BL 200 .T73 1897 
 Trevor, John, 1855- 
 My quest for God 
 
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 [Front isf>iccc. 
 
MY QUEST FOR GOD 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN ^TREVOR 
 
 All my emprises have been fill'd with Thee, 
 
 My speculations, plans, begun and carried on in thoughts of Thee 
 bailing the deep or journeying the land for Thee ; ' 
 
 Intentions, purports, aspirations mine, leaving results with Thee. 
 
 O, I am sure they really came from Thee, 
 
 The urge, the ardour, the unconquerable will, 
 
 The potent, felt, interior command, stronger than words 
 
 A message from the Heavens whispering to me even in sleep, 
 
 Inese sped me on. 
 
 Walt WHiTMAN.-7/ze Prayer of Columbus. 
 
 LONDON 
 LABOUR PROPHET" OFFICE 
 72, FLEET STREET, E.G. 
 1897 
 
IN PREPARATION. 
 
 THE STORY OF THE LABOUR 
 CHURCH. 
 
 By JOHN TREVOR. 
 
 This work will comprise an account of the early days 
 of the Labour Church, with a survey of its develop- 
 ment and present position. As My Quest for God 
 forms a preliminary study in Personal Religion, so 
 The Story of the Labour Church will form a pre- 
 liminary study in Social Religion. The Labour Church 
 will be presented as an ideal on the one hand, and as 
 a realised fact on the other. As realised, it already 
 forms a remarkable example of the spontaneous or- 
 ganisation by the people of their own religious life and 
 service. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 NOTES TO ILLUSTRATIONS V 
 
 PROLOGUE yjj 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. CHILDHOOD ........ I 
 
 II. SCHOOL LIFE 1 1 
 
 III. OTHER INFLUENCES ig 
 
 IV. ARCHITECTURE AND CONVERSION . . . .27 
 
 V. CHRISTIANITY IN LODGINGS 
 
 36 
 
 VI. LOVE AND DESTINY 4c 
 
 Vn. PHYSICAL COLLAPSE c^ 
 
 VIII. COLLAPSE OF FAITH 60 
 
 IX. LIFE AT SEA 5g 
 
 X. LETTERS HOME ^c 
 
 XI. SYDNEY AND THE BLUE MOUNTAINS . . . ,83 
 
 XII. OVERLAND TO MELBOURNE qa 
 
 XIII. BACK TO SYDNEY 104 
 
 XIV. SYDNEY TO SAN FRANCISCO 112 
 
 iii 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAl'. 
 
 XV. THE NARROW WAY . 
 XVI. SAN FRANCISCO TO MEADVILLE 
 XVII. MEADVILLE TO WEST CHESTER 
 XVIII. HOME AGAIN . . . • 
 
 XIX. LETTERS FROM FOLKESTONE 
 XX. MARRIAGE AND LONELINESS 
 XXI. INTO THE WILDERNESS . 
 XXII. POLITICS AND RELIGION . 
 
 XXIII. FROM COUNTRY TO COLLEGE 
 
 XXIV. PREACHING IN LONDON . 
 XXV. MANCHESTER MINISTRY . 
 
 XXVI. THE LABOUR CHURCH . 
 
 XXVII. HOW THE IDEA CAME 
 
 XXVIII. LIVELIHOOD AND LIFE . 
 
 XXIX. IN THE CHESHIRE HILLS 
 
 XXX. AU REVOIR 
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 PAGE 
 I20 
 
 127 
 148 
 
 187 
 200 
 207 
 219 
 226 
 
 244 
 
 253 
 266 
 272 
 
NOTES TO ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Frontispiece. — My Wife. From a photograph taken in New York a few 
 months before our marriage. 
 
 Page i. — My Paternal Grandfather. These portraits of my grandparents are 
 given to illustrate what I have said of my maternal and paternal heri- 
 tage, which needs some qualification, however. For this grandfather 
 was intensely sensitive to music, a sensitiveness which runs in his family, 
 though with no developed ear for it. On the other hand, I am aware 
 of no susceptibility to music in my mother's family. My inability to 
 live alone may also be traced to this grandfather, who married again 
 in his old age, because he found life with only the semblance of home 
 unendurable, arrangements made for his comfort notwithstanding. 
 As I think of myself, I feel grateful to this somewhat severe old man, 
 that neither could he accept the lines which relatives so thoughtfully 
 laid down for him. A spark of humour there must have been, after 
 all, somewhere in the depths of him. Did he not shock his second 
 wife with his inability to refrain from getting up from the tea-table 
 and dancing to the music of a hurdy-gurdy — its strains so irresistible ! 
 A kind of unripened humour, I imagine, waiting for further develop- 
 ment in later generations, who will laugh the more soundly for all 
 this involved in him. Yet how shocked he was when he found us 
 climbing over the bald head of our maternal grandfather, coming upon 
 us suddenly in our riot, and lecturing us sternly on our want of 
 respect for old age ! It is all very funny. But how darkly and deeply 
 we are rooted ! — And I learn that my dear old grandmother's novel 
 reading was carried to almost blamable extremes in one so pious ! 
 She was deaf, and made her deafness an excuse for reading even at 
 meals, though grudging none the less to lose anything of the con- 
 versation, and being rather exacting in expecting people to turn their 
 faces to her in talking. And her needlework was neglected, too ! 
 She would set herself about it — with a novel, innocently closed, not too 
 far from her basket — would, after a few stitches, take it up, just to 
 see what it was about — but the needlework would somehow slip from 
 her hands, the novel thenceforth the real thing for her, absorbing her 
 entirely. Dear old folk ! I thank God for your failings, blended as 
 they were with such virtues ! 
 
vi NOTES TO ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Page 2. — From a photograph taken not long after my father's death. These 
 and the following portraits of myself are given to illustrate this story 
 as a study in personal development. 
 
 ,, 4. — Lynn Road, Wisbech — as I knew it. My Grandmother's house, 
 the home of my boyhood, is the nearest of the three under the wind- 
 mill — the one with the bay window. 
 
 ,, 7. — My Maternal Grandmother. 
 
 „ 16. — From a photograph taken when I was about twelve. 
 
 „ 19. — The River at Wisbech. 
 
 „ 41. — My Uncle's Garden — wherein I read David Elginbrod— sacred to 
 me as my Wife's Home, now about to pass into the hands of strangers. 
 
 „ 5^- — From a photograph taken before sailing for Sydney — which 
 shows how near I came to being beaten then. 
 
 „ ^6. — Sydney Harbour, as I saw it across the Domain from my bed- 
 room balcony. 
 
 „ 86. — The Grose Vallej^, from the point by Govett's Leap whence I first 
 saw it. 
 
 „ 104.— A Sheet from the MS. of this Book, Placed here to qualify 
 what I have said on page 179 — showing that, if I write easily, I am 
 not easily satisfied, this work of reshaping and finishing being itself a 
 labour of love with me. Indeed, but for stern necessity, I should keep 
 back this book for much more thorough and prolonged revision than 
 circumstances now permit. — This page may stand, too, as a comment 
 on anything I may say, here or hereafter, on Freedom as an inward 
 possession. 
 
 134. — Meadville Theological School, with the Professors and some of 
 the Students, Session 1878-79. 
 
 156. — From a photograph taken soon after my return to Architecture, 
 my Wife being about to visit America, 
 
 184. — Our Home at Ballingdon. From a water-colour drawing which 
 I made on leaving, 
 
 200. — On the Yare near Norwich. In memory of a day spent there 
 with wife and children, the latter sailing their boats while I made 
 this water-colour sketch. 
 
 244, — From a photograph taken at the end of 1891, about two months 
 after the opening of the Labour Church in Manchester. 
 
 266. — From a photograph taken at the time of completing this book — 
 Autumn, 1897, 
 
PROLOGUE. 
 
 In the Art of Living, it is as though we had to work for years 
 with shutters closed, in such dim hght as may still pass through, 
 or by such borrowed light as we can get, always with uncertainty 
 and fear as to the final result. Then some unseen Hand throws 
 open the shutters unawares, and we see our work in a strange 
 glow of light, effects and meanings there of which we had not 
 dreamed, our bUndest bunglings appearing as cool transparent 
 shadows wherein the eye can now gratefully rest. In which 
 moment of vision we learn many things — that it was enough 
 that we meant to paint a picture, to do our best, though bungling 
 about in the dark — that it was enough that we had a purpose 
 in our work, though not the highest and truest, but the highest 
 and truest we knew — that, to faithful effort, even in the dark, 
 the Eye was not wanting that could guide our hand, though not 
 yet realised as, in part, our own. But this, perhaps, surprises us 
 most — that the product of our toil is stamped with that highest 
 artistic quality — Inevitability — which reveals a Genius we had 
 not suspected in our work. With all this sudden insight, a joy 
 thrills through us, like that of a little child, whom some kindly 
 visitor assures that he has grown. Then, when the shutters again 
 fall to, we have confidence — a Self-confidence which transcends 
 our self^that our work will tell ; though not, perhaps, as we 
 had hoped. 
 
 To him who has once seen his past in the glow of this re- 
 vealing light, life can never be the same again, though the glow 
 may not last. Fate is known as a Friend, and Will as a gracious 
 gift, not blind, though working in the dark. 
 
Of ill-advised ambition and of pride 
 I would stand clear, but yet to me I feel 
 That an internal brightness is vouchsafed 
 That must not die, that must not pass away. 
 
 Possessions have I that are solely mine, 
 Something within which yet is shared by none, 
 Not e'en the nearest to me and most dear, 
 Something which power and effort may impart. 
 I would impart it, I would spread it wide. 
 
 Wordsworth. — The Recluse. 
 
[To face p. i. 
 
MY QUEST FOR GOD 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 Had infanticide prevailed at the time of my birth, I should 
 scarcely have been permitted to live. I was so poor a thing, 
 that a relative expressed the opinion that it would be better for 
 me to die. Certainly no influence of connections would have 
 saved me; for my father was but a struggling linen-draper, in 
 Scotland Road, Liverpool. Soon after my birth, which occurred 
 on October yth, 1855, he failed. When I was but five months 
 old, my mother, with my sister and myself, went to live with her 
 parents at Wisbech, while my father took a situation for a short 
 time in London. There he rejoined us, and we lived in a small 
 cottage next to the comparatively large house and garden of my 
 father's parents, who also lived at Wisbech. Thus my earliest 
 years were associated with poverty and sorrow. ■ 
 
 My paternal grandfather was a retired Lincolnshire farmer— a 
 fine old Puritan, who shaved on Saturday night to avoid needless 
 labour on the Sabbath, and objected to wearing linen fronts to 
 cotton shirts. Both he and my grandmother had rectitude 
 indelibly stamped upon them. They had become dissenters 
 from conviction, and had thereby incurred the ostracism of their 
 relatives in the Church. In those days dissent meant dissent 
 indeed. Once I asked why we did not keep Good Friday, and 
 was answered, "Because the Church people do." It was a 
 question whether any member of the National Church could 
 be saved. 
 
 My maternal grandfather had been a grocer and draper at 
 
2 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 Wisbech, and was now living in retirement upon an income 
 which strict economy made sufficient for the needs of very 
 simple lives. He was a joyous, contented, humble soul, much 
 given to meditation on heavenly things. Yet he was keenly 
 interested in human affairs. Only this do I remember of him 
 —that he used to take my sister and myself for walks, especially 
 to a particular farm-yard to see the turkeys ; and that he was 
 accustomed to sit alone in the dark, with a coloured silk hand- 
 kerchief over his head, and a glass of ale by his side ; in which 
 solitary musings or naps he contentedly allowed himself to be 
 disturbed by us children, even to letting us climb into his chair 
 and over his bald head. 
 
 From Wisbech we removed to Norwich, where my father's 
 brother was prospering in business. Here also we lived in a 
 small cottage overlooking what, in my memory, was a very large 
 garden, with a wonderful green summerhouse on the further side. 
 Some years since I sought out my former humble home, and 
 found the garden, that loomed so large in memory, to be very 
 small and commonplace. 
 
 In this cottage my father died when I was but four years old. 
 I have a very vague recollection of him smoking a long clay 
 pipe — a habit recommended to him, I believe, by his doctor. 
 That is all. But one fact which I was early told of him made 
 a deep impression on me, and was often a support to me in the 
 religious struggles of my boyhood. At a time when my life was 
 despaired of, he prayed, as a father would, that I might be 
 spared ; but added, that he would rather I should die in infancy 
 than grow up to be unsaved by the grace of God. When I was 
 old enough to have the need of redemption impressed upon 
 me — which was very early — the terror which fell upon me was 
 sometimes alleviated by the conviction that this prayer of my 
 father's would be answered, and that I had not been allowed 
 to live to be lost in hell at last. 
 
 My father was a lover of books, and my own shelves contain 
 several from the small collection which he left at his death. I 
 have read some of his letters to my mother, and have a MS. 
 book of his into which he used to copy extracts in poetry and 
 prose. These remains all suggest a mind that had little oppor- 
 tunity for expansion, and insufficient force to break its fetters. 
 On the other hand, he must have been well abreast of his times. 
 
ITofaccp. 
 
CHILDHOOD. 3 
 
 for I have a card showing that he was a member of the Anti 
 Corn Law League, and among his books were the twenty-seven 
 volumes of the Penny Cyclopaedia, Chambers' Encyclopedia 
 OF Literature, RolHn's Ancient History, and a large volume 
 of Shakspeare. These things indicate whither his tastes were 
 leading him ; and they might have led him much further but for 
 poverty and early death. 
 
 I daresay that an uninstructed person, reading the letters of 
 my parents, would conclude that theirs was a religion of mere 
 phrases, so constantly did their ideas express themselves in 
 stereotyped terms. I remember well, for instance, how fre- 
 quently the antithesis occurs between " the creature and the 
 Creator," and, •' Nature and Grace ; " and how, by the habitual 
 use of such set phrases, thought seems to be stifled and life 
 quenched. But such a judgment would be wide of the truth. 
 Formal as their religion was in its expression, it was very real 
 in its experiences, and gave them strength to pass confidently 
 through lives of exceptional pain and distress. Completely as 
 I have myself abandoned this formal outside, I am increasingly 
 convinced of the reality of that communion with God which was 
 its inward essence, and that no life which does not flower into 
 such communion has realised its own reality, or entered into that 
 higher form of consciousness which is the goal of human 
 development. 
 
 After my father's death, we removed again to Wisbech, where 
 we lived in a small house on the Walsoken Road, occupied by 
 my maternal grandparents, and an aunt, their only unmarried 
 child. My mother soon became a confirmed invalid, and died 
 when I was nine years old. I remember almost as little of her 
 as of my father, for during the last years of her life she was too 
 ill to have charge of her children— my sister and myself I knew 
 she had much suffering to endure; and the knowledge of this, 
 and of my father's early death, impressed me deeply with the 
 tragic side of human life. But this tragic side of life, so early 
 revealed to me, was not allowed to stand alone. I knew it was 
 accepted with resignation and confidence, as from the hands of 
 a loving Father, who did all things well. Suffering was to me, 
 therefore, never a meaningless mystery, much less a horrible 
 curse. It had its place in the divine economy, as a discipline 
 for this life, and a preparation for the life to come. 
 
 V 
 
4 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 A year after my father's death, my maternal grandparents 
 removed to a house on the Lynn Road, which Hves in my 
 memory as the home of my boyhood. I can see the old place 
 vividly as I write — the stone-coloured bay window, the wide road, 
 the eight-sailed mill, which many a time told me whether the 
 wind was suitable for sailing my boats, the canal with its muddy 
 banks joining the tidal river at the end of the road, where I often 
 watched the vessels load and unload their cargoes of coal and 
 timber and salt. The little garden at the back I also see, with 
 the rockery in the middle, covered with Poor-man's-Pepper and 
 London Pride, the rose-covered trellis-work at the end, hiding 
 the outbuildings beyond, and behind which I was allowed to 
 make fires of the kindling stored in the shed ; the large bowling- 
 green adjoining the garden, wherein, from the bedroom windows, 
 I sometimes witnessed fireworks, and once saw Blondin perform 
 his wonderful feats on the rope. 
 
 My surroundings were thus of the most commonplace sort, but 
 they were the scene of an intense though simple life, into which 
 I was early initiated. Here were made known to me, in many 
 a soul-stirring talk, the mysteries of life and death, of righteous- 
 ness and sin, of redemption and damnation, of predestination 
 and free grace, and of the crowning act of God's love in appear- 
 ing in human form on earth, and suffering on the cross. I was 
 indeed a "child of many prayers," my grandmother and my 
 aunt feeling doubtless the more anxious about me because the 
 natural guardians of my childhood were withdrawn. 
 
 Within a year from our removal to Lynn Road, my grandfather 
 died. The house still remained my home ; but after the death 
 of my other grandfather, my sister went to live with his widow — 
 a second wife. My sister and I were thus permanently separated, 
 and the loneliness of my boyhood increased. 
 
 My grandmother's talks on religion made a most profound 
 impression on my sensitive mind. My earliest clear recollections 
 are associated with the fear of Hell. I used to sleep in the same 
 room with my aunt, in a dark blue iron crib which stood beside 
 her bed. Well do I remember waking up one morning, in this 
 little crib, with a most distinct vision of Satan, with broad black 
 wings, hovering over my head, as if he had come to carry me 
 away in my sleep. I frequently had nightmare. Besides the 
 more usual kinds, there was one which was exceptionally and in- 
 
CHILDHOOD. 5 
 
 describably terrible. I used to fancy myself looking through a 
 
 key-hole into an empty room, which immediately grew bigger and 
 
 bigger, the walls receding continually from me with great rapidity. 
 
 My mind, meanwhile, suffered the intensest agony, as though 
 
 it were being drawn out to fill the ever growing space ; and I 
 
 woke with the sense of having been stretched on a mental rack, 
 
 until my whole being had been almost wrenched asunder. The / 
 
 impression of infinity as endless extension, and the intense torture 
 
 I experienced in feeling myself, as it were, drawn out and out , 
 
 to fill this growing space, were doubtless the result of my terrified 
 
 broodings over the endless pain and duration of Hell. 
 
 How to escape Hell ! — that was the one absorbing problem ^ 
 
 of my early years. I remember once persuading myself that, if 
 I could keep one of the Ten Commandments unbroken, I might 
 escape ; the one I felt pretty sure of obeying being, " Thou shalt 
 do no murder." Unfortunately for my peace of mind, I sought 
 a confirmation of my opinion, but was assured that, not only 
 would keeping one commandment be insufficient to save me, but 
 that breaking one was equal to breaking them all. To enforce 
 this statement, James, ii. to, was quoted. " For whosoever shall 
 keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is become 
 guilty of all." The law was regarded as a chain, one link of 
 which being broken, the whole would fall to the ground. 
 
 Thus, while I was still so young, the dark cloud of Hell began 
 to overshadow my whole life. It was not because it was pre- ^ 
 
 sented to me very dramatically in my religious teaching, though 
 it was always there — real, awful, unending, and only to be avoided 
 through faith in the blood of Christ. There must have been 
 something in my own mind which could not allow so frightful 
 a reality to remain in the background, but which insisted upon 
 dragging it out into the fullest light. If Hell was there, I must 
 know all about it, cost me what mental torture it would. So I 
 eagerly filled up from the Bible itself what was left untold of 
 my possible fate — the worm that dieth not, the fire that is not 
 quenched, the smoke of their torment ascending for ever and 
 ever. I feel appalled even now as I recall the sensations which 
 these pictures produced. 
 
 Above all things was a thunderstorm terrible to me, especially 
 at night. Bathed in perspiration and trembling with terror, I 
 asked myself what it would be if, that very night, I were killed 
 
6 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 and awoke in Hell, where I should never cease to suffer, and 
 whence there would be absolutely no hope of escape. It was 
 the endlessness of the thing that horrified me, the thought that, 
 after a thousand years, or a million years, the torment of pain 
 and despair would but have begun. No murderer walking to his 
 doom on the scaffold has suffered more terribly than I thus 
 suffered as a child. Over and over again have I wished that I 
 had never been born. 
 
 Very early I came to say to myself, " It is I ! " Like a red 
 hot furnace around me was the awful sense of being unable to 
 escape from my own personality. After all the millions and 
 millions of people who had been born upon this earth, I at last 
 had come, conscious of myself as no one else could be conscious 
 of me, and with a consciousness that could never die. It was 
 not another's life that I was conscious of ; it was my own life ; 
 and, once begun, it could never, never, cease. Often, in my 
 lessons, or at play, this thought, " It is I ! " would suddenly fill 
 my mind to the exclusion of all else, making my brain reel with 
 its tremendous import. 
 
 It is impossible to describe this experience in all its frightful 
 reality — the perception of the difference of my own personality 
 from the personality of those about me ; the feeling that, amidst 
 all these conscious bodies, it was this one alone that was filled 
 with the consciousness of my particular self; the conviction that 
 the most awful and irreparable doom might already be mine in 
 the consciousness of God, in which I had been taught that past, 
 present and future lived as one ever-present thought ; the know- 
 ledge that no human soul could interfere in my relations with 
 God, which were already determined in his unchangeable will. 
 A naked, solitary soul, I lay on the burning desert of life, no 
 shelter possible from the searching eye of God. All this mental 
 agony, prompted by the thought, " It is I ! " became so acute, 
 that I gradually discarded the idea of Hell as a place of physical 
 torment ; for in my own mind I bore a pain unspeakably worse 
 than any physical pain I had known. 
 
 And yet my grandmother, to whom I was most indebted for 
 religious teaching, had, like my grandfather, a warm and generous 
 heart, and was very human withal. None the less was she so 
 affectionately faithful in seeking the salvation of souls, that her 
 conversations were dreaded, not by myself alone, but by all the 
 
[To face p. 7. 
 
CtilLDHOOb. f 
 
 unsaved young people with whom she came in contact. On the 
 other hand, she was, in her old age, a great reader of novels and 
 of advanced literature. The first novel I ever read, Agatha's 
 Husband, was one which had been lent to her, and which she 
 had no objection to my reading. She had the Examiner, too, 
 every week, sent to her regularly by a friend, and passed on by 
 her to other friends, after she had carefully cut out anything she 
 considered dangerous. I well remember reading Ecce Homo to 
 her. This, however, ended with the remark, "You had better 
 put that book away, John, and get the Bible." Indeed, in the 
 only picture of her that lives in my memory, I see her seated at 
 the table in the little dining-room with the bay window overlook- 
 ing the small garden, with glasses on, a large Bible before her, 
 and a tender smile of deep peace illumining her aged face. 
 Whatever excursions she made in her reading, the Bible was 
 still her one book. 
 
 Her friend in these excursions into the world of letters was 
 a young lady of exceptional vitality, who long rebelled against the 
 restrictions laid upon her in the name of Religion, and was as 
 much of a Revoltress, and therefore a heroine, as such a com- 
 munity could well produce. She visited my grandmother regularly, 
 and lent her books, with the express stipulation that she was 
 never to be talked to about her soul; a condition which my 
 grandmother, I believe, loyally observed. In her old age this 
 friendship kept the world open to her, and gave her intercourse 
 with a kindred though more youthful spirit. Once, when remon- 
 strated with on the ground of her novel-reading, she excused 
 herself by saying, that she was so old that she quickly forgot 
 what she read. 
 
 To me there is something quaintly pathetic in all this — the 
 human heart, even in old age, asserting itself half-apologetically 
 in defiance of a narrow creed, which was yet so sincerely believed. 
 If I, too, had been strong enough to have demanded a truce to 
 these conversations of the soul, and to have lived with my grand- 
 mother in the cooler atmosphere of Novels, Ecce Homo ! and 
 the Examiner — ! Still, I had these open to me ; and though 
 I was too young to make much of them at the time, I think they 
 were as a seed in my life which afterwards bore fruit. I have 
 the memory, too, of my grandmother, apart from her terrible 
 creed — the memory of a devout, tender and strong soul, bowed 
 
8 MY QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 down with deepest sorrow, yet sustained by the very faith which 
 gave the keenest pang to her grief. For she had lost her oldest 
 and dearest son— a very able and charming man— "without 
 hope," as her creed compelled her to believe. She, too, had 
 had her Gethsemane, and had accepted the awful cup. At what 
 cost had she not kept her warm heart, her broad sympathies, 
 and the tender lines on her face ! 
 
