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 The autobiography & deliverance of Marie 
 
 3 1924 013 569 821 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tlie Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013569821 
 
The 
 
 AUTOBIOGRAPHY 
 ^ DELIVERANCE 
 
 of 
 
 MARK RUTHERFORD 
 
A************ *#******# ******* 
 
 i autobiography | 
 |@^ deliveranceI 
 
 % I 
 
 S MARK RUTHERFORD | 
 
 * £<//V^fl' by His Friend * 
 
 « * 
 
 « ,iBn * 
 
 * - 
 
 I DODD, MEAD 6f COMPANY I 
 
 8 1899 I 
 
C O NTE NTS 
 
 The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. CHILDHOOD 
 
 I 
 
 II. PREPARATION 
 
 12 
 
 III. WATER LANE 
 
 26 
 
 IV. EDWARD GIBBON MARDON 
 
 41 
 
 V. MISS ARBOUR 
 
 54 
 
 VI. ELLEN AND MARY 
 
 72 
 
 VII. EMANCIPATION . 
 
 92 
 
 VIII. PROGRESS IN EMANCIPATION 
 
 104 
 
 IX. OXFORD STREET . 
 
 116 
 
 Mark Rutherford's Deliverance 
 
 chapter page 
 
 I. NEWSPAPERS .... I 
 
 II. M'KAY 17 
 
 III. MISS LE ROY . . . . 31 
 
 IV. A NECESSARY DEVELOPMENT . 49 
 V. WHAT IT ALL CAME TO . . 64 
 
 VI. DRURY LANE THEOLOGY . . 82 
 VII. QUI DEDIT IN MARI VIAM . 93 
 
 VIII. FLAGELLUMNONAPPROQUINABIT 
 
 TABERNACULO TUO . .102 
 IX. HOLIDAYS 116 
 
PREFACE 
 
 TO THE SECOND EDITION, 
 
 The present edition is a reprint of the first, with cor- 
 rections of several mistakes which had been over- 
 looked. 
 
 There is one observation which I may perhaps be 
 permitted to make on re-reading after some years this 
 autobiography. Eutherford, at any rate in his earlier 
 life, was an example of the danger and the folly of 
 cultivating thoughts and reading books to which he 
 was not equal, and which tend to make a man lonely. 
 
 It is all very well that remarkable persons should 
 occupy themselves with exalted subjects, which are out 
 of the ordinary road which ordinary humanity treads ; 
 but we who are not remarkable make a very great 
 mistake if we have anything to do with them. If 
 we wish to be happy, and have to live with average 
 men and women, as most of us have to live, we 
 
viii PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 must learn to take an interest in the topics wMch 
 concern average men and women. We think too 
 much of ourselves. We ought not to sacrifice a single 
 moment's pleasure in our attempt to do something 
 which is too big for us, and as a rule, men and women 
 are always attempting what is too big for them. To 
 ninety-nine young men out of a hundred, or perhaps 
 ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine 
 out of a hundred thousand, the wholesome healthy 
 doctrine is, "Don't bother yourselves with what is 
 beyond you ; try to lead a sweet, clean, wholesome life, 
 keep yourselves in health above everything, stick to 
 your work, and when your day is done amuse and 
 refresh yourselves." It is not only a duty to ourselves, 
 but it is a duty to others to take this course. Great 
 men do the world much good, but not without some 
 harm, and we have no business to be troubling our- 
 selves with their dreams if we have duties which lie 
 nearer home amongst persons to whom these dreams 
 are incomprehensible. Many a man goes into his 
 study, shuts himself up with his poetry or his psycho- 
 logy, comes out, half understanding what he has read, 
 is miserable because he cannot find anybody with 
 whom he can talk about it, and misses altogether the 
 far more genuine joy which he could have obtained 
 from a game with his children, or listening to what his 
 wife had to tell him about her neighbours. 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. ix 
 
 " Lor, miss, you haven't looked at your new bonnet 
 to-day," said a servant girl to her young mistress, 
 
 "No, why should I ? I did not want to go out." 
 
 " Oh, how can you ? why, I get mine out and look at 
 it every night." 
 
 She was happy for a whole fortnight with a happiness 
 cheap at a very high price. 
 
 That same young mistress was very caustic upon the 
 women who block the pavement outside drapers' shops, 
 but surely she was unjust. They always seem uncon- 
 scious, to be enjoying themselves intensely and most 
 innocently, more so probably than an audience at a 
 Wagner concert. Many persons with refined minds 
 are apt to depreciate happiness, especially, if it is of "a 
 low type." Broadly speaking, it is the one thing worth 
 having, and low or high, if it does no mischief, is better 
 than the most spiritual misery. 
 
 Metaphysics, and theology, including all specula- 
 tions on the why and the wherefore, optimism, pes- 
 simism, freedom, necessity, causality, and so forth, are 
 not only for the most part loss of time, but frequently 
 ruinous. It is no answer to say that these things force 
 themselves upon us, and that to every question we are 
 bound to give or try to give an answer. It is true, 
 although strange, that there are multitudes of burning 
 questions which we must do our best to ignore, to forget 
 their existence; and it is not more strange, after all. 
 
X PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION, 
 
 than many other facts in this wonderfully mysterious 
 and defective existence of ours. One fourth of life is 
 intelligible, the other three fourths is unintelligible 
 darkness ; and our earliest duty is to cultivate the habit 
 of not looking round the comer. 
 
 " Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy 
 wine with a merry heart ; for God hath already accepted 
 thy works. Let thy garments be always white, and let 
 not thy head lack ointment Live joyfully with the 
 wife whom thou lovest aU the days of the life of thy 
 vanity, which He hath given thee under the sun, all the 
 days of thy vanity : for that is thy portion in life." 
 
 £. S. 
 
This is the night when I must die, 
 And great Orion walketh high 
 In silent glory overhead : 
 Hill set just after I am dead, 
 
 A week this night, Fm in my grave : 
 Orion walketh o'er the wave : 
 Dovm in the dark damp earth I lie. 
 While he doth march in majesty. 
 
 A few weeks hence and spring will come ; 
 The earth will bright array put on 
 Of daisy and of primrose bright, 
 And everything which loves the light. 
 
 And some one to my child will say, 
 " Tou'll soon forget that you could play 
 Beethoven ; let us hear a strain 
 From that slow movement once again," 
 
 And so sh£llplay that melody. 
 While I among the worms do lief 
 Dead to them all, for ever dead; 
 The churchyard day dense overhead. 
 
 I once did think there might be mine 
 One friendship perfect and divine; 
 Alas I that dream dissolved in tears 
 Before Td counted twenty years. 
 ( xi ) 
 
( »i ) 
 
 For I was ever commonplace/ 
 
 Of genius never had a trace; 
 
 My thoughts the world have never fed. 
 
 Mere echoes of the hook last read. 
 
 Those whom I Tmew I cannot blames 
 If they are cold, J am the same.' 
 How could they ever show to me 
 More than a common courtesy 1 
 
 There is no deed which I have done; 
 There is no love which I have won, 
 To mahe them for a moment grieve 
 Thai I this night their earth must Uaoe, 
 
 Thus, moaning at the break of day, 
 A man upon his deathbed lay ; 
 A moment more and all was still ; 
 The Morning Star came o'er the hilL 
 
 But when the dawn lay on his face, 
 It kindled an immortal grace ; 
 As if in death that Life were shown 
 Which Uves not in the great alone, 
 
 Orion sank down in the west 
 
 Just as he sank into his rest ; 
 
 I closed in solitude his eyes, 
 
 And watched him till the sun's upiisa. 
 
AUTOBIOGEAPHT 
 
 OF 
 
 MARK RUTHERFORD. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 Now that I have completed my autobiography up to 
 the present year, I sometimes doubt whether it is right 
 to publish it Of what use is it, many persons will 
 say, to present to the world what is mainly a record 
 of weaknesses and failures? If I had any triumphs 
 to teU; if I could show how I had risen superior to 
 poverty and suffering; if, in short, I were a hero of 
 any kind whatever, I might perhaps be justified in 
 communicating my success to mankind, and stimu- 
 lating them to do as I have done. But mine is the 
 tale of a commonplace life, perplexed by many 
 problems I have never solved; disturbed by many 
 difficulties I have never surmounted; and blotted by 
 ignoble concessions which are a constant regret. I 
 have decided, however, to let the manuscript remain, 
 I will not destroy it, although I will not take the 
 
2 AUTOBIOGEAPHY OF 
 
 responsibility of printing it. Somebody may think it 
 worth preserving ; and there are two reasons why they 
 may think so, if there are no others. In the first place, 
 it has some little historic value, for I feel increas- 
 ingly that the race to which I belonged is fast pass- 
 ing away, and that the Dissenting minister of the 
 present day is a different being altogether from the 
 Dissenting minister of forty years ago. In the next 
 place, I have observed that the mere knowing that 
 other people have been tried as we have been tried 
 is a consolation to us, and that we are relieved by 
 the assurance that our sufferings are not special and 
 peculiar, but common to us with many others. Death 
 has always been a terror to me, and at times, nay 
 generally, religion and philosophy have been altogether 
 unavailing to mitigate the terror in any way. But it 
 has been a comfort to me to reflect that whatever death 
 may be, it is the inheritance of the whole human race ; 
 that I am not singled out, but shall merely have to 
 pass through what the weakest have had to pass 
 through before me. In the worst of maladies, worst 
 at least to me, those which are hypochondriacal, the 
 healing effect which is produced by the visit of a 
 friend who can simply say, " I have endured all that," 
 is most marked. So it is not impossible that some 
 few whose experience has been like mine may, by my 
 example, be freed from that sense of solitude which 
 they find so depressing. 
 
 1 was bom, just before the Liverpool and Man- 
 chester Eailway was opened, in a small country town 
 in one of the Midland shires. It is now semi-manu- 
 facturing, at the junction of three or four lines of 
 railway, with hardly a trace left of what it was fifty 
 
MAKK RUTHERFORD. 3 
 
 years ago. It then consisted of one long main street, 
 with a few other streets branching from it at right 
 angles. Through this street the mail-coach rattled at 
 night, and the huge waggon roUed through it, drawn 
 by four horses, which twice a week travelled to and 
 from London and brought us what we wanted from the 
 great and unknown city. My father and mother be- 
 longed to the ordinary English middle class of well- 
 to-do shopkeepers. My mother's family came from a 
 little distance, but my father's had lived in those parts 
 for centuries. I remember perfectly well how business 
 used to be carried on in those days. There was ab- 
 solutely no competition, and although nobody in the 
 town who was in trade got rich, except the banker 
 and the brewer, nearly everybody was tolerably well 
 off, and certainly not pressed with care as their suc- 
 cessors are now. The draper, who lived a little way 
 above us, was a deacon in our chapel, and every 
 morning, soon after breakfast, he would start off for 
 his walk of about four miles, stopping by the way to 
 talk to his neighbours about the events of the day. At 
 eleven o'clock or thereabouts, he would return and 
 would begin work. Everybody took an hour for dinner 
 — between one and two, and at that time, especially 
 on a hot July afternoon, the High Street was empty 
 from end to end and the profoundest peace reigned. 
 
 My life as a child falls into two portions, sharply 
 divided, — week-day and Sunday. During the week- 
 day I went to the public school, where I learned 
 little or nothing that did me much good. The dis- 
 cipline of the school was admirable, and the head- 
 master was penetrated with a most lofty sense of duty, 
 but the methods of teaching were very imperfect. In 
 
4 AUTOBIOaRAPHY OF 
 
 Latin we had to learn the Eton Latin Grammar till 
 we knew every word of it by heart, but we did scarcely 
 any retranslation from English into Latin. Much of 
 our time was wasted on the merest trifles, such as 
 learning to write, for example, like copperplate, and, 
 still more extraordinary, in copying the letters of the 
 alphabet as they are used in printing. But we had 
 two half-holidays in the week, which seem to me now 
 to have been the happiest part of my Ufe. A river ran 
 through the town, and on summer Wednesdays and 
 Saturdays we wandered along its banks for miles, 
 alternately fishing and bathing. I remember whole 
 afternoons in June, July, and August, passed half -naked 
 or altogether naked in the solitary meadows and in the 
 water; I remember the tumbling weir with the deep 
 pool at the bottom in which we dived; I remember, 
 too, the place where we used to swim across the river 
 with our clothes on our heads, because there was no 
 bridge near, and the frequent disaster of a slip of the 
 braces in the middle of the water, so that shirt, jacket, 
 and trousers were soaked, and we had to lie on the 
 grass in the broiling sun without a rag on us till every- 
 thing was dry again. In winter our joys were of a 
 different kind, but none the less delightfuL If it was 
 a frost, we had skating; not like the skating on a 
 London pond, but over long reaches, and if the locks 
 had not intervened, we might have gone a day's journey 
 on the ice without a stoppage. If there was no ice we 
 had football, and what was still better, we could get 
 up a steeplechase on foot straight across hedge and 
 ditch. In after-years, when I lived in London, I 
 came to know children who went to school in Gower 
 Street, and travelled backwards and forwards by 
 
MAEK RUTHERFORD, 5 
 
 omnibus, children who had no other recreation than an 
 occasional visit to the Zoological Gardens, or a some- 
 what sombre walk up to Hampstead to see their aunt ; 
 and I have often regretted that they never had any 
 experience of those perfect poetic pleasures which the 
 boy enjoys whose childhood is spent in the country, 
 and whose home is there. A country boarding-school 
 is something altogether different. On the Sundays, 
 however, the compensation came. It was a season of 
 unmixed gloom. My father and mother were rigid 
 Calvinistic Independents, and on that day no news- 
 paper nor any book more secular than the Evangelical 
 Magazine was tolerated. Every preparation for the 
 Sabbath had been made on the Saturday, to avoid as 
 much as possible any work. The meat was cooked 
 beforehand, so that we never had a hot dinner even in 
 the coldest weather ; the only thing hot which was 
 permitted was a boiled suet pudding, which cooked 
 itself whUe we were at chapel, and some potatoes 
 which were prepared after we came home. Not a letter 
 was opened unless it was clearly evident that it was 
 not on business, and for opening these an apology was 
 always offered that it was possible they might contain 
 some announcement of sickness. If on cursory in- 
 spection they appeared to be ordinary letters, although 
 they might be from relations or friends, they were put 
 away. After family prayer and breakfast the business 
 of the day began with the Sunday-school at nine o'clock. 
 We were taught our Catechism and Bible there till a 
 quarter past ten. We were then marched across the 
 road into the chapel, a large old-fashioned building 
 dating from the time of Charles II. The floor was 
 covered with high pews. The roof was supported 
 
6 AUTOBIOGKAPHY OF 
 
 by three or four tall wooden pillars which ran from 
 the ground to the ceiling, and the galleries by 
 shorter pillars. There was a large oak pulpit on 
 one side against the wall, and down below, imme- 
 diately under the minister, was the "singing pew," 
 where the singers and musicians sat, the musicians 
 being performers on the clarionet, flute, violin, and 
 violoncello. Eight in front was a long enclosure, 
 called the communion pew, which was usually occupied 
 by a number of the poorer members of the congrega- 
 tion. There were three services every Sunday, besides 
 intermitting prayer-meetings, but these I did not as 
 yet attend. Each service consisted of a hymn, reading 
 the Bible, another hymn, a prayer, the sermon, a third 
 hymn, and a short final prayer. The reading of the 
 Bible was unaccompanied with any observations or 
 explanations, and I do not remember that I ever once 
 heard a mistranslation corrected. The first, or long 
 prayer, as it was called, was a horrible hypocrisy, and 
 it was a sore tax on the preacher to get through it. 
 Anything more totally unlike the model recommended 
 to us in the New Testament cannot well be imagined. 
 It generally began with a confession that we were all 
 sinners, but no individual sins were ever confessed, and 
 then ensued a kind of dialogue with God, very much 
 resembling the speeches which in later years I have 
 heard in the House of Commons from the movers 
 and seconders of addresses to the Crown at the opening 
 of Parliament. In aU the religion of that day nothing 
 was falser than the long prayer. Direct appeal to God 
 can only be justified when it is passionate. To come 
 maundering into His presence when we have nothing 
 particular to say is an insult, upon which we should 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD. 7 
 
 never presume if we had a petition to offer to any 
 earthly personage. We should not venture to take up 
 his time with commonplaces or platitudes; but our 
 minister seemed to consider that the Almighty, who 
 had the universe to govern, had more leisure at His 
 command than the idlest lounger at a club. Nobody 
 ever listened to this performance. I was a good child 
 on the whole, but I am sure I did not ; and if the 
 chapel were now in existence, there might be traced on 
 the flap of the pew in which we sat, many curious 
 designs due to these dreary performances. The sermon 
 was not much better. It generally consisted of a text, 
 which was a mere peg for a discourse, that was pretty 
 much the same from January to December. The minister ^ 
 invariably began with the fall of man ; propounded the 
 scheme of redemption, and ended by depicting in the 
 morning the blessedness of the saints, and in the even- 
 ing the doom of the lost. There was a tradition that 
 in the morning there should be " experience," that is 
 to say, comfort for the elect, and that the evening 
 should be appropriated to their less fortunate brethren. 
 The evening service was the most trying to me of all 
 these. I never could keep awake, and knew that to 
 sleep under the Gospel was a sin. The chapel was 
 lighted in winter by immense chandeliers with tiers 
 of candles all round. These required perpetual snuff- 
 ing, and I can see the old man going round the 
 chandeliers in the middle of the service with a 
 mighty pair of snuffers which opened and shut with 
 a loud click. How I envied him because he had a 
 semi-secular occupation which prevented that terrible 
 drowsiness ! How I envied the pew-opener, who was 
 allowed to stand at the vestry door, and could slip 
 
8 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP 
 
 into the vestry every now and then, or even into 
 the burial-ground if he heard irreverent boys playing 
 there ! The atmosphere of the chapel on hot nights 
 was most foul, and this added to my discomfort. 
 Oftentimes in winter, when no doors or windows 
 were open, I have seen the glass panes streaming 
 with wet inside, and women carried out fainting. 
 On rare occasions I was allowed to go with my 
 father when he went into the villages to preach. 
 As a deacon he was also a lay-preacher, and I had 
 the ride in the gig out and home, and tea at a farm- 
 house. Perhaps I shall not have a better opportu- 
 nity to say that, with all these drawbacks, my religious 
 education did confer upon me some positive advan- 
 tages. The first was a rigid regard for truthfulness. 
 My parents never would endure a lie or the least 
 equivocation. The second was purity of life, and I 
 look upon this as a simply incalculable gain. Im- 
 purity was not an excusable weakness in the society 
 in which I lived; it was a sin for which dreadful 
 punishment was reserved. The reason for my virtue 
 may have been a wrong reason, but anyhow I was 
 saved, and being saved, much more was saved than 
 health and peace of mind. To this day I do not 
 know where to find a weapon strong enough to subdue 
 the tendency to impurity in young men ; and although 
 I cannot tell them what I do not believe, I hanker 
 sometimes after the old prohibitions and penalties. 
 Physiological penalties are too remote, and the subtler 
 penalties— the degradation, the growth of callousness 
 to finer pleasures, the loss of sensitiveness to all that 
 is most nobly attractive in woman — are too feeble to 
 withstand temptation when it lies in ambush like a 
 
MARK RUTHEEFORD. 9 
 
 garrotter, and has the reason stunned in a moment. 
 The only thing that can he done is to make the con- 
 science of a boy generally tender, so that he shrinks 
 instinctively from the monstrous injustice of contri- 
 buting for the sake of his own pleasure to the ruin 
 of another. As soon as manhood dawns, he must also 
 have his attention absorbed on some objeot which 
 will divert his thoughts intellectually or ideally, and 
 by slight yet constant pressure, exercised not by fits 
 and starts, but day after day, directly and indirectly, 
 his father must form an antipathy in him to brutish 
 selfish sensuality. Above all, there must be no toying 
 with passion, and no books permitted, without con- 
 demnation and warning, which are not of a heroic 
 turn. When the boy becomes a man he may read 
 Byron without danger. To a youth he is fatal. Before 
 leaving this subject I may observe, that parents greatly 
 err by not telling their children a good many things 
 which they ought to know. Had I been taught when 
 I was young a few facts about myself, which I only 
 learned accidentally long afterwards, a good deal of 
 misery might have been spared me. 
 
 Nothing particular happened to me till I was 
 about fourteen, when I was told it was time I became 
 converted. Conversion, amongst the Independents 
 and other Puritan sects, is supposed to be a kind 
 of miracle wrought in the heart by the influence of 
 the Holy Spirit, by which the man becomes some- 
 thing altogether different to what he was previously. 
 It affects, or should affect, his character; that is to 
 say, he ought after conversion to be better in every 
 way than he was before : but this is not considered as 
 its main consequence. In its essence it is a change 
 
lo AUTOBIOQBAPHT OP 
 
 in the emotions and increased vividness of belief. 
 It is now altogether untrue. Yet it is an undoubted 
 fact that in earlier days, and, indeed, in rare cases, 
 as late as the time of my childhood, it was occasion- 
 ally a reality. It is possible to imagine that under 
 the preaching of Paul sudden conviction of a life 
 misspent may have been produced with sudden per- 
 sonal attachment to the Galilean who, untU then, 
 had been despised. There may have been prompt 
 release of unsuspected powers, and as prompt an im- 
 prisonment for ever of meaner weaknesses and ten- 
 dencies ; the result being literally a putting off of the 
 old, and a putting on of the new man. Love has always 
 been potent to produce such a transformation, and the 
 exact counterpart of conversion, as it was understood by 
 the apostles, may be seen whenever a man is redeemed 
 from vice by attachment to some woman whom he 
 worships, or when a girl is reclaimed from idleness 
 and vanity by becoming a mother. But conversion, as 
 it was understood by me and as it is now understood, 
 is altogether unmeaning. I knew that I had to be " a 
 child of God," and after a time professed myself to be 
 one, but I cannot call to mind that I was anything 
 else than I always had been, save that I was perhaps 
 a little more hypocritical; not in the sense that I 
 professed to others what I knew I did not believe, 
 but in the sense that I professed it to myself. I was 
 obliged to declare myself convinced of sin ; convinced 
 of the efficacy of the atonement ; convinced that I was 
 forgiven; convinced that the Holy Ghost was shed 
 abroad in my heart; and convinced of a great many 
 other things which were the merest phrases. However, 
 the end of it was, that I was proposed for acceptance. 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD. n 
 
 and two deacons were deputed, in accordance with the 
 usual custom, to wait upon me and ascertain my fitness 
 for membership. What they said and what I said has 
 now altogether vanished ; but I remember with perfect 
 distinctness the day on which I was admitted. It was 
 the custom to demand of each candidate a statement 
 of his or her experience. I had no experience to give ; 
 and I was excused on the grounds that I had been the 
 child of pious parents, and consequently had not under- 
 gone that convulsion which those, not favoured like 
 myself, necessarily underwent when they were called. 
 I was now expected to attend all those extra services 
 which were specially for the church. I stayed to the 
 late prayer-meeting on Sunday ; I went to the prayer- 
 meeting on week-days, and also to private prayer- 
 meetings. These services were not interesting to me 
 for their own sake. I thought they were, but what I 
 really liked was clanship and the satisfaction of be- 
 longing to a society marked off from the great world. 
 It must also be added that the evening meetings 
 afforded us many opportunities for walking home with 
 certain young women, who, I am sorry to say, were a 
 more powerful attraction, not to me only but to others, 
 than the prospect of hearing brother Holderness, the 
 travelling draper, confess crimes which, to say the truth, 
 although they were many according to his own account, 
 were never given in that detail which would have made 
 his confession of some value. He never prayed without 
 telling all of us that there was no health in him, and 
 that his soul was a mass of putrefying sores ; but every- 
 body thought the better of him for his self-humiliation. 
 One actual indiscretion, however, brought home to him 
 would have been visited by suspension or expulsion. 
 
ta AUTOBIOGEAPHY OF 
 
 CHAPTER IL 
 
 PREPARATION. 
 
 It was necessary that an occupation should be found 
 for me, and after much deliberation it was settled that 
 I should "go into the ministry." I had joined the 
 church, I had "engaged in prayer" publicly, and 
 although I had not set up for being extraordinarily 
 pious, I was thought to be as good as most of the 
 young men who professed to have a mission to regene- 
 rate mankind. Accordingly, after some months of 
 preparation, I was taken to a Dissenting College not 
 very far from where we lived. It was a large old- 
 fashioned house with a newer building annexed, and 
 was surrounded with a garden and with meadows. 
 Each student had a separate room, and all had their 
 meals together in a common hall. Altogether there 
 were about forty of us. The establishment consisted 
 of a President, an elderly gentleman who had an 
 American degree of doctor of divinity, and who taught 
 the various branches of theology. He was assisted by 
 three professors, who imparted to us as much Greek, 
 Latin, and mathematics as it was considered that we 
 ought to know. Behold me, then, beginning a course 
 of training which was to prepare me to meet the doubts 
 of the nineteenth century; to be the guide of men; 
 to advise them in their perplexities ; to suppress their 
 
MAEK RUTHEKFOED. 13 
 
 tempestuous lusts ; to lift them above their petty cares, 
 and to lead them heavenward ! About the Greek and 
 Latin and the secular part of the college discipline 
 I will say nothing, except that it was generally ine£&- 
 cient. The theological and biblical teaching was a 
 sham. We had come to the college in the first place 
 to learn the Bible. Our whole existence was in future 
 to be based upon that book ; our lives were to be 
 passed in preaching it. I will venture to say that 
 there was no book less understood either by students 
 or professors. The President had a course of lectures, 
 delivered year after year to successive generations of 
 his pupilSj upon its authenticity and inspiration. They 
 were altogether remote from the subject ; and afterwards, 
 when I came to know what the difficulties of belief 
 really were, I found that these essays, which were sup- 
 posed to be a triumphant confutation of the sceptic, 
 were a mere sword of lath. They never touched the 
 question, and if any doubts suggested themselves to 
 the audience, nobody dared to give them tongue, 
 lest the expression of them should beget a suspicion of 
 heresy. I remember also some lectures on the proof of 
 the existence of God and on the argument from design ; 
 all of which, when my mind was once awakened^ were 
 as irrelevant as the chattering of sparrows. When I 
 did not even know who or what this God was, and 
 could not bring my Ups to use the word with any 
 mental honesty, of what service was the " watch argu- 
 ment " to me ? Very lightly did the President pass over 
 all these initial difficulties of his religion. I see him 
 now, a gentleman with lightish hair, with a most melli- 
 fluous voice and a most pastoral manner, reading his 
 prim little tracts to us directed against the "shallow 
 
14 AUTOBIOGEAPHY OF 
 
 infidel" who seemed to deny conclusions so obvious 
 that we were certain he could not be sincere, and those 
 of us who had never seen an infidel might well be par- 
 doned for supposing that he must always be wickedly 
 bhnd. About a dozen of these tracts settled the infidel 
 and the whole mass of unbelief from the time of Celsus 
 downwards. The President's task was aU the easier 
 because he knew nothing of German literature; and, 
 indeed, the word "German" was a term of reproach 
 signifying something very awful, although nobody knew 
 exactly what it was. Systematic theology was the next 
 science to which the President directed us. We used a 
 sort of Calvinistic manual which began by setting forth 
 that mankind was absolutely in God's power. He was 
 our maker, and we had no legal claim whatever to any 
 consideration from Him. The author then mechanically 
 built up the Calvinistic creed, step by step, like a house 
 of cards. Systematic theology was the great business 
 of our academical life. We had to read sermons to the 
 President in class, and no sermon was considered com- 
 plete and proper unless it unfolded what was called 
 the scheme of redemption from beginning to end. So 
 it came to pass that about the Bible, as I have already 
 said, we were in darkness. It was a magazine of texts, 
 and those portions of it which contributed nothing in 
 the shape of texts, or formed no part of the scheme, 
 were neglected. Worse still, not a word was ever 
 spoken to us telling us in what manner to strengthen 
 the reason, to subdue the senses, or in what way to 
 deal with all the varied diseases of that soul of man 
 which we were to set ourselves to save. All its failings, 
 infinitely more complicated than those of the body, 
 were grouped as "sin," and for these there was one 
 
MAEK RUTHERFORD. 15 
 
 quack remedy. If the patient did not like the remedy, 
 or got no good from it, the fault was his. It is remark- 
 able that the scheme was never of the slightest service 
 to me in repressing one solitary evil inclination ; at no 
 point did it come into contact with me. At the time 
 it seemed right and proper that I should learn it, and 
 I had no doubt of its efficacy; but when the stress 
 of temptation was upon me, it never occurred to me, 
 nor when I became a minister did I find it sufficiently 
 powerful to mend the most trifling fault. In after 
 years, but not till I had strayed far away from the 
 President and his creed, the Bible was really opened to 
 me, and became to me, what it now is, the most precious 
 of books. 
 
 There were several small chapels scattered in the 
 villages near the college, and these chapels were " sup- 
 plied," as the phrase is, by the students. Those who 
 were near the end of their course were also employed 
 as substitutes for regular ministers when they were 
 temporarily absent. Sometimes a senior was even sent 
 up to London to take the place, on a sudden emergency, 
 of a great London minister, and when he came back he 
 was an object almost of adoration. The congregation, 
 on the other hand, consisting in some part of country 
 people spending a Sunday in town and anxious to hear 
 a celebrated preacher, were not at all disposed to adore, 
 when, instead of the great man, they saw "only a 
 student." By the time I was nineteen I took my turn 
 in "supplying" the villages, and set forth with the 
 utmost confidence what appeared to me to be the 
 indubitable gospel. No shadow of a suspicion of its 
 truth ever crossed my mind, and yet I had not spent 
 an hour in comprehending, much less in answering, one 
 
i6 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 objection to it. The objections, in fact, had never met 
 me ; they were over my horizon altogether. It is won- 
 derful to think how I could take so much for granted; 
 and not merely take it to myself and for myself, but 
 proclaim it as a message to other people. It would be a 
 mistake, however, to suppose that theological youths 
 are the only class who are guilty of such presumption. 
 Our gregarious instinct is so strong that it is the most 
 difficult thing for us to be satisfied with suspended 
 judgment. Men must join a party, and have a cry, and 
 they generally take up their party and their cry from 
 the most indifferent motives. For my own part I 
 cannot be enthusiastic about politics, except on rare 
 occasions when the issue is a very narrow one. There 
 is so much that requires profound examination, and it 
 disgusts me to get upon a platform and dispute with 
 ardent Eadicals or Conservatives who know nothing 
 about even the rudiments of history, political economy, 
 or political philosophy, without which it is as absurd 
 to have an opinion upon what are called politics as 
 it would be to have an opinion upon an astronomical 
 problem without having learned Euclid. The more 
 incapable we are of thorough investigation, the wider 
 and deeper are the subjects upon which we busy our- 
 selves, and still more strange, the more bigoted do we 
 become in our conclusions about them ; and yet it is 
 not strange, for he who by painful processes has found 
 yes and no alternate for so long that he is not sure 
 which is final, is the last man in the world, if he for 
 the present is resting in yes, to crucify another who 
 can get no further than no. The bigot is he to whom 
 no such painful processes have ever been permitted. 
 The society amongst the students was very poor. 
 
MARK RUTHEEFOED. ^^ 
 
 Not a single friendship formed then has remained with 
 me. They were mostly young men of no education, 
 who had been taken from the counter, and their spiritual 
 life was not very deep. In many of them it did not 
 even exist, and their whole attention was absorbed upon 
 their chances of getting wealthy congregations or of 
 making desirable matches. It was a time in which the 
 world outside was seething with the ferment which had 
 been cast into it by Germany and by those in England 
 whom Germany had influenced, but not a fragment of 
 it had dropped within our walls. I cannot call to mind 
 a single conversation upon any but the most trivial 
 topics, nor did our talk ever turn even upon our reli- 
 gion, so far as it was a thing affecting the soul, but only 
 upon it as something subsidiary to chapels, "causes," 
 deacons, and the like. The emptiness of some of my 
 colleagues, and their worldliness, too, were almost in- 
 credible. There was one who was particularly sUly. 
 He was a blonde youth with greyish eyes, a mouth not 
 quite shut, and an eternal simper upon his face. He 
 never had an idea in his head, and never read anything 
 except the denominational newspapers and a few well- 
 known aids to sermonising. He was a great man at all 
 tea-meetings, anniversaries, and parties. He was facile 
 in public speaking, and he dwelt much upon the 
 joys of heaven and upon such topics as the possibility 
 of our recognising one another there. I have known 
 bim describe for twenty minutes, in a kind of watery 
 rhetoric, the passage of the soul to bhss through death, 
 and its meeting in the next world with those who had 
 gone before. With aU his weakness he was close and 
 mean in money matters, and when he left college, the 
 first thing he did was to marry a widow with a fortune. 
 
i8 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 Before long he became one of the most popular of 
 ministers in a town much visited by sick persons, with 
 whom he was an especial favourite. I disliked him 
 — and specially disliked his unpleasant behaviour to 
 women. If I had been a woman I should have spurned 
 him for his perpetual insult of inane compliments. He 
 was always dawdling after " the sex," which was one 
 of his sweet phrases, and yet he was not passionate. 
 Passion does not dawdle and compliment, nor is it 
 nasty, as this fellow was. Passion may burn like a 
 devouring flame ; and in a few moments, like flame, 
 may bring down a temple to dust and ashes, but it is 
 earnest as flame, and essentially pure. 
 
