, an adhesion 
 tempered and rendered tolerable by port wine. It 
 must not, however, be supposed that human nature 
 was different from the human nature of to-day or a 
 thojjisand years ago. There were then, even as there 
 were a thousand years ago, and are to-day, small, 
 secret doors, connected with mysterious staircases, by 
 which access was gained to freedom; and men and 
 women, inmates of castles with walls a yard thick, 
 and impenetrable portcullises, sought those doors and 
 descended those stairs night and day. But nobody 
 knew, or if we did know, the silence was profound. 
 The broad-shouldered, yellow-haired Whig squire, 
 had a wife who was the opposite of him. She came 
 from a distant part of the country, and had been 
 educated in France. She was small, with black 
 hair, and yet with blue eyes. She spoke French 
 perfectly, was devoted to music, read French books, 
 and, although she was a constant attendant at 
 church, and gave no opportunity whatever for the 
 slightest suspicion, the matrons of the circle in 
 which she moved were never quite happy about her. 
 This was due partly to her knowledge of French, 
 
64 MARK RUTHERFOED'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 and partly to her having no children. Anything 
 more about her I do not know. She was beyond us, 
 and although I have seen her often enough I never 
 spoke to her. Butts, however, managed to become 
 a visitor at the squire's house. Fancy my going to 
 the squire's ! But Butts did, was accepted there, 
 and even dined there with a parson, and two or three 
 half-pay officers. The squire never called on Butts. 
 That was an understood thing, nor did Mrs. Butts 
 accompany her husband. That also was an under- 
 stood thing. It was strange that Butts could tolerate 
 and even court such a relationship. Most men 
 would scorn with the scorn of a personal insult an 
 invitation to a house from which their wives were 
 expressly excluded. The squire's lady and George 
 became great friends. She discovered that his 
 mother was a Frenchwoman, and this was a bond 
 between them. She discovered also that George 
 was artistic, that he was devotedly fond of music, 
 that he could draw a little, paint a little, and she 
 believed in the divine right of talent wherever it 
 mi<T^ht be found to assert a claim of equality with 
 those who were better born. The women in the 
 countryside were shy of her ; for the men she could 
 not possibly care, and no doubt she must at times 
 have got rather weary of her heavy husband with 
 his one outlook towards the universal in the person 
 
MAEK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 65 
 
 of George James Fox, and the Whig policy of 1803. 
 I am under some disadvantage in telling this part of 
 my story, because I was far away from home, and 
 only knew afterwards at second hand what the 
 course of events had been. But I learned them 
 from one who was intimately concerned, and I do 
 not think I can be mistaken on any essential point. 
 I imagine that by this time Mrs. Butts must have 
 become changed into what she was in later years. 
 She had grown older since she and I had parted; 
 she had seen trouble ; her child had been born, and 
 although she was not exactly estranged from George, 
 for neither he nor she would have admitted any 
 coolness, she had learned that she was nothing 
 specially to him. I have often noticed what an 
 imperceptible touch, what a slight shifting in the 
 balance of opposing forces, will alter the character. 
 I have observed a woman, for example, essentially 
 the same at twenty and at thirty — who is there 
 who is not always essentially the same ? — and yet, 
 what was a defect at twenty, has become trans- 
 formed and transfigured into a benignant virtue 
 at thirty; translating the whole nature from the 
 human to the divine. Some slight depression has 
 been wrought here, and some slight lift has been 
 given there, and beauty and order have miraculously 
 •emerged from what was chaotic. The same thing 
 
 £ 
 
66 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 may continually be noticed in the hereditary trans- 
 mission of qualities. The redeeming virtue of the 
 father palpably present in the son becomes his curse, 
 through a faint diminution of the strength of the 
 check which caused that virtue to be the father's 
 salvation. The propensity, too, which is a man's 
 evil genius, and leads him to madness and utter ruin, 
 gives vivid reality to all his words and thoughts, 
 and becomes all his strength, if by divine assist- 
 ance it can just be subdued and prevented from 
 rising in victorious insurrection. But this is a 
 digression, useful, however, in its way, because it 
 will explain Mrs. Butts when we come a little 
 nearer to her in the future. 
 
 For a time George's visits to the squire's house 
 always took place when the squire was at home, 
 but an amateur concert was to be arranged in which 
 George was to take part together with the squire's 
 lady. George consequently was obliged to go to the 
 Hall for the purpose of practising, and so it came 
 to pass that he was there at unusual hours and 
 when the master was afield. These morning and 
 afternoon calls did not cease when the concert was 
 over. George's wife did not know anything about 
 them, and, if she noticed his frequent absence, she 
 was met with an excuse. Perhaps the worst, or 
 almost the worst effect of relationships which we do 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 67 
 
 not like to acknowledge, is the secrecy and equito- 
 cation which they beget. From the very first 
 moment when the intimacy between the squire's 
 wife and George began to be anything more than 
 harmless, he was compelled to shuffle and to become 
 contemptible. At the same time I believe he de- 
 fended himself against himself with the weapons 
 which were ever ready when self rose against self 
 because of some wrong doing. He was not as 
 other men. It was absurd to class what he did with 
 what an ordinary person might do, although externally 
 his actions and those of the ordinary person might 
 resemble one another. I cannot trace the steps by 
 which the two sinners drew nearer and nearer together, 
 for the simple reason that this is an autobiography, 
 and not a novel. I do not know what the develop- 
 ment was, nor did anybody except the persons con- 
 cerned. Neither do I know what was the mental 
 history of Mrs. Butts during this unhappy period. 
 She seldom talked about it afterwards. I do, how- 
 ever, happen to recollect hearing her once say 
 that her greatest trouble was the cessation, from 
 some unknown cause, of George's attempts — they 
 were never many — to interest and amuse her. It 
 is easy to understand how this should be. If a 
 man is guilty of any defection from himself, of any- 
 thing of which he is ashamed, everything which is 
 
68 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 better becomes a farce to him. After he has been 
 betrayed by some passion, how can he pretend to the 
 perfect enjoyment of what is pure ? The moment he 
 feels any disposition to rise, he is stricken through as 
 if with an arrow, and he drops. JSTot until weeks, 
 months, or even years have elapsed, does he feel 
 justified in surrendering himself to a noble emotion. 
 I have heard of persons who have been able to 
 ascend easily and instantaneously from the mud 
 to the upper air, and descend as easily ; but to me 
 at least they are incomprehensible. George, less 
 than most men, suffered permanently, or indeed 
 in any way from remorse, because he was so 
 shielded by his peculiar philosophy; but I can 
 quite believe that when he got into the habit of 
 calling at the Hall at mid-day, his behaviour to 
 his wife changed. 
 
 One day in December the squire had gone out with 
 the hounds. George, going on from bad to worse, had 
 now reached the point of planning to be at the Hall 
 when the squire was not at home. On that particular 
 afternoon George was there. It was about half-past 
 four o'clock, and the master was not expected till six. 
 There had been some music, the lady accompanying, 
 and George singing. It was over, and George, sitting 
 down beside her at the piano, and pointing out with 
 his right hand some passage which had troubled him, 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 69 
 
 had placed his left arm on her shoulder, and round 
 her neck, she not resisting. He always swore after- 
 wards that never till then had such a familiarity as 
 this been permitted, and I believe that he did not 
 tell a lie. But what was there in that familiarity ? 
 The worst was already there, and it was through a 
 mere accident that it never showed itself. The 
 accident was this. The squire, for some unknown 
 reason, had returned earlier than usual, and dismount- 
 ing in the stable-yard, had walked round the garden 
 on the turf which came close to the windows of the 
 ground-floor. Passing the drawing-room window, 
 and looking in by the edge of the drawn-down blind, 
 he saw his wife and George just at the moment 
 described. He slipped round to the door, took off 
 his boots so that he might not be heard, and as 
 there was a large screen inside the room he was able 
 to enter it unobserved. George caught sight of him 
 just as he emerged from behind the screen, and 
 started up instantly in great confusion, the lady, with 
 greater presence of mind, remaining perfectly still. 
 Without a word the squire strode up to George, 
 struck out at him, caught him just over the 
 temple, and felled him instantaneously. He lay 
 for some time senseless, and what passed between 
 husband and wife I cannot say. After about ten 
 minutes, perhaps, George came to himself; there 
 
7o MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 was nobody to be seen; and he managed to get 
 up and crawl home. He told his wife he had 
 met with an accident ; that he would go to bed, 
 and that she should know all about it when he 
 was better. His forehead was dressed, and to bed 
 he went. That night Mrs. Butts had a letter. It 
 ran as follows : — 
 
 " Madam, — It may at first sight seem a harsh thing 
 for me to write and tell you what I have to say, but 
 I can assure you I do not mean to be anything but 
 kind to you, and I think it will be better, for reasons 
 which I will afterwards explain, that I should com- 
 municate with you rather than with your husband. 
 Tor some time past I have suspected that he was too 
 fond of my wife, and last night I caught him with 
 his arms round her neck. In a moment of not un- 
 justifiable anger I knocked him down. I have not 
 the honour of knowing you personally, but from 
 what I have heard of you I am sure that he has not 
 the slightest reason for playing with other women. 
 A man who will do what he has done will be very 
 likely to conceal from you the true cause of his 
 disaster, and if you know the cause you may perhaps 
 be able to reclaim him. If he has any sense of 
 honour left in him, and of what is due to you, he 
 will seek your pardon for his baseness, and you will 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 71 
 
 have a hold on him afterwards which you would not 
 have if you were in ignorance of what has happened. 
 For him I do not care a straw, but for you I feel 
 deeply, and I believe that my frankness with you, 
 although it may cause you much suffering now, will 
 save you more hereafter. I have only one condition 
 to make. Mr. Butts must leave this place, and never 
 let me see his face again. He has ruined my peace. 
 Nothing will be published through me, for, as far as I 
 can prevent it, I will have no public exposure. If 
 Mr. Butts were to remain here it would be dangerous 
 for us to meet, and probably everything, by some 
 chance, would become common property. — Believe me 
 to be, Madam, with many assurances of respect, truly 
 yours, ." 
 
 I cannot distinguish the precise proportion of 
 cruelty in this letter. Did the writer designedly 
 torture Butts by telling his wife, or did he really 
 think that she would in the end be happier be- 
 cause Butts would not have a secret reserved from 
 her, — a temptation to lying — and because with this 
 secret in her possession. Butts might perhaps be 
 restrained in future ? Nobody knows. All we know 
 is that there are very few human actions of which it 
 can be said that this or that taken by itself produced 
 them. With our inborn tendency to abstract, to 
 
72 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 separate mentally the concrete into factors which 
 do not exist separately, we are always disposed to 
 assign causes which are too simple, and which, in 
 fact, have no being in rerum natura. Nothing in 
 nature is propelled or impeded by one force acting 
 alone. There is no such thing, save in the brain of the 
 mathematician. I see no reason why even motives 
 diametrically opposite should not unite in one result- 
 ing deed, and think it very probable that the squire 
 was both cruel and merciful to the same person in 
 the letter ; influenced by exactly conflicting passions, 
 whose conflict ended so. 
 
 As to the squire and his wife they lived together 
 just as before. I do not think, that, excepting the 
 four persons concerned, anybody ever heard a syllable 
 about the affair, save myself a long while after- 
 wards. George, however, packed up and left the 
 town, after selling his business. He had a reputa- 
 tion for restlessness ; and his departure, although it 
 was sudden, was no surprise. He betook himself 
 to Australia, his wife going with him. I heard 
 that they had gone, and heard also that he was 
 tired of school-keeping in England, and had deter- 
 mined to try his fortune in another part of the 
 world. Our friendship had dwindled to nothing, 
 and I thought no more about him. Mrs. Butts 
 never uttered one word of reproach to her husband. 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 73 
 
 I cannot say that she loved him as she could have 
 loved, but she had accepted him, and she said to 
 herself that as perhaps it was through her lack of 
 sympathy with him that he had strayed, it was her 
 duty more and more to draw him to herself. She 
 had a divine disposition, not infrequent amongst 
 women, to seek in herself the reason for any wrong 
 which was done to her. That almost instinctive 
 tendency in men, to excuse, to transfer blame to 
 others, to be angry with somebody else when we 
 suffer from the consequences of our own misdeeds, 
 in her did not exist. 
 
 During almost the whole of her married life, before 
 this affair between the squire and George, Mrs. Butts 
 had had much trouble, although her trouble was, per- 
 haps, rather the absence of joy than the presence of 
 any poignant grief. She was much by herself. She 
 had never been a great reader, but in her frequent 
 solitude she was forced to do something in order to 
 obtain relief, and she naturally turned to the Bible. 
 It would be foolish to say that the Bible alone was 
 to be credited with the support she received. It 
 may only have been the occasion for a revelation of 
 the strength that was in her. Beading, however, 
 under such circumstances, is likely to be peculiarly 
 profitable. It is never so profitable as when it is 
 undertaken in order that a positive need may be 
 
74 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 satisfied or an inquiry answered. She discovered in 
 the Bible much that persons to whom it is a mere 
 literature would never find. The water of life was 
 not merely admirable to the eye ; she drank it, and 
 knew what a property it possessed for quenching 
 thirst. No doubt the thought of a heaven hereafter 
 was especially consolatory. She was able to endure, 
 and even to be happy because the vision of lengthen- 
 ing sorrow was bounded by a better world beyond. " A 
 very poor, barbarous gospel," thinks the philosopher 
 who rests on his Marcus Antoninus and Epictetus. 
 I do not mean to say, that in the shape in which 
 she believed this doctrine, it was not poor and bar- 
 barous, but yet, we all of ^^s, whatever our creed 
 may be, must lay hold at times for salvation upon 
 something like it. Those who have been plunged 
 up to the very lips in affliction know its necessity. 
 To such as these it is idle work for the prosperous 
 and the comfortable to preach satisfaction with the 
 life that now is. There are seasons when it is our 
 sole resource to recollect that in a few short years 
 we shall be at rest. While upon this subject I may 
 say, too, that some injustice has been done to the 
 Christian creed of immortality as an influence in 
 determining men's conduct. Paul preached the 
 imminent advent of Christ and besought his dis- 
 ciples, therefore, to watch, and we ask ourselves what 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 75 
 
 was the moral value to us of such an admonition. 
 But surely if we are to have any reasons for being 
 virtuous, this is as good as any other. It is just as 
 respectable to believe that we ought to abstain from 
 iniquity because Christ is at hand, and we expect 
 to meet Him, as to abstain from it because by our 
 abstention we shall be healthier or more prosperous. 
 Paul had a dream — an absurd dream let us call it — 
 of an immediate millennium, and of the return of 
 his Master surrounded with divine splendour, judg- 
 ing mankind and adjusting the balance between good 
 and eviL It was a baseless dream, and the enlight- 
 ened may call it ridiculous. It is anything but 
 that, it is the very opposite of that. Putting aside 
 its temporary mode of expression, it is the hope and 
 the prophecy of all noble hearts, a sign of their in- 
 ability to concur in the present condition of things. 
 
 Going back to George's wife ; she laid hold, as I 
 have said, upon heaven. The thought wrought in 
 her something more than forgetfulness of pain or the 
 expectation of counterpoising bliss. We can under- 
 stand what this something was, for although we 
 know no such heaven as hers, a new temper is 
 imparted to us, a new spirit breathed into us ; I was 
 about to say a new hope bestowed upon us, when 
 we consider that we live surrounded by the sound- 
 less depths in which the stars repose. Such a con- 
 
76 MARK HUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 sideration has a direct practical effect upon us, and 
 so had the future upon the mind of Mrs. Butts. 
 " Why dost thou judge thy brother," says Paul, " for 
 we shall all stand before the judgment seat of God." 
 Paul does not mean that God will punish him and 
 that we may rest satisfied that our enemy will be 
 turned into hell fire. Eather does he mean, what 
 we, too, feel, that, reflecting on the great idea of 
 God, and upon all that it involves, our animosities 
 are softened, and our heat against our brother is 
 cooled. 
 
 One or two reflections may perhaps be permitted 
 here on this passage in Mrs. Butts' history. 
 
 The fidelity of George's wife to him, if not entirely 
 due to the New Testament, was in a great measure 
 traceable to it. She had learned from the Epistle to 
 the Corinthians that charity beareth all things, 
 believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all 
 things ; and she interpreted this to mean, not merely 
 charity to those whom she loved by nature, but 
 charity to those with whom she was not in sympathy, 
 and who even wronged her. Christianity no doubt 
 does teach such a charity as this, a love which is to 
 be independent of mere personal likes and dislikes, 
 a love of the human in man. The natural man, the 
 man of this century, uncontrolled by Christianity, 
 considers himself a model of what is virtuous and 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 77 
 
 heroic if he really loves his friends, and he permits 
 all kinds of savage antipathies to those of his fellow 
 creatures with whom he is not in harmony. Jesus 
 on the other hand asks with His usual perfect sim- 
 plicity, " if ye love them which love you, what reward 
 have ye ? Do not even the publicans the same ? " It 
 would be a great step in advance for most of us to 
 love anybody, and the publicans of the time of 
 Jesus must have been a much more Christian set 
 than most Christians of the present day. But that 
 we should love those who do not love us is a height 
 never scaled now, except by a few of the elect in 
 whom Christ still survives. In the gospel of Luke, 
 also, Mrs. Butts read that she was to hope for 
 nothing again from her love, and that she was to be 
 merciful, as her Father in Heaven is merciful. That 
 is really the expression of the idea in morality, and 
 incalculable is the blessing that our great religious 
 Teacher should have been bold enough to teach the 
 idea, and not any limitation of it. He always taught 
 it, the inward born, the heavenly law towards which 
 everything strives. He always trusted it ; He did not 
 deal in exceptions ; He relied on it to the uttermost, 
 never despairing. This has always seemed to me to 
 be the real meaning of the word faith. It is a per- 
 manent confidence in the idea, a confidence never 
 to be broken down by apparent failure, or by 
 
78 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 examples by which ordinary people prove that quali- 
 fication is necessary. It was precisely because Jesus 
 taught the idea, and nothing below it, that He had 
 such authority over a soul like my friend's, and 
 the effect produced by Him could not have been 
 produced by anybody nearer to ordinary humanity. 
 
 It must be admitted, too, that the Calvinism of those 
 days had a powerful influence in enabling men and 
 women to endure, although I object to giving the 
 name of Calvin to a philosophy which is a necessity 
 in all ages. "Are not two sparrows sold for a 
 farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the 
 ground without your Father." This is the last word 
 which can be said. Nothing can go beyond it, and 
 at times it is the only ground which we feel does not 
 shake under our feet. All life is summed up, and 
 due account is taken of it, according to its degree. 
 Mrs. Butts' Calvinism, however, hardly took the usual 
 dogmatic form. She was too simple to penetrate the 
 depths of metaphysical theology, and she never would 
 have dared to set down any of her fellow creatures as 
 irrevocably lost. She adapted the Calvinistic creed to 
 something which suited her. For example, she fully 
 understood what St. Paul means when he tells the 
 Thessalonians that because they were called, therefore 
 they were to stand fast. She thought with Paul that 
 being called ; having a duty plainly laid upon her ; 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. ' 79 
 
 being bidden as if by a general to do something, she 
 ought to stand fast; and she stood fast, supported 
 against all pressure by the consciousness of fulfill- 
 ing the special orders of One who was her superior. 
 There is no doubt that this dogma of a personal 
 calling is a great consolation, and is a great truth. 
 Looking at the masses of humanity, driven this way 
 and that way, the Christian teaching is apt to be 
 forgotten that for each individual soul there is a 
 vocation as real as if that soul were alone upon the 
 planet. Yet it is a fact. We are blinded to it and 
 can hardly believe it, because of the impotency of 
 our little intellects to conceive a destiny which shall 
 take care of every atom of life on the globe : we are 
 compelled to think that in such vast crowds of people 
 as we behold, individuals must elude the eye of the 
 Maker, and be swept into forgetfulness. But the 
 truth of truths is that the mind of the universe is 
 not our mind, or at any rate controlled by our 
 limitations. 
 
 This has been a long digression which I did not 
 intend, but I could not help it. I was anxious to 
 show how Mrs. Butts met her trouble through her 
 religion. The apostle says that " they drank of that 
 spiritual Bock which followed them, and that Bock 
 was Christ" That was true of her. The way 
 through the desert was not annihilated ; the path 
 
8o MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 remained stony and sore to the feet, but it was 
 accompanied to the end by a sweet stream to which 
 she could turn aside, and from which she could ob- 
 tain refreshment and strength. 
 
 Just about the time that we began our meetings 
 near Drury Lane, I heard that George was dead; 
 that he had died abroad. I knew nothing more ; I 
 thought about him and his wife perhaps for a day, 
 but I had parted from both long ago, and I went on 
 ■with my work. 
 
 \ y ao si   
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 8i 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 WHAT IT ALL CAME TO. 
 