 Of my Aunt, who was for years a mother to me, how can I 
 adequately speak ? She still lives, in her old age bearing much 
 physical suffering with a brave and warm heart. Such freedom 
 for expansion as I enjoyed in early life I owe chiefly to her. It 
 was she who allowed me to make the above-mentioned fires at 
 the bottom of the garden, never once complaining of the waste 
 of wood, though always obliged to be very economical in her 
 housekeeping. Later, when 1 wanted to make dutch-ovens, 
 tin boilers, and wooden boats, she never laid me under the least 
 restraint. She loved me dearly, as a child of her own ; and with 
 a fear lest she should be unkind to me, as the child of another. 
 From little things that I still recall, I am sure I helped to fill a 
 lonely corner in her heart. Deeply religious as she was, I cannot 
 remember that she talked to me systematically as her mother 
 did, though she was very faithful to me when I committed a 
 fault, pointing out the wrong I had done, and then praying with 
 me that I might be forgiven. 
 
 I was never taught to " say my prayers," and never encouraged 
 to pray as an act which was in itself a means of grace. Nothing 
 was allowed to come into my mind as a possible medium between 
 myself and God. I always had a sense that it was with God 
 immediately that I had to do. Prayer to God could be of no 
 service, save so far as it was prompted by his Holy Spirit ; and 
 my relatives had the wit to understand that the Holy Spirit would 
 not prompt a child to repeat "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild," 
 every night on going to bed. 
 
 Moreover, prayer to Jesus was not allowed ; only prayer in the 
 name of Jesus. Jesus was "God manifest in the flesh," not the 
 Son of God manifest in the flesh. While the deity of Christ was 
 held, the doctrine of the Trinity was denied. The unity of the 
 Godhead was asserted without compromise — Father, Son and 
 Holy Ghost being but different manifestations of the one Eternal 
 Spirit. The idea that " Jesus laid His glory by " was declared to 
 
CHILDHOOD. 9 
 
 be unscriptural, for there was no Jesus before the incarnation. 
 Equally false was the conception, more prevalent then than now, 
 that God needed reconciling to the world, and that Jesus came to 
 the rescue of fallen man by offering himself as a sacrifice to 
 appease the Divine wrath. They accepted simply the statement 
 of Paul, "that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto 
 himself." I never thought that the God against whom I had 
 sinned, and the God who suffered to save me, were two different 
 persons of a Triune God. 
 
 Thus the realities of the religious life were brought awfully near 
 to me as a child. There was no hocus-pocus of any kind— no 
 infant baptism, no god-fathers and god-mothers, no repetition of 
 prayers, no catechism, no means of grace save the immediate 
 operation of God's Spirit in the heart. Adult baptism was 
 practised, though not in itself as a means of grace, but as a 
 grateful confession of faith, and as a symbol of a spiritual 
 regeneration which had already taken place. So, too, the Lord's 
 Supper was partaken by all baptised persons, as an act of 
 gratitude and the symbol of a permanent spiritual condition. 
 Indeed, taking the Bible for their sole guide, these people seem 
 to me to have penetrated to bottom facts more deeply than most. 
 At any rate there was none of the weakness either of Liberalism 
 or of Ceremonialism among them ; no attempt to explain away 
 or to dress up the naked realities of their faith. 
 
 The longer I live in this world of convenient make-believe, 
 the more I thank God for the influence of these pious old folk. 
 False as many of their beliefs may have been, how sound and 
 solid and true they themselves were ! There was something 
 heroic, indeed, in the lives of many of them. Though to all 
 the world their grocery and their drapery seemed their sole 
 standard, and the sum total of their achievement ; yet, behind 
 the counter, and behind the little dining-room whence the counter 
 could be watched, and behind the narrow yard full of boxes and 
 tubs, their real life was lived— a tremendous soul-drama, ending 
 in triumphant entrance into immortal bliss. Whatever sorrow 
 my boyhood brought me, I am sure that intimate contact with 
 such intense living, though it almost scorched me up, was well 
 worth the cost. It made it for ever impossible for me to mistake 
 external appearances for the inward realites of life, or to accept 
 any cheap interpretation of human existence. 
 
lo MV QUESl FOR GOD. 
 
 If, in later years, when the old creed was no longer credible 
 to me, I was at times tempted to accept some frivolous gospel 
 or superficial belief, I might well have made Clough's words 
 my own : — 
 
 I have seen higher, hoHer things than these, 
 And therefore must to these refuse my heart. 
 
 And if, to-day, amid many difficulties, I yet feel strong in 
 spirit, and confident in God and in myself, I owe it in large 
 measure to the tremendous influences and disciplines of my 
 earliest years. Freedom and strength come to us only through 
 what we conquer. These old folk set me much to conquer, they 
 nurtured me in a giant's school, they set tasks before me that 
 nearly broke my back ; but I am still here, with some scars, yet 
 rejoicing in life, having found its meaning for me, and the work 
 I have to do. When I can believe that strength can come 
 without sorrow, and freedom without toi4, then I may feel dis- 
 posed to blame the teachers and inspirers of my youth. As it 
 is, I love and honour them with all my heart. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 SCHOOL LIFE. 
 
 Though my grandmother's house at Wisbech was my home 
 during my school hfe, it was not she who was my responsible 
 guardian, but my father's brother already mentioned, who lived 
 at Norwich ; his sister, who lived at Wisbech, acting in some 
 sort as his representative, buying my clothes, and interesting her- 
 self generally in my behalf. With all the generous care I have 
 had from these and other relatives, I have probably been better 
 off, in some respects, than if my parents had lived. My uncle 
 was much more successful in business than my father could ever 
 have been, and interpreted his responsibility towards his brother's 
 children in a very magnanimous spirit. Thus, in after years, 
 when my soul demanded freedom in its struggle for life, the 
 means to it were not wanting. The successful issue to these 
 struggles, as will appear more fully hereafter, has been largely 
 due to this. Indeed, if, from the time of my majority, I could 
 not have had a considerable amount of liberty, I believe that I 
 should long since have died — the demands of the soul are so 
 imperious. 
 
 But I had still to undergo a long course of discipline in a 
 severe school. I was an orphan ; and, to an orphan, life must 
 needs be hard. It was thought all the kinder, therefore, that I 
 should commence in early life those habits which were considered 
 necessary to enable me to push my way in the world. I do 
 not regret the results of this idea. They bore heavily on me at 
 the time ; but, as I look back on the past, I see that they all 
 fit into their place. There was no slovenliness in my bringing 
 up. I was always the object of earnest solicitude, and of prayer 
 which carried action with it. All that was done in my behalf 
 was based on principles and convictions sincerely held and 
 
12 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 affectionately applied. Indeed, what now strikes me as one of 
 the marked characteristics of the religious community, in which 
 I was brought up and widely related, is the responsibility which 
 each member of it felt towards all the rest. If their narrow 
 creed made them live in a narrow world, within the limits of 
 their world the sense of brotherly duty was very strong. 
 
 After spending some time at a Dame School, where I was 
 kept in continual fear of being consigned to the dark cellar, I 
 was sent, when but seven years old, to a boarding school at 
 Wisbech, kept by a very heartless woman. For the smallest 
 faults she would pull our ears unmercifully, and then mock us 
 by telling us that we might cry till we shed tears enough to float 
 Noah's Ark — it would not affect her in the least. For larger 
 faults we were condemned to the almost unbearable torture of 
 holding out a couple of heavy slates at arm's length, not the 
 least relaxation of the muscles being allowed. The cruelty of 
 this woman naturally bred cruelty in the boys, and for two years 
 I had a wretched time indeed. It ended dramatically. After 
 the midsummer holidays, which I had spent as usual at my 
 grandmother's, I was taken back to school by my aunt ; but to 
 her repeated knocks at the door no one replied. We learned 
 that the mistress had run away, being unable to pay her debts. 
 My good relatives could not have understood how glad I was ; 
 for, as is often the case with sensitive children, I never complained 
 of all that I had to endure. 
 
 Living under the continual tyranny of fear — fear of this cruel 
 woman, fear of the cruel older boys, fear of Hell worse than all — 
 I naturally grew up a nervous, lonely and unsociable child. My 
 life was absolutely without joy, and my young heart had no place 
 of rest. At the same time the extreme exclusiveness of the 
 religion I was taught filled me with spiritual pride. I well 
 remember regarding myself, even at this early age, as belonging 
 to quite a different order from the other boys, none of whom had 
 been taught the true way of salvation as I had, and none of 
 whom, therefore, had even the small chance that I had of being 
 saved. Nothing gratified my vanity more than an opportunity 
 for theological discussion, in which I could display my knowledge 
 of the orthodox faith, and wherein it differed from the various 
 heterodox creeds. I knew my Bible so much better than the 
 other boys, that it was easy for me to support my own position, 
 
SCHOOL LIFE. 13 
 
 and to prove the groundlessness of theirs — if, indeed, they quite 
 knew what theirs was. Thus I never was really a child, never 
 natural and simple, but always self-conscious, self-restrained 
 and severe. 
 
 I was nine years old, when a new school had so unexpectedly 
 to be found for me. I was sent, again as a boarder, to a Middle 
 Class School for boys, kept by an elderly man whose memory 
 I heartily revere. He had the most beautiful shining white hair 
 I have ever seen, and he was so very short-sighted, and so 
 absorbed in everything he did, that we frequently made it stand 
 on end by holding over his head a piece of hot paper rubbed 
 with india-rubber. He was quite an exceptional man, un- 
 practical as the world goes, but full of ideas and ideals by which 
 he consistently taught and lived. He was one of our religious 
 community, but with a difference ; partly from originality of 
 character, and partly because he had not been brought up 
 therein. He frequently read the Bible at our chapel services, 
 and occasionally preached or prayed ; but his whole life sprang 
 naturally from within, and was never warped by his creed. He 
 took us to chapel regularly on Sundays and Wednesday evenings, 
 but we had no morning or evening prayers, our religious exercises 
 being limited to reading the Ten Commandments every Sunday 
 morning, verse by verse in turn. I cannot remember that he 
 ever spoke to us of religion, or even spoke of it in our hearing ; 
 neither can I remember his ever moralising to us in any way. 
 He was very frank and natural in his intercourse with us, 
 especially on our long walks. Yet he never put himself out to 
 talk with us. Everything seemed to arise spontaneously from 
 him, and to be appropriate to the moment ; though, doubtless, 
 he lived much within himself too, and had thoughts which no 
 one shared. Most boys see more or less of the humbug in their 
 schoolmaster ; and take it good-naturedly, as a matter of course, 
 that schoolmasters should be so. I never detected the slightest 
 sign of the humbug in this old master of mine. 
 
 He was a great believer in fresh air and exercise. Even in 
 the coldest weather our bedroom windows were never quite 
 closed. Any change of temperature or of the wind during the 
 night would bring him from his bed to regulate the opening of 
 our windows accordingly, for he had a great love of exactness 
 in all he did, He always attended to the fires and trimmed the 
 
14 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 lamps, because no one else could be trusted to do these things 
 with sufficient care. He taught us that if the bottom of a fire 
 were kept clear, you might put almost anything you liked on the 
 top. He would come into a room where the fire was dull and 
 the grate choked, and would rake away at the bottom bars with 
 the utmost energy, until only a few red cinders were left. Then 
 he would throw everything back into the grate, with some added 
 coal to fill it up, and in time a splendid and durable fire would 
 result. In everything he followed some simple principle which 
 he was never tired of enunciating, even to the sharpening of lead 
 pencils and the washing of his hands. The pencil, he insisted, 
 should be cut away from you, so that the fingers should not be 
 soiled with the lead, for which purpose the knife should be kept 
 very sharp. The hands should be soaked for two or three 
 minutes in the water before the soap was applied, in order to 
 thoroughly soften the dirt. It was the same in his teaching and 
 in everything else. He followed his own methods, and always 
 told us why he followed them, and never seemed so happy as 
 when he was giving us the reason for what he did. 
 
 Invaluable was the living impression he left on my mind of 
 rectitude, principle, thoroughness. Without being didactic, he 
 inspired me unconsciously with confidence in high aims. He 
 implanted in me a sense of there being a best in everything, 
 to be diligently sought after and associated with. His influence 
 was due to the fact that he himself was thorough and transparent 
 in all that he did, and followed high ideals as naturally as he 
 breathed. He was one of those rare, inevitable men who produce 
 the impression of being what God meant them to be. His whole 
 method of life was instinctive, intuitive, unconscious. When he 
 gave me my first French Dictionary, he wrote my name in it in 
 his fine clear hand, and then added beneath, without remark, 
 " Ars longa, vita brevis est." There he let it stand, without 
 explanation or moral, to work in my mind as it might. I still 
 use the dictionary, but some poor bookbinder has removed the 
 sacred page. None the less I see it there still. 
 
 Our exercise consisted chiefly in walking and bathing, the 
 latter being enforced most assiduously whenever the water in 
 the canal reached a temperature of 60°. This exercise was rather 
 too severe a discipline for me, especially when bathing time set 
 in. Going to bed with no supper — save that, on Sunday and 
 
SCHOOL LIFE. 15 
 
 Wednesday evenings, on returning from chapel, we had a quarter 
 of a round of bread and a transparent morsel of cheese — we rose 
 at six o'clock, set out at 6.30 for a two mile walk, had half an 
 hour for bathing, and reached home again for breakfast of bread 
 and butter and tea at 8 o'clock. Four miles and a bathe in an hour 
 and a half, and on an empty stomach, w\^s rather too much, and 
 left me little appetite for the ensuing meal. Nevertheless I learned 
 to swim. Occasionally we bathed in the river, when high tide 
 occurred in the evening. Before any boy was allowed to cross 
 the river, he had to swim half a mile in the canal, and then our 
 schoolmaster would accompany him across. As the evening tide 
 was spring tide, the river was wide and the current strong, though 
 of course we sometimes caught it on the turn. I was the first 
 boy that he allowed to cross for the first time alone — he being 
 then unable to bathe through a severe pain in the leg which 
 was becoming chronic at this time. 
 
 We had none but corporal punishment, because other forms 
 involved our staying indoors ; and we were never allowed indoors, 
 save for lessons, meals and bed, unless it rained. Even then we 
 sometimes had only the shelter of the shed wherein we washed, 
 no washing in our bedroom being allowed. In winter it was 
 often difficult to separate the ice from the basin without breaking 
 both. At first I used to get the cane almost every day— never 
 severely — just a smart " tap " on the hand for a blot in a copy- 
 book, or some similar fault. During the last two years, however, 
 I never had the cane at all, and therefore never any punishment. 
 Another boy and myself had worked our way up to form a class 
 by ourselves, and the master took special delight and interest in 
 our progress, to which we responded by taking a real interest 
 in our work. It must not be supposed, however, that we were 
 very advanced. At the time of my leaving school at fourteen, I 
 was only just able to pass the Cambridge Local Examination, 
 with honours in French. From what has already been said, it is 
 scarcely necessary to remark, that this result was not due to 
 cramming of any sort. In my school work I was always very 
 slow ; but had, on the other hand, a certain plodding thorough- 
 ness and insight into the reason of things which helped me 
 through. 
 
 My feelings of respect and gratitude towards my schoolmaster 
 have grown up chiefly since I left school, and especially in later 
 
i6 MY QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 years, when I have been able to discern and value the influence 
 he has had on my life. I think these feehngs are the more 
 genuine and reliable from the fact that I have to recognise, 
 somewhat sadly, that he never quite liked me. His favourite boy 
 was the one already named as the working companion of the 
 last two years of my school life ; and it was a great blow to him 
 when I passed the Cambridge Local, and his favourite was 
 plucked. But there was a certain poetic justice in this. My 
 companion was much smarter in his work than I was, but he 
 could not unravel a problem so well. The result was that 
 he depended on me to unravel problems, but always got his work 
 done first. As we had no cramming for our examination, this 
 defect brought him to grief. Up to this point he had been, both 
 in games and work, the lucky boy, who always came out first. 
 
 The reason why my schoolmaster did not like me was, I 
 believe, because of a certain priggishness which resulted from 
 my excessive religious training ; also the more lively and spon- 
 taneous qualities of the other boy were much more after his own 
 heart. My success in the Cambridge Local was thus a real 
 blessing to me, as the first solid encouragement I had in going 
 on faithfully with my work. Depressed and disheartened as I 
 was too liable to be, through religious and other influences and 
 an over sensitive frame, this little sprig of laurel was a stimulus 
 of a very wholesome sort. 
 
 There was an evil influence in the school, which I feel com- 
 pelled to mention here, because it made my early religious life 
 so difficult. I write to encourage those who find their way hard, 
 and I dare not let them suppose that mine has been easy. I 
 allude to the usual evil influence of boarding schools in sexual 
 matters. Some of the older boys had assignments with girls in 
 the town, and spoke with the utmost freedom of all that passed 
 between them. My sensitive nature was but too easily corrupted 
 by what I heard ; and though I never joined the boys in their 
 pursuits, yet habits were engendered while I was too ignorant to 
 understand their real nature, and which long after gave me infinite 
 trouble. 
 
 This evil might have been counteracted somewhat, at least, if 
 we had been allowed the usual athletic amusements of school life. 
 We were never permitted to play football and cricket ; moreover, 
 our playground was small, and we had no gymnastic appliances. 
 
{To face p. i6. 
 
SCHOOL LIFE, 17 
 
 Sometimes we would form a cricket club, buy the necessary 
 implements, engage a field— and then all would collapse because 
 we were not allowed to go and play. Thus we were reduced to 
 mere children's games, save when we bathed or walked. It was 
 very unfortunate for me, for more manly games would have had 
 a most excellent influence on my physical and moral life, as well 
 as on the life of the whole school. One reason for this want of 
 athletic exercise was, that a few years before, a boy was killed on 
 a giant's stride that stood in the playground, which was at once 
 removed. Then our schoolmaster was himself most fond of 
 walking and bathing, and could not have understood the value 
 to boys of games which demanded the organisation of a club, 
 and developed skill and courage and other mental and moral 
 qualities of a high order. 
 
 The end of this good man was very sad. One day, as he was 
 pulling on one of the Wellington boots he always wore, a pain 
 seized his leg — the pain already mentioned as preventing him 
 from bathing. Slowly but surely it grew worse and worse, 
 until at last he had to be taken to school in a bath chair, the 
 school being about half a mile from the house. By that time 
 I had left. No one could discover the cause of the pain, or 
 provide any remedy for it. For many months he lay dying 
 by inches. One heard continually of his sufferings, and then 
 that Death had ended them. This was his first as it was his 
 last illness. 
 
 As to the final cause of this sad ending of a singularly simple 
 and straightforward life, some of our folk could give account 
 readily enough ; my paternal relatives being especially familiar 
 with the mysteries of divine judgment. He had been a great 
 walker and swimmer; and talked freely, though quite simply, 
 of his various exploits on land and sea. His illness, therefore, 
 had been sent as a discipline from Heaven, in the form most 
 suitable to rebuke his pride in his own powers. My maternal 
 relatives, though equally loyal to their faith, were saved from 
 much of this want of human charity by a certain sense of humour, 
 of which they were quite unconscious, but which none the 
 less kept them from this free handling of the bolts of Jove. For 
 it is to my mother, I believe, that I owe that impulse which 
 has compelled me to seek a more human religion than the one 
 in which I was brought up ; to my father that severe sense of 
 
i8 MY QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 truth which held me too loyal to my doubts to seek satisfaction 
 in a merely liberal faith. 
 
 And there was something so childlike and simple about this 
 man, and such a charming naivete in the manner in which he 
 accepted the facts of life — until this last fact of the lame and 
 aching leg, which he found it hard enough to accept, though 
 I never heard him complain. If he did walk great distances, 
 he also designed a special four-wheeled carriage, which he could 
 drag after him on occasion, with his youngest children therein. 
 These people who will judge ! — Did they ever tie their family 
 burdens to their hobbies as he did ? 
 
 Once, in my hearing, he spoke admiringly of my maternal 
 grandfather, already mentioned — of his gratitude and simplicity, 
 and his way of cheerfully making the best of things ; how, if 
 he broke the handle off his brush, he would say it would take 
 up the less room in his bag. On one occasion, he said, they 
 had a discussion on the question of " degrees of glory," my 
 grandfather, in his later years, living much in the thought of 
 heaven. The correct opinion among our people was that in 
 heaven all would hold an equal place, otherwise salvation could 
 not be entirely of grace. My schoolmaster declared that he 
 would be quite contented if he just got within the gates, and 
 would not trouble about the position assigned him there ; to 
 which my grandfather replied stoutly, and with some humour, 
 that he should never be happy if even Paul were nearer the 
 throne than himself. 
 
 This same grandfather carried to his grave a distorted thumb, 
 which, in early life, he broke on another boy's head. I remember 
 being told of this in such a way that I was rather proud of him 
 for his boyish feat, which, I beHeve, it gave the old man some 
 small satisfaction to recall. 
 
 To these maternal relatives, as also to my old schoolmaster, 
 I owe much of the sanity of life — an abiding sense of humour, 
 and of the charm and grace of things. As I look across this 
 lovely valley from my cottage window, and feel the deep joy 
 of the beauty of the scene, I like to think that it is the sad 
 soul of my unknown mother rejoicing in a new life through 
 my eyes. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 OTHER INFLUENCES. 
 
 Though Wisbech is a small town of but 10,000 inhabitants, 
 yet its being a port only ten miles from the sea enabled me to 
 associate its quiet life with the great world outside. The tidal 
 river was in itself an inspiration, compensating to a considerable 
 degree for its flat and uninteresting surroundings. After heavy 
 rains or a sudden thaw, there was the swirling rush of water 
 from the country above, impressing the mind with the existence 
 of towns and villages and farms and tributary streams, and 
 all the pumps and drains necessary to carry the water from 
 the fen country. The continual arrival of vessels, laden chiefly 
 with timber and coal, the former mostly from Norway, linked 
 our little town with foreign lands, and made foreign speech 
 familiar to our ears. Our schoolmaster knew the most important 
 modern languages, and during the winter months we usually 
 had one or two Norwegian captains or first mates in the school 
 learning English. Thus we had a kind of world-consciousness 
 nourished within us, and our minds had room to expand. 
 
 More impressive than all was the constant ebb and flow of the 
 tide, which I soon learned to associate with the ocean and 
 the moon and the sun. This river was to me always a living 
 thing, especially at spring tides, when it brought up with it the 
 salt and weedy smell of the sea. All sorts of sea-things were 
 carried along on its swelling bosom, which rose higher and 
 higher, until it seemed as though it must overflow its banks, 
 and flood the lower parts of the town. How irresistibly, yet 
 tenderly and slowly, it raised the dark hulls of the vessels high 
 above our heads, and as tenderly and silently lowered them again 
 to their berths on the yielding mud ! Doubtless 1 see and feel 
 all this with a deeper insight and emotion than I experienced 
 
 19 
 
20 MY QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 then ; but I am sure that then arose the first dawnings, not only 
 of a world-consciousness, but of a universal consciousness within 
 my soul. Of the life and strength of Nature this river was a 
 revelation to me in my early years, though the revelation was not 
 yet understood. 
 
 And though the country around Wisbech is flat and uninterest- 
 ing, yet it bears on its surface evidence of the conquest of Nature 
 by man, through its embankments and drains ; and also is 
 covered with memorials which carry back the mind to prehistoric 
 times. In so level a country the " tumuli " were the more 
 noticeable, and called at once for explanation. Then there were 
 miles of Roman Banks which, in the earliest historic times, had 
 formed the boundary between land and sea, though several miles 
 inland now. Also, scattered over the district, stand some of the 
 finest churches in the kingdom ; but none stand outside the 
 ramparts that the Romans raised against the waves. Thus, in 
 this little fen town, the world of the present, the world of the past, 
 the pulsing heart of the Universe itself, were all open to me, and 
 I began to come under their spell. 
 
 The charm of the tidal river and the shipping had a wholesome 
 influence on my pursuits. The one redeeming feature of my 
 boyhood, to which I look back with most satisfaction, was that I 
 had a hobby for making boats ; and I did somehow discover 
 how to make boats that would sail well. All else that I have 
 written about w^as impressed upon me from without. This 
 saving grace arose spontaneously from within, the river and the 
 ships being doubtless the occasion for its growth. In the pursuit 
 of this hobby I never remember being thwarted in any way, 
 either by my relatives or my schoolmaster. I had the small 
 amount of money necessary for building the boats, the time 
 necessary for their construction, and sufficient freedom to sail 
 them too. Each boat that I made was larger and more am- 
 bitiously designed than the last ; and though I was not very 
 skilful in their finish, yet, as far as it went, the work was sound 
 and true. My final effort was a large schooner, too heavy to 
 carry to the water ; so I had to make a carriage for it with some 
 old perambulator wheels. It was rigged as a fore-and-aft 
 schooner, and I can still see and feel it crossing the canal at 
 Wisbech for the first time. I think my conceit over my boat- 
 building must have somewhat annoyed my schoolmaster. I well 
 
OTHER INFLUENCES. 21 
 
 remember the day when I proudly brought the log for this last 
 boat to the school, and how the boys stood around impressed by 
 its size. The master joined us ; and hearing us talking of the 
 boat that was to be, remarked, somewhat sarcastically, " Ah, but 
 he has not finished it yet ! " 
 
 Out of my love for making fires, which has already been 
 mentioned, sprang an ambition to make boilers, in which, how- 
 ever, I never quite succeeded, from want of instruction and the 
 necessary tools. Nevertheless I did manage to make several, in 
 the furnaces of which the fire would burn up grandly, but just 
 as the water came near boiling, a joint invariably gave way, 
 letting the water run out. Apart from my love of fire and 
 furnaces, I had great hopes that if I could make a boiler I might 
 be able to convert one of my boats into a steamer ; but I never 
 got so far as that. 
 