 During the first two years at college my life was 
 entirely external. My heart was altogether untouched 
 by anything I heard, read, or did, although I myself 
 supposed that I took an interest in them. But one 
 day in my third year, a day I remember as well as Paul 
 must have remembered afterwards the day on which he 
 went to Damascus, I happened to find amongst a parcel 
 of books a volume of poems in paper boards. It was 
 called " Lyrical Ballads," and I read first one and then 
 the whole book. It conveyed to me no new doctrine, 
 and yet the change it wrought in me could only be 
 compared with that which is said to have been wrought 
 on Paul himself by the Divine apparition. Looking 
 over the " Lyrical Ballads " again, as I have looked over 
 it a dozen times since then, I can hardly see what it 
 was which stirred me so powerfully, nor do I believe 
 that it communicated much to me which could be put 
 in words. But it excited a movement and a growth 
 which went on till, by degrees, all the systems which 
 enveloped me like a body gradually decayed from me 
 
MAKK RUTHERFORD. 19 
 
 and fell away into nothing. 1 Of more importance, too, 
 than the decay of systems was the birth of a habit of 
 inner reference and a dislike to occupy myself with 
 anything which did not in some way or other touch the 
 soul, or was not the illustration or embodiment of some 
 spiritual law. There is, of course, a definite explanation 
 to be given of one effect produced by the "Lyrical 
 Ballads." God is nowhere formally deposed, and 
 Wordsworth would have been the last man to say that 
 he had lost his faith in the God of his fathers. But 
 his real God is not the God of the Church, but the God 
 of the hills, the abstraction Nature, and to this my 
 reverence was transferred. Instead of an object of 
 worship which was altogether artificial, remote, never 
 coming into genuine contact with me, I had now one 
 which I thought to be real, one in which literally I 
 could live and move and have my being, an actual fact 
 present before my eyes. God was brought from that 
 heaven of the books, and dwelt on the downs in the 
 far-away distances, and in every cloud-shadow which 
 wandered across the valley. Wordsworth unconsciously 
 did for me what every religious reformer has done, — 
 he re-created my Supreme Divinity ; substituting a 
 new and living spirit for the old deity, once alive, but 
 gradually hardened into an idol. 
 
 What days were those of the next few years before 
 increasing age had presented preeiser problems and 
 demanded preeiser answers; before all joy was dark- 
 ened by the shadow of on-coming death, and when 
 life seemed infinite! Those were the days when 
 through the whole long summer's morning I wanted 
 no companion but myself, provided only I was in 
 the country, and when books were read with tears in 
 
30 AUTOBIOGBAPHr OP 
 
 the eyes. Those were the days when mere life, apart 
 from anything which it brings, was exquisite. In 
 my own college I found no sympathy, but we were 
 in the habit of meeting occasionally the students 
 from other colleges, and amongst them I met with one 
 or two, especially one who had undergone experiences 
 similar to my own. The friendships formed with 
 these young men have lasted till now, and have been 
 the most permanent of all the relationships of my 
 existence. I wish not to judge others, but the persons 
 who to me have proved themselves most attractive, 
 have been those who have passed through such a 
 process as that through which I myself passed ; those 
 who have had in some form or other an enthusiastic 
 stage in their history, when the story of Genesis and 
 of the Gospels has been rewritten, when God has 
 visibly walked in the garden, and the Son of God has 
 drawn men away from their daily occupations into 
 the divinest of dreams. I have known men — most 
 interesting men — ^with far greater powers than any 
 which I have possessed, men who have never been 
 trammelled by a false creed, who have devoted them- 
 selves to science and acquired a great reputation, who 
 have somehow never laid hold upon me like the man I 
 have just mentioned. He failed altogether as a minister, 
 and went back to his shop, but the old glow of his 
 youth burns, and wUl burn for ever. When I am with 
 him our conversation naturally turns on matters which 
 are of profoundest importance : with others it may be 
 instructive, but I leave them unmoved, and I trace 
 the difference distinctly to that visitation, for it was 
 nothing else, which came to him in his youth. 
 
 The effect which was produced upon my preaching 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD. 21 
 
 and daily conversation by this change was immediate. 
 It became gradually impossible for me to talk about 
 subjects which had not some genuine connection with 
 me, or to desire to hear others talk about them. The 
 artificial, the merely miraculous, the event which had 
 no inner meaniug, no matter how large externally it 
 might be, I did not care for. A little Greek mytho- 
 logical story was of more importance to me than a 
 war which filled the newspapers. What, then, could 
 I do with my theological treatises ? It would be a 
 mistake, however, to suppose that I immediately be- 
 came formally heretical. Nearly every doctrine in 
 the college creed had once had a natural origin in the 
 necessities of human nature, and might therefore be 
 so interpreted as to become a necessity again. To 
 reach through to that original necessity; to explain 
 the atonement as I believed it appeared to Paul, and 
 the sinfulness of man as it appeared to the prophets, 
 was my object. But it was precisely this reaching 
 after a meaning which constituted heresy. The dis- 
 tinctive essence of our orthodoxy was not this or that 
 dogma, but the acceptance of dogmas as communica- 
 tions from without, and not as born from within. 
 Heresy began, and in fact was altogether present, 
 when I said to myself that a mere statement of the 
 atonement as taught in class was impossible for me, 
 and that I must go back to Paul and his century, 
 place myself in his position, and connect the atone- 
 ment through him with something which I felt. I 
 thus continued to use aU the terms which I had 
 hitherto used ; but an uneasy feeling began to develop 
 itself about me in the minds of the professors, because 
 I did not rest in the " simplicity " of the gospel. To 
 
22 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 me this meant its unintelligibility. I remember, for 
 example, discoursing about the death of Christ. There 
 was not a single word which was ordinarily used in 
 the pulpit which I did not use, — satisfaction for sin, 
 penalty, redeeming blood, they were all there, — but 
 I began by saying that in this world there was no 
 redemption for man but by blood; furthermore, the 
 innocent had everywhere and in all time to suffer for 
 the guilty. It had been objected that it was contrary 
 to our notion of an all-loving Being that He should 
 demand such a sacrifice ; but, contrary or not, in this 
 world it was true, quite apart from Jesus, that virtue 
 was martyred every day, unknown and unconsoled, in 
 order that the wicked might somehow be saved. This 
 was part of the scheme of the world, and we might 
 dislike it or not, we could not get rid of it. The con- 
 sequences of my sin, moreover, are rendered less terrible 
 by virtues not my own. I am literally saved from 
 penalties because another pays the penalty for me. 
 The atonement, and what it accomplished for man, 
 were therefore a sublime summing up as it were of 
 what sublime men have to do for their race; an 
 exemplification, rather than a contradiction, of Nature 
 herself, as we know her in our own experience. Now, 
 all this was really intended as a defence of the atone- 
 ment; but the President heard me that Sunday, and 
 on the Monday he called me into his room. He said 
 that my sermon was marked by considerable ability, 
 but he should have been better satisfied if I had con- 
 fined myself to setting forth as plainly as I could the 
 " way of salvation " as revealed in Christ Jesus. What 
 I had urged might perhaps have possessed some in- 
 terest for cultivated people; in fact, he had himself 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD. 23 
 
 urged pretty much the same thing many years ago, 
 when he was a young man, in a sermon he had preached 
 at the Union meeting ; but I must recollect that in all 
 probability my sphere of usefulness would lie amongst 
 humble hearers, perhaps in an agricultural village or 
 a small town, and that he did not think people of this 
 sort would understand me if I talked over their heads 
 as I had done the day before. What they wanted on 
 a Sunday, after all the cares of the week, was not 
 anything to perplex and disturb them; not anything 
 which demanded any exercise of thought j but a repeti- 
 tion of the " old story of which, Mr. Eutherford, you 
 know, we never ought to get weary ; an exhibition of 
 our exceeding sinfulness ; of our safety in the Eock of 
 Ages, and there only; of the joys of the saints and 
 the sufferings of those who do not believe." His words 
 fell on me like the hand of a corpse, and I went away 
 much depressed. My sermon had excited me, and the 
 man who of all men ought to have welcomed me, 
 had not a word of warmth or encouragement for me, 
 nothing but the coldest indifference, and even repulse. 
 
 It occurs to me here to offer an explanation of a 
 failing of which I have been accused in later years, 
 and that is secrecy and reserve. The real truth is, 
 that nobody more than myself could desire self-reve- 
 lation ; but owing to peculiar tendencies in me, and 
 peculiarity of education, I was always prone to say 
 things in conversation which I found produced blank 
 silence in the majority of those who listened to me, and 
 immediate opportunity was taken by my hearers to 
 turn to something trivial. Hence it came to pass that 
 only when tempted by unmistakable sympathy could I 
 be induced to express my real self on any topic of 
 
24 AUTOBIOGKAPHY OP 
 
 importance. It is a curious instance of the difficulty 
 of diagnosing (to use a doctor's word) any spiritual 
 disease, if disease this shyness may be called. People 
 •would ordinarily set it down to self-reliance, with no 
 healthy need of intercourse. It was nothing of the 
 kind. It was an excess of communicativeness, an 
 eagerness to show what was most at my heart, and to 
 ascertain what was at the heart of those to whom I 
 talked, which made me incapable of mere fencing and 
 trifling, and so often caused me to retreat into myself 
 when I found absolute absence of response. 
 
 I am also reminded here of a dream which I had in 
 these years of a perfect friendship. I always felt that, 
 talk with whom I would, I left something unsaid 
 which was precisely what I most wished to say. I 
 wanted a friend who would sacrifice himself to me 
 utterly, and to whom I might offer a similar sacrifice. 
 I found companions for whom I cared, and who pro- 
 fessed to care for me ; but I was thirsting for deeper 
 draughts of love than any which they had to offer; 
 and I said to myself that if I were to die, not one 
 of them would remember me for more than a week. 
 This was not selfishness, for I longed to prove my 
 devotion as well as to receive that of another. How 
 this ideal haunted me ! It made me restless and 
 anxious at the sight of every new face, wondering 
 whether at last I had found that for which I searched 
 as if for the kingdom of heaven. It is superfluous to 
 say that a friend of the kind I wanted never appeared, 
 and disappointment after disappointment at last pro- 
 duced in me a cynicism which repelled people from 
 me, and brought upon me a good deal of suffering. I 
 tried men \>j my standard, and if they did not come 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD. 25 
 
 up to it I rejected them ; thus I prodigally wasted a 
 good deal of the affection which the world would have 
 given me. Only when I got much older did I discern 
 the duty of accepting life as God has made it, and 
 thankfully receiving any scrap of love offered to me, 
 however imperfect it might be. I don't know any 
 mistake which I have made which has cost me more 
 than this ; but at the same time I must record that it 
 was a mistake for which, considering everything, I 
 cannot much blame myself. I hope it is amended 
 now. Now when it is getting late I recognise a higher 
 obligation, brought home to me by a closer study of 
 the New Testament. Sympathy or no sympathy, a 
 man's love should no more fail towards his fellows 
 than that love which spent itself on disciples who 
 altogether misunderstood it, like the rain which falls 
 on just and unjust alike. 
 
2£ AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 WATER LANE. 
 
 I HAD now reached the end of my fourth year at college, 
 and it was time for me to leave. I was sent down into 
 the eastern counties to a congregation which had lost 
 its minister, and was there "on probation" for a month. 
 I was naturally a good speaker, and as the " cause " 
 had got very low, the attendance at the chapel increased 
 during the month I was there. The deacons thought 
 they had a prospect of returning prosperity, and in the 
 end I received a nearly unanimous invitation, which, 
 after some hesitation, I accepted. One of the deacons, 
 a Mr. Snale, was against me; he thought I was not 
 " quite sound ; " but he was overruled. We shall hear 
 more of him presently. After a short holiday I entered 
 on my new duties. The town was one of those which 
 are not uncommon in that part of the world. It had a 
 population of about seven or eight thousand, and was 
 a sort of condensation of the agricultural country round. 
 There was one main street, consisting principally of very 
 decent, respectable shops. Generally speaking, there 
 were two shops of each trade ; one which was patronised 
 by the Church and Tories, and another by the Dissenters 
 and Whigs. The inhabitants were divided into two 
 distinct camps — of the Church and Tory camp the 
 other camp knew nothing. On the other hand, the 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD. 27 
 
 knowledge which each member of the Dissenting camp 
 had of every other member was most intimate. The 
 Dissenters were further split up into two or three 
 different sects, but the main sect was that of the Inde- 
 pendents. They, in fact, dominated every other. There 
 was a small Baptist community, and the Wesleyans 
 had a new red brick chapel in the outskirts ; but for 
 some reason or other the Independents were really the 
 Dissenters, and until the " cause " had dwindled, as 
 before observed, all the Dissenters of any note were to 
 be found on Sunday in their meeting-house in Water 
 Lane. My predecessor had died in harness at the age 
 of seventy-five. I never knew him, but from all I 
 could hear he must have been a man of some power. 
 As he got older, however, he became feeble ; and after 
 a course of three sermons on a Sunday for fifty years, 
 what he had to say was so entirely anticipated by hia 
 congregation, that although they all maintained that 
 the gospel, or, in other words, the doctrine of the fall, 
 the atonement, and so forth, should continually be pre- 
 sented, and their minister also believed and acted im- 
 plicitly upon the same theory, they fell away, — some 
 to the Baptists, some to the neighbouring Independents 
 about two mUes off, and some to the Church, while a 
 few " went nowhere." When I came I found that the 
 deacons still remained true. They were the skeleton ; 
 but the flesh was so woefully emaciated, that on my 
 first Sunday there were not above fifty persons in a 
 building which would hold seven hundred. These 
 deacons were four in number. One was an old farmer 
 who lived in a village three miles distant. Ever since 
 he was a boy he had driven over to Water Lane on 
 Sunday. He and his family brought their dinner with 
 
28 AUTOBIOGEAPHY OP 
 
 them, and ate it in the vestry; but they never stopped 
 till the evening, because of the difficulty of getting 
 home on dark nights, and because they all went to bed 
 in winter-time at eight o'clock. Morning and afternoon 
 Mr. Catfield — for that was his name— gave out the 
 hymns. He was a plain, honest man, very kind, very 
 ignorant, never reading any book except the Bible, and 
 barely a newspaper save BeWs Weekly Messenger. Even 
 about the Bible he knew little or nothing beyond a few 
 favourite chapters; and I am bound to say that, so 
 far as my experience goes, the character so frequently 
 drawn in romances of intense Bible students in Dis- 
 senting congregations is very rare. At the same time 
 Mr. Catfield believed himself to be very orthodox, and 
 in his way was very pious. I could never call him a 
 hypocrite. He was as sincere as he could be, and yet 
 no religious expression of his was ever so sincere as the 
 most ordinary expression of the most trifling pleasure 
 or pain. The second deacon, Mr. Weeley, was, as he 
 described himself, a builder and undertaker; more 
 properly an undertaker and carpenter. He was a thin, 
 tall man, with a tenor voice, and he set the tunes. 
 He was entirely without energy of any kind, and 
 always seemed oppressed by a world which was too 
 much for him. He had depended a good deal for 
 custom upon his chapel connection; and when the 
 attendance at the chapel fell off, his trade fell off like- 
 wise, so that he had to compound with his creditors. 
 He was a mere shadow, a man of whom nothing could 
 be said either good or eviL The third deacon was Mr. 
 Snale, the draper. When I first knew him he was 
 about thirty-five. He was slim, small, and small-faced, 
 closely shaven excepting a pair of little curly whiskers, 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD. 29 
 
 and he was extremely neat He had a little voice too, 
 rather sc[ueaky, and the marked peculiarity that he 
 hardly ever said anything, no matter how disagreeable 
 it might be, without stretching as if in a smile his 
 thin little lips. He kept the principal draper's shop 
 in the town, and even Church people spent their money 
 with him, because he was so very genteel compared 
 with the other draper, who was a great red man, 
 and hung things outside his window. Mr. Snale was 
 married, had children, and was strictly proper. But 
 his way of talking to women and about them was 
 more odious than the way of a debauchee. He in- 
 variably called them " the ladies," or more exactly, " the 
 leedies ; " and he hardly ever spoke to a " leedy " with- 
 out a smirk and some faint attempt at a joke. One of 
 the customs of the chapel was what were called Dorcas 
 meetings. Once a month the wives and daughters 
 drank tea with each other; the evening being osten- 
 sibly devoted to making clothes for the poor. The 
 husband of the lady who gave the entertainment for the 
 month had to wait upon the company, and the mini- 
 ster was expected to read to them while they worked. 
 It was my lot to be Mr. Snale's guest two or three 
 times when Mrs. Snale was the Dorcas hostess. We 
 met in the drawing-room, which was over the shop, 
 and looked out into the town market-place. There was 
 a round table in the middle of the room, at which 
 Mrs. Snale sat and made the tea. Abundance of hot 
 buttered toast and muffins were provided, which Mr. 
 Snale and a maid handed round to the party. Four 
 pictures decorated the walls. One hung over the 
 mantelpiece. It was a portrait in oils of Mr. Snale, 
 and opposite to it, on the other side, was a portrait of 
 
30 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 Mrs. Snale. Both were daubs, but curiously faithful 
 in depicting what was most offensive in the character 
 of both the originals, Mr. Snale's simper being pre- 
 served ; together with the peculiarly hard, heavy sen- 
 suality of the eye in Mrs. Snale, who was large and 
 full-faced, correct like Mr. Snale, a member of the 
 church, a woman whom I never saw moved to any 
 generosity, and cruel, not with the ferocity of the tiger, 
 but with the dull insensibility of a cart-wheel, which 
 will roll over a man's neck as easily as over a flint. 
 The third picture represented the descent of the Holy 
 Ghost : a number of persons sitting in a chamber, and 
 each one with the flame of a candle on his head. The 
 fourth represented the last day. The Son of God was 
 in a chair surrounded by clouds, and beside Him was 
 a flying figure blowing a long mail-coach horn. The 
 dead were coming up out of their graves ; some were 
 half out of the earth, others three-parts out — the whole 
 of the bottom part of the picture being filled with bodies 
 emerging from the ground, a few looking happy, but 
 most of them very wretched ; all of them being naked. 
 The first time I went to Mrs. Snale's Dorcas gathering 
 Mr. Snale was reader, on the ground that I was a novice ; 
 and I was very glad to resign the task to him. As the 
 business in hand was week-day and secular, it was not 
 considered necessary that the selected subjects should be 
 religious ; but as it was distinctly connected with the 
 chapel, it was also considered that they should have 
 a reUgious flavour. Consequently the Bible was ex- 
 cluded, and so were books on topics altogether worldly. 
 Dorcas meetings were generally, therefore, shut up to 
 the denominational journal and to magazines. Towards 
 the end of the evening Mr. Snale read the births, deaths, 
 
MARK RUTHERFOED. 31 
 
 and marriages in this journal It would not have been 
 thought right to read them from any other newspaper, 
 but it -was agreed, -with a fineness of tact which was 
 very remarkable, that it was quite right to read them 
 in one which was " serious." During the whole time 
 that the reading was going on conversation was not 
 arrested, but was conducted in a kind of half whisper ; 
 and this was another reason why I exceedingly dis- 
 liked to read, for I could never endure to speak if 
 people did not listen. At half-past eight the work 
 was put away, and Mrs. Snale went to the piano and 
 played a hymn tune, the minister having first of all 
 selected the hymn. Singing over, he offered a short 
 prayer, and the company separated. Supper was not 
 served, as it was found to be too great an expense. 
 The husbands of the ladies generally came to escort 
 them home, but did not come upstairs. Some of the 
 gentlemen waited below in the dining-room, but most 
 of them preferred the shop, for, although it was shut, 
 the gas was burning to enable the assistants to put 
 away the goods which had been got out during the day. 
 When it first became my turn to read I proposed the 
 " Vicar of "Wakefield ; " but although no objection was 
 raised at the time, Mr. Snale took an opportunity of 
 telling me, after I had got through a chapter or two, 
 that he thought it would be better if it were discon- 
 tinued. " Because, you know, Mr. Eutherford," he said, 
 with his smirk, "the company is mixed; there are 
 young leedies present, and perhaps, Mr. Eutherford, a 
 book with a more requisite tone might be more suit- 
 able on such an occasion." "What he meant I did not 
 know, and how to find a book with a more requisite 
 tone I did not know. However, the next time, in my 
 
38 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 folly, I tried a selection from George Fox's Journal. 
 Mr. Snale objected to this too. It was " hardly of a 
 character adapted for social intercourse," he thought j 
 and furthermore, " although Mr. Fox might be a very 
 good man, and was a converted character, yet he did 
 not, you know, Mr. Eutherford, belong to us." So I 
 was reduced to that class of literature which of all 
 others I most abominated, and which always seemed 
 to me the most profane, — ^religious and sectarian gossip, 
 religious novels designed to make religion attractive, 
 and other slip-slop of this kind. I could not endure 
 it, and was frequently unwell on Dorcas evenings. 
 
 The rest of the small congregation was of no par- 
 ticular note. As I have said before, it had greatly 
 fallen away, and all who remained clung to the chapel 
 rather by force of habit than from any other reason. 
 The only exception was an old maiden lady and her 
 sister, who lived in a little cottage about a mile out of 
 the town. They were pious in the purest sense of the 
 word, suffering much from ill-health, but perfectly 
 resigned, and with a kind of tempered cheerfulness 
 always apparent on their faces, like the cheerfulness 
 of a white sky with a sun veiled by light and lofty 
 clouds. They were the daughters of a gentleman 
 farmer, who had left them a small annuity. Their 
 house was one of the sweetest which I ever entered. 
 The moment I found myself inside it, I became con- 
 scious of perfect repose. Everything was at rest; 
 books, pictures, furniture, all breathed the same peace. 
 Nothing in the house was new, but everything had 
 been preserved with such care that nothing looked old. 
 Yet the owners were not what is called old-maidish ; 
 that is to say, they were not superstitious worshippers 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD. 33 
 
 of order and neatness. I remember Mrs. Snale's 
 children coming in one afternoon when I was there. 
 They were rough and ill-mannered, and left traces of 
 dirty footmarks aU over the carpet, which the two 
 ladies noticed at once. But it made no difference to 
 the treatment of the children, who had some cake 
 and currant wine given to them, and were sent away 
 rejoicing. Directly they had gone, the eldest of my 
 friends asked me if I would excuse her; she would 
 gather up the dirt before it was trodden about. So 
 she brought a dust-pan and brush (the little servant 
 was out) and patiently swept the floor. That was the 
 way with them. Did any mischief befall them or those 
 whom they knew ; without blaming anybody, they im- 
 mediately and noiselessly set about repairing it with 
 that silent promptitude of nature which rebels not 
 against a wound, but the very next instant begins her 
 work of protection and recovery. The Misses Arbour 
 (for that was their name) mixed but little in the society 
 of the town. They explained to me that their health 
 would not permit it. They read books — a few — but 
 they were not books about which I knew very much, 
 and they belonged altogether to an age preceding mine. 
 Of the names which had moved me, and of all the 
 thoughts stirring in the time, they had heard nothing. 
 They greatly admired Cowper, a poet who then did not 
 much attract me. 
 
 The country near me was rather level, but towards 
 the west it rose into soft swelling hiUs, between which 
 were pleasant lanes. At about ten miles distant east- 
 ward was the sea. A small river ran across the High 
 Street under a stone bridge ; for about two miles below 
 U3 it was locked up for the sake of the mills, but at the 
 
 
 
34 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 end of the two miles it became tidal and flowed between 
 deep and muddy banks through marshes to the ocean. 
 Almost all my walks were by the river-bank down to 
 these marshes, and as far on as possible till the open 
 water was visible. Not that I did not like inland 
 scenery: nobody could like it more, but the sea was 
 a corrective to the littleness all round me. With the 
 ships on it sailing to the other end of the earth it 
 seemed to connect me with the great world outside "the 
 parochialism of the society in which I lived. 
 
 Such was the town of C , and such the company 
 
 amidst which I found myself. After my probation it 
 was arranged that I should begin my new duties at 
 once, and accordingly I took lodgings, — two rooms over 
 the shop of a tailor who acted as chapel-keeper, pew- 
 opener, and sexton. There was a small endowment on 
 the chapel of fifty pounds a year, and the rest of my 
 income was derived from the pew-rents, which at the 
 time I took charge did not exceed another seventy. The 
 first Sunday on which I preached after being accepted 
 was a dull day in November, but there was no dulness 
 in me. The congregation had increased a good deal 
 during the past four weeks, and I was stimulated by 
 the prospect of the new life before me. It seemed to 
 be a fit opportunity to say something generally about 
 Christianity and its special peculiarities. I began by 
 pointing out that each philosophy and religion which 
 had arisen in the world was the answer to a question 
 earnestly asked at the time ; it was a remedy proposed 
 to meet some extreme pressure. Eeligions and philoso- 
 phies were not created by idle people who sat down 
 and said, " Let us buHd up a system of beliefs upon 
 the universe; what shall we say about immoitalitj, 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD. 35 
 
 about sin ? " and so on. Unless there had been ante- 
 cedent necessity there could have been no religion ; and 
 no problem of life or death could be solved except under 
 the weight of that necessity. The stoical morality 
 arose out of the condition of Eome when the scholar 
 and the pious man could do nothing but simply 
 strengthen his knees and back to bear an inevitable 
 burden. He was forced to find some counterpoise 
 for the misery of poverty and persecution, and he 
 found it in the denial of their power to touch him. 
 So with Christianity. Jesus was a poor solitary 
 thinker, confronted by two enormous and overpowering 
 organisations, the Jewish hierarchy and the Eoman 
 state. He taught the doctrine of the kingdom of 
 heaven; He trained Himself to have faith in the abso- 
 lute monarchy of the soul, the absolute monarchy of 
 His own; He tells us that each man should learn to 
 find peace in his own thoughts, his own visions. It is 
 a most difficult thing to do ; most difficult to believe 
 that my highest happiness consists in my perception of 
 whatever is beautiful. If I by myself watch the sun 
 rise, or the stars come out in the evening, or feel the 
 love of man or woman, I ought to say to myself, " There 
 is nothing beyond this." But people will not rest there ; 
 they are not content, and they are for ever chasing 
 a shadow which flies before them, a something exter- 
 nal which never brings what it promises. I said that 
 Christianity was essentially the religion of the unknown 
 and of the lonely ; of those who are not a success. It 
 was the religion of the man who goes through Ufa 
 thinking much, but who makes few friends and sees 
 nothing come of his thoughts. I said a good deal more 
 upon the same theme which I have forgotten. After 
 
36 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP 
 
 the service was over I went down into the vestry. 
 Nobody came near me but my landlord, the chapel- 
 keeper, who said it was raining, and immediately went 
 away to put out the lights and shut up the building. I 
 had no umbrella, and there was nothing to be done but 
 to walk out in the wet. When I got home I found 
 that my supper, consisting of bread and cheese with a 
 pint of beer, was on the table, but apparently it had 
 been thought unnecessary to light the fire again at that 
 time of night. I was overwrought, and paced about 
 for hours in hysterics. All that I had been preaching 
 seemed the merest vanity when I was brought face to 
 face with the fact itself ; and I reproached myself bit- 
 terly that my own creed would not stand the stress 
 of an hour's actual trial. Towards morning I got into 
 bed, but not to sleep ; and when the dull daylight of 
 Monday came, all support had vanished, and I seemed 
 to be sinking into a bottomless abyss. I became 
 gradually worse week by week, and my melancholy 
 took a fixed form. I got a notion into my head that 
 my brain was failing, and this was my first acquaint- 
 ance with that most awful malady hypochondria. I 
 did not know then what I know now, although I only 
 half believe it practically, that this fixity of form is a 
 frequent symptom of the disease, and that the general 
 weakness manifests itself in a determinate horror, which 
 gradually fades with returning health. For months — 
 many months, this dreadful conviction of coming 
 idiocy or insanity lay upon me like some poisonous 
 reptile with its fangs driven into my very marrow, so 
 that I could not shake it off. It went with me wher- 
 ever I went, it got up with me in the morning, walked 
 about with me all day, and lay down with me at night. 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD. 37 
 
 I managed somehow or other to do my work, but I 
 prayed incessantly for death ; and to such a state was 
 I reduced that I could not even make the commonest 
 appointment for a day beforehand. The mere know- 
 ledge that something had to be done agitated me and 
 prevented my doing it. In June next year my holiday 
 came, and I went away home to my father's house. 
 Father and mother were going for the first time in their 
 lives to spend a few days by the seaside together, and 
 I went with them to Ilfracombe. I had been there about 
 a week, when on one memorable morning, on the top 
 of one of those Devonshire hills, I became aware of a 
 kind of flush in the brain and a momentary relief such as 
 I had not known since that November night. I seemed, 
 far away on the horizon, to see just a rim of olive light 
 low down under the edge of the leaden cloud that hung 
 over my head, a prophecy of the restoration of the sun. 
 or at least a witness that somewhere it shone. It was 
 not permanent, and perhaps the gloom was never mora 
 profound, nor the agony more intense, than it was for 
 long after my Ilfracombe visit. But the light broadened, 
 and gradually the darkness was mitigated. I have 
 never been thoroughly restored. Often, with no warn- 
 ing, I am plunged in the Valley of the Shadow, and no 
 outlet seems possible ; but I contrive to traverse it, or 
 to wait in calmness for access of strength. When I 
 was at my worst I went to see a doctor. He recom- 
 mended me stimulants. I had always been rather 
 abstemious, and he thought I was suffering from 
 physical weakness. At first wine gave me relief, and 
 such marked relief that whenever I felt my misery 
 insupportable I turned to the bottla At no time in 
 my life was I ever the worse for liquor, but I soon 
 
38 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 found the craving for it was getting the better of me. 
 I resolved never to touch it except at night, and kept 
 my vow ; but the consequence was, that I looked for- 
 ward to the night, and waited for it with such eagerness 
 that the day seemed to exist only for the sake of the 
 evening, when I might hope at least for rest. For the 
 wine as wine I cared nothing; anything that would 
 have dulled my senses would have done just as well. 
 But now a new terror developed itself. I began to be 
 afraid that I was becoming a slave to alcohol; that 
 the passion for it would grow upon me, and that I 
 should disgrace myself, and die the most contempt- 
 ible of all deaths. To a certain extent my fears 
 were just. The dose which was necessary to pro- 
 cure temporary forgetfulness of my trouble had to 
 be increased, and might have increased dangerously. 
 But one day, feeling more than usual the tyranny of 
 my master, I received strength to make a sudden 
 resolution to cast him off utterly. Whatever be the 
 consequence, I said, I will not be the victim of this 
 shame. If I am to go down to the grave, it shall 
 be as a man, and I will bear what I have to bear 
 honestly and without resort to the base evasion of 
 stupefaction. So that night I went to bed having 
 drunk nothing but water. The struggle was not felt 
 just then. It came later, when the first enthusiasm 
 of a new purpose had faded away, and I had to fall 
 back on mere force of will, I don't think any- 
 body but those who have gone through such a 
 crisis can comprehend what it is, I never under- 
 stood the maniacal craving which is begotten by 
 ardent spirits, but I understood enough to be con- 
 vinced that the man who has once rescued himself 
 
MAKE RUTHERFORD. 39 
 
 from the domination even of half a bottle, or three- 
 parts of a bottle of claret daily, may assure himself 
 that there is nothing more in life to be done which 
 he need dread. Two or three remarks begotten of 
 experience in this matter deserve record. One is, that 
 the most powerful inducement to abstinence, in my 
 case, was the interference of wine with liberty, and 
 above all things its interference with what I really 
 loved best, and the transference of desire from what 
 was most desirable to what was sensual and base. 
 The morning, instead of being spent in quiet contem- 
 plation and quiet pleasures, was spent in degrading 
 anticipations. What enabled me to conquer, was 
 not so much heroism as a susceptibility to nobler 
 joys, and the difficulty which a man must encounter 
 who is not susceptible to them must be enormous and 
 almost insuperable. Pity, profound pity is his due, 
 and especially if he happen to possess a nervous, 
 emotional organisation. If we want to make men 
 water-drinkers, we must first of all awaken in them a 
 capacity for being tempted by delights which water- 
 drinking intensifies. The mere preaching of self- 
 denial will do little or no good. Another observation 
 is, that there is no danger in stopping at once, and 
 suddenly, the habit of drinking. The prisons and 
 asylums furnish ample evidence upon that point, but 
 there will be many an hour of exhaustion in which this 
 danger will be simulated and wine wUl appear the 
 proper remedy, No man, or at least very few men, 
 would ever feel any desire for it soon after sleep. This 
 shows the power of repose, and I would advise anybody 
 who may be in earnest in this matter to be specially 
 on guard during moments of physical fatigue, and to 
 
40 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 try the effect of eating and rest. Do not persist in 
 a blind, obstinate wrestle. Simply take food, drink 
 water, go to bed, and so conquer not by brute strength, 
 but by strategy. Going back to hypochondria and 
 its countless forms of agony, let it be borne in mind 
 that the first thing to be aimed at is patience — not 
 to get excited with fears, not to dread the evil which 
 most probably wiU never arrive, but to sit down 
 quietly and wait. The simpler and less stimulating 
 the diet, the more likely it is that the sufferer will 
 be able to watch through the wakeful hours without 
 delirium, and the less likely is it that the general 
 health will be impaired. Upon this point of health 
 too much stress cannot be laid. It is difficult for the 
 victim to believe that his digestion has anything to 
 do with a disease which seems so purely spiritual, but 
 frequently the misery will break up and yield, if it do 
 not altogether disappear, by a little attention to physi- 
 ology and by a change of air. As time wears on, too, 
 mere duration will be a relief ; for it familiarises with 
 what at first was strange and insupportable, it shows 
 the groundlessness of fears, and it enables us to say 
 with each new paroxysm, that we have surmounted one 
 like it before, and probably a worse. 
 