 For two years or thereabouts, M'Kay and myself con- 
 tinued our labours in the Drury Lane neighbourhood. 
 There is a proverb that it is the first step which is 
 the most difficult in the achievement of any object, 
 and the proverb has been altered by ascribing the 
 main part of the difficulty to the last step. Neither 
 the first nor the last has been the difficult step with 
 me, but rather what lies between. The first is usually 
 helped by the excitement and the promise of new 
 beginnings, and the last by the prospect of triumph ; 
 but the intermediate path is unassisted by enthusiasm, 
 and it is here we are so likely to faint. M'Kay 
 nevertheless persevered, supporting me, who other- 
 wise might have been tempted to despair, and at the 
 end of the two years we were still at our posts. We 
 had, however, learned something. We had learned 
 that we could not make the slightest impression on 
 Drury Lane proper. Now and then an idler, or some- 
 
82 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 times a dozen, lounged in, but what was said was 
 strange to them ; they were out of their own world 
 as completely as if they were in another planet, 
 and all our efforts to reach them by simplicity of 
 statement and by talking about things which we 
 supposed would interest them utterly failed, I 
 did not know, till I came in actual contact with 
 them, how far away the classes which lie at the 
 bottom of great cities are from those above them ; 
 how completely they are inaccessible to motives 
 which act upon ordinary human beings, and how 
 deeply they are sunk beyond ray of sun or stars, 
 immersed in the selfishness naturally begotten of 
 their incessant struggle for existence and the inces- 
 sant warfare with society. It was an awful thought 
 to me, ever present on those Sundays, and haunting 
 me at other times, that men, women, and children 
 were living in such brutish degradation, and that as 
 they died others would take their place. Our civili- 
 zation seemed nothing but a thin film or crust lying 
 over a bottomless pit, and I often wondered whether 
 some day the pit would not break up through it 
 and destroy us all. Great towns are answerable for 
 the creation and maintenance of the masses of 
 dark, impenetrable, subterranean blackguardism, with 
 which we became acquainted. The filthy gloom of 
 the sky, the dirt of the street, the absence of fresh 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 83 
 
 air, the herding of the poor into huge districts which 
 cannot be opened up by those who would do good^ 
 are tremendous agencies of corruption which are 
 active at such a rate that it is appalling to reflect 
 what our future will be if the accumulation of 
 population be not checked. To stand face to face 
 with the insoluble is not pleasant. A man will do 
 anything rather than confess it is beyond him. He 
 will create pleasant fictions, and fancy a possible 
 escape here and there, but this problem of Drury 
 Lane was round and hard like a ball of adamant. 
 The only thing I could do was faintly, and 1 was 
 about to say stupidly, hope — for I had no rational, 
 tangible grounds for hoping — that some force of 
 which we are not now aware may some day develop 
 itself, which will be able to resist and remove the 
 pressure which sweeps and crushes into a hell, 
 sealed from the upper air, millions of human souls 
 every year in one quarter of the globe alone. 
 
 M'Kay's dreams therefore were not realised, and 
 yet it would be a mistake to say that they ended 
 in nothing. It often happens that a grand attempt, 
 although it may fail — miserably fail — is fruitful in 
 the end and leaves a result, not the hoped for result 
 it is true, but one which would never have been 
 attained without it. A youth strives after the im- 
 possible, and he is apt to break his heart because he 
 
84 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 has never even touched it, but nevertheless his whole 
 life is the sweeter for the striving ; and the archer 
 who aims at a mark a hundred yards away will send 
 his arrow further than he who sets his bow and his 
 arm for fifty yards. So it was with M'Kay. He did 
 not convert Drury Lane, but he saved two or three. 
 One man whom we came to know was a labourer in 
 Somerset House, a kind of coal porter employed in 
 carrying coals into the offices there from the cellars 
 below, and in other menial duties. He had about 
 fifteen or sixteen shillings a week, and as the coals 
 must necessarily be in the different rooms before ten 
 o'clock in the morning, he began work early, and was 
 obliged to live within an easy distance of the Strand. 
 This man had originally been a small tradesman in 
 a country town. He was honest, but he never could 
 or never would push his trade in any way. He was 
 fond of all kinds of little mechanical contrivings, 
 disliked his shop, and ought to have been a carpenter 
 or cabinetmaker — not as a master but as a journey- 
 man, for he had no ability whatever to control men 
 or direct large operations. He was married, and a 
 sense of duty to his wife — he fortunately had no 
 children — induced him to stand or sit behind his 
 counter with regularity, but people would not 
 come to buy of him, because he never seemed to con- 
 sider their buying as any favour conferred on him ; 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 85 
 
 and thus he became gradually displaced by his more 
 energetic or more obsequious rivals. In the end he 
 was obliged to put up his shutters. Unhappily for 
 him, he had never been a very ardent attendant at 
 any of the places of religious worship in the town, 
 and he had therefore no organisation to help him. 
 Not being master of any craft, he was in a pitiable 
 plight, and was slowly sinking, when he applied to 
 the solicitor of the political party for which he had 
 always voted to assist him. The solicitor applied to 
 the member, and the member, much regretting the 
 difficulty of obtaining places for grown-up men, and 
 explaining the pressure upon the Treasury, wrote to say 
 that the only post at his disposal was that of labourer. 
 He would have liked to offer a messengership, but the 
 Treasury had hundreds of applications from great 
 people who wished to dispose of favourite footmen 
 whose services they no longer required. Our friend 
 Taylor had by this time been brought very low, or he 
 would have held out for something better, but there 
 was nothing to be done. He was starving, and he 
 therefore accepted ; came to London ; got a room, one 
 room only, near Clare Market, and began his new 
 duties. He was able to pick up a shilling or two 
 more weekly by going on errands for the clerks 
 during his slack time in the day, so that altogether 
 on the average he made up about eighteen shillings. 
 
86 MARK EUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 Wandering about the Clare Market region on Sunday- 
 he found us out, came in, and remained constant. 
 Naturally, as we had so few adherents, we gradually 
 knew these few very intimately, and Taylor would 
 often spend a holiday or part of the Sunday with us. 
 He was not eminent for anything in particular, and 
 an educated man, selecting as his friends those only 
 M'ho stand for something, would not have taken the 
 slightest notice of him. He had read nothing par- 
 ticular, and thought nothing particular — he was 
 indeed one of the masses — but in this respect 
 different, that he had not the tendency to association, 
 aggregation, or clanship which belong to the masses 
 generally. He was different, of course, in all his 
 ways from his neighbours born and bred to Clare 
 Market and its alleys. Although commonplace, he 
 had demands made upon him for an endurance by no 
 means commonplace, and he had sorrows which were 
 • as exquisite as those of his betters. He did not much 
 resent his poverty. To that I think he would have 
 submitted, and in fact he did submit to it cheerfully. 
 What rankled in him was the brutal disregard of him 
 at the ofi&ce. He was a servant of servants. The 
 messengers, who themselves were exposed to all the 
 petty tyrannies of the clerks, and dared not reply, 
 were Taylor's masters, and sought a compensation for 
 their own serfdom by making his ten times worse. 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 87 
 
 The head messenger, who had been a butler, swore at 
 him, and if Taylor had " answered " he would have 
 been reported. He had never been a person of much 
 importance, but at least he had been independent, 
 and it was a new experience for him to feel that he 
 was a thing fit for nothing but to be cuffed and 
 cursed. Upon this point he used to get eloquent — 
 as eloquent as he could be, for he had small power of 
 expression, and he would describe to me the despair 
 which came over him down in those dark vaults at 
 the prospect of life continuing after this fashion, and 
 with not the minutest gleam of light even at the very 
 end. Nobody ever cared to know the most ordinary 
 facts about him. Nobody inquired whether he was 
 married or single ; nobody troubled himself when he 
 was ill. If he was away, his pay was stopped ; and 
 when he returned to work nobody asked if he was 
 better. Who can wonder that at first, when he was 
 an utter stranger in a strange land, he was overcome 
 by the situation, and that the world was to him a 
 dungeon worse than that of Chillon ? Who can 
 wonder that he was becoming reckless ? A little 
 more of such a life would have transformed him 
 into a brute. He had not the ability to become revo- 
 lutionary, or it would have made him a conspirator. 
 Suffering of any kind is hard to bear, but the suffer- 
 ing which especially damages character is that which 
 
88 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 is caused by the neglect or oppression of man. At 
 any rate it was so in Taylor's case. I believe that 
 he would have been patient under any inevitable 
 ordinance of nature, but he could not lie still under 
 contempt, the knowledge that to those about him he 
 was of less consequence than the mud under their 
 feet. He was timid and, after his failure as a shop- 
 keeper, and the near approach to the workhouse, he 
 dreaded above everything being again cast adrift. 
 Strange conflict arose in him, for the insults to which 
 he was exposed drove him almost to madness ; 
 and yet the dread of dismissal in a moment checked 
 him when he was about to " fire up," as he called it, 
 and reduced him to a silence which was torture. 
 Once he was ordered to bring some coals for the 
 messenger's lobby. The man who gave him the 
 order, finding that he was a long time bringing 
 them, went to the top of the stairs, and bawled 
 after him with an oath to make haste. The reason 
 of the delay was that Taylor had two loads to bring 
 up — one for somebody else. When he got to the 
 top of the steps, the messenger with another oath 
 took the coals, and saying that he " would teach him 
 to skulk there again," kicked the other coal-scuttle 
 down to the bottom. Taylor himself told me this ; 
 and yet, although he would have rejoiced if the man 
 had dropped down dead, and would willingly have 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 89 
 
 shot him, he was dumb. The check operated in an 
 instant. He saw himself without a penny, and in 
 the streets. He went down into the cellar, and 
 raged and wept for an hour. Had he been a work- 
 man, he would probably have throttled his enemy, 
 or tried to do it, or what is more likely, his enemy 
 would not have dared to treat him in such fashion, 
 but he was powerless, and once losing his situation 
 he would have sunk down into the gutter, whence 
 he would have been swept by the parish into the 
 indiscriminate heap of London pauperism, and carted 
 away to the Union, a conclusion which was worse to 
 him than being hung. 
 
 Another of our friends was a waiter in one of the 
 public-houses and chop-houses combined, of which 
 there are so many in the Strand. He lived in a 
 wretched alley which ran from St, Clement's Church 
 to Boswell Court — I have forgotten its name — a dark 
 crowded passage. He was a man of about sixty — 
 invariably called John, without the addition of any 
 surname, I knew him long before we opened our 
 room, for I was in the habit of frequently visiting 
 the chop-house in which he served. His hours were 
 incredible. He began at nine o'clock in the morning 
 with sweeping the dining-room, cleaning the tables and 
 the gas globes, and at twelve business commenced 
 with early luncheons, Not till three-quarters of an 
 
90 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 hour after midnight could he leave, for the house was 
 much used by persons who supped there after the 
 theatres. During almost the whole of this time he 
 was on his legs, and very often he was unable to find 
 two minutes in the day in which to get his dinner. 
 Sundays, however, were free. John was not a head 
 waiter, but merely a subordinate, and I never knew 
 why at his time of life he had not risen to a better 
 position. He used to say that "things had been 
 against him," and I had no right to seek for further 
 explanations. He was married, and had had three 
 children, of whom one only was living — a boy of ten 
 years old, whom he hoped to get into the public- 
 house as a potboy for a beginning. Like Taylor, the 
 world had well-nigh overpowered John entirely — 
 crushed him out of all shape, so that what he was 
 originally, or might have been, it was almost impos- 
 sible to tell. There was no particular character left 
 in him. He may once have been this or that, but 
 every angle now was knocked off, as it is knocked 
 oft' from the rounded pebbles which for ages have 
 been dragged up and down the beach by the waves. 
 For a lifetime he had been exposed to all sorts of 
 whims and caprices, generally speaking of the most 
 unreasonable kind, and he had become so trained to 
 take everything without remonstrance or murmur- 
 ing that every cross in his life came to him as 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 91 
 
 a chop alleged by an irritated customer to be raw or 
 done to a cinder. Poor wretcli ! lie had one trouble, 
 however, which he could not accept with such equa- 
 nimity, or rather with such indifference. His wife 
 was a drunkard. This was an awful trial to him. 
 The worst consequence was that his boy knew his 
 mother got drunk. The neighbours kindly enough 
 volunteered to look after the little man when he was 
 not at school, and they would waylay him and give 
 him dinner when his mother was intoxicated ; but 
 frequently he was the first when he returned to find 
 out that there nothing for him to eat, and many a time 
 he got up at night as late as twelve o'clock, crawled 
 downstairs, and went off to his father to tell him 
 that "she was very bad, and he could not go to 
 sleep." The father, then, had to keep his son in the 
 Strand till it was time to close, take him back, and 
 manage in the best way he could. Over and over 
 again was he obliged to sit by this wretched 
 woman's bedside till breakfast time, and then had 
 to go to work as usual. Let anybody who has seen 
 a case of this kind say whether the State ought not 
 to provide for the relief of such men as John, and 
 whether he ought not to have been able to send his 
 wife away to some institution where she might have 
 been tended and restrained from destroying, not merely 
 
92 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 herself, but her husband and her child. John hardly 
 bore up under this sorrow. A man may endure 
 much, provided he knows that he will be well sup- 
 ported when his day's toil is over ; but if the help 
 for which he looks fails, he falls. Oh those weary 
 days in that dark back dining-room, from which 
 not a square inch of sky was visible ! weary days 
 haunted by a fear that while he was there unknown 
 mischief was being done ! weary days, whose close 
 nevertheless he dreaded ! Beaten down, baffled, 
 disappointed, if we are in tolerable health we can 
 contrive to live on some almost impossible chance, 
 some most distant flicker of hope. It is astonishing 
 how minute a crack in the heavy uniform cloud will 
 relieve us ; but when with all our searching we can 
 see nothing, then at last we sink. Such was John's 
 case when I first came to know him. He attracted 
 me rather, and bit by bit he confided his story to 
 me. He found out that I might be trusted, and that I 
 could sympathise, and he told me what he had never 
 told to anybody before. I was curious to discover 
 whether religion had done anything for him, and I 
 put the question to him in an indirect way. His 
 answer was that " some on 'em say there's a better 
 world where everything will be put right, but some- 
 how it seemed too good to be true." That was his 
 
MARK RUTHEEFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 93 
 
 reason for disbelief, and heaven had not the slightest 
 effect on him. He found out the room, and was one 
 of our most constant friends. 
 
 Another friend was of a totally different type. 
 His name was Cardinal. He was a Yorkshireman, 
 broad-shouldered, ruddy in the face, short-necked, 
 inclined apparently to apoplexy, and certainly to 
 passion. He was a commercial traveller in the 
 cloth trade, and as he had the southern counties 
 for his district, London was his home when he was 
 not upon his journeys. His wife was a curious 
 contrast to him. She was dark-haired, pinched-up, 
 thin-lipped, and always seemed as if she suffered 
 from some chronic pain or gnawing — not sufficient 
 to make her ill, but sufficient to make her miserable. 
 They had no children. Cardinal in early life had 
 been a member of an orthodox Dissenting consre- 
 gation, but he had fallen away. He had nobody to 
 guide him, and the position into which he fell was 
 peculiar. He never busied himself about religion 
 or philosophy ; indeed he had had no training 
 which would have led him to take an interest in 
 abstract questions, but he read all kinds of ro- 
 mances and poetry without any order and upon no 
 system. He had no discriminating faculty, and 
 mixed up together the most heterogeneous mass of 
 trumpery novels, French translations, and the best 
 
94 MARK EUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 English authors, provided only they were unworldly 
 or sentimental. Neither did he know how far to 
 take what he read and use it in his daily life. He 
 would often select some fantastical motive which he 
 had found set forth as operative in one of his heroes, 
 and he would bring it into his business, much to the 
 astonishment of his masters and customers. For 
 this reason he was not stable. He changed em- 
 ployers two or three times ; and, so far as I could 
 make out, his ground of objection to each of the 
 firms whom he left might have been a ground of 
 dislike in a girl to a suitor, but certainly nothing 
 more. During the intervals of his engagements, 
 unless he was pressed for money, he did nothing — 
 not from laziness, but because he had got a notion 
 in his head that his mind wanted rest and rein- 
 vigoration. His habit then was to consume the 
 whole day — day after day — in reading or in walk- 
 ing out by himself. It may easily be supposed that 
 with a temperament like his, and with nobody near 
 him to take him by the hand, he made great mis- 
 takes. His wife and he cared nothing for one 
 another, but she was jealous to the last degree. I 
 never saw such jealousy. It was strange that, 
 although she almost hated him, she watched him 
 with feline sharpness and patience, and would even 
 have killed any woman whom she knew had won 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 95 
 
 his affection. He, on the other hand, openly avowed 
 that marriage without love was nothing, and flaunted 
 without the least modification the most ideal theories 
 as to the relation between man and woman. Not 
 that he ever went actually wrong. His boyish edu- 
 cation, his natural purity, and a fear never wholly 
 suppressed, restrained him. He exasperated people 
 by his impracticability, and it must be acknowledged 
 that it is very irritating in a difficult complexity 
 demanding the gravest consideration — the balancing 
 of this against that — to hear a man suddenly pro- 
 pose some naked principle with which everybody is 
 acquainted, and decide by it solely. I came to 
 know him through M'Kay, who had known him for 
 years ; but M'Kay at last broke out against him, and 
 called him a stupid fool when he threw up a hand- 
 some salary and refused to serve any longer under a 
 house which had always treated him well, because 
 they, moving with the times, had determined to 
 offer their customers a cheaper description of goods, 
 which Cardinal thought was dishonest. M'Kay 
 said, and said truly, that many poor persons would 
 buy these goods who could buy nothing else, and 
 that Cardinal, before yielding to such scruples, ought 
 to satisfy himself that, by yielding, he would not 
 become a burden upon others less fanciful. This 
 was just what happened. Cardinal could get no 
 
96 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 work again for a long time, and had to borrow 
 money. I was sorry ; but for my part, this and 
 other eccentricities did not disturb my confidence 
 in him. He was an honest, affectionate soul, and 
 his peculiarities were just one necessary result of 
 the total chaos of a time without any moral guid- 
 ance. With no church, no philosophy, no religion, 
 the wonder is that anybody on whom use and wont 
 relax their hold should ever do anything more than 
 blindly rove hither and thither, arriving at nothing. 
 Cardinal was adrift, like thousands and hundreds 
 of thousands of others, and amidst the storm and 
 pitchy darkness of the night, thousands and hun- 
 dreds of thousands of voices offer us pilotage. It 
 spoke well for him that he did nothing worse than 
 take a few useless phantoms on board which did 
 him no harm, and that he held fast to his own 
 instinct for truth and goodness. I never let myself 
 be annoyed by what he produced to me from his 
 books. All that I discarded. Underneath all that 
 was a solid worth which I loved, and which was 
 mostly not vocal. What was vocal in him was, I 
 am bound to say, not of much value. 
 
 About the time when our room opened, Mrs. 
 Cardinal had become almost insupportable to her 
 husband. Poor woman; I always pitied her; she 
 was alone sometimes for a fortnight at a stretch; 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 97 
 
 she read nothing ; there was no child to occupy her 
 thoughts ; she knew that her husband lived in a 
 world into which she never entered, and she had 
 nothing to do but to brood over imaginary infi- 
 delities. She was literally possessed, and who shall 
 be hard upon her ? Nobody cared for her ; every- 
 body with whom her husband associated disliked 
 her, and she knew perfectly well they never asked 
 her to their houses except for his sake. Cardinal 
 vowed at last he wf)uld endure her no longer, and 
 that they must separate. He was induced one 
 Sunday morning, when his resolution was strong 
 within him, and he was just about to give effect to 
 it, to come with us. The quiet seemed to soothe 
 him, and he went home with me afterwards. He 
 was not slow to disclose to me his miserable condi- 
 tion, and his resolve to change it. I do not know 
 now what I said, but it appeared to me that he 
 ought not to change it, and that change would be 
 for him most perilous. I thought that with a little 
 care life might become at least bearable with his 
 wife; that by treating her not so much as if she 
 were criminal, but as if she were diseased, hatred 
 might pass into pity, and pity into merciful tender- 
 ness to her, and that they might dwell together 
 upon terms not harder than those upon which many 
 persons who have made mistakes in youth agree to 
 
 G 
 
98 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 remain with each other; terms which, after much 
 consideration, they adjudge it better to accept than 
 to break loose, and bring upon themselves and those 
 connected with them all that open rupture involves. 
 The difficulty was to get Cardinal to give up his 
 theory of what two abstract human beings should do 
 between whom no love exists. It seemed to him some- 
 thing like atheism to forsake his clearly-discerned, 
 simple rule for a course which was dictated by no 
 easily-grasped higher law, and s-t was very difficult 
 to persuade him that there is anything of equal 
 authority in a law less rigid in its outline. How- 
 ever, he went home. I called on him some time 
 afterwards, and saw that a peace, or at any rate a 
 truce, was proclaimed, which lasted up to the day 
 of his death. M'Kay and I agreed to make as 
 much of Mrs. Cardinal as we could, and yielding to 
 urgent invitation, she came to the room. This won- 
 derfully helped to heal her. She began to feel that 
 she was not overlooked, put on one side, or despised, 
 and the bonds which bound her constricted lips into 
 bitterness were loosened. 
 