 For most of the time that I was at my last school, I had to 
 go on Saturdays, from half-past ten to five, to a shop where a 
 newspaper was printed and published, and stationery, paper- 
 hangings and patent medicines were sold. My work consisted 
 chiefly in cutting and folding the papers as they left the machine, 
 rolling up and replacing paperhangings that had been shown to 
 customers, and distributing handbills in the Market-place or the 
 Corn Exchange. Thus I was deprived of Saturday's half-holiday ; 
 though, on the other hand, I was allowed to go to my grand- 
 mother's to tea, and to stay until about eight o'clock. The value 
 of this set-off, however, was largely discounted by my fear of her 
 religious talks. Being an orphan, it was thought desirable that 
 I should be made early acquainted with business, and acquire 
 the habit of earning money with a view to saving it. For the 
 work I did I was paid threepence, and had to find my own 
 dinner, or rather my good grandmother found it for me. I used 
 to call for it on my way from school to the shop. During my 
 holidays, if spent at Wisbech, I used sometimes to be sent on 
 other days as well to learn to set up type. Thus I came pretty 
 near to being a Printer's devil. 
 
 After about three years, I began to think that I ought to get 
 more than threepence a week. At my grandmother's I talked 
 the matter over, and was encouraged to ask for a rise. I was 
 told that my employer would think all the better of me if I did. 
 With my courage thus screwed up, I made the bold request. 
 
22 MY QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 Having been questioned rather severely whether I thought I 
 earned more than threepence — a question which I had not the 
 economic knowledge to fully understand, and which I therefore 
 answered affirmatively from sentiment — I was told that, in future, 
 I should receive fourpence halfpenny. But even a rise of fifty 
 per cent, in my wages did not reconcile me to my work. After 
 about another year I broke into open revolt, in which I was 
 encouraged by my schoolmaster, and was allowed, with much 
 misgiving for my future, to enjoy my Saturday half-holiday with 
 the other boys. 
 
 Of course the effect of all this on my mind was the reverse 
 of what was intended. It was a thoroughly demoralising influence. 
 There was nothing in the work to occupy my active brain, and 
 its unchangeableness during the whole period made hope or 
 the gratification of ambition out of the question. At school 
 I was steadily pushing my way to the front ; in my leisure I 
 was making progress with my boats ; my mind was in a 
 perpetual state of ferment over religious problems ; yet, in order 
 to give me a love of business, and to train me in business habits, 
 I was set to the most monotonous work, and robbed of my 
 weekly half-holiday. Of course this was done with the very 
 best intentions, and I should not think of dwelling on it as I 
 have, but that it is just the kind of thing which, in varying 
 forms, kills the souls of so many boys and girls. 
 
 What I most disliked in my Saturday's work was the bill 
 distributing. When the bills related to horse-balls, sheep-dip, 
 or Thorley's Food for Cattle, I had to go into the Corn Exchange 
 with them ; and well remember seeing wheat sold at seventy-two 
 shillings a quarter. If the bills announced the virtues of Norton's 
 Camomile Pills, Page Woodcock's Wind Pills, or Holloway's 
 Pills and Ointment, I had to give them away in the Market 
 Place or in the streets adjacent. One fine afternoon I revolted, 
 went for a walk along the banks of the canal, and, at the furthest 
 point of my walk, threw the hated bills into the water. It 
 was usual, at the ebb of a spring tide, to let about half the 
 water out of the canal, and to refill it as the tide rose again, 
 On this Saturday afternoon the water was let out, and my 
 unlucky bills were carried quickly into the town. Some were 
 picked out of the water and taken to my employer, which led 
 to trouble. On another occasion I foolishly stuffed the bills 
 
OTHER INFLUENCES. 23 
 
 down an area, and again the righteous person was not wanting 
 to bring my sin to Hght. 
 
 These, and other faults of which I was guilty, had much the 
 same origin as my good grandmother's reading of novels and 
 sceptical literature. It was the revolt of an imprisoned life, 
 in her case harmless, in my own far otherwise. In my school 
 work and in the making of boats I was conscientious enough, 
 naturally doing all I had to do as well as I knew how. These 
 differed from my Saturday's work, if only in this, that they 
 .exercised my brain, and rewarded my exertions by progress. 
 Here there was no interest aroused and no progress permitted. 
 The dull monotony of it led me into wrong-doing. My con- 
 science was hurt ; and for faults which sprang naturally from 
 all this mental confinement, I was of course severely chidden. 
 The text of one lecture, the crushing effect of which I can still 
 recall, was the admonition of Paul to those who made the 
 expected re-appearance of Christ an excuse for idleness — " He 
 that will not work, neither shall he eat." I think that school- 
 boys, especially boarders, do more work in proportion to their 
 capacity than most of their elders. 
 
 What with the effects of this Saturday's work, the evil influence 
 of my school-fellows previously mentioned, and the continual 
 fear of Hell under which I lived, my youthful nerves were kept 
 in a state of severe tension, amounting at times to frightful 
 mental torture. My uninstructed and undeveloped mind rose 
 occasionally in instinctive revolt against it all, but the revolt 
 necessarily put on false forms, and I only fell back into a deeper 
 bondage of terror. One difficulty was that I could not understand 
 the way of salvation that was pointed out to me. I cannot remember 
 that any effort was made to enable me to understand it. I was 
 told that I must believe in Christ. I remember on one occasion, 
 at Sunday School, replying that I did believe in Christ. Still, the 
 difference between my belief and saving belief was never made 
 clear. These good old folk were profoundly convinced that 
 God alone, by his Holy Spirit, could teach the lost the way of 
 his grace; and the more suffering that way involved, the more 
 confidence they had in the authenticity of the conversion reached 
 by it. Sin, even that of a child, assumed frightful proportions. 
 Its magnitude, being measured by the infinity of the Offended, 
 rather than by the insignificance of the offender, became appalling. 
 
24 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 Salvation could not be expected, therefore, without proportional 
 distress. 
 
 I well remember one of the crises which resulted from my 
 perplexity and fear. In one of my seasons of anxiety, I had 
 asked to have a New Testament to carry in my pocket I must 
 have been then about twelve years old. I read it carefully, at 
 the expense of much derision from the other boys. Amidst the 
 same derision I prayed on my knees before going to bed. I 
 believed that God would not acknowledge my prayers, unless 
 I acknowledged openly that I was seeking his forgiveness and 
 grace. For a sensitive boy it was a terrible ordeal, and it did not 
 get me any forwarder. Read and pray, pray and read, as I 
 might, the way of salvation appeared no plainer. A sense of 
 despair seized me. I m.ust have committed the unpardonable 
 sin against the Holy Ghost ! I must be one of those "vessels of 
 wrath fitted to destruction " of which Paul wrote. One afternoon, 
 as these thoughts crushed me, I was walking alone along the 
 banks of the river. The tide was high, but falling ; and I stood 
 and watched the water flowing away to the sea. The despair of 
 absolute helplessness seized me. I took the New Testament 
 from my pocket, and flung it impetuously into the middle of the 
 rapid current. It was an instinctive effort to end a conflict 
 which I could no longer endure, though I fully understood that 
 by this act I was accepting my dreadful doom. 
 
 Of course I did not continue to accept it. Reaction set in, 
 and a season followed in which I seemed to reach the goal of 
 my prayers. I remember that at this time I wrote a sermon in 
 a small note-book, appealing to the boys to seek salvation 
 through the blood of Christ, and picturing his sufl'erings on the 
 cross very vividly. The boys read it, and some of them were 
 deeply affected, even professing conversion. The bad boy of the 
 school, a cruel bully of whom I lived in mortal fear, was deeply 
 penitent. We read the Bible and prayed together. Instead of 
 being a butt for sarcasm, I became for the w^hile their religious 
 leader and teacher. But somehow a collapse came, the boys 
 gradually fell away, and my own state grew more desperate than 
 before. I did not know then how unnatural and unwholesome 
 the whole thing was. 
 
 I am glad to be able to turn to an influence of a more 
 wholesome character. I have already spoken of the sense of 
 
OTHER INFLUENCES. 25 
 
 responsibility towards each other which ran through our religious 
 community. The Church approached as nearly to a Brotherhood 
 as could be expected in this dark Nineteenth Century. Rich 
 and poor met together on terms of religious equality. The real 
 thing was Religion. The poor were looked after, and their needs 
 satisfied. One poor woman of great age I especially remember, 
 who was regarded almost as a saint. She was unable to get to 
 chapel, and was therefore visited very assiduously. I believe 
 she was maintained, also, by some of the richer members. 
 Though so young, I was on several occasions sent to call on her, 
 doubtless with the hope that her conversation might further 
 my soul's welfare. I can still see her little figure, her wrinkled 
 yet polished red face, her snow-white, close-fitting cap, her 
 marvellously neat little cottage up a narrow yard, and the perennial 
 smile of gratitude and good will that beamed from her fresh 
 countenance. Poor and dependent as she was, I was always led 
 to regard her as a very fine character, and to hold her in high 
 esteem. That I thus early reverenced a very poor woman is an 
 experience for which I give thanks ; and the more so because 
 the reverence I have learned for the poor is no longer damned 
 by association with a willingness that they should remain in their 
 poverty. 
 
 All sorts and conditions of people were invited to meet at tea, 
 especially on Sunday and Wednesday evenings. Often have I heard 
 the remark, " We have not had so and so to tea lately " ; and " so 
 and so " was carefully hunted up at the next chapel service. My 
 paternal aunt used especially to delight in having very hetero- 
 geneous gatherings at her house for Scriptural reading and con- 
 versation. She sometimes invited me to these gatherings, and 
 I can still feel the charm of their democratic simplicity and 
 informality. Rich and poor were there, equally welcome, equally 
 respected, equally listened to when, after tea, conversation 
 followed the reading of the Bible. And how these good people 
 did know their Bibles — my aunt above all ! I think none were 
 present who did got go away the happier and stronger; and it 
 all arose so naturally from the religious life of the people. I 
 never had the feeling that there was any cant about it, and I am 
 sure that my democratic sympathies were greatly nourished by 
 these influences. 
 
 I had not done much reading before I left school, not because 
 
26 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 I was not fond of reading, but because I had little time for it. 
 What interested me chiefly was History and Biography, and 
 especially Scott's Novels. I cannot remember that I was ever 
 restricted in my reading, save on one occasion when I was staying 
 at the house of a paternal relative. I brought from the Library 
 a huge and antiquated volume of Don Quixote, which I began 
 to read before my choice had been discovered. When I was 
 found with it, I was asked to take it back, as it was not con- 
 sidered a suitable book for a boy. In its place I read Creasy's 
 Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World, and with deep 
 interest. In earlier days I was allowed to pick up a deal of the 
 old Folk Lore — Jack-the-Giant-Killer, Jack and the Bean Stalk, 
 Cinderella, and the rest; but all this came to me through my 
 maternal relatives. 
 
 I must also have received a good deal of mental stimulus 
 from visits paid in boyhood to my relatives in Liverpool and 
 Norwich, and also to some genial farmer friends in Essex whom 
 my maternal aunt used to visit. How high I thought the Essex 
 hills, coming from the Wisbech Fens ! How I loved to ride 
 the horses, to feed the chickens, to tramp over the straw in the 
 yards, to get on the top of the haystacks, and above all to ride 
 in triumph on the hay-carts ! If it had not been for that ever- 
 lasting Hell which was always haunting me — ! And then there 
 were the cathedral and the castle at Norwich, and St, George's 
 Hall at Liverpool with its thunderous organ, and the magnificent 
 river Mersey with all its shipping and its docks. Also I used 
 to go occasionally to Hunstanton, travelling in the old open 
 carriages ; and down the river Nene, on a steamer or in a barge, 
 to gather samphire on the vast mud-flats of the Wash. But I 
 cannot remember that any of these things impressed me, not 
 even the sea itself, as the high spring tides on the river at 
 Wisbech did. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 ARCHITECTURE AND CONVERSION, 
 
 In July, 1870, when still not fifteen, I left school, and went 
 with some relatives to visit the Isle of Man. I can still recall 
 the thrill of excitement with which we heard, while there, that 
 France had declared war against Germany, and how general the 
 impression was that Germany would suffer defeat. 
 
 This was a wider opening into the world of Nature than I 
 had yet experienced. For the first time I crossed the sea, for 
 the first time saw from a mountain top the land and water 
 spread far and away beneath. It was my first introduction, too, 
 to the haunts of legend and myth. There were no railways on 
 the island then. Even a boy could understand that he was 
 in the midst of a simpler and more primitive folk ; and could 
 feel the charm of contact with a younger world. Stories of 
 devils and monsters and mermaids seemed almost credible there. 
 
 On the evening of our arrival I walked on the shore of Douglas 
 Bay alone. The moon shone with wondrous brilliance on that 
 calm summer night, and was reflected with strange beauty in 
 the pools, and from the breakers, and from the crests of the 
 tumbling waves. I see it all now, and can still vaguely recall 
 the soul-awakening it produced. Yet, as a whole, the visit was 
 a very unhappy one. I was terribly lonely and oppressed. In- 
 stinctively I yearned for a love and repose which life could not 
 give. All the beauties of the island seemed to exasperate rather 
 than soothe me, and to make me realise, half-consciously, that 
 in all this world of loveliness and grandeur I had no home. 
 
 I had brought one of my boats with me — not the last made, 
 for that was too big. One morning I trimmed its sails to the 
 breeze, adjusted its rudder, and launched it from the shore, 
 watching it long dancing over the waves until it disappeared 
 
 27 
 
28 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 from sight. My boyhood, so far as I had any boyhood, went 
 away with it too. Harder times lay ahead ; but it is wonderful 
 what the human soul can endure, and what may come from such 
 endurance if it can but stand at its post. 
 
 I was spending my days in a world from which my religion 
 shut me out. The worlds of Nature and of Grace were held 
 absolutely apart. The former was blasted by sin, and had no 
 more place in the soul's pilgrimage than a kind of Vanity Fair — 
 though you had to get on in it too, not by any means stuffing 
 your fingers in your ears, and refusing to buy, as the good 
 Pilgrims did. This strange inconsistency I did not notice as 
 a boy, but one of another kind struck me. I could not understand 
 how the marriage relationship, and all the kissing and courting 
 I saw going on, could be consistent with the religious doctrines 
 that were taught. It seemed to me, still unsaved as I was, that, 
 in view of the tremendous destiny of the soul, marriage and all 
 associated with it was but a foolish and dangerous trifling by 
 the way. Especially did I rise in indignant revolt against the 
 kissing games which had a great vogue then, and the mischievous 
 attempts which were made to bring young couples together. 
 All this was not because I thought lightly of the marriage tie — 
 just the reverse. From early life I had a most lofty ideal of the 
 beauty and happiness of the married life, not so much as I saw 
 it lived around me, but as it existed in my own imagination. But 
 I could not see where it fitted into the scheme of redemption. 
 The intense reality of Heaven and Hell completely dwarfed it 
 in my esteem, and gave it absolutely no place among religious 
 things. 
 
 I suppose this singular feeling was the first indication of what 
 ultimately led to my cleavage from Christianity — the divorce, of 
 which I was not fully conscious even at the time, between 
 Christianity of any form, and the real life of man and of the 
 world. And this visit to the Isle of Man must have considerably 
 deepened my sense of this divorce, in what I may call my sub- 
 consciousness — a consciousness which has not yet made itself 
 clear, but which bides its time and grows. It must also have 
 given my soul some material on which to work out its freedom 
 at a later date. But I was not to reach this freedom before I 
 had achieved the Hfe which this religion imposed, with many 
 struggles and tears, Until I had done this, it remained the real 
 
ARCHITECTURE AND CONVERSION. 29 
 
 thing for me, all else in life unreal and insignificant in comparison 
 therewith. To have abandoned it before realising it in my own 
 life would have saved me a deal of trouble, perhaps ; but it 
 would have meant a mere drifting into that weak and ineffectual 
 thing known as Liberal Religion, which, despite my efforts to be 
 charitable, I find it difficult not to despise. 
 
 And so I might well be unhappy to desperation in the Isle of 
 Man. All this bright world of life and beauty had no place in 
 the religion I was taught, and this religion itself hung over me 
 like a fatal curse. Nothing had any place in it. Like the bits 
 of English and Scotch coast that I saw from Snaefell, it stood up 
 bold and clear and alone. Friendship, love, home, business, 
 pleasure, work, knowledge, literature, art — none of these had any 
 meaning imparted to them by this religion, nor did they them- 
 selves impart any meaning to it. All that I understood about 
 their relation was that they might, with fatal facility, become idols 
 set up in the heart, while the living God was being slowly and 
 almost unconsciously turned out. On the one hand was the 
 Scheme of Salvation ; on the other hand were all the facts and 
 activities of life. Between the two lay a deep impassable gulf ; 
 or, rather, a gulf across which a pass was half surreptitiously 
 given, on the understanding that it was taken at the holder's risk 
 of eternal death. At this time, however, I was innocent of all 
 such ideas, and suffered in dumb misery and dread. 
 
 I returned to Wisbech. My good grandmother had died. 
 My aunt had taken a little house in another part of the town ; 
 and there I lived with her during the winter of 1870 — 71. It 
 was intended that I should take up some form of business. But 
 I had had quite enough experience of the shop, and also my 
 boat-building and boiler-making gave me leanings in another 
 direction. I said I should like to be a Builder or an Engineer. 
 This desire was declared impracticable by my paternal aunt, as I 
 could not be seen going about in workman's clothes. Then 
 I said I would like to be an Architect; and this wish, being made 
 known to my uncle in Norwich, was generously granted. I went 
 for some months to an architect's office at Wisbech, and then 
 was articled to a Norwich architect for five years. I can still 
 recall the visions that passed before my mind of the grand 
 buildings I would one day erect. 
 
 This choice of a profession was an exceedingly happy one for 
 
30 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 me. Of course the difference between a calling and an enthu- 
 siastic boy's conception of it is almost infinite. I have never 
 erected the vast sweeping colonnades that were the dream of my 
 youthful days. But Architecture opened out to me a very wide 
 range of experience and knowledge, and gave me a very sound 
 education in both the ideal and the practical world. I doubt 
 whether any other profession is so comprehensive as an 
 educational influence. Besides the artistic sense and power 
 which it cultivates, it requires a general knowledge of the history 
 and principles of Art, the practice of various kinds of drawling and 
 design, the study of natural objects for decorative purposes, some 
 knowledge of the law and the nature of legal obligation, a 
 considerable practical acquaintance with the various building 
 trades and all their numerous operations, a knowledge of the 
 qualities of building material and the principles of building 
 construction, while there are further the departments of quantity 
 surveying, the writing of specifications, the valuation of property, 
 the surveying of land and buildings, drainage, road-making, the 
 direction of large bodies of men, the settlement of disputes 
 between employer and contractor or employer and adjoining 
 owner, the overcoming of physical difficulties in special building 
 operations, and all the business energy and responsibility which 
 such a profession demands. 
 
 I had the good fortune to be trained in a provincial office 
 where I could learn all branches of the profession, and could 
 constantly visit buildings in course of erection. In a London 
 office so wide an experience could not have been obtained. 
 Here, at least, I had full scope for intellectual and artistic 
 activity. I was free, also_, to advance in my work according to 
 my industry and capacity. The gentleman to whom I was 
 articled and the manager of his office afforded me every 
 opportunity for instruction and practical progress. Hence, in 
 spite of drawbacks to be mentioned, I thoroughly enjoyed 
 my work, and gained a sound and general knowledge of 
 Architecture. 
 
 It was on the first of April, 187 1, that I went to Norwich, 
 and commenced to live alone in lodgings at the age of fifteen. 
 During this period I occupied five different sets of apartments, 
 but I need not enter into any particulars about them. However 
 much they differed, their differences had no special effect on 
 
ARCHITECTURE AND CONVERSION. 31 
 
 my religious life. They all had the common quality of being 
 lodgings, and this quality affected me very badly. It helped 
 still further to develop the lonely self-centredness of my school 
 days, and gave free play to all the unwholesome tendencies of 
 my nature. From seven to fourteen at boarding schools, from 
 fifteen onwards in lodgings — it is not surprising that, to this 
 day, I find myself deficient in the sociable virtues ; to which 
 defect my religious training, and an over sensitive temperament, 
 have greatly contributed. All this, however, has not destroyed 
 the child life in me, nor the love of humour. It has only 
 destroyed the power to express these things. I love children, 
 and child-books, and folk lore; and one of my favourite works 
 is Tristram Shandy. But all this love remains dumb within 
 me for the most part. 
 
 The new interest in life and outlet for mental energy which 
 my architectural work gave me reacted favourably on my religious 
 difficulties. I applied myself steadily to their solution, reading 
 the Bible, and praying earnestly to be shown the way of salvation. 
 It was Paul's Epistle to the Romans that at last filled me with 
 light. On reading the verse, " For the wages of sin is death ; but 
 the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord," 
 my eyes were suddenly opened. I saw the way of salvation 
 clearly, and accepted it gladly. Now, for the first time, 1 realised 
 that salvation was the free gift of God through the atoning blood 
 of Christ; and that all I had to do was to accept the gift as 
 freely as it was offered. Of course, in the very nature of the gift, 
 a great deal more was involved— a life-long gratitude to the giver, 
 a continual growth in consecration to his service, the making 
 known of the grace of God to my fellows, and constant prayer 
 for the guidance of God's Holy Spirit into all holiness and truth. 
 This first act of faith was but the narrow gateway to the Christian 
 life; but I had been taught that, having once passed through 
 it by the grace of God, the good work which he had begun in 
 me he would also carry through, so that there was now no 
 possibility of my being lost. This was known as the doctrine of 
 the final perseverance of the saints. 
 
 It will thus be seen that I was brought up in the Calvinist 
 faith ; but here, as in regard to the doctrine of the Trinity, there 
 was a marked difference between this small section of Baptists 
 and those more widely known. The great body of Baptists has 
 
32 AfV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 been divided into Particular and General ; the former being 
 Calvinist, the latter Arminian. My own friends accepted both 
 doctrines, finding both taught most explicitly in the Bible. They 
 believed that only those were saved whom God had elected for 
 salvation, from which belief the doctrine of final perseverance 
 naturally sprang. But while they thus asserted the universal 
 knowledge and power of God, they were compelled also to 
 acknowledge his universal love as manifested by the death of 
 Christ. "Christ died for all." Of this there could be no question. 
 Then God's grace was open to all, and must be preached freely 
 to all, in order that all might have the opportunity of being 
 saved. 
 
 Of course these two doctrines of Predestination and Free Grace 
 are in flat contradiction to each other. The intellect cannot 
 reconcile them. But both are taught most plainly in the Bible. 
 All that remained, therefore, was to accept both as equally true, 
 and to act on both without further questioning. I well remember 
 a much revered preacher at Wisbech declaring that it was im- 
 possible to harmonise these two views by human reasoning, but 
 that each was none the less to be accepted, since each stood 
 revealed in God's word. 
 
 In the sudden opening of my eyes, so long blinded, to the way 
 of salvation, and in the acceptance of these two irreconcilable 
 doctrines, I believe two most important practical truths lie hidden. 
 Both illustrate in different ways the fact that, for the perception 
 of the highest truth, the Intellect holds a subordinate position. 
 It must be regarded as the servant of the whole man, not the 
 master. I can see now that I was blind to the way of salvation 
 until my will was ready to accept it, and that herein lay the 
 answer to the question which I used to ask— believing, as I did, 
 in Jesus Christ ; why, then, was I not saved ? Religious faith is 
 not merely an intellectual belief ; it is rather an act of the will 
 which carries conviction with it. In our merely intellectual 
 beliefs we are scarcely responsible beings. The Intellect works 
 mechanically upon the materials presented to it. But the heroic 
 Will, instinctively pressing forward to new ventures in life, 
 breaks up new material and gains new experiences, which the 
 Intellect, hobbling after, accepts, arranges, and catalogues. When 
 my will was ready for the venture, then my intellect saw. 
 