MAEK KUTHERFOED. 41 
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 EDWARD GIBBON MARDON. 
 
 I HAD now been " settled," to use a dissenting phrase, 
 for nearly eighteen months. While I was ill I had no 
 heart in my work, and the sermons I preached were 
 very poor and excited no particular suspicion. But 
 with gradually returning energy my love of reading 
 revived, and questions which had slumbered again 
 presented themselves. I continued for some time to 
 deal with them as I had dealt with the atonement 
 at college. I said that Jesus was the true Paschal 
 Lamb, for that by His death men were saved from 
 their sins, and from the consequences of themj I 
 said that belief in Christ, that is to say, a love for 
 Him, was more powerful to redeem men than the 
 works of the law. All this may have been true, 
 but truth lies in relation. It was not true when I, 
 understanding what I understood by it, taught it 
 to men who professed to believe in the West- 
 minster Confession. The preacher who preaches it 
 uses a vocabulary which has a certain definite mean- 
 ing, and has had this meaning for centuries. He 
 cannot stay to put his own interpretation upon it 
 whenever it is upon his lips, and so his hearers are in 
 a false position, and imagine him to be much more 
 orthodox than he reaUy is. For some time I fell into 
 
42 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 this snare, until one day I happened to be reading 
 the story of Balaam. Balaam, though most desirous to 
 prophesy smooth things for Balak, had nevertheless a 
 word put into his mouth by God. When he came to 
 Balak he was unable to curse, and could do nothing 
 but bless. Balak, much dissatisfied, thought that a 
 change of position might alter Balaam's temper, and he 
 brought him away from the high places of Baal to the 
 field of Zophim, to the top of Pisgab. But Balaam 
 could do nothing better even on Pisgah. Not even a 
 compromise was possible, and the second blessing was 
 more emphatic than the first. "God," cried the prophet, 
 pressed sorely by his message, " is not a man, that He 
 should lie; neither the son of man, that He should 
 repent : hath He said, and shall He not do it ? or hath 
 He spoken, and shall He not make it good ? Behold, 
 I have received commandment to bless : and He hath 
 blessed; and I cannot reverse it." This was very 
 unsatisfactory, and Balaam was asked, if he could not 
 curse, at least to refrain from benediction. The answer 
 was still the same, " Told not I thee, saying, All that 
 the Lord speaketh, that I must do " ? A third shift 
 was tried, and Balaam went to the top of Peor. This 
 was worse than ever. The Spirit of the Lord came 
 upon him, and he broke out into triumphal anticipation 
 of the future glories of Israel Balak remonstrated in 
 wrath, but Balaam was altogether inaccessible. "If 
 Balak would give me his house full of silver and gold, 
 I cannot go beyond the commandment of the Lord, to 
 do either good or bad of mine own mind ; but what the 
 Lord saith, that wUl I speak." This story greatly im- 
 pressed me, and I date from it a distinct disinclination 
 to tamper with myself, or to deliver what I had to 
 
MARK RUTHEKFOED. 43 
 
 deliver in phrases which, though they might be con- 
 ciliatory, were misleading. 
 
 About this time there was a movement in the town 
 to obtain a better supply of water. The soil was 
 gravelly and full of cesspools, side by side with which 
 were sunk the wells. A public meeting was held, and 
 I attended and spoke on behalf of the scheme. There 
 was much opposition, mainly on the score that the 
 rates would be increased, and on the Saturday after the 
 meeting the following letter appeared in the Sentinel, 
 the local paper : — 
 
 " SiE, — It is not my desire to enter into the con- 
 troversy now raging about the water-supply of this 
 town, but I must say I was much surprised that a 
 minister of religion should interfere in politics. Sir, 
 I cannot help thinking that if the said minister would 
 devote himself to the Water of Life, — 
 
 ' that gentle fount 
 Progre3sing from Immanuel's mount,' — 
 
 it would be much more harmonious with his function 
 as a follower of him who knew nothing save Christ 
 crucified. Sir, I have no wish to introduce contro- 
 versial topics upon a subject like religion into your 
 columns, which are allotted to a different line, but I 
 must be permitted to observe that I fail to see how a 
 minister's usefulness can be stimulated if he sets class 
 against class. Like the widows in affliction of old, he 
 should keep himself pure and unspotted from the 
 world. How can many of us accept the glorious 
 gospel on the Sabbath from a man who will incur spots 
 during the week by arguing about cesspools like any 
 
44 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 other man ? Sir, I will say nothing, moreover, about a 
 minister of the gospel assisting to bind burdens — that 
 is to say, rates and taxation — upon the shoulders of 
 men grievous to be borne. Surely, sir, a minister of 
 the Lamb of God, who was shed for the remission of 
 sins, should be against burdens. — ^I am, sir, your 
 obedient servant, A Cheistian Tradesman." 
 
 I had not the least doubt as to the authorship of 
 this precious epistle. Mr. Snale's hand was apparent 
 in every word. He was fond of making religious 
 verses, and once we were compelled to hear the 
 Sunday-school children sing a hymn which he had 
 composed. The two lines of poetry were undoubtedly 
 his. Furthermore, although he had been a chapel-goer 
 all his life, he muddled, invariably, passages from the 
 Bible. They had no definite meaning for him, and 
 there was nothing, consequently, to prevent his tacking 
 the end of one verse to the beginning of another. Mr. 
 Snale, too, continually " failed to see." Where he got 
 the phrase I do not know, but he liked it, and was 
 always repeating it. However, I had no external evi- 
 dence that it was he who was my enemy, and I held 
 my peace. I was supported at the public meeting by 
 a speaker from the body of the hall whom I had never 
 seen before. He spoke remarkably well, was evidently 
 educated, and I was rather curious about him. 
 
 It was my custom on Saturdays to go out for the 
 whole of the day by the river, seawards, to prepare for 
 the Sunday. I was coming home rather tired, when I 
 met this same man against a stUe. He bade me good- 
 evening, and then proceeded to thank me for my 
 speech, saying many complimentary things about it. 
 
MAEK EUTHERFORD. 45 
 
 I asked who it was to whom I had the honour of 
 talking, and he told me he was Edward Gibbon 
 Mardon. " It was Edward Gibson Mardon once, sir," 
 he said, smilingly. " Gibson was the name of a rich 
 old aunt who was expected to do something for me, 
 but I disliked her, and never went near her. I did not 
 see why I should be ticketed with her label, and as 
 Edward Gibson was very much like Edward Gibbon, 
 the immortal author of the ' Decline and Pall,' I 
 dropped the ' s ' and stuck in a ' b.' I am nothing but 
 a compositor on the Sentinel, and Saturday afternoon, 
 after the paper is out, is a holiday for me, unless there 
 Is any reporting to do, for I have to turn my attention 
 to that occasionally." Mr. Edward Gibbon Mardon, I 
 observed, was slightly built, rather short, and had 
 scanty whiskers which developed into a little thicker 
 tuft on his chin. His eyes were pure blue, like the 
 blue of the speedwell. They were not piercing, but 
 perfectly transparent, indicative of a character which, 
 if it possessed no particular creative power, would not 
 permit self-deception. They were not the eyes of a 
 prophet, but of a man who would not be satisfied with 
 letting a half-known thing alone and saying he believed 
 it. His lips were thin, but not compressed into bitter- 
 ness; and above everything there was in his face a 
 perfectly legible frankness, contrasting pleasantlv with 
 the doubtfulness of most of the faces I knew. I ex- 
 pressed my gratitude to him for his kind opinion, and 
 as we loitered he said — 
 
 " Sorry to see that attack upon you in the Sentinel. 
 I suppose you are aware it was Snale's. Everybody 
 could tell that who knows the man." 
 
 " If it is Mr. Snale's, I am very sorry," 
 
46 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 " It is Snale's, He is a contemptible cur ; and yet it 
 is not his fault. He has heard sermons about all sorts 
 of supernatural subjects for thirty years, and he has 
 never once been warned against meanness, so of course 
 he supposes that supernatural subjects are everything 
 and meanness is nothing. But I will not detain you 
 any longer now, for you are busy. Good-night, sir." 
 
 This was rather abrupt and disappointing. However, 
 I was much absorbed in the morrow, and passed on. 
 
 Although I despised Snale, his letter was the begin- 
 ning of a great trouble to me. I had now been preach- 
 ing for many months, and had met with no response 
 whatever. Occasionally a stranger or two visited the 
 chapel, and with what eager eyes did I not watch for 
 them on the next Sunday, but none of them came twice. 
 It was amazing to me that I could pour out myself as I 
 did, poor although I knew that self to be, and yet make 
 so little impression, Not one man or woman seemed 
 any different because of anything I had said or done, 
 and not a soul kindled at any word of mine, no matter 
 with what earnestness it might be charged. How I 
 groaned over my incapacity to stir in my people any 
 participation in my thoughts or care for them ! Look- 
 ing at the history of those days now from a distance 
 of years, everything assumes its proper proportion. I 
 was at work, it is true, amongst those who were excep- 
 tionally hard and worldly, but I was seeking amongst 
 men (to put it in orthodox language) what I ought to 
 have sought with God alone. In other, and perhaps 
 plainer phrase, I was expecting from men a sympathy 
 which proceeds from the Invisible only. Sometimes, 
 indeed, it manifests itself in the long-postponed justice 
 of time, but more frequently it is nothing more and 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD. 47 
 
 nothing less than a consciousness of approval by the 
 Unseen, a peace unspeakable, which is bestowed on us 
 wh«n self is suppressed. I did not know then how little 
 one man can change another, and what immense and 
 persistent efforts are necessary — efforts which seldom 
 succeed except in childhood — ^to accomplish anything 
 but the most superficial alteration of character. Stories 
 are told of sudden conversions, and of course if a poor 
 simple creature can be brought to believe that hell-fire 
 awaits him as the certain penalty of his misdeeds, he 
 will cease to do them ; but this is no real conversion, 
 for essentially he remains pretty much the same kind 
 of being that he was before. 
 
 I remember while this mood was on me, that I was 
 much struck with the absolute loneliness of Jesus, and 
 with His horror of that death upon the cross. He was 
 young and full of enthusiastic hope, but when He died 
 He had found hardly anything but misunderstanding. 
 He had written nothing, so that He could not expect 
 that His life would live after Him. Nevertheless His 
 confidence in His own errand had risen so high, that 
 He had not hesitated to proclaim Himself the Messiah : 
 not the Messiah the Jews were expecting, but still the 
 Messiah. I dreamed over His walks by the lake, over 
 the deeper solitude of His last visit to Jerusalem, and 
 over the gloom of that awful Friday afternoon. The 
 hold which He has upon us is easily explained, apart 
 from the dignity of His recorded sayings and the purity 
 of His life. There is no Saviour for us like the hero 
 who has passed triumphantly through the distress which 
 troubles m». Salvation is the spectacle of a victory by 
 another over foes like our own. The story of Jesus is 
 the story of the poor and forgotten. He is not the 
 
48 AUTOBIOGEAPHT OF 
 
 Saviour for the rich and prosperous, for they want 
 no Saviour. The healthy, active, and well-to-do need 
 Him not, and require nothing more than is given by 
 their own health and prosperity. But every one who 
 has walked in sadness because his destiny has not 
 fitted his aspirations ; every one who, having no oppor- 
 tunity to lift himself out of his little narrow town or 
 village circle of acquaintances, has thirsted for some- 
 thing beyond what they could give him; everybody 
 who, with nothing but a dull, daily round of mechanical 
 routine before him, would welcome death, if it were 
 martyrdom for a cause ; every humblest creature, in 
 the obscurity of great cities or remote hamlets, who 
 silently does his or her duty without recognition — all 
 these turn to Jesus, and find themselves in Him. He 
 died, faithful to the end, with infinitely higher hopes, 
 purposes, and capacity than mine, and with almost no 
 promise of anything to come of them. 
 
 Something of this kind I preached one Sunday, more 
 as a relief to myself than for any other reason. Mardoa 
 was there, and with him a girl whom I had not seen 
 before. My sight is rather short, and I could not very 
 well tell what she was like. After the service was 
 over he waited for me, and said he had done so to ask 
 me if I would pay him a visit on Monday evening. I 
 promised to do so, and accordingly went. I found him 
 living in a small brick-built cottage near the outskirts 
 of the town, the rental of which I should suppose 
 would be about seven or eight pounds a year. There 
 was a patch of ground in front and a little garden 
 behind, a kind of narrow strip about fifty feet long, 
 separated from the other little strips by iron hurdles. 
 Mardon had tried to keep his garden in order, and had 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD. 49 
 
 succeeded, but his neighbour was disorderly, and had 
 allowed weeds to grow, blacking bottles and old tin 
 cans to accumulate, so that whatever pleasure Mardon's 
 labours might have afforded was somewhat spoiled. 
 He himself came to the door when I knocked, and I 
 was shown into a kind of sitting-room with a round 
 table in the middle and furnished with Windsor chairs, 
 two arm-chairs of the same kind standing on either 
 side the fireplace. Against the window was a smaller 
 table with a green baize tablecloth, and about half-a- 
 dozen plants stood on the window-sUl serving as a 
 screen. In the recess on one side of the fireplace was 
 a cupboard, upon the top of which stood a tea-caddy, a 
 workbox, some tumblers, and a decanter full of water ; 
 the other side being filled with a bookcase and books. 
 There were two or three pictures on the walls; one 
 was a portrait of Voltaire, another of Lord Bacon, and 
 a third was Albert Dtlrer's St. Jerome. This latter 
 was an heirloom, and greatly prized I could perceive, 
 as it was hung in the place of honour over the mantel- 
 piece. After some little introductory talk, the same 
 girl whom I had noticed with Mardon at the chapel 
 came in, and I was introduced to her as his only 
 daughter Mary. She began to busy herself at once 
 in getting the tea. She was under the average height 
 for a woman, and delicately built. Her head was 
 small, but the neck was long. Her hair was brown, 
 of a peculiarly lustrous tint, partly due to nature, but 
 also to a looseness of arrangement and a most diligent 
 use of the brush, so that the light fell not upon a dead 
 compact mass, but upon myriads of individual hairs, 
 each of which reflected the light. Her eyes, so far as 
 I could make out, were a kind of greenish grey, but the 
 
 D 
 
so AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 eyelashes were long, so that it was difficult exactly to 
 discover what was underneath them. The hands were 
 small, and the whole figure exquisitely graceful; the 
 plain black dress, which she wore fastened right up to 
 the throat, suiting her to perfection. Her face, as I 
 first thought, did not seem indicative of strength. The 
 lips were thin, but not straight, the upper lip showing 
 a remarkable curve in it. Nor was it a handsome face. 
 The complexion was not sufficiently transparent, nor 
 were the features regular. During tea she spoke very 
 little, but I noticed one peculiarity about her manner 
 of talking, and that was its perfect simplicity. There 
 was no sort of effort or strain in anything she said, 
 no attempt by emphasis of words to make up for weak- 
 ness of thought, and no compliance with that vulgar 
 and most disagreeable habit of using intense language 
 to describe what is not intense in itself. Her yea was 
 yea, and her no, no. I observed also that she spoke 
 without disguise, although she was not rude. The 
 manners of the cultivated classes are sometimes very 
 charming, and more particularly their courtesy, which 
 puts the guest so much at his ease, and constrains him 
 to believe that an almost personal interest is taken in 
 his affairs, but after a time it becomes wearisome. It 
 is felt to be nothing but courtesy, the result of a rule 
 of conduct uniform for all, and verging very closely 
 upon hypocrisy. We long rather for plainness of 
 speech, for some intimation of the person with whom 
 we are talking, and that the mask and gloves may be 
 laid aside. Tea being over. Miss Mardon cleared away 
 the tea-things, and presently came back again. She 
 took one of the arm-chairs by the side of the fireplace, 
 which her father had reserved for her, and while he 
 
MARK EUTHERFORD. 51 
 
 and I were talking, she sat with her head leaning a 
 little sideways on the back of the chair. I could just 
 discern that her feet, which rested on the stool, were 
 very diminutive, like her hands. The talk with Mardon 
 turned upon the chapel. I had begun it by saying that 
 I had noticed him there on the Sunday just mentioned. 
 He then explained why he never went to any place 
 of worship. A purely orthodox preacher it was, of 
 course, impossible for him to hear, but he doubted 
 also the efficacy of preaching. What could be the 
 use of it, supposing the preacher no longer to be a 
 believer in the common creeds? If he turns himself 
 into a mere lecturer on all sorts of topics, he does 
 nothing more than books do, and they do it much 
 better. He must base himself upon the Bible, and 
 above all upon Christ, and how can he base himself 
 upon a myth ? We do not know that Christ ever lived, 
 or that if He lived His life was anything like what 
 is attributed to Him. A mere juxtaposition of the 
 Gospels shows how the accounts of His words and deeds 
 differ according to the tradition followed by each of His 
 biographers. I interrupted Mardon at this point by 
 saying that it did not matter whether Christ actually 
 existed or not. What the four evangelists recorded 
 ■oas eternally true, and the Christ-idea was true whether 
 it was ever incarnated or not in a being bearing His 
 name. " Pardon me," said Mardon, " but it does very 
 much matter. It is all the matter whether we are 
 dealing with a dream or with reality. I can dream 
 about a man's dying on the cross in homage to what he 
 believed, but I would not perhaps die there myself; 
 and when I suffer from hesitation whether I ought to 
 sacrifice myself for the truth, it is of immense assist- 
 
52 AUTOBIOGKAPHY OF 
 
 ance to me to know that a greater sacrifice has been 
 made before me — that a greater sacrifice is possible. 
 To know that somebody has poetically imagined that 
 it is possible, and has very likely been altogether in- 
 capable of its achievement, is no help. Moreover, the 
 commonplaces which even the most freethinking of 
 Unitarians seem to consider as axiomatic, are to me 
 far from certain, and even unthinkable. For example, 
 they are always talking about the omnipotence of God. 
 But power even of the supremest kind necessarily 
 implies an object — that is to say, resistance. Without 
 an object which resists it, it would be a blank, and 
 what then is the meaning of omnipotence ? It is not 
 that it is merely inconceivable ; it is nonsense, and so 
 are all these abstract, illimitable, self-annihilative attri- 
 butes of which God is made up." 
 
 This negative criticism, in which Mardon greatly 
 excelled, was all new to me, and I had no reply to 
 make. He had a sledgehammer way of expressing 
 himself, while I, on the contrary, always required time 
 to bring into shape what I saw. Just then I saw 
 nothing ; I was stunned, bewildered, out of the sphere 
 of my own thoughts, and pained at the roughness with 
 which he treated what I had cherished. I was presently 
 relieved, however, of further reflection by Mardon's 
 asking his daughter whether her face was better. It 
 turned out that all the afternoon and evening she had 
 suffered greatly from neuralgia. She had said nothing 
 about it while I was there, but had behaved with 
 cheerfulness and freedom. Mentally I had accused her 
 of slightness, and inability to talk upon the subjects 
 which interested Mardon and myself ; but when I knew 
 she had been in torture all the time, my opinion was 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD. 
 
 S3 
 
 altered. I thought how rash I had been in judging 
 her as I continually judged other people, without being 
 aware of everything they had to pass through ; and I 
 thought, too, that if I had a fit of neuralgia, everybody 
 near me would know it, and be almost as much annoyed 
 by me as I myself should be by the pain. It is curious, 
 also, that when thus proclaiming my troubles I often 
 considered my eloquence meritorious, or, at least, a kind 
 of talent for which I ought to praise God, contemning 
 rather my silent friends as something nearer than my- 
 self to the expressionless animals. To parade my tooth- 
 ache, describing it with unusual adjectives, making it 
 felt by all the company in which I might happen to be, 
 was to me an assertion of my superior nature. But, 
 looking at Mary, and thinking about her as I walked 
 home, I perceived that her ability to be quiet, to subdue 
 herself, to resist the temptation for a whole evening of 
 drawing attention to herself by telling us what she was 
 enduring, was heroism, and that my contrary tendency 
 was pitiful vanity. I perceived that such virtues as 
 patience and self-denial — which, clad in russet dress, I 
 had often passed by unnoticed when I had found them 
 amongst the poor or the humble — were more precious 
 and more ennobling to their possessor than poetic yearn- 
 ings, or the power to propound rhetorically to the world 
 my grievances or agonies. 
 
 Miss Mardon's face was getting worse, and as by this 
 time it was late, I stayed but a little while longer. 
 
S4 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 MISS ARBOUR. 
 
 FoK some months I continued without much change 
 in my monotonous existence. I did not see Mardon 
 often, for I rather dreaded him. I could not resist 
 him, and I shrank from what I saw to be inevitably 
 true when I talked to him, I can hardly say it was 
 cowardice. Those may call it cowardice to whom aU 
 associations are nothing, and to whom beliefs are no 
 more than matters of indifferent research; but as for 
 me, Mardon's talk darkened my days and nights. I 
 never could understand the light manner in which 
 people will discuss the gravest questions, such as God, 
 and the immortality of the soul. They gossip about 
 them over their tea, write and read review articles 
 about them, and seem to consider affirmation or negation 
 of no more practical importance than the conformation 
 of a beetle. With me the struggle to retain as much as 
 I could of my creed was tremendous. The dissolution 
 of Jesus into mythologic vapour was nothing less than 
 the death of a friend dearer to me then than any other 
 friend whom I knew. But the worst stroke of all was 
 that which fell upon the doctrine of a life beyond the 
 grave. In theory I had long despised the notion that 
 we should govern our conduct here by hope of reward 
 or fear of punishment hereafter. But under Mardon's 
 
MARK RUTHEEFORD. 55 
 
 remorseless criticism, when he insisted on asking for 
 the where and how, and pointed out that all at- 
 tempts to say where and how ended in nonsense, my 
 hope began to fail, and I was surprised to find myself 
 incapable of living with proper serenity if there was 
 nothing but blank darkness before me at the end of a 
 few years. As I got older I became aware of the folly 
 of this perpetual reaching after the future, and of 
 drawing from to-morrow, and from to-morrow only, a 
 reason for the joyfulness of to-day, I learned, when, 
 alas ! it was almost too late, to live in each moment as 
 it passed over my head, believing that the sun as it is 
 now rising is as good as it will ever be, and blinding 
 myself as much as possible to what may follow. But 
 when I was young I was the victim of that illusion, 
 implanted for some purpose or other in us by Nature, 
 which causes us, on the brightest morning in June, to 
 think immediately of a brighter morning which is to 
 come in July. I say nothing, now, for or against the 
 doctrine of immortality. All I say is, that men have 
 been happy without it, even under the pressure of 
 disaster, and that to make immortality a sole spring 
 of action here is an exaggeration of the folly which 
 deludes us all through Kfe with endless expectation, 
 and leaves us at death without the thorough enjoyment 
 of a single hour. 
 
 So I shrank from Mardon, but none the less did the 
 process of excavation go on. It often happens that 
 a man loses faith without knowing it. Silently the 
 foundation is sapped while the building stands fronting 
 the sun, as solid to all appearance as when it was first 
 turned out of the builder's hands, but it last it falls 
 suddenly with a crash. It was so at this time with 
 
S6 ATJTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 a personal relationship of mine, about which I have 
 hitherto said nothing. Tears ago, before I went to 
 college, and when I was a teacher in the Sunday- 
 school, I had fallen in love with one of my fellow- 
 teachers, and we became engaged. She was the 
 daughter of one of the deacons. She had a smiling, 
 pretty, vivacious face; was always somehow foremost 
 in school treats, picnics, and chapel- work, and she had 
 a kind of piquant manner, which to many men is more 
 ensnaring than beauty. She never read anything ; she 
 was too restless and fond of outward activity for that, 
 and no questions about orthodoxy or heresy ever troubled 
 her head. "We continued our correspondence regularly 
 after my appointment as minister, and her friends, I 
 knew, were looking to me to fix a day for marriage. 
 But although we had been writing to one another as 
 affectionately as usual, a revolution had taken place. 
 I was quite unconscious of it, for we had been be- 
 trothed for so long that I never once considered the 
 possibility of any rupture. One Monday morning, 
 however, I had a letter from her. It was not often 
 that she wrote on Sunday, as she had a religious pre- 
 judice against writing letters on that day. However, 
 this was urgent, for it was to teU me that an aunt of 
 hers who was staying at her father's was just dead, 
 and that her uncle wanted her to go and live with him 
 for some time, to look after the little children who were 
 left behind. She said that her dear aunt died a beau- 
 tiful death, trusting in the merits of the Eedeemer. 
 She also added, in a very delicate way, that she would 
 have agreed to go to her uncle's at once, but she had 
 understood that we were to be married soon, and she 
 did not like to leave home for long. She was evidently 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD. 57 
 
 anxious for me to tell her what to do. This letter, 
 as I have said, came to me on Monday, when I was 
 exhausted by a more than usually desolate Sunday. 
 I became at once aware that my affection for her, if 
 it ever really existed, had departed. I saw before me 
 the long days of wedded life with no sympathy, and I 
 shuddered when I thought what I should do with such 
 a wife. How could I take her to Mardon ? How could 
 I ask him to come to me 1 Strange to say, my pride 
 suffered most. I could have endured, I believe, even 
 discord at home, if only I could have had a woman 
 whom I could present to my friends, and whom they 
 would admire. I was never unselfish in the way in 
 which women are, and yet I have always been more 
 anxious that people should respect my wife than re- 
 spect me, and at any time would withdraw myself into 
 the shade if only she might be brought into the 
 light. This is nothing noble. It is an obscure form 
 of egotism probably, but anyhow, such always was my 
 case. It took but a very few hours to excite me to 
 distraction. I had gone on for years without realising 
 what I saw now, and although in the situation itself 
 the change had been only gradual, it instantaneously 
 became intolerable. Yet I never was more incapable 
 of acting. What could I do? After such a long 
 betrothal, to break loose from her would be cruel and 
 shamefuL I could never hold up my head again, and 
 in the narrow circle of Independency, the whole affair 
 would be known and my prospects ruined. Then other 
 and subtler reasons presented themselves. No men 
 can expect ideal attachments. We must be satisfied 
 with ordinary humanity. Doubtless my friend with 
 a lofty imagination would be better matched with 
 
58 AUTOBIOGEAPHy OP 
 
 some Antigone who exists somewhere and whom he 
 does not know. But he wisely does not spend his life 
 in vain search after her, but settles down with the 
 first decently sensible woman he finds in his own 
 street, and makes the best of his bargain. Besides, 
 there was the power of use and wont to be considered. 
 Ellen had no vice of temper, no meanness, and it was 
 not improbable that she would be just as good a help- 
 meet for me in time as I had a right to ask. Living 
 together, we should mould one another, and at last 
 like one another. Marrying her, I should be relieved 
 from the insufferable solitude which was depressing 
 me to death, and should have a home. So it has 
 always been with me. When there has been the 
 sternest need of promptitude, I have seen such multi- 
 tudes of arguments for and against every course that 
 I have despaired. I have at my command any number 
 of maxims, all of them good, but I am powerless to 
 select the one which ought to be applied. A general 
 principle, a fine saying, is nothing but a tool, and the 
 wit of man is shown not in his possession of a well- 
 furnished tool-chest, but in the ability to pick out 
 the proper instrument and use it. I remained in this 
 miserable condition for days, not venturing to answer 
 Ellen's letter, until at last I turned out for a walk. I 
 have often found that motion and change will bring 
 light and resolution when thinking wiU not. I started 
 off in the morning down by the river, and towards the 
 sea, my favourite stroll. I went on and on under a 
 leaden sky, through the level, solitary, marshy meadows, 
 where the river began to lose itself in the ocean, and 
 I wandered about there, struggling for guidance. In 
 my distress I actually knelt down and prayed, but 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD. 59 
 
 the heavens remained impassive as before, and I was 
 half ashamed of what I had done, as if it were a piece 
 of hypocrisy. At last, wearied out, I turned home- 
 ward, and diverging from the direct road, I was led 
 past the house where the Misses Arbour lived. I was 
 faint, and some beneficent inspiration prompted me to 
 calL I went in, and found that the younger of the 
 two sisters was out. A sudden tendency to hysterics 
 overcame me, and I asked for a glass of water. Miss 
 Arbour, having given it to me, sat down by the side of 
 the fireplace opposite to the one at which I was sitting, 
 and for a few moments there was silence. I made 
 some commonplace observation, but instead of answer- 
 ing me she said quietly, "Mr. Eutherford, you have 
 been upset ; I hope you have met with no accident." 
 How it came about I do not know, but my whole story 
 rushed to my lips, and I told her all of it with quiver- 
 ing voice. I cannot imagine what possessed me to 
 make her my confidante. Shy, reserved, and proud, I 
 would have died rather than have breathed a syllable 
 of my secret if I had been in my ordinary humour, but 
 her soft, sweet face altogether overpowered me. As I 
 proceeded with my tale, the change that came over her 
 was most remarkable. When I began she was leaning 
 back placidly in her large chair, with her handkerchief 
 upon her lap ; but gradually her face kindled, she sat 
 upright, and she was transformed with a completeness 
 and suddenness which I could not have conceived pos- 
 sible. At last, when I had finished, she put both her 
 hands to her forehead, and almost shrieked out, " Shall 
 I tell him ?— my God, shall I tell him ?— may God 
 have mercy on him ! " I was amazed beyond measure 
 at the altogether unsuspected depth of passion which 
 
6o AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP 
 
 was revealed in her whom I had never before seen 
 disturbed by more than a ripple of emotion. She drew 
 her chair nearer to mine, put both her hands on my 
 knees, looked right into my eyes, and said, " Listen," 
 She then moved back a little, and spoke as follows : — 
 "It is forty-five years ago this month since I was 
 married. You are surprised ; you have always known 
 me under my maiden name, and you thought I had 
 always been single. It is forty-six years ago this 
 month since the man who afterwards became my 
 husband first saw me. He was a partner in a cloth 
 firm. At that time it was the duty of one member of 
 a firm to travel, and he came to our town, where my 
 father was a well-to-do carriage-builder. My father 
 was an old customer of his house, and the relationship 
 between the customer and the wholesale merchant was 
 then very different from what it is now. Consequently, 
 Mr. Hexton — for that was my husband's name — ^was 
 continually asked to stay with us so long as he re- 
 mained in the town. He was what might be called a 
 singularly handsome man, that is to say, he was upright, 
 well-made, with a straight nose, black hair, dark eyes, 
 and a good complexion. He dressed with perfect 
 neatness and good taste, and had the reputation of 
 being a most temperate and most moral man, much 
 respected amongst the sect to which both of us belonged. 
 When he first came our way I was about nineteen and 
 he about three-and-twenty. My father and his had 
 long been acquainted, and he was of course received 
 even with cordiality. I was excitable, a lover of poetry, 
 a reader of all sorts of books, and much given to 
 enthusiasm. Ah ! you do not think so, you do not see 
 how that can have been, but you do not know how 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD. 6i 
 
 unaccountable is the development of the soul, and 
 what is the meaning of any given form of character 
 which presents itself to you. You see nothing but the 
 peaceful, long since settled result, but how it came 
 there, what its history has been, you cannot telL It 
 may always have been there, or have gradually grown 
 so, in gradual progress from seed to flower, or it may 
 be the final repose of tremendous forces. I will show 
 you what I was like at nineteen," and she got up and 
 turned to a desk, from which she took a little ivory 
 miniature. "That," she said, "was given to Mr. Hexton 
 when we were engaged. I thought he would have 
 locked it up, but he used to leave it about, and one day 
 I found it in the dressing-table drawer, with some 
 brushes and combs, and two or three letters of mine. 
 I withdrew it, and burnt the letters. He never asked 
 for it, and here it is." The head was small and set 
 upon the neck like a flower, but not bending pensively. 
 It was rather thrown back with a kind of firmness, 
 and with a peculiarly open air, as if it had nothing to 
 conceal and wished the world to conceal nothing. The 
 body was shown down to the waist, and was slim and 
 graceful. But what was most noteworthy about the 
 picture was its solemn seriousness, a seriousness capable 
 of infinite afi'ection, and of infinite abandonment, not 
 sensuous abandonment — everything was too severe, 
 too much controlled by the arch of the top of the 
 head for that — but of an abandonment to spiritual 
 aims. Miss Arbour continued : " Mr. Hexton after a 
 while gave me to understand that he was my admirer, 
 and before six months of acquaintanceship had passed 
 my mother told me that he had requested formally that 
 he might be considered as my suitor. She put no 
 
62 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 pressure upon me, nor did my father, excepting that 
 they said that if I would accept Mr. Hexton they would 
 be content, as they knew him to he a very well-con- 
 ducted young man, a member of the church, and 
 prosperous in his business. My first, and for a time 
 my sovereign, impulse was to reject him, because I 
 thought him mean, and because I felt he lacked sym- 
 pathy with me. UnhappUy I did not trust that impulse. 
 I looked for something more authoritative, but I was 
 mistaken, for the voice of God, to me at least, hardly 
 ever comes in thunder, but I have to listen with perfect 
 stillness to make it out. It spoke to me, told me what 
 to do, but I argued with it and was lost. I was guilt- 
 less of any base motive, but I found the wrong name 
 for what displeased me in Mr. Hexton, and so I deluded 
 myself. I reasoned that his meanness was justifiable 
 economy, and that his dissimilarity from me was perhaps 
 the very thing which ought to induce me to marry him, 
 because he would correct my failings. I knew I was 
 too inconsiderate, too rash, too flighty, and I said to 
 myself that his soberness would be a good thing for me. 
 Oh, if I had but the power to write a book which should 
 go to the ends of the world, and warn young men and 
 women not to be led away by any sophistry when 
 choosing their partners for life! It may be asked. 
 How are we to distinguish heavenly instigation from 
 hellish temptation 1 I say, that neither you nor I, 
 sitting here, can tell how to do it. We can lay down 
 no law by which infallibly to recognise the messenger 
 from God. But what I do say is, that when the moment 
 comes, it is perfectly easy for us to recognise him. 
 Whether we listen to his message or not is another 
 matter. If we do not — ^if we stop to dispute with him. 
 