 Another friend, and the last whom I shall name, 
 was a young man named Clark. He was lame, and 
 had been so from childhood. His father was a 
 tradesman, working hard from early morning till late 
 at night, and burdened with a number of children. 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 99 
 
 The boy Eichard, shut out from the companionship 
 of his fellows, had a great love of books. When he 
 left school his father did not know what to do with 
 him — in fact there was only one occupation open 
 to him, and that was clerical work of one kind or 
 another. At last he got a place in a house in Fleet 
 Street, which did a large business in those days in 
 sending newspapers into the country. His whole 
 occupation all day long was to write addresses, and 
 for this he received twenty-five shillings a week, his 
 hours being from nine o'clock till seven. The office 
 in which he sat was crowded, and in order to 
 squeeze the staff into the smallest space, rent being 
 dear, a gallery liad been run round the wall about 
 four feet from the ceiling. This was provided with 
 desks and gas lamps, and up there Clark sat, arti- 
 ficial light being necessary four days out of five. 
 He came straight from the town in which his father 
 lived to Fleet Street, and once settled in it there 
 seemed no chance of change for the better. He 
 knew what his father's struggles were; he could 
 not go back to him, and he had not the energy to 
 attempt to lift himself. It is very doubtful too 
 whether he could have succeeded in achieving any 
 improvement, whatever his energy might have been. 
 He had got lodgings in Newcastle Street, and to 
 these he returned in the evening, remaining there 
 
loo MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 alone with his little library, and seldom moving out 
 of doors. He was unhealthy constitutionally, and 
 his habits contributed to make him more so. Every- 
 thing which he saw which was good seemed only to 
 sharpen the contrast between himself and his lot, 
 and his reading was a curse to him rather than a 
 blessing. I sometimes wished that he had never 
 inherited any love whatever for what is usually 
 considered to be the Best, and that he had been 
 endowed with an organisation coarse and common- 
 place, like that of his colleagues. If he went into 
 company which suited him, or read anything which 
 interested him, it seemed as if the ten hours of the 
 gallery in Fleet Street had been made thereby only 
 the more insupportable, and his habitual mood was 
 one of despondency, so that his fellow clerks who 
 knew his tastes not unnaturally asked what was the 
 use of them if they only made him wretched; and 
 they were more than ever convinced that in their 
 amusements lay true happiness. Habit, which is 
 the saviour of most of us, the opiate which dulls 
 the otherwise unbearable miseries of life, only served 
 to make Clark more sensitive. The monotony of 
 that perpetual address-copying was terrible. He 
 has told me with a kind of shame what an effect it 
 had upon him — that sometimes for days he would 
 feed upon the prospect of the most childish trifle 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. loi 
 
 because it would break in some slight degree the 
 uniformity of his toil. For example, he would 
 sometimes change from quill to steel pens and back 
 again, and he found himself actually looking for- 
 ward with a kind of joy — merely because of the varia- 
 tion — to the day on which he had fixed to go back to 
 the quill after using steel. He would determine, 
 two or three days beforehand, to get up earlier, and 
 to walk to Fleet Street by way of Great Queen 
 Street and Lincoln's Inn Fields, and upon this he 
 would subsist till the day came. He could make 
 no longer excursions because of his lameness. All 
 this may sound very much like simple silliness to 
 most people, but those who have not been bound to 
 a wheel do not know what thoughts come into the 
 head of the strongest man who is extended on it. 
 Clark sat side by side in his gallery with other 
 young men of rather a degraded type, and the con- 
 finement bred in them a filthy grossness with which 
 they tormented him. They excited in him loath- 
 some images, from which he could not free himself 
 either by day or night. He was peculiarly weak in 
 his inability to cast off impressions, or to get rid of 
 mental pictures when once formed, and his dis- 
 tress at being haunted by these hateful, disgusting 
 thoughts was pitiable. They were in fact almost 
 more than thoughts, they were transportations out 
 
I02 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 of himself — real visions. It would have been his sal- 
 vation if he could have been a carpenter or a brick- 
 layer, in country air, but this could not be. 
 
 Clark had no power to think connectedly to a con- 
 clusion. When an idea came into his head, he would 
 dwell upon it incessantly, and no correction of the 
 false path upon which it set him was possible, be- 
 cause he avoided society. Work over, he was so 
 sick of people that he went back to himself. So it 
 came to pass that when brought into company, what 
 he believed and cherished was frequently found to 
 be open to obvious objection, and was often nothing 
 better than nonsense which was rudely, and as he 
 himself was forced to admit, justly overthrown. He 
 ought to have been surrounded with intelligent 
 friends, who would have enabled him to see con- 
 tinually the other side, and who would have prevented 
 his long and useless wanderings. Like many other 
 persons, too, whom I have known — ^just in proportion 
 to his lack of penetrative power was his tendency to 
 occupy himself with difficult questions. By a cruel 
 destiny he was impelled to dabble in matters for 
 which he was totally unfitted. He never could go 
 beyond his author a single step, and he lost himself 
 in endless mazes. If he could but have been per- 
 suaded to content himself with sweet presentations 
 of wholesome happy existence, with stories and with 
 
MARK RUTHERFOED'S DELIVERANCE. 103 
 
 history, how much better it would have been for 
 him ! He had had no proper training whatever for 
 anything more, he was ignorant of the exact mean- 
 ing of the proper terminology of science, and an 
 unlucky day it was for him when he picked up 
 on a bookstall some very early translation of some 
 German book on philosophy. One reason, as may 
 be conjectured, for his mistakes was his educa- 
 tion in dissenting Calvinism, a religion which is 
 entirely metaphysical, and encourages, unhappily, in 
 everybody a taste for tremendous problems. So 
 long as Calvinism is unshaken, the mischief is 
 often not obvious, because a ready solution taken 
 on trust is provided; but when doubts arise, the 
 evil results become apparent, and the poor helpless 
 victim, totally at a loss, is torn first in this direction 
 and then in the other, and cannot let these questions 
 alone. He has been taught to believe they are con- 
 nected ^with salvation, and he is compelled still to 
 busy himself with them, rather than with simple 
 external piety. 
 
I04 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 DRURY LANE THEOLOGY. 
 
 Such were some of our disciples. I do not think 
 that church or chapel would have done them much 
 good. Preachers are like unskilled doctors with the 
 same pill and draught for every complaint. They 
 do not know where the fatal spot lies on lung or 
 heart or nerve which robs us of life. If any of 
 these persons just described had gone to church or 
 chapel they would have heard discourses on the 
 usual set topics, none of which would have con- 
 cerned them. Their trouble was not the forgiveness 
 of sins, the fallacies of Arianism, the personality of 
 the Holy Ghost, or the doctrine of the Eucharist. 
 They all wanted something distinctly. They had 
 great gaping needs which they longed .to satisfy, 
 intensely practical and special. Some of these ne- 
 cessities no words could in any way meet. It was 
 obvious, for instance, that Clark must at once be 
 taken away from his gallery and his copying if he 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 105 
 
 was to live — at least in sanity. He had fortunately 
 learned shorthand, and M'Kay got him employment 
 on a newspaper. His knowledge of his art was by 
 no means perfect at first, but he was sent to attend 
 meetings where verbatim reports were not necessary, 
 and he quickly advanced. Taylor, too, we tried to 
 remove, and we succeeded in attaching him to a 
 large club as an out-of-doors porter. The poor man 
 was now at least in the open air, and freed from 
 insolent tyranny. This, however, was help such as 
 anybody might have given. The question of most 
 importance is. What gospel had we to give ? Why, 
 in short, did we meet on the Sunday ? What was 
 our justification ? In the first place, there was the 
 simple quietude. The retreat from the streets and 
 from miserable cares into a place where there was 
 peace and room for reflection was something. It is 
 all very well for cultivated persons with libraries to 
 scoff at religious services. To the poor the cathedral 
 or the church might be an immense benefit, if only 
 for the reason that they present a barrier to worldly 
 noise, and are a distinct invitation by architecture 
 and symbolic decoration to meditation on something 
 beyond the business which presses on them during 
 the week. Poor people frequently cannot read for 
 want of a place in which to read. Moreover, they 
 require to be provoked by a stronger stimulus than 
 
io6 MARK RUTHEEFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 that of a book. They willingly hear a man talk if 
 he has anything to say, when they would not care 
 to look at what he said if it were printed. But to 
 come more closely to the point. Our main object 
 was to create in our hearers contentment with their 
 lot, and even some joy in it. That was our reli- 
 gion; that was the central thought of all we said 
 and did, giving shape and tendency to everything. 
 We admitted nothing which did not help us in that 
 direction, and everything which did help us. Our 
 attempts, to any one who had not the key, may 
 have seemed vague and desultory. We might by 
 a stranger have been accused of feeble wandering, 
 of idle dabbling, now in this subject and now in 
 that, but after a while he would have found that 
 though we were weak creatures, with no pretence to 
 special knowledge in any subject, we at least knew 
 what we meant, and tried to accomplish it. For my 
 own part, I was happy when I had struck that path. 
 I felt as if somehow, after many errors, I had once 
 more gained a road, a religion in fact, and one 
 which essentially was not new but old, the religion 
 of the Eeconciliation, the reconciliation of man with 
 God ; differing from the current creed in so far as I 
 did not lay stress upon sin as the cause of estrange- 
 ment, but yet agreeing with it in making it my duty 
 of duties to suppress revolt, and to submit calmly 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 107 
 
 and sometimes cheerfully to the Creator. This 
 surely, under a thousand disguises, has been the 
 meaning of all the forms of worship which we have 
 seen in the world. Pain and death are nothing new, 
 and men have been driven into perplexed scepticism 
 and even insurrection by them, ever since men came 
 into being. Always, however, have the majority, 
 the vast majority of the race, felt instinctively that 
 in this scepticism and insurrection they could not 
 abide, and they have struggled more or less blindly 
 after explanation ; determined not to desist till they 
 had found it, and reaching a result embodied in a 
 multitude of shapes irrational and absurd to the 
 superficial scoffer, but of profound interest to the 
 thoughtful. I may observe, in passing, that this is 
 a reason why all great religions should be treated 
 with respect, and in a certain sense preserved. It 
 is nothing less than a wicked waste of accumulated 
 human strivings to sneer them out of existence. 
 They will be found, every one of them, to have in- 
 carnated certain vital doctrines which it has cost 
 centuries of toil and devotion properly to appreciate. 
 Especially is this true of the Catholic faith, and if 
 it were worth while, it might be shown how it is 
 nothing less than a divine casket of precious reme- 
 dies, and if it is to be brutally broken, it will take 
 ages to rediscover and restore them. Of one thing I 
 
io8 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 am certain, that their rediscovery and restoration 
 will be necessary. I cannot too earnestly insist 
 upon the need of our holding, each man for himself, 
 by some faith which shall anchor him. It must not 
 be taken up by chance. We must fight for it, for 
 only so will it become our faith. The halt in indif- 
 ference or in hostility is easy enough and seductive 
 enough. The half-hearted thinks that when he has 
 attained that stage he has completed the term of 
 human wisdom. I say go on : do not stay there ; 
 do not take it for granted that there is nothincr 
 beyond ; incessantly attempt an advance, and at last 
 a light, dim it may be, will arise. It will not be a 
 completed system, perfect in all points, an answer to 
 all our questions, but at least it will give ground for 
 hope. 
 
 We had to face the trials of our friends, and we 
 had to face death. I do not say for an instant that 
 we had any effectual reply to these great arguments 
 against us. We never so much as sought for one, 
 knowing how all men had sought and failed. But 
 we were able to say there is some compensation, 
 that there is another side, and this is all that man can 
 say. No theory of the world is possible. The storm, 
 the rain slowly rotting the harvest, children sickening 
 in cellars are obvious ; but equally obvious are an 
 evening in June, the delight of men and women in 
 
MARK RUTHERFOED'S DELIVERANCE. 109 
 
 one another, in music, and in the exercise of thought. 
 There can surely be no question that the sum of satis- 
 faction is increasing, not merely in the gross but for 
 each human being, as the earth from which we sprang 
 is being worked out of the race, and a higher type is 
 being developed. I may observe, too, that although 
 it is usually supposed, it is erroneously supposed, 
 that it is pure doubt which disturbs or depresses us. 
 Simple suspense is in fact very rare, for there are few 
 persons so constituted as to be able to remain in it. 
 It is dogmatism under the cloak of doubt which pulls 
 us down. It is the dogmatism of death, for example, 
 which we have to avoid. The open grave is dogmatic, 
 and we say that man has gone, but this is as much a 
 transgression of the limits of certitude as if we were 
 to say he is an angel in bliss. The proper attitude, 
 the attitude enjoined by the severest exercise of the 
 reason is, / do not know; and in this there is an 
 element of hope, now rising and now falling, but 
 always sufficient to prevent that blank despair which 
 we must feel if we consider it as settled that when 
 we lie down under the grass there is an absolute 
 end. 
 
 The provision in nature of infinity ever present to 
 us is an immense help. No man can look up to the 
 stars at night and reflect upon what lies behind them 
 without feeling that the tyranny of the senses is 
 
no MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 loosened, and the tyranny, too, of the conclusions of 
 his logic. The beyond and the beyond, let us turn 
 it over as we may, let us consider it as a child con- 
 siders it, or by the light of the newest philosophy, is 
 a constant, visible warning not to make our minds 
 the measure of the universe. Underneath the stars 
 what dreams, what conjectures arise, shadowy enough, 
 it is true ; but one thing we cannot help believing as 
 irresistibly as if by geometrical deduction — that the 
 sphere of that understanding of ours, whose function 
 it seems to be to imprison us, is limited. 
 
 Going through a churchj^ard one afternoon I 
 noticed that nearly all the people who were buried 
 there, if the inscriptions on the tombstones might be 
 taken to represent the thoughts of the departed when 
 they were alive, had been intent solely on their own 
 personal salvation. The question with them all 
 seemed to have been, Shall /go to heaven ? Consider- 
 ing the tremendous difference between heaven and 
 hell in the popular imagination, it was very natural 
 that these poor creatures should be anxious above 
 everything to know whether they would be in hell 
 or heaven for ever. Surely, however, this is not the 
 highest frame of mind, nor is it one to be encouraged. 
 I would rather do all I can to get out of it, and to 
 draw others out of it too. Our aim ought not so 
 much to be the salvation of this poor petty self, but 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. iii 
 
 of that in me which alone makes it worth while to 
 save me ; of that alone which I hope will be saved, 
 immortal truth. The very centre of the existence of 
 the ordinary chapel-goer and church-goer needs to be 
 shifted from self to what is outside self, and yet is 
 truly self, and the sole truth of self. If the truth 
 lives, we live, and if it dies, we are dead. Our 
 theology stands in need of a reformation greater than 
 that of Luther's. It may be said that the attempt 
 to replace the care for self in us by a care for the 
 universal is ridiculous. Man cannot rise to that 
 height. I do not believe it. I believe we can rise 
 to it. Every ordinary unselfish act is a proof of the 
 capacity to rise to it ; and the mother's denial of all 
 care for her own happiness, if she can but make her 
 child happy, is a sublime anticipation. It may be 
 called an instinct, but in the course of time it will 
 be possible to develop a wider instinct in us, so that 
 our love for the truth shall be even maternally 
 passionate and self-forgetting. 
 
 After all our searching it was difficult to find any- 
 thing which, in the case of a man like John the 
 waiter, for example, could be of any service to him. 
 At his age efficient help was beyond us, and in his 
 case the problem presented itself in its simple naked- 
 ness. What comfort is there discoverable for the 
 wretched which is not based upon illusion? We 
 
112 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 could not tell him tliat all he endured was right and 
 proper. But even to him we were able to offer some- 
 thing. We did all we could to soothe him. On the 
 Sunday, at least, he was able to find some relief from 
 his labours, and he entered into a different region. 
 He came to see us in the afternoon and evenins 
 occasionally, and brought his boy. Father and son 
 were pulled up out of the vault, brought into the day- 
 light, and led into an open expanse. We tried above 
 everything to interest them, even in the smallest 
 degree, in what is universal and impersonal, feeling 
 that in that direction lies healing. We explained 
 to the child as well as we could some morsels of 
 science, and in explaining to him we explained to the 
 father as well. When the anguish begotten by some 
 outbreak on the part of the wife more violent than 
 usual became almost too much to bear, we did our 
 best to counsel, and as a last consolation we could 
 point to Death, divine Death, and repose. It was but 
 for a few more years at the utmost, and then must 
 come a rest which no sorrow could invade. " Having 
 death as an ally, I do not tremble at shadows," is 
 an immortal quotation from some unknown Greek 
 author. Providence, too, by no miracle, came to our 
 relief. The wife died, as it was foreseen she must, 
 and that weight being removed, some elasticity and 
 recoil developed itself. John's one thought now was 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 113 
 
 for his child, and by means of the child the father 
 passed out of himself, and connected himself with 
 the future. The child did in fact teach the father 
 exactly what we tried to teach, and taught it with a 
 power of conviction which never could have been 
 produced by any mere appeals to the reason. The 
 father felt that he was battered, useless, and a failure, 
 but that in the boy there were unknown possibilities, 
 and that' he might in after life say that it was to this 
 battered, useless failure of a father he owed his 
 success. There was nothing now that he would not 
 do to help Tom's education, and we joyfully aided as 
 best we could. So, partly I believe by us, but far 
 more by nature herself, John's salvation was wrought 
 out at least in a measure ; discord by the intervention 
 of another note resolved itself into a kind of harmony, 
 and even through the skylight in the Strand a glimpse 
 of the azure was obtained. 
 
 I hope my readers, if I should ever have any, will 
 remember that what I wish to do is to give some 
 account of the manner in which we sought to be of 
 service to the small and very humble circle of persons 
 whom we had collected about us. I have preserved 
 no record of anything ; I am merely putting down 
 what now comes into my mind — the two or three 
 articles, not thirty-nine, nor, alas ! a third of that 
 number — which we were able to hold. I recollect 
 
 H 
 
114 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 one or two more which perhaps are worth preserva- 
 tion. In my younger days the aim of theologians 
 was the justification of the ways of God to man. 
 They could not succeed. They succeeded no better 
 than ourselves in satisfying the intellect with a 
 system. Nor does the Christian religion profess any 
 such satisfaction. It teaches rather the great doctrine 
 of a Eemedy, of a Mediator ; and therein it is pro- 
 foundly true. It is unphilosophical in the sense that 
 it offers no explanation from a single principle, and 
 leaves the ultimate mystery as dark as before, but it 
 is in accordance with our intuitions. Everywhere in 
 nature we see exaction of penalties down to the utter- 
 most farthing, but following after this we discern 
 forgiveness, obliterating and restorative. Both tend- 
 encies exist. Nature is Rhadamanthine, and more so, 
 for she visits the sins of the fathers upon the chil- 
 dren ; but there is in her also an infinite Pity, healing 
 all wounds, softening all calamities, ever hastening to 
 alleviate and repair. Christianity in strange histori- 
 cal fashion is an expression of nature, a projection of 
 her into a biography and a creed. 
 
 We endeavoured to follow Christianity in the 
 depth of its distinction between right and wrong. 
 Herein this religion is of priceless value. Philosophy 
 proclaims the unity of our nature. To philosophy 
 every passion is as natural as every act of saintlike 
 
MARK EUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 115 
 
 negation, and one of the usual effects of thinking or 
 philosophising is to bring together all that is appa- 
 rently contrary in man, and to show how it proceeds 
 really from one centre. But Christianity had not to 
 propound a theory of man; it had to redeem the world. 
 It laid awful stress on the duality in us, and the 
 stress laid on that duality is the world's salvation. 
 The words right and wrong are not felt now as they 
 were felt by Paul. They shade off one into the other. 
 Nevertheless, if mankind is not to be lost, the ancient 
 antagonism must be maintained. The shallowest of 
 mortals is able now to laugh at the notion of a per- 
 sonal devil. No doubt there is no such thing exis- 
 tent; but the horror at evil which could find no 
 other expression than in the creation of a devil is no 
 subject for laughter, and if it do not in some shape 
 or other survive, the race itself will not survive. 
 No religion, so far as I know, has dwelt like Chris- 
 tianity with such profound earnestness on the 
 bisection of man — on the distinction within him, 
 vital to the very last degree, between the higher and 
 the lower, heaven and hell. What utter folly is 
 it because of an antique vesture to condemn as 
 effete what the vesture clothes ! Its doctrine and 
 its sacred story are fixtures in concrete form of 
 precious thoughts purchased by blood and tears. 
 I fancy I see the sneer of theologians and 
 
ii6 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 critics at our efforts. The theologians will mock 
 us because we had nothing better to say. I can 
 only reply that we did our best. We said all 
 we knew, and we would most thankfully have 
 said more, had we been sure that it must be 
 true. I would remind, too, those of our judges who 
 think that we were such wretched mortals, blind 
 leaders of the blind, that there have been long ages 
 during which men never pretended to understand 
 more than we professed to understand. To say 
 nothing of the Jews, whose meagre system would 
 certainly not have been thought either satisfying or 
 orthodox by modern Christians, the Greeks and 
 Eomans lived in no clearer light than that which 
 shines on me. The critics, too, will condemn 
 because of our weakness ; but this defect I at once 
 concede. The severest critic could not possibly be 
 so severe as I am upon myself. I know my failings. 
 He, probably, would miss many of them. But, 
 again I urge that men are not to be debarred by 
 reason of weakness from doing what little good may 
 lie within reach of their hands. Had we attempted 
 to save scholars and thinkers, we should have de- 
 served the ridicule with which no doubt we shall be 
 visited. We aspired to save nobody. We knew no 
 salvation ourselves. We ventured humbly to bring a 
 feeble ray of light into the dwellings of two or three 
 
MAEK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 117 
 
 poor men and women ; and if Prometheus, fettered 
 to his rock, dwelt with pride on the blind hopes 
 which he had caused to visit mortals, the hopes 
 which " stopped the continual anticipation of their 
 destiny," we perhaps may be pardoned if at times we 
 thought that what we were doing was not altogether 
 vanity. 
 
Ii8 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 QUI DEBIT IN MART VI AM. 
 
 From time to time I received a newspaper from my 
 native town, and one morning, looking over the 
 advertisements, I caught sight of one which arrested 
 me. It was as follows : — 
 
 " A Widow Lady desires a situation as Daily Governess to 
 little children. Address E. B., care of Mrs. George Andrews, 
 Fancy Bazaar, High Street." 
 