 Equally important is the truth which lay beneath my Calvinist- 
 
ARCHITECTURE AND CONVERSION. 33 
 
 Arminian teaching. Calvinism and Arminianism, Predestination 
 and Free Grace, are simply the Christian forms of the world-wide 
 side-taking in the controversy respecting Fate and Free will. My 
 good friends closed the controversy by taking both sides, and 
 acting upon both doctrines. This is but another illustration of the 
 fact that Will is greater than Reason. In the world of affairs 
 the Libertarian and the Necessarian follow much the same line, 
 the chief distinction being that they give different reasons for 
 doing the same thing. Among Socialists, for instance, we find 
 men of both schools working for the same end. The Necessarian 
 says, "Man is the product of his environment; therefore we must 
 improve his environment." The Libertarian says, " Man is a 
 progressive being ; and this thing you call civilisation is no longer 
 tolerable to his growing conscience." Or again, in the movement 
 for criminal reform, the Materialist points out the folly of treating 
 criminals as free agents, by his measurement of the brain and 
 the presentation of a whole series of facts which prove the 
 connection between physical condition and crime. The Spiritual- 
 ist, on the other hand, views the criminal as a neglected brother, 
 in whom the divine spark still lives ; and he desires, by various 
 means, prompted by faith and love, to fan this spark into a flame. 
 
 It would give an enormous impetus to progress if we had the 
 genius to see that in these and all similar controversies — to name 
 another, that between the Anarchist and the State Socialist — 
 both sides are right in what they assert, but both wrong in 
 denying the assertions of the other side. This practical genius 
 does exist largely in the English people, and that is why we have 
 made more progress with less trouble than other nations. But 
 it is a blind genius. We can give no satisfactory account of our 
 practical way of looking at things. We call it, perhaps, the 
 happy habit of compromise ; and affect to despise our more 
 logical neighbours. This kind of explanation is demoralising. 
 It is dangerous to be greater than we know. In the fundamental 
 dualism of all phenomenal life lies the reason for the successful 
 issue of what we call compromise. To understand this enables 
 us to put the logical man in his true place, as a one-eyed man, 
 who is blind to half the facts of life. 
 
 The mistake of the Intellect has been, that it has assumed a 
 relationship between phenomenal facts which does not really 
 exist, namely, the relationship of intellectual consistency. Of 
 
 3 
 
34 MY QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 course I am speaking of the limited human intellect. Doubtless, 
 at its source, Life is One and Divine; but in its manifestations 
 to the human mind it appears in very complex dual forms, which 
 seem more or less contradictory. Need I enumerate some of 
 the more fundamental of these forms ? — Subject and Object, 
 Mind and Matter, God and the Universe, Free Will and Ne- 
 cessity, Good and Evil, Being and Becoming, the Real and the 
 Phenomenal — such are some of them, which the Intellect of 
 man has never been able to resolve into unity, or to harmonise 
 in any Philosophy. The whole history of Philosophy proves that 
 the human Intellect has been attempting what remains for it 
 impossible. The Universe itself knows nothing of the limitations 
 of human reason. On the other hand, I am convinced that, in 
 man, there is being evolved a higher power of insight, which will 
 enable him to grasp the unity of all things ; but many ages, 
 doubtless, will be needed for this unfolding. Meanwhile, each 
 of us may co-operate towards this end according to his measure. 
 All my present work for my fellows is based on this conviction — 
 not a conviction of the study, but arising from the experiences 
 of life. 
 
 I have never been able to trace any conscious connection 
 between this early Calvinist-Arminian teaching and my present 
 position, yet I think it must have largely helped me towards it. 
 I believe it must have left a permanent impression on my mind 
 which may be expressed in various ways — that no one statement 
 on any subject can possibly sum up the whole truth about it; 
 that to act on one idea alone in any direction will certainly lead 
 us astray; that truth has always two sides, to be seen with two 
 eyes ; that one idea will never save the world, and that the man 
 of one idea is never the leader of any solid progress ; that people 
 who can accept but one idea may produce great changes, but 
 cannot bring about any permanent advancement ; that the other 
 idea, the necessary complement of the one, cannot be neglected 
 with impunity. 
 
 This truth is of that order which the Intellect will never see 
 until the Will is ready to adopt it. We wish to narrow down the 
 Universe to the limitations of our own reason. We fear we 
 should feel lonely and lost if we realised our true position. W^e 
 dare not turn out into the open, and look " this mighty sum of 
 things " in the face, without first insisting on conclusions, or at 
 
ARCHITECTURE AND CONVERSION. 35 
 
 least conditions. To love this mighty Universe, and crave her 
 love ; to abandon our souls to her in perfect confidence and awe ; 
 to passionately wed our souls with her as she is, for better or 
 worse, with no fear of discovering a worse — how few have the 
 instinctive genius to do this — and live ! Nothing so convinces 
 me of the fundamental unity and divinity of life as the fact that 
 we are ourselves capable of living a life larger and more complex 
 than our Intellect can grasp, much less control and direct. In 
 the arrangement of its various details. Reason must in some sense 
 be our guide ; but in its combined unity and variety it is some 
 higher power of the creative Will that assumes the sway in any 
 really sane life. If we would study the logical outcome of the 
 rejection of this doctrine of Dualism, we can find it in that 
 frightful bar to progress— the Crank. 
 
 Were my friends right, then, in teaching me to entertain both 
 Calvinism and Arminianism in defiance of Reason? At any 
 rate they were far more right than either the Calvinist or the 
 Arminian. Wherein they were wrong was simply in the false 
 dogmatic form in which they held a true working principle ; and 
 this false dogmatic form blinded them to its essential truth. For 
 my own part, after my conversion, I argued it out in this manner 
 with myself:— "If the doctrine of Election were not true, I 
 should go mad ; because my neglect might cause the damnation 
 of many souls ; but if the doctrine of Free Grace were not true, 
 I should lose the incentive to seek the salvation of souls." So 
 I, too, accepted both doctrines, in spite of their intellectual 
 incompatibility, as the only practical way out of the far greater 
 difficulty of denying the one or the other. It was only necessary 
 for me to get this idea out of its dogmatic garb, in order to 
 recognise it as a principle most essential to real progress. 
 
 Its practical application this is not the place to discuss. I 
 will only point out here that this principle must not be allowed 
 to reduce us to inaction. In the struggles of the Great Arena 
 we shall still take sides on behalf of that half of the Truth which 
 man is always liable to reject ; and yet we shall know that the 
 highest service we can render to progress is to recognise the 
 limitations of our own side, and to keep our eyes open to its 
 defects. No man who understands this principle truly will, there- 
 fore, keep out of the Arena; but neither will he become a 
 narrow-minded partisan or a one-eyed Demagogue. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY IN LODGINGS. 
 
 In Norwich was a small Baptist chapel belonging to the same 
 group as the one at Wisbech. There were others at Liverpool, 
 Towcester, Newark and Lymm. The one at Wisbech was the 
 largest, and is still in a flourishing condition. Only the members 
 of this little handful of Churches held the true faith, and only 
 they were sure of salvation. They thought it a great sin for 
 one of their number to marry outside the pale, regarding the 
 members of other Churches practically as unbehevers, refusing 
 to partake of the Lord's Supper with them, or to enter into any 
 sort of religious fellowship. Of course those who are still left 
 of this small denomination have marched more or less with the 
 times ; and, while holding their former distinctive doctrines, 
 have grown much broader in their sympathies. 
 
 One important change of doctrine, however, was made before 
 I left Wisbech. The leading minister, a fine, upright old man, 
 with a deal of humour in his private relations, and who was 
 regarded almost as an oracle by the people, preached a series 
 of seven sermons, in which he exhaustively proved that Hell 
 was not eternal, but that the Devil and his angels and all the 
 wicked would be annihilated at the Day of Judgment. I well 
 remember the subdued but deep excitement which those sermons 
 produced. The new doctrine was accepted by nearly all the 
 Church ; though a few of the harder and more old-fashioned 
 members deprecated it strongly, as being likely to lessen the 
 sense of sin and the desire for salvation among the unconverted. 
 Certainly this was not the result in my own case. The un- 
 mitigated horror of the old doctrine had stupefied and almost 
 paralysed me. The new doctrine was bad enough in all con- 
 science. Still it left me more free to long for the eternal 
 
 36 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN LODGINGS. 37 
 
 happiness of Heaven, and more sensible to the love of God 
 which was to be the source of that happiness. 
 
 Naturally, on coming to Norwich, I attended the services of 
 the little Baptist Chapel already mentioned. After time had 
 been given to test the reality of my conversion, I was received 
 as a member of the Church, and baptised by immersion. It 
 seemed now as though my religious difficulties were over, and 
 that all that remained was to grow in Christian service and life. 
 I took a class of boys in the Sunday School. I worked steadily 
 at my profession, and made good progress. Yet there was no 
 place for Architecture in my Religion, and it was in the latter that 
 I found my chief interest. The result was that, though I 
 thoroughly liked my work, I did scarcely anything for my advance- 
 ment out of office hours ; what little I did being done spasmodi- 
 cally and to small profit. 
 
 It was not for very long that my new peace of mind lasted. 
 Clouds began to gather slowly but surely about me. With a very 
 sensitive and intense nature, weakened by the frightful sufferings 
 of my boyhood, and demoralised by some of its influences, I was 
 set to fight the batde of life alone in lodgings, with no knowledge 
 of what life really was, and in entire ignorance of my own nature 
 and its requirements. As my equipment for the fight, I had 
 nothing but an entirely artificial Scheme of Redemption. For 
 everything that befell me, for all the difficulties I had to over- 
 come, for the control of my animal nature, and the development 
 of my intellectual, moral and spiritual life, the grace of God was 
 set before me as all sufficient. I know now that the creed of 
 my youth was utterly unsuited to my needs. Yet, as I had been 
 taught it so patiendy and consistently, so I held it most un- 
 questioningly ; and, in the conflicts that ensued, I never hesitated 
 to condemn myself as being wholly and inexcusably at fault. 
 
 Now and again the bad influences of my school life would 
 assert themselves. Happily the very sensitiveness of my nature, 
 which made life in lodgings so severe a trial, yet made it im- 
 possible for me to live in open vice. I shrank in horror from 
 the ugliness and hatefulness of that which I was tempted to do. 
 But outward conformity to the laws of society still left me a prey 
 to thoughts and desires which periodically obtained complete 
 mastery over me. Prayer— on which I was taught to rely as my 
 sole security, so that it would seem almost impious to seek any 
 
38 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 other help — failed me absolutely. In an agony of desire to have 
 my mind freed from the obsession of thoughts, so attractive to 
 my lower nature, so repulsive to my higher, I would throw myself 
 on my knees and pray and pray until I had stupefied myself by 
 praying, and had thus further weakened my power for resistance. 
 I might as well have been thrown into deep water, and told that 
 by prayer I could save myself from being drowned. 
 
 So my religious teaching led me to exaggerate the sinfulness 
 of the thoughts that haunted me, and limited me to one sole 
 safeguard against them which proved completely useless. The 
 result was that I was reduced at times to a very desperate con- 
 dition. So completely did I accept the views in which I had 
 been brought up, that it never occurred to me at that time to 
 seek the natural remedies for such a condition — exercise, com- 
 panionship, wholesome novels and other forms of recreation and 
 mental diversion, as well as the natural development of my 
 spiritual life. I must fight the battle out fair and square, with 
 no other weapons but those of the Christian warfare. It was 
 nearly the death of me. Had I been of a more sociable dis- 
 position, with the least tendency to drink, I must indeed have 
 been utterly lost. 
 
 There was, however, one good feature of this terrible time 
 which I recall with real satisfaction. After my conversion. 
 Heaven and Hell both had ceased to have any power over 
 me as motives. I no longer sought salvation from Hell but 
 from Sin ; and the goal of my desires and prayers was no longer 
 Heaven but Holiness. Satan, who had been such a terribly 
 real personality to me, completely dropped out of my life. I 
 never dreamed of attributing my evil thoughts to the promptings 
 of a wicked spirit, but understood clearly that they sprang 
 entirely from my own heart. Also there grew up in me the 
 feeling that Sin was hateful because it shut me out from 
 communion with God, and Holiness desirable because it was 
 the condition of fellowship with the Eternal Spirit. 
 
 And so my religious life was growing very really in spite of the 
 terrible conflicts and defeats that I endured. To be saved 
 from the power of Sin, to live with God and to God, to com- 
 pletely subordinate myself to the life of God within me, to tell 
 others from my own experience of the power and joy of his 
 love in the heart — such became the passionate desire of my 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN LODGINGS. 39 
 
 troubled and stormy life. Well do I remember telling God 
 that I would willingly endure any suffering, if I might but thereby 
 conquer myself, and always be filled with the power of his 
 Spirit. But of course such heights of passionate desire could 
 not be permanently maintained; and I fell from them again 
 and again, though they still represented very definitely the 
 permanent aspirations of my heart. 
 
 It was the old and terrible mistake of trying to work out any 
 problem with only one idea. Shaken to pieces as I was by 
 the struggles I endured, to go down on my knees and pray, as 
 I prayed, was only still further to exhaust my nervous energy. 
 Yet I am most thankful that, believing in the one idea, I 
 resolutely stuck to it at all costs, until I worked through it, and 
 came out on the other side. It was the best thing to do, the 
 only thing to do. Had I done anything else, I might have 
 become a Liberal Christian. I still feel that, even if the struggle 
 had killed me, it was best to keep it up while I saw no clearer 
 light. If I did repeatedly fail, as was inevitable under the 
 ci'rcumstances, I was never long from my post ; and I can see 
 now that I was growing all the time. After all, I question 
 whether I have not learned more of life from this desperately 
 insane way of living, than I should have done by living on 
 more rational lines. But I would not like to put any one else 
 through the same mill. It would need the assurance of God 
 himself to do that. But I regret nothing, I complain of nothing ; 
 nay, I give God and the old folk thanks. I am through with 
 it all, and shall not have to pass that way again. When I come 
 to die, I shall not have to regret that I have not yet lived. 
 
 In the earlier part of this period I spent some time on water- 
 colour drawing and oil-painting, but without any tuition. In 
 the former I made some progress; in the latter my efforts 
 proved hopeless, and, after some foolishly bold attempts, I 
 abandoned it. Some years after, however, I found, hanging on 
 the walls of a friend's house, a small oil-painting of my doing— a 
 copy in colours from an engraving in the Art Journal. But 
 in any work that I have ever done I have never had any of that 
 intuitive skill or spontaneity which arises from natural genms. 
 Whatever I have got through has been entirely the result of hard 
 plodding. In every direction my work has always been slow and 
 laborious, and the output very limited. I have, however, the 
 
40 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 faculty of accepting myself and my circumstances, though far 
 from being a Quietist ; and I have often consoled myself with 
 the thought that a happy facility for doing things is apt to prove 
 a fatal facility. I believe the best gift that an ordinary man can 
 have is, not so much the capacity for doing things easily, but 
 rather that commanding desire to do great things which slowly 
 but surely compels him to some achievement. There is a quality 
 in work which has been possible only through conquering great 
 difficulties which facile work can never know. It seems to take 
 its place more naturally with the divine order of things, and to 
 co-operate with that order more effectually. Of course I am not 
 speaking of the facility which results from years of patient toil — 
 the Masterhood which characterises the third period of an earnest 
 and laborious life. 
 
 Under other conditions 1 might have had a commanding desire 
 towards Art, and so achieved something in this direction. Cer- 
 tainly I would greatly like to be an artist ; but, as I came to see 
 later, the times made that impossible. Meanwhile the struggle 
 of my soul to live was too severe, and my religious convictions 
 were too severe, also, for me to continue long at drawing and 
 painting. The commanding desire of my life became more and 
 more exclusively self-conquest through religious consecration. 
 If I had but known that what I needed was not so much self- 
 conquest as self-development ! But I did not know it, and so 
 threw myself desperately into the struggle. I devoted myself 
 more entirely to religious work, taught with greater earnestness 
 in the Sunday School, visited my scholars assiduously, took part 
 in evangelistic services, attended revivalist prayer-meetings. 
 
 Meanwhile, beneath this continuous strain, my strength col- 
 lapsed. Doctors could not discover what was the matter with 
 me. There were no indications of disease, yet I grew incapable 
 of doing anything. On two occasions I spent about three months 
 with relatives in Liverpool, but on returning to work soon be- 
 came as bad as ever. Before this I had a ten-day trip up the 
 Rhine with a relative. These holidays were a very great gain to 
 me, in enlarging my narrow world ; but a gain of which I could 
 not then reap the advantage. Nothing short of a complete 
 inward revolution could save me, and enable me to enter into 
 possession of myself. 
 
 But I still had not lived out completely the religion I pro- 
 
{To face p. 41. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN LODGINGS. 41 
 
 fessed. I had not yet gone thoroughly through with it. It was 
 the teaching of Mr. and Mrs. Pearsall Smith on the subject of 
 HoHness through Faith that enabled me to do this. Further help 
 came from a growing companionship of thought with the woman 
 I afterwards loved. Also my mind had begun to open to the 
 charms of literature. The first consciousness of this came to me 
 in reading David Elginbrod. It was during one of my times of 
 physical collapse. I was sitting in my uncle's large and beautiful 
 garden, surrounded by wooded slopes and grass and a profusion 
 of flowers. The August sun fell warmly on me, and the breeze 
 kept me from feeling overcome with the heat. In this lap of 
 luxury, with David Elginbrod for my more definite inspiration, 
 I realised for the first time, though but dimly, that I had a soul 
 in communion with Nature, and my love went out to Nature, 
 and we began to grow one. This would be in the middle period 
 of my time at Norwich, and before I came under the religious 
 influence just mentioned. This, is the only reading that I can 
 remember to have afl'ected my development until a later date, 
 unless the reading of Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies while in 
 Liverpool was about this time. 
 
 The doctrine which Mr. and Mrs. Pearsall Smith revived in the 
 Evangelical Churches was, that as justification came through 
 faith as the free gift of God, so Holiness should come in like 
 manner. If God could justify us, could he not also sanctify us ? 
 Must we believe that we were always to go on sinning and being 
 forgiven, only to sin again ? Had Jesus died for us in order 
 to produce so unsatisfactory a result ? This condition must be 
 put an end to. We were daily dishonouring God and disgracing 
 our profession while we remained in it. God had done his part. 
 What was necessary on our part was the simple acceptance of the 
 gift of Holiness, exactly as we had already accepted the gift of 
 Forgiveness. This Holiness was no mere cloak to hide our sins. 
 It was a condition of actual sinlessness. This meant, of course, 
 absolute consecration to the service of God, and perfect sub- 
 mission to his will. This consecration and submission he would 
 freely give us, if we but had the faith to accept it. There was no 
 trace in it of salvation through works ; it was salvation of God's 
 free grace still. 
 
 This teaching had a very wide and deep influence on the 
 Evangelical Churches at the time, and one which still has not 
 
42 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 died out where Liberalism has not entered in. Of course there 
 were those, on the other hand, who denounced those who 
 advocated it as being guilty of self-righteousness and spiritual 
 pride. None the less there remained the fact that it worked, and 
 that it brought an entirely new joy and strength into thousands 
 of Christian hearts. To me it seemed, and still seems, to follow 
 naturally from the Pauline scheme of redemption through faith. 
 Of course it had a great attraction for me, for it was just from 
 this up and down Christian life that I was seeking to be saved. 
 I never was able to attend any of Mr. or Mrs. Pearsall Smith's 
 meetings, but I heard the doctrine expounded by others, and 
 read a very solid book on the subject by Thomas Upham, called, 
 I think, The Higher Life. 
 
 After much prayer and hesitation, I determined to make the 
 venture of consecration and faith which this teaching demanded. 
 For the first time I lived wholly and whole-heartedly the Pauline 
 Christian life. I believe that, for people of small intellectual 
 power, of narrow sympathies, and with none of that kind of 
 humour which is a form of mental insight, it is probably about 
 the highest type of religious life possible, and that it makes the 
 most of their limited powers along its limited lines. But it means 
 walking through the world on a tight-rope, and never coming off. 
 Worse still— it means taking absolutely none but a tight-rope view 
 of life. It converts men and women into monsters ; but very 
 happy and self-satisfied monsters. Let me not be misunder- 
 stood. In my dictionary I find that Monster means literally, 
 ** That which admonishes or warns," and, after that, " Anything 
 out of the usual course of nature." It is only in these senses of 
 being a warning and unnatural that I use the term — an extreme 
 example of the result of accepting creeds, and trying to run life 
 with only one idea. Don't let us close our Tristram Shandy. 
 It makes life very complex to keep it open ; but very interesting 
 and very lovable too. 
 
 Well, I mounted the tight-rope, and to my joy found that I 
 could walk. My friends noticed the change in me, and had joy 
 in me too; though those for whom I most cared deprecated 
 the teaching that brought it about. For the first time I had the 
 possession of that living peace and strength that come from the 
 mastery of any department of life, and this the supreme depart- 
 ment of all. For the first time I could live with confidence and 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN LODGINGS. 43 
 
 comparative ease. Although I had, at a later period, to begin 
 the whole task afresh, yet, having mastered the problem, as I then 
 understood it, was an enormous strength to me when I came 
 to learn how much vaster the real problem was — that what I had 
 solved was, indeed, not the real problem at all, but only an 
 artificial one, set under artificial conditions, the premises being 
 entirely at fault. None the less, like discipleship, walking a 
 tight-rope is splendid discipline, provided we know when to leave 
 it off. 
 
 With this life I never really broke. I grew out of it, — how, 
 I cannot clearly tell. Doubtless the growth was largely aided by 
 love and books. But the experience was unspeakably valuable, 
 the more so that it ended gradually, through natural development, 
 and not in any sudden crash. There was a crash to come later, 
 but it did not drag down my moral life as this would have done. 
 It was only the crash of my religious postulates, which left my 
 moral life still standing up. 
 
 The books that I remember to have influenced me most during 
 the later stage of this period were Robertson's Sermons, Sartor 
 Resartus, Heroes and Hero Worship. Also I remember that 
 Browning's Inn Album had a strange fascination for me. I 
 read it through three times, but have not read it since. Robert- 
 son's Sermons laid a much deeper hold on me. Their extreme 
 humanity and spirituality took me into an entirely new world, 
 and gave what was best within me an atmosphere and surround- 
 ings in which to grow. It was a painful pleasure, however, to read 
 them — as though I were putting myself in a spiritual hot-house, 
 and felt within my soul the agony of being forced. Carlyle, also, 
 I revelled in. His splendid intuitive defence of Mahomet must 
 have produced a permanent growth in my thought. But it is 
 wonderful how far such influences will affect us beyond our 
 consciousness at the time. We grow for a long period before we 
 know that we have grown. 
 
 A passionate sensitiveness to Music began to awaken in me 
 at this period, and has never dulled since — a sensitiveness to all 
 high and beautiful things, which at times became exceedingly 
 painful to bear. I remember how keenly I sometimes suffered 
 from the emotions called forth by hymns expressive of the 
 intimacies of the religious life. In my office work this artistic 
 temperament showed itself in a lavish use of colour on drawings 
 
44 MY QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 of the most practical and commonplace sort. " Trevor's happy ! " 
 used to be frequently remarked, when, having completed a 
 drawing, I began to get together the brushes and saucers and 
 paints. But, in spite of my profession, these faculties have 
 gone almost untrained, and have lived in me as capacity to feel 
 rather than as power to do. My art has been my life, and 
 difficult enough. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 LOVE AND DESTINY, 
 
 In September, 1876, the five years of my apprenticeship came 
 to an end, with six months added because of loss of time through 
 illness. Mentally, I was restless ; physically, worn out. In spite 
 of a higher spiritual development and a wider range of thought 
 — perhaps because of these— I seemed now to have no definite 
 aim in life. My profession did not absorb me, and my tempera- 
 ment was such that I could only work freely at that in which I 
 was absorbed. None the less, I thoroughly liked my office work, 
 and often realised in it the artist's joy. But outside the office I 
 had given myself chiefly to other things ; and these other things 
 were opening out into a world greater for me than Architecture— 
 a world in which Architecture was becoming very unreal, very 
 unideal, to me. It was as though I had journeyed until I found 
 myself in a strange land, ignorant of the road to take, not know- 
 ing, indeed, whither I wanted to go, but only inwardly urged 
 forward. As one not only lost, but aimless, I decided on the 
 road to follow, guided by new instincts that were beginning to 
 assert themselves. 
 