MAKE RUTHERFORD. 63 
 
 we are undone, for we shall very soon learn to discredit 
 him. So I was married, and I went to live in a dark 
 manufacturing town, away from all my friends. I 
 awoke to my misery by degrees, but still rapidly. I 
 had my books sent down to me. I unpacked them in 
 Mr. Hexton's presence, and I kindled at the thought of 
 ranging my old favourites in my sitting-room. He saw 
 my delight as I put them on some empty shelves, but 
 the next day he said that he wanted a stuffed dog there, 
 and that he thought my books, especially as they were 
 shabby, had better go upstairs. We had to give some 
 entertainments soon afterwards. The minister and his 
 wife, with some other friends, came to tea, and the con- 
 versation turned on parties and the dulness of winter 
 evenings if no amusements were provided. I maintained 
 that rational human beings ought not to be dependent 
 upon childish games, but ought to be able to occupy 
 themselves and interest themselves with talk. Talk, I 
 said, — not gossip, but talk, pleases me better than chess 
 or forfeits ; and the lines of Gowper occurred to me — 
 
 ' When one, that holds communion with the skies, 
 Has filled his urn where these pure waters rise, 
 And once more mingles with us meaner things, 
 'Tis even as if an angel shook his wings ; 
 Immortal fragrance fills the circuit wide, 
 That tells ns whence his treasures are supplied. 
 
 I ventured to repeat this verse, and when I had 
 finished, there was a pause for a moment, which was 
 broken by my husband's saying to the minister's wife, 
 who sat next to him, ' Mrs. Cook, I quite forgot to 
 express my sympathy with you ; I heard that you had 
 lost your cat.' The blow was deliberately administered. 
 
64 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 and I felt it as an insult. I was wrong, I know. I 
 was ignorant of the ways of the world, and I ought to 
 have been aware of the folly of placing myself above 
 the level of my guests, and of the extreme unwisdom 
 of revealing myself in that unguarded way to strangers. 
 Two or three more experiences of that kind taught 
 me to close myself carefully to all the world, and to be- 
 ware how I uttered anything more than commonplace. 
 But I was young, and ought to have been pardoned. 
 I felt the sting of self-humiliation far into the night, as 
 I lay and silently cried, while Mr. Hexton slept beside 
 me. I soon found that he was entirely insensible to 
 everything for which I most cared. Before our marriage 
 he had affected a sort of interest in my pursuits, but in 
 reality he was indifferent to them. He was cold, hard, 
 and impenetrable. His habits were precise and methodi- 
 cal, beyond what is natural for a man of his years. I 
 remember one evening — strange that these small events 
 should so burn themselves into me — that some friends 
 were at our house at tea. A tradesman in the town 
 was mentioned, a member of our congregation, who had 
 become bankrupt, and everybody began to abuse him. 
 It was said that he had been extravagant ; that he 
 had chosen to send his children to the grammar-school, 
 where the children of gentlefolk went ; and finally, that 
 only last year he had let his wife go to the seaside. I 
 knew what the real state of affairs was. He had perhaps 
 been living a little beyond his means, but as to the 
 school, he had rather refined tastes, and he longed to 
 teach his children something more than the ciphering, 
 as it was called, and bookkeeping which they would have 
 learned at the academy at which men in his position 
 usually educated their boysj and as to the seaside, 
 
MAKE RUTHERFORD. 65 
 
 his wife was ill, and he could not bear to see her suffer- 
 ing in the smoky street, when he knew that a little 
 fresh air and change of scene would restore her. So I 
 said that I was sorry to hear the poor man attacked ; 
 that he had done wrong, no doubt, but so had the 
 woman who was brought before Jesus ; and that with 
 me, charity or a large heart covered a multitude of sins. 
 I added that there was something dreadful in the way 
 in which everybody always seemed to agree in deserting 
 the unfortunate. I was a little moved, and unluckily 
 upset a teacup. No harm was done; and if my husband, 
 who sat next to me, had chosen to take no notice, there 
 need have been no disturbance whatever. But he made 
 a great fuss, crying, * Oh, my dear, pray mind ! Ring 
 the bell instantly, or it will all be through the table- 
 cloth,' In getting up hastily to obey him, I happened 
 to drag the cloth, as it lay on my lap ; a plate fell down 
 and was broken ; everything was in confusion ; I was 
 ashamed and degraded. 
 
 "I do not believe there was a single point in Mr. 
 Hexton's character in which he touched the universal ; 
 not a single chink, however narrow, through which 
 his soul looked out of itself upon the great world 
 around. If he had kept bees, or collected butterflies 
 or beetles, I could have found some avenue of approach. 
 But he had no taste for anything of the kind. He had 
 his breakfast at eight regularly every morning, and 
 read his letters at breakfast. He came home to dinner 
 at two, looked at the newspaper for a little while 
 after dinner, and then went to sleep. At six he had 
 his tea, and in half-an-hour went back to his counting- 
 house, which he did not leave till eight. Supper at 
 nine, and bed at ten, closed the day. It was a habit 
 
 E 
 
66 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 of mine to read a little after supper, and occasionally I 
 read aloud to him passages which struck me, but I soon 
 gave it up, for once or twice he said to me, ' Now you've 
 got to the bottom of that page, I think you had better 
 go to bed,' although perhaps the page did not end a 
 sentence. But why weary you with all this ? I pass 
 over all the rest of the hateful details which made life 
 insupportable to me. Suffice to say, that one wet 
 Sunday evening, when we could not go to chapel and 
 were in the dining-room alone, the climax was reached. 
 My husband had a religious magazine before him, and 
 I sat still doing nothing. At last, after an hour had 
 passed without a word, I could bear it no longer, and I 
 broke out — 
 
 " ' James, I am wretched beyond description ! * 
 
 "He slowly shut the magazine, tearing a piece of 
 paper from a letter and putting it in as a mark, and 
 then said — 
 
 "'What is the matter?' 
 
 " ' You must know. You must know that ever since 
 we have been married you have never cared for one 
 single thing I have done or said ; that is to say, you 
 have never cared for me. It is not being married.' 
 
 "It was an explosive outburst, sudden and almost 
 incoherent, and I cried as if my heart would break. 
 
 " ' What is the meaning of aU this ? You must be 
 unweU. Win you not have a glass of wine ? ' 
 
 " I could not regain myself for some minutes, during 
 which he sat perfectly still, without speaking, and 
 without touching me. His coldness nerved me again, 
 congealing aU my emotion into a set resolve, and I 
 
 ' I want no wine. I am not unwell I do not wish 
 
MAKK EUTHERFORD. 67 
 
 to have a scene. I will not, by useless words, embitter 
 myself against you, or you against me. Ton know you 
 do not love me. I know I do not love you. It is all 
 a bitter, cursed mistake, and the sooner we say so and 
 rectify it the better.' 
 
 " The colour left his face ; his lips quivered, and he 
 looked as if he would have kUled me. 
 
 " ' What monstrous thing is this ? What do you 
 mean by your tomfooleries ? ' 
 
 " I did not speak. 
 
 "'Speak!' he roared. 'What am I to understand 
 by rectifying your mistake ? By the living God, you 
 shall not make me the laughing-stock and gossip of the 
 town ! I'll crush you first.' 
 
 " I was astonished to see such rage develop itself 
 so suddenly in him, and yet afterwards, when I came 
 to reflect, I saw there was no reason for surprise. Self, 
 self was his god, and the thought of the damage which 
 would be done to him and his reputation was what 
 roused him. I was still silent, and he went on — 
 
 " ' I suppose you intend to leave me, and you think 
 you'U disgrace me. You'll disgrace yourself. Every- 
 body knows me here, and knows you've had every com- 
 fort and everything to make you happy. Everybody 
 will say what everybody will have the right to say 
 about you. Out with it and confess the truth, that 
 one of your snivelling poets has fallen in love with you 
 and you with him.' 
 
 " I still held my peace, but I rose and went into the 
 best bedchamber, and sat there in the dark till bedtime. 
 I heard James come upstairs at ten o'clock as usual, go 
 to his own room, and lock himself in. I never hesitated 
 a moment. I could not go home to become the centre 
 
68 AUTOBIOQEAPHY OF 
 
 of all the chatter of the little provincial town in which 
 I was born. My old nurse, who took care of me as a 
 child, had got a place ia London as housekeeper in a 
 large shop in the Strand. She was always very fond 
 of me, and to her instantly I determined to go. I 
 came down, wrote a brief note to James, stating that 
 after his base and lying sneer he could not expect to 
 find me in the morning still with him, and telling him 
 I had left him for ever. I put on my cloak, took some 
 money which was my own out of my cashbox, and at 
 half-past twelve heard the mail-coach approaching. I 
 opened the front door softly — ^it shut with an oiled 
 spring bolt; I went out, stopped the coach, and was 
 presently rolling over the road to the great city. Oh 
 that night ! I was the sole passenger inside, and for 
 some hours I remained stunned, hardly knowing what 
 had become of me. Soon the morning began to break, 
 with such calm and such slow-changing splendour that 
 it drew me out of myself to look at it, and it seemed 
 to me a prophecy of the future. No words can tell the 
 bound of my heart at emancipation. I did not know 
 what was before me, but I knew from what I had 
 escaped ; I did not believe I should be pursued, and no 
 sailor returning from shipwreck and years of absence 
 ever entered the port where wife and children were 
 with more rapture than I felt journeying through the 
 rain into which the clouds of the sunrise dissolved, as we 
 rode over the dim flats of Huntingdonshire southwards. 
 There is no need for me to weary you any longer, nor 
 to tell you what happened after I got to London, or 
 how I came here. I had a little property of my own, 
 and no child. To avoid questions I resumed my maiden 
 name. But one thing you must know, because it will 
 
MAKE RUTHERFORD. 69 
 
 directly tend to enforce what I am going to beseech of 
 you. Years afterwards, I might have married a man 
 who was devoted to me. But I told him I was mar- 
 ried already, and not a word of love must he speak 
 to me. He went abroad in despair, and I have never 
 seen anything more of him. 
 
 " You can guess now what I am going to pray of you 
 to do. Without hesitation, write to this girl and tell 
 her the exact truth. Anything, any obloquy, anything 
 friends or enemies may say of you must be faced even 
 joyfully, rather than what I had to endure. Better 
 die the death of the Saviour on the cross than live 
 such a life as mine." 
 
 I said : " Miss Arbour, you are doubtless right, but 
 think what it means. It means nothing less than 
 infamy. It will be said, I broke the poor thing's heart, 
 and marred her prospects for ever. What will become 
 of me, as a minister, when all this is known ? " 
 
 She caught my hand in hers, and cried with inde- 
 scribable feeling — 
 
 "My good sir, you are parleying with the great 
 Euemy of Souls. Oh! if you did but know, if you 
 could but know, you would be as decisive in your 
 recoil from him, as you would from hell suddenly 
 opened at your feet. Never mind the future. The 
 one thing you have to do is the thing that lies next to 
 you, divinely ordained for you. What does the 119th 
 Psalm say ? — ' Thy word is a lamp unto my feet.' 
 We have no light promised us to show us our road a 
 hundred miles away, but we have a light for the next 
 footstep, and if we take that, we shall have a light 
 for the one which is to follow. The inspiration of the 
 Almighty could not make clearer to me the message 
 
70 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 I deliver to you. Forgive me — you are a minister, I 
 know, and perhaps I ought not to speak so to you, 
 but I am an old woman. Never would you have 
 heard my history from me, if I had not thought it 
 would help to save you from something worse than 
 death." 
 
 At this moment there came a knock at the door, 
 and Miss Arbour's sister came in. After a few words 
 of greeting I took my leave and walked home. I 
 was confounded. Who could have dreamed that such 
 tragic depths lay behind that serene face, and that her 
 orderly precision was like the grass and flowers upon 
 volcanic soil with Vesuvian fires slumbering below ? 
 I had been altogether at fatilt, and I was taught, what 
 I have since been taught over and over again, that 
 unknown abysses, into which the sun never shines, lie 
 covered with commonplace in men and women, and 
 are revealed only by the rarest opportunity. 
 
 But my thoughts turned almost immediately to 
 myself, and I could bring myself to no resolve, I was 
 weak and tired, and the more I thought the less 
 capable was I of coming to any decision. In the 
 morning, after a restless night, I was in still greater 
 straits, and being perfectly unable to do anything, I 
 fled to my usual refuge, the sea. The whole day I 
 swayed to and fro, without the smallest power to 
 arbitrate between the contradictory impulses which 
 drew me in opposite directions. I knew what I ought 
 to do, but Ellen's image was ever before me, mutely 
 appealing against her wrongs, and I pictured her de- 
 serted and with her life spoiled. I said to myself that 
 instinct is all very well, but for what purpose is reason 
 given to us if not to reason with it; and reasoning 
 
MAEK RUTHERFORD. fi 
 
 in the main is a correction of what is called instinct, 
 and of hasty first impressions. I knew many cases 
 in which men and women loved one another without 
 similarity of opinions, and, after aU, similarity of 
 opinions upon theological criticism is a poor bond of 
 union. But then, no sooner was this pleaded than the 
 other side of the question was propounded with aU its 
 distinctness, as Miss Arbour had presented it. I came 
 home thoroughly beaten with fatigue, and went to bed. 
 Fortunately I sank at once to rest, and with the morn- 
 ing was born the clear discernment that whatever I 
 ought to do, it was more manly of me to go than to 
 write to Ellen. Accordingly, I made arrangements for 
 getting somebody to supply my place in the pulpit for 
 a couple of Sundays, and went home. 
 
7a AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 CHAPTEE VL 
 
 ELLEN AND MARY. 
 
 I NOW found myself in the strangest position. What 
 was I to do ? Was I to go to Ellen at once and say 
 plainly, " I have ceased to care for you " ? I did what 
 all weak people do. I wished that destiny would take 
 the matter out of my hands. I would have given the 
 world if I could have heard that Ellen was fonder 
 of somebody else than me, although the moment the 
 thought came to me I saw its baseness. But destiny 
 was determined to try me to the uttermost, and make 
 the task as difScult for me as it could be made. It 
 was Thursday when I arrived, and somehow or other 
 — how I do not know — I found myself on Thurs- 
 day afternoon at her house. She was very pleased to 
 see me, for many reasons. My last letters had been 
 doubtful, and the time for our marriage, as she at 
 least thought, was at hand. I, on my part, could 
 not but return the usual embrace, but after the first 
 few words were over there was a silence, and she 
 noticed that I did not look well. Anxiously she asked 
 me what was the matter. I said that something had 
 been upon my mind for a long time, which I thought 
 it my duty to tell her. I then went on to say that 
 I felt she ought to know what had happened. When 
 we were first engaged we both professed the same 
 
MAEK RUTHERFORD. 73 
 
 faith. From that faith I had gradually departed, and 
 it seemed to me that it would be wicked if she were 
 not made acquainted before she took a step which 
 was irrevocable. This was true, but it was not quite 
 aU the truth, and with a woman's keenness she saw 
 at once everything that was in me. She broke out 
 instantly with a sob — 
 
 "0 Eough !" a nickname she had given me, "I know 
 what it all means — ^you want to get rid of me." 
 
 God help me, if I ever endure greater anguish than 
 I did then, I could not speak, much less could I 
 weep, and I sat and watched her for some minutes 
 in silence. My first impulse was to retract, to put my 
 arms round her neck, and swear that whatever I might 
 be. Deist or Atheist, nothing should separate me from 
 her. Old associations, the thought of the cruel injustice 
 put upon her, the display of an emotion which I had 
 never seen in her before, almost overmastered me, and 
 why I did not yield I do not know. Again and again 
 havB I failed to make out what it is which, in moments 
 of extreme peril, has restrained me from making some 
 deadly mistake, when I have not been aware of the 
 conscious exercise of any authority of my own. At 
 last I said — 
 
 " Ellen, what else was I to do ? I cannot help my 
 conversion to another creed. Supposing you had found 
 out that you had married a Unitarian and I had never 
 told you!" 
 
 " Eough ! you are not a Unitarian, you don't love 
 me," and she sobbed afresh. 
 
 I could not plead against hysterics. I was afraid 
 Bhe would get ilL I thought nobody was in the house, 
 and I rushed across the passage to get her some 
 
74 AUTOBIOQEAPHY OF 
 
 stimulants. When I came back her father was in the 
 room. He was my aversion — a fussy, conceited man, 
 who always prated about "my daughter" to me in 
 a tone which was very repulsive — ^just as if she were 
 his property, and he were her natural protector 
 against me. 
 
 "Mr. Eutherford," he cried, "what is the matter 
 with my daughter ? What have you said to her ? " 
 
 " I don't think, sir, I am bound to tell you. It is a 
 matter between Ellen and myself." 
 
 "Mr. Eutherford, I demand an explanation. Ellen 
 is mine. I am her father." 
 
 "Excuse me, sir, if I desire not to have a scene 
 here just now. Ellen is unwell. When she recovers 
 she will tell you. I had better leave," and I walked 
 straight out of the house. 
 
 Next morning I had a letter from her father to say, 
 that whether I was a Unitarian or not, my behaviour 
 to Ellen showed I was bad enough to be one. Any- 
 how, he had forbidden her all further intercourse with 
 me. When I had once more settled down in my soli- 
 tude, and came to think over what had happened, I 
 felt the self-condemnation of a criminal without being 
 able to accuse myself of a crime. I believe with Miss 
 Arbour that it is madness for a young man who finds 
 out he has made a blunder, not to set it right; no 
 matter what the wrench may be. But that Ellen was 
 a victim I do not deny. If any sin, however, was 
 committed against her, it was committed long before 
 our separation. It was nine-tenths mistake and one- 
 tenth something more heinous ; and the worst of it is, 
 that while there is nothing which a man does which 
 is of greater consequence than the choice of a woman 
 
MAKE RUTHERFORD. 75 
 
 witli whom he is to live, there is nothing he does in 
 which he is more Kable to self-deception. 
 
 On my return I heard that Mardon was ill, and that 
 probably he would die. During my absence a con- 
 tested election for the county had taken place, and 
 ur town was one of the polling-places. The lower 
 classes were violently Tory. During the excitement of 
 the contest the mob had set upon Mardon as he was 
 going to his work, and had reviled him as a Eepublican 
 and an Atheist. By way of proving their theism they 
 had cursed him with many oaths, and had so sorely 
 beaten him that the shock was almost fataL I went 
 to see him instantly, and found him in much pain, 
 believing that he would not get better, but perfectly 
 peaeefuL I knew that he had no faith in immortality, 
 and I was curious beyond measure to see how he 
 would encounter death without such a faith; for the 
 problem of death, and of life after death, was still 
 absorbing me even to the point of monomania. I had 
 been struggling as best I could to protect myself against 
 it, but with little success. I had long since seen the 
 absurdity and impossibility of the ordinary theories of 
 hell and heaven. I could not give up my hope in a 
 continuance of life beyond the grave, but the moment 
 I came to ask myself how, I was involved in contra- 
 dictions. Immortality is not really immortality of the 
 person unless the memory abides and there be a con- 
 nection of the self of the next world with the self here, 
 and it was incredible to me that there should be any 
 memories or any such connection after the dissolution 
 of the body ; moreover, the soul, whatever it may be, 
 is so intimately one witli the body, and is affected so 
 seriously by the weaknesses, passions, and prejudices 
 
76 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP 
 
 of the body, that without it my soul would not be 
 myself, and the fable of the resurrection of the body, 
 of this same brain and heart, was more than I could 
 ever swallow in my most orthodox days. But the 
 greatest difficulty was the inability to believe that 
 the Almighty intended to preserve aU the mass of 
 human beings, all the countless millions of barbaric 
 half-bestial forms which, since the appearance of man, 
 had wandered upon the earth, savage or civilised. 
 Is it like Nature's way to be so careful about indivi- 
 duals, and is it to be supposed that, having produced, 
 millions of years ago, a creature scarcely nobler than 
 the animals he tore with his fingers, she should take 
 pains to maintain him in existence for evermore ? The 
 law of the universe everywhere is rather the perpetual 
 rise from the lower to the higher ; an immortality of 
 aspiration after more perfect types ; a suppression and 
 happy forgetfulness of its comparative failures. There 
 was nevertheless an obstacle to the acceptance of this 
 negation in a faintness of heart which I could not over- 
 come. Why this ceaseless struggle, if in a few short 
 years I was to be asleep for ever? The position of 
 mortal man seemed to me infinitely tragic. He is born 
 into the world, beholds its grandeur and beauty, is 
 filled with unquenchable longings, and knows that in 
 a few inevitable revolutions of the earth he will cease. 
 More painful still ; he loves somebody, man or woman, 
 with a surpassing devotion ; he is so lost in his love 
 that he cannot endure a moment without it ; and when 
 he sees it pass away in death, he is told that it is ex- 
 tinguished — that that heart and mind absolutely are 
 not. It was always a weakness with me that certain 
 thoughts preyed on me. I was always singularly feeble 
 
MARK RUTHEEFORD. 77 
 
 in laying hold of an idea, and in the ability to compel 
 myself to dwell upon a thing for any lengthened period 
 in continuous exhaustive reflection. But, nevertheless, 
 ideas would frequently lay hold of me with such re- 
 hntless tenacity that I was passive in their grasp. So 
 it was about this time with death and immortality, and 
 I vatched eagerly Mardon's behaviour when the end 
 had to be faced. As I have said, he was altogether 
 calm. I did not like to question him while he was 
 so unwell, because I knew that a discussion would 
 arise vhich I could not control, and it might disturb 
 him, but I would have given anything to understand 
 what was passing in his mind. 
 
 During his sickness I was much impressed by 
 Mary's manner of nursing him. She was always 
 entirely wrapped up in her father, so much so, that 
 I had often doubted if she could survive him; but 
 she never revealed any trace of agitation. Under the 
 pressure of the calamity which had befallen her, she 
 showed rather increased steadiness, and even a cheer- 
 fulness which surprised me. Nothing went wrong in 
 the house. Everything was perfectly ordered, perfectly 
 quiet, and she rose to a height of which I had never sus- 
 pected her capable, while her father's stronger nature 
 was allowed to predominate. She was absolutely de- 
 pendent on him. If he did not get well she would 
 be penniless, and I could not help thinking that with 
 the like chance before me, to say nothing of my love 
 for him and anxiety lest he should die, I should be 
 distracted, and lose my head ; more especially if I had 
 to sit by his bed, and spend sleepless nights such as 
 fell to her lot. But she belonged to that class of 
 natures which, although delicate and fragile, rejoice 
 
78 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 in difficulty. Her grief for her father was exquisite, 
 but it was controlled by a sense of her responsibility. 
 The greater the peril, the more complete was her 
 self-command. 
 
 To the surprise of everybody Mardon got better. 
 His temperate habits befriended him in a manner 
 which amazed his more indulgent neighbours, who 
 were accustomed to hot suppers, and whisky and water 
 after them. Meanwhile I fell into greater difficulties 
 than ever in my ministry. I wonder now that I was 
 not stopped earlier. I was entirely unorthodox, through 
 mere powerlessness to believe, and the catalogue of 
 the articles of faith to which I might be said really to 
 subscribe was very brief. I could no longer preach 
 any of the dogmas which had always been preached in 
 the chapel, and I strove to avoid a direct conflict by 
 taking Scripture characters, amplifying tliem from the 
 hints in the Bible, and neglecting what was super- 
 natural. That I was allowed to go on for so long was 
 mainly due to the isolation of the town and the igno- 
 rance of my hearers. Mardon and his daughter came 
 frequently to hear me, and this, I believe, finally roused 
 suspicion more than any doctrine expounded from the 
 pulpit. One Saturday morning there appeared the fol- 
 lowing letter in the Sentinel : — 
 
 "SiE, — Last Sunday evening I happened to stray 
 into a chapel not a hundred miles from Water Lane. 
 Sir, it was a lovely evening, and 
 
 'The glorious stars on high. 
 Set like jewels in the sky,' 
 
 were circling their courses, and, with the moon, irre- 
 
MAKE RUTHEEFOKD. 79 
 
 sistibly reminded me of that blood which was shed for 
 the remission of sins. Sir, with my mind attuned in 
 that direction I entered the chapeL I hoped to hear 
 something of that Eock of Ages in which, as the poet 
 sings, we shall wish to hide ourselves in years to come. 
 But, sir, a young man, evidently a young man, occupied 
 the pulpit, and great was my grief to find that the 
 tainted flood of human philosophy had rolled through 
 the town and was withering the truth as it is in Christ 
 Jesus. Years ago that pulpit sent forth no uncertain 
 sound, and the glorious gospel was proclaimed there — 
 not a German gospel, sir — of our depravity and our 
 salvation through Christ Jesus. Sir, I should like to 
 know what the dear departed who endowed that chapel, 
 and are asleep in the Lord in that burying-ground, 
 would say if they were to rise from their graves and 
 sit in those pews again and hear what I heard — a 
 sermon which might have been a week-day lecture. 
 Sir, as I was passing through the town, I could not feel 
 that I had done my duty without announcing to you 
 the fact as above stated, and had not raised a humble 
 warning from — Sir, yours truly, 
 
 " A Christian Teavellee." 
 
 Notwithstanding the transparent artifice of the last 
 paragraph, there was no doubt that the author of this 
 precious production was Mr. Snale, and I at once deter- 
 mined to tax him with it. On the Monday morning 
 I called on him, and found him in his shop. 
 
 " Mr. Snale," I said, " I have a word or two to say 
 to you." 
 
 " Certainly, sir. What a lovely day it is ! I hope 
 you are very well, sir. Will you come upstairs ? " 
 
8o AUTOBIOGEAPHY OF 
 
 But I declined to go upstairs, as it was probable I 
 might meet Mrs. Snale there. So I said that we had 
 better go into the counting-house, a little place boxed 
 off at the end of the shop, but with no door to it. As 
 soon as we got in I began. 
 
 " Mr. Snale, I have been much troubled by a letter 
 which has appeared in last week's Sentinel. Although 
 disguised, it evidently refers to me, and to be perfectly 
 candid with you, I cannot help thinking you wrote it." 
 
 " Dear me, sir, may I ask why you think so ? " 
 
 " The internal evidence, Mr. Snale, is overwhelming ; 
 but if you did not write it, perhaps you will be good 
 enough to say so." 
 
 Now Mr, Snale was a coward, but with a peculiarity 
 which I have marked in animals of the rat tribe. He 
 would double and evade as long as possible, but if he 
 found there was no escape, he would turn and tear and 
 fight to the last extremity. 
 
 " Mr. Rutherford, that is rather — aground of an, of an 
 — what shall I say ? — of an assumptive nature on which 
 to make such an accusation, and I am not obliged to 
 deny every charge which you may be pleased to make 
 against me." 
 
 " Pardon me, Mr. Snale, do you then consider what 
 I have said is an accusation and a charge ? Do you 
 think that it was wrong to write such a letter ? " 
 
 " Well, sir, I cannot exactly say that it was ; but I 
 must say, sir, that I do think it peculiar of you, pecu- 
 liar of you, sir, to come here and attack one of your 
 friends, who I am sure has always showed you so much 
 kindness — to attack him, sir, with no proof." 
 
 Now Mr. Snale had not openly denied his author- 
 ship. But the use of the word "friend" was essen- 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD. 8i 
 
 tially a lie — just one of those lies wHch, by avoiding 
 the form of a lie, have such a charm for a mind like 
 his. I was roused to indignation. 
 
 "Mr. Snale, I will give you the proof which you 
 want, and then you shall judge for yourself. The letter 
 contains two lines of a hymn which you have mis- 
 quoted. You made precisely that blunder in talking 
 to the Svmday-school children on the Sunday before 
 the letter appeared. You will remember that in ac- 
 cordance with my custom to visit the Sunday school 
 occasionally, I was there on that Sunday afternoon." 
 
 " Well, sir, I've not denied I did write it." 
 
 " Denied you did write it ! " I exclaimed, with gather- 
 ing passion; "what do you mean by the subterfuge 
 about your passing through the town and by your 
 calling me your friend a minute ago? What would 
 you have thought if anybody had written anonymously 
 to the Sentinel, and had accused you of selling short 
 measure? You would have said it was a Kbel, and 
 you would also have said that a charge of that kind 
 ought to be made publicly and not anonymously. You 
 seem to think, nevertheless, that it is no sin to ruin ma 
 anonymously." 
 
 "Mr. Eutherford, I am sure I am your friend. I 
 wish you well, sir, both here" — and Mr. Snale tried 
 to be very solemn — " and in the world to come. With 
 regard to the letter, I don't see it as you do, sir. But, 
 sir, if you are going to talk in this tone, I would advise 
 you to be careful. We have heard, sir," — and here Mr. 
 Snale began to simper and grin with an indescribably 
 loathsome grimace, — "that some of your acquaintances 
 in your native town are of opinion that you have not 
 behaved quite so well as you should have done to a cer- 
 
 V 
 
82 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 tain young lady of your acquaintance; and what is more, 
 we have marked with pain here, sir, your familiarity with 
 an atheist and his daughter, and we have noticed their 
 coming to chapel, and we have also noticed a change in 
 your doctrine since these parties attended there." 
 
 At the word "daughter" Mr. Snale grinned again, 
 apparently to somebody behind me, and I found that 
 one of his shopwomen had entered the counting-house, 
 unobserved by me, while this conversation was going 
 on, and that she was smirking in reply to Mr. Snale's 
 signals. In a moment the blood rushed to my brain. 
 I was as little able to control myself as if I had been 
 shot suddenly down a precipice. 
 
 " Mr. Snale, you are a contemptible scoundrel and a 
 Uar." 
 
 The effort on him was comical. He cried : " What, 
 sir ! — what do you mean, sir ? — a minister of the gospel 
 — if you were not, I would — a liar" — and he swung 
 round hastily on the stool on which he was sitting, to 
 get off and grasp a yard-measure which stood against 
 the fireplace. But the stool slipped, and he came 
 down ignominiously. I waited till he got up, but as 
 he rose a carriage stopped at the door, and he recognised 
 one of his best customers. Brushing the dust off his 
 trousers, and smoothing his hair, he rushed out without 
 his hat, and in a moment was standing obsequiously on 
 the pavement bowing to his patron. I passed him in 
 going out, but the oily film of subserviency on his face 
 was not broken for an instant. 
 
 When I got home I bitterly regretted what had 
 happened. I never regret anything more than the loss of 
 self-mastery. I had been betrayed, and yet I could not 
 for the life of me see how the betrayal could have been 
 
MARK RUTHERFOED. 83 
 
 prevented. It was upon me so suddenly, that before a 
 moment had been given me for reflection, the words 
 were out of my mouth. I was distinctly conscious that 
 the / had not said those words. They had been 
 spoken by some other power working in me which was 
 beyond my reach. Nor could I foresee how to prevent 
 such a fall for the future. The only advice, even now, 
 which I can give to those who comprehend the bitter 
 pangs of such self-degradation as passion brings, is to 
 watch the first risings of the storm, and to say " Beware ; 
 be watchful," at the least indication of a tempest. Yet, 
 after every precaution, we are at the mercy of the ele- 
 ments, and in an instant the sudden doubling of a cape 
 may expose us, under a serene sky, to a blast which, 
 taking us with all sails spread, may overset us and 
 wreck us irretrievably. 
 