 Mrs. George Andrews was a cousin of Ellen 
 Butts, and that this was her advertisement I had 
 not the slightest doubt. Suddenly, without being 
 able to give the least reason for it, an unconquerable 
 desire to see her arose within me. I could not 
 understand it. I recollected that memorable resolu- 
 tion after Miss Arbour's story years ago. How true 
 that counsel of Miss Arbour's was ! and yet it had 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 119 
 
 the defect of most counsel. It was but a principle ; 
 whether it suited this particular case was the one 
 important point on which Miss Arbour was no 
 authority. What was it which prompted this inexpli- 
 cable emotion ? A thousand things rushed through 
 my head without reason or order. I begin to believe 
 that a first love never dies. A boy falls in love at 
 eighteen or nineteen. The attachment comes to no- 
 thing. It is broken off for a multitude of reasons, 
 and he sees its absurdity. He marries afterwards 
 some other woman whom he even adores, and he has 
 children for whom he spends his life; yet in an 
 obscure corner of his soul he preserves everlastingly 
 the cherished picture of the girl who first was dear 
 to him. She, too, marries. In process of time she 
 is fifty years old, and he is fifty-two. He has not 
 seen her for thirty years or more, but he continually 
 turns aside into the little oratory, to gaze upon the 
 face as it last appeared to him when he left her at 
 her gate and saw her no more. He inquires now 
 and then timidly about her whenever he gets the 
 chance. And once in his life he goes down to 
 the town where she lives, solely in order to get 
 a sight of her without her knowing anything about 
 it. He does not succeed, and he comes back and 
 tells his wife, from whom he never conceals any 
 secrets, that he has been away on business. I did 
 
I20 MARK EUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE, 
 
 not for a moment confess that my love for Ellen had 
 returned. I knew who she was and what she was, 
 and what had led to our separation ; but neverthe- 
 less, all this would keep in the background, and all 
 the passages of love between us, all our kisses, and 
 above everything, her tears at that parting in her 
 father's house, thrust themselves upon me. It was 
 a mystery to me. What should have induced that 
 utterly unexpected resurrection of what I believed 
 to be dead and buried, is beyond my comprehension. 
 However, the fact remains. I did not to myself 
 admit that this was love, but it was love, and that 
 it should have shot up with such swift vitality 
 merely because I had happened to see those initials 
 was miraculous. I pretended to myself that I 
 should like once more to see Mrs. Butts — perhaps 
 she might be in want and I could help her. I 
 shrank from writing to her or from making myself 
 known to her, and at last I hit upon the expedient 
 of answering her advertisement in a feigned name, 
 and requesting her to call at the King's Arms hotel 
 upon a gentleman who wished to engage a widow 
 lady to teach his children. To prevent any previous 
 inquiries on her part, I said that my name was 
 Williams, that I lived in the country at some little 
 distance from the town, but that I should be there 
 on business on the day named. I took up my 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 121 
 
 quarters at the King's Arms the night before. It 
 seemed very strange to be in an inn in the place in 
 which I was born. I retired early to my bedroom 
 and looked out in the clear moonlight over the 
 river. The landscape seemed haunted by ghosts of 
 my former self. At one particular point, so well 
 known, I stood fishing. At another, equally well 
 known, dangerously deep and shaded grove, I was 
 examining the ice ; and round the corner was the 
 boathouse where we kept the little craft in which I 
 had voyaged so many hundreds of miles on excur- 
 sions upwards beyond where the navigation ends, 
 or, still more fascinating, down to where the water 
 widens and sails are to be seen, and there is a fore- 
 taste of the distant sea. It is no pleasure to me 
 to revisit scenes in which earlier days have been 
 passed. I detest the sentimental melancholy which 
 steals over me ; the sense of the lapse of time, and 
 the reflection that so many whom I knew are dead. 
 I would always, if possible, spend my holiday in 
 some new scene, fresh to me, and full of new interest. 
 I slept but little, and when the morning came, 
 instead of carrying out my purpose of wandering 
 through the streets, I was so sick of the mood by 
 which I had been helplessly overcome, that I sat 
 at a distance from the window in the coffee-room, 
 and read diligently last week's BelVs Weekly Messen- 
 
122 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 ger. My reading, however, was nothing. I do not 
 suppose I comprehended the simplest paragraph. 
 My thoughts were away, and I watched the clock 
 slowly turning towards the hour when Ellen was to 
 call. I foresaw that I should not be able to speak 
 to her at the inn. If I have anything particular to 
 say to anybody, I can always say it so much better 
 out of doors. I dreaded the confinement of the 
 room, and the necessity for looking into her face. 
 Under the sky, and in motion, I should be more at 
 liberty. At last eleven struck from the church in 
 the square, and five minutes afterwards the waiter 
 entered to announce Mrs. Butts. I was therefore 
 right, and she was "E. B." I was sure that I 
 should not be recognised. Since I saw her last I 
 had grown a beard, my hair had got a little grey, 
 and she was always a little short-sighted. She 
 came in, and as she entered she put away over 
 her bonnet her thick black veil. Not ten seconds 
 passed before she was seated on the opposite side 
 of the table to that on which I was sitting, but I 
 re-read in her during those ten seconds the whole 
 history of years. I cannot say that externally 
 she looked worn or broken. I had imagined that 
 I should see her undone with her great troubles, 
 but to some extent, and yet not altogether, I was 
 mistaken. The cheek-bones were more prominent 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 123 
 
 than of old, and her dark-brown hair drawn tightly 
 over her forehead increased the clear paleness of the 
 face; the just perceptible tint of colour which I 
 recollect being now altogether withdrawn. But she 
 was not haggard, and evidently not vanquished. 
 There was even a gaiety on her face, perhaps a 
 trifle enforced, and although the darkness of sorrow 
 gleamed behind it, the sorrow did not seem to be 
 ultimate, but to be in front of a final background, if 
 not of joy, at least of resignation. Her ancient levity 
 of manner had vanished, or at most had left nothing 
 but a trace. I thought I detected it here and there 
 in a line about the mouth, and perhaps in her walk. 
 There was a reminiscence of it too in her clothes. 
 Notwithstanding poverty and distress, the old neat- 
 ness — that particular care which used to charm me so 
 when I was little more than a child, was there still. 
 I was always susceptible to this virtue, and delicate 
 hands and feet, with delicate care bestowed thereon, 
 were more attractive to me than slovenly beauty. I 
 noticed that the gloves, though mended, fitted with 
 the same precision, and that her dress was unwrinkled 
 and perfectly graceful. Whatever she might have 
 had to endure, it had not destroyed that self-centred 
 satisfaction which makes life tolerable. 
 
 I was impelled at once to say that I had to beg 
 her pardon for asking her there. Unfortunately I 
 
124 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 was obliged to go over to Cowston, a village which 
 was about three miles from the town. Perhaps she 
 would not mind walking part of the way with me 
 through the meadows, and then we could talk with 
 more freedom, as I should not feel pressed for time. 
 To this arrangement she at once agreed, and drop- 
 ping her thick veil over her face, we went out. In 
 a few minutes we were clear of the houses, and I 
 began the conversation. 
 
 " Have you been in the habit of teaching ? " 
 
 "IsTo. The necessity for taking to it has only 
 lately arisen." 
 
 " What can you teach ? " 
 
 " Not much beyond what children of ten or eleven 
 years old are expected to know; but I could take 
 charge of them entirely." 
 
 " Have you any children of your own ? " 
 
 " One." 
 
 " Could you take a situation as resident teacher if 
 you have a child ? " 
 
 " I must get something to do, and if I can make no' 
 arrangement by which my child can live with me, I 
 shall try and place her with a friend. I may be able 
 to hear of some appointment as a daily governess." 
 
 " I should have thought that in your native town 
 you would have been easily able to find employment 
 — you must be well known ? " 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 125 
 
 There was a pause, and after a moment or so she 
 said : — 
 
 " We were well known once, but we went abroad 
 and lost all our money. My husband died abroad. 
 When I returned, I found that there was very little 
 which my friends could do for me. I am not accom- 
 plished, and there are crowds of young women who 
 are more capable than I am. Moreover, I saw that 
 I was becoming a burden, and people called on me 
 rather as a matter of duty than for any other reason. 
 You don't know how soon all but the very best in- 
 sensibly neglect very poor relatives if they are not 
 gifted or attractive. I do not wonder at being made 
 to feel this, nor do I blame anybody. My little girl 
 is a cripple, my rooms are dull, and I have nothing 
 in me with which to amuse or entertain visitors. 
 Pardon my going into this detail. It was necessary 
 to say something in order to explain my position." 
 
 " May I ask what salary you will require if you 
 live in the house ? " 
 
 " Five-and-thirty pounds a year, but I might take 
 less if I were asked to do so." 
 
 " Are you a member of the Church of England ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " To what religious body do you belong ? " 
 
 " I am an Independent, but I would go to Church 
 if my employers wished it." 
 
126 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 "I thought the Independents object to go to 
 Church." 
 
 " They do ; but I should not object, if I could hear 
 anything at the Church which would help me." 
 
 " I am rather surprised at your indifference." 
 
 " I was once more particular, but I have seen 
 much suffering, and some things which were im- 
 portant to me are not so now, and others which 
 were not important have become so." 
 
 I then made up a little story. My sister and 
 I lived together. We were about to take up our 
 abode at Cowston, but were as yet strangers to it. 
 I was left a widower with two little children whom 
 my sister could not educate, as she could not spare 
 the time. She would naturally have selected the 
 governess herself, but she was at some distance. 
 She would like to see Mrs. Butts before engaging 
 her finally, but she thought that as this advertise- 
 ment presented itself, I might make some prelimi- 
 nary enquiries. Perhaps, however, now that Mrs. 
 Butts knew the facts, she would object to living 
 in the house. I put it in this way, feeling sure that 
 she would catch my meaning. 
 
 " I am afraid that this situation will not suit me. 
 I could not go backwards and forwards so far 
 every day." 
 
 " I understand you perfectly, and feared that this 
 
MAKK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 127 
 
 ■would be your decision. But if you hesitate, I can 
 give you the best of references. I had not thought 
 of that before. Eeferences of course will be required 
 by you as well as by me." 
 
 I put my hand in my pocket for my pocket- 
 book. I could not find it. We had now reached 
 a part of our road familiar enough to both of us. 
 Along that very path Ellen and I had walked 
 years ago. Under those very trees, on that very 
 seat had we sat, and she and I were there again. 
 All the old confidences, confessions, tendernesses, 
 rushed upon me. What is there which is more potent 
 than the recollection of past love to move us to love, 
 and knit love with closest bonds ? Can we ever cease 
 to love the souls who have once shared all that we 
 know and feel ? Can we ever be indifferent to those 
 who have our secrets, and whose secrets we hold ? 
 As I looked at her, I remembered what she knew 
 about me, and what I knew about her, and this 
 simple thought so overmastered me, that I could 
 hold out no longer. I said to her that if she would 
 like to rest for one moment, I might be able to find 
 my papers. We sat down together, and she drew up 
 •her veil to read the address which I was about to 
 give her. She glanced at me, as I thought, with a 
 strange expression of excited interrogation, and some- 
 thing swiftly passed across her face, which warned me 
 
128 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 that I had not a moment to lose. I took out one 
 of my own cards, handed it to her, and said, " Here is 
 a reference which perhaps you may know." She 
 bent over it, turned to me, fixed her eyes intently 
 and directly on mine for one moment, and then I 
 thought she would have fallen. My arm was around 
 her in an instant, her head was on my shoulder, 
 and my many wanderings were over. It was broad, 
 high, sunny noon, the most solitary hour of the day- 
 light in those fields. We were roused by the dis- 
 tant sound of the town clock striking twelve ; we 
 rose and went on together to Cowston by the river 
 bank, returning late in the evening. 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 129 
 
 CHAPTEK VIII. 
 
 FLAGELLUM NON APPROQUINABIT TABERNACULO TUO. 
 
 I SUPPOSE that the reason why in novels the story 
 ends with a marriage is partly that the excitement 
 of the tale ceases then, and partly also because of 
 a theory that marriage is an epoch, determining the 
 career of life after it. The epoch once announced, 
 nothing more need be explained; everything else 
 follows as a matter of course. These notes of mine 
 are autobiographical, and not a romance. I have 
 never known much about epochs. I have had one 
 or two, one specially when I first began to read and 
 think; but after that, if I have changed, it has 
 been slowly and imperceptibly. My life, therefore, 
 is totally unfitted to be the basis of fiction. My 
 return to Ellen, and our subsequent marriage, were 
 only partially an epoch. A change had come, but it 
 was one which had long been preparing. Ellen's 
 experiences had altered her position, and mine too 
 
I30 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 was altered. She had been driven into religion by 
 trouble, and knowing nothing of criticism or philo- 
 sophy, retained the old forms for her religious feel- 
 ino-. But the very quickness of her emotion caused 
 her to welcome all new and living modes of express- 
 ing it. It is only when feeling has ceased to accom- 
 pany a creed that it becomes fixed, and verbal 
 departures from it are counted heresy. I too cared 
 less for argument, and it even gave me pleasure to 
 talk in her dialect, so familiar to me, but for so many 
 years unused. 
 
 It was now necessary for me to add to my income. 
 I had nothing upon which to depend save my news- 
 paper, which was obviously insufficient. At last, I 
 succeeded in obtaining some clerical employment. 
 For no other work was I fit, for my training had not 
 been special in any one direction. My hours were 
 long, from ten in the morning till seven in the 
 evening, and as I was three miles distant from the 
 office, I was really away from home for eleven hours 
 every day, excepting on Sundays. I began to cal- 
 culate that my life consisted of nothing but the brief 
 spaces allowed to me for rest, and these brief spaces 
 I could not enjoy because I dwelt upon their brevity^ 
 There was some excuse for me. Never could there 
 be any duty incumbent upon man much more 
 inhuman and devoid of interest than my own. 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 131 
 
 How often I thought about my friend Clark, and 
 his experiences became mine. The whole day I 
 did nothing but write, and what I wrote called 
 forth no single faculty of the mind. jSTobody who 
 has not tried such an occupation can possibly 
 forecast the strange habits, humours, fancies, and 
 diseases which after a time it breeds. I was 
 shut up in a room half below the ground. In this 
 room were three other men besides myself, two of 
 them between fifty and sixty, and one about three or 
 four-and-twenty. All four of us kept books or copied 
 letters from ten to seven, with an interval of three- 
 quarters of an hour for dinner. In all three of these 
 men, as in the case of Clark's companions, there had 
 been developed, partly I suppose by the circumstance 
 of enforced idleness of brain, the most loathsome 
 tendency to obscenity. This was the one subject 
 which was common ground, and upon which they 
 could talk. It was fostered too by a passion for beer, 
 which was supplied by the publican across the way, 
 who was perpetually travelling to and fro with cans. 
 My horror when I first found out into what society I 
 was thrust was unspeakable. There was a clock 
 within a hundred yards of my window which struck 
 the hours and quarters. How I watched that clock ! 
 My spirits rose or fell with each division of the day. 
 From ten to twelve there was nothing but gloom. 
 
132 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 By half-past twelve I began to discern dinner time, 
 and the prospect was brighter. After dinner there 
 was nothing to be done but doggedly to endure until 
 five, and at five I was able to see over the distance 
 from five to seven. My disgust at my companions, 
 however, came to be mixed with pity. I found none 
 of them cruel, and I received many little kindnesses 
 from them. I discovered that their trade was largely 
 answerable for the impurity of thought and speech 
 which so shocked me. Its monotony compelled some 
 countervailing stimulus, and as they had never been 
 educated to care for anything in particular, they 
 found the necessary relief in sensuality. At first 
 they " chaffed " and worried me a good deal because 
 of my silence, but at last they began to think I was 
 " religious," and then they ceased to torment me. I 
 rather encouraged them in the belief that I had a 
 right to exemption from their conversation, and I 
 passed, I believe, for a Plymouth brother. The only 
 thing which they could not comprehend was that I 
 made no attempt to convert them. 
 
 The whole establishment was under the rule of a 
 deputy-manager, who was the terror of the place. He 
 was tall, thin, and suffered occasionally from spitting 
 of blood, brought on no doubt from excitement. He 
 was the strangest mixture of exactitude and passion. 
 He had complete mastery over every detail of the 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 133 
 
 business, and he never blundered. All his work was 
 thorough, down to the very bottom, and he had the 
 most intolerant hatred of every thing which was 
 loose and inaccurate. He never passed a day with- 
 out flaming out into oaths and curses against his 
 subordinates, and they could not say in his wildest 
 fury that his ravings were beside the mark. He 
 was wrong in his treatment of men — utterly wrong 
 — but his facts were always correct. I never saw 
 anybody hated as he was, and the hatred against 
 him was the more intense because nobody could 
 convict him of a mistake. He seemed to enjoy a 
 storm, and knew nothing whatever of the constraints 
 which with ordinary men prevent abusive and brutal 
 languasre to those around them. Some of his clerks 
 suffered greatly from him, and he almost broke down 
 two or three from the constant nervous strain upon 
 them produced by fear of his explosions. For my 
 own part, although I came in for a full share of his 
 temper, I at once made up my mind as soon as I 
 discovered what he was, not to open my lips to him 
 except under compulsion. My one object now was to 
 get a living. I wished also to avoid the self-mortifi- 
 cation which must ensue from altercation. I dreaded, 
 as I have always dreaded beyond what I can tell, the 
 chaos and wreck which, with me, follows subjugation 
 by anger, and I held to my resolve under all provo- 
 
134 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 cation. It was very difficult, but how many times 
 I have blessed myself for adhesion to it. Instead of 
 going home undone with excitement, and tremb- 
 ling with fear of dismissal, I have walked out of 
 my dungeon having had to bite my lips till the 
 blood came, but still conqueror, and with peace of 
 mind. 
 
 Another stratagem of defence which I adopted at 
 the office was never to betray to a soul anything 
 about myself. Nobody knew anything about me, 
 whether I was married or single, where I lived, or 
 what I thought upon a single subject of any import- 
 ance. I cut off my office life in this way from my 
 life at home so completely that I was two selves, 
 and my true self was not stained by contact with 
 my other self. It was a comfort to me to think 
 the moment the clock struck seven that my second 
 self died, and that my first self suffered nothing by 
 having anything to do with it. I was not the per- 
 son who sat at the desk downstairs and endured the 
 abominable talk of his colleagues and the ignominy 
 of serving such a chief. I knew nothing about him. 
 I was a citizen walking London streets ; I had my 
 opinions upon human beings and books ; I was on 
 equal terms with my friends; I was Ellen's hus- 
 band ; I was, in short, a man. By this scrupulous 
 isolation, I preserved myself, and the clerk was not 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 135 
 
 debarred from the domain of freedom. It is very- 
 terrible to think that the labour by which men are 
 to live should be of this order. The ideal of labour 
 is that it should be something in which we can take 
 an interest and even a pride. Immense masses of 
 it in London are the merest slavery, and it is as 
 mechanical as the daily journey of the omnibus 
 horse. There is no possibility of relieving it, and 
 all the ordinary copybook advice of moralists and 
 poets as to the temper in which we should earn our 
 bread is childish nonsense. If a man is a painter, 
 or a physician, or a barrister, or even a tradesman, 
 well and good. The maxims of authors may be of 
 some service to him, and he may be able to exemplify 
 them ; but if he is a copying clerk they are an insult, 
 and he can do nothing but arch his back to bear 
 his burden and find some compensation elsewhere. 
 True it is, that beneficent Nature here, as always, is 
 helpful. Habit, after a while, mitigated much of the 
 bitterness of destiny. The hard points of the flint 
 became smoothed and worn away by perpetual 
 tramping over them, so that they no longer wounded 
 with their original sharpness; and the sole of the 
 foot was in time provided with a merciful callosity. 
 Then, too, there was developed an appetite which 
 was voracious for all that was best. Who shall tell 
 the revulsion on reaching home, which I should 
 
136 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 never have known had I lived a life of idleness. 
 Ellen was fond of hearing me read, and with a little 
 care I was able to select what would bear reading — 
 dramas, for example. She liked the reading for the 
 reading's sake, and she liked, to know that what I 
 thought was communicated to her; that she was 
 not excluded from the sphere in which I lived. Of 
 the office she never heard a word, and I never would 
 tell her anything about it ; but there was scarcely a 
 single book in my possession which could be read 
 aloud, that we did not go through together in this 
 way. I don't prescribe this kind of life to every- 
 body. Some of my best friends, I know, would 
 find it intolerable, but it suited us. Philosophy and 
 religion I did not touch. It was necessary to choose 
 themes with varying human interest, such as the 
 best works of fiction, a play, or a poem ; and these 
 perhaps, on the whole, did me more good at that 
 time than speculation. Oh, how many times have I 
 left my office humiliated by some silently endured 
 outbreak on the part of my master, more galling 
 because I could not put it aside as altogether gratui- 
 tous ; and in less than an hour it was two miles away, 
 and I was myself again. If a man wants to know 
 what the potency of love is, he must be a menial ; 
 he must be despised. Those who are prosperous and 
 courted cannot understand its power. Let him come 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 137 
 
 home after he has suffered what is far worse than 
 hatred — the contempt of a superior, who knows that 
 he can afford to be contemptuous, seeing that he 
 can replace his slave at a moment's notice. Let him 
 be trained by his tyrant to dwell upon the thought 
 that he belongs to the vast crowd of people in 
 London who are unimportant; almost useless; to 
 whom it is a charity to offer employment ; who are 
 conscious of possessing no gift which makes them 
 of any value to anybody, and he will then com- 
 prehend the divine efficacy of the affection of that 
 woman to whom he is dear. God's mercy be praised 
 ever more for it ! I cannot write poetry, but if I 
 could, no theme would tempt me like that of 
 love to such a person as I was — not love as I say 
 again to the hero, but love to the Helot. Over 
 and over again, when I have thought about it, I 
 have felt my poor heart swell with a kind of un- 
 controllable fervour. I have often, too, said to 
 myself that this love is no delusion. If we were 
 to set it down as nothing more than a merciful 
 cheat on the part of the Creator, however pleasant it 
 might be, it would lose its charm. If I were to think 
 that my wife's devotion to me is nothing more 
 than the simple expression of a necessity to love 
 somebody, that there is nothing in me which justifies 
 such devotion, I should be miserable. Eather, I 
 
138 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 take it, is the love of woman to man a revelation 
 of the relationship in which God stands to him — of 
 what ought to be, in fact. In the love of a woman 
 to the man who is of no account God has provided 
 us with a true testimony of what is in His own 
 heart. I often felt this when looking at myself 
 and at Ellen. "What is there in me?" I have 
 said; "is she not the victim of some self-created 
 deception?" and I was wretched till I considered 
 that in her I saw the Divine Nature itself, and 
 that her passion was a stream straight from the 
 Highest. The love of woman is, in other words, 
 a living witness never failing of an actuality in 
 God which otherwise we should never know. This 
 led me on to connect it with Christianity ; but I am 
 getting incoherent and must stop. 
 