 Thus it was that I decided to go to Liverpool in view of my 
 approaching freedom. Judging what I proposed to do there by 
 what I actually did, I should say that already I was dimly aware 
 of the need of a saner and fuller life ; that already the narrowness 
 and unreality of my inward and outward conditions were urging 
 me towards escape. This decision was the first assertion of my 
 real self; but because it was quite unopposed, I did not yet 
 realise how imperious my real self was to be in commanding the 
 course of my hfe. It was the first step in which no considera- 
 tion outside of myself— such as that of creed, or custom, or the 
 claims of the bodily life— had any part. So far as is possible to 
 
 43 
 
46 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 human nature, it was a free and undetermined act, urged by 
 motive forces far deeper than I then knew, and which I am now 
 only beginning to recognise and understand. It was an act of 
 the self-determined will, and yet of a Will greater than mine, 
 and guided by an Insight clearer than mine, as though co-operating 
 with me towards the realisation of myself, while working at the 
 same time towards its own infinite ends. 
 
 And on the eve of this important step, in which I now see a 
 kind of divine partnership, a co-operation with God, just beginning 
 to be set up, myself not yet, or for a long while, able to under- 
 stand all that was therein implied — on the eve of my journey to 
 Liverpool, on parting with her who had begun to be my 
 companion in reading and thought, I became suddenly aware of 
 the love which thenceforth was to be the discipline, the strength, 
 the joy of my whole life. At parting she gave me the four 
 volumes of Robertson's Sermons, which had so often been the 
 ground on which our minds had met. As our hands came 
 together about the books, my soul rushed across. 
 
 Mine was a strange love — of a type not rare, perhaps ; and 
 yet as if meant for a world nearer to God than this. Had it 
 been more mundane, it might have been happier for us both. 
 But I did not love for happiness. My real self held happiness in 
 perfect scorn. I had fought until I loved to fight, and could 
 find no joy in ease. It is only in later years that I have learned 
 in happiness still to trust myself, and that happiness is one of 
 the elements necessary to a sane life. 
 
 It was my first love. I have said that, in early boyhood, I 
 had already a very high ideal of love and marriage and home. 
 It was natural, therefore, that what I may call a loving longing to 
 love, rather than love itself, had frequently arisen within me. But 
 this was Love — all I had to give — the absolute abandonment of 
 myself. And it came just when I was really taking my life into 
 my own hands ; and all my real life went into it. It was truly a 
 religious cult to me, inseparable from all my thoughts of God, 
 and intimately associated with all my communion with him ; 
 intensifying that communion, indeed, to a degree I had not 
 realised before. A new Way to God was opened up — a Way of 
 Life, as that of Christ had been to me a Way of Death. 
 
 Henceforth I was a dual being, my real self a double self, 
 this double self entering into every department of action and 
 
LOVE AND DESTINY. 
 
 47 
 
 of thought. A new jealousy of evil in either of us, as destroying 
 the unity of our souls in God, became one of the commanding 
 motives of my life. It is said that Love is blind. Mine was 
 not. Rather it made my vision too intense, my standard too 
 absolute, for both of us. Inseparable from my ideal for myself 
 was my ideal for her, and neither stopped short of the infinite 
 claims of God. At the same time I had never lived so spon- 
 taneously from within as I did from this time forward. In every 
 direction my life grew more intense. 
 
 The blended way of two souls that really loved — who can tell 
 the true story of all that ? In our case I dare not attempt it. 
 It is too sacred. It would not be understood. I do not under- 
 stand it all myself yet, though light still grows now that it has 
 run its earthly course. Neither would it be right for one of us 
 alone to undertake so great a task. For myself, I need not 
 hesitate to say that there was much thunder and lightning in my 
 love, which years of fellowship with her strong soul did much to 
 tame and humanise. That stern severity, ungenerous in the 
 name of God and Truth, which I think I inherited from my 
 father, has been tempered more and more by the human-kindness, 
 the magnanimity, the humour akin to God's grace, which I 
 believe my mother gave me; so that now I would almost run 
 the risk of being wrong with her I love, rather than right alone 
 with God, in confidence that God would understand and forgive. 
 But then I have been through all the hard discipline of trying to 
 be right alone with God, of making the blunders natural to a 
 mortal who attempts that high walk of life, and of accepting the 
 dark shadows which such a course, followed never so sincerely, 
 must surely bring. In which matter each must take his own 
 lessons, and learn for himself. 
 
 Thus, to return to my story, I set out for Liverpool, like some 
 mediaeval knight, in quest of a fuller life, with the love of God 
 and my Lady completely filling my heart. My love was truly 
 a worship, springing from my ideal of what the love and fellow- 
 ship of man and woman should be. I did not ask that it should 
 be returned. Circumstances made me think it impossible that 
 it should be returned, much less be consummated in marriage. 
 It was a pure giving out of myself, asking for nothing in return 
 but continued friendship and freedom of intercourse between us. 
 
 In my love, the sensual element was entirely absent ; indeed. 
 
48 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 this, which at one time had seemed to threaten me with des- 
 truction, was now entirely absorbed by a high sexual passion. 
 My own experience, then and later, makes me certain that 
 sexual love and sensual love are entirely separable ; and I know 
 that those who cynically assure us that the sensual element in 
 sex love is its essential element, and would have us explain all 
 love in terms of the senses, are fatally ignorant of the higher 
 realities of existence, and just because they have been incapable 
 of the higher experiences. 
 
 None the less am I sure that, in a truly normal sex relationship, 
 both soul and body will commune in perfect freedom ; but this 
 will only be possible where the body is the vehicle of the spirit. 
 I am also sure that, where this full freedom does exist on both 
 sides of our nature, there love may be the means of making us 
 aware of the presence of the Eternal Spirit as the uniting medium 
 which makes such perfect communion possible. In the passion 
 with which such communion is sought and the joy with which 
 it is found, Nature is not merely luring us on to the perpetuation 
 of the race, deceiving us meanwhile with emotions, the vanity 
 of which it were the highest wisdom to understand. No ! 
 Through this human communion, carried confidently and 
 magnanimously to its natural ends, we have the opportunity of 
 rising to the highest consciousness of real Being, of finding 
 ourselves in the very presence of God. 
 
 Thus, while I protest against the ignorance and inexperience 
 of those who regard all the phenomena of love as mere emana- 
 tions from matter, and who, in rightly demanding honesty for 
 the body, are too immature to claim a like honesty for the spirit, 
 I protest equally against those who would deny love its physical 
 expression, and suppress the animal passion which Nature has 
 associated so intimately therewith. The denial of the body is 
 as dangerous and disloyal as the denial of the soul ; both denials 
 being equally founded in immaturity, ignorance, inexperience. 
 Half-men govern our thinking too much in these matters — 
 anaemic, emasculated, on one side of their nature or the other. 
 I think Count Tolstoy's Kreuzer Sonata one of the most un- 
 wholesome and perverting books ever published — a book of mere 
 reaction, because the possible perfect harmony between soul and 
 body has been sadly missed. We have yet to blend Pagan 
 Sanity with Christian Holiness in a fuller Manhood and Woman- 
 
LOVE AND DESTINY. 49 
 
 hood — divine in their highest development, and walking with 
 God familiarly as their common friend. 
 
 From my own experience I know that there is no necessary 
 antagonism between the flesh and the spirit. Of this experience 
 I may not say much, but this must always be remembered by 
 those who would not misunderstand me — that my love for the 
 woman who afterwards became my wife began as a purely 
 spiritual love, a love as of a divine worship, which came to 
 me when I was first freely setting out in search of a higher 
 mental and spiritual life and work. I had, for the time being, 
 entirely conquered my physical nature, not so much by sup- 
 pression, as by the development of an absorbing spiritual life. 
 I sought, not happiness, but Holiness, as my ideal end ; and 
 carried up this passionate human fellowship into a life of higher 
 communion with God. And yet, step by step, as I have passed 
 on from that life to the life I now live ; step by step, as I have 
 come to my present far wider consciousness of God ; so, step 
 by step, have I had to learn to give the body a place in my real 
 and ideal living, and to seek for my body the same freedom of 
 life that I seek for my soul. There is no necessary antagonism 
 in our complex dual nature. If any arise, it is because we do 
 not possess the genius to command all the forces within us into 
 a working harmony, which, when formed, culminates in the 
 consciousness of God. 
 
 The marriage of the body and the soul ; the wholesome 
 discipHne of the flesh over the spirit, as of the spirit over the 
 flesh ; the emancipation, too, of each by each ; the attainment 
 of this divine harmony in us as the accepted end of our earthly 
 life, so that all education and all culture find their aim in that ; 
 and then old age coming on, naturally and beautifully, as the 
 gradual putting off of the flesh, lovingly and reverently folded up 
 and laid aside, as the mother folds up and lays aside the little 
 garments that her child has now outgrown ; the whole world, 
 too, accepted as the body is accepted, for the discipline and 
 emancipation of the whole man, it, too, laid aside at last, with 
 the same love towards it, and the same reverent gratitude for 
 its use — the full and free communion of life, no part left out, 
 the body taken up into fellowship with the soul, the dual man 
 thus formed entering into fellowship with Humanity, with Nature, 
 with God ; our earthly existence growing ever towards this divine 
 
 4 
 
50 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 harmony, some chords of it now and again surprising us on our 
 way, the very memory of them being more real to us than the 
 every-day facts of our phenomenal Hfe— have we not here 
 the Hving reahties of a perfectly Natural Religion, in which 
 the ideals of Christianity and the ideals of Paganism blend and 
 merge into a larger whole? And have not both Christianity 
 and Paganism been equally steps in "the education of God" 
 towards this larger life? 
 
 At the time of going to Liverpool, I had reached the climax 
 of my Christian life, beyond which it was scarcely possible to 
 go. Already I was beginning, in my very love, passionately 
 spiritual as it was, to admit certain Pagan elements, akin to 
 those which so greatly influenced and humanised the Roman 
 Catholic Church. Hitherto my growth had been towards Chris- 
 tianity. Henceforth it was to be towards Paganism; a growth 
 which my extreme Christian discipline made perfectly sane and 
 safe. For I have never lost my Christianity. There is a real 
 truth underlying the dogma which I was taught to believe — the 
 final perseverance of the saints. No man can lose his past. 
 Once a Christian, to that extent always a Christian ; though, it 
 is to be hoped, with so much added as to make the faithful 
 doubt. Certainly they have reason to doubt much in my own 
 case. But the growing oak does not lose its heart, at least 
 until death begins. 
 
 At Liverpool, or rather at Waterloo, near Liverpool, where I 
 took lodgings, I had a very queer time, which I do not remember 
 with much clearness. What is certain is, that I then determined, 
 as soon as possible, to turn from Architecture to Literature I 
 read Ruskin eagerly ; especially Seven Lamps of Architecture 
 and Stones of Venice. My conclusion was that Architecture 
 was quite hopeless in our shopkeeping age, and that he who 
 wanted to be a real architect could only spend his life in so 
 revolutionising society as to make a real Architecture possible. 
 I did not think of social or industrial or political revolution, but 
 rather of a revolution in the whole inward life of the people. 
 Politics had very httle interest for me, and I knew practically 
 nothing of them. Being brought up a Liberal, I never thought 
 of deserting the colours ; and that was about all. It was the 
 whole of life, as moved from within, that 1 saw needed seizing 
 and developing, by some artist of consummate power and insight, 
 
LOVE AND DESTINY. 51 
 
 endowed with the genius of a more spiritual and creative Shak- 
 speare — one who could grasp the whole range of human develop- 
 ment, with its future possibilities, and give the conception forth 
 again to the people in language clear and convincing, because 
 welling up from a new life experienced within. 
 
 I should say that, though at this time I was intensely Christian, 
 I was no longer exclusively Christian. Yet I regularly attended 
 the ministry of Hugh Stowell Brown in Liverpool, and was 
 greatly stimulated and helped by his strong human orthodoxy. 
 But my chief stimulants had been only semi-orthodox — George 
 Macdonald, Robertson, Browning, and even Carlyle, having all 
 been absorbed more or less into my Christian life, without 
 any conscious widening, but rather a deepening of it. Now, 
 in Liverpool, Ruskin's influence was overwhelming. Yet I 
 was in no sense his disciple, for I never set myself in any 
 way to follow his teaching. But he informed me greatly, both 
 in Art and Literature, and excited in me the highest mental 
 activity. So painful did this stimulus at last become, that I had 
 to resolutely close him, and have never since been able to read 
 him with real pleasure. In the days of which I am now writing 
 I read none of his sociological works. Coming to them com- 
 paratively recently, I found the charm of the Ruskin I had 
 known completely gone, as indeed is almost the case with works 
 that at this time proved most attractive. Especially his mediceval- 
 ism offends me, and his failure to understand Liberty and 
 Democracy. His influence, both in Religion and Sociology, 
 tends back to the old life rather than forward to the new ; and 
 I have no faith whatever in restorations and revivals. Carlyle 
 may seem to some to be open to the same charge ; but the man 
 who could write Sartor Resartus, and translate Goethe's 
 WiLHELM Meister, must have had a far stronger hold than 
 Ruskin on the creative forces of the future, especially in the 
 development of a truer religious life. Better a glorified Dissenter 
 than a glorified Churchman, though neither quite hits the mark. 
 
 With these ideas and ideals growing up in Liverpool as in 
 a hot-house, I set myself to improve my education and study 
 literature, trusting that some day I might become a writer. 
 Indeed, I did make one small literary venture, which I sent to 
 Hugh Stowell Brown, in the hope that he might publish it in a 
 magazine which he edited. If I had it by me still, it might 
 
52 MY QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 throw considerable light on my condition at this period. For 
 of course it was returned, with the usual advice, put in a very 
 strong and kind manner, and an added warning not to forsake 
 the profession in which I had been educated. All of which 
 had the usual effect on the young aspirant. 
 
 Though not quite the usual effect. For it helped me to realise 
 that I had to achieve something before I could say anything — 
 just what, I could not tell. I believed that I had a work to do 
 which one day would justify my abandonment of the profession 
 in which I had been educated, and a work in which this education 
 would by no means be wasted. I understood that I was at the 
 very threshold of my life task, and that it would not do to 
 hasten to it immaturely. Instinctively the conviction seized me 
 that I should have to wait until I was thirty before I could tell 
 what this task was. I accepted the instinct as trustworthy, and 
 prepared to act cheerfully upon it. Nine years did not seem too 
 long to wait and watch and work in patient uncertainty, if only 
 then I might discover my destiny. In the intense passion of my 
 love I seemed already to have achieved something heroic, which 
 gave me confidence that I had a future worth waiting for. 
 
 Thus, by the end of the year, I found it natural to return to 
 Norwich and to Architecture. My former employer was willing 
 to have me back; and I had the satisfaction of now earning 
 my living for the first time. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 PHYSICAL COLLAPSE. 
 
 One of the qualities in which I had been lacking as a boy was a 
 healthy self-confidence. My extremely sensitive nature, not find- 
 ing a home in the world, produced in me a morbid sense of 
 exile and loneliness and self-suspicion. I was afraid of contact 
 with people, and was painfully aware that I was not liked. Yet 
 I craved affection and esteem to an unusual extent. I well 
 remember, during one of my visits to Liverpool, when I must 
 have been about eighteen, the emotion produced in my mind 
 by being told that a lady, whose house I had visited, had said 
 that she liked me very much. My gratitude to her who said 
 this, and also to her who had enough confidence in me to tell 
 me this, was unbounded. It seemed to be my first introduction 
 to the fellowship of men and women, from which, hitherto, I 
 had felt shut out. If the reader have Hans Andersen's story of 
 The Ugly Duckling by him, let him turn to it now ; for therein 
 he will learn much about the dumb misery of my early life, 
 and all that this new experience of approval and confidence 
 meant. 
 
 And my great love, both from its own intensity and sacredness, 
 and also from the height on which I placed its object, was an 
 immense lift to me, bringing into my heart a wholly new and 
 wholesome reverence for myself. If, before, I had felt as though 
 introduced to the world of men and women, now I felt as if 
 welcomed to the fellowship of the world's great lovers : for even 
 Dante, I was assured, had not known a diviner passion than this. 
 And, looking back on it now, across half the years of my life, 
 I am gladdened and emboldened by the same assurance still. 
 To no man, 1 believe, has God given a greater gift of love than 
 mine; though many may well have been worthier of it than 
 
 53 
 
54 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 myself. It was all high love centred on one human object — the 
 love of a child for its mother, of a father for his child, of a 
 husband for his wife, of a man for God. 
 
 She who awakened this great gift of love in me was some 
 years older than myself. When I had come to Norwich — an 
 awkward, self-suspicious, undeveloped boy — she was already a 
 woman, and had had her baptism of fire, the endurance of which 
 gave her that dignity of exterior which seems like hardness to 
 one who does not know the suffering heart it protects. To be 
 at last admitted as the friend, and then as the passionate lover, 
 of one who had seemed so far removed above me, at so un- 
 approachable a height, was to me a call to fellowship with the 
 gods indeed. In all the doubts concerning myself that suc- 
 ceeded this time, I could always fall back for support upon the 
 fact of this great love, and so renew my faith in my fate. 
 
 But this new confidence in myself and in the providence of 
 my life was to receive a sudden shock, which has vibrated through 
 all my after years. God does not leave our growing qualities 
 long unpruned, and it is well for us that he does not. Certainly 
 this admirable growth of self-confidence needs a free use of 
 the knife, not for its destruction, but that it may bear sound and 
 abundant fruit. My new sense of heroism was to be disciplined 
 by an experience which made me feel very unheroic indeed. I 
 had despised the body, I had scorned happiness, and Nature 
 would have her revenge on me for that. 
 
 And yet I was just beginning to learn my mistake, and to 
 make amends for my misdeeds. But I sought to propitiate the 
 Divine Mother too late. Then, and since, she has allowed me 
 to go on offending her, in confidence that all was well, that I 
 still had not exhausted her good will, while she has but been 
 waiting until I was entirely bankrupt before she would present 
 her claims. She seems magnificently jealous of the devotees 
 to a spiritual life, demanding that neither shall the flame on 
 Her altar be allowed to go out. 
 
 Already I had had warnings, but had learned practically 
 nothing by them. Still I treated my body as a thing of small 
 account. This new passion of love, and the conditions of it, 
 soon co-operated to threaten a new nervous collapse. As if 
 enlightened by love, and the new expansion of my life, I set 
 about strengthening myself, not by prayer alone, but also by 
 
PHYSICAL COLLAPSE. 55 
 
 means more commonplace. I was going to describe these means 
 as being more natural; but, to me, prayer is as natural as 
 eating is. 
 
 One thing that indicated the unwholesomeness of my condition 
 was, that I still retained a deal of my old nervous dread of the 
 dark, resulting from my old terror of Hell, but now only re- 
 maining as a physical survival in me. I do not remember that, 
 ashamed of my foolishness, I prayed to be delivered therefrom. 
 I determined to walk each night beyond the gas lamps, gradually 
 increasing the distance as confidence grew, until I had quite 
 overcome my unreasonable fears. My experience on the first 
 night of this effort was not auspicious. When but a little way 
 into the darkness, beyond the last lamp, I suddenly saw in the 
 hedge the form of a man, in the act of springing upon me. My 
 heart stopped beating. My whole body became rigid and cold. 
 I stood immovable — one foot stretched forward, the heel of the 
 other just lifted from the ground. When I found that the 
 shadow in the hedge became equally immovable, circulation 
 returned, muscles relaxed, and I resumed my walk. Even if 
 I had been foolishly frightened by a shadow, I was not going 
 to turn back until I had completely regained possession of myself. 
 This was the first commencement of a habit I have frequently 
 indulged, of walking alone in the dark and communing with the 
 stars. 
 
 I recognised also, at this time, that the life I was imposing on 
 myself was morbidly severe. To further the benefit of my nightly 
 walks, I therefore began to smoke, and have since maintained 
 the habit, not by any means as a permitted fault, but rather as a 
 saving grace. This means, of course, that I have never carried 
 the habit to excess, or even been tempted to do so. The only 
 time when I feel anything like a real craving for a pipe is when 
 I am set down to a regular talk with any one. Then a pipe acts 
 as a kind of buffer state between us, or as a bond of fellowship — 
 just as our relations decide. Some hopelessly gone people talk 
 of the quantity of nicotine that will poison a cat, taking account of 
 nothing else. As though I were a cat ! Of course there are 
 people whom smoking injures. Let them avoid. My physical 
 frame is so sensitive that I can quickly tell what harms me, and 
 also what does me good. If I find smoking does me good, where 
 does the cat come in ? Happiness and repose are necessary to 
 
56 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 bodily health as well as to mental. You cannot separate the 
 two. But happiness and repose escape the chemist's analysis. 
 Therefore all this knowing talk about the cat. The chemistry of 
 human life involves something far more subtle than can be 
 discovered by scales and test-tubes and the cutting up of animals 
 alive. 
 
 Moreover, in a really healthy moral life, there wnll always be a 
 certain element of self assertion, or even of revolt. When we 
 dare no longer be a little bit impudent — quite naturally and 
 simply — we are sinking beneath our prerogative. Man is some- 
 thing more than God's dog. Life is not a Scotch Sabbath. Only 
 a fool will always live by rule. Genius plays fiddlesticks with the 
 canons of the schools. Expressing all this in an extreme form, I 
 have sometimes said, that it is necessary to be wicked occasionally, 
 in order to maintain one's self-respect. It only needs a little of 
 the saving grace of humour to put this element of manhood into 
 its right place; and we should make ourselves infinitely less 
 ridiculous to the gods if we habitually did this. Sanity — which 
 means the omission of nothing — that is what we want. 
 
 But those were still not days of sanity with me, though I was 
 now at last learning its need. In spite of night walks and 
 tobacco, the strain that my soul imposed upon my body was 
 greater than it could bear. If I had returned to Norwich and to 
 Architecture, I was still conscious of having a mission to fulfil, 
 though what it was I could not at all tell. I knew that my 
 present life was no expression of my real self, though I rather 
 felt than understood that this was so. It is remarkable how far a 
 feeling will guide us without the help of the understanding, when 
 that feeling results from a fact in the inner life. Urged by this 
 instinct, I renewed my prayer to God, though now in another form, 
 that I was prepared to suffer anything that human nature could 
 endure, if my life might but be of service to my fellow men. 
 
 In the limitation that I thus placed on my consecration, I was 
 not thinking at all of the capacity of the body for endurance, 
 but rather of the capacity of the will ; and the will I regarded as 
 a purely spiritual force, sustained by the spirit of God. Pain, 
 that did not weaken my power of self control, I regarded as of 
 no account. My sole ambition was to be spiritually strong, and 
 to serve some purpose in life. This granted, I would raise no 
 question as to the cost. I was convinced that the way of high 
 
PHYSICAL COLLAPSE. 57 
 
 service must be a way of great suffering ; and my past Christian 
 life yet lives in me in this, that I still have the highest confidence 
 in pain. Yet I have now the highest confidence in joy, too ; no 
 longer fearing it as I once did. I thank God that I have drunk 
 my fill of both. Only he who can say this can face the mystery 
 of evil with full assurance of faith. 
 
 In abandoning myself gratefully to the ideas which the painful 
 experiences of this time in Norwich began to open up to me, 1 
 have almost lost the thread of my story, these ideas being now 
 so much more real to me than the events which called them 
 forth. As twice before, so again, I broke down; but this time 
 with a greater collapse, as the burden I carried was heavier to 
 bear, and I had still some heavy arrears in my account with the 
 Divine Mother to make up. My passionate love naturally con- 
 tributed largely to this result. It was a love so far removed from 
 the common track, that it could not be taken naturally, and 
 expressed openly. An ideal love like mine, without marriage in 
 view, or even demanding like love in return, it has not entered 
 into the mind of Mrs. Grundy to conceive. Verily she has a 
 mind of her own in these matters, and has no wish to be in- 
 formed. And so a love, perfectly wholesome and natural in 
 itself, grew morbid through secrecy and outward suppression, 
 instead of being healthfully and naturally allowed to grow. My 
 love needed sunshine and the free air, but both were denied. 
 This confinement in a dungeon was Mrs. Grundy's work. All 
 through my life I have had no cause to love Mrs. Grundy ; and 
 if I do not roundly call her a fool, it is because I know she is 
 too foolish to understand. From me, indeed, she would accept 
 such an epithet as the highest praise. What can one do, then, 
 but go on ? 
 
 Morbid fears and doubts grew up in me, and ran their course 
 unchecked. They had no foundation in fact — creatures of the 
 imagination, breeding rapidly in the dark, light and air being 
 denied. And I had no refuge in work. My office work, as 
 before, I liked ; but it had no place in my programme of life. 
 Indeed, the great trouble was that I had really no programme, 
 but was only expecting one ; and the realisation of this expecta- 
 tion seemed now farther off. My religion, of course, should 
 have unified and directed my energies; but it did not. As in 
 the Isle of Man, so here, my religious convictions, though now 
 
58 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 expressed in an intensely religious life, could not concentrate my 
 activities upon one fixed aim. They were simply employed in 
 keeping me going from day to day, but gave me no indication 
 of a way to follow and a work to do. Without knowing the 
 cause, I was suffering all the mental and physical ills of imprison- 
 ment in a dark cell. 
 