 My connection with the chapel was now obviously 
 at an end. I had no mind to be dragged before a 
 church meeting, and I determined to resign. After a 
 little delay I wrote a letter to the deacons, explaining 
 that I had felt a growing divergence from the theology 
 taught heretofore in Water Lane, and I wished conse- 
 quently to give up my connection with them. I re- 
 ceived an answer stating that my resignation had been 
 accepted ; I preached a farewell sermon ; and I found 
 myself one Monday morning with a quarter's salary in 
 my pocket, a few biUs to pay, and a blank outlook. 
 What was to be done ? My first thought was towards 
 Unitarianism, but when I came to cast up the sum 
 total of what I was assured, it seemed so ridiculously 
 small that I was afraid. The occupation of a merely 
 miscellaneous lecturer had always seemed to me very 
 poor. I could not get up Sunday after Sunday and 
 
84 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 retail to people little scraps suggested by what I might 
 have been studying during the week ; and with regard 
 to the great subjects, for the exposition of which the 
 Christian minister specially exists — how much did I 
 know about them ? The position of a minister who has 
 a gospel to proclaim ; who can go out and tell men 
 what they are to do to be saved, was intelligible ; but 
 not so the position of a man who had no such gospel. 
 What reason for continuance as a preacher could I 
 claim ? Why should people hear me rather than read 
 books ? I was alarmed to find, on making my reckon- 
 ing, that the older I got the less I appeared to believe. 
 Nakeder and nakeder had I become with the passage of 
 every year, and I trembled to anticipate the complete 
 emptiness to which before long I should be reduced. 
 What the dogma of immortality was to me I have 
 already described, and with regard to God I was no 
 better. God was obviously not a person in the clouds, 
 and what more was really firm imder my feet than this 
 — that the universe is governed by immutable laws? 
 These laws were not what is commonly understood as 
 God. Nor could I discern any ultimate tendency in 
 them. Everything was full of contradiction. On the 
 one hand was infinite misery ; on the other there were 
 exquisite adaptations producing the highest pleasure: 
 on the one hand the mystery of life-long disease, and 
 on the other the equal mystery of the unspeakable 
 glory of the sunrise on a summer's morning over a 
 quiet summer sea. I happened to hear once an atheist 
 discoursing on the follies of theism. If he had made 
 the world, he would have made it much better. He 
 would not have racked innocent souls with years of 
 torture, that tyrants might live in splendour. He 
 
MAKE RUTHERFORD. 85 
 
 would not have permitted the earthquake to swallow 
 up thousands of harmless mortals, and so forth. But, 
 putting aside all dependence upon the theory of a com- 
 ing rectification of such wrongs as these, the atheist's 
 argument was shallow enough. It would have been 
 easy to show that a world such as he imagines is un- 
 thinkable directly we are serious with our conception 
 of it. On whatever lines the world may be framed, 
 there must be distinction, difference, a higher and a 
 lower; and the lower, relatively to the higher, must 
 always be an evil. The scale upon which the higher 
 and lower both are, makes no difference. The supremest 
 bliss would not be bliss if it were not defincible bliss, 
 that is to say, in the sense that it has limits, marking 
 it out from something else not so supreme. Perfectly 
 uninterrupted, infinite light, without shadow, is a phy- 
 sical absurdity. I see a thing because it is lighted, but 
 also because of the differences of light, or, in other words, 
 because of shade, and without shade the universe would 
 be objectless, and in fact invisible. The atheist was 
 dreaming of shadowless light, a contradiction in terms. 
 Mankind may be improved, and the improvement may 
 be infinite, and yet good and evil must exist. So with 
 death and life. Life without death is not life, and 
 death without life is equally impossible. But though 
 all this came to me, and was not only a great comfort 
 to me, but prevented any shallow prating like that to 
 which I listened from this lecturer, it could not be said 
 that it was a gospel from which to derive apostolic 
 authority. There remained morals. I could become 
 an instructor of morality. I could warn tradesmen not 
 to cheat, children to honour their parents, and people 
 generally not to lie. The mission was noble, but I 
 
86 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 could not feel much enthusiasm for it, and more than 
 this, it was a fact that reformations in morals have 
 never been achieved by mere directions to be good, but 
 have always been the result of an enthusiasm for some 
 City of God, or some supereminent person. Besides, 
 the people whom it was most necessary to reach would 
 not be the people who would, unsolicited, visit a Uni- 
 tarian meeting-house. As for a message of negations, 
 emancipating a number of persons from the dogma of the 
 Trinity or future punishment, and spending my strength 
 in merely demonstrating the nonsense of orthodoxy, 
 my soul sickened at the very thought of it. Wherein 
 would men be helped, and wherein should I be helped ? 
 There were only two persons in the town who had ever 
 been of any service to me. One was Miss Arbour, and 
 the other was Mardon. But I shrank from Miss 
 Arbour, because I knew that my troubles had never 
 been hers. She belonged to a past generation, and as 
 to Mardon, I never saw him without being aware of the 
 difficulty of accepting any advice from him. He was 
 perfectly clear, perfectly secular, and was so definitely 
 shaped and settled, that his line of conduct might 
 always be predicted beforehand with certainty. I 
 knew very well what he thought about preaching, and 
 what he would tell me to do, or rather, what he would 
 tell me not to do. Nevertheless, after all, I was a 
 victim to that weakness which impels us to seek the 
 assistance of others when we know that what they offer 
 will be of no avail. Accordingly, I called on him. 
 Both he and Mary were at home, and I was received 
 with more than usual cordiality. He knew already 
 that I had resigned, for the news was all over the town. 
 I said I was in great perplexity. 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD. 87 
 
 " The perplexities of most persons arise," said Mardon, 
 "as yours probably arise, from not understanding exactly 
 what you want to do. For one person who stumbles and 
 falls with a perfectly distinct object to be attained, I 
 have known a score whose disasters are to be attributed 
 to their not having made themselves certain what their 
 aim is. Tou do not know what you believe, conse- 
 quently you do not know how to act." 
 
 " What would you do if you were in my case ? " 
 
 "Leave the whole business and prefer the meanest 
 handicraft. You have no right to be preaching any- 
 thing doubtfuL Tou are aware what my creed is. I 
 profess no belief in God, and no belief in what hangs 
 upon it. Try and name now, any earnest conviction 
 you possess, and see whether you have a single one 
 which I have not got." 
 
 " I do believe in God." 
 
 " There is nothing in that statement. What do you 
 believe about Him ? — that is the point. You will find 
 that you believe nothing, in truth, which I do not also 
 believe of the laws which govern the universe and 
 man." 
 
 " I believe in an intellect of which these laws are the 
 expression." 
 
 " Now what kind of an intellect can that be ? You 
 can assign to it no character in accordance with its 
 acts. It is an intellect, if it be an intellect at all, 
 which will swallow up a city, and will create the music 
 of Mozart for me when I am weary ; an intellect which 
 brings to birth His Majesty King George TV., and the 
 love of an affectionate mother for her child; an intellect 
 which, in the person of a tender girl, shows an exquisite 
 conscience, and in the person of one or two religious 
 
88 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 creatures whom I have known, shows a conscfence 
 almost inverted. I have always striven to prove to my 
 theological friends that their mere affirmation of God is 
 of no consequence. They may he affirming anything or 
 nothing. The question, the all-important question is, 
 What can be affirmed about Him ? " 
 
 "Your side of the argument naturally admits of a 
 more precise statement than mine. I cannot encom- 
 pass God with a well-marked definition, but for all 
 that, I believe in Him. I know all that may be urged 
 against the belief, but I cannot help thinking that the 
 man who looks upon the stars, or the articulation of 
 a leaf, is irresistibly impelled, unless he has been cor- 
 rupted by philosophy, to say. There is intellect there. 
 It is the instinct of the child and of the man." 
 
 "I don't think so; but grant it, and again I ask, 
 Jf^Hntellectisit?" 
 
 " Again I say, I do not know." 
 
 " Then why dispute 1 Why make such a fuss about 
 it?" 
 
 "It really seems to me of immense importance 
 whether you see this intellect or not, although you say 
 it is of no importance. It appears to be of less im- 
 portance than it really is, because I do not think that 
 even you ever empty the universe of intellect, I believe 
 that mind never worships anything but mind, and that 
 you worship it when you admire the level bars of 
 cloud over the setting sun. You think you eject mind, 
 but you do not. I can only half imagine a belief which 
 looks upon the world as a mindless blank, and if I could 
 imagine it, it would be depressing in the last degree to 
 me. I know that I have mind, and to live in a universe 
 in which my mind is answered by no other would bo 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD. 89 
 
 tinbearable. Better any sort of intelligence than none 
 at all. But, as I have just said, your case admits of 
 plainer statement than mine. You and I have talked 
 this matter over before, and I have never gained a 
 logical victory over you. Often I have felt thoroughly 
 prostrated by you, and yet when I have left you the old 
 superstition has arisen unsubdued. I do not know how 
 it is, but I always feel that upon this, as upon many 
 other subjects, I never can really speak myself. An 
 unshapen thought presents itself to me, I look at it, and 
 I do all in my power to give it body and expression, 
 but I cannot. I am certain that there is something 
 truer and deeper to be said about the existence of God 
 than anything I have said, and what is more, I am 
 certain of the presence of this something in me, but I 
 cannot lift it to the light." 
 
 " Ah, you are now getting into the region of senti- 
 ment, and I am unable to accompany you. When my 
 friends go into the cloud, I never try to follow them." 
 
 All this time Mary had been sitting in the arm- 
 chair against the fireplace in her usual attitude, resting 
 her head on her hand and with her feet crossed one 
 over the other on the fender. She had been listening 
 silently and motionless. She now closed her eyes and 
 said — 
 
 " Father, father, it is not true." 
 
 "What is not true?" 
 
 "I do not mean that what you have said about 
 theology is not true, but you make Mr. Eutherford 
 believe you are what you are not. Mr. Eutherford, 
 father sometimes tells us he has no sentiment, but 
 you must take no notice of him when he talks in 
 that way. I always think of our visit to the seaside 
 
go AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 two years ago. The railway station was in a dis- 
 agreeable part of the town, and when we came out we 
 walked along a dismal row of very plain-looking houses. 
 There were cards in the window with 'Lodgings' 
 written on them, and father wanted to go in to ask the 
 terms. I said that I did not wish to stay in such a dull 
 street, but father could not afford to pay for a sea view, 
 and so we went in to inquire. We then found that 
 what we thought were the fronts of the houses were 
 the backs, and that the fronts faced the bay. They had 
 pretty gardens on the other side, and a glorious sunny 
 prospect over the ocean." 
 
 Mardon laughed and said — 
 
 "Ah, Mary, there is no sea-front here, and no 
 garden." 
 
 I took up my hat and said I must go. Both pressed 
 me to stop, but I declined. Mardon urged me again, 
 and at last said — 
 
 " I believe you've never once heard Mary sing." 
 
 Mary protested, and pleaded that as they had no 
 piano, Mr. Eutherford would not care for her poor 
 voice without any accompaniment. But I, too, pro- 
 tested that I should, and she got out the 'Messiah.' 
 Her father took a tuning-fork out of his pocket, and 
 having struck it, Mary rose and began, 'He was 
 despised.' Her voice was not powerful, but it was 
 pure and clear, and she sang with that perfect taslje 
 which is begotten solely of a desire to honour the 
 master. The song always had a profound charm for 
 me. Partly this was due to association. The words 
 and tones, which have been used to embody their 
 emotions by those whom we have loved, are doubly 
 expressive when we use them to embody our own. The 
 
MAEK RUTHERFOKD. 91 
 
 song is potent too, because with utmost musical tender- 
 ness and strength, it reveals the secret of the influence 
 of the story of Jesus. Nobody would be bold enough 
 to cry, Thnt too is m/y case, and yet the poorest and the 
 humblest soul has a right to the consolation that Jesus 
 was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. For 
 some reason or. the other, or for many reasons, Mary's 
 voice wound itself into the very centre of my existence. 
 I seemed to be listening to the tragedy of all human 
 worth and genius. The ball rose in my throat, the tears 
 mounted to my eyes, and I had to suppress myself 
 rigidly. Presently she ceased. There was silence for 
 a moment. I looked round, and saw that Mardon's 
 face was on the table, buried in his hands. I felt that 
 I had better go, for the presence of a stranger, when 
 the heart is deeply stirred, is an intrusion. I noiselessly 
 left the room, and Mary followed. When we got to 
 the door she said : " I forgot that mother used to sing 
 that song. I ought to have known better." Her own 
 eyes were full ; I thought the pressure of her hand as 
 she bade me good-bye was a little firmer than usual, 
 and as we parted an over-mastering impulse seized me. 
 I lifted her hand to my lips ; without giving her time 
 to withdraw it, I gave it one burning kiss, and passed 
 out into the street. It was pouring with rain, and I 
 had neither overcoat nor umbrella, but I heeded not 
 the heavens, and not till I got home to my own fireless, 
 dark, solitary lodgings, did I become aware of any 
 contrast between the sphere into which I had been 
 exalted and the earthly commonplace world by which I 
 was surrounded. -- 
 
9i AUTOBIOGBAPHY OF 
 
 CHAPTER VIL 
 
 EMANCIPATION. 
 
 The old Presbyterian chapels throughout the country 
 have many of them become Unitarian, and occasionally, 
 even in an agricultural village, a respectable red brick 
 building may be seen, dating from the time of Queen 
 Anne, in which a few descendants of the eighteenth 
 century heretics still testify against three Gods in one 
 and the deity of Jesus Christ. Generally speaking, the 
 attendance in these chapels is very meagre, but they 
 are often endowed, and so they are kept open. There 
 was one in the large straggling half-village, half-town 
 
 of D , within about ten miles of me, and the pulpit 
 
 was then vacant. The income was about ;£'ioo a year. 
 The principal man there was a small general dealer, 
 who kept a shop in the middle of the village street, and 
 I had come to know him slightly, because I had under- 
 taken to give his boy a few lessons to prepare him for 
 admission to a boarding-school. The money in my 
 pocket was coming to an end, and as I did not suppose 
 that any dishonesty would be imposed on me, and 
 although the prospect was not cheering, I expressed 
 my willingness to be considered as a candidate. In 
 the course of a week or two I was therefore invited to 
 preach, I was so reduced that I was obliged to walk 
 the whole distance on the Sunday morning, and as I 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD. 93 
 
 was asked to no house, I went straight to the chapel, 
 and loitered about in the graveyard till a woman came 
 and opened a door at the back. I explained who I 
 was, and sat down in a Windsor chair against a small 
 kitchen table in the vestry. It was cold, but there 
 was no fire, nor were any preparations made for one. 
 On the mantel-shelf were a bottle of water and a glass, 
 but as the water had evidently been there for some 
 time, it was not very tempting. I waited in silence 
 for about twenty minutes, and my friend the dealer 
 then came in, and having shaken hands and remarked 
 that it was chilly, asked me for the hymns. These I 
 gave him and went into the pulpit. I found myself 
 in a plain-looking building designed to hold about 
 two hundred people. There was a gallery opposite 
 me, and the floor was occupied with high, dark, 
 brown pews, one or two immediately on my right and 
 left being surrounded with faded green curtains. I 
 counted my hearers, and discovered that there were 
 exactly seventeen, including two very old labourers, 
 who sat on a form near the door. The gallery was 
 quite empty, except a little organ or seraphine, I 
 think it was called, which was played by a young 
 woman. The dealer gave out the hymns, and accom- 
 panied the seraphine in a bass voice, singing the air. 
 A weak whisper might be perceived from the rest of 
 the congregation, but nothing more. I was somewhat 
 taken aback at finding in the Bible a discourse which 
 had been left by one of my predecessors. It was a 
 funeral sermon, neatly written, and had evidently done 
 duty on several occasions, although the allusions in it 
 might be considered personal. The piety and good 
 works of the departed were praised with emphasis, but 
 
94 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 the masculine pronouns originally used were altered 
 above the lines all throughout to feminine pronouns, and 
 the word "brother" to "sister," so that no difficulty 
 might arise in reading it for either sex. I was faint, 
 benumbed, and with no heart for anything. I talked 
 for about half-an-hour about what I considered to be 
 the real meaning of the death of Christ, thinking that 
 this was a subject which might, prove as attractive as 
 any other. After the service the assembly of seven- 
 teen departed, save one thin elderly gentleman, who 
 came into the vestry, and having made a slight bow, 
 said : " Mr, Eutherford, will you come with me, if you 
 please ? " I accordingly followed him, almost in silence, 
 through the village till we reached his house, where 
 his wife, who had gone on before, received us. They 
 had formerly kept the shop which the dealer now had, 
 but had retired. They might both be about sixty-five, 
 and were of about the same temperament, pale, thin, 
 and ineffectual, as if they had been fed on gruel. We 
 had dinner in a large room with an old-fashioned grate 
 in it, in which was stuck a basket stove. I remember 
 perfectly well what we had for dinner. There was a 
 neck of mutton (cold), potatoes, cabbage, a suet pudding, 
 and some of the strangest-looking ale I ever saw — 
 about the colour of lemon juice, but what it was really 
 like I do not know, as I did not drink beer. I was 
 somewhat surprised at being asked whether I would 
 take potatoes or cabbage, but thinking it was the custom 
 of the country not to indulge in both at once, and 
 remembering that I was on probation, I said " cabbage," 
 Very little was spoken during dinner-time by anybody, 
 and scarcely a word by my hostess. After dinner she 
 cleared the things away, and did not again appear. My 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD. 95 
 
 host drew near the basket stove, and having remarked 
 that it was beginning to rain, fell into a slumber. At 
 twenty minutes to two we sallied out for the afternoon 
 service, and found the seventeen again in their places, 
 excepting the two labourers, who were probably pre- 
 vented by the wet from attending. The service was a 
 repetition of that in the morning, and when I came 
 down my host again came forward and presented me 
 with niueteen shillings. The fee was a guinea, but 
 from that two shillings were abated for my entertain- 
 ment. He informed me at the same time that a farmer, 
 who had been hearing me and who lived five miles on 
 my road, would give me a lift. He was a very large, 
 stout man, with a rosy countenance, which was some- 
 what of a relief after the gruel face of my former friend. 
 We went round to a stable-yard, and I got into a four- 
 wheeled chaise. His wife sat with him in front, and a 
 biggish boy sat with me behind. When we came to 
 the guide-post which pointed down his lane, I got out, 
 and was dismissed in the dark with the observation — 
 uttered good-naturedly and jovially, but not very help- 
 fully — that he was "afraid I should have a wettish 
 walk." The walk certainly was wettish, and as I had 
 had nothing to eat or drink since my midday meal, I 
 was miserable and desponding. But just before I 
 reached home the clouds rolled off with the south-west 
 wind into detached, fleecy masses, separated by liquid 
 blue gulfs, in which were sowed the stars, and the 
 effect upon me was what that sight, thank God, always 
 has been — a sense of the infinite, extinguishing all 
 mean cares. 
 
 I expected to hear no more from my Unitarian 
 acquaintances, and was therefore greatly surprised when. 
 
96 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 a week after my visit, I received an invitation to 
 " settle " amongst them. The usual month's trial was 
 thought unnecessary, as I was not altogether a stranger 
 to some of them. I hardly knew what to do. I could 
 not feel any enthusiasm at the prospect of the engage- 
 ment, but, on the other hand, there was nothing else 
 before me. There is no more helpless person in this 
 world than a minister who is thrown out of work. At 
 any rate, I should be doing no harm if I went. I 
 pondered over the matter a good deal, and then reflected 
 that in a case where every opening is barred save one, 
 it is our duty not to plunge at an impassable barrier, 
 but to take that one opening, however unpromising it 
 may be. Accordingly I accepted. My income was to 
 be a hundred a year, and it was proposed that I should 
 lodge with my friend the retired dealer, who had the 
 only two rooms in the village which were avail- 
 able. I went to bid Mardon and Mary good-bye. I 
 had not seen either of them since the night of the 
 song. To my surprise I found them both away. The 
 blinds were down and the door locked. A neighbour, 
 who heard me knocking, came out and told me the 
 news. Mardon had had a dispute with his employer, 
 and had gone to London to look for work. Mary had 
 gone to see a relative at some distance, and would 
 remain there until her father had determined what was 
 to be done. I obtained the addresses of both of them, 
 and wrote to Mardon, telling him what my destiny for 
 the present was to be. To Mary I wrote also and to 
 her I offered my heart. Looking backward, I have 
 sometimes wondered that I felt so little hesitation ; 
 not that I have ever doubted since, that what I did 
 then was the one perfectly right thing which I have 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD, 97 
 
 done in my life, bnt because it was my habit so to 
 confuse myself with meditative indecision. I had 
 doubted before. I remember once being so near engag- 
 ing myself to a girl that the desk was open and the 
 paper under my hand. But I held back, could not 
 make up my mind, and happily was stayed. Had I 
 not been restrained, I should for ever have been miser- 
 able. The remembrance of this escape, and the certain 
 knowledge that of all beings whom I knew I was most 
 likely to be mistaken in an emergency, always pro- 
 duced in me a torturing tendency to inaction. There 
 was no such tendency now. I thought I chose Mary, 
 but there was no choice. The feeblest steel filing 
 which is drawn to a magnet, would think, if it had 
 consciousness, that it went to the magnet of its own free 
 wlLL My soul rushed to hers as if dragged by the 
 force of a loadstone. But she was not to be mine. I 
 had a note from her, a sweet note, thanking me with 
 much tenderness for my affectionate regard for her, 
 but saying that her mind had long since been made 
 up. She was an only child of a mother whom her 
 father had loved above everything in life, and she 
 could never leave him nor suffer any affection to 
 interfere with that which she felt for him and which 
 he felt for her. I might well misinterpret him, and 
 think it strange that he should be so much bound up 
 in her. Few people knew him as she did. 
 
 The shock to me at first was overpowering, and I 
 fell under the influence of that horrible monomania 
 from which I had been free for so long. For weeks I 
 was prostrate, with no power of resistance ; the evil 
 being intensified by my solitude. Of all the dreadful 
 trials which human nature has the capacity to bear 
 
 a 
 
98 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 nnshattered, the worst — as, indeed, I have already said 
 — is the fang of some monomaniacal idea which cannot 
 be wrenched out. A main part of the misery, as I 
 have also said, lies in the belief that suffering of this 
 kind is peculiar to ourselves. We are afraid to speak 
 of it, and not knowing, therefore, how common it is, 
 we are distracted with the fear that it is our own 
 special disease. I managed to get through my duties, 
 but how I cannot tell. Fortunately our calamities are 
 not what they appear to be when they lie in perspective 
 behind us or before us, for they actually consist of 
 distinct moments, each of which is overcome by itself. 
 I was helped by remembering my recovery before, and 
 I was able now, as a reward of long-continued absti- 
 nence from wine, to lie much stiller, and wait with 
 more patience till the cloud should lift. Mardon 
 having gone to London, I was more alone than ever, 
 but my love for Mary increased in intensity, and had a 
 good deal to do with my restoration to health. It was 
 a hopeless love, but to be in love hopelessly is more 
 akin to sanity than careless, melancholy indifference 
 to the world, I was relieved from myself by the 
 anchorage of all my thoughts elsewhere. The pain of 
 loss was great, but the main curse of my existence has 
 not been pain or loss, but gloom ; blind wandering in 
 a world of black fog, haunted by apparitions. I am 
 not going to expand upon the history of my silent 
 relationship to Mary during that time. How can I ? 
 All that I felt has been described better by others ; and 
 if it had not been, I have no mind to attempt a descrip- 
 tion myself, which would answer no purpose. I con- 
 tinued to correspond with Mardon, but with Mary I 
 interchanged no word. After her denial of me I should 
 
MARK EUTHERFORD. 99 
 
 have dreaded the charge of selfishness if I had opened 
 my lips again. I could not place myself in her 
 affection before her father. 
 
 My work at the chapel was of the most lifeless kind. 
 My people really consisted of five families — those of 
 the retired dealer, the farmer who took me home the 
 first day I preached, and a man who kept a shop in 
 the village for the sale of all descriptions of goods, 
 including ready-made clothing and provisions. He 
 had a wife and one child. Then there was a super- 
 annuated brassfounder, who had a large house near, 
 and who nominally was a Unitarian, having professed 
 himself a Unitarian in the town in which he was 
 formerly in business, where Unitarianism was flourish- 
 ing. He had come down here to cultivate, for amuse- 
 ment, a few acres of ground, and play the squire at a 
 cheap rate. Eeleased from active employment, he had 
 given himself over to eating and drinking, particularly 
 the drinking of port wine. His wife was dead, his 
 sons were in business for themselves, and his daughters 
 all went to church. His connection with the chapel 
 was merely nominal, and I was very glad it was so. I 
 was hardly ever brought into contact with him, except 
 as trustee, and once I was asked to his house to 
 dinner ; but the attempt to make me feel my inferiority 
 was so painful, and the rudeness of his children was so 
 marked, that I never went again. There was also a 
 schoolmaster, who kept a low-priced boarding-school 
 with a Unitarian connection. He lived, however, at 
 such a distance that his visits were very unfrequent. 
 Sometimes on a fine summer's Sunday morning the 
 boys would walk over — about twenty of them alto- 
 gether, but this only happened perhaps half-a-dozen 
 
100 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP 
 
 times in a year. Although my congregation had a 
 freethought lineage, I do not think that I ever had 
 anything to do with a more petrified set. With one 
 exception, they were meagre in the extreme. They 
 were perfectly orthodox, except that they denied a few 
 orthodox doctrines. Their method was as strict as 
 that of the most rigid Calvinist. They plumed them- 
 selves, however, greatly on their intellectual superiority 
 over the Wesleyans and Baptists round them ; and so 
 far as I could make out, the only topics they delighted 
 in, were demonstrations of the unity of God from texts 
 in the Bible, and polemics against tri-theism. Sym- 
 pathy with the great problems then beginning to 
 agitate men, they had none. Socially they were cold, 
 and the entertainment at their houses was pale and 
 penurious. They never considered themselves bound 
 to contribute a shilling to my support. There was an 
 endowment of a hundred a year, and they were relieved 
 from all further anxiety. They had no enthusiasm for 
 their chapel, and came or stayed away on the Sunday 
 just as it suited them, and without caring to assign any 
 reason. The one exception was the wife of the 
 shopkeeper. She was a contrast to her husband and 
 all the rest. I do not think she was a Unitarian 
 born and bred. She talked but little about theology, but 
 she was devoted to her Bible, and had a fine sense 
 for all the passages in it which had an experience 
 in them. She was generous, spiritual, and possessed of 
 an unswerving instinct for what was right. Often- 
 times her prompt decisions were a scandal to her more 
 sedate friends, who did not believe in any way of 
 arriving at the truth except by rationalising, but she 
 hardly ever failed to hit the mark. It was in questions 
 
MARK RUTHERFOED. loi 
 
 of telationship between persons, of behaviour, and of 
 morals, that her guidance was the surest. In such 
 cases her force seemed to keep her straight, while the 
 weakness of those around made it impossible for them 
 not to wander, first on one side and then on the 
 other. She was unflinching in her expressions, and 
 at any sacrifice did her duty. It was her severity in 
 obeying her conscience which not only gave authority 
 to her admonitions, but was the source of her in- 
 spirations. She was not much of a reader, but she 
 read strange things. She had some old volumes of a 
 magazine, a "Eepository" of some kind — I have for- 
 gotten what, and she picked out from them some trans- 
 lations of German verses which she greatly admired. 
 She was not a well-educated woman in the school sense 
 of the word, and of several of our greatest names in 
 literature had heard nothing. I do not think she knew 
 anything about Shakespeare, and she never entered 
 into the meaning of dramatic poetry. At all points 
 her path was her own, intersecting at every conceiv- 
 able angle the paths of her acquaintances, and never 
 straying along them, except just so far as they might 
 happen to be hers. While I was in the village an 
 event happened which caused much commotion. Her 
 son was serving in the shop, and there was in the 
 house at the time a nice-looking, clean servant-girl. 
 Mrs. Lane, for that was my friend's name, had meditated 
 discharging her, for, with her usual quickness, she 
 thought she saw something in the behaviour of her 
 son to the girl which was peculiar. One morning, 
 however, both her son and the girl were absent, and there 
 was a letter upon the table announcing that they were 
 in a town about twenty miles off and were married. 
 
I02 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 The shock was great, and a tumult of voices arose, 
 confusing counsel. Mrs. Lane said but little, but never 
 wavered an instant. Leaving her husband to " consider 
 what was best to be done," she got out the gig, drove 
 herself over to her son's lodging, and presented herself 
 to her amazed daughter-in-law, who fell upon her knees 
 and prayed for pity. "My dear," said Mrs. Lane, "get 
 up this instant; you are my daughter. Not another 
 word. I've come to see what you want." And she 
 kissed her tenderly. The girl was at heart a good girL 
 She was so bound to her late mistress and her new 
 mother by this behaviour, that the very depths in her 
 opened, and she loved Mrs. Lane ever afterwards with 
 almost religious fervour. She was taught a little up to 
 her son's level, and a happier marriage I never knew. 
 Mrs. Lane told me what she had done, but she had no 
 theory about it. She merely said that she knew it to 
 be the right thing to do. She was very fond of getting 
 up early in the morning and going out, and in such 
 a village this was an eccentricity bordering almost 
 on lunacy. At five o'clock she was often wandering 
 about in her large garden. She was a great lover of 
 order in the house, and kept it well under control, but 
 I do not think I ever surprised her when she was 
 so busy that she would not easily, and without any 
 apparent sacrifice, leave what she was doing to come 
 and talk with me. As I have said, the world of books 
 in which I lived was almost altogether shut to her, 
 but yet she was the only person in the village whose 
 conversation was lifted out of the petty and personal 
 into the region of the universal I have been thus 
 particular in describing her — I fear without raising any 
 image of her — because she was of incalculable service 
 
MARK RUTHEE.FOED. lo, 
 
 to me. I languished from lack of life, and her mere 
 presence, so exuberant in its full vivacity, was like 
 mountain air. Furthermore, she was not troubled much 
 with my philosophical difficulties. They had not come 
 in her path. Her world was the world of men and 
 women — more particularly of those she knew, and it 
 was a world in which it did me good to dwell. She 
 was all the more important to me, because outside our 
 own little circle there was no society whatever. The 
 Church and the other dissenting bodies considered us 
 as non-Christian. I often wondered that Mr. Lane 
 retained his business, and, indeed, he would have lost 
 it if he had not established a reputation for honesty, 
 which drew customers to him, who, notwithstanding 
 the denunciations of the parson, preferred tea with 
 some taste in it from a Unitarian to the insipid wood- 
 flavoured stuff which was sold by the grocer who 
 believed in the Trinity. 
 
104 AUTOBIOQEAPHY OF 
 
 CHAPTER VIIL 
 
 PROGRESS IN EMANCIPATION. 
 
 I WAS with my Unitarian congregation for about a 
 twelvemonth. My life during that time, save so far as 
 my intercourse with Mrs. Lane, and one other friend 
 presently to be mentioned, was concerned, was as sun- 
 less and joyless as it had ever been. Imagine me 
 living by myself, roaming about the fields, and^^bsorbed 
 mostly upon insoluble problems with which I never 
 made any progress^ and which tended to draw me 
 away from what enjoyment of life there was which I 
 might have had. One day I was walking along under 
 the south side of a hill, which was a great place for 
 butterflies, and I saw a man, apparently about fifty 
 years old, coming along with a butterfly net. He did 
 not see me, for he looked about for a convenient piece 
 of turf, and presently sat down, taking out a sandwich 
 box, from which he produced his lunch. His occupa- 
 tion did not particularly attract me, but in those days, 
 if I encountered a new person who was not repulsive, 
 I was always as eager to make his acquaintance as if 
 he perchance might solve a secret for me, the answer 
 to which I burned to know. I have been disappointed 
 so many times, and have found that nobody has 
 much more to tell me, that my curiosity has somewhat 
 abated, but even now, the news that anybody who 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD. 105 
 
 has the reputation for intelligence has come near me, 
 makes me restless to see him. I accordingly saluted 
 the butterfly catcher, who returned the salutation 
 kindly, and we began to talk. He told me that he 
 had come seven miles that morning to that spot, 
 because he knew that it was haunted by one parti- 
 cular species of butterfly which he wished to get; and 
 as it was a stUl, bright day, he hoped to find a speci- 
 men. He had been unsuccessful for some years. Pre- 
 supposing that I knew all about his science, he began 
 to discourse upon it with great freedom, and he ended 
 by saying that he would be happy to show me his 
 collection, which was one of the finest in the country. 
 
 " But I forget," said he, " as I always forget in such 
 cases, perhaps you don't care for butterflies." 
 
 " I take much interest in them. I admire exceed- 
 ingly the beauty of their colours." 
 
 " Ah, yes, but you don't care for them scientifically, 
 or for collecting them." 
 
 "No, not particularly. I cannot say I ever saw 
 much pleasure in the mere classification of insects." 
 
 " Perhaps you are devoted to some other science ? " 
 
 "No, I am not." 
 