 My employment now was so incessant, for it was 
 still necessary that I should write for my newspaper 
 — although my visits to the House of Commons had 
 perforce ceased — that I had no time for any schemes 
 or dreams such as those which had tormented me 
 when I had more leisure. In one respect this was 
 a blessing. Destiny now had prescribed for me. I 
 was no longer agitated by ignorance of what I ought 
 to do. My present duty was obviously to get my 
 own living, and having got that, I could do little 
 besides save continue the Sundays with M'Kay. 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 139 
 
 We were almost entirely alone. We had no 
 means of making any friends. We had no money 
 and no gifts of any kind. We were neither of us 
 witty nor attractive, but I have often wondered, 
 nevertheless, what it was which prevented us from 
 obtaining acquaintance with persons who thronged 
 to houses in which I could see nothing worth a two- 
 penny omnibus fare. Certain it is, that we went out 
 of our way sometimes to induce people to call upon 
 us whom we thought we should like ; but, if they came 
 once or twice, they invariably dropped off, and we saw 
 no more of them. This behaviour was so universal 
 that, without the least affectation, I acknowledge 
 there must be something repellent in me, but what 
 it is I cannot tell. That Ellen was the cause of the 
 general aversion, it is impossible to believe. The 
 only theory I have is, that partly owing to a constant 
 sense of fatigue, due to imperfect health, and partly 
 to chafing irritation at mere gossip, although I had no 
 power to think of anything better, or say anything 
 better myself, I was avoided both by the common- 
 place and those who had talent. Commonplace 
 persons avoided me because I did not chatter, and 
 persons of talent because I stood for nothing, 
 " There was nothing in me." We met at M'Kay's 
 two gentlemen whom we thought we might invite to 
 our house. One of them was an antiquary. He had 
 
140 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 discovered in an excavation in London some Eoman 
 remains. This had led him on to the study of the 
 position and boundaries of the Eoman city. He 
 had become an authority upon this subject, and had 
 lectured upon it. He came ; but as we were utterly 
 ignorant, and could not, with all our efforts, manifest 
 any sympathy which he valued at the worth of a 
 pin, he soon departed, and departed for ever. The 
 second was a student of Elizabethan literature, and 
 I rashly concluded at once that he must be most 
 delightful. He likewise came. I showed him my 
 few poor books, which he condemned, and I found 
 that such observations as I could make he con- 
 sidered as mere twaddle. I knew nothing, or next 
 to nothing, about the editions or the curiosities, or 
 the proposed emendations of obscure passages, and 
 he, too, departed abruptly. I began to think after 
 he had gone that my study of Shakspere was mere 
 dilettantism, but I afterwards came to the conclusion 
 that if a man wishes to spoil himself for Shakspere, 
 the best thing he can do is to turn Shaksperian 
 critic. 
 
 My worst enemy at this time was ill health, and it 
 was more distressing than it otherwise would have 
 been, because I had such responsibilities upon me. 
 When I lived alone I knew that if anything should 
 happen to me it would be of no particular conse- 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 141 
 
 quence, but now whenever I felt sick I was anxious 
 on account of Ellen. What would become of her ? — 
 this was the thought which kept me awake night 
 after night when the terrors of depression were upon 
 me, as they often were. But still, terrors with grow- 
 ing years had lost their ancient strength. My brain 
 and nerves were quiet compared with what they were 
 in times gone by, and I had gradually learned the 
 blessed lesson which is taught by familiarity with 
 sorrow, that the greater part of what is dreadful 
 in it lies in the imagination. The true Gorgon 
 head is seldom seen in reality. That it exists I do 
 not doubt, but it is not so commonly visible as we 
 think. Again, as we get older we find that all 
 life is given us on conditions of uncertainty, and yet 
 we walk courageously on. The labourer marries and 
 has children, when there is nothing but his own 
 strength between him and ruin. A million chances 
 are encountered every day, and any one of the million 
 accidents which might happen would cripple him or 
 kill him, and put into the workhouse those who 
 depend upon him. Yet he treads his path undisturbed. 
 Life to all of us is a narrow plank placed across a 
 gulf, which yawns on either side, and if we were 
 perpetually looking down into it we should fall. So 
 at last, the possibility of disaster ceased to affright 
 me. I had been brought off safely so many times 
 
142 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 when destruction seemed imminent, that I grew 
 hardened, and lay down quietly at night, although 
 the whim of a madman might to-morrow cast me on 
 the pavement, Frequently, as I have said, I could 
 not do this, but I strove to do it, and was able to do 
 it when in health. 
 
 I tried to think about nothing which expressed 
 whatever in the world may be insoluble or simply 
 tragic. A great change is just beginning to come 
 over us in this respect. So many books I find are 
 written which aim merely at new presentation of the 
 hopeless. The contradictions of fate, the darkness of 
 death, the fleeting of man over this brief stage of 
 existence, whence we know not, and whither we know 
 not, are favourite subjects with writers who seem to 
 think that they are profound, because they can pro- 
 pose questions which cannot be answered. There is 
 really more strength of mind required for resolving 
 the commonest difficulty than is necessary for the 
 production of poems on these topics. The character- 
 istic of so much that is said and written now is 
 melancholy ; and it is melancholy, not because of any 
 deeper acquaintance with the secrets of man than 
 that which was possessed by our forefathers, but be- 
 cause it is easy to be melancholy, and the time lacks 
 strength. 
 
 As I am now setting down, without much order or 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 143 
 
 connection, the lessons which I had to learn, I may 
 perhaps be excused if I add one or two others. I can 
 say of them all, that they are not book lessons. They 
 have been taught me by my own experience, and as 
 a rule I have always found that in my own most 
 special perplexities I got but little help from books 
 or other persons. I had to find out for myself what 
 was for me the proper way of dealing with them. 
 
 My love for Ellen was great, but I discovered that 
 even such love as this could not be left to itself. It 
 wanted perpetual cherishing. The lamp, if it was to 
 burn brightly, required daily trimming, for people 
 become estranged and indifferent, not so much by 
 open quarrel or serious difference, as by the interven- 
 tion of trifles which need but the smallest, although 
 continuous effort for their removal. The true wisdom 
 is to waste no time over them, but to eject them at 
 once. Love, too, requires that the two persons who 
 love one another shall constantly present to one 
 another what is best in them, and to accomplish this, 
 deliberate purpose, and even struggle, are necessary. 
 If through relapse into idleness we do not attempt 
 to bring soul and heart into active communion day 
 by day, what wonder if this once exalted relationship 
 become vulgar and mean ? 
 
 I was much overworked. It was not the work 
 itself which was such a trial, but the time it con- 
 
144 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 sumed. At best, I had but a clear space of an hour, 
 or an hour and a- half at home, and to slave merely 
 for this seemed such a mockery ! Day after day sped 
 swiftly by, made up of nothing but this infernal 
 drudgery, and I said to myself — Is this life ? But I 
 made up my mind that never ivould I give myself 
 tongue. I clapped a muzzle on my mouth. Had I 
 followed my own natural bent, I should have become 
 expressive about what I had to endure, but I found 
 that expression reacts on him who expresses, and 
 intensifies what is expressed. If we break out into 
 rhetoric over a toothache, the pangs are not the 
 easier, but the worse to be borne. 
 
 I naturally contracted a habit of looking forward 
 from the present moment to one beyond. The whole 
 week seemed to exist for the Sunday. On Monday 
 morning I began counting the hours till Sunday 
 should arrive. The consequence was, that when it 
 came, it was not enjoyed properly, and I wasted it 
 in noting the sv/iftness of its flight. Oh, how absurd 
 is man 1 If we were to reckon up all the moments 
 which we really enjoy for their own sake, how few 
 should we find them to be ! The greatest part, far 
 the greatest part, of our lives is spent in dreaming 
 over the morrow, and when it comes, it, too, is con- 
 sumed in the anticipation of a brighter morrow, and 
 so the cheat is prolonged, even to the grave. This 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 145 
 
 tendency, unconquerable though it may appear to be, 
 can to a great extent, at any rate, be overcome by 
 strenuous discipline. I tried to blind myself to the 
 future, and many and many a time, as I have walked 
 along that dreary New Eoad or Old St. Pancras Eoad, 
 have I striven to compel myself not to look at the 
 image of Hampstead Heath or Eegent's Park, as yet 
 six days in front of me, but to get what I could out 
 of what was then with me. 
 
 The instinct which leads us perpetually to compare 
 what we are with what we might be is no doubt of 
 enormous value, and is the spring which prompts all 
 action, but, like every instinct, it is the source of 
 greatest danger. I remember the day and the very 
 spot on which it flashed into me like a sudden burst 
 of the sun's rays, that I had no right, to this or that — 
 to so much happiness, or even so much virtue. What 
 title-deeds could I show for such a ri^ht ? Straijjht- 
 way it seemed as if the centre of a whole system of 
 dissatisfaction were removed, and as if the system 
 collapsed. God, creating from His infinite resources 
 a whole infinitude of beings, had created me with a 
 definite position on the scale, and that position only 
 could I claim. Cease the trick of contrast. If I can 
 by any means get myself to consider myself alone 
 without reference to others, discontent will vanish. 
 I walk this Old St. Pancras Eoad on foot — another 
 
 K 
 
146 MARK RUTHEEFORD'S DELIYERANCE, 
 
 rides. Keep out of view him who rides and all 
 persons riding, and I shall not complain that I 
 tramp in the wet. So also when I think how small 
 and weak I am. 
 
 How foolish it is to try and cure by argument 
 what time will cure so completely and so gently if 
 left to itself. As I get older, the anxiety to prove 
 myself right if I quarrel dies out. I hold my tongue 
 and time vindicates me, if it is possible to vindicate 
 me, or convicts me if I am wrong. Many and many 
 a debate too which I have had with myself alone has 
 been settled in the same way. The question has 
 been put aside and has lost its importance. The 
 ancient Church thought, and seriously enough, no 
 doubt, that all the vital interests of humanity were 
 bound up with the controversies upon the Divine 
 nature ; but the centuries have rolled on, and who 
 cares for those controversies now ? The problems of 
 death and immortality once upon a time haunted me 
 so that I could hardly sleep for thinking about them. 
 I cannot tell how, but so it is, that at the present 
 moment, when I am years nearer the end, they 
 trouble me but very little. If I could but bury and 
 let rot things which torment me and come to no 
 settlement — if I could always do this — what a 
 blessing it would be ! 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 147 
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 HOLIDAYS. 
 
 I HAVE said that Ellen had a child by her first hus- 
 band. Marie, for that was her name, was now ten 
 years old. She was like neither her mother nor 
 father, and yet was shot as it were with strange 
 gleams which reminded me of her paternal grand- 
 mother for a moment, and then disappeared. She 
 had rather coarse dark hair, small black eyes, round 
 face, and features somewhat blunt or blurred, the 
 nose in particular being so. She had a tendency 
 to be stout. For books she did not care, and it 
 was with the greatest difficulty we taught her to 
 read. She was not orderly or careful about her 
 person, and in this respect was a sore disappointment 
 — not that she was positively careless, but she took no 
 pride in dress, nor in keeping her room and her ward- 
 robe neat. She was fond of bright colours, which was 
 another trial to Ellen, who disliked any approach to 
 
148 MAKK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 gaudiness. She was not by any means a fool, and 
 she had a peculiarly swift mode of expressing herself 
 upon persons and things. A stranger looking at her 
 would perhaps have adjudged her inclined to sen- 
 suousness, and dull. She was neither one nor the 
 other. She ate little, although she was fond of sweets. 
 Her rather heavy face, with no clearly cut outline in 
 it, was not the typical face for passion ; but she was 
 capable of passion to an extraordinary degree, and 
 what is more remarkable, it was not explosive passion, 
 or rather it was not passion which she suffered to 
 explode. I remember once when she was a little 
 mite she was asked out somewhere to tea. She was 
 dressed and ready, but it began to rain fast, and she 
 was told she could not go. She besought, but it 
 was in vain. We could not afford cabs, and there 
 was no omnibus. Marie, finding all her entreaties 
 were useless, quietly walked out of the room; and after 
 some little time her mother, calling her and finding 
 she did not come, went to look for her. She had 
 gone into the back-yard, and was sitting there in 
 the rain by the side of the water-butt. She was 
 soaked, and her best clothes were spoiled. I must 
 confess that I did not take very kindly to her. 
 I was irritated at her slowness in learning : it 
 was, in fact, painful to be obliged to teach her. I 
 thought that perhaps she might have some unde- 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 149 
 
 veloped taste for music, but she showed none, and 
 our attempts to get her to sing ordinary melodies 
 were a failure. She was more or less of a locked 
 cabinet to me. I tried her with the two or three 
 keys which I had, but finding that none of them 
 fitted, I took no more pains about her. 
 
 One Sunday we determined upon a holiday. It 
 was a bold adventure for us, but we had made up 
 our minds. There was an excursion train to Hast- 
 ings, and accordingly Ellen, Marie, and myself were 
 at London Bridge Station early in the morning. It 
 was a lovely summer's day in mid- July. The jour- 
 ney down was uncomfortable enough in consequence 
 of the heat and dust, but we heeded neither one nor 
 the other in the hope of seeing the sea. We reached 
 Hastings at about eleven o'clock, and strolled west- 
 wards towards Bexhill. Our pleasure was exquisite. 
 Who can tell, save the imprisoned Londoner, the joy 
 of walking on the clean sea-sand ! What a delight 
 that was, to say nothing of the beauty of the 
 scenery ! To be free of the litter and filth of a 
 London suburb, of its broken hedges, its brickbats, 
 its torn advertisements, its worn and trampled 
 grass in fields half given over to the speculative 
 builder : in place of this, to tread the immaculate 
 shore over which breathed a wind not charged with 
 soot ; to replace the dull shrouding obscurity of the 
 
150 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 smoke by a distance so distinct that the masts of 
 the ships whose hulls were buried below the hori- 
 zon were visible — all this was perfect bliss. It was 
 not very poetic bliss, perhaps ; but nevertheless it is 
 a fact that the cleanness of the sea and the sea air 
 was as attractive to us as any of the sea attributes. 
 We had a wonderful time. Only in the country is 
 it possible to note the change of morning into mid- 
 day, of mid-day into afternoon, and of afternoon into 
 evening; and it is only in the country, therefore, 
 that a day seems stretched out into its proper length. 
 We had brought all our food with us, and sat upon 
 the shore in the shadow of a piece of the cliff. A 
 row of heavy white clouds lay along the horizon 
 almost unchangeable and immovable, with their sum- 
 mit-lines and the part of the mass just below them 
 steeped in sunlight. The level opaline water dif- 
 fered only from a floor by a scarcely perceptible 
 heaving motion, which broke into the faintest of 
 ripples at our feet. So still was the great ocean, 
 so quietly did everything lie in it, that the wavelets 
 which licked the beach were as pure and bright as if 
 they were a part of the mid-ocean depths. About a 
 mile from us, at one o'clock, a long row of porpoises 
 appeared, showing themselves in graceful curves for 
 half-an-hour or so, till they went out farther to sea 
 off Fairlicrht. Some fishing-boats were becalmed 
 
MAEK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 151 
 
 just in front of us. Their shadows slept, or almost 
 slept, upon the water, a gentle quivering alone show- 
 ing that it was not complete sleep; or if sleep, that 
 it was sleep with dreams. The intensity of the sun- 
 light sharpened the outlines of every little piece of 
 rock, and of the pebbles, in a manner which seemed 
 supernatural to us Londoners. In London we get 
 the heat of the sun, but not his light ; and the sepa- 
 ration of individual parts into such vivid isolation 
 was so surprising that even Marie noticed it, and 
 said it " all seeined as if she were looking through a 
 glass." It was perfect — perfect in its beauty — and 
 perfect because, from the sun in the heavens down 
 to the fly with burnished wings on the hot rock, 
 there was nothing out of harmony. Everything 
 breathed one spirit. Marie played near us ; Ellen 
 and I sat still, doing nothing. We wanted nothing, 
 we had nothing to achieve ; there were no curiosities 
 to be seen, there was no particular place to be 
 reached, no " plan of operations," and London was 
 forgotten for the time. It lay behind us in the 
 north-west, and the cliff was at the back of us shut- 
 ting out all thought of it. No remiaiscences and 
 no anticipations disturbed us ; the present was suf- 
 ficient, and occupied us totally. 
 
 I should like, if I could, to write an essay upon 
 the art of enjoying a holiday. It is sad to think 
 
152 MARK RUTHERFOED'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 how few people know how to enjoy one, although 
 they are so precious. We do not sufficiently con- 
 sider that enjoyment of every kind is an art care- 
 fully to be learnt, and specially the art of making 
 the most of a brief space set apart for pleasure. It 
 is foolish, for example, if a man, city bred, has but 
 twelve hours before him, to spend more of it in eat- 
 ing and drinking than is necessary. Eating and 
 drinking produce stupidity, at least in some degree, 
 which may just as well be reserved for town. It is 
 foolish also to load the twelve hours with a task — so 
 much to be done. The sick person may perhaps 
 want exercise, but to the tolerably healthy the best 
 of all recreation is the freedom from fetters even 
 when they are self-imposed. 
 
 Our train homewards was due at Bexhill a little 
 after seven. By five o'clock a change gradual but 
 swift was observed. The clouds which had charmed 
 us all through the morning and afternoon were in 
 reality thunder-clouds, which woke up like a sur- 
 prised army under perfect discipline, and moved 
 magnificently towards us. Already afar off we 
 heard the softened echoing roll of the thunder. 
 Every now and then we saw a sharp thrust of light- 
 ning down into the water, and shuddered when we 
 thought that perhaps underneath that stab there 
 might be a ship with living men. The battle at 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 153 
 
 first was at such a distance that we watched it 
 with intense and solemn delight. As yet not a 
 breath of air stirred, but presently, over in the 
 south-east, a dark ruffled patch appeared on the 
 horizon, and we agreed that it was time to go. 
 The indistinguishable continuous growl now be- 
 came articulated into distinct crashes. I had mis- 
 calculated the distance to the station, and before 
 we got there the rain, skirmishing in advance, 
 was upon us. We took shelter in a cottage for a 
 moment in order that Ellen might get a glass of 
 water — bad-looking stuff it was, but she was very 
 thirsty — and put on her cloak. We then started 
 again on our way. We reached the station at about 
 half-past six, before the thunder was overhead, but 
 not before Ellen had got wet, despite all my efforts 
 to protect her. She was also very hot from hurrying, 
 and yet there was nothing to be done but to sit in 
 a kind of covered shed till the train came up. The 
 thunder and lightning were, however, so tremendous, 
 that we thought of nothing else. When they were 
 at their worst, the lightning looked like the upset of a 
 caldron of white glowing metal — with such strength, 
 breadth, and volume did it descend. Just as the 
 train arrived, the roar began to abate, and in about 
 half-an-hour it had passed over to the north, leaving 
 behind the rain, cold and continuous, which fell all 
 
154 MAEK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 round us from a dark, heavy, grey sky. The car- 
 riage in which we were was a third class, with seats 
 arranged parallel to the sides. It was crowded, and 
 we were obliged to sit in the middle, exposed to the 
 draught which the tobacco smoke made necessary. 
 Some of the company were noisy, and before we got 
 to Eed Hill became noisier, as the brandy-flasks 
 which had been well filled at Hastings began to 
 work. Many were drenched, and this was an ex- 
 cuse for much of the drinking ; although, for that 
 matter, any excuse or none is generally sufficient. 
 At Red Hill we were stopped by other trains, and 
 before we came to Croydon we were an hour 
 late. We had now become intolerably weary. The 
 songs were disgusting, and some of the women 
 who were with the men had also been drinking, 
 and behaved in a manner which it was not pleasant 
 that Ellen and Marie should see. The carriage 
 was lighted fortunately by one dim lamp only 
 which hung in the middle, and I succeeded at last 
 in getting seats at the further end where there was 
 a knot of more decent persons who had huddled up 
 there away from the others. All the glory of the 
 morning was forgotten. Instead of three happy, 
 exalted creatures, we were three dejected, shivering 
 mortals, half poisoned with foul air and the smell of 
 spirits. We crawled up to London Bridge at the 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 155 
 
 slowest pace, and, finally, the railway company dis- 
 charged us on the platform at ten minutes past 
 eleven. Not a place in any omnibus could be 
 secured, and we therefore walked for a mile or so 
 till I saw a cab, which — unheard-of expense for 
 me — I engaged, and we were landed at our own 
 house exactly at half -past twelve. The first thing to 
 be done was to get Marie to bed. She was instantly 
 asleep, and was none the worse for her journey. 
 With Ellen the case was different. She could not 
 sleep, and the next morning was feverish. She 
 insisted that it was nothing more than a bad 
 cold, and would on no account permit me even 
 to give her any medicine; She would get up 
 presently, and she and Marie could get on well 
 enough together. But when I reached home on 
 Monday evening, Ellen was worse, and was still 
 in bed. I sent at once for the doctor, who would 
 give no opinion for a day or two, but meanwhile 
 directed that she was to remain where she was, 
 and take nothing but the lightest food. Tues 
 day night passed, and the fever still increased. I 
 had become very anxious, but I dared not stay with 
 her, for I knew not what might happen if I were 
 absent from my work. I was obliged to try and 
 think of somebody who would come and help us. 
 Our friend Taylor, who once was the coal porter at 
 Somerset House, came into my mind. He, as I have 
 
156 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 said when talking about him, was married, but had 
 no children. To him accordingly I went. I never 
 shall forget the alacrity with which he prompted his 
 wife to go, and with which she consented. I was shut 
 up in my own sufferings, but I remember a flash of joy 
 that all our efforts in our room had not been in vain. 
 I was delighted that I had secured assistance, but I 
 do believe the uppermost thought was delight that 
 we had been able to develop gratitude and affec- 
 tion. Mrs. Taylor was an " ordinary woman." She 
 was about fifty, rather stout, and entirely unedu- 
 cated. But when she took charge at our house, 
 all her best qualities found expression. It is true 
 enough, omnium consensu ca'pax imperii nisi imperas- 
 set, but it is equally true that under the pressure of 
 trial and responsibility we are often stronger than 
 when there is no pressure. Many a man will 
 acknowledge that in difficulty he has surprised him- 
 self by a resource and coolness which he never sus- 
 pected before. Mrs. Taylor I always thought to be 
 rather weak and untrustworthy, but I found that 
 when weight was placed upon her, she was steady as 
 a rock, a systematic and a perfect manager. 
 