 And the results came which solitary confinement brings. 
 Among other effects, I found the old sensual temptations, to 
 which I had long been a stranger, returning upon me ; and I was 
 powerless to drive them off. For the sake of the cynic I must 
 remark, that they were absolutely dissociated from my love. 
 The self-confidence which had grown up in me, the confidence 
 that my high love foretold a high future for which I had been set 
 apart, the sense of heroism and of fellowship with heroes which 
 it brought, all fell away before this terrible assault. The one 
 condition of my prayer of consecration had gone unfulfilled. I 
 had suffered to the point of losing the power of controlling my 
 thoughts. I could no longer reverence myself, therefore, no 
 longer feel worthy in the presence of the woman I loved, no 
 longer believe that I had a mission from God to fulfil. The idea 
 grew in my mind, until it became an obsession, that my life on 
 earth was done with, and that God meant me to die. Under 
 this obsession, I determined to die ; and bought poison for this 
 end. So near does the highest life come to the lowest, when 
 ill-conditioned and misunderstood. 
 
 If Sanity has come to be the fullest term that I can use to 
 express my ideal of the fullest human life, including the Christian 
 Holiness, and so much more beside, the reader will now under- 
 stand. But doubtless I use the word with a completeness of 
 meaning all my own, including in it all forms of the development 
 of human powers, nothing omitted, all organised into a hierarchy 
 of bodily and spiritual affections and energies, culminating in the 
 attainment of the consciousness of the indwelling love and energy 
 of God. Of course such a conception of life beggars any term 
 I may use. Let the reader avoid limiting my conception by my 
 term. If he have come to the same sense of the fulness of life, 
 and to the same consciousness of its perfect union in God, 
 though by another road than mine, let him use another term if 
 he choose, and not quarrel about terms, declaring that my ideal 
 is lower than his because, for instance, I do not use here a 
 
To face p. 58. 
 
PHYSICAL COLLAPSE. 59 
 
 Christian word. Such a man has not yet learned the mystery 
 of language and the mastery thereof ; limiting realities by terms, 
 so that he puts terms in the place of things ; not understanding 
 the patience and magnanimity needed towards finite words when 
 used to express infinite thoughts. 
 
 At this crisis in my life, which need not be taken too seriously, 
 I was saved in the very nature of things by my perfect confidence 
 in the woman 1 loved. With a thoroughness that was charac- 
 teristic of me, I simply placed in her lap the poison I had bought. 
 Notwithstanding all the difficulties that had beset our relationship, 
 no shadow had fallen between us ; and her action at this time 
 justified wholly my perfect faith in her judgment and her love. 
 For now, at last, she was beginning to love me with a love like 
 my own — now, when our fate decreed that we must part. 
 
 For it was clear that, for such a condition as mine, only drastic 
 remedies could avail. With the womanly strength which always 
 characterised her love for me, she proposed that I should go to 
 Australia ; and it was soon decided that I should go. There was 
 no thought of permanent severance in this, though what our 
 future was to be we could not conceive. I was still but twenty- 
 one, and had yet to learn to master life and the means to live — 
 a dual obligation which I have never been able to harmonise 
 for long, though I still live and work in hope, as now in writing 
 this book, compelled still to place life first. 
 
 Thus, in this physical collapse, I began to learn the awful 
 discipline of the body — the spirit rising in lofty claims on life, 
 and attempting heroic things, careless of any pain, only to find 
 the body, itself with a kind of asinine heroism, steadfastly 
 refusing to support the soul, either in its flight or its task. Yet 
 not quite always ; for such clearest revelations as I have had of 
 God have come to me when body and soul have, for awhile, found 
 full freedom in each other's company, each helping the other 
 loyally to a fulness of life and joy which neither could have 
 known apart. And I am sure my weak body has largely helped 
 towards the Sanity I prize — holding my spirit in bounds, keeping 
 me truer to things, saving me from spiritual pride, preventing me 
 from becoming a crank, and opening up in my heart that gracious 
 sense of Humour, which, along with Sanity, and with a similar 
 fulness of meaning all my own, I have placed among the gods 
 of my earthly Hfe. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 
 
 On the 30th of August, 1876, I left London on a sailing ship for 
 Sydney. During the short period of preparation for the voyage, 
 I was greatly sustained by that sense of expansion which I had 
 so much needed in my past life. But my real support was found 
 in my religious faith, and in the love now inseparable from it. 
 God and Christ were nearer to me than ever before, and in spite 
 of the deepest suffering, my heart was full of confidence and 
 peace. I am now destroying some mementoes of that time, 
 too sacred for any eye to see, too intimate for any heart to 
 understand. What they reveal is a boundless confidence in God, 
 and a sense of nearness to him, in which all the machinery of 
 the redemption was practically lost — as though, through my 
 perfect human love, 1 had at last been raised to a height, at 
 which all that machinery had become a mere scaffolding, as it 
 were, to the Temple of the God of Love in which I now 
 dwelt. 
 
 I see from these mementoes that this was actually so, though 
 I was not conscious of it at the time. In understanding and in 
 thought I was far behind my actual life. For I have, also, the 
 notes of my last Sunday School lesson, the subject being the 
 Parable of the Prodigal Son. In reading these I am struck with 
 the inconsistency of my teaching. At first I spoke to my boys, 
 in the terms of the Parable, of the immediateness of God, of his 
 accessibility, of his waiting and watching for our readiness to 
 come to him, of his joy in welcoming the wandering soul home, 
 when at last it could understand and crave his love. And then, 
 as bound by my creed, I hauled in the machinery of the 
 Redemption, although it was the manifest intention of Jesus to 
 declare that all such machinery God and the soul could do 
 
 6q 
 
COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 6i 
 
 without. Of the Parable of the Prodigal Son I made an 
 evangelical discourse, with no sense of the incongruity thereof. 
 
 In thought, therefore, I was still an earnest Evangelical Chris- 
 tian, though in life I was rising nearer to God and to Truth. 
 I was not in the least aware of what I have indicated in the 
 previous chapter, that my experiences were leading me swiftly 
 forward towards a rupture between Dogma and Life. Misgivings 
 as to this Dogma I certainly had, but they found no fixed place 
 in my mind. On leaving England, therefore, I had not the 
 slightest apprehension of any change in my religious beliefs. 
 At the same time I had developed a strong instinct for Truth 
 in a wide sense, resulting in a craving for honesty in both 
 manners and thought, which sometimes made my conduct 
 objectionableTto my friends. Especially the dishonesty of certain 
 social amenities and class distinctions led me into mild revolt. 
 
 For in these early days I had experienced already the beginnings 
 of that terrible conflict between Truth and Love which was to 
 cut so deeply into my life ; and already I had determined that 
 Truth must come first, and that Love must learn to wait in 
 perfect faith. It was this that gave such elemental qualities 
 to my love— qualities which, later on, Emerson was to help me 
 to understand. One result of this awful conflict, the facts of 
 which I can never record, is, that I have placed Magnanimity, 
 along with Sanity and Humour, among my mundane gods ; but, 
 again, with a meaning all my own. Certainly no person who 
 lives by a creed can quite understand what I mean by any of 
 these terms. 
 
 Love of Truth, and confidence in my creed, were both 
 manifested in my first real act after getting to sea. As soon as 
 sickness had been overcome, and I had got my books arranged 
 in my cabin— a large square cabin, shared only by a consumptive 
 young Scotchman, with a great fund of humour which more than 
 made up for his distressing cough— thus settled down in my 
 quarters, I set myself diligently to study the Bible afresh, unaided 
 by helps of any kind, save prayer for the guidance of God's Holy 
 Spirit in the interpretation of his word, and for strength to act 
 faithfully by all that I found therein revealed. It was another 
 act of consecration— this time to revealed Truth, with a sense 
 that the Truth revealed was doubtless greater than I knew. 
 Alone, with no programme, I was going forth to a new world ; 
 
62 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 yet confident in the consciousness of a mission, which my great 
 sorrow and lonehness would help me to discover and fulfil. In 
 prayer and faith I turned to the Old Book, on which, more 
 definitely than ever, I was determined to build my life. 
 
 It was natural that I should commence my reading with Paul's 
 letter to the Roman Church. Actually, though not consciously, 
 the Bible began there for me. In the world of thought, if not 
 historically, it began there — in the light now first thrown on the 
 Old Testament, on the life of Jesus, on God's providential 
 designs running through all the remainder of man's career on 
 earth. I began at the point of illumination in the whole of this 
 strange scheme, into which all the tremendous Drama of 
 Humanity has been forced by the genius of this converted 
 Pharisee, whose thought has since so largely ruled the world. 
 With his strong Pharisaic instinct for dogmatic interpretation, 
 illuminated by an absolutely new thought and life — God in 
 Christ, reconciling the world to himself, Jew and Gentile now 
 no longer set apart, man and God now no longer set apart, 
 but all alike united to God through a conscious personal 
 union with Christ, first on the cross, and then risen to the 
 right hand of God ; his own personality lost to his own thought 
 through conscious oneness with Christ, crucified and glorified; 
 his aim the loss of all personality in Christ, who himself, at 
 last, is also to be lost in God, who will be all in all ; the 
 mighty passion of this new sense of union quivering hot through 
 this iron man, whose bodily presence many dared to despise ; 
 all this blazing up suddenly in one individual, and brooded over 
 in solitude until it cohered into a body of doctrine, explain- 
 ing the meaning of all the mystery of life — this Hero, as if 
 a demi-god, has, in his own person, created the greatest revolu- 
 tion the world has yet known, a revolution far from being 
 exhausted yet. 
 
 This man's letter to the Roman Church I now read in prayer 
 and faith, with perfect abandonment to God. It was a sentence 
 in this letter which first brought light to my darkened life — 
 " For the wages of sin is death ; but the gift of God is eternal 
 life, through Jesus Christ our Lord." I read on, slowly and 
 prayerfully, past that, past the magnificent eighth chapter, which 
 now again, as so often before, thrilled me with its intensity of 
 thought and life, and then on into all that maze of involved and 
 
COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 63 
 
 subtle reasoning about the rejection of the Jews and the salvation 
 of the Gentiles, in the midst of which, suddenly — as a lightning 
 flash — the thought shot hot through me — " This man is trying 
 to prove true that which is fundamentally false." I see now that 
 Paul made the mistake of all dogmatic interpreters — he did not 
 know where reverently and humbly to stop short. He must 
 interpret everything, account for everything, present his Scheme 
 as one into which everything could be made to fit. 
 
 It was chaos come with a crash. I was buried suddenly in 
 the ruins of the Temple I had been building for myself, praying 
 to God that it might be truly built. The disillusion was as 
 complete as it was swift. I saw that everything was lost on 
 which my past life had been built up, and the loss was worse 
 than any sentence of death. My suffering, as I realised what 
 had befallen, and the consequences thereof to others, seemed 
 more than I could endure. Never, in any life, has there been 
 a more sudden and devastating bolt from the blue than that. 
 
 But the bolt fell on me while I was walking the path of life 
 with a whole heart. I learned to accept it, if not bravely, at least 
 doggedly, and, in time, not without some despairing hope. I 
 did not feel bitter towards the old faith. I did not despise those 
 who held it. I did not regret the years passed in confidence 
 that it was God's revealed word. It was still the faith of the 
 woman I loved, with a love no longer inseparable from my love 
 and worship of God, but now rent rudely apart, braving the 
 elements like some mighty storm-riven oak, defiantly renewing 
 its leafage as if in mute protest against Fate. 
 
 I saw that the whole problem of Religion had to be faced 
 afresh, and with no Bible for my guide. If I was ever again 
 to have any confidence in God, any sense of his presence in the 
 world and in my own heart, it must be built up afresh from the 
 deep foundations of life. And I saw, too, what seemed to add 
 to the almost hopeless difficulty of the task, that the old faith 
 would always remain with me as a memory, by which to test the 
 strength and beauty of the new ; that I should never be satisfied 
 with a confidence less sure, a communion with God less close, 
 a life less directed and inspired by the Eternal Spirit. From the 
 first I had a wholesome disrespect for watered down beliefs, 
 make-beliefs, which it has none the less been my fate to come 
 in contact with so much. 
 
64 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 It seemed to me certain, therefore, that unless I must conclude 
 the whole Universe, a fraud (which is really now unthinkable to 
 my more matured thought, for Reality is unthinkable as false) 
 a still higher life ought to be built up on the foundations of 
 fact and experience than I had built in the past on a creed 
 which I found to be untrue. For it was no mere consistent 
 scheme of the Universe that could satisfy me. After the intense 
 spiritual life that I had lived, the goal of my quest was no 
 plausible theory of God, such as so many appear to be satisfied 
 with, but very God himself, consciously present in my life. I 
 began to be, thenceforth, a Realist in Religion, demanding no 
 romantic dream of Religion, and no philosophic scheme of it, but 
 Facts, Facts, Facts — facts, which would make all dreams and 
 schemes appear mere trivial sport. I was beginning to foresee 
 the revolution that is to be in religious life — a revolution that 
 came to Science centuries since — the lower preparing the way for 
 the higher, as is always the case. 
 
 The cleanness of this piece of destructive work in my life, 
 and the clearness of vision that attended it, still surprise me 
 as I look back on it over twenty intervening years. It was 
 a revolution from which no reaction ensued. There was no 
 hesitation in accepting the frightful catastrophe, and yet no self- 
 deception in regard to its character and extent. The past lay 
 before me in sharpest outline ; but a deep, impassable chasm had 
 suddenly opened up, which I could not even hope to cross, though 
 she I so perfectly loved stood beckoning on the other side. It 
 never occurred to me to attempt the passage by a new interpreta- 
 tion of the Old Book. I knew now that this Old Book was less 
 than Life, that a Book Religion could never again satisfy my soul, 
 and that this Jewish Literature, on which my life had been built, 
 could never be anything to me again, until I had learned a 
 larger truth and life in God himself. 
 
 Verily, I was making tremendous claims on Life — claims 
 that all my past training made to appear very hopeless indeed. 
 Revelation or Nothing — the light of the Gospel of Christ, or 
 the Darkness of endless Despair — the possibility of any other 
 alternative had never entered my mind. But now, at last, there 
 lay clearly before me the lifetask that I had been so blindly 
 groping after in the days of the Faith now lost — to find God with 
 a closed Bible, and then to tell others the way by which I had 
 
 I 
 
COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 65 
 
 gone— in my own experience to enlarge the borders and deepen 
 the foundations of the rehgious hfe. 
 
 If I saw the whole situation so clearly, and accepted it so 
 loyally, impossible from every point of view as it then seemed, 
 I think it was because already I had grown into a life larger 
 than my creed, though it was an unconscious growth. I think 
 my vague and yet irresistible sense of a purpose that my life 
 was to fulfil implies this. Else, why was not that purpose 
 clearly defined at once as being to preach the gospel of Salva- 
 tion and Holiness through Faith ? It was this gospel which 
 was the sole conscious foundation of all I sought to be. Then 
 why did I dream of a new Literature, of a greater Shakspeare, 
 of a revolution in the national inner life ? I may not be able to 
 impress the reader with the fact ; but to myself it is evident 
 that, when I went to Liverpool, my creed had already become 
 too small for my growing consciousness ; it was already a scheme 
 of salvation into which my thoughts for the world's salvation 
 would not all fit. 
 
 Indeed — as will appear hereafter, from a letter written in 
 Australia — when I went to Liverpool, I had already discussed 
 in my own mind the possibility of preaching, and had given it up 
 in favour of writing. The reason I give in this letter is, that I 
 had not the physical strength requisite for a preacher. I have 
 entirely forgotten the fact. What alone I can remember is the 
 sense of a mission which only Literature could fulfil — most cer- 
 tainly of a mission already instinctively realised as larger than that 
 of converting others to my own creed. All the facts show that, 
 though I had evidently then considered preaching and writing as 
 alternatives, my ideas of the end of preaching must have been 
 the same as those of the end of writing previously explained, their 
 combined largeness and vagueness showing them to have already 
 expanded in sub-consciousness beyond the simple gospel of 
 redemption through the blood of Christ. But it is interesting 
 to me to be informed by this letter that, before first leaving 
 Norwich, I had considered the possibility of being a preacher, 
 though the idea was so completely given up that it has left no 
 mental impress. 
 
 Certainly mine has always been the preacher's temperament, 
 my view of life the preacher's view, modified, however, by an 
 artistic temperament and outlook, which would never let me feel 
 
 5 
 
66 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 quite at home in the pulpit, but as if under protest there. None 
 the less, as the sequel will show, I should be preaching to-day if 
 I had the physical strength for the task, though on a platform of 
 a very unconventional sort. It is this preaching quality in me 
 which has made my efforts towards imaginative literature fail, 
 while its artistic modification will, I trust, serve as a vital 
 salt, to keep my life and work from going conventionally 
 corrupt. 
 
 Before the cloud-capped precipice that now fronted me, I 
 again renewed the old prayer — if now it could be called a prayer, 
 when no sense of the old communion with God went with it — 
 that I was willing to suffer anything I could bear, if I might but 
 learn a new divine message for my fellow men. Rather was it, 
 then, a dumb, forlorn casting of myself upon the bare rock of the 
 Universe, with Love bleeding and Faith dead, resolved that, 
 while still not crushed by Fate, I would remain faithful to my 
 fellows and to myself. The sense of a mission, the possession of 
 a boundless love— of these I had not been robbed. Though the 
 Universe had died for me, its Soul fled suddenly away, yet there 
 remained these spiritual gifts, which kept me from quite sinking 
 beneath the sense of the utter commonplaceness which now 
 characterised my outer world— a cheap, painted thing — uncom- 
 panionable for me as any wax-work show. 
 
 And I had this one unspeakable advantage, that I possessed 
 my soul in freedom — a freedom which more than made up for 
 my frightful solitude. I was among strangers, I was going to a 
 strange land, I need not return home for an indefinite time, if at 
 all. In my new voyage of adventure, I could sail whither I 
 would, with no fear of being hampered by orders from home. 
 Without this freedom, I think I should have died. 
 
 Also I was most fortunate in finding one passenger on board 
 with whom I could talk freely about my loss of faith. He was 
 an elderly man, who had lived for several years in the Colonies, 
 and was now returning from a visit to his English friends. Bright, 
 generous, mentally satisfied, absolutely ignorant of the needs of 
 the spiritual life, this good man did me excellent service in the 
 condition in which I was. He discussed with me problems, 
 which caused me the greatest pain, in a light-minded way, which, 
 doubtless, did me much, good, helping me towards that complete 
 sanity, or balance, or inclusiveness, which it is so difficult to 
 
COLLAPSE OF FAITH. g. 
 
 maintain in our complex world-save as he obtained it by 
 leaving out of the account the most real elements of life 
 
 His light-mindedness was that of a man who had passed 
 middle life, had found what his intellect could grasp and' what 
 .t could not, and had cheerfully accepted the result. There was 
 something charming in this in his own case, because he did no 
 pose as a teacher; nor did he present his conclusions as in any 
 sense conclusive, or as at all commensurate with the sum of things 
 
 Si'nd h TT""""'"'' " ' '^'"^^ ' '-"" short-sighted and colour: 
 blind, but I am content to live by what I see, without quarrel- 
 Img with others who declare that they can see more." So he 
 good-naturedly accepted himself, without claiming to be accented 
 by others as a standard by which the limits of human atminm m 
 could be judged Throughout the voyage, and during the Ume 
 of my stay m Sydney, he remained a most generous and helpfi! 
 
 For the rest, I had the ship, the sailors, and my books. The 
 
 ZTT"' T\ '™™ ''"' °"' J"^' -"^""""^d, were of no use 
 Into their ridiculous quarrels I could not enter, and therefore 
 n^de no friends. It was amusing to watch th^'r vain dotj 
 
 hv hf h"""" P'/*^"' ^ '^y- '°'^"^ by the waves, cooM 
 by the breezes, and sufficiently removed from the emptiness 
 of the he beneath. If I have not become a cynic I know 
 quite well how a .cynic feels. I owe it to the inte^sUy and 
 consistency o my early training, together with a certain nher, 
 tance of the blood, that I cannot help holding those in "com 
 who make life cheap-but not individually-only in the mass 
 Men and women in their collective capacity I often reTard 
 as ridiculous, whom personally I deeply respect ^ 
 
 My books were very good books, but, under the altered cir- 
 cumstances not much to the point. I read Spenser's FaeRe 
 Queene; failed with Gary's Dante, though I Zl 4at y 
 admired the prose translation of the Infekno by Dr Ca^Me 
 became more familiar with some of the Poets, and could rlake' 
 hi^ uo 1 ZT' "'°" ' '^°"°"^'' ^™- ^ passenger, takng 
 
 cabin and fi . "k" '" °"' ^^^' ^"^"'""S '"y^^'f "P '" my 
 cabm, and finishing about half-past nine. It was not my wont 
 
 atZT' I°s"''' '^f.'T ^"'^ ' "^^^^ "-- repeated the 
 attempt. I suppose I did it from a wholesome desire, already 
 
68 MY QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 growing within -me, to try all sorts of experiences. Most of 
 my reading was done aloft, whence I could look around at 
 the heavens and the circle of waters, and gaze deep down into 
 the wondrous blue beneath. And often, up there, I would 
 take from my pocket a photograph, and think deep and sad 
 thoughts. I could scarcely even pray for her now. Yet was 
 there not a bond between us which was of the very stuff 
 of God ? 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 LIFE AT SEA. 
 
 The ship and the sailors were a great education to me. I have 
 already mentioned my growing desire to lay myself open to all 
 sorts of experiences. During the first week on board, before 
 the crash of my faith, I had resolved that I would live and 
 work with the sailors before the voyage was through. It was 
 almost a reckless idea for one who had had no athletic training ; 
 but it was this very fact that made me see that to work with the 
 sailors was the very thing I needed. It was another instance 
 of the extent to which I was unconsciously breaking out. I 
 did not make my purpose known, but quietly set myself the 
 necessary preliminary task of learning to reach every part of the 
 ship. For, of course, until I could feel quite comfortable hanging 
 over a royal yard, or describing ellipses at the end of the jib- 
 boom, it would be useless for me to think of working as one 
 of the crew. 
 
 At the outset I had to do a deal of arguing with myself, for I 
 had had no experience to give me the confidence needed for the 
 many and increasingly difficult essays which I had to make. I 
 had to tell myself that thousands upon thousands of boys had 
 to master the run of a ship under circumstances much less 
 favourable than mine ; and that what they had to do I certainly 
 ought to be able to do equally well, and equally without fear of 
 danger. In regard to the danger, the doctrine of averages 
 assured me then, and has often comforted me since. Perhaps 
 one in ten thousand, or perhaps in one thousand, might be 
 killed in such a venture as this ; but why should I expect to be 
 one in a thousand ? We cannot think ourselves the objects of 
 providential spite. 
 
 It did not take long to develop the new powers required. To 
 
 69 
 
70 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 my surprise I found the swaying of the ship to be quite a 
 negligible quantity. Gradually one difficulty after another was 
 overcome, until there was only one last, but greatest, difficulty to 
 face — the ascent to the main truck, the highest point on the 
 ship. Here I did nearly come to grief. I had been to the top of 
 the Jacob's ladder several times, but the rest of the distance had 
 an ugly look. One fine breezy morning I set my teeth, and deter- 
 mined that I would reach that main truck or drop. The first 
 thing was to swing myself from the top of the Jacob's ladder on 
 to one of the back-stays running down from the main truck. 
 This I managed all right. Then I had to swarm up this back- 
 stay, on its under side, of course, until there was no room for 
 me to go farther, because I was jammed against the mast. At 
 this point came the really trying part. There were two back- 
 stays — one running down on each side of the ship, but both 
 meeting at the top of the mast. I had to swing myself over the 
 stay up which I had climbed, so as to have one leg on the top 
 of each stay, and thus get clear of the mast. Then I had to 
 draw myself up on the top of the two stays, instead of climbing 
 up the underside of one. 
 