 "Well, I daresay it looks absurd for a man at my 
 years to be running after a moth. I used to think it 
 was absurd, but I am wiser now. However, I cannot 
 stop to talk ; I shall lose the sunshine. The first time 
 you are anywhere near me, come and have a look. You 
 will alter your opinion." 
 
 Some weeks afterwards I happened to be in the 
 neighbourhood of the butterfly catcher's house, and I 
 called. He was at home, and welcomed me cordially. 
 The first thing he did was to show me his little museum. 
 
io6 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP 
 
 It was really a wonderful exhibition, and as I saw the 
 creatures in lines, and noted the amazing variations of 
 the single type, I was filled with astonishment. Seeing 
 the butterflies systematically arranged was a totally 
 different thing from seeing a butterfly here and there, 
 and gave rise to altogether new thoughts. My friend 
 knew his subject from end to end, and I envied him 
 his mastery of it. I had often craved the mastery of 
 some one particular province, be it ever so minute. 
 I half or a quarter knew a multitude of things, but no 
 one thing thoroughly, and was never sure, just when 
 I most wanted to be sure. We got into conversation, 
 and I was urged to stay to dinner. I consented, and 
 found that my friend's household consisted of himself 
 alone. After dinner, as we became a little more com- 
 municative, I asked him when and how he took to this 
 pursuit. 
 
 "It will be twenty-six years ago next Christmas," 
 said he, " since I suffered a great calamity. Yon will 
 forgive my saying anything about it, as I have no 
 assurance that the wound which looks healed may not 
 break out again. Suffice to say, that for some ten 
 years or more my thoughts were almost entirely occu- 
 pied with death and our future state. There is a 
 strange fascination about these topics to many people, 
 because they are topics which permit a great deal 
 of dreaming, but very little thinking: in fact, true 
 thinking, in the proper sense of the word, is impossible 
 in dealing with them. There is no rigorous advance 
 from one position to another, which is really all that 
 makes thinking worth the name. Every man can 
 imagine or say cloudy things about death and the 
 future, and feel himself here, at least, on a level with 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD. 107 
 
 the ablest brain which he knows. I went on gazing 
 gloomily into dark emptiness, till all life became 
 nothing for me. I did not care to live, because there 
 was no assurance of existence beyond. By the strangest 
 of processes, I neglected the world, because I had so 
 short a time to be in it. It is with absolute horror now 
 that I look back upon those days, when I lay as if alive 
 in a coffin of lead. AU passions and pursuits were 
 nullified by the ever-abiding sense of mortality. For 
 years this mood endured, and I was near being brought 
 down to the very dust. At last, by the greatest piece 
 of good fortune, I was obliged to go abroad. The 
 change, and the obligation to occupy myself about 
 many afiairs, was an incalculable blessing to me. 
 While travelling I was struck with the remarkable and 
 tropical beauty of the insects, and especially of the 
 butterflies. I captured a few, and brought them home. 
 On showing them to a friend, learned in such matters, 
 I discovered that they were rare, and I had a little 
 cabinet made for them. I looked into the books, found 
 what it was which I had got, and what I had not got. 
 Next year it was my duty to go abroad again, and I 
 went with some feeling akin to pleasure, for I wished 
 to add to my store. I increased it considerably, and 
 by the time I returned I had as fine a show as any 
 private person might wish to possess. A good deal 
 of my satisfaction, perhaps, was unaccountable, and no 
 rational explanation can be given of it. But men 
 should not be too curious in analysing and condemning 
 any means which nature devises to save them from them- 
 selves, whether it be coins, old books, curiosities, butter- 
 flies, or fossils. And yet my newly-acquired passion was 
 not altogether inexplicable. I was the owner of some- 
 
io8 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP 
 
 thing which other persona did not own, and in a little 
 while, in my own limited domain I was supreme. No 
 man either can study any particular science thoroughly 
 without transcending it; and it is an utter mistake 
 to suppose, that because a student sticks to any one 
 branch, he necessarily becomes contracted. However, 
 I am not going to philosophise ; I do not like it. All 
 I can say is, that I shun all those metaphysical specu- 
 lations of former years as I would a path which leads 
 to madness. Other people may be able to occupy 
 themselves with them and be happy ; I cannot. I find 
 quite enough in my butterflies to exercise my wonder, 
 and yet, on the other hand, my study is not a mere 
 vacant, profitless stare. When you saw me that morn- 
 ing, I was trying to obtain an example which I have 
 long wanted to fill up a gap. I have looked for it for 
 years, but have missed it But I know it has been seen 
 lately where we met, and I shall triumph at last." 
 
 A good deal of all this was to me incomprehensible. 
 It seemed mere solemn trifling compared with the in- 
 vestigation of those great questions with which I had 
 been occupied, but I could not resist the contagion of 
 my friend's enthusiasm when he took me to his little 
 library, and identified his treasures with pride, pointing 
 out at the same time those in which he was deficient. 
 He was specially exultant over one minute creature 
 which he had caught himself, which he had not as yet 
 seen figured, and he proposed going to the British 
 Museum almost on purpose to see if he could find it 
 there. 
 
 When I got home I made inquiries into the histoiy 
 of my entomologist. I found that years ago he had 
 married a delicate girl, of whom he was devotedly fond. 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD. 109 
 
 She died in childbirth, leaving him completely broken. 
 Her offspring, a boy, survived, but he was a cripple, and 
 grew up deformed. As he neared manhood he developed 
 a satyr-like lustfulness, which was almost uncontroll- 
 able, and made it difficult to keep him at home without 
 constraint. He seemed to have no natural affection for 
 his father, nor for anybody else, but was cunning with 
 the base beastly cunning of the ape. The father's horror 
 was infinite. This thing was his only child, and the 
 child of the woman whom he worshipped. He was 
 excluded from all intercourse with friends ; for, as the 
 boy could not be said to be mad, he could not be shut 
 up. After years of inconceivable misery, however, lust 
 did deepen into absolute lunacy, and the crooked, mis- 
 shapen monster was carried off to an asylum, where he 
 died, and the father well-nigh went there too. 
 
 Before I had been six months amongst the Unitarians, 
 I found life even more intolerable with them than it 
 had been with the Independents. The difference of a 
 little less belief was nothing. The question of Uni- 
 tarianism was altogether dead to me ; and although 
 there was a phase of the doctrine of God's unity which 
 would now and then give me an opportunity for a few 
 words which I felt, it was not a phase for which my 
 hearers in the least cared or which they understood. 
 Here, as amongst the Independents, there was the same 
 lack of personal affection, or even of a capability of it 
 — excepting always Mrs. Lane — and, in fact, it was 
 more distressing amongst the Unitarians than amongst 
 the orthodox. The desire for something like sympathy 
 and love absolutely devoured me. I dwelt on all the 
 instances in poetry and history in which one human 
 being had been bound to another human being, and I 
 
no AUTOBIOQEAPHY OP 
 
 reflected that my existence was of no earthly import- 
 ance to anybody. I could not altogether lay the blame 
 on myself. God knows that I would have stood against 
 a wall and have been shot for any man or woman whom 
 I loved, as cheerfully as I would have gone to bed, but 
 nobody seemed to wish for such a love, or to know 
 what to do with it. Oh the humiliations under which 
 this weakness has bent me ! Often and often I have 
 thought that I have discovered somebody who could 
 really comprehend the value of a passion which could 
 tell everything and venture everything. I have over- 
 stepped all bounds of etiquette in obtruding myself on 
 him, and have opened my heart even to shame. I have 
 then found that it was all on my side. Tor every 
 dozen times I went to his house, he came to mine once, 
 and only when pressed : I have languished in sickness 
 for a month without his finding it out ; and if I were to 
 drop into the grave, he would perhaps never give me 
 another thought. If I had been born a hundred years 
 earlier, I should have transferred this burning longing to 
 the unseen God and have become a devotee. But 1 was 
 a hundred years too late, and I felt that it was mere 
 cheating of myself and a mockery to think about love 
 for the only God whom I knew, the forces which main- 
 tained the universe. I am now getting old, and have 
 altered in many things. The hunger and thirst of those 
 years have abated, or rather, the fire has had ashes 
 heaped on it, so that it is well-nigh extinguished. I 
 have been repulsed into self-reliance and reserve, 
 having learned wisdom by experience ; but still I know 
 that the desire has not died, as so many other desires 
 have died, by the natural evolution of age. It has been 
 forcibly suppressed, and that is all. If anybody who 
 
MARK EUTHERFOKD. in 
 
 reads these words of mine should be offered by any 
 young dreamer such a devotion as I once had to offer, 
 and had to take back again refused so often, let him in 
 the name of all that is sacred accept it. It is simply 
 the most precious thing in existence. Had I found 
 anybody who would have thought so, my life would 
 have been redeemed into something which I have often 
 imagined, but now shall never know. 
 
 I determined to leave, but what to do I could not 
 teU, I was fit for nothing, and yet I could not make 
 up my mind to accept a life which was simply living. 
 It must be a life through which some benefit was 
 conferred upon my fellow-creatures. This was mainly 
 delusion. I had not then learned to correct this natural 
 instinct to be of some service to mankind by the 
 thought of the boundlessness of infinity and of nature's 
 profuseness. I had not come to reflect that, taking 
 into account her eternities, and absolute exhaustless- 
 ness, it was folly in me to fret and fume, and I there- 
 fore clung to the hope that I might employ myself in 
 some way which, however feebly, would help mankind 
 a little to the realisation of an ideal. But I was not 
 the man for such a mission. I lacked altogether that 
 concentration which binds up the scattered powers into 
 one resistless energy, and I lacked faith. All I could 
 do was to play the vagrant in literature, picking up 
 here and there an idea which attracted me, and pre- 
 senting it to my flock on the Sunday ; the net result 
 beincf next to nothing. However, existence like that 
 which I had been leading was intolerable, and change 
 it I must. I accordingly resigned, and with ten pounds 
 in my pocket, which was all that remained after paying 
 my biUs, I came to London, thinking that untU I could 
 
112 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP 
 
 settle what to do, I would try and teach in a school. 
 I called on an agent somewhere near the Strand, and 
 after a little negotiation, was engaged by a gentleman 
 who kept a private establishment at Stoke ITewington. 
 Thither I accordingly went one Monday afternoon in 
 January, about two days before the term commenced. 
 When I got there, I was shown into a long schoolroom, 
 which had been built out from the main building. It 
 was dark, save for one candle, and was warmed by a 
 stove. The walls were partly covered with maps, and 
 at one end of the room hung a diagram representing a 
 globe, on which an immense amount of wasted ingenuity 
 had been spent to produce the illusion of solidity. The 
 master, I was told. Was out, and in this room with one 
 candle I remained till nine o'clock. At that time a 
 servant brought me some bread and cheese on a small 
 tray, with half-a-pint of beer. I asked for water, which 
 was given me, and she then retired. The tray was set 
 down on the master's raised desk, and sitting there I 
 ate my supper in silence, looking down upon the dimly- 
 lighted forms, and forward into the almost absolute 
 gloom. At ten o'clock a man, who seemed as if he 
 were the knife and boot cleaner, came and said he 
 would show me where I was to sleep. We passed 
 through the schoolroom into a kind of court, where 
 there was a ladder standing against a trap-door. He 
 told me that my bedroom was up there, and that when 
 I got up I could leave the ladder down, or pull it up 
 after me, just as I pleased. I ascended and found a 
 little chamber, duly furnished with a chest of drawers, 
 bed, and washhand stand. It was tolerably clean and 
 decent; but who shall describe what I felt. I went 
 to the window and looked out. There were scattered 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD. 113 
 
 lights here and there marking roads, but as they crossed 
 one another, and now and then stopped where building 
 had ceased, the effect they produced was that of bewil- 
 derment with no clue to it. Further off was the great 
 light of London, like some unnatural dawn, or the 
 illumination from a fire which could not itself be seen. 
 I was overcome with the most dreadful sense of loneli- 
 ness. I suppose it is the very essence of passion, using 
 the word in its literal sense, that no account can be 
 given of it by the reason. Eeflecting on what I suffered 
 then, I cannot find any solid ground for it, and yet 
 there are not half-a-dozen days or nights of my life 
 which remain with me like that one. I was beside 
 myself with a kind of terror, which I cannot further 
 explain. It is possible for another person to understand 
 grief for the death of a friend, bodily suffering, or any 
 emotion which has a distinct cause, but how shall he 
 understand the worst of all calamities, the nameless 
 dread, the efflux of all vitality, the ghostly haunting 
 horror which is so nearly akin to madness ? It is many 
 years ago since that evening, but while I write I am at 
 the window stiU, and the yellow flare of the city is still 
 in my eyes. I remember the thought of all the happy 
 homes which lay around me, in which dwelt men who 
 had found a position, an occupation, and, above all 
 things, affection. I know the causelessness of a good 
 deal of all those panic fears, and all that suffering, but 
 I tremble to think how thin is the floor on which we 
 stand which separates us from the bottomless abyss. 
 
 The next morning I went down into the schoolroom, 
 and after I had been there for some little time, the 
 proprietor of the school made his appearance. He was 
 liot a bad man, nor even unkiad in his way, but he 
 
 B 
 
114 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 ■was utterly uninteresting, and as commonplace as 
 might be expected after having for many years done 
 nothing but fight a very uphill battle in boarding the 
 sons of tradesfolk, and teaching them, at very moderate 
 rates, the elements of Latin, and the various branches 
 of learning which constitute what is called a commercial 
 education. He said that he expected some of the boys 
 back that day ; that when they came, he should wish 
 me to take my meals with them, but that meanwhile 
 he would be glad if I would breakfast with him and 
 his wife. This accordingly I did. What his wife was 
 like I have almost entirely forgotten, and I only saw 
 her once again. After breakfast he said I could go 
 for a walk, and for a walk I went ; wandering about 
 the dreary intermingled chaos of fields with damaged 
 hedges, and new roads divided into building plots. 
 
 Meanwhile one or two of the boys had made their 
 appearance, and I therefore had my dinner with them. 
 After dinner, as there was nothing particular to do, I 
 was again dismissed with them for a walk just as the 
 light of the winter afternoon was fading. My com- 
 panions were dejected, and so was L The wind was 
 south-easterly, cold and raw, and the smoke came up 
 from the region about the river and shrouded all the 
 building plots in fog. I was now something more than 
 depressed. It was absolutely impossible to endure such 
 a state of things any longer, and I determined that, 
 come what might, I would not stop. I considered 
 whether I should leave without saying a word, that is 
 to say, whether I should escape, but I feared pursuit 
 and some unknown legal proceedings. When I got 
 home, therefore, I sought the principal, and informed 
 him that I felt so unwell that I was afraid I must 
 
MARK KUTHERFORD. n; 
 
 throw up my engagement at once. He naturally 
 observed that this was a serious business for him; that 
 my decision was very hasty — what was the matter 
 with me? I might get better; but he concluded, after 
 my reiterated asseverations that I must go, with a per- 
 mission to resign, only on one condition, that I should 
 obtain an equally efficient substitute at the same salary. 
 I was more agitated than ever. With my natural 
 tendency to believe the worst, I had not the least 
 expectation of finding anybody who would release me. 
 The next morning I departed on my errand. I knew 
 a poor student who had been at college with me, and 
 who had nothing to do, and to him I betook myself. I 
 strove — as even now I firmly believe — not to make the 
 situation seem any better than it was, and he consented 
 to take it. I have no clear recollection of anything 
 that happened till the following day, excepting that I 
 remember with all the vividness of actual and present 
 sensuous perception, lugging my box down the ladder 
 and sending for a cab. I was in a fever lest anything 
 should arrest me, but the cab came, and I departed. 
 When I had got fairly clear of the gates, I literally 
 cried tears of joy — the first and the last of my life. I 
 am constrained now, however, to admit that my trouble 
 was but a bubble blown of air, and I doubt whether I 
 have done any good by dwelling upon it. 
 
Ii6 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 OXFORD STREET. 
 
 Until I had actually left, I hardly knew where I was 
 going, but at last I made up my mind I would go to 
 Eeuben Shapcott, another fellow-student, whom I knew 
 to be living in lodgings in one of the streets just then 
 beginning to creep over the unoccupied ground between 
 Camden Town and Haverstock Hill, near the Chalk 
 Farm turnpike gate. To his address I betook myself, 
 and found him not at home. He, like me, had been 
 unsuccessful as a minister, and wrote a London letter 
 for two country papers, making up about ;f lOO or ;f 120 
 a year by preaching occasionally in small Unitarian 
 chapels in the country. I waited till his return, and 
 told him my story. He advised me to take a bed in 
 the house where he was staying, and to consider what 
 could be done. At first I thought I would consult 
 Mardon, but I could not bring myself to go near him. 
 How was I to behave in Mary's presence? During 
 the last few months she had been so continually before 
 me, that it would have been absolutely impossible for 
 me to treat her with assumed indifference. I could 
 not have trusted myself to attempt it. When I had 
 been lying alone and awake at night, I had thought 
 of all the endless miles of hill and valley that lay 
 outside my window, separating me from the one house 
 
MARK RUTHERFOED. ii; 
 
 in which I could be at peace ; and at times I scarcely 
 prevented myself from getting up and taking the mail 
 train and presenting myself at Maiden's door, braving 
 all consequences. With the morning light, however, 
 would come cooler thoughts, and a dull sense of impos- 
 sibility. This, I know, was not pure love for her ; it 
 was a selfish passion for relief. But then I have never 
 known what is meant by a perfectly pure love. When 
 Christian was in the VaUey of the Shadow of Death, 
 and, being brought to the mouth of hell, was forced to 
 put up his sword, and could do no other than cry, 
 Lord, I beseech Thee, deliver my soul, he heard a voice 
 going before him and saying. Though I walk through 
 the Vcdley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear none ill, 
 for Thou art with me. And by and by the day broke. 
 " Then," said Christian, " He hath turned the Shadow 
 of Death into morning. Whereupon Christian sang — 
 
 " Oh world of wonders I (I can say no less) 
 That I should be preserved in that distress 
 That I have met with here ! Oh, blessed be 
 That hand that from it hath delivered me ! " 
 
 This was Christian's love for God, and for God as 
 his helper. Was that perfectly pure ? However, this 
 ia a digression. I determined to help myself in my 
 own way, and thought I would try the publishers. 
 One morning I walked from Camden Town to Pater- 
 noster Eow. I went straightway into two or three 
 shops and asked whether they wanted anybody. I 
 was ready to do the ordinary work of a publisher's 
 assistant, and aspired no higher. I met with several 
 refusals, some of them not over polite, and the degrada- 
 tion — ^for 80 I felt it — of wandering through the streets 
 
Ii8 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 and suing for employment cut me keenly. I remember 
 one man in particular, who spoke to me with the 
 mechanical brutality with which probably he replied 
 to a score of similar applications every week. He sat 
 in a little glass box at the end of a long dark room 
 lighted with gas. It was a bitterly cold room, with 
 no contrivance for warming it, but in his box there 
 was a fire burning for his own special benefit. He 
 surveyed all his clerks unceasingly, and woe betide 
 the unhappy wretch who was caught idling. He and 
 his slaves reminded me of the thre^shing machine which 
 is worked by horses walking round in a ring, the driver 
 being perched on a high stool in the middle and armed 
 with a long whip. While I was waiting his pleasure, 
 he came out and spoke to one or two of his miserable 
 subordinates words of directest and sharpest rebuke, 
 without anger or the least loss of self-possession, and 
 yet without the least attempt to mitigate their severity. 
 I meditated much upon him. If ever I had occasion 
 to rebuke anybody, I always did it apologetically, un- 
 less I happened to be in a flaming passion — and this 
 was my habit, not from any respectable motive of con- 
 sideration for the person rebuked, but partly because 
 I am timid, and partly because I shrink from giving 
 pain. This man said with perfect ease what I could 
 not have said unless I had been wrought up to white 
 heat. With all my dislike to him, I envied him: I 
 envied his complete certainty ; for although his lan- 
 guage was harsh in the extreme, he was always sure 
 of his ground, and the victim upon whom his lash 
 descended could never say that he had given abso- 
 lutely no reason for the chastisement, and that it 
 was altogether a mistake. I envied also his ability 
 
MAEK RUTHERFOED. 119 
 
 to make himself disagreeable and care nothing about 
 it ; his power to walk in his own path, and his resolve 
 to succeed, no matter what the cost might be. As I 
 left him, it occurred to me that I might be more 
 successful perhaps with a publisher of whom I had 
 heard, who published and sold books of a sceptical 
 turn. To him I accordingly went, and although I 
 had no introductions or recommendatory letters, I 
 was received, if not with a cordiality, at least with 
 an interest which surprised me. He took me into a 
 little back shop, and after hearing patiently what I 
 wanted, he asked me somewhat abruptly what I thought 
 of the miracles in the Bible. This was a curious ques- 
 tion if he wished to understand my character; but his 
 mind so constantly revolved in one circle, and existed 
 so completely by hostility to the prevailing orthodoxy, 
 that belief or disbelief in it was the standard by which 
 he judged men. It was a very absurd standard doubt- 
 less, but no more absurd than many others, and not so 
 absurd then as it would be now, when heresy is becom- 
 ing more fashionable. I explained to him as well as I 
 could what my position was ; that I did not suppose 
 that the miracles actually happened as they are re- 
 corded, but that, generally speaking, the miracle was 
 a very intense statement of a divine truth; in fact, 
 a truth which was felt with a more than common 
 intensity seemed to take naturally a miraculous expres- 
 sion. Hence, so far from neglecting the miraculous 
 stories of the Bible as simply outside me, I rejoiced 
 in them, more, perhaps, than in the plain historical 
 or didactic prose. He seemed content, although hardly 
 to comprehend, and the result was that he asked me 
 if I would help him in his business. In order to do 
 
I20 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP 
 
 this, it would be more economical if I would live in 
 his house, which was too big for him. He promised 
 to give me £/^o a year, in addition to board and lodging. 
 I joyously assented, and the bargain was struck. The 
 next day I came to my new quarters. I found that he 
 was a bachelor, with a niece, apparently about four or 
 five and twenty years old, acting as a housekeeper, 
 who assisted him in literary work. My own room 
 was at the top of the house, warm, quiet, and com- , 
 fortable, although the view was nothing but a wide 
 reaching assemblage of chimney pots. My hours were 
 long — from nine in the morning till seven in the 
 evening; but this I did not mind. I felt that if I 
 was not happy, I was at least protected, and that I 
 was with a man who cared for me, and for whom I 
 cared. The first day I went there, he said that I could 
 have a fire in my bedroom whenever I chose, so that 
 I could always retreat to it when I wished to be by 
 myself. As for my duties, I was to sell his books, 
 keep his accounts, read proofs, run errands, and, in 
 short, do just what he did himself. After my first 
 morning's work we went upstairs to dinner, and I 
 was introduced to " my niece Theresa." I was rather 
 surprised that I should have been admitted to a house 
 in which there lived a young woman with no mother 
 nor aunt, but this surprise ceased when I came to know 
 more of Theresa and her uncle. She had yellowish hair 
 which was naturally waved, a big arched head, greyish 
 blue eyes, so far as I could make out, and a mouth 
 which, although it had curves in it, was compressed 
 and indicative of great force of character. She was 
 rather short, with square shoulders, and she had a 
 singularly vigorous firm walk. She had a way, when 
 
MAEK RUTHERFORD. ui 
 
 she was not eating or drinking, of sitting back in her 
 chair at table and looking straight at the person with 
 whom she was talking. Her uncle, whom, by the way, 
 I had forgotten to name — ^his name was WoUaston — 
 happened to know some popular preacher whom I 
 knew, and I said that I wondered so many people 
 went to hear him, for I believed him to be a hypocrite, 
 and hypocrisy was one of the easiest of crimes to dis- 
 cover. Theresa, who had hitherto been silent, and 
 was reclining in her usual attitude, instantly broke 
 out with an emphasis and directness which quite 
 startled me. 
 
 " The easiest to discover, do you think, Mr. Euther- 
 ford ; I think it is the most difficult, at least for 
 ordinary persons; and when they do discover it, I 
 believe they like it, especially if it is successful They 
 like the sanction it gives to their own hypocrisy. They 
 like a man to come to them who will say to them, ' We 
 are all hypocrites together,' and who will put his finger 
 to his nose and comfort them. Don't you think so 
 yourself ? " 
 
 In conversation I was always a bad hand at assum- 
 ing a position contrary to the one assumed by the 
 person to whom I might be talking; nor could I per- 
 sistently maintain my own position if it happened to be 
 opposed. I always rather tried to see as my opponent 
 saw, and to discover how much there was in him with 
 which I could sympathise. I therefore assented weakly 
 to Theresa, and she seemed disappointed. Dinner was 
 just over ; she got up and rang the bell and went out 
 of the room. 
 
 I found my work very hard, and some of it even 
 loathsome. Particularly loathsome was that part of 
 
122 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 it which brought me into contact with the trade. I 
 had to sell books to the booksellers' assistants, and I 
 had to collect books myself. These duties are usually 
 undertaken in large establishments by men specially 
 trained, who receive a low rate of wages, and who are 
 rather a rough set. It was totally different work to 
 anything I had ever had to do before, and I suffered 
 as a man with soft hands would suffer, who was sud- 
 denly called to be a blacksmith or a dock-labourer. 
 Specially, too, did I miss the country. London lay 
 round me like a mausoleum. I got into the habit of 
 rising very early in the morning and walking out to 
 Kensington Gardens and back before breakfast, varying 
 my route occasionally so as even to reach Battersea 
 Bridge, which was always a favourite spot with me. 
 Kensington Gardens and Battersea Bridge were poor 
 substitutes for the downs, and for the level stretch by 
 the river towards the sea where I first saw Mardon, 
 but we make too much of circumstances, and the very 
 pressure of London produced a sensibility to whatever 
 loveliness could be apprehended there, which was absent 
 when loveliness was always around me. The stars seen 
 in Oxford Street late one night ; a sunset one summer 
 evening from Lambeth pier; and above everything, 
 Piccadilly very early one summer morning, abide with 
 me still, when much that was more romantic has been 
 forgotten. On the whole, I was not unhappy. The 
 constant outward occupation prevented any eating of 
 the heart or undue brooding over problems which were 
 insoluble, at least for my intellect, and on that very 
 account fascinated me the more. 1 do not think that 
 WoUaston cared much for me personally. He was a 
 curious compound, materialistic yet impulsive, and for 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD. 123 
 
 ever drawn to some new thing ; without any love for 
 anybody particularly, as far as I could see, and yet with 
 much more general kindness and philanthropy than 
 many a man possessing much stronger sympathies and 
 antipathies. There was no holy of holies in him, into 
 which one or two of the elect could occasionally be 
 admitted and feel God to be there. He was no temple, 
 but rather a comfortable hospitable house open to all 
 friends, well furnished with books and pictures, and 
 free to every guest from garret to cellar. He had 
 "liberal" notions about the relationship between the 
 sexes. Not that he was a libertine, but he disbelieved 
 in marriage, excepting for so long as husband and wife 
 are a necessity to one another. If one should find the 
 other uninteresting, or somebody else more interesting 
 he thought there ought to be a separation. All this I 
 soon learned from him, for he was communicative with- 
 out any reserve. His treatment of his niece was pecu- 
 liar. He would talk on all kinds of subjects before her, 
 for he had a theory that she ought to receive precisely 
 the same social training as men, and should know just 
 what men knew. He was never coarse, but on the 
 other hand he would say things to her in my presence, 
 which brought a flame into my face. What the evil 
 consequences of this might be, I could not at once 
 foresee, but one good result obviously was, that in his 
 house there was nothing of that execrable practice of 
 talking down to women ; there was no change of level 
 when women were present. One day he began to speak 
 about a novel which everybody was reading then, and 
 I happened to say that I wished people who wrote 
 novels would not write as if love were the very centre 
 and sum of human existence. A man's life was made 
 
124 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP 
 
 up of so much besides love, and yet novelists were 
 never weary of repeating the same story, telling it over 
 and over again in a hundred different forms. 
 
 " I do not agree with you," said Theresa. " I disagree 
 with you utterly. I dislike foolish inane sentiment — 
 it makes me sick ; but I do believe, in the first place, 
 that no man was ever good for anything who has not 
 been devoured, I was going to say, by a great devotion 
 to a woman. The lives of your great men are as much 
 the history of women whom they adored as of them- 
 selves. Dante, Byron, Shelley, it is the same with all 
 of them, and there is no mistake about it; it is the 
 great fact of life. What would Shakespeare be without 
 it? and Shakespeare is life. A man, worthy to be 
 named a man, will find the fact of love perpetually con- 
 fronting him till he reaches old age, and if he be not 
 ruined by worldliness or dissipation, will be troubled 
 by it when he is fifty as much as when he was twenty- 
 five. It is the subject of all subjects. People abuse 
 love, and think it the cause of half the mischief in the 
 world. It is the one thing that keeps the world straight, 
 and if it were not for that overpowering instinct, human 
 nature would fall asunder ; would be the prey of incon- 
 ceivable selfishness and vices, and finally, there would 
 be universal suicide. I did not intend to be eloquent : 
 I hate being eloquent. But you did not mean what 
 you said ; you spoke from the head or teeth merely." 
 
 Theresa's little speech was delivered not with any 
 heat of the blood. There was no excitement in her 
 grey eyes, nor did her cheek burn. Her brain seemed 
 to rule everything. This was an idea she had, and she 
 kindled over it because it was an idea. It was impos- 
 siblsj of course, that she should say what she did with- 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD. 125 
 
 out some movement of the organ in her breast, but 
 how much share this organ had in her utterances, I 
 never could make out. How much was due to the in- 
 terest which she as a looker-on felt in men and women, 
 and how much was due to herself as a woman, was 
 always a mystery to me. She was fond of music, and 
 occasionally I asked her to play to me. She had 
 a great contempt for bungling, and not being a pro- 
 fessional player, she never would try a piece in my 
 presence of which she was not perfectly master. She 
 particularly liked to play Mozart, and on my asking 
 her once to play a piece of Beethoven, she turned 
 round upon me and said : " You like Beethoven best. 
 I knew you would. He encourages a luxurious revel- 
 ling in the incomprehensible and indefinably sublime. 
 He is not good for you." 
 
 My work was so hard, and the hours were so long, 
 that I had little or no time for reading, nor for thinking 
 either, except so far as WoUaston and Theresa made 
 me think, Wollaston himself took rather to science, 
 although he was not scientific, and made a good deal 
 of what he called psychology. He was not very pro- 
 found, but he had picked up a few phrases, or if this 
 word is too harsh, a few ideas about metaphysical 
 matters from authors who contemned metaphysics, and 
 with these he was perfectly satisfied, A stranger 
 listening to him would at first consider him well read, 
 but would soon be undeceived, and would find that 
 these ideas were acquired long ago ; that he had never 
 gone behind or below them, and that they had never 
 fructified in him, but were like hard stones, which he 
 rattled in his pocket. He was totally, unlike Mardon. 
 Mardon, although he would have agreed with many of 
 
126 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 WoUaston's results, differed entirely from him in the 
 processes by which they had been brought about; and 
 a mental comparison of the two often told me what I 
 had been told over and over again, that what we believe 
 is not of so much importance as the path by which we 
 travel to it. Theresa too, like her uncle, eschewed 
 metaphysics, but she was a woman, and a woman's 
 impulses supplied in her the lack of those deeper ques- 
 tionings, and at times prompted them. She was far 
 more original than he was, and was impatient of the 
 narrowness of the circle in which he moved. Her love 
 of music, for example, was a thing incomprehensible 
 to him, and I do not remember that he ever sat for a 
 quarter of an hour really listening to it He would 
 read the newspaper or do anything while she was 
 playing. She never resented his inattention, except 
 when he made a noise, and then, without any rebuke, 
 she would break off and go away. This mode of treat- 
 ment was the outcome of one of her theories. She 
 disbelieved altogether in punishment, except when it 
 was likely to do good, either to the person punished or 
 to others. " A good deal of punishment," she used to 
 say, " is mere useless pain." 
 