 There was no doubt in a very short time as to 
 the nature of the disease. It was typhoid fever, 
 the cause probably being the impure water drank 
 as we were coming home. I have no mind to de- 
 scribe what Ellen suffered. Suffice it to say, that 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 157 
 
 her treatment was soon reduced to watching her 
 every minute night and day, and administering small 
 quantities of milk. Her prostration and emaciation 
 were excessive, and without the most constant atten- 
 tion, she might at any moment have slipped out of our 
 hands. I was like a man shipwrecked and alone in 
 a polar country, whose existence depends upon one 
 spark of fire, which he tries to cherish, left glimmer- 
 ing in a handful of ashes. Oh those days, prolonged 
 to weeks, during which that dreadful struggle lasted 
 — days swallowed up with one sole, intense, hungry 
 desire that her life might be spared ! — days filled with 
 a forecast of the blackness and despair before me if 
 she should depart. I tried to obtain release from the 
 ofi&ce. The answer was that nobody could of course 
 prevent my being away, but that it was not usual for 
 a clerk to be absent merely because his wife was not 
 well. The brute added with a sneer that a wife was 
 " a luxury " which he should have thought I could 
 hardly afford. We divided between us, however, at 
 home the twenty-four hours during which we stood 
 , sentinels against death, and occasionally we were 
 relieved by one or two friends. I went on duty 
 from about eight in the evening till one in the 
 morning, and was then relieved by Mrs. Taylor, who 
 remained till ten or eleven. She then went to bed, 
 and was replaced by little Marie. What a change 
 
158 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. ' 
 
 came over that child ! I was amazed at her. All at 
 once she seemed to have found what she was born to 
 do. The key had been discovered, which unlocked and 
 revealed what there was in her, of which hitherto I 
 had been altogether unaware. Although she was so 
 little, she became a perfect nurse. Her levity dis- 
 appeared ; she was grave as a matron, moved about 
 as if shod in felt, never forgot a single direction, 
 and gave proper and womanly answers to strangers 
 who called. Faculties unsuspected grew almost to 
 full height in a single day. Never did she relax 
 during the whole of that dreadful time, or show 
 the slightest sign of discontent. She sat by her 
 mother's side, intent, vigilant; and she had her 
 little dinner prepared and taken up into the sick- 
 room by Mrs. Taylor before she went to bed. I 
 remember once going to her cot in the night, as she 
 lay asleep, and almost breaking my heart over her 
 with remorse and thankfulness — remorse, that I, 
 with blundering stupidity, had judged her so super- 
 ficially ; and thankfulness, that it had pleased God 
 to present to me so much of His own divinest grace. 
 Fool that I was, not to be aware that messages 
 from Him are not to be read through the envelope 
 in which they are enclosed. I never should have 
 believed, if it had not been for Marie, that any 
 grown-up man could so love a child. Such love, I 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 159 
 
 should have said, was only possible between man and 
 woman, or, perhaps, between man and man. But 
 now I doubt whether a love of that particular kind 
 could be felt towards any grown-up human being, 
 love so pure, so imperious, so awful. My love to 
 Marie was love of God Himself as He is — an un- 
 restrained adoration of an efflux from Him, adoration 
 transfigured into love, because the revelation had 
 clothed itself with a child's form. It was, as I say, 
 the love of God as He is. It was not necessary, as 
 it so often is necessary, to qualify, to subtract, to 
 consider the other side, to deplore the obscurity 
 or the earthly contamination with which the Word 
 is delivered to us. This was the Word itself, with- 
 out even consciousness on the part of the instru- 
 ment selected for its vocalisation. I may appear 
 extravagant, but I can only put down what I felt 
 and still feel. I appeal, moreover, to Jesus Himself 
 for justification, I had seen the kingdom of God 
 through a little child. I, in fact, have done nothing 
 more than beat out over a page in my own words 
 what passed through His mind when he called a 
 little child and set him in the midst of His disciples. 
 How I see the meaning of those words now ! and so 
 it is that a text will be with us for half a life time, 
 recognised as great and good, but not penetrated till 
 the experience comes round to us in which it was born. 
 
i6o MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE, 
 
 Six weeks passed before the faint blue point of 
 light which flickered on the wick began to turn white 
 and show some strength. At last, however, day by 
 day we marked a slight accession of vitality which 
 increased with change of diet. Every evening when 
 I came home I was gladdened by the tidings which 
 showed advance, and Ellen, I believe, was as much 
 pleased to see how others rejoiced over her recovery 
 as she was pleased for her own sake. She, too, was 
 one of those creatures who always generously admit 
 improvement. For my own part, I have often 
 noticed that when I have been ill, and have been 
 getting better, I have refused to acknowledge it, 
 and that it has been an effort to me to say that 
 things were not at their worst. She, however, had 
 none of this niggardly baseness, and always, if only 
 for the sake of her friends, took the cheerful side. 
 Mrs. Taylor now left us. She left us as a friend 
 whose friendship will last, I hope, as long as life 
 lasts. She had seen all our troubles and our poverty : 
 we knew that she knew all about us: she had 
 helped us with the most precious help — what more 
 was there necessary to knit her to us ? — and it is 
 worth noting that the assistance which she rendered, 
 and her noble self-sacrifice, so far from putting us, in 
 her opinion, in her debt, only seemed to her a reason 
 why she should be more deeply attached to us. 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. i6i 
 
 It was late in the autumn before Ellen lia;d 
 thoroughly recovered, but at last we said that she 
 was as strong as she was before, and we determined 
 to celebrate our deliverance by one more holiday 
 before the cold weather came. It was again Sunday 
 — a perfectly still, warm, autumnal day, with a high 
 barometer and the gentlest of airs from the west. 
 The morning in London was foggy, so much so that 
 we doubted at first whether we should go ; but my 
 long experience of London fog told me that we 
 should escape from it with that wind if we got to the 
 chalk downs away out by Letherhead and Guildford, 
 We took the early train to a point at the base of the 
 hills, and wound our way up into the woods at the 
 top. We were beyond the smoke, which rested like 
 a low black cloud over the city in the north-east, 
 reaching a third of the way up to the zenith. The 
 beech had changed colour, and glowed with reddish- 
 brown fire. We sat down on a floor made of the 
 leaves of last year. At midday the stillness was 
 profound, broken only by the softest of whispers 
 descending from the great trees which spread over us 
 their protecting arms. Every now and then it died 
 down almost to nothing, and then would slowly swell 
 and die again, as if the gods of the place were engaged 
 in divine and harmonious talk. By moving a little 
 towards the external edge of our canopy we beheld 
 
1 62 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 the plain all spread out before us, bounded by the 
 heights of Sussex and Hampshire. It was veiled 
 with the most tender blue, and above it was spread 
 a sky which was white on the horizon and deep- 
 ened by degrees into azure over our heads. The 
 exhilaration of the air satisfied Marie, although she 
 had no playmate, and there was nothing special 
 with which she could amuse herself. She wandered 
 about looking for flowers and ferns, and was content. 
 We were all completely happy. We strained our eyes 
 to see the furthest point before us, and we tried to 
 find it on the map we had brought with us. The 
 season of the year, which is usually supposed to make 
 men pensive, had no such effect upon us. Everythin^^ 
 in the future, even the winter in London, was painted 
 by Hope, and the death of the summer brought no 
 sadness. Eather did summer dying in such fashion 
 fill our hearts with repose, and even more than repose 
 — with actual joy. 
 
 Here ends the autobiography. A month after this 
 last holiday my friend was dead and buried. He 
 had unsuspected disease of the heart, and one day 
 his master, of whom we have heard something, was 
 more than usually violent. Mark, as his custom 
 was, was silent, but evidently greatly excited. His 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 163 
 
 tyrant left the room ; and in a few minutes after- 
 wards Mark was seen to turn white and fall forward 
 in his chair. It was all over ! His body was taken 
 to a hospital and thence sent home. The next morn- 
 ing his salary up to the day of his death came in an 
 envelope to his widow, without a single word from 
 his employers save a request for acknowledgment. 
 Towards mid-day, his office coat, and a book found in 
 his drawer, arrived in a brown paper parcel, carriage 
 unpaid. 
 
 On looking over his papers, I found the sketch of 
 his life and a mass of odds and ends, some apparently 
 written for publication. Many of these had evidently 
 been in envelopes, and had most likely, therefore, 
 been offered to editors or publishers, but all, I am 
 sure, had been refused. I add one or two by way of 
 appendix, and hope they will be thought worth 
 
 saving. 
 
 E. S. 
 
NOTES ON THE BOOK OF JOB. 
 
 Here is a book which has for its subject not this or 
 that remote question which touches us only in idle 
 or careless moods; it is book which deals directly 
 with one of the deepest problems which have occupied 
 the mind of man. 
 
 We are a long way towards understanding any- 
 thing under our consideration when we have pro- 
 perly laid it open, even without comment. Job 
 is a wealthy and blameless man in whom God 
 takes pride, and when Satan presents himself be- 
 fore God, God asks him whether he has considered 
 Job. God thinks Job something worth considera- 
 tion. Satan stands for the sceptic. He sneers at 
 Job's virtue. Job is well paid for his piety. It is 
 easy for a pious man to be good, but if his prosperity 
 departs he will curse; his creed is the product of 
 his circumstances. God, who is Job's Maker, is, on 
 the other hand, a believer. He stands by Job, puts 
 
1 66 NOTES ON THE BOOK OF JOB. 
 
 a stake on him, and authorises Satan to try him. 
 Job loses all his children and his property, and he 
 knows not what is intended by the loss. He is 
 ignorant of what has passed between God and 
 Satan; the secret transactions of the high heavens 
 are unrevealed to him, but nevertheless he is stead- 
 fast. What he loses was not his, and in the depths 
 of his sorrow he blesses the name of the Lord. 
 Satan again presents himself before God, and God 
 justly claims the victory — "he holdeth fast his 
 integrity." Satan replies that Job as yet has not 
 known the worst, and that sickness is the test of all 
 tests. With health a man may endure anything, 
 but if that fail, it will be seen what becomes of his 
 religion. God is still confident, and Job is smitten 
 with sore boils from head to foot. The torment 
 cannot be surpassed, for not only is it extreme 
 taken by itself, but it is aggravated by the contrast 
 with his former condition. Death of course presents 
 itself to him as the welcome end, and he thinks of 
 suicide, suggested to him by his wife. If he could 
 have but a word of explanation he could bear all 
 with patience. But no word comes ; the sky gives 
 no sign. Separation from those he has loved, loath- 
 some disease infecting him up to his very brain, are 
 terrible, but the real agony is the silence, the ignor- 
 ance of the why and the wherefore, the sphinx-like 
 
NOTES ON THE BOOK OF JOB. 167 
 
 imperturbability which meets his prayers. Never- 
 theless he sins not. " What ! we have received good 
 at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil ? " 
 God had been gracious to him; he recollects all 
 the benefits bestowed on him, and he refuses to turn 
 upon Him because of present reverses. He submits ; 
 he is unable to explain, but still he submits. 
 
 His three friends forsake him not, but visit him. 
 When they see him afar off they rend their mantles, 
 sprinkle dust upon their heads, and coming near to 
 him, say nothing for seven days and seven nights, 
 for they see that his grief is very great. The conso- 
 lation offered by these three men to Job has passed 
 into a proverb; but who that knows what most 
 modern consolation is can prevent a prayer that 
 Job's comforters may be his ? They do not call 
 upon him for an hour, and invent excuses for the 
 departure which they so anxiously await ; they do 
 not write notes to him and go about their business 
 as if nothing had happened ; they do not inflict on 
 him meaningless commonplaces. They honour him 
 by remaining with him, and by their mute homage ; 
 and when they speak to him, although they are mis- 
 taken, they offer him the best that they have been 
 able to think. Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the 
 Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite, sitting in the 
 dust with Job, not daring to intrude upon him, are 
 
1 68 NOTES ON THE BOOK OF JOB. 
 
 for ever an example of what man once was and 
 ought to be to man. 
 
 After a while, Job " opened his mouth and cursed 
 his day," in words which are so vital that they are 
 an everlasting formula for all those of the sons of 
 men whose only hope is their last sleep. There the 
 wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary 
 be at rest. There the prisoners rest together ; they 
 hear not the voice of the oppressor. The small and 
 great are there, and the servant is free from his 
 master. One touch, that in the twenty-fifth verse 
 of the third chapter, is so intense, that it must be 
 the record of a very vivid experience. "For the 
 thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and 
 that which I was afraid of is come unto me," or 
 more correctly, "For I fear a fear; it meets me; 
 and what I shudder at comes to me." The object 
 of the dread which haunts us does not generally 
 become real to us, but to Job the horror of all his 
 worst dreams had become actual. 
 
 Job's three friends begin their reply, and Eliphaz 
 is the first. He asserts generally the just rule of 
 God, and the connection between doing good and 
 prosperity on the one hand, and between evil doing 
 and adversity on the other, ending with an amplifi- 
 cation of the text that the man is happy whom God 
 correcteth, for by chastisement are we redeemed. 
 
NOTES ON THE BOOK OF JOB. 196 
 
 Nothing that Eliphaz says is commonplace, although 
 it has no direct bearing on Job's case. If he had 
 been a fool he would never have been dear to Job, 
 nor would he have been one of the three amongst 
 all Job's acquaintances who came to him from afar. 
 We must remember, too, that in a simple, honest 
 society righteousness and temporal prosperity, sin 
 and poverty, may be more immediately conjoined 
 than they are with ourselves, and that Eliphaz may 
 have felt that much that he said was true, although 
 to us it is mere talk. Eliphaz is partly a rhetori- 
 cian, and, like all persons with that gift, he is fre- 
 quently carried off his feet and ceases to touch the 
 firm earth. His famous vision in the night, which 
 caused the hair of his flesh to stand up, is an ex- 
 aggeration, and does nothing but declare what might 
 as well have been declared without it, that man is 
 not just in the eyes of perfect purity. On the other 
 hand, his eloquence assists him to golden sayings 
 which will never be forgotten. Such, for example, 
 are the verses : " Thou shalf be hid from the scourge 
 of the tongue; neither shalt thou be afraid of de- 
 struction when it cometh. At destruction and 
 famine thou shalt laugh ; neither shalt thou be 
 afraid of the beasts of the earth. Eor thou shalt 
 be in league with the stones of the field, and the 
 beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee." The 
 
lyo NOTES ON THE BOOK OF JOB, 
 
 main moments of the oration of Eliphaz are these. 
 Rest upon thy piety ; no one who is innocent has 
 perished. In the eyes of God the purest is impure ; 
 His angels He charges with folly. The fool may 
 take root, but suddenly his habitation is cursed. 
 Commit your cause unto God who doeth great 
 things and unsearchable, and think yourself happy 
 in His correction. Doing this He will deliver you ; 
 you shall come to a good old age and die in peace. 
 
 It will be seen that there is here no direct imputa- 
 tion of crime against Job. Eliphaz holds generally 
 nevertheless to the belief that crime is followed by 
 punishment. A certain want of connection and 
 pertinence is observable in Eliphaz. A man who 
 is made up of what he hears or reads always lacks 
 unity and directness. Confronted by any difficulty 
 or by any event which calls upon him, he answers, 
 not by an operation of his intellect on what is im- 
 mediately before him, but by detached remarks which 
 he has collected, and which are never a fused homo- 
 geneous whole. In conversation he is the same, and 
 will first propound one irrelevant principle and then 
 another — the one, however, not leading to the other, 
 and sometimes contradicting it. The transition from 
 Eliphaz to Job in this respect is very remarkable. 
 The sixth and seventh chapters are molten from end 
 to end, and run in one burning stream. He com- 
 
NOTES ON THE BOOK OF JOB. 171 
 
 plains that Eliphaz is beside the mark. "How 
 forcible are right words ! but what doth your argu- 
 ing reprove ? " Eliphaz is like the torrent which the 
 caravans expected, but, when they came to it, it had 
 been consumed out of its place, and they were 
 ashamed. Barren sand was all that was offered in- 
 stead of the living water. Everything which can be 
 said by a sick man against life is in these chapters. 
 The whole of a vast subsequent literature is summed 
 up here, and he who has once read it may fairly ask 
 never to be troubled with anything more on that 
 side. Death to Job is as the shadow for which he 
 looks as an hireling looks for the reward of his work. 
 He calls upon God to remember that his life is wind ; 
 that as a cloud is consumed and vanisheth away, 
 so he that goeth down to the grave shall come up 
 no more ; and therefore he prays for consideration. 
 What is man, too, that the Almighty should set 
 Himself against him ? " Supposing I have sinned, 
 what can I do unto Thee ? Why set me up as a 
 mark against Thee ? Why dost Thou not pardon 
 my transgression ? " There is nothing in all 
 poetry more sublime than this : it was a complete 
 answer to Eliphaz, and is a complete answer to all 
 those who suppose that God, after the fashion of a 
 man, proposes to punish man deliberately for his 
 trivial misdeeds, and to punish him, too, not that he 
 
172 NOTES ON THE BOOK OF JOB. 
 
 may be cured, but because the dignity of the Maker 
 has received an affront. 
 
 Bildad, unaffected by what he has heard, referring 
 to it in no way whatever, reiterates the old tale. It 
 is the testimony of the fathers. We are but of 
 yesterday, and know nothing. Age after age has de- 
 clared that although the wicked may be green before 
 the sun, and his branch shoot forth in his garden, 
 he will be destroyed, and Grod will not cast away a 
 perfect man. The confidence of Bildad and his 
 friends upon this point is very remarkable. It must 
 have been based upon something. Such a creed did 
 not grow up without some root ; and it is equally 
 curious if it was the result of a philosophy, a felt 
 impossibility to consider God as unjust, or if it was 
 an induction from observed facts. If it was due to a 
 philosophy, it at least bears testimony to the autho- 
 rity of the ought in the minds of these men and the 
 depth of the distinction between justice and injus- 
 tice ; injustice being so hateful to them, that in spite 
 of everything which seems to prove the contrary, 
 they were unable to ascribe it to God. If it was 
 an induction from the facts — an induction which, as 
 I have before observed, might in those times be per- 
 fectly valid — then it is no less remarkable that such a 
 theocracy should ever have existed. 
 
 Job makes no direct answer. " How shall I 
 
NOTES ON THE BOOK OF JOB. 173 
 
 contend with Him ? I cannot answer one of His 
 thousand questions!" The conception of God in 
 Job's mind has greatly enlarged, and he dwells upon 
 His incomprehensibility. He is the maker of Arc- 
 turus, Orion, and the Pleiades, of that which is farthest 
 from us. " He goeth by me, and I see Him not ; He 
 passeth on also, but I perceive Him not." He is for 
 ever before me and about me ; what He does I see 
 perpetually, but I know Him not. How can I plead 
 with such a Being ? " If I had called, and He had 
 answered me, yet I would not believe that He had 
 hearkened unto my voice." One thing Job knows. 
 " He destroyeth the perfect and the wicked . . 
 the earth is given into the hand of the wicked ; He 
 covereth the faces of the judges thereof ; if not, who 
 is it?" What is the use of debating with Him? 
 " For He is not a man, as I am, that I should answer 
 Him, and we should come together in judgment. 
 Neither is there any daysman betwixt us that might 
 lay his hand upon us both," or as the Vulgate says, 
 " Non est qui utrumque valeaf arguere,et ponere manum 
 suam in awibobus " — a saying which has in it a gran- 
 deur as of some mountain summit "holding dark 
 communion with the cloud." Nevertheless can God 
 carelessly cast aside the work of His hands ? — so 
 much care apparently has been bestowed upon it. 
 " Hast thou not poured me out as milk, and curdled 
 
174 NOTES ON THE BOOK OF JOE. 
 
 me like cheese ? Thou hast clothed me with skin 
 and flesh, and hast fenced me with bones and sinews. 
 Thou hast granted me life and favour, and Thy visita- 
 tion hath preserved my spirit. And these things hast 
 thou hid in thy heart : I know that this is with Thee," 
 i.e., was intended by Thee. This book in a sense is 
 terribly modern, for this is a question which is con- 
 tinually but resultlessly asked by us all. A woman 
 of seven-and-twenty died the other day. She was 
 German, and had been in England five or six years. 
 She had applied herself with such diligence to 
 learning English, that she spoke it without the least 
 perceptible accent. She knew French just as well, 
 and her general training, the result of years of most 
 strenuous work, was most accurate. She was hand- 
 some, and had been married to an English husband two 
 years. One child was born, and her friends rejoiced 
 at the chances it would have with a German mother 
 in England. It was a preternaturally bright child, 
 and it was destroyed — a year old. Three months 
 before its death the mother began to show signs of 
 consumption, and now she has gone. As I stood by 
 her grave, the thought came into my mind — His 
 hands had made and fashioned her : why then did 
 He kill her? Why was all this carefully, drop- 
 by-drop collected store, precious beyond calculation, 
 
NOTES ON THE BOOK OF JOB. 175 
 
 emptied on the ground ? I know not. I cannot answer 
 Him one of a thousand ! 
 
 The example of Job protects us from the charge 
 of blasphemy in not suppressing our doubts. No- 
 thing can be more daring than his interrogations. 
 There is no impiety whatever in them, nor are they 
 recognised as impious in the final chapters of the 
 book. The question is put to us directly by Him — 
 it is no creation of ours — and shall we be thought 
 irreverent because we hear it ? 
 