 It was when I found myself jammed between the back-stay 
 and the mast, and had to swing myself on to the top of the two 
 stays together, that my nerves suddenly and completely collapsed. 
 It was not that I was afraid. Had I been afraid, I should not 
 be writing this. It was simply that my nervous system was over- 
 strained and struck work. I quite understood what was wrong, 
 and simply hung there motionless to give myself a rest until I 
 could resume self-control. Naturally the temptation was strong 
 to slide down the back-stay to the deck, which would have been 
 easy enough. But I was determined to complete the attempt 
 as part of the necessary conquest of myself on which I was bent. 
 Gradually my control over nerves and muscles returned. Then 
 I swung myself on to the back of the two stays, and hauled 
 myself up them until I could place my hand on the top of the 
 main truck. Some may regard all this as a piece of very dan- 
 gerous folly. For my own part I know it to have been one of 
 the most valuable experiences of my life, especially since I had 
 never had any such education before. 
 
 This victory gave me the entire run of the ship. A good 
 deal of practice was still needed, however, before I could think 
 
LIFE AT SEA. 
 
 71 
 
 of serving before the niast. Indeed, it was not until we were 
 down in the "roaring forties " that I ventured to ask the captain 
 if I might occupy, for a week, the berth of a sailor who had died, 
 and work with the starboard watch. I had previously bought 
 oil-skins, sea-boots, a sou'wester, and other equipments, some of 
 them at the auction which followed the sailor's death, the 
 proceeds of which would be forwarded to the dead man's friends. 
 It was a wet and stormy day, and the captain looked much 
 surprised. However, after asking a few questions, he gave his 
 consent. I left the saloon for the fo'castle at the first dog-watch. 
 My friends could quite understand my desire to work with the 
 sailors, but that I should be willing to abandon saloon fare for 
 " salt junk " and " hard-tack " utterly passed their comprehension. 
 Indeed, one man asserted frankly that I must be mad. But how 
 shallow men's minds must be when they cannot understand the 
 infinite difference between sharing the sailors' whole round of 
 life, and merely working with them and going into the saloon for 
 meals. It is such elemental stupidity which makes the world so 
 hard to save. 
 
 My week with the sailors was one of the best times I have had, 
 though a hard time too. For we had very bad weather, and very 
 rough food, and very hard work. The constant up and down of the 
 watches I enjoyed at first, but soon I began to long for a whole 
 night's rest— to be allowed, just for once, to sleep my sleep out. 
 But the sailors were gentlemen at heart, with but one or two 
 exceptions, and these were really landsmen who had come to sea. 
 I had some pretty lessons, too. On the first evening I sat down 
 on my chest to eat my supper with my cap on. Presently a 
 sailor came behind me, and gently tapped my head with a 
 " pantile," as the hard sea-biscuits are called. He explained that 
 it was usual to smash a pantile on the head of any one who 
 offended as I had done ; but, as I was a stranger to fo'castle 
 manners, he had let me off! There was a German sailor who 
 had a bamboo tobacco-box which he had bought in Shanghai. 
 I asked him to sell it to me. No ; he did not wish to part with 
 it. After my week in the fo'castle, I found him one day spitting 
 on this tobacco-box and rubbing it over with his handkerchief— 
 of course fetching off a deal of the deep rich brown which I had 
 admired so much. I asked him what he was doing. He said 
 he was polishing it up to give to me. And he would take no 
 
72 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 refusal. I have never been a good collector, or had any love of 
 keeping things, except books ; but that tobacco-box stands on my 
 mantel-piece now. Yet it never seems to have regained the 
 splendid rich brown that the sailor so generously polished off to 
 make it fit for a gift. 
 
 Let it be understood that I did not go at all out of my way to 
 please these sailors, that I never tipped them or gave them drink, 
 but simply lived and worked with them, and did as they did — 
 though I had to draw the line at talking their talk. Yet I prefer 
 the "Damn!" of a sailor to the "Bother!" of a bishop. I 
 can by no means sympathise with the man who argued that 
 there must be a Hell, or why did God make sailors ? If I were 
 God, 1 should let all sailors into the Kingdom, and give them 
 front seats. More than all my reading in Philosophy, my experi- 
 ence with sailors has taught me the relativity of things. 
 
 But the gentlemen's sons, who go to sea as Apprentices, I 
 should consign to the lowest pit. It must have been this sort 
 of boy-gentleman-sailor that the man meant. I admit that my 
 basis for such a generalisation was not broad, covering but five 
 specimens in all ; but it was a very strong and homogeneous 
 basis as far as it went. I thought I would put a week in with 
 these apprentices. It was harder work holding out through that 
 week than carrying out my determination to reach the main truck. 
 There was a mean, gross and sensual cussedness about these 
 fellows which language fails to express. As a boy I had strong 
 democratic leanings. I wanted to shake hands with the man 
 as well as with the master, and to raise my hat to the woman as 
 well as to the lady. And now this new experience came to rein- 
 force my awkward instinct. 
 
 I have said that we had some rough weather during this time, 
 and indeed we had. It enabled me to feel something of the 
 hardness of a sailor's life. One night the wind rose so high 
 that we had to heave the ship to. Again and again I went 
 aloft with the men to shorten sail, amid lightning and thunder 
 and torrents of rain. But the wind still rose, and our work was 
 not finished until, at three o'clock in the morning, we were hove 
 to under three lower topsails. On the yard-arms curses fell 
 as quickly as rain-drops ; but not one fell on any living thing, 
 not even on myself, who must often have been in the way as 
 the men crowded aloft. It was the slippery foot-ropes, the hard 
 
LIFE AT SEA. 73 
 
 and heavy sails, the obstinate gaskets, or some other inanimate 
 thing, each of which seemed that night to be possessed of a legion 
 of devils, and was treated with the language suited to objects so 
 possessed. Animism still lingers among sailors, even a marline- 
 spike or a sheath-knife having a several devil of its own, or why 
 should it hide itself when wanted, or turn obstinate when 
 required to work ? And the language of the sailor adapts itself 
 very naturally to the continual conflict he has to maintain with 
 these innumerable spirits of evil ; good spirits, apparently, not 
 often crossing his path. And yet, as I listened to the innocent, 
 childlike talk of that tobacco-box German sailor on cold, starry 
 nights, when I shared his post on the fo'castle head, it was 
 easy to understand that these men had their angel spirits too. 
 For the rest, I can only say, " God bless all sailors, and bring 
 them to port at last ! " 
 
 I might make a very long chapter about the experiences of 
 this adventurous time — the wonder and beauty of the blue sea, 
 silvering every object that fell into its bewitching depths —the 
 marvellous grandeur and glory of the tropical sunsets, and of 
 their reflection on the crests and hollows of the ever rolling waves 
 — the constant changing of the starry sky, until the familiar 
 Great Bear was drowned in the ocean, and the lovely Southern 
 Cross arose, hke Venus Aphrodite, from the deep — the weird and 
 awful feeling of our first calm, the shining and heaving surface 
 of the swell rolling us heavily from port to starboard and from 
 starboard to port, while the sails flapped wearily against the masts 
 — the still more profound impression of our first gale, when the 
 seas lifted our proud ship aloft till, for one moment, we could see 
 a huge distance across the wild mountainous waves, and then 
 tumbled us down the side of the mighty ridge, until we lay for 
 another instant at the bottom of a vast sweeping valley, nothing 
 visible to us but its green and foaming sides — the sudden 
 thunder of the carrying away of our huge jib-boom just as I had 
 turned in to sleep away the forenoon watch — the incarnation of 
 power and self-control which we beheld in the mighty albatross, 
 careering hour after hour in the gale, and never flapping its 
 wings — the strange sensation of leaving our ship in mid ocean in 
 an open boat, and seeing her towers of canvas from a distance 
 occupying the circle of waters alone — the boarding of a vessel 
 laden with sugar from Cibu, two years out from England, and 
 
74 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 three degrees out of her reckoning because her chronometers 
 had broken down — the observance by the sailors of the singular 
 ceremony of the Dead Horse, to raise money at the end of their 
 first month at sea — the Sports we held on crossing the Line, 
 instead of the old-fashioned tar-and-feathering, with father 
 Neptune rising from the sea to preside over the time-honoured 
 rites — the Bazaar we had in the tropics on our tented deck, by 
 which we realised ;£'4o for the benefit of three Sailors' Homes — 
 the Sunday Services, the weekly concerts, the dramatic per- 
 formances, and all the whims and vagaries of the passengers, with 
 the quarrelling and love-making in which they indulged to pass 
 away the time — the songs and chanteys of the sailors, and all 
 their yarns and card playing and painting of pictures and washing 
 and mending of clothes — the strange characters among them — 
 the Butcher with his cow and sheep and fowls, and the song- 
 birds in a hundred cages which he was taking out to sell — the 
 Carpenter who made us a new jib-boom seventy feet long, and 
 set it up with all the rigging thereto, as we sailed the open sea — 
 the poor, raving maniac, who broke out soon after we left 
 England, and lived naked like a wild beast in the deck-house, 
 cursing and raving at all who came near him, and repeatedly 
 tearing off his clothes — the little Irish Doctor, who dissected the 
 dead sailor, and proudly bottled his ruptured kidney in spirits — 
 the good Captain, a model captain, who was courteous to all, 
 but held aloof from the women and all their quarrels, and kept 
 chiefly to a few old fogies with whom he played whist at night — 
 the quaint old Quarter-masters, with whom I occasionally took 
 lee wheel, once during a splendid Southerly Buster off the 
 Australian coast — 
 
 But I might continue my bald enumeration all night. I have 
 written it because I want the reader to understand how new and 
 varied and beneficent all my experiences were ; and how, during 
 the cruel time through which I had to pass, they all helped me 
 to live. People have said, " You must have found it very dull, 
 shut up three months in a ship." I felt infinitely sad on the 
 morning when firsts from the fore royal yard, I discerned the 
 Australian coast. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 LETTERS HOME. 
 
 One Saturday morning the captain announced, that if the wind 
 held, we should see Cape Otvvay light that night. I paced the 
 fo'castle head with the look-out after darkness set in, every 
 few minutes seeing imaginary lights, my more experienced com- 
 panion always crushing my hopes. It was not until nearly mid- 
 night that the look-out on the fore top-gallant yard shouted down, 
 " Light on the port bow ! " Then I saw the difference between 
 the real light shining with a steady glow, and the imaginary lights 
 I had seen flitting about on the horizon. It was much the same 
 experience as I was to go through in my religious beliefs. 
 
 After a time, I turned in, determined, if possible, to be the 
 first to see land in the morning. Nor was I disappointed. When 
 I turned out again, daylight had already come ; but dense banks 
 of cloud lay heavy on the horizon, making impossible any sight 
 of the distant coast. I ran aloft, however, to the fore royal yard, 
 hoping doubtfully that the clouds would lift. It was very strange, 
 waiting up there alone, my heart answering but too well to the 
 cold grey of the morning, seeking to see a land which I had 
 little desire to reach. I knew that when I set my foot ashore, 
 new difficulties would begin, besides which there would be the 
 unspeakable sorrow of writing home the story of my lost faith. 
 I had kept a journal during the vogage, part of which had already 
 been sent to England by the ship we boarded from Cibu. But 
 this was only the record of outward facts. Of inward facts there 
 was no hint, save what my very silence afforded. During the 
 voyage I could allow my soul to remain largely in a state of 
 suspended animation — a state which, under the circumstances, 
 was doubtless the best for it. But, once on shore, I must begin 
 to live again, in however maimed a manner. The utter l)lank 
 
 75 
 
76 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 that lay before me was appalling ; yet I had not lost courage, or 
 even a living faith in things right down beneath. 
 
 After long waiting and watching, my patience was at last 
 rewarded. Very slowly the clouds lightened on the horizon, 
 and then gradually lifted. Yes — there could be no doubt about 
 it — I could see clearly the sloping hills of the coast ! Land, 
 land, at last ! In a few days this strange voyage would be ended. 
 Soon the vision was again beclouded ; but I had fulfilled my 
 quest. 
 
 It was on the sixth of December, 1877, that we sailed into the 
 magnificent harbour of Sydney, and I first set foot on the new 
 world. The summer had well commenced, and the consignment 
 of real English plum-puddings on board would soon be in request. 
 The weather was beautiful in the extreme. I found excellent 
 apartments overlooking the Domain, and commanding a splendid 
 view of the blue waters of the Harbour. The semi-tropical 
 climate, and the great beauty of my surroundings, did much to 
 enable me to endure the blank misery of my life. " There is no 
 sorrow like lean sorrow." Inwardly, my sorrow was lean enough ; 
 outwardly, it was almost rich. I made my little room as com- 
 fortable and beautiful as I could, carefully arranged my books, 
 and reverently hung on the wall a picture of snow-clad Alpine 
 mountains which I found on my arrival, with a letter and a small 
 volume of poems from her I loved. How terrible to realise that 
 all the deepest prayers of that letter had no meaning for me now ; 
 that the poems had lost all their old power to fill me with 
 strength and peace ! But there was the love still there, stronger 
 and deeper for all that now divided us. That was, indeed, a 
 piece of solid rock — one of the deep foundations on which my 
 new religious life was slowly to be built up. 
 
 To this woman, whom I will henceforth call my wife, I had 
 now to tell my terrible tale. How she suffered during my 
 absence I never fully knew until after her death. Then I found 
 some of her notebooks, in which she wrote down the dates of 
 events as they occurred ; and also, at times, gave expression to 
 her feelings and thoughts. Soon after my departure from 
 England she had written : — " The blank, the almost death-like 
 emptiness, grows more intense each day ; but only hold my hand. 
 Father, and then I shall not fail." Such was the sorrow which 
 had now to bear this still more terrible blow. 
 
LETTERS HOME. 77 
 
 I have before me the letter which I wrote on this occasion. 
 It is evident that the emotions with which I had read her letter 
 and others received from home revived in me a good deal of my 
 old confidence in God, though without the least return of 
 confidence in the Christian faith. Long after this I was to find 
 that my religion was still but a fluttering survival of the old life, 
 and not yet the new life on new foundations which I had set 
 myself to build up. Perhaps it is my own experience of the 
 difference between the two that makes me a little scornful about 
 religions which are obviously survivals from the old, with in- 
 genious adaptations to keep them up to date. 
 
 After writing of the effect produced by her letter and gifts, I 
 proceeded : 
 
 " All this recalls to my mind that strange time, when the old 
 foundations were giving way under my feet, when all around me 
 of shelter and hope seemed to be driving away. Then my 
 chief pain was the thought of thee. Not yet sufficiently were we 
 separated — we who loved so much — but this, too, must come ! 
 At first, as I realised all this, I sought to cling to the hope that it 
 would soon pass away, the dark cloud vanishing, and again allowing 
 the sun to shine with renewed splendour. This, however, grew 
 impossible ; and this new fact has to be recorded of us — that 
 thou art a Christian, I an Infidel. For myself, I can only say, I 
 have no fear. One or two moments of this did come, but they 
 vanished instantly. My path is as free from fear of any kind as 
 ever it was. The love of God is still my one hope, service to 
 him my real desire. With these, I cannot sink ; and these aspira- 
 tions shall still unite as in all that is deepest and truest, though 
 the forms which have been so precious to both have now gone 
 from me." 
 
 In the same letter I gave some of the reasons why I could no 
 longer believe in Christianity— just enough to indicate that I had 
 not been acting from mere blind emotion. I will not repeat 
 them. English literature contains any amount of argument, both 
 for and against the reasonableness of Christian faith— for the 
 most part useless. I write for those who have already given 
 up Christianity, or who are clinging feebly to it, because they 
 think no other religion is possible. I want such to know that 
 Christianity is only a form of religion, and that they may give it 
 
78 MY QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 up entirely, and then find a truer, fuller and more satisfying 
 religion arise in its place. Reasons are nothing as compared 
 with facts — and are very cheap for the most part. So I will 
 omit these reasons, and much personal matter besides, and 
 resume my quotation at a later point. 
 
 " Before I finish, I must give you some of my ideas of the future. 
 At present all is uncertain, with this one exception, that I believe 
 a literary life of some sort to be the only one possible. To me 
 it is not so much a matter of choice as of necessity. I 7nust do 
 work which has real meaning in it, something into which all my 
 soul can throw itself, and about which all my life can centre. 
 Apart from the desire to be useful to my fellows, I find this work 
 of writing to be the only one which I can hope to follow with 
 success. I must have some work to do, and this alone can satisfy 
 me. It is as though I were driven to it by some mysterious 
 power, ordering my steps for me. . . . As to the way in which 
 my one object can be achieved, I am in great uncertainty. I 
 only know that I have chosen a path full of the greatest difficulties ; 
 and yet, on the whole, the easiest one for me. Here there is, 
 indeed, Uttle chance of my gaining anything but experience— of 
 no very pleasant nature, but still useful. My intention is to stay 
 as long as I can, and then go off— where, I cannot tell. At 
 present I am a learner in God's earth, seeking to find here what 
 truth I may, and in the meantime trying to do what good I can. 
 . . . You see, I am not going on the crushing principle. I 
 never did believe in it, except on the very sternest occasions, and 
 then to be paid for afterwards with much interest. ... I have 
 joined a Free Thought Society here, and am to read a paper. 
 This Society is a poor affair— rather ludicrous, even to me. But 
 I shall stick to it as long as I can, in the hope, not only of learn- 
 ing much myself, but also of giving others a little help. Do not 
 be afraid of this. It is part of my duty, and so I may fearlessly 
 enter upon it." 
 
 Upon the receipt of this letter, my wife wrote in the note-book 
 already named : — 
 
 " Do help me, dear Father, in this new trouble. It seems to 
 have stunned me, to have taken from me all power of real, 
 earnest thought. It fills my soul, and absorbs me altogether. 
 
LETTERS HOME. 79 
 
 The very first verse which comforted me after reading the letter 
 was, ' This sickness is not unto death ' — a strange verse to come 
 to me in this sorrow, but still it clings. It is a blessed thing to 
 know that so many are praying for him. Oh, that the true light 
 may very quickly shine upon him, and that he may again 
 become truly happy in Christ ! Father, comfort him ; for we 
 may not. I know thou wilt never leave him. Though the path 
 be ever so dark, thou canst keep his steps, and I do believe that 
 thou wilt. Let me hold on to this belief through all the mists. 
 Now is the time when real trust in God may be intensified. 
 Father, grant it to me, that I may not be afraid." 
 
 Few but those who have had a similar experience can imagine 
 how crushing a blow my letter had produced. But faith in God 
 did not fail her ; and was to be justified, though in a way not 
 then understood. My letter to her, so far as the account of my 
 loss of faith went, was but supplementary to one I had written 
 for more general reading. From this I will now quote. In so 
 doing there will be a certain amount of repetition of what has 
 already been told from memory. Probably the reader will feel 
 that a somewhat different impression is produced by the two 
 accounts. That is why I have thought it necessary to give both. 
 In writing home it may well be that I did not express fully the 
 suddenness and completeness of the change which had come 
 over me : while in my memory it is quite possible that the 
 suddenness is somewhat exaggerated. However that may be, it 
 was certainly a complete crash that came to my Christian faith, 
 and one from which it never for a moment revived. 
 
 " When I last wrote, I was not sufficiently settled, either in 
 body or mind, to be able to give any account of that inner life 
 which is the most important part of one's history, and most 
 valued by those who love us. In my Diary you would notice, I 
 suppose, an absence of allusion to any personal feelings of mine, 
 except of the most superficial character; a reserve which increased 
 as time went on. The time has now come when something 
 more than actions must be recorded, when I must tell you, and 
 others whom I love, what I would be glad to leave untold, if ^that 
 were possible, namely, of the change of belief which I have 
 undergone since I left England. . . . 
 
 "Very soon after leaving London, I was led to study the 
 
8o MV QUEST FOR GOD, 
 
 Bible more earnestly and candidly than I had hitherto had the 
 opportunity of doing, with prayer to God that he would teach me 
 what that book really taught. I felt that I must study it afresh 
 to find what rock I could there, so that I might stand securely 
 thereon in my new and lonely life. Thus I began reading Paul's 
 Epistle to the Romans. Earnestly and thoughtfully I read on, 
 weighing over ajid over again the meaning of what I found there 
 recorded, and with this result, that I came to the conclusion, not 
 in the least altered since, that this was not the Word of God as 
 I had believed it to be. 
 
 " I found it absolutely impossible to believe that what was here 
 recorded of the ways of God was infallibly true — true beyond 
 appeal. Here, it seemed to me, was an earnest, enthusiastic, 
 noble soul, ardently believing all he wrote, but through it all 
 showing most painfully that his fervour had gone ahead of his 
 reason, and had led him to believe things which demanded a fearful 
 amount of energy on his part to substantiate as the whole truth 
 of God. It is not the writing of a clear-headed, calm man, 
 endeavouring, step by step, to inquire into the truth concerning 
 his subject; but of a passionate soul, striving to make what he 
 believed appear consistent to others. A sea of such thoughts as 
 these, and others bearing indirectly on these, flooded my soul, 
 and quenched all my faith in this as the Word of God. . . . 
 
 " It may seem to you that this change of mind is a very sudden 
 one, as it did to me when I was the midst of it. Since then, 
 however, I have been able to look at the matter more calmly, 
 and from a safer distance. I can now see that the change was 
 only sudden in appearance. It had been going on within me, 
 slowly, but surely, for at least a year. I have never, since I first 
 began to think for myself, held matters of faith in any but a 
 tentative manner; have never been afraid to find out the truth 
 at any cost. And yet, as is so often the case, the surroundings 
 in which I found myself prevented me, as I believe, from study- 
 ing things as candidly as I should have done. 
 
 " Unconscious, indeed, as I was of this influence, I can now 
 recall many times when, as I went to teach my boys at the 
 Sunday School, I said to myself, ' Is this, indeed, God's message 
 to them? Is this the way the boys must be saved, otherwise 
 must they perish in Hell ? ' And I had to spur myself to speak 
 words which I can now see I only half believed — which I had 
 
LETTERS HOME. 8i 
 
 to make myself believe. The only thing that kept my faith 
 alive was the earnestness with which I lived and worked. I had 
 need of faith. I knew that, without faith, the work would die. 
 I was too busy in action to allow these vague foreshadowings to 
 become definite and tangible. In the hurry of my life I brushed 
 them aside, and worked through them. It only needed freedom 
 from bias to allow these thoughts to rjn forward to conclusions 
 — freedom from earnest action to give them time to precipitate 
 and cohere. 
 
 "An event which happened during the voyage caused me to 
 think very practically on the transition through which I was 
 passing. On the night after the Sports held on crossing the 
 Line, one of the sailors fell from the fo'castle head to the main 
 deck. In less than a fortnight his body was lying at the bottom 
 of the blue sea. From the first I knew the man's life was in 
 danger, because of the constant and copious internal bleeding, 
 and the awful suffering he endured. I went to see him every 
 day, and naturally all the serious thought within me was intensely 
 deepened by my visits. Here was a man going away to God. 
 What message had I for him ? 
 
 "Not long since, all would have been clear enough, with a 
 certain amount of suppression of doubt, of stifling of truer 
 thoughts. But what gospel had I now for the dying man? 
 This was the result, then, of my state of mind— Silence !— and 
 a brother entering the Great Unknown. By degrees I came to 
 the conclusion that there was no help for it, that I must let my 
 brother die, and not seek to comfort him with what I believed 
 to be a lie. On this I acted, doing a little to show my sympathy 
 with him until his spirit passed away. I had, thus, full soon to 
 face the test of all creeds— Death. And I am thankful that I 
 had, for I learned much by it, though I suffered much too. 
 
 " Happier thoughts came to me during the last scene. We 
 are not afraid to trust the living with God, why the dead ? Does 
 his love for man cease when earth's life is over? If he be the 
 Eternal Love, I need not fear to trust myself or any other in his 
 hands, whether alive or dead. And so, when the dead man was 
 launched into the sea, I felt that he was still in a world governed 
 by a God of Justice and Love, and by no means banished from 
 the presence of God forever. 
 
 " I think I have said enough now to show what has been 
 
 6 
 
82 MY QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 passing within me during the past three months— enough, at least, 
 to give you and others a deal of pain, I fear. I can only say, 
 Trust in God. He is our Father still. Trust me with him who 
 made me. It is he I am trying to serve, he for whom I wish to 
 live, whatever I may be. In some three months I may expect 
 to know what pain my letter has given. In the mean time I 
 will seek to live my life for the love of God and of man." 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 SYDNEY AND THE BLUE MOUNTAINS. 
 
 As soon as I had found apartments in Sydney, the gentleman 
 already mentioned as the friend of my voyage generously offered 
 me employment in his office, so that I might earn a little money 
 while I was looking round and deciding on a future course. 
 He was a shipping agent, and my work consisted chiefly in 
 copying ships' manifests. He also invited me to his house over- 
 looking the Harbour, and frequently took me to sail with him in 
 his boat. After a fortnight at this office I was obliged to give 
 up. Day by day I was getting reduced to the condition in which 
 I was before leaving England ; although, when I commenced, I 
 felt exceedingly well. It was an absolute necessity that I 
 should have perfect freedom to follow the bent of my thoughts. 
 The work, of course, gave me no mental occupation ; and without 
 mental occupation I could not live. All my energies must be 
 bent on my one commanding quest for God. Reading and 
 writing and gaining fresh experience wherever I could— these 
 were the only conditions under which I could exist. So heavily 
 lay upon me the hand of Fate ; but I had become used to it by 
 this, and accepted it as the normal condition of my being. My 
 ideal at this time I find expressed in a verse quoted 'm. a letter 
 home : — 
 
 Never hasting, never resting, 
 
 Glad in peace and calm in strife ; 
 
 Quietly thyself preparing 
 To fulfil thy task in life. 
 
 The work at my good friend's office I could not feel to have 
 any place in helping me to fulfil my life task. And so I had to 
 leave. The following extracts from letters will further explain 
 my ideas. 
 
 83 
 
84 MY QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 " Sydney, December 2^rd, 1877. 
 " I am bent on Literature as my only possible ultimate aim. It 
 will be rough, uphill work, and probably the means of causing you 
 all much anxiety. As yet my course is by no means clear, though 
 the object to be obtained is plain enough. I fear I have a 
 head wind, and must tack about for some time. Probably I shall 
 endeavour to get on one of the papers here. If I do, I shall not 
 succeed in the work; but I hope to learn by it. There is 
 nothing to keep me in Sydney long. Indeed, I have been near 
 going off to Melbourne already, but judged it better to learn to 
 wait—^o hard a lesson for such as I am. Not that I suppose I 
 shall do much better in Melbourne either. You will see that I am 
 by no means settled at present. To-morrow I am off to the Blue 
 Mountains. I don't know what to expect, except that it will be 
 somewhat cooler than here, Blackheath, the station at which I 
 get out, being 3,500 feet above the sea." 
 
 ''January Sth, 1878. 
 "On Monday, Dec. 24th, I started by 9, a.m., train from 
 Blackheath, the highest station on the Blue Mountains, and 
 seventy-three miles from Sydney. The first station of note after 
 leaving Sydney is Paramatta. The whole of this fourteen miles is 
 more or less studded with villas and smaller residences, and trains 
 are running constantly during the day for the convenience of the 
 inhabitants. Towards Paramatta much wood still remains, with 
 abundance of undergrowth, looking altogether like a neglected 
 kitchen-garden. The district is one of expansive undulations, 
 and where no wood grows it has a hot and sandy look. Beyond 
 Paramatta the scene gradually changes ; the soil improves ; 
 cultivation is carried on, and orangeries form an important feature 
 in the landscape. The country generally becomes flatter, and 
 through breaks in the bush the Blue Mountains may be seen 
 far away. On the Emu Plains, at the foot of the mountains, much 
 corn is cultivated. At Penrith we have a second engine attached. 
 The view is magnificent, at least to those who delight in the sense 
 of infinitude. Mountain ranges receding into the invisible form 
 the background to the greater part of the scene. The Nepean 
 River winds about on its sandy bed — evidently a very fickle 
 stream. Cattle are grazing on the plains, which are only eighty- 
 eisht feet above the level of the sea. 
 
SYDNEY AND THE BLUE MOUNTAINS. 85 
 
 " From Penrith we set off at fine speed, but very soon the 
 engines begin to make hard work of it. We are now ascending 
 the First Zigzag, so called from the zigzag plan of the road. The 
 gradient here is one in thirty-three. The line runs along the 
 mountain side for some distance, then stops, and branches up 
 again in the opposite direction. This operation is repeated 
 several times until the First Zigzag is ascended. As we thus 
 crawl up, the view becomes magnificent. We stop to water the 
 engines, and then continue our uphill winding way, but with no 
 more zigzags. Descending the other side, beyond Mt. Victoria, 
 is the Great Zigzag ; but I did not go so far as that. Of course 
 when I returned people said, ' Oh, you ought to have seen the 
 Great Zigzag. What you went up is nothing to it ! ' 
 
 " For many years these mountains were considered impassable, 
 for reasons which will appear later on. An escaped convict 
 was the first white man to achieve the feat, which had often 
 been vainly attempted. The scenery is very wild. Wood grows 
 everywhere. Even in the crevices of the precipices trees 
 struggle for life. The gum tree is the most common. Its limbs 
 are weird and gawky ; its leaves are sparse ; many arms are 
 white and bare ; and, like all natives, it is an evergreen. Rock 
 appears everywhere in juts and crags. It is wonderful, indeed, 
 how so much vegetation exists on such poor and scanty soil. 
 
 " At 1.30 Blackheath was reached. I found it to consist 
 of a platform, and close beside it the Govett's Leap Hotel — 
 nothing else. The hotel is kept by Truth Butts, who went to 
 England with the fictitious Roger Tichborne, and acted as his 
 secretary. Eight sat down to dinner, after which I walked off 
 to Govett's Leap, a distance of about two miles. The walk is 
 through the bush along a rough track cut for the Duke of 
 Edinburgh when he was here. Overhead was the sparse grey 
 foliage of the everlasting gum, giving little shade, and forming 
 but a thin screen in relief against the deep blue sky. Beneath, 
 the ground was brilliant with flowers, though nothing of a tropical 
 nature grows here. In winter it is very cold in the mountains, 
 and that evening I was thankful for the warm glow of a large 
 log fire, though now I was very hot in the brilliant summer's sun. 
 
 "On and on I walked over a level track, fearing at last lest 
 I had missed my way. It was scarcely a minute before the 
 Leap was reached that I caught a glimpse of mountain peaks 
 
86 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 in the distance. And now each step enlarges the view, until 
 I stand on a jutting rock and look down into an immense valley, 
 bounded on each side by lofty precipices, and rocks covered with 
 trees shelving away at their base until they meet at a stream 
 below. The effect of the scene thus suddenly opened out is 
 altogether indescribable. To the right the precipice is highest, 
 and over it tumbles the fall known as Govett's Leap. Of course 
 a tragic love-story is popularly associated with the name ; but 
 as a matter of fact the fall is simply called after a surveyor 
 named Govett who worked in the mountains. The fall is said 
 to be 1400 ft. deep, the rock being as evenly perpendicular 
 from top to bottom as if cut down with an immense curved 
 knife. In a dry season such as this, the stream that goes over 
 the fall is but a small one. 
 
 "After a while I got down to a lower crag jutting out more 
 boldly into space, and lay flat on it so that I could look sheer 
 down into the depth. Hundreds of feet beneath me lay the 
 bottom of the valley, covered with trees looking like little shrubs 
 from so great a height. Not a rustle could be heard among the 
 foliage, not a murmur from the stream or the fall, the water of 
 which was lost in fine spray before the bottom was reached. 
 The perfect stillness was awful, as though Nature were being 
 hushed forever in death. To the left of where I was lying was 
 another fall, the rocks forming a precipitous semi-circle of 
 wonderful regularity. These two hollowed precipices, at the 
 juncture of which I lay, form the abrupt commencement of the 
 Grose Valley, whence it winds away and is lost to sight among 
 the distant mountains. The nearest entrance to this valley is 
 thirty-four miles away, so lofty and precipitous are its sides. 
 Such valleys are the peculiar feature of the Blue Mountains, 
 and made them long impassable. The train now crosses by the 
 road which was first found, and I believe no other has been 
 discovered since. 
 
 " I lay there gazing on the stupendous scene, until the setting 
 sun filled all the valley with a golden haze, in which its distant 
 lines grew indistinct. The light slowly faded from the mountains. 
 Darkness gradually came on, until at last it hid all the valley 
 beneath. Slowly the stars came out, the night air became cold, 
 and I rose reluctantly to find my way back to the hotel. By 
 the time I reached it I felt uncomfortably cold, notwithstanding 
 
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SYDNEY AND THE BLUE MOUNTAINS. 87 
 
 my brisk walk. My long absence had caused considerable 
 uneasiness. A good supper before a large log fire was a fitting 
 close to the day. 
 
 "On Tuesday — Christmas Day — Truth Butts, three others, 
 and myself went off on horse-back, to ride along the edge of the 
 Grose Valley. I saw even grander sights than those of the day 
 before, the valley being here two thousand feet deep, but still 
 with the same leading features of precipices with tree-covered 
 shelving rocks at their base. At 1.30 I had dinner alone, as I 
 left by the 2.30 train. The hostess expressed much sorrow at 
 my not waiting to join them in their Christmas dinner, for which 
 great preparations were being made. By 7 o'clock I was in 
 Sydney again. 
 
 " The next day I spent with Mr. boating. In the morning 
 
 we sailed to Rose Bay, towards the Heads ; in the afternoon we 
 went up the Paramatta River as far as Hen and Chickens Bay. 
 Before we got back we were caught in a squall. We rushed 
 grandly through the water, but got rather wetter than we liked. 
 Happily the boat was in safe hands. 
 
 " Mr. has given me an introduction to the Editor of . 
 
 He started his paper with the best of intentions. He was very 
 liberal in his views, and thought he might do some good in 
 helping to make way for such sentiments. After a while he 
 
 published ■ from week to week. He told me that he 
 
 had to give it up, however. Half his subscribers left him. This 
 was his turning point. Now he will print anything that will go ; 
 often two articles appearing in the same issue will take different 
 sides of the same question. But there seems to be little principle 
 in the papers here, or in the politics either. They have had 
 four governments this year— 1877. After much difficulty another 
 new government is being formed, which will take office on the 
 22nd of next month." 
 
 '■^January 13^/;, 1878. 
 " A few weeks back I went to a meeting of the Sydney Free 
 Thought Progressive Society. It had been announced at a 
 Spiritualist lecture by Charles Bright which I attended on the 
 previous Sunday evening. The entrance, I found, was through a 
 shoemaker's shop. The room for the meeting was the work-room, 
 with boards on stools for seats. A paper was read on the 
 
88 MY QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 Freedom of the Press, and a discussion followed. The latter was 
 not very encouraging for a believer in free thought. There were 
 some twenty persons present, on the whole a fairly sensible lot of 
 men, but not promising much for the future of the Society. I 
 felt almost as though I had got into a Chartist Camp, and had a 
 nervous sensation as though a body of soldiers might attack us 
 any minute. Such feelings by no means arose from the nature of 
 the sentiments uttered, but rather from all the circumstances and 
 surroundings of the scene. However, I paid my shilling, and 
 became a member for a month. At the close a paper was 
 earnestly requested for the next meeting. No one responded, 
 so at last I ventured to volunteer. The subject I gave was, The 
 Progress of Earnest Free Thought among the Thought- 
 less. 
 
 " Last Wednesday evening I read my paper. The chief aim of 
 it was to point out some of what I thought to be the dangers 
 of free thought, and the necessity of obviating these. You will 
 readily understand that I did not gain much support for my views ; 
 for, as the chairman remarked, it was a different kind of paper 
 from what they usually had. However, I had the right of reply ; 
 and as there was no great amount of talent present, I managed 
 to get through all right. 
 
 " I have come to the conclusion that I must move once more. 
 In another week I expect to be starting for Melbourne by the 
 overland route. This is not the most comfortable way of going, 
 but I want to see as much as I can of the country while I am 
 here. As to the future, I can say little, except this, that my 
 idea at present is to go on to New York via Melbourne, New 
 Zealand, and San Francisco. This seems to me the wisest course 
 I can pursue, though I may change my plans on more mature 
 consideration." 
 
 My address to the Free Thought Society was a protest against 
 mere destructiveness, with no attempt to provide something better 
 in the place of the thing destroyed. This has been my deep 
 conviction from the time when my own faith fell, that our work 
 in furthering the progress of man must always be constructive, 
 and that whatever destruction may attend it should stand in quite 
 a secondary place. The truer vision, the higher life, alone can 
 supersede that which is less true, less high. Not only so, they 
 
SYDNEY AND THE BLUE MOUNTAINS. 89 
 
 cannot fail to supersede them in due course, when once dis- 
 covered and taught, and exemplified in those who teach them. 
 It seemed to me painfully ludicrous that these people should 
 suppose that they could overturn the Churches by merely de- 
 nouncing them, when they had nothing whatever to show at 
 all comparable with what the Churches, with all their faults, 
 could present, both in social and personal life. Let us construct, 
 and leave destruction to the sure hand of Fate. 
 
 And I knew instinctively, though I could not state it at the 
 time because of the chaos of my own faith, that all permanent 
 progress must be based upon Religion, and that we could never 
 supersede a false religion until we had discovered one more true ; 
 that, however far Scepticism might seem to go in weakening the 
 hold of the Churches on the people, or in chilling the very 
 marrow of Church life, a revival of the old religion would recur 
 again and again, until a newer and truer religion could take its 
 place. Thus early did I begin to recognise this truth, which 
 has since inspired all my efforts towards God, and all my work 
 for my fellow men ; and I hold it now more strongly than ever 
 before. The reforming energy of the world must be a new 
 religious life, more comprehensive, more deep, and more true 
 than the religious life associated with that which we wish to 
 reform. We may destroy by other means ; we may change the 
 face of things ; but we shall not have done more than destroy or 
 change ; we shall not have opened up to man a fuller freer and 
 stronger life. 
 
 The editor mentioned above promised, at the request of my 
 friend, to give me employment. He commissioned me to write 
 an article, and on a congenial topic. I felt greatly encouraged. 
 I wrote the article, and was rather proud of it. Visions arose. 
 After what seemed a long delay, the article was returned 
 through my friend's hands, with the explanation that its fault was 
 that it told the truth. I saw clearly that journalism did not lie 
 along my path. 
 
 During my stay in Sydney I commenced a habit which has 
 been of great service to me. I laid myself open to all influences 
 that had about them any semblance of sincerity, however much 
 I might, at the time, doubt their truth. I had set before myself 
 the task of finding God in life ; and 1 dared not, therefore, shut 
 out any form of life other than that which was obviously of a 
 
90 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 vicious and degrading sort. Following this idea, I had joined 
 this Free Thought Society. For the same reason I persisted in 
 attending different churches, though I had completely lost their 
 faith. I felt that so doing would help me to realise what I had 
 lost, and what I had now to make good. It was always a very 
 trying ordeal to me, however, arousing feelings within me, es- 
 pecially during the singing, which at last I could bear no longer. 
 I had, indeed, to give it up on this account. 
 
 As already indicated, I attended some Spiritualist lectures in 
 Sydney given by Charles Bright. The theatre was crowded each 
 Sunday evening, which testified to the popularity of the speaker ; 
 and, so far as I remember, he was a very attractive speaker 
 indeed. But as for his Spiritualism — ! It appeared to me the 
 coldest and deadest Materialism, utterly incompatible with any 
 sort of spiritual life. It seems to me that if you materialise 
 Spiritualism, you get no forwarder than if you spiritualise Ma- 
 terialism, as some Scientists or Philosophers try to do. Between 
 our bodily and our spiritual life a hopeless misunderstanding is 
 introduced, and necessarily with the result of preventing any 
 fulness of growth. 
 
 In this same spirit of throwing myself open to all influences, 
 I one day bought a copy of a proscribed book, the publication 
 of which led to the imprisonment of Charles Bradlaugh and 
 Mrs. Besant. I concluded that its proscription, combined with 
 the undoubted sincerity of its authors, indicated that it contained 
 ideas which would have to be reckoned with, though the day 
 of reckoning might be put off. So completely had I accepted 
 the programme of Free Thought. On the question of repression 
 as a whole I have since learned much, but it is a subject too 
 large to deal with here. If, however, people could recognise 
 that everything man knows he has had to find out, and that his 
 chief business in life is to go on finding out, and to master the 
 meaning of what he finds for the purposes of a constantly un- 
 folding life, they would cease to be so stupid and brutal in face 
 of a new fact, and would understand that, if the new fact seems 
 dangerous, what is needed is still further light. But while the 
 conviction exists that there is a special divine revelation which 
 will save man the trouble of finding things out, so long will the 
 powers of Church and State be blind and cruel in their sway, 
 and the methods of God's education be hopelessly misunder- 
 
SYDNEY AND THE BLUE MOUNTAINS. 91 
 
 stood. Darkness will still be preferred to light, and the iron 
 heel of repression will be used in place of the friendly hand of 
 help ; while the august name of God will be called upon in 
 support of blindness and cruelty, and of the tyranny of the 
 strong over the weak. 
 
 In Sydney I went to the theatre for the first time, and saw 
 plays of all sorts, from Shakspeare to the most thoroughgoing 
 melodrama ; but nothing particularly attractive or good. How- 
 ever, it all told as experience ; and all helped. 
 
 But my time was occupied chiefly in reading and writing. 1 
 began then a custom which I long continued, of copying 
 extracts from books I read, and writing down occasional thoughts, 
 indexing the passages under suitable headings for reference. 
 Later I developed this much further, especially marking and 
 indexing every book I read, until I obtained thousands of 
 references on hundreds of subjects — obviously vastly more 
 material than I could ever use. These indexings have been of 
 some service, however, especially when I came to bear the yoke 
 of preaching two sermons a w^eek. But the real use of all this 
 lay in the habit it engendered of recognising the value of all 
 sorts of ideas on all sorts of subjects, in revealing to to me the 
 extreme range and complexity of life, in enabling me to classify 
 an endless variety of ideas, and to note their relation to each 
 other, and how each was like a facet of infinite-sided Truth. The 
 mere method of the habit was also good, especially for one who 
 was to go through such experiences as mine, and whose life had 
 thenceforward to be ordered almost entirely from within. 
 
 The books stand before me now. I never use them. For 
 some years I have not added to their contents. But I do not 
 think of the many hours spent over them as lost. Their real 
 worth lives and grows in myself. I cannot forget, too, that 
 there was once a time when, in a season of despair, I feared 
 I should never fulfil my mission in life ; and that then the backs 
 of these books smiled on me with an almost human smile, 
 prophesying to me the comforting and strengthening word, that 
 so much labour in faith could never be labour in vain. 
 
 Of books I read all sorts. What most deeply impressed me, 
 almost as a new revelation, was Lecky's History of Rational- 
 ism. There are times now and again in our progress when we 
 feel that we need some new book — that all books within our 
 
92 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 reach have been read and are used up, and that we need 
 something completely different from all the rest. Such a hook 
 was this to me, as David Elginbrod had been at a much 
 earlier stage — the book I was just ripe for, and that led me into 
 the new world, the verge of which I had reached. I had never 
 read anything like it before — so grand and calm it seemed in 
 its atmosphere of disinterested truth. It was a revelation to me, 
 and a strong hand to help me in my distress. 
 
 So, too, I read Buckle's History of Civilisation, Strauss's 
 The Old Faith and the New, Coleridge's Lay Sermons — 
 which I had to give up, with the comfort that Carlyle had written 
 of " Coleridgean Moonshine " — Cowper's Task, Lytton's Rienzi, 
 F. W. Newman's Phases of Faith, Robert Dale Owen's Debat- 
 able Land — in the hope of finding help in Spiritualism, which 
 I did not, and have never done — Emerson's Essays, Theodore 
 Parker's Sermons, Carlyle's John Sterling, Winwood Reade's 
 Martyrdom of Man, the Life of Charlotte Bronte, Izaak Walton, 
 Shakspeare, Shelley, Robert Buchanan, Sheridan Knowles, and 
 so on, some of which I read at Melbourne, but all in Australia. 
 I was, indeed, in a new world, and made the most of my 
 opportunities for discovering new well-springs of life and thought. 
 
 I might, however, have carried my newly acquired reasonable- 
 ness and openness too far. I fully recognised how completely 
 free I was, both inwardly and outwardly, to follow my own 
 reason or my own impulses. All authority had been wiped out 
 for ever from my mind, and all my old friends were far enough 
 away for conventional propriety to have lost its hold. Thus 
 there were times when the life of instinctive virtue which I led 
 came to be challenged by Reason, and I was forced to see that 
 I was practising my virtues over an abyss — for anything 1 could 
 say that Reason would accept. I did not then understand that, 
 in the drama of human life. Reason may so easily become the 
 villain of the piece. I will give a short scene in my own particular 
 drama to illustrate all this. 
 
 I stood one night at a corner of two of the principal thorough- 
 fares in Sydney, and watched the gay throng of people passing 
 to and fro in the gaslight. Why should not I, also, join in the 
 pursuit of Pleasure? Ah, why not, indeed? I had money in 
 my purse, my old friends were separated from me by many 
 thousands of miles, God was no longer an authority to me, and 
 
SYDNEY AND THE BLUE MOUNTAINS. 93 
 
 it was a question whether I should ever find the faith which I so 
 painfully sought. What reason could I give for this sombre life, 
 this severe restraint? What meaning could it have in the new 
 world of thought and action in which I then lived ? 
 
 And I made answer, " If Reason does really commend such 
 a life, I will live it " — so strong was my new confidence in 
 Reason. And then I began to wonder whether Reason would 
 not commend it after all — only without the extremes to which 
 most went, but rather in that moderation which ensured satisfac- 
 tion without the after-pang of penalty or regret ! And I was so 
 weary already of the dark and lonely fight ! 
 
 "Yes, I will do it, if Reason commends it — but — I will not 
 BE DEGRADED." From the depths of my soul that one saving 
 condition flashed up, and put all else to flight. The villain of 
 the piece withdrew, and never troubled me again in that form. 
 Although God seemed as far off as before, I had regained 
 possession of myself. So the dark conflict went on, now in this 
 form, now in that, but with sufficient occasional flashes of light 
 to warn me from a false track. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 OVERLAND TO MELBOURNE. 
 
 Though my brief visit to the Blue Mountains brought no clear 
 conviction of God to my mind, yet so deep an experience of 
 communion with Nature in her grandest and most beautiful forms 
 must have given me a considerable fund of confidence and 
 strength. The fact that the scene had so stimulated my highest 
 powers must have been a vital defence against the decaying 
 influences that were so strongly attacking my life. Regarding, as 
 I do, the seat of religious conviction to lie not so much in Reason 
 as in the whole Man himself, an experience so profoundly impres- 
 sive must ever after have counted for much in my long struggle 
 towards Light and Life. 
 
 The magnificent displays of Nature that I had so long lived 
 with at sea, and that in some respects I was to have repeated 
 on a still grander scale, doubtless also helped to awaken in me 
 new powers of insight, wonder and love — perhaps the sea more 
 powerfully than anything else. The grandest scenes on land 
 seem to live in the memory as located here or there, separated 
 by vast tracts of unfamiliar earth. Our visions of the sea all 
 arise in our mind set in the one familiar frame — the circle where 
 sea and sky meet. However infinitely varied these visions may 
 be, there is a unity about them which compels us to think of 
 them all as the ever changing manifestations of one vast power, 
 or as pictures painted by one mighty hand. 
 
 Thus the sea, however widely travelled, comes to have for us 
 a unity and an underlying personality that the land never has. 
 One scene on land may bring to us this sense of unity and 
 personality, as the wondrous view of the Grose Valley certainly 
 did ; but all the many pictures of the sea that live in my memory 
 1 am constrained to attribute to one power and source. Sunshine 
 
 94 
 
OVERLAND TO MELBOURNE. 95 
 
 and cloud, blue and green, storm and clear, tempest and calm, 
 fury and peace, fair weather and foul, rain and fog, vessels, birds, 
 islands and distant coasts— all things seen from the deck of a 
 ship at sea— are one to the poetic heart, and live one undivided 
 though ever-changing life. To me the sea is the one open vision, 
 symbolising more completely than all others the unity underlying 
 the diversity of all forms of life. But at the time of which I 
 write I was not conscious of all this. I was only storing up 
 experiences out of which this consciousness was to grow. 
 
 Thus it is that, although, both in Australia and America, I saw 
 some most magnificent scenery, it is only my experiences of the 
 sea that really live in me now as memories of an intimate and 
 loved friend, with whom I have grown familiar in all her varied 
 moods. The Blue Mountains, the Sierra Nevadas, the Rocky 
 Mountains, are acquaintances whom I have almost forgotten ; 
 the Sea is an old love, of whom I think with an almost sad tender- 
 ness of heart. For though I should sail round the world again, 
 I suppose I should find her a little more cold and formal with 
 me now, as if to indicate that, while she wished to remain my 
 friend, she did not mean to allow our former intimacy to be 
 renewed. Indeed, I have long since found that we cannot repeat 
 our experiences, that nothing occurs to us twice, that we never 
 have even the same difficulties or sorrows to fight through again. 
 I think it is this that gives such an inexhaustible interest to life, 
 and makes us wish never to die. 
 
 The time had come for me to again move on. I had exhausted 
 Sydney as far as both my needs and my interest went. So I set 
 off to go to New York by way of Melbourne, New Zealand and 
 'Frisco. My friend in Sydney urged me strongly to take the 
 BuUi Pass on the way, in order to see some typical Australian 
 scenery, and the