 Both Theresa and her uncle were kind and human, 
 and I endeavoured to my utmost to repay them by 
 working my hardest. My few hours of leisure were 
 sweet, and when I spent them with Wollaston and 
 Theresa, were interesting. I often asked myself why 
 I found this mode of existence more tolerable than any 
 other I had hitherto enjoyed. I had, it is true, an hour 
 or two's unspeakable peace in the early morning, but, 
 as I have said, at nine my toil commenced, and, with 
 a very brief interval for meals, lasted till seven. After 
 
MAEK RUTHERFORD. 127 
 
 seven I was too tired to do anything by myself, and 
 could only keep awake if I happened to be in company. 
 One reason certainly why I was content, was Theresa 
 herself. She was a constant study to me, and I could 
 not for a long time obtain any consistent idea of her. 
 She was not a this or a that or the other. She could not 
 be summarily dismissed into any ordinary classification. 
 At first I was sure she was hard, but I found by the 
 merest accident that nearly all her earnings were given 
 with utmost secrecy to support a couple of poor rela- 
 tives. Then I thought her self-conscious, but this, 
 when I came to think upon it, seemed a mere word. 
 She was one of those women, and very rare they are, 
 who deal in ideas, and reflectiveness must be self-con- 
 scious. At times she appeared passionless, so completely 
 did her intellect dominate, and so superior was she to 
 all the little arts and weaknesses of women ; but this 
 was a criticism she contradicted continually. There 
 was very little society at the WoUastons', but occasion- 
 ally a few friends called. One evening there was a 
 little party, and the conversation flagged. Theresa said 
 that it was a great mistake to bring people together 
 with nothing special to do but talk. Nothing is more 
 tedious than to be in a company assembled for no par- 
 ticular reason, and every host, if he asks more than two 
 persons at the outside, ought to provide some entertain- 
 ment. Talking is worth nothing unless it is perfectly 
 spontaneous, and it cannot be spontaneous if there are 
 sudden and blank silences, and nobody can think of 
 a fresh departure. The master of the house is bound 
 to do something. He ought to hire a Punch and Judy 
 show, or get up a dance. This spice of bitterness and 
 flavour of rudeness was altogether characteristic of 
 
128 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 Theresa, and somebody resented it by reminding her 
 that she was the hostess. "Of course," she replied, 
 " that is why I said it : what shall I do ? " One of her 
 gifts was memory, and her friends cried out at once 
 that she should recite something. She hesitated a 
 little, and then throwing herself back in her chair, 
 began " The Lass of Lochroyan." At first she was 
 rather difi&dent, but she gathered strength as she went 
 on. There is a passage in the middle of the poem, in 
 which Lord Gregory's cruel mother pretends she is 
 Lord Gregory, and refuses to recognise his former love, 
 Annie of Lochroyan, as she stands outside his tower. 
 The mother calls to Annie from the inside 
 
 " Gin thon be Annie of Lochroyan 
 (As I trow thon binna she), 
 Now tell me some of the love tokens 
 That passed between thee and me." 
 
 " Oh dinna ye mind. Lord Gregory, 
 As we sat at the wine, 
 We changed the rings frae our fingers, 
 And I can show thee thine ? 
 
 " Oh yours was gude, and gude enough, 
 But aye the best was mine ; 
 For yours was o' the gude red gowd, 
 Bvi mine d the dia/mond fine." 
 
 The last verse is as noble as anything in any ballad 
 in the English language, and I thought -that when 
 Theresa was half way through it her voice shook a 
 good deal There was a glass of flowers standing near 
 her, and just as she came to an end her arm moved 
 and the glass was in a moment on the floor, shivered 
 into twenty pieces. I happened to be watching her, 
 
MARK RUTHEKFOED. 129 
 
 and felt perfectly aure that the movement of her arm 
 was not accidental, and that her intention was to con- 
 ceal, by the apparent mishap, an emotion which was 
 increasing and becoming inconvenient. At any rate, 
 if that was her object it was perfectly accomplished, 
 for the recitation was abruptly terminated, there was 
 general commiseration over the shattered vase, and 
 when the pieces were picked up and order was restored, 
 it was nearly time to separata 
 
 Two of my chief failings were forgetfulness and a 
 want of thorougliness in investigation. What misery 
 have I not suffered from insufficient presentation of a 
 case to myself, and from prompt conviction of insuffi- 
 ciency and inaccuracy by the person to whom I in turn 
 presented it ! What misery have I not suffered from 
 the discovery that explicit directions to me had been 
 overlooked or only half understood ! One day in par- 
 ticular, I had to take round a book to be " subscribed " 
 which WoUaston had just published, that is to say, I 
 had to take a copy to each of the leading booksellers 
 to see how many they would purchase. Some books 
 are sold "thirteen as twelve," the thirteenth book being 
 given to the purchaser of twelve, and some are sold 
 " twenty-five as twenty-four." This book was to be sold 
 " twenty-five as twenty-four " according to WoUaston's 
 orders. I subscribed it thirteen as twelve. Wollaston 
 was annoyed, as I could see, for I had to go over all 
 my work again, but in accordance with his fixed prin- 
 ciples, he was not out of temper. It so happened that 
 that same day he gave me some business correspondence 
 which I was to look through; and having looked through 
 it, I was to answer the last letter in the sense which he 
 indicated. I read the correspondence and wTote the 
 
 I 
 
130 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 letter for his signature. As soon as he saw it, he 
 pointed out to me that I had only half mastered the 
 facts, and that my letter was all wrong. This greatly 
 disturbed me, not only because I had vexed him and 
 disappointed him, but because it was renewed evidence 
 of my weakness. I thought that if I was incapable of 
 getting to the bottom of such a very shallow complica- 
 tion as this, of what value were any of my thinkings on 
 more difficult subjects, and I fell a prey to self-contempt 
 and scepticism. Contempt from those about us is hard 
 to bear, but God help the poor wretch who contemns 
 himself. How well I recollect the early walk on the 
 following morning in Kensington Gardens, the feeling 
 of my own utter worthlessness, and the longing for death 
 as the cancellation of the blunder of my existence ! I 
 went home, and after breakfast some proofs came from 
 the printer of a pamphlet which Wollaston had in hand. 
 Without unfastening them, he gave them to me, and 
 said that as he had no time to read them himself, I 
 must go upstairs to Theresa's study and read them off 
 with her. Accordingly I went and began to read. She 
 took the manuscript and I took the proof. She read 
 about a page, and then she suddenly stopped. " Mr. 
 Eutherford," she said, " what have you done ? I heard 
 my uncle distinctly tell you to mark on the manuscript, 
 when it went to the printer, that it was to be printed in 
 demy octavo, and you have marked it twelvemo." I 
 had had little sleep that night, I was exhausted with 
 my early walk, and suddenly the room seemed to fade 
 from me and I fainted. When I came to myself, I 
 found that Theresa had not sought for any help ; she 
 had done all that ought to be done. She had unfastened 
 my collar and had sponged my face with cold water. 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD. 131 
 
 The first thing I saw as I gradually recovered myself, 
 was her eyes looking steadily at me as she stood over 
 me, and I felt her hand upon my head. When she was 
 sure I was coming to myself, she held off and sat down 
 in her chair. I was a little hysterical, and after the 
 fit was over I broke loose. With a storm of tears, I 
 laid open all my heart. I told her how nothing I had 
 ever attempted had succeeded ; that I had never even 
 been able to attain that degree of satisfaction with 
 myself and my own conclusions, without which a man 
 cannot live ; and that now I found I was useless, even 
 to the best friends I had ever known, and that the 
 meanest clerk in the city would serve them better than 
 I did. I was beside myself, and I threw myself on my 
 knees, burying my face in Theresa's lap and sobbing 
 convulsively. She did not repel me, but she gently 
 passed her fingers through my hair. Oh the transport 
 of that touch! It was as if water had been poured 
 on a burnt hand, or some miraculous Messiah had 
 soothed the delirium of a fever-stricken sufferer, and 
 replaced his visions of torment with dreams of Paradise 
 She gently lifted me up, and as I rose I saw her eyes 
 too were wet. " My poor friend," she said, '' I cannot 
 talk ±0 you now. You are not strong enough, and 
 for that matter, nor am I, but let me say this to you, 
 that you are altogether mistaken about yourself. The 
 meanest clerk in the city could not take your place 
 here." There was just a slight emphasis I thought 
 upon the word "here." "Now," she said, "you had 
 better go. I will see about the pamphlet." I went 
 out mechanically, and I anticipate my story so far as 
 to say that, two days after, another proof came in the 
 proper form. I went to the printer to offer to pay for 
 
132 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP 
 
 setting it up afresh, and was told that Miss Wollasfcon 
 had been there and had paid herself for the rectification 
 of the mistake, giving special injunctions that no notice 
 of it was to be given to her uncle. I should like to add 
 one more beatitude to those of the gospels and to say. 
 Blessed are they who heal us of self-despisings. Of 
 all services which can be done to man, I know of none 
 more precious. 
 
 When I went badk to my work I worshipped Theresa, 
 and was entirely overcome with unhesitating absorbing 
 love for her. I saw nothing more of her that day nor 
 the next day. Her uncle told me that she had gone 
 into the country, and that probably she would not 
 return for some time, as she had purposed paying a 
 lengthened visit to a friend at a distance. I had a 
 mind to write to her ; but I felt as I have often felt 
 before in great crises, a restraint which was gentle and 
 incomprehensible, but nevertheless unmistakable. I 
 suppose it is not what would be called conscience, as 
 conscience is supposed to decide solely between right 
 and wrong, but it was none the less peremptory, although 
 its voice was so soft and low that it might easily have 
 been overlooked. Over and over again, when I have 
 purposed doing a thing, have I been impeded or arrested 
 by this same silent monitor, and never have I known 
 its warnings to be the mere false alarms of fancy. 
 
 After a time, the thought of Mary recurred to me. 
 I was distressed to find that, in the very height of my 
 love for Theresa, my love for Mary continued unabated. 
 Had it been otherwise, had my affection for Mary 
 grown dim, I should not have been so much perplexed, 
 but it did not. It may be ignominious to confess it, but 
 BO it was; I simply record the fact I had not seen 
 
MAEK RUTHERFORD. 133 
 
 Mardon since that last memorable evening at hia house, 
 but one day, as I was sitting in the shop, who should 
 walk in but Mary herself. The meeting, although 
 strange, was easily explained. Her father was ill, and 
 could do nothing but read. WoUaston published free- 
 thinking books, and Mardon had noticed in an advertise- 
 ment the name of a book which he particularly wished 
 to see. Accordingly he sent Mary for it. She pressed 
 me very much to call on him. He had talked about 
 me a good deal, and had written to me at the last address 
 he knew, but the letter had been returned through the 
 dead letter office. It was a week before I could go, and 
 when I did go, I found him much worse than I had 
 imagined him to be. There was no virulent disease of 
 any particular organ, but he was slowly wasting away 
 from atrophy, and he knew, or thought he knew, he 
 should not recover. But he was perfectly self-possessed. 
 "With regard to immortality," he said, " I never know 
 what men mean by it. What self is it which is to be 
 immortal? Is it really desired by anybody that he 
 should continue to exist for ever with his present limita- 
 tions and failings ? Yet if these are not continued, the 
 man does not continue, but something else, a totally 
 different person. I believe in the survival of life and 
 thought. People think that is not enough. They say 
 they want the survival of their personality. It is very 
 difficult to express any conjecture upon the matter, 
 especially now when I am weak, and I have no system 
 — nothing but surmises. One thing I am sure of, that 
 a man ought to rid himself as much as possible of the 
 miserable egotism which is so anxious about self, and 
 should be more and more anxious about the Universal." 
 Mardon grew slowly worse. The winter was coming on. 
 
134 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 and as the temperature fell, and the days grew darker, 
 he declined. With all his heroism and hardness he had 
 a weakness or two, and one was, that he did not want 
 to die in London or be buried there. So we got him 
 down to Sandgate near Hythe, and procured lodging 
 for him close to the sea, so that he could lie in bed and 
 watch the sun and moon rise over the water. Mary, of 
 course, remained with him, and I returned to London. 
 Towards the end of November I got a letter, to tell me 
 that if I wished to see him alive again, I must go down 
 at once. I went that day, and I found that the doctor 
 had been, and had said that before the morning the end 
 must come. Mardon was perfectly conscious, in no 
 pain, and quite calm. He was just able to speak. 
 When I went into his bedroom, he smiled, and without 
 any preface or introduction he said : " Learn not to be 
 over-anxious about meeting troubles and solving diffi- 
 culties which time will meet and solve for you." 
 Excepting to ask for water, I don't think he spoke again. 
 All that night Mary and I watched in that topmost 
 garret looking out over the ocean. It was a night 
 entirely unclouded, and the moon was at the full. 
 Towards daybreak her father moaned a little, then 
 became quite quiet, and just as the dawn was chang- 
 ing to sunrise, he passed away. What a sunrise 
 it was! For about half-an-hour before the sun 
 actually appeared, the perfectly smooth water was one 
 mass of gently heaving opaline lustre. Not a sound 
 was to be heard, and over in the south-east hung the 
 planet Venus. Death was in the chamber, but the 
 surpassing splendour of the pageant outside arrested 
 us, and we sat awed and silent. Not till the first 
 burning point of the great orb itself emerged above 
 
MAKE RUTHERFOKD. 135 
 
 the horizon, not till the day awoke with its brightness 
 and brought with it the sounds of the day and its cares, 
 did we give way to our grief. It was impossible for 
 me to stay. It was not that I was obliged to get back 
 to my work in London, but I felt that Mary would far 
 rather be alone, and that it would not be proper for 
 me to remain. The woman of the house, in which the 
 lodgings were, was very kind, and promised to do all 
 that was necessary. It was arranged that I should 
 come down again to the funeral. So I went back to 
 London. Before I had got twenty miles on my journey 
 the glory of a few hours before had turned iuto autumn 
 storm. The rain came down in torrents, and the wind 
 rushed across the country in great blasts, stripping the 
 trees, and driving over the sky with hurricane speed 
 great masses of continuous cloud, which mingled earth 
 and heaven. I thought of all the ships which were 
 on the sea in the night, sailing under the serene stars 
 which I had seen rise and set ; I thought of Mardon 
 lying dead, and I thought of Mary. The simultaneous 
 passage through great emotions welds souls, and begets 
 the strongest of all forms of love. Those who have 
 sobbed together over a dead friend, who have held one 
 another's hands in that dread hour, feel a bond of 
 sympathy, pure and sacred, which nothing can dis- 
 solve. I went to the funeral as appointed. There was 
 some little difficulty about it, for Mary, who knew her 
 father so well, was unconquerably reluctant that an 
 inconsistency should crown the career of one who, all 
 through life, had been so completely self-accordant. 
 She could not bear that he should be buried with a 
 ceremony which he despised, and she was altogether 
 free from that weakness which induces a compliance 
 
136 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 with the rites of the Church from persons who avow 
 themselves sceptics. At last a burying-ground was 
 found, belonging to a little half-forsaken Unitarian 
 chapel; and there Mardon was laid. A few friends 
 came from London, one of whom had been a Unitarian 
 minister, and he "conducted the service," such as it 
 was. It was of the simplest kind. The body was 
 taken to the side of the grave, and before it was 
 lowered a few words were said, calling to mind all 
 the virtues of him whom we had lost. These the 
 speaker presented to us with much power and sym- 
 pathy. He did not merely catalogue a disconnected 
 string of excellences, but he seemed to plant himself 
 in the central point of Mardon's nature, and to see 
 from what it radiated. He then passed on to say that 
 about immortality, as usually understood, he knew 
 nothing; but that Mardon would live as every force 
 in nature lives — for ever ; transmuted into a thousand 
 different forms; the original form utterly forgotten, 
 but never perishing. The cloud breaks up and comes 
 down upon the earth in showers which cease, but the 
 clouds and the showers are really undying. This may 
 be true, but, after all, I can only accept the fact of 
 death in silence, as we accept the loss of youth and 
 all other calamities. We are able to see that the 
 arrangements which we should make, if we had the 
 control of the universe, would be more absurd than 
 those which prevail now. We are able to see that 
 an eternity of life in one particular form, with one 
 particular set of relationships, would be misery to 
 many and mischievous to everybody; however sweet 
 those relationships may be to some of us. At times we 
 are reconciled to death as the great regenerator, and we 
 
MARK EUTKEEFORD. 137 
 
 pine for escape from the surroundings of wHch we have 
 grown weary; but we can say no more, and the hour of 
 illumination has not yet come. Whether it ever will 
 come to a more nobly developed race, we cannot tell. 
 
 Thus far goes the manuscript which I have in my 
 possession. I know that there is more of it, but all 
 my search for it has been in vain. Possibly some 
 day I may be able to recover it. My friend discon- 
 tinued his notes for some years, and consequently the 
 concluding portion of them was entirely separate from 
 the earlier portion, and this is the reason, I suppose, 
 why it is missing. Miss Mardon soon followed her 
 father. She caught cold at his funeral; the seeds of 
 consumption developed themselves with remarkable 
 rapidity, and in less than a month she had gone. Her 
 father's peculiar habits had greatly isolated him, and 
 Miss Mardon had scarcely any friends, Eutherford 
 went to see her continually, and during the last few 
 nights sat up with her, incurring not a little scandal 
 and gossip, to which he was entirely insensible. For 
 a time he was utterly broken-hearted; and not only 
 broken-hearted, but broken-spirited, and incapable of 
 attacking the least difficulty. All the springs of his 
 nature were softened, so that if anything was cast upon 
 him, there it remained without hope, and without any 
 effort being made to remove it. He only began to 
 recover when he was forced to give up work altogether 
 and take a long holiday. To do this he was obliged to 
 leave Mr. WoUaston, and the means of obtaining his 
 
138 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 much-needed rest were afforded him, partly by what 
 he had saved, and partly by the kindness of one or two 
 whom he had known. I thought that Miss Mardon's 
 death would permanently increase my friend's intel- 
 lectual despondency, but it did not. On the contrary, 
 he gradually grew out of it. A crisis seemed to take a 
 turn just then, and he became less involved in his old 
 speculations, and more devoted to other pursuits. I 
 fancy that something happened ; there was some word 
 revealed to him, or there was some recoil, some healthy 
 horror of eclipse in this self-created gloom which drove 
 him out of it. He accidentally renewed his acc[uainfr- 
 ance with the butterfly catcher, who was obliged to 
 leave the country and come up to London. He, how- 
 ever, did not give up his old hobby, and the two friends 
 used every Sunday in summer time to sally forth some 
 distance from town and spend the whole live-long day 
 upon the downs and in the green lanes of Surrey. 
 Both of them had to work hard during the week. 
 Eutherford, who had learned shorthand when he was 
 young, got employment upon a newspaper, and ulti- 
 mately a seat in the gallery of the House of Com- 
 mons. He never took to collecting insects like his com- 
 panion, nor indeed to any scientific pursuits, but he 
 certainly changed. I find it very difficult to describe 
 exactly what the change was, because it was into 
 nothing positive; into no sect, party, nor special 
 mode. He did not, for example, go off into absolute 
 denial. I remember his telling me, that to suppress 
 speculation would be a violence done to our nature as 
 unnatural as if we were to prohibit ourselves from 
 looking up to the blue depths between the stars at 
 night ; as if we were to determine that nature required 
 
MARK BUTHERFORD. 139 
 
 correcting in this respect, and that we ought to be so 
 constructed as not to be able to see anything but the 
 earth and what lies on it Still, these things in a 
 measure ceased to worry him, and the long conflict 
 died away gradually into a peace not formally con- 
 cluded, and with no specific stipulations, but neverthe- 
 less definite. He was content to rest and wait. Better 
 health and time, which does so much for us, brought 
 this about. The passage of years gradually relaxed his 
 anxiety about death by loosening his anxiety for life 
 without loosening his love of life. But I would rather 
 not go into any further details, because I still cherish 
 the hope that some day or the other I may recover the 
 contents of the diary. I am afraid that up to this 
 poiut he has misrepresented himself, and that those 
 who read his story will think him nothing but a mere 
 egoist, selfish and self-absorbed. Morbid he may have 
 been, but selfish he was not. A more perfect friend I 
 never knew, nor one more capable of complete abandon- 
 ment to a person for whom he had any real regard, and 
 I can only hope that it may be my good fortune to find 
 the materials which will enable me to represent him 
 autobiographically in a somewhat different light to that 
 in which he appears now. 
 
** Ego doceo sine strepitu verboium, sine confusione opinionnm, sine 
 fastu honoris, sine impugnatione argamentornm," 
 
 " I teach withont noise of words, without confusion of opinions, 
 vithout the arrogance of honour, without the assault of arguments." 
 
 De Imitaiione Christi, chap. zliiL 
 
 " Come what come may, 
 Time and the hour runs through the roughest day. " 
 
 Macbeth, Act L Sc 3. 
 
 " Having death for my friend, I tremble not at shadows." 
 
 Uulcnown Qruk Author, 
 
MAKE KUTHEKFOKD'S 
 DELIVEEANCE. 
 
 CHAPTEE L 
 
 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, throwing 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 be 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 de- 
 scribing, 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 
 
2 MAKE RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 every one, offering my services. I am afraid that I 
 somewhat exaggerated them, for I had two answers, 
 and, after a little correspondence, 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 recog- 
 nised, 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 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 con- 
 tinuous 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 treatment ? Thousands of 
 men and women superior to myself, are condemned, if 
 that is the proper word to use, to almost total absence 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 3 
 
 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 discussion 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 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 persous 
 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 con- 
 duct of foreign affairs. The evidence lay in masses of 
 
4 MARK RUTHERFOEDf DELIVERANCE. 
 
 correspondence 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 principle for which 
 much might be pleaded. There were not fifty members 
 in the House with the leisure or the ability to under- 
 stand what it was which had 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 the 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 beU. 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 everything which 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 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE, j 
 
 hedged round by impregnable conventionalities cannot 
 yield.^ 
 
 When I was living in the country, the pure sky and 
 the landscape formed a large portion of my existence, 
 BO large that much of myself depended on it, and I 
 vrondered 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 intercourse 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 necessary for me, therefore, to understand that 
 all that was essential for me was obtainable there, even 
 though 1 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 
 WhitehaU. 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 great 
 towns. It might be imagined from much of this litera- 
 ture 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 altogether upon scenery, 
 
 1 This was written many years ago, but is cnrionsly pertinent to the 
 discussions of this year. — ^Ediiob, 1884. 
 
6 MAEK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCK 
 
 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 Londoner, 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 writing 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 dis- 
 honesty to depend upon the charity of friends because 
 some pleasant, clean, ideal employment has not pre- 
 sented 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 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 7 
 
 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 absolutely false. I there- 
 fore contrived to exist on the one letter, Which, except- 
 ing 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 
 of a discreditable manoeuvre to consume the time of 
 the House, and as he represented a borough in my 
 district, he wrote to the editor denying the chaise. 
 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 for- 
 gotten 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 occasions, 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 
 
8 MARK RUTHERFORD'S D£LIVERA1T(7B. 
 
 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 hricklayer, if he be diligent, 
 is rewarded by knowing that his master understands 
 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 belonged. 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 professionalism, that 
 though I was Eadical, and was expected to be so, we 
 never jarred, and often, as we wandered homewards, we 
 exchanged notes, and were mutually useful, his observa- 
 tions app^nring in my paper, and mine in his, with 
 
MAKE RUTHERFOKD'S DELIVERANCE. 9 
 
 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 difi&dent 
 and tender. He had acquired, as an instrument neces- 
 sary 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 
 him. 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 contro- 
 versy 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 and 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 hypo- 
 crisy did in fact react upon him, and so far from affect- 
 ing harmfully what lay deeper, produced a more com- 
 plete sincerity and transparency extending 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 remonstrance with him ; and he 
 always insisted upon it that there is oo training more 
 
10 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 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 compelling, point by point, a corre- 
 spondence 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 portraiture ; 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 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 inefficient to represent a 
 particular object or emotion as a; 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, check- 
 ing 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 uot become what 
 
MAEK RUTHEEFORD'S DELIVERANCE. n 
 
 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 in- 
 viting one another to dinner ! I have heard them say 
 that we ought to congratulate ourselves that parlia- 
 mentary differences do not in this country breed 
 personal animosities. To me this seemed anything but 
 a subject of congratulation. Men who are totally at 
 variance ought not to be friends, and if Kadical 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 indifference 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 parliamen- 
 tary 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. 
 
12 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 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 getting 
 through 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 sup- 
 posed 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 experience 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 weari- 
 some 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 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 
 
MABK KUTHERFOED'S DELIVEEANCE. 13 
 
 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 hut 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 exhilarat- 
 ing, 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 freethinking hall, where we were entertained 
 with demonstrations of the immorality of the patri- 
 archs 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 " cele- 
 brated Christian," as he was described to us, having 
 heard of the hall, had voluntered 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 freethinking 
 antagonist, who claimed for him a 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 
 conversion " 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 
 
J4 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 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 was the point to which everything 
 tended ; and " now, my friends," he said, " I cannot 
 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 which awaits you if you receive 
 Him, of the eternal companionship with the Most 
 High and with the spirits of just men made perfect." 
 
MAKK RUTHERFORD'S BELIVER^CE. 15 
 
 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 practised 
 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 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, considering 
 it must be over 3000 years since he first saw Bath- 
 sheba ; 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. (Roars of laughter.) 
 Nor did the speaker feel particularly 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 tem- 
 pered 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 cleTer exposition of the inconsistencies of the Old 
 
i6 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 Testament history, the impossibility of any reference 
 to Jesus therein, and a really earnest protest against 
 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 aU 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 appre- 
 ciating the great remains of antiquity, and would pro- 
 bably 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. if 
 
 OHAPTEK n. 
 
 M'KAY. 
 
 It was foggy and overcast as we walked home to 
 Goodge Street. The churches and chapels were empty- 
 ing 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, calling "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 of the dingy 
 passage, and gazes doubtfully this way and that way, 
 not knowing whither to go, and evidently 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 Mor- 
 
 B 
 
i8 MARK RUTHEHFOED'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 timer 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 om- 
 nibus 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 
 establishment 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 al- 
 ways 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, 
 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 were indulged with the performance 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 five o'clock a prophecy of 
 the incoming tea brought us some relief from the con- 
 templation of the landscape or brick-scape. I say 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 19, 
 
 " some relief," for meals at M'Kay's were a little dis- 
 agreeable. 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 perpetually, therefore, had before him an enfeebled 
 reflection of himself, and this much irritated him, not- 
 withstanding his love for her ; for who could help lov- 
 ing a woman who, without the least hesitation, would 
 have opened her veins at his command, and have given 
 up every drop of blood in her body for him? Over 
 and over again I have heard him offer some criticism 
 on a person or event, and the customary chime of 
 approval would ensue, provoking him to such a degree 
 that he would instantly contradict 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 designedly 
 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 much 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 
 
:o MARK RUTHEKFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 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 
 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 occupation he 
 hated, and his restless repugnance to it frequently dis- 
 charged itself indifferently upon everything 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, excluding 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 oppor- 
 tunity 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 develop- 
 ment, 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 his 
 something perhaps, but something 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, 
 
MAKE RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 21 
 
 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 rejected in foolish, fatal, nay, even wicked 
 indifference, the bread of life upon which he might 
 have lived and thriven. His whole effort now was to 
 suppress himself in his wife. He read to her, a thing 
 he never did before, and when she misunderstood, he 
 patiently explained; he took her into his counsels 
 and asked her opinion; he abandoned his own opi- 
 nion for hers, and in the presence of her children 
 he always deferred to her, and delighted to acknow- 
 ledge that she knew more than he did, that she 
 was right and he was wrong. She was now con- 
 fined to her house, and the end was near, but this was 
 the most blessed time of her 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 bene- 
 ficent 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, 
 
23 MARK EUTHERFOED'S DELIVEEANCK 
 
 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 
 he. 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 crucifixion may indeed be tremendous, 
 but there is a tragedy too in the existence of a soul 
 like hers, conscious 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, 
 and when we wanted to talk we went out of doors. 
 The evening after our visit to the debating haU we 
 moved towards Portland Place, and walked up and 
 down there for an hour or more. M'Kay had a pas- 
 sionate desire to reform the world. The spectacle of 
 the misery of London, and of the distracted swaying 
 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 dark- 
 ness 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 grovel- 
 ling in the mire, and never know anything more of 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE 23 
 
 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 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 im- 
 provement 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 pro- 
 claim the Second Advent, as Paul did to the Thessa- 
 lonians, and get people to believe, he might change 
 their manners, but otherwise he could do nothing but 
 resort to a much slower process. With the departure 
 of a belief in the supernatural departs once and for 
 ever the chance of regenerating the race except by the 
 
■24 MABK KUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 Bchool 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 any rate it pre- 
 vented his waiting for distinct answers. He recurred 
 to the apostles and Bunyan, 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 preceded us. We instinctively 
 follow the antecedent form, and consequently we 
 either pass by, or deny altogether, 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 manifesta- 
 tion of to-day, and dying, perhaps, without recognis- 
 ing it. 
 
 M'Kay had found a room near Parker Street, 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 particular I 
 
 ' 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, — EmiOB, 1SS4. 
 
MARK RUTHERFOED'S DELIVERANCE. 25 
 
 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 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 mis- 
 cellaneous 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 de- 
 scended 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 
 
26 MAKE RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 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 stretch- 
 ing 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 vul- 
 garest 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 compulsion — 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 under- 
 taker, who displayed the wiUows, 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 
 submerged. The cross in such dens as these, or, worse 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 27 
 
 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 subjuga- 
 tion, the most grovelling slavery, mitigated only by a 
 tendency to mutiny. Here was a strength of circum- 
 stance to quell and dominate which neither Jesus nor 
 Paul could have overcome — worse a thousandfold than 
 Scribes or Pharisees, or any form of persecution. 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 cess- 
 pools 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 out- 
 siders, 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 plea- 
 sure 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 in- 
 habitants to improve themselves. He had no talents 
 wherewith to found a great organisation or create public 
 opinion. He had determined, after much thought, to 
 do what he was now doing. It was very little, but it 
 was all he could undertake. He proposed to keep this 
 room open as a place to which those who wished might 
 resort at different times, and find some quietude, in- 
 struction, and what fortifying thoughts he could collect 
 to enable men to endure their almost unendurable 
 sufferings. He did not intend to teach theology. Any- 
 
28 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 thing 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 
 probably 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 overflowingly about Jesus, 
 or meet at parties and talk about Him ; but He is not 
 of much use to me unless I say to myself, 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 directing 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 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 irreversible standard set up in us by 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 29 
 
 which everything we meet is to be judged. That ia 
 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 be- 
 come distracted. 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 
 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 deliberately 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 genuinely Christian spirit, which, when 
 any choice of conduct is presented to us, will prompt 
 us to ask first of all, Jioiv would Christ have it? or, 
 when men and things pass before us, wiU 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 accom- 
 plished. Such, as nearly as I can now recollect, is an 
 outline of his discourse. It was thoroughly character- 
 
30 MARK EUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 istic 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 a vision of a new Christianity which was to take 
 the place of the old and dead theologies. I have re- 
 ported 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 aU 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 con- 
 tinuing what she had been saying, when she rose, not 
 is auger, but in trouble, and went upstairs. 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 31 
 
 CHAPTER IIL 
 
 MISS 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 imder- 
 stand theirs. The common soldiers amused themselves 
 by making little trifles and selling 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, 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 
 
32 MARK RUTHERFOED'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 hatit 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 Christi 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 fore- 
 heads 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 
 holes, into which they dropped their neighbours, and 
 they must go into one or the other. Nothing was more 
 distressing than a specimen which, notwithstanding 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 generalisa- 
 tion, 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 particular, I have heard, 
 about personal tidiness, and this I can well believe, for 
 
MARK EUTHERFOED'S DELIVERANCE. 33 
 
 she was certainly not distinguished when I knew her 
 for this virtue. She cared nothing for the linen-closet, 
 the spotless bed-hangings, and the bright poker, which 
 were the true household 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' best 
 bedroom 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 expected 
 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." 
 This 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, moreover, Miss Leroy was 
 believed by the strongest circumstantial evidence to 
 wash herself all over every morning, a habit which 
 Mrs. Mobbs thought " weakening," and somehow con- 
 nected with ethical impropriety. When Miss Leroy 
 was married, and first as an elderly woman became 
 
 o 
 
34 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 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 those who possessed any one mark of 
 the pattern, had all. The wine - merchant, for ex- 
 ample, who *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 like him. 
 Another class was represented by the dissenting iron- 
 monger, deacon, presiding at prayer-meetings, strict 
 Sabbatarian, 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 ac- 
 cepted 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 converted, 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 ominous, and anything but a 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 35 
 
 subject for 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 irreconcil- 
 able. She was a person whom nobody could have 
 created in writing a novel, because she was so incon- 
 sistent. As I have said before, she studied Thomas k 
 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 Protestant- 
 ism ! She had no sceptical doubts. She believed im- 
 plicitly 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 doc- 
 trines 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 Uuitarianism was hateful 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 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 re- 
 spect she was far below the commonplace tradesman's 
 wife, who visited the sick, sat 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. 
 
36 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 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'a 
 windows were spared on the ground that he was not 
 a Briton, but the mob endeavoured to show my grand- 
 father 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 company 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 com- 
 plete suit of light pepper-and-salt clothes, and con- 
 tinued to wear pepper-and-salt on Sunday aU 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 cbapels 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 
 
MARK EUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 37 
 
 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 thouglit, could be brought together. 
 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 laat 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 bad 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 dis- 
 
38 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 play any violent affection for him, I have heard her 
 criticise and patronise him as a "good soul," but in- 
 capable, as indeed he was, of all sympathy with her. 
 After marriage she went her way and he his. She 
 got up early, as she was wont to do, and took her 
 Bible into the fields whUe he was snoring. She would 
 then very likely suffer from a terrible headache 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 encourag- 
 ing 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 incalculable and not-to-be-predicted re- 
 sults, that to attempt to make a major and minor pre- 
 miss and an inevitable 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 accomodate 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 foreign 
 land, she could not do, and the compensatory sacrifice 
 to her was smaU. This is really the only attempt at 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCK 59 
 
 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 perplexed and 
 uncomfortable in the presence of a nondescript who 
 did not respond to any dogmatic statement 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 amazing fervour, and she quoted 
 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 congre- 
 gation. 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, conventional, uttered with gravity at 
 suitable times — such as were customary amongst aU 
 the ministers of the denomination. It was not pleasant 
 to be outbid in his own department, especially by one 
 who was not a communicant, and to be obliged, when 
 he went on a pastoral visit to a house in which Mrs. 
 Butts happened to be, to sit still and hear her, regard- 
 less of the minister's presence, conclude a short mystical 
 monologue with Cowper's verse — 
 
 •• Exults our rising soul, 
 Disbuideued of her load, 
 And swells unutterably full 
 Of glory and of God." 
 