 Zophar now ventures to express in plain words 
 what before had been merely a hint. "God ex- 
 acteth of thee less," says he, " than thy iniquity 
 deserveth." What was observed to be true of 
 Eliphaz is true of Zophar. He is made up of 
 disjointed propositions accumulated from time to 
 time, and now inappropriately vented on Job. 
 Por example : " Thou hast said, my doctrine is 
 pure, and I am clean in Thine eyes. But oh that 
 God would speak, and open His lips against thee; 
 and that He would show thee the secrets of wisdom, 
 that they are double to that which is (double thine 
 own — et quod multiplex esset lex ejus : Vulg. ) ; know 
 therefore that God exacteth of thee less than thine 
 iniquity deserveth. Canst thou by searching find 
 out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto 
 
176 NOTES ON THE BOOK OF JOB. 
 
 perfection ? It is high as heaven ; what canst thou 
 do ? deeper than hell ; what canst thou know ? " 
 All this about the incomprehensibility of God is 
 true and great, but what has it to do with the 
 preceding assertion of Job's sin ? It is something 
 gathered, something Zophar had been told, and 
 something he has had the wit to feel and admire, 
 but it is not Zophar himself. 
 
 Job holds fast to the evidence of his own eyes. 
 " I have understanding as well as you ; I am not 
 inferior to you." Zophar had appealed to anti- 
 quity. Job appeals to the beasts, " and they shall 
 teach thee ; and the fowls of the air, and they shall 
 tell thee." Of all that happens God is the cause. 
 " With Him is strength and wisdom : the deceived 
 and the deceiver are His." It is curious to see 
 what the image of this book becomes after it has 
 passed through the refracting glass of orthodoxy. 
 In the heading to the twelfth chapter we are told, 
 as a summary of the seventh and following verses, 
 that Job acTcTiowledgeth the general doctrine of God's 
 omnipotency, and so the texts, " the deceived and the 
 deceiver are His," " He removeth away the speech 
 of the trusty" {i.e. of the confident), " and taketh away 
 the understanding of the aged. He taketh away the 
 heart of the chief of the people of the earth, and causeth 
 
NOTES ON THE BOOK OF JOB. 177 
 
 them to wander in a wilderness where there is no 
 way. They grope in the dark without light, and He 
 maketh them to stagger like a drunken man" — 
 words tremendous and dangerous — are smothered up 
 under the decent formula of the general doctrine of 
 God's omnipotency. It is in fact a very particular 
 doctrine, and not by any means the harmless plati- 
 tude of the theologians. The difference is great 
 between the preacher in gown and bands acknow- 
 ledging the general doctrine of God's omnipotency, 
 and Job, who is forced to break away from the faith 
 of his church, sacred through the testimony of ages 
 of miracle and prophecy — Job, who feels the ground 
 shake under him as he is compelled to admit that 
 He whom he worshipped holds both cheat and 
 victim in His hand, smites the eloquent with para- 
 lytic stammerings, turns the old man into a melan- 
 choly childish driveller, and causes nations to swerve 
 aside over precipices, under the guidance of leaders 
 whom He has blinded. Job is the type of those 
 great thinkers who cannot compromise ; who cannot 
 say hit yet ; who faithfully follow their intellect to 
 its very last results, and admit all its conclusions. 
 They are better to a man so constituted than living 
 in a fool's paradise, however paradisaical it may be. 
 " For," translating the twelfth verse of the thir- 
 teenth chapter into intelligibility by the help of 
 
 M 
 
178 NOTES ON THE BOOK OF JOB. 
 
 the German Version, " your sayings are sayings of 
 ashes ; your ramparts are ramparts of mud " — mere 
 mud before the attack, thinks Job, although the fool 
 may dwell behind them in placid content, believing 
 them to be granite. 
 
 Job renews his desire to speak with God. • He 
 renews also his request for death; and yet death, 
 the passing of life like a shadow, is to him most 
 pathetic, although the pathos in his case had never 
 been sharpened by the loss of a hope in immor- 
 tality. " His sons come to honour, and he knoweth 
 it not ; and they are brought low, but he perceiveth 
 it not of them. But his flesh upon him shall have 
 pain, and his soul within him shall mourn." He is 
 shut out from all sympathy with the joys and the 
 sorrows of the children whom he has so much loved. 
 He lies cold and dead, when they are exulting in 
 love, in marriage, in well-deserved gratulations from 
 their fellows. He is cold and dead, when they are 
 in complicated difficulty or distress from which he 
 could save them ! 
 
 The three friends, having each said what they had 
 to say, and Job having answered, begin again, 
 Eliphaz taking the lead as before. His position is 
 unaltered. How should it be altered ? It is not 
 possible for a man committed, as Eliphaz and his 
 companions are committed, to alter, whatever the 
 
NOTES ON THE BOOK OF JOB. 179 
 
 facts may be, and the same argument returns with 
 little variation. Eliphaz condemns Job because his 
 talk can do no good. Always has this been urged 
 against those who, with no thought of consequences, 
 cannot but utter that which is in them ; and it is held 
 to be especially pertinent against the man who, like 
 Job, challenges the constitution under which he lives, 
 and " has no remedy to propose." It is incredible to 
 Eliphaz that there should be anything in Job's case 
 which had not been anticipated. " Art thou the first 
 man that was born ? Hast thou heard the secret of 
 God?" This was supposed to be conclusive in Job's 
 day, and has been thought to be conclusive ever since. 
 Although there must necessarily be a certain 
 monotony in the continuous counter -statements 
 of Job, there is not a single dead repetition. For 
 example, in this second answer to Eliphaz, Job, after 
 the retort that he, too, " could heap up words " if he 
 pleased, adds "my purposes are broken oflf, even 
 the thoughts of my heart." Happy is the man, no 
 matter what his lot may be otherwise, who sees some 
 tolerable realisation of the design he has set before 
 him in his youth or in his earlier manhood. Many 
 there are who, through no fault of theirs, know 
 nothing but mischance and defeat. Either sudden 
 calamity overturns in tumbling ruins all that they 
 had painfully toiled to build, and success for ever after- 
 
i8o NOTES ON THE BOOK OF JOB. 
 
 wards is irrecoverable ; or, what is most frequent, each 
 day brings its own special hindrance, in the shape 
 of ill-health, failure of power, or poverty, and a fatal 
 net is woven over the limbs preventing all activity. 
 The youth with his dreams wakes up some morning, 
 and finds himself fifty years old with not one soli- 
 tary achievement, with nothing properly learned, with 
 nothing properly done, with an existence consumed in 
 mean, miserable, squalid cares, and his goal henceforth 
 is the grave in which to hide himself ashamed. 
 
 Bildad's second response travels over the old 
 ground. " The light of the wicked shall be put out, 
 and the spark of his fire shall not shine," &c. &c., and 
 Job reiterates that all this is nothing but clatter. 
 " Know now that God hath overthrown me, and hath 
 compassed me with His net. Behold, I cry out of 
 wrong, but I am not heard : I cry aloud, but there is 
 no judgment. He hath fenced up my way that I 
 cannot pass, and He hath set darkness in my paths." 
 Into the much-disputed question of the meaning of 
 the famous verses at the end of the 19th chapter, 
 which have been so generally supposed to refer to 
 the resurrection, I cannot enter. I do not know what 
 they mean, and it is a pity that commentators, where 
 there is no certain light, cannot say there is none, 
 but feel themselves compelled to give an interpreta- 
 tion. I will only go so far as to admit that if there 
 
NOTES ON THE BOOK OF JOB. i8i 
 
 is any allusion to future life here, much of what 
 goes before and comes after is obscured. We are at 
 a loss to know why Job should have dwelt upon the 
 finality of death if he had immortality before him. 
 It is inconsistent with the thought that he was 
 about to go " whence he should not return," and it 
 destroys the parallel between the flower, which revives 
 at the scent of water, and man who " giveth up the 
 ghost, and where is he ?" — man who "lieth down and 
 riseth not : till the heavens be no more they shall not 
 awake nor be raised out of their sleep." It is curious, 
 too, that Job's friends do not allude to the doctrine, 
 as one would think they would certainly do, at least 
 after having seen Job's reliance upon it. Zophar's 
 speech in the 20th chapter does not refer to it. He con- 
 tents himself with the affirmation that in this life the 
 avenger of the wicked will appear : " The increase of 
 his house shall depart — shall flow away in the day of 
 his wrath. This is the portion of a wicked man from 
 God, and the heritage appointed unto him by God." 
 
 As the action of the poem proceeds. Job becomes 
 more and more direct. " Mark me," says he in the 
 2ist chapter, " and be astonished, and lay your hand 
 upon your mouth. Even when I reflect I am afraid, 
 and trembling taketh hold on my flesh. Where- 
 fore do the wicked live, become old, yea, are mighty 
 in power ? " They openly defy God. They say. 
 
1 82 NOTES ON THE BOOK OF JOB. 
 
 " What is the Almighty that we should serve Him ? " 
 and yet " their bull gendereth, and faileth not, their 
 cow calveth, and slippeth not her calf." His friends, 
 in order to avoid the significance of what is obvious, 
 had explained it away by the assumption that ini- 
 quity is laid up for the children of the wicked. 
 " His own eyes," replies Job, " ought to see his de- 
 struction, and he himself ought to drink of the 
 wrath of the Almighty. For what care hath he 
 in his house after him, when the number of his 
 months is cut off in the midst ? " Good and evil 
 " lie down alike in the dust, and the worms do cover 
 them." The closing verses of the chapter must be 
 given as they stand : " Behold, I know your thoughts, 
 and the devices that ye wrongfully imagine against 
 me. For ye say, where is the house of the prince ? 
 and where the tent of the dwellings of the wicked ? 
 Have ye not asked them that go by the way, and 
 do ye not know their tokens (i.e., do ye not know 
 what travellers will tell you), that the wicked is 
 spared at the day of destruction : they are led away 
 at the day of wrath ? who shall declare his way to 
 his face ? and who shall repay him what he hath 
 done ? He is brought to the grave, and over his 
 tomb is watch kept. The clods of the valley are 
 sweet unto him, and every man draws after him, and 
 innumerable before him. How, then, comfort ye 
 
NOTES ON THE BOOK OF JOB. 183 
 
 me in vain ? Your answers are but falsehood." 
 Once more Job takes his stand on actual eyesight. 
 He relies, too, on the testimony of those who have 
 travelled. He prays his friends to turn away from 
 tradition, from the idle and dead ecclesiastical reite- 
 ration of what had long since ceased to be true, and 
 to look abroad over the world, to hear what those 
 have to say who have been outside the narrow valleys 
 of Uz. Job demands of his opponents that they 
 should come out into the open universe. If they 
 will but lift up their eyes across the horizon which 
 hitherto has hemmed them in, what enlargement 
 will not thereby be given to them ! Herein lies the 
 whole contention of the philosophers against the 
 preachers. The philosophers ask nothing more 
 than that the conception of God should be wide 
 enough to cover what we see; that it shall not be arbi- 
 trarily framed to serve certain ends ; that it shall be 
 inclusive of everything which is discovered beyond 
 Uz and its tabernacles ; and if the conclusions we 
 desire cannot be drawn from that conception, so 
 much the worse for them. 
 
 Inexpressibly touching is the last verse but one. 
 It is a revelation of the inmost heart striving to 
 be at peace with death. Not one grain of comfort 
 is sought outside, and it is this which makes it so 
 precious. There is not even a hint of a hope. All 
 
1 84 NOTES ON THE BOOK OF JOB. 
 
 is drawn from within, and is solid and real. To this 
 we can come when religion, dreams, metaphysics, all 
 fail. The clods of the valley shall be sweet even to 
 us. Why should we complain, why should we be in 
 mortal fear ! We do but go the path which the poor- 
 est, the weakest, the most timid have all trodden ; 
 which the poorest, the weakest, the most timid for 
 millions of years will still tread. Every man draws 
 after us, and innumerable have drawn thither before 
 us. None who have passed have ever rebelled or re- 
 pented, nor shall we. Job, in building on rest, and 
 on community, has struck the adamant which cannot 
 be shaken. 
 
 So strong is the superstition of the friends that Eli- 
 phaz now advances to a creation of crimes which Job 
 must have committed. It is more easy to believe him 
 to be a sinner than that their creed can be shaken. 
 " Thou hast taken," says Eliphaz, " a pledge from thy 
 brother for nought, and stripped the naked of their 
 clothing. Thou hast not given water to the weary to 
 drink, and thou hast withholden bread from the hungry. 
 But as for the mighty man, he had the earth ; and the 
 honourable man dwelt in it. Thou hast sent widows 
 away empty, and the arms of the fatherless have 
 been broken. Therefore snares are round about 
 thee, and sudden fear troubleth thee." There was 
 no shadow of truth in the accusation. Job seems, 
 
NOTES ON THE BOOK OF JOB. 185 
 
 on the contrary, to have been remarkable for 
 the virtues which were the very opposite of these 
 sins. It is worth while to notice how onr measure 
 of wrong has altered. To Eliphaz, wrong, when he 
 wishes specially to name it, is a class of actions, not 
 one of which is to us accounted an offence, except by 
 certain sentimental persons. A man now-a-days may 
 be a good Christian and a good citizen, and do every 
 one of these deeds which in Job's time were so pecu- 
 liarly reprehensible, and which are taken, as we shall 
 see afterwards, with Job's full consent, as the very 
 type of misdoing. Eliphaz, as before observed, is 
 the church. But what a world that must have been, 
 when the church's anathemas were reserved for 
 him who exacteth pledges from his brother, who 
 neglected the famishing, and who paid undue re- 
 spect to the great. Job's answer is an indignant 
 denial of the charge. It is not worth an answer, 
 and again he implores God to speak to him. " Be- 
 hold, I go forward, but He is not there ; and back- 
 ward, but I cannot perceive Him ; on the right hand 
 where He doth work, but I cannot behold Him : He 
 hideth Himself on the right hand, that I cannot see 
 Him." Job adds to the last repetition, however, of 
 his complaint something which is new — that He is 
 irreversible. He is " in one mind : " more probably 
 the Unexampled, the Unique — " and who can turn 
 
l86 NOTES ON THE BOOK OF JOB. 
 
 Him ? " and he proceeds in the next verse to a still 
 plainer exposition. " He performeth the thing that 
 is appointed for me : and many such things are with 
 Him. Therefore am I troubled at His presence: 
 when I consider I am afraid of Him. For God 
 maketh my heart soft, and the Almighty troubleth 
 me." The temptation is great, when we find any- 
 thing approaching modern learning in an ancient 
 book, to suppose that we have got hold of an anti- 
 cipation of it, but we cannot conclude from this 
 passage that Job's belief in the impossibility of 
 altering the divine decree is our belief in the 
 uniformity of nature. Nevertheless Job's dejection, 
 because no man can turn Him, and the fear at His 
 presence, because He performeth the thing ap- 
 pointed, are the dejection and the fear of our nine- 
 teenth century as certainly as they were those of 
 the seventh century B.C. 
 
 In the twenty-fourth chapter Job turns aside 
 from the charge brought by Zophar against him, 
 and points to what cannot be disputed, the success 
 of the wandering savage tribes, which must have 
 made such a figure in the domestic history of the 
 time. They, says Job, go on their desperate way 
 unrebuked, and die as the others die. " Drought 
 and heat consume the snow waters; so doth the 
 grave those which have sinned." These are they 
 
NOTES ON THE BOOK OF JOB. 187 
 
 who " are wet with the showers of the mountains, 
 and embrace the rock for want of a shelter." 
 
 The controversy has now been fully developed. 
 Bildad mumbles in half-a-dozen weak words, what 
 is nothing to the point, that man in God's sight 
 must be unclean. His short monologue sounds 
 rather as a meditation meant for himself, the only 
 refuge he could find from the dijBficulty which pressed 
 upon him. Zophar, who ought to have spoken again, 
 is silent. The victory remains with Job, and he sums 
 up his case. 
 
 First of all, though, he competes as it were with 
 Bildad in his account of the Almighty. It is as if Job 
 said — I also know Him and what He is. " Hast 
 thou plentifully declared the thing as it is?" and 
 then he describes God as hanging the earth upon 
 nothing, as the Maker of the constellations, and yet 
 these are but the very fringe of His doings ; " what a 
 mere whisper of Him do we hear ! but the thunder 
 of His power who shall understand ? " He holds 
 fast, too, by his integrity. Nothing that his friends 
 have urged will convince him against his own 
 clear conscience. He remains to them in an utterly 
 unconverted and even horribly profane state of 
 mind — " My heart is not ashamed for one of my 
 days." He casts up his accounts, and refuses to 
 
188 NOTES ON THE BOOK OF JOB. 
 
 allow any sin, actual or imputed, open or secret. 
 The rest of the 27th chapter is a mystery which 
 is insoluble. It stands in Job's name, but it is an 
 admission of everything which he had before de- 
 nied. " This is the portion of a wicked man with 
 God, and the heritage of oppressors, which they 
 shall receive of the Almighty. If his children be 
 multiplied, it is for the sword; and his offspring 
 shall not be satisfied with bread." In the 21st 
 chapter Job had urged on this very point, " Let 
 his own eyes " — the eyes of the wrong-doer himself — 
 "see his destruction." Again in the 21st chapter, 
 " Their seed is established in their sight with them, 
 and their offspring before their eyes." In the 27th 
 chapter " terrors take hold on him'as waters, a tem- 
 pest stealeth him away in the night." In the 21st 
 chapter " their houses are safe from fear . . . they 
 spend their days in wealth, and in a moment go 
 down to the grave. Therefore they say unto God, 
 Depart from us." Whether in the 27th chapter 
 there is a remnant of a speech by Zophar, from 
 whom one is due, or whether it is an interpolation 
 devised to save Job's orthodoxy, I have no means of 
 determining, but that it is unintelligible is certain, 
 and the only thing to be done with it is to pass it 
 by. The 28th chapter is not free from difficulty, 
 and both the 27th and 28th are rendered doubly 
 
NOTES ON THE BOOK OF JOB. 189 
 
 suspicious by the commencement of the 29th. 
 " Moreover, Job continued his parable and said," 
 the sequel being a reversion to the old pang so 
 authentic and so familiar. " Oh that I were as in 
 months past." But the 28th chapter is so exqui- 
 site, that even if it does not help the develop- 
 ment of the poem, or is inharmonious with it, it 
 cannot be neglected. It is a passionate personi- 
 fication of Wisdom, and the desire for her is almost 
 sensuous in its intensity. " It cannot be gotten for 
 gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the price 
 thereof. It cannot be valued with the gold of 
 Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire." 
 This is the wisdom by which the world was framed ; 
 by which the winds and waters were measured 
 " when He made a decree for the rain, and a way 
 for the lightning of the thunder." This very same 
 wisdom it is which is the fear of the Lord. " Unto 
 man he said. Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is 
 wisdom ; and to depart from evil is understanding." 
 It is wisdom in both cases — the same wisdom. It 
 is not going beyond the text to say that this is 
 what it teaches. What we call morality is no 
 separate science. It is the science by which a 
 decree was made for the rain and a way for the 
 lightning of the thunder. These immortal words 
 should not be narrowed down to the poverty-stricken 
 
I90 NOTES ON THE BOOK OF JOB. 
 
 conclusion that the sum-total of all wisdom is con- 
 formity to half-a-dozen plain rules, and that the 
 divine ambition of man is to be limited within the 
 bounds of departing from evil. Eather do we dis- 
 cover in these words the essential unity of fearing 
 the Lord and wisdom. To be wise is to fear Him. 
 Wisdom, the wisdom searched out by Him in His 
 creation of the universe, when it is brought down 
 to man, is morality. "Whatever we may think of 
 the date of this portion of the book, there is no 
 question as to the three following chapters. Job 
 protests, not merely his innocence, but his active 
 righteousness, and remembers his past prosperity. 
 He dwells upon the time when he laughed away 
 his friends' trouble, and they were not able to 
 darken the cheerfulness of his countenance. Im- 
 movable he was when fear was abroad, and the 
 hearts of men were snaken. " I chose out their 
 
 way, and sat chief, and dwelt as a king in the 
 
 • 
 army, as one that comforteth the mourners." The 
 
 humanities of these chapters reveal the best side 
 
 of the Semitic race. They are the burden of the 
 
 prophets — of Micah, who invokes God's vengeance 
 
 on those who " covet fields, and take them by 
 
 violence ; and houses, and take them away : so they 
 
 oppress a man and his house, even a man and 
 
 his heritage ; " and they are the soul of the Eevolu- 
 
NOTES ON THE BOOK OF JOB. 191 
 
 tion, which will one day make foolish the modern 
 quarrels over forms of government. Job goes down 
 to the very root of the matter. " Did not He that 
 made me in the womb make him ? and did not 
 one fashion us in the womb ? If I have withheld 
 the poor from their desire, or have caused the eyes 
 of the widow to fail; or have eaten my morsel 
 myself alone, and the fatherless hath not eaten 
 thereof (for from my youth he was brought up 
 with me, as with a father, and I have guided her 
 from my mother's womb) : if I have seen any perish 
 for want of clothing, or any poor without covering ; 
 if his loins have not blessed me, and if he were not 
 warmed with the fleece of my sheep ; if I have lifted 
 up my hand against the fatherless, when I saw my 
 help in the gate: then let mine arm fall from my 
 shoulder-blade, and mine arm be broken from the 
 bone." Again, let it be laid to heart that the obli- 
 gations, the breach of which was a " terror " to him, 
 are not one of them legal obligations, and not one 
 of them moral obligations in the modern sense of 
 the word. The races to whom we owe the Bible 
 were cruel in war ; they were revengeful ; their veins 
 were filled with blood hot with lust; they knew no 
 art, nor grace, nor dialectic, such as Greece knew, 
 but one service they at least have rendered to the 
 world. They have preserved in their prophets and 
 
192 NOTES ON THE BOOK OF JOB. 
 
 poets this eternal verity — Re that made me in the 
 womb made him — and have proclaimed with divine 
 fury a divine wrath upon all those who may be 
 seduced into forgetfulness of it. In discernment 
 of the real breadth and depth of social duty, no- 
 thing has gone beyond the . book of Job. Much 
 of it ought to be engraved upon brass and set 
 upon pillars throughout the land, as a perpetual 
 reminder of the truth as between man and man. 
 In one of the shires of this country stands, or used 
 to stand, a tablet with a mark on it twenty or 
 thirty feet above the level of the river which runi 
 beneath, and on the tablet it is recorded, incredible 
 almost to all present inhabitants, that on a certain 
 day years ago the water reached that mark. So 
 with the book of Job. It is a monument testify- 
 ing, although its testimony is now hardly believ- 
 able, that this was a rich man's notion of duty ; 
 and more extraordinary still, that this was his 
 religion. 
 
 As to Elihu's speech I have nothing to say. 
 Whether there is sufficient philological evidence 
 against it I am unable to determine, but the evi- 
 dence supplied by the instinct of the ordinary 
 reader is sufficient. Setting apart that it is entirely 
 unnecessary in the progress of the poem, and that 
 it is tame and flat compared with the other portion 
 
NOTES ON THE BOOK OF JOB. 193 
 
 of it, the omission of Elihu in the prologue and the epi- 
 logue is almost decisive. 
 
 "Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind." 
 He makes no reference whatever to what had passed 
 in heaven. It would have been easy, one would think, 
 to have cleared up all Job's doubts by telling him at 
 once that his trials were ordained to establish his 
 steadfastness and confound the Accuser. But no ; He 
 does not, and cannot allude to that act of the drama 
 which had been enacted unseen. The very first words 
 of the Almighty are the key to the whole of what fol- 
 lows. " Where wast thou when I laid the foundations 
 of the earth? declare if thou hast understanding? 
 Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest ? 
 or who hath stretched out the line upon it ? Where- 
 upon are the foundations thereof fastened ? or who 
 laid the corner-stone thereof : when the morning 
 stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted 
 for joy ? " The appeal is in no sense whatever to 
 the bare omnipotence of God. He is omnipotent, 
 but not upon His omnipotence does He rely in His 
 divine argument with Job. Listen, for example, 
 to such passages as these : " Who hath divided a 
 watercourse for the overflowing of waters, or a way 
 for the lightning of thunder ; to cause it to rain on 
 the earth, where no man is ; on the wilderness, where- 
 in there is no man ; to satisfy the desolate and waste 
 
 N 
 
194 NOTES ON THE BOOK OF JOB. 
 
 ground, and to cause the bud of the tender herb to 
 spring forth ? " Still more noteworthy, there is the 
 ostrich, " which leaveth her eggs in the earth and 
 warmeth them in the dust, and forgetteth that the foot 
 may crush them, or that the wild beast may break 
 them. She is hardened against her young ones as 
 though they were not hers; her labour is in vain with- 
 out fear ; because God hath deprived her of wisdom, 
 neither hath He imparted to her understanding." 
 There are also the hawk and the eagle : " Doth the 
 hawk fly by thy wisdom and stretch her wings towards 
 the south ? Doth the eagle mount up at thy command, 
 and make his nest on high ? He dwelleth and abideth 
 upon the rock, upon the crag of the rock, and the 
 strong place. From thence he seeketh his prey, and his 
 eyes behold afar off. His young ones also suck up 
 blood : and where the slain are, there is he." 
 
 The Almighty pauses. " Moreover the Lord 
 answered Job and said, " Shall he who censures God 
 contend with Him ? He that reproveth God, let 
 Him answer it." Job humiliates himself : " Behold, 
 too insignificant am I ; what shall I answer thee ? 
 I will lay mine hand upon my mouth." Jehovah 
 again speaks from the storm : " Gird up thy loins 
 now like a man : I will demand of thee, and declare 
 thou unto Me. Wilt thou also disannul my right ? 
 wilt thou condemn me, that thou mayest be right- 
 
NOTES ON THE BOOK OF JOB. 195 
 
 eous ? Hast thou an arm like God ? or canst thou 
 thunder with a voice like Him ? Deck thyself 
 now with majesty and excellency, and array thy- 
 self with glory and beauty ! Cast abroad the rage 
 of thy wrath : and behold every one that is proud, 
 and abase him ! look on every one that is proud, and 
 bring him low, and tread down the wicked in their 
 place ! Hide them in the dust together, and bind 
 their faces in secret ! Then will I also confess unto 
 thee that thine own right hand can save thee ? " The 
 description of behemoth and the leviathan follows. 
 
 There are two observations plain enough but 
 most important to be made upon the Divine ora- 
 tion. One is that God vouchsafes to Job no 
 revelation in order to solve the mystery with which 
 he was oppressed. There is no promise of immor- 
 tality, nothing but an injunction to open the eyes 
 and look abroad over the universe. Whatever help 
 is to be obtained is to be had, not through an oracle, 
 but by the exercise of Job's own thought. 
 
 In the next place, there is no trace of any admis- 
 sion on the part of Jehovah that the well-meant 
 theories of the friends are correct. On the con- 
 trary. His wrath is kindled against them. Jehovah 
 does not admit for a moment that He has estab- 
 lished any unvarying connection between righteous- 
 ness and prosperity, sin and adversity. 
 
196 NOTES ON THE BOOK OF JOB. 
 
 What then is God's meaning ? It behoves us to 
 keep close to the text in our interpretation of it. 
 We have not to ascertain what we might imagine 
 or wish Him to say. We have to find out what 
 He did say. Most scrupulously are we to avoid 
 foisting upon Him any idea of our own. It 
 is much easier to impose a meaning upon the 
 Bible, written in an age so unlike our own, than 
 to extract the meaning from it. God reminds us 
 of His wisdom, of the mystery of things, and that 
 man is not the measure of His creation. The world 
 is immense, constructed on no plan or theory which 
 the intellect of man can grasp. It is transcendent 
 everywhere. This is the burden of every verse, and 
 is the secret, if there be one, of the poem. Sufficient 
 or insufficient, there is nothing more. Job is to 
 hold fast to the law within; that is his candle 
 which is to light his path ; but God is infinite. Job, 
 if he is not satisfied, submits. Henceforth he will 
 be mute — "once have I spoken, but I will not 
 answer ; yea twice ; but I will proceed no further." 
 " I have uttered that I understood not ; things too 
 wonderful for me, which I knew not." AU his 
 thinkings seemed like hearsay. This then was the 
 real God. " Now mine eye seeth Thee." 
 
 It is impossible to neglect the epilogue in which 
 Job is restored to his prosperity. If we do neglect 
 
NOTES ON THE BOOK OF JOB. 197 
 
 it, we may perhaps turn the book into something 
 more accordant with our own notions, but the book 
 itself we have not got. There is nothing really 
 inconsistent in it. The Almighty has explained 
 Himself, and the explanation stands, but there is 
 no reason why Job should be left in such utter 
 misery. The anguish which completely envelopes 
 the sufferer does break and yield with time, and 
 often disappears. On the other hand, we have no 
 right to demand happiness, and we are not told 
 that Job's happiness returned to him because he 
 demanded it. It is utterly to mistake the purpose 
 of the last chapter to suppose that in it lies the 
 meaning of all that has gone before, and that it 
 teaches us that we have only to wait and God will 
 reward us. God is great, we know not His ways. 
 He takes from us all we have, but yet, if we pos- 
 sess our souls in patience, we may pass the valley 
 of the shadow and come out in sunlight again. 
 We may or we may not. If we had before us a 
 statement of a nineteenth-century philosophy, there 
 would undoubtedly have been no epilogue ; but the 
 book is not a philosophy, but a record of an expe- 
 rience. 
 
 What more have we to say now than God said 
 from the whirlwind over 2500 years ago? We 
 have passed through much since that memorable 
 
iqS notes on the book or job. 
 
 day. We have had new religions which have over- 
 spread the world, and yet the sum total of all that 
 we can add is but small. Scientific discovery — as- 
 tronomy for example — contributes something. The 
 earth is no longer the centre of the starry system, 
 and with the disappearance of that belief much 
 more has disappeared. Man has not become of less 
 importance, but it is seen that all things do not 
 converge to him. We have learned too more inti- 
 mately God's infinity. It is this which caused Job 
 to put his hand on his mouth — the truth that even 
 the dry clod and the desert grass are dear to Him 
 though no man is near them. Why should they 
 not be ? Why should I say that dew falling on a 
 thorn in a desert is wasted, but falling on my 
 flower shows proper economy ? Furthermore, if 
 resources are inexhaustible, there can be no waste. 
 It might be waste if / were to lavish time and 
 treasure on building up the blue succory perfect in 
 its azure, which springs by the wayside, to be 
 smothered by the chalk dust and to be destroyed 
 in its pride by a chance cut from a boy's stick, but 
 it is no waste to God. In this way the lesson 
 which the whirlwind taught us has been expanded 
 and intensified. We return to it anew after all the 
 creeds, and we say that they are but the hearing of 
 Him, and that this is seeing Him. 
 
PRINCIPLES. 
 
 I HAVE often reproached myself that principles have 
 done so little for me. It is not that I have not got 
 any. I have been for years familiar with all the 
 wisest and noblest principles which are to be found 
 in philosophical and religious books from the time 
 of Moses downwards. Nor is it a failing of mine 
 that I have not the courage or strength to apply 
 principles. I am weak as other men are, and liable 
 to yield to temptation; but this is not my main 
 difficulty ; my trouble is that I never know how to 
 apply my principles. Take a case : It is true that 
 every man ought to be satisfied with the limitations 
 of his own nature. He ought not to repine that he 
 cannot write poems or carve statues. The principle 
 is of some service when the question is of poems or 
 statues ; but I should be equally helped without it, 
 for the most uncultivated of mortals is not so foolish 
 as to be melancholy because he cannot fly. At other 
 times, when I most need assistance, and call upon 
 
200 PRINCIPLES. 
 
 this principle to aid me, I am all adrift. I am placed 
 in such a position, for example, that it is my duty to 
 exercise control over somebody below me. I ought to 
 tell him that he is going wrong and put him right, but 
 I feel that I cannot, and that he is too strong for me. 
 This may be mere conquerable cowardice, or it may 
 be that in this direction I am as limited as I am in 
 relation to poems or statues. I do not know. When 
 I have done what I think I can do, am I to sit 
 down contented and say I can do no more, or 
 am I to listen to a voice which for ever prompts 
 me and whispers, "All you can do you have not 
 done ? " 
 
 During the major portion of my life I am 
 the victim of antagonisms, and each opposing 
 force seems able to plead equal justification. This, 
 however, is the system on which the world is 
 built. It is a mistake to expect a principle to 
 be anything else than abstract. An act is con- 
 crete, and that means that it is something in 
 which oppositions find their solution and lie in 
 repose. This, it will be said, leaves us just where 
 we were and gives us no assistance. It is a just 
 criticism. Man is man because he possesses the 
 proud prerogative of actualising the abstract. He is 
 not its fool. In each deed he does he has to be aware 
 of two poles, and say, " Between them, doing justice 
 
PRINCIPLES. 201 
 
 to both, I fix this deed so." Instead of two poles 
 there may be a dozen or more, not exactly poles, 
 but divergent or opposite pulls. The richer the 
 nature is, the more there will be of them; the 
 stronger the nature, the more perfect will be the 
 harmony in which they will all meet in external 
 life. 
 
 To know principles, although at first it seems 
 as if the consciousness of them is of no service 
 to us, is really an enormous benefit. The more 
 we have, if we have only the gift to manage them, 
 the more real and less shadowy shall we be. Let 
 it ever be remembered that the reality of an act 
 or of a man is in exact proportion to the number of 
 principles which lie in that man or act, and that the 
 single abstract is unreality, unsubstantiality, useless- 
 ness. Let us not be cast down at our difficulties. 
 Let us rejoice rather at the exalted, the divine task 
 that is imposed on us. Man is the very top of the 
 creation, the express image of the Creator, because 
 at every moment of his life he resolves abstracts 
 into realities. 
 
 The curse of every truth is that a counterfeit of it 
 always waits on it, and is its greatest enemy. What 
 is this which I have said but the mere commonplace 
 that we must never go too far, and that compromise 
 is the rule of life. But between my doctrine and 
 
aoi PRINCIPLES. 
 
 this commonplace there is a great difference. The 
 commonplace teaches that no principle is ultimately 
 efficacious ; that it is to be trusted to a certain arbi- 
 trary point, and beyond that it somehow ceases to 
 be valid. The truth, on the other hand, is that ever]/ 
 principle is efficacious up to the uttermost, and that 
 faith in it is never to be abandoned. The compro- 
 mise comes of imbecility or impotence, and is essen- 
 tially contrary to the concrete reconciliation of 
 abstracts. 
 
 It is difficult to separate morals from wisdom, and 
 in fact no clear line of demarcation is possible ; but 
 perhaps we may say that in morals a single clear 
 principle is more distinctly supreme than in 
 wisdom. Morality is the region of the abstract. 
 It is mercifully provided that that which is of the 
 most importance to us in the conduct of life should 
 be under the dominion of the abstract, and there- 
 fore be plain to everybody. There is no wit neces- 
 sary in order to discover what we ought to do when 
 the question is one of telling a lie or speaking the 
 truth. This seems to me as valid a distinction 
 between morality and wisdom as any I know. The 
 abstractness of the moral law gives it a certain 
 sublimity and ideality which is very remarkable. 
 
 Perpetual undying faith in principles is of the 
 utmost importance. I sometimes think it is the 
 
PRINCIPLES. a03 
 
 very Alpha and Omega of life. Belief in prin- 
 ciples is the only intelligible interpretation I have 
 ever been able to attach to the word faith. A man 
 with faith in principles, even if they be not first-rate, 
 is sure to succeed. The man who has no faith in them 
 is sure to fail. Nothing finer after all can be said 
 of faith than that which is said in the epistle to 
 the Hebrews, and no finer example can be given 
 of it than that of Noah there given. Noah was 
 warned of God that destruction would visit the 
 impious race by which he was surrounded. He 
 quietly set to work to build his ark. There is no 
 record that it was built by miracle, and he must 
 have been a long time about it. Glorious days of 
 unclouded sunshine with no hint of rain, weeks per- 
 haps of drought, must have passed over his head 
 as he sat and wrought at this wondrous structure. 
 Imagine the scoffs of the irreverent Canaanites, the 
 jeers of the mob which passed by or peeped over 
 fences; imagine the suggestions of lunacy ! Worse and 
 worse, imagine what was said and done when, seven 
 days before the rain, though not a drop had fallen, 
 the pious man with all his family, and with that 
 wonderful troop of animals, entered the ark, and 
 the Lord shut him in. But God had spoken to 
 him : he had heard a divine word, and in that word 
 he believed, despite the absence of a single fleck 
 
204 . PRINCIPLES. 
 
 of vapour in the sky. What a time, though, it must 
 have been for him during those seven days ! Would 
 it come true ? Would he have to walk out asain 
 down those planks with the clean beasts and un- 
 clean beasts after him, amidst the inextinguishable 
 laughter of all his pagan, God-denying neighbours ? 
 But in a week he heard the first growl of the tem- 
 pest. He was justified, God was justified ; and for 
 evermore Noah stands as a divine type of what we 
 call faith. This is really it. What we have once 
 heard, really heard in our best moments, by that let 
 us abide. There are multitudes of moments in which 
 intelligent conviction in the truth of principles dis- 
 appears, and we are able to do nothing more than 
 fall back on mere dogged determinate resolution to 
 go on ; not to give up what we have once found to be 
 true. This power of dogged determinate resolution, 
 which acts independently of enthusiasm, is a pre- 
 cious possession. A principle cannot for ever ap- 
 pear to us in its pristine splendour. Not only are 
 we tempted to forsake it by other and counter at- 
 tractions, but it gets wearisome to us because it is 
 a principle. It becomes a fetter, we think. Then 
 it is that faith comes into operation. We hold fast, 
 and by and bye a third state follows the second, 
 and we emerge into confidence again. One would 
 like to have a record of all that passed through the 
 
PRINCIPLES. 205 
 
 soul of Ulysses when he was rowed past the Sirens, 
 In what intellectually subtle forms did not the 
 desire to stay clothe itself to that intellectually 
 subtle soul ? But he had bound himself beforehand, 
 and he reached Ithaca and Penelope at last. I re- 
 member once having determined after much delibe- 
 ration that I ought to undertake a certain task 
 which would occupy me for years. It was one which 
 I could at any moment relincLuish. After six 
 months I began to flag, and my greatest hindrance 
 was, not the confessed desire for rest, but all kinds 
 of the most fascinating principles or pseudo prin- 
 ciples which flattered what was best and not what 
 was worst in me. I was narrowing my intellect, pre- 
 venting the proper enjoyment of life, neglecting the 
 sunshine, &c. &c. But I thought to myself, " Now 
 the serpent was more subtile than any beast of the 
 field," and that his temptation specially was that 
 " your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods." 
 I was enabled to persevere, oftentimes through no 
 other motive than that aforesaid divine doggedness, 
 and presently I was rewarded. 
 
 As an instance of the necessity of reconciling 
 principles, the experience of advancing years may be 
 taken. A man must for ever keep himself open to 
 the reception of new light. As he gets older, he will 
 find that the tendency grows to admit nothing into 
 
aofr PRINCIPLES. 
 
 his mind which does not corroborate something he has 
 already believed, and that the new truth acquired is 
 very limited. If he wishes to keep himself young 
 he must use his utmost efforts to maintain his sus- 
 ceptibility. He must not converse solely with him- 
 self and turn over and over again the thoughts of 
 the past. He must not in reading a book dwell 
 upon those passages only which are a reflection of his 
 own mind. This is true, but it is also true that he 
 must put certain principles beyond debate. Life is 
 too short to admit of the perpetual discussion and 
 re-discussion of what is fundamental and has been 
 settled after bestowing on it all the care of which 
 we are capable. If, by reason of patient and 
 long-continued experiment, we have found out, for 
 example, that a certain regimen is good for us, 
 we should be foolish, at the bidding of even a scien- 
 tific man, to begin experimenting again. "We must 
 simply say that this matter is once for all at rest, 
 whether rightly or wrongly, and that our days here 
 are but threescore years and ten. Neither can we 
 afford to make quite certain between opposing prin- 
 ciples. The demand for certainty is a sign of weak- 
 ness, and if we persist in it induces paralysis. The 
 successful man is he who when he sees that no 
 further certainty is attainable, promptly decides on 
 the most probable side, as if he were completely 
 
PRINCIPLES. 207 
 
 sure it was right. If we come to a parting of roads, 
 and this one goes slightly east and the other a little 
 west, then, if we believe that our town lies westward, 
 we are bound, supposing we have no other guide, 
 instantaneously to take the western road, although 
 we know that the tracks thereabouts twist in every 
 direction, and that the one to the west may bend 
 southwards and bring us back to the point from 
 which we started. 
 
 It is an old theory that our action depends on 
 wisdom. We do what we see to be good. If we 
 really see it to be good, we must do it. There is no 
 doubt that a certain dimness of vision accompanies 
 temptation. We do not discern in its real splen- 
 dour the virtue which, properly discerned, would 
 fascinate and compel us. But, nevertheless, the 
 part which pure resolution has to play is very 
 great. It is, as Burns says, the stalk of carle hemp 
 in us. A man must continually put his back to 
 the wall, just as in pain the hero determines through 
 sheer force of will to endure. Inflexibility, Will, 
 the power of holding fast to a principle is a primary 
 faculty, not altogether to be resolved into insight, 
 although of course it is easy enough to argue the 
 identity of everything in man, and to prove that 
 will is science, or love, or a superior capacity of 
 definition, or anything else. We often fail through 
 
2o8 PRINCIPLES. 
 
 a lamentable trick of reopening negotiations with 
 what we have determined to abandon. Severed 
 once and for good reason, let it remain once and for 
 all severed. 
 
 Principles are more useful to us in time of danger 
 when they are presented to us incarnated in living 
 men. We should ask ourselves, how would Paul or 
 Jesus have acted in this case. That question will 
 often settle a difficulty when the appeal to abstract 
 principles would only bewilder us through the 
 difficulty of selection. Furthermore, the reference 
 to men rather than to abstractions puts us in good 
 company: we are conscious of society and of fellow- 
 ship : we see the faces of the heroes looking on us 
 and encouraging us. Plutarch in his essay — How 
 a mail), may jperceive his own proceeding and going 
 forward in virtue (Holland's translation) — says, 
 " Hereupon also it followeth by good consequence 
 that they who have once received so deep an 
 impression in their hearts take this course with 
 themselves, that when they begin any enterprise 
 or enter into the administration of government, or 
 when any sinister accident is presented to them, 
 they set before their eyes the examples of those, 
 who either presently are or heretofore have been 
 worthy persons, discoursing in this manner : What 
 is it that Plato would have done in this case ? What 
 
PRINCIPLES. 209 
 
 would Epaminondas have said to this ? How would 
 Lycurgus or Agesilaus have behaved themselves 
 herein ? After this sort (I say) will they labour to 
 frame, compose, reform, and adorn their manners, 
 as it were, before a mirror or looking-glass; to 
 wit, in correcting any unseemly speech that they 
 have let fall, or repressing any passion that hath 
 risen in them. They that have learned the names 
 of the demi-gods called Idcei Dactyli know how to 
 use them as counter charms, or preservatives against 
 sudden frights, pronouncing the same one after 
 another readily and ceremoniously ; but the remem- 
 brance and thinking upon great and worthy men 
 represented suddenly unto those who are in the 
 way of perfection, and taking hold of them in all 
 passions and complexions which shall encounter 
 them, holdeth them up, and keepeth them upright 
 that they cannot fall." This we know is the secret 
 of the Christian religion. It is based upon a 
 Person, and the whole drift of Paul's epistles is 
 specially this — to turn Christ into a second con- 
 science. More particularly for simple people easily 
 led away, but, indeed, for all people, the import- 
 ance, the overwhelming importance of maintaining a 
 personal basis for religion, cannot be overstated. I 
 only speak my own experience : I am not talking 
 theology or philosophy. I know what I am saying, 
 
2IO PRINCIPLES. 
 
 and can point out the times and places when I 
 should have fallen if I had been able to rely for 
 guidance upon nothing better than a command- 
 ment or a deduction. But the pure, calm, heroic 
 image of Jesus confronted me, and I succeeded. I 
 had no doubt as to what He would have done, and 
 through Him I did not doubt what I ought to do. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 PRINTED BY BALLANTVNE, HANSON AND CO. 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON. 
 
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