40 MAEK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 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 under- 
 stand 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 among 
 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. 
 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 also often retained, and in any 
 weather, not extraordinarily cold, he sat 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; 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 41 
 
 the machinery connected with the wheel — I knew 
 not how ; the hole where the roach lay by the side 
 of the miU-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 
 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 aU 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 among us. He had a versatile talent 
 for almost every accomplishment in which we de- 
 lighted, but he was not supreme in any one of them. 
 There were better cricketers, better football players, 
 better hands at setting a night-line, better swimmers 
 
42 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 than Clem, but he could do something, and do it 
 •well, in aU 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 permitted to 
 flourish for a time, and then superseded. 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 efiect 
 But as he never was taught by a master, and never 
 practised elementary exercises and studies, 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 everybody, 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 themselves surpassed and put in the shade 
 by a stranger, who, they were confident, could hardly 
 construct a hexameter. He never quarrelled with them 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 43 
 
 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. Eather 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 French origin, made a great deal of his mother, 
 was silent as to his father, and always signed himself 
 C. Leroy Butts, although I don't believe the second 
 Christian name was given him in baptism. Notwith- 
 standing 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 he could find, and he succeeded in 
 passing a boy for an open scholarship at Oxford, against 
 two competitors 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 in- 
 come. His talents were sometimes taxed when people 
 who came to place their sons with him supposed 
 
44 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 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 ;f8o 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 acquaint- 
 ance" with Latin prosody, Chalmers' opinion of Pro- 
 vidence 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- 
 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 suffi- 
 ciently 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 
 
MAEK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 45 
 
 never have commanded 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 always held implicitly and 
 sometimes explicitly that gifted people live under a 
 kind of dispensation of grace ; the law existing solely 
 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 shopman, 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 in- 
 ferior 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 
 
46 MAKE EUTHERFOED'S DELIVERANCE, 
 
 endured, he was the first person to he protected from 
 it, and he accepted the greatest sacrifices, with a grace- 
 ful acknowledgment, it is true, hut with no repulse. 
 To what hetter purpose could the hest wine he put 
 than in cherishing his imagination. It was simple 
 waste to allow it to he 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 childhood. 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 hy 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 .4 s 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 afiFection, of its superiority to books, and on 
 the pleasure and profit of self-denial. I do not mean to 
 accuse Clem of downright hypocrisy. I have known 
 many persons come 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 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 47 
 
 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, 
 uncomplaining 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 was I was so 
 driven : they would make me go here and go there, 
 and I kept putting off my visit to you tUl it was too 
 lata" Fortunately my train was just starting, 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 imme- 
 diately to some well-dressed ofScer-like gentleman with 
 
48 MAEK EUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 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 consequently we cannot expect anybody 
 to gravitate towards us with any forceful impulse. It 
 is a bitter experience. And yet there is consolation. 
 The universe 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 incomprehen- 
 sible 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. 49 
 
 CHAPTEK IV. 
 A NECESSARY DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 The few friends who have read the first part of my 
 autobiograpby 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 
 intercourse with Butts, that the two were married. 
 He of course, living so near her, had known her 
 well, and he 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 near Butts a small 
 squire, married, but with no family. He was a 
 lethargic creature, about five-and-thirty years old, 
 farming eight himdred 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 
 
so Mark euthehford's beliveeance. 
 
 round. He was like every other squire whom I 
 rememher 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 aught I know may 
 restrict it now. There was with us one huge and dark 
 exception to the general uniformity. 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 thousand 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. 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. ji 
 
 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, 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 
 understood 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 Clem 
 became great friends. She discovered that his mother 
 was a Frenchwoman, and this was a bond between 
 them. She discovered also that Clem 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 might be found to assert a 
 claim of equality with those who were better born. 
 
52 MARK EUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 The women in the country-side 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 of George James Fox, and the Whig poKcy 
 of 1802. 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 Clem, 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 thirty — who is there who is not always 
 essentially the same ? — and yet, what was a defect at 
 twenty, has become transformed 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 may 
 continually be noticed in the hereditary transmission 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 
 
MAKE RUTHERFOED'S DELIVERANCE. 53 
 
 that virtue to be the father's salvation. The propen- 
 sity, 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 assistance 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 Clem'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 Clem was to take 
 part together with the squire's lady. Clem conse- 
 quently 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. Clem'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 not like to acknowledge, is the secrecy and 
 equivocation which they beget. From the very first 
 moment when the intimacy between the squire's wife 
 and Clem began to be anything more than harmless, 
 he was compelled to shuffle and to become contemptible. 
 At the same time I believe he defended 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 
 
54 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 by which the two sinners drew nearer and nearer 
 together, for the simple reason that this is an autobio- 
 graphy, and not a novel. I do not know what the 
 development was, nor did anybody except the persons 
 concerned. Neither do I know what was the mental 
 history of Mrs. Butts during this unhappy period. She 
 seldom talked about it afterwards. I do, however, 
 happen to recollect hearing her once say that her 
 greatest trouble was the cessation, from some unknown 
 cause, of Clem'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 defec- 
 tion from himself, of anything of which he is ashamed, 
 everything which is 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. 
 Not until weeks, months, and 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. Clem, 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. Clem, going on from bad to worse, had 
 now reached the point of planning to be at the HaU 
 when the squire was not at home. On that particular 
 
MAKK EUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 55 
 
 afternoon Clem 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 Clem singing. It was over, and Clem, sitting 
 down beside her at the piano, and pointing out with 
 his right hand some passage which had troubled him, 
 had placed his left arm on her shoulder, and round her 
 neck, she not resisting. He always swore afterwards 
 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 dismounting 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 Clem 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. Clem 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 Clem, 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, Clem came to 
 himself ; there was nobody to be seen ; and he managed 
 to get up and crawl home. He told his wife he had 
 
56 MARK EUTHEEFOED'S DELIVEEANCB. 
 
 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 f oUows : — 
 
 " 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 communicate 
 with you rather than with your husband. For 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 unjustifiable 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 wUl seek your pardon for his baseness, and you will 
 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 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 57 
 
 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 reaUy think that she 
 would in the end be happier because Butts would not 
 have a secret reserved from her, — a temptation to lying 
 — and because with this secret in her possession, he 
 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 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 Tiatura. 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 resulting deed, and think it 
 very probable that the squire was both cruel and mer- 
 ciful 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 afterwards. Clem, 
 however, packed up and left the town, after selling his 
 business. He had a reputation for restlessness; and 
 
58 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 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 
 determined 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. I cannot say 
 that she loved him as she could have loved, but she 
 had accepted him, and she said to herself that as per- 
 haps 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 they suffer from the consequences of their 
 own misdeeds, in her did not exist. 
 
 During almost the whole of her married life, before 
 this affair between the squire and Clem, 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. Heading, however, under 
 such circumstances, is likely to be peculiarly profit- 
 able. It is never so profitable as when it is undertaken 
 
MAEK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 59 
 
 in order that a positive need may be satisfied or aa 
 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 lengthening 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 
 barbarous, but yet we all of us, 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 afHiction 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 con- 
 duct. Paul preached the imminent advent of Christ 
 and besought his disciples, therefore, to watch, and we 
 ask ourselves what is 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 haud, and 
 we expect to meet Him, as to abstain from it because 
 by our abstention we shall be healthier or more pros- 
 
6o MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 perous. 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 enlightened 
 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 inability to concur in 
 the present condition of things. 
 
 Going back to Clem's wife ; she laid hold, as I have 
 said, upon heaven. The thought wrought in her some- 
 thing more than forgetfulness of pain or the expectation 
 of counterpoising bliss. We can understand 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 be- 
 stowed upon us, when we consider that we live sur- 
 rounded by the soundless depths in which the stars 
 repose. Such a consideration 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 soft- 
 ened, 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 Clem's wife to him, if not entirely 
 due to the New Testament, was in a great measure 
 
MARK EUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 6i 
 
 traceable to it She had learned from the Epistle to 
 the Corinthians that charity beareth aU 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 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 simplicity, " 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 
 
62 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 to the uttermost, never despairing. This has always 
 seemed to me to be the real meaning of the word faith. 
 It is permanent confidence in the idea, a confidence 
 never to be broken down by apparent failure, or by 
 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 aU 
 ages. " Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing ? and 
 one of them shall not faU 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, how- 
 ever, 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 ; 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 consoiousnesa 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S BELIVEEANCE. 63 
 
 of fulfilling the special orders of One who was hei- 
 superior. There is no doubt that this dogma of a per- 
 sonal 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 con- 
 ceive 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 thai 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 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 obtain refreshment and strength. 
 
 Just about the time that we began our meetings near 
 Drury Lane, I heard that Clem 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. 
 
04 MARK EUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 WHAT IT ALL CAME TO. 
 
 Foe 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 otherwise 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 sometimes 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 effijrts 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 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 65 
 
 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 incessant war- 
 fare 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 civilisation seemed 
 nothing but a thin film or crust lying over a volcanic 
 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 main- 
 tenance of the masses of dark, impenetrable, subter- 
 ranean blackguardism, with which we became acquainted. 
 The filthy gloom of the sky, the dirt of the street, the 
 absence of fresh 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 popula- 
 tion be not checked. To stand face to face with the 
 insoluble is not pleasant. A man wUl 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 I 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 might some 
 day develop itself which will be able to resist and 
 
66 MAEK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 remove the pressure which sweeps and crushes into a 
 hell, sealed from the upper air, millions of human soula 
 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 
 faU — 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 impossible, and he is apt to break 
 his heart because he has never even touched it, but 
 nevertheless his whole life is the sweeter for the striv- 
 ing; 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 cabinet- 
 maker — not as a master but as a journeyman, for he 
 had no abUity 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 
 
MAKK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 67 
 
 stand or sit behind his counter with regularity.but people 
 would not come to buy of him, because he never seemed 
 to consider their buying as any favour conferred on him ; 
 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 ob- 
 taining 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 ouly, near Clare Market, 
 and becan 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. 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 
 
68 MARK RUTHEEFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 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 
 who stand for something, would not have taken the 
 slightest notice of him. He had read nothing particular, 
 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 dis- 
 regard of him at the office. He was a servant of ser- 
 vants. 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. 
 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 
 
MAKK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 69 
 
 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 becom- 
 ing reckless ? A little more of such a life would have 
 transformed him into a brute. He had not the ability 
 to become revolutionary, or it would have made him a 
 conspirator. Suffering of any kind is hard to bear, but 
 the suffering which especially damages character is that 
 which 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 ordi- 
 nance of nature, but he could not lie still under con- 
 tempt, 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 shopkeeper, 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 
 
70 MAKK RUTHEEFOKD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 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 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 workman, 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 morninw 
 with sweeping the dining-room, cleaning the tables 
 and the gas globes, and at twelve business commenced 
 
JiLiKJi mrrHiSKFOKiyST)ELIVERANCE. 71 
 
 with early luncheons. Not tiU three-quarters of an 
 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 impossible 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 off 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 remon- 
 strance or murmuring that every cross in his life came 
 to him as a chop alleged by an irritated customer to 
 be raw or done to a cinder. Poor wretch ! he had one 
 trouble, however, which he could not accept with such 
 equanimity, or rather with such indifference. His wife 
 was a drunkard. This was an awful trial to him. The 
 worst consequence was that bis boy knew that hJ3 
 
72 MARK RUTHERFOUD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 mother got drunk. The neighbours kindly enough 
 volunteered to look after the little man when he was 
 not at school, and they waylaid him and gave him 
 dinner when his mother was intoxicated ; but fre- 
 q^uently he was the first when he returned to find 
 out that there was 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 tiU 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 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 supported 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 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 73 
 
 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. Ho 
 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 
 somehow it seemed too good to be true." That was 
 his 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 iU, but sufficient to make 
 her miserable. They had no children. Cardinal in 
 early life had been a member of an orthodox Dissenting 
 congregation, 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, 
 
74 MARK KUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 but he read all kinds of romances and poetry without 
 any order and upon no system. He had no dis- 
 criminating faculty, and mixed up together the most 
 heterogeneous mass of trumpery novels, French trans- 
 lations, and the best 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 often selected some fantastical 
 motive which he had found set forth as operative in 
 one of his heroes, and he brought it into his busi- 
 ness, much to the astonishment of his masters and 
 customers. For this reason he was not stable. He 
 changed employers 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 mora 
 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 reinvigoration. His habit then 
 was to consume the whole day — day after day — in 
 reading or in walking 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 mistakes. 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 sharp- 
 ness and patience, and would even have killed any 
 woman whom she knew had won his affection. He, on 
 the other hand, openly avowed that marriage without 
 love was nothing, and flaunted without the least modi- 
 fication the most ideal theories as to the relation 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 75 
 
 between man and woman. Not that he ever went 
 actually wrong. His boyish education, 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 considera- 
 tion — ^the balancing of this against that — to hear a 
 man suddenly propose 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 handsome 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 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 con- 
 fidence in him. He was an honest, affectionate soul, 
 and his peculiarities were a necessary result of the 
 total chaos of a time without any moral guidance. 
 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 
 
76 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 others, and amicjst the storm and pitchy darkness of 
 the night, thousands and hundreds 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; 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 infidelities. She was literally possessed, and 
 who shall be hard upon her ? Nobody cared for her ; 
 everybody 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 would 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 after- 
 wards. He was not slow to disclose to me his miserable 
 condition, 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 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 77 
 
 miglit become at least bearable witb 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 tenderness 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 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 
 something like atheism to forsake his clearly-discerned, 
 simple rule for a course which was dictated by no easily- 
 grasped higher law, and it was very difficult to persuade 
 him that there is anything of equal authority in a law 
 less rigid in its outline. However, 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 wonderfully 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 trades- 
 man, working hard from early morning till late at 
 night, and burdened with a number of children. The 
 boy Eichard, shut out from the companionship of hia 
 
78 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 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 Meet 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 had been run round the wall 
 about four feet from the ceiling. This was provided 
 with desks and gas lamps, and up there Clark sat, 
 artificial 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, what- 
 ever his energy might have been. He had got lodgings 
 in Newcastle Street, and to these he returned in the 
 evening, remaining there alone with his little library, 
 and seldom moving out of doors. He was unhealthy 
 constitutionally, and his habits contributed to make 
 him more so. Everything 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 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 79 
 
 been endowed with an organisation coarse and com- 
 monplace, 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 other- 
 wise 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 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 
 forward with a kind of joy— merely because of the 
 variation— to the day on which he had fixed to go 
 back to the quill after using steel. He would deter- 
 mine, 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 sHliness 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 
 
8o MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 by side in his gallery with other young men of rather 
 a degraded type, and the confinement bred in them a 
 filthy grossness with which they tormented him. They 
 excited in him loathsome images, from which he could 
 not free himself either by day or night. He was pecu- 
 liarly weak in his inability to cast off impressions, or 
 to get rid of mental pictures when once formed, and 
 his distress at being haunted by these hateful, disgust- 
 ing thoughts was pitiable. They were in fact almost 
 more than thoughts, they were transportations out of 
 himself — real visions. It would have been his salva- 
 tion if he could have been a carpenter or a bricklayer, 
 in country air, but this could not be. 
 
 Clark had no power to think connectedly to a 
 conclusion. When an idea came into his head, he 
 dwelt upon it incessantly, and no correction of the 
 false path upon which it set him was possible, because 
 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 be- 
 lieved 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 continually 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 pene- 
 trative 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 
 
MARK EUTHERPORD'S DELIVERANCE. 8? 
 
 he lost himself in endless mazes. If he could hut have 
 heen persuaded to content himself with sweet presenta- 
 tions of wholesome happy existence, with stories and 
 with history, how much hetter it would have been for 
 him! He had had no proper training whatever for 
 anything more, he was ignorant of the exact meaning 
 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 education in dissenting Calvinism, 
 a religion which is entirely metaphysical, and encour- 
 ages, unhappily, in everybody a taste for tremendous 
 problems. So long as Calvinism is unshaken, the mis- 
 chief 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. 
 
82 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 CHAPTEE VL 
 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 
 piU 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 concerned 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 some- 
 thing distinctly. They had great gaping needs which 
 they longed to satisfy, intensely practical and special. 
 Some of these necessities 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 was to live — at least in sanity. He had fortu- 
 nately learned shorthand, and M'Kay got him employ- 
 ment on a newspaper. His knowledge of his art was 
 by no means perfect at first, but he was sent to attend 
 meetings where verbaiim reports were not necessary, 
 and he quickly advanced. Taylor, too, we tried to 
 remove, and we succeeded in attaching him to a largo 
 
MAKK KUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 83 
 
 club as an out-of-doors porter. The poor man wag 
 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 per- 
 sons 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 pre- 
 sent 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 fre- 
 quently cannot read for want of a place in which to 
 read. Moreover, they require to be provoked by a 
 stronger stimulus than 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 f 
 main object was to create in our hearers contentment 
 with their lot, and even some joy in it. That was our 
 religion; 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 
 
84 MARK RUTHEKFORD'S DELIVERANCE 
 
 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 EeconcUiation, 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 estrangement, but yet agreeing with 
 it in making it my duty of duties to suppress revolt, 
 and to submit calmly 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 no- 
 thing 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 wiU be found, every one of them, to have in- 
 carnated certain vital dociuues which it has cost 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 85 
 
 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 
 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 (mr faith. The halt in indifference 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 nothing beyond; incessantly 
 attempt an advance, and at last a light, dim it may 
 be, wUl arise. It will not be a completed system, 
 perfect in aU points, an answer to all our questions, 
 but at least it wiU 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 aU 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 one another, 
 in music, and in the exercise of thought There can 
 
86 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 surely be no question that the sum of satisfaction 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 Uiss. The proper attitude, 
 the attitude enjoined by the severest exercise of the 
 reason is, 7 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 
 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. 
 
jUAttJS. iiUTJlEJiFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 87 
 
 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 churchyard 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. Considering 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 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 refor- 
 mation 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 
 
88 MARK RUTHEBFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 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 pas- 
 sionate 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 nakedness. What 
 comfort is there discoverable for the wretched which 
 is not based upon illusion? We could not tell him 
 that all he endured was right and proper. But even 
 to him we were able to offer something. We did aU 
 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 evening occasionally, and brought 
 his boy. Father and son were pulled up out of the 
 vault, brought into the daylight, 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 ex- 
 plained to the father as well. When the anguish be- 
 gotten 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. 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 89 
 
 "Having death as an ally, I do not tremble at 
 shadows," is an immortal quotation from some un- 
 known 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 elas- 
 ticity and recoil developed itself. John's one thought 
 now was 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 pro- 
 duced 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 one 
 
go MARK RUTHEEFOKD'S DELIVERANCE, 
 
 or two more which perhaps are worth preservation. 
 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 profoundly 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 in- 
 tuitions. Everywhere in nature we see exaction of 
 penalties down to the uttermost farthing, but follow- 
 ing after this we discern forgiveness, obliterating and 
 restorative. Both tendencies exist. Nature is Ehada- 
 manthine, and more so, for she visits the sins of the 
 fathers upon the children ; but there is in her also an 
 infinite Pity, healing aU. wounds, softening all calamities, 
 ever hastening to alleviate and repair. Christianity in 
 strange historical 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 pro- 
 claims the unity of our nature. To philosophy every 
 passion is as natural as every act of saintlike negation, 
 and one of the usual effects of thinking or philo- 
 sophising is to bring together aU that is apparently 
 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 
 
MARK RUTHEEFOED'S DELIVEEANCE. 9, 
 
 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 personal devil No doubt 
 there is no such thing existent; 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 Christianity 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 
 bi'cause 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 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 aU 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 
 modem Christians, the Greeks and Eomans lived in no 
 clearer L'ght than that which shines on me. The critics, 
 too, will condemn because of our weakness; but this 
 
93 MAEK EUTHERFOED'S DELIVEEANCE. 
 
 defect I at once concede. The severest critic could not 
 possibly be so severe as I am upon myself. I Tcnow 
 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 deserved 
 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 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. 
 
MAEK RUTHEEFOED'S DELIVEEANCE. 
 
 93 
 
 CHAPTER VIL 
 
 QUI DEDIT IN MARI VIAM. 
 
 From time to time I received a newspaper from my 
 native town, and one morning, looking over the ad- 
 vertisements, 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 re- 
 collected that memorable resolution after Miss Arbour's 
 story years ago. How true that counsel of Miss 
 Arbour's was I and yet it had 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 inexplicable emotion ? A thou- 
 sand 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 nothing. It is broken off for a 
 
94 MARK HUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 multitude of reasons, and he sees its absurdity. Ha 
 marries afterwards some other woman whom he even. 
 adores, and he has children for whom he spends his 
 life ; yet in an ohscure 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 not for a moment confess that my love for EUen 
 had returned. I knew who she was and what she was, 
 and what had led to our separation ; but nevertheless, all 
 this obstinately remained 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 un- 
 expected 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 hap- 
 pened 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 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE, 95 
 
 her. I shrank from writing to her or from making 
 myself known to her, and at last I hit upon the ex- 
 pedient 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 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, where the water was 
 dangerously deep, 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 excursions upwards beyond where the navi- 
 gation ends, or, stiU more fascinating, down to where 
 the water widens and sails are to be seen, and there is 
 a foretaste 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 fuU 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, 
 
96 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 that I sat at a distance from the window in the coffee- 
 room, and read diligently last week's Bell's Weekly 
 MesseTi^er. 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 " K 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 alto- 
 gether, I was mistaken. The cheek-bones were more 
 prominent 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 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 97 
 
 and although the darkness of sorrow gleamed behind 
 it, the sorrow did not seem to be ultimate, but to be in 
 frorit 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 neatness — 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 witb 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 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 dropping 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 ? " 
 "No. The necessity for taking to it baa only lately 
 arisen." 
 
98 MARK RUTIIEllFORD'S DELIVERANCK 
 
 " 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 ? " 
 
 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 
 eay something in order to explain my position." 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 99 
 
 "May I ask what salary you -will rec[uire 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." 
 
 "I thought the Independents objected 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 important 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 advertisement presented itself, I 
 might make some preliminary inquiries. Perhaps, how- 
 ever, 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." 
 
loo MARK RUTHERFOED'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 " I understand you perfectly, and feared that this 
 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, 
 but 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 con- 
 fidences, confessions, tendernesses, rushed upon me. 
 What is there which is more potent than the recollec- 
 tion 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 over- 
 mastered 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 inter- 
 rogation, and something swiftly passed across her face, 
 which warned me 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 
 
MAKK KUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. loi 
 
 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 distant 
 sound of the town clock striking twelve ; we rose and 
 went on together to Cowston by the river bank, 
 returning late in the evening. 
 
102 MARK EUTHEEFOKD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 CHAPTEE Vm 
 
 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 was altered. She had been driven into religion by 
 trouble, and knowing nothing of criticism or philosophy, 
 retained the old forms for her religious feeling. But 
 the very quickness of her emotion caused her to 
 welcome all new and living modes of expressing it. It 
 is only when feeling has ceased to accompany a creed 
 that it becomes fixed, and verbal departures from it are 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 103 
 
 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 insufiScient. 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 calculate 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. 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. Nobody 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 cir- 
 cumstance of enforced idleness of brain, the most loath- 
 
104 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 some 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. 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 dis- 
 covered 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 any- 
 thing 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 
 
MAEK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 105 
 
 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 business, 
 and he never blundered. All his work was thorough, 
 down to the very bottom, and he had the most into- 
 lerant hatred of everything which was loose and in- 
 accurate. He never passed a day without 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 language 
 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 pro- 
 duced 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-mortification 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 provocation. It was very difficult, 
 but how many times I have blessed myself for adhe- 
 sion to it. Instead of going home undone with excite- 
 ment, and trembling with fear of dismissal, I have 
 
•io6 MARK EUTHERFOKD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 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 oflBce 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 importance. I cut off my 
 office life in this way from my life at home so com- 
 pletely that I was two selves, and my true self was not 
 stained by contact with my other self. It was a com- 
 fort 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 person 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. 
 1 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 husband ; 
 I was, in short, a man. By this scrupulous isolation, I 
 preserved myself, and the clerk was not 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 some- 
 thing 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 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 107 
 
 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 sharp- 
 ness; and the sole of the foot was in time provided 
 with a merciful callosity. Then, too, there was de- 
 veloped an appetite which was voracious for all that 
 was best. Who shall tell the revulsion on reaching 
 home, which I should 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 everybody. 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 
 
io8 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 silently endured outbreak on the part of my master, 
 more galling because I could not put it aside as alto- 
 gether gratuitous ; 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 
 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 comprehend 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 uncontrollable 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,! should 
 be miserable. Eather, I take it, is the love of woman 
 
MARK EUTHEIIFOEDS DELIVERANCE. 109 
 
 to man a revelation of the relationsliip in which God 
 stands to him — of what ougM to be, in fact. In the 
 love of a woman to the man who ia 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 per- 
 force 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. 
 
 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 attrac- 
 tive, 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 twopenny omnibus fare. Certain 
 it is, that we went out of our way sometimes to induce 
 
no MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 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 be- 
 haviour was so universal that, without the least affecta- 
 tion, 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 any- 
 thing 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 antiquarian. He had discovered in an excava- 
 tion 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 considered 
 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 
 
MARK RtTTHERPOHD'S DELIVERANCE. iii 
 
 abruptly. I began to think after he had gone that my 
 study of Shakespeare was mere dilettantism, but I after- 
 wards came to the conclusion that if a man wishes to 
 spoil himself for Shakespeare, the best thing he can do 
 is to turn Shakespearian 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 consequence, 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 growing 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 
 
112 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 should fall. So at last, the possibility of disaster ceased 
 to affright me. I had been brought off safely so many 
 times 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 wiitten 
 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 propose 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 characteristic 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 because it is easy to be melancholy, and the time 
 lacks strength. 
 
 As I am now setting down, without much order or 
 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 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCR 113 
 
 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 intervention 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 consumed. 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 wmld 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. 
 
it4 MARK RU'faERPORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 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 
 swiftness of its flight. Oh, how absurd is man ! If we 
 were to reckon up all the moments wliich we really 
 enjoy for their own sake, how few should we find them 
 to be I The greatest part, far the greatest part, of our 
 lives is spent in dreaming over the morrow, and when 
 it comes, it, too, is consumed in the anticipation of a 
 brighter morrow, and so the cheat is prolonged, even to 
 the grave. This 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 walked along that dreary N"ew 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 right ? Straight- 
 way it seemed as if the centre of a whole system of 
 dissatisfaction were removed, and as if the system 
 
MARK EUTHERFOED'S DELIVEEANCE. 115 
 
 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 
 rides. Keep out of view him who rides and all per- 
 sons 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 con- 
 victs 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 cen- 
 turies have rolled on, and who cares for those con- 
 troversies 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 settlemenl>-if I cowld ^waya do this 
 .^what a blessing it would be. 
 
Ii6 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 HOLIDAYS. 
 
 I HAVE said that Ellen had a child by her first hushancL 
 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 re- 
 minded me of her paternal grandmother for a moment, 
 and then disappeared. She had rather coarse dark 
 hair, small black eyes, round face, and features some- 
 what 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 dis- 
 appointment — not that she was positively careless, 
 but she took no pride in dress, nor in keeping her 
 room and her wardrobe neat. She was fond of bright 
 colours, which was another trial to Ellen, who disliked 
 any approach to gaudiness. She was not by any means 
 a fool, and she had a peculiarly swift mode of express- 
 ing herself upon persons and things. A stranger look- 
 ing at her would perhaps have adjudged her inclined 
 to sensuousness, 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 cat 
 
MAUK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 117 
 
 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 use- 
 less, 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 slow- 
 ness in learning ; it was, in fact, painful to be obliged 
 to teach her. I thought that perhaps she might have 
 some undeveloped 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 Hastings, and accord- 
 ingly Ellen, Marie, and myself were at London Bridge 
 Station early in the morning. It was a lovely summer's 
 day in mid-July. The journey down was uncomfortable 
 enough in consequence of the heat and dust, but we 
 heeded neither one nor the other in the hope of seeing 
 
ii8 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 the sea. We reached Hastings at about eleven o'clock, 
 and strolled -westwards 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 smoke by a distance so 
 distinct that the masts of the ships whose hulls were 
 buried below the horizon 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 after- 
 noon into evening ; and it is only in the country, there- 
 fore, that a day seems stretched out into its proper 
 lengtL 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 differed 
 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 every- 
 thing lie in it, that the wavelets which licked the beach 
 were as pure and bright as if they were a part of tho 
 
MAEK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 119 
 
 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 Fairlight. Some fishing-boats 
 were becalmed just in front of us. Their shadows slept, 
 or almost slept, upon the water, a gentle quivering alone 
 showing that it was not complete sleep, or if sleep, that 
 it was sleep with dreams. The intensity of the sunlight 
 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 separation of individual 
 parts into such vivid isolation was so surprising that 
 even Marie noticed it, and said it " all seemed 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 shutting out aU thought of it. E"o 
 reminiscences and no anticipations disturbed us; the 
 present was sufficient, 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 how few 
 people know how to enjoy one, although they are so 
 precious. We do not sufficiently consider that enjoy- 
 ment of every kind is an art carefully to be learnt, and 
 specially the art of making the most of a brief space 
 
120 MAEK KUTHERFOro*S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 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 eating and drinking than is neces- 
 sary. Eating and drinking produce stupidity, at least 
 in some degree, which may just as weU 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 surprised 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 lightning 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 
 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 
 rufiied patch appeared on the horizon, and we agreed 
 that it was time to go. The indistinguishable continu- 
 ous growl now became articulated into distinct crashes. 
 I had miscalculated 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 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 121 
 
 ■way. We reached the station at ahout 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 cauldron 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 round us from a dark, heavy, grey sky. 
 The carriage 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 
 Ked Hill became noisier, as the brandy-flasks which had 
 been well filled at Hastings began to work. Many 
 were drenched, and this was an excuse for much of the 
 drinking ; although for that matter, any excuse or none 
 is generally sufficient. At Eed 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 
 EUen and Marie should see. The carriage was Hghted 
 fortunately by one dim lamp only which hung m the 
 middle, and I succeeded at last in gettmg seats at the 
 further end, where there was a knot of more decent 
 
122 MARK RUTHEKFOED'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 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 slowest pace, and, finally, the railway 
 company discharged 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. Tuesday night passed, and the fever still in- 
 creased. 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 Somer- 
 set House, came into my mind. He, as I have said 
 when talking about him, was married, but had no 
 chUdren. To him accordingly I went. I never shall 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 123 
 
 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 affection. Mrs. 
 Taylor was an "ordinary woman." She was about 
 fifty, rather stout, and entirely uneducated. But when 
 she took charge at our house, all her best qualities 
 found expression. It is true enough, omnium consensu 
 capax imperii nisi imperasset, 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 sur- 
 prised himself by a resource and coolness which he 
 never suspected 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 drunk as we were 
 coming home. I have no mind to describe what EUen 
 suffered. Suffice it to say, that 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 attention she might at any moment 
 have slipped out of our hands. I was like a man ship- 
 wrecked and alone in a polar country, whose existence 
 depends upon one spark of fire, which he tries to 
 cherish, left glimmering in a handful of ashes. Oh 
 
J24 MARK RUTHEEFOEFSTJELlTERANCir 
 
 those days, prolonged to weeks, during which that 
 dreadful struggle lasted — days swallowed up with one 
 sole, intelise, 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 office. 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 
 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 sickroom by Mrs. Taylor before she 
 
MAEK RUTHERFOED'S DELIVERANCE. 125 
 
 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 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 unrestrained adora- 
 tion 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, without even consciousness on the part of 
 the instrument 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 
 caUed a little child and set him in the midst of His dis- 
 
125 MARK KllTaERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 ciples. How I see the meaning of those words now ! 
 and so it is that a text will be with us for half a 
 lifetime, recognised as great and good, but not pene- 
 trated till the experience comes round to us in which 
 it was born. 
 
 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 in- 
 creased 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 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 
 U3 ? — 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. 
 
 It was late in the autumn before Ellen had thoroughly 
 
MARK RUTHEEFOED'S DELIVERANCE. 127 
 
 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 slowly swelled and 
 died 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 
 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 deepened 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 
 
128 MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. 
 
 and ferns, and was content. We were all completely 
 happy. We strained our eyes to see the furthest point 
 hefore 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. Everything in the future, even the 
 winter in London, was painted by Hope, and the death 
 of the summer brought no sadness. Rather 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 
 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. To- 
 wards midday, 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 
 
MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE. X29 
 
 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. 
 
 B.S. 
 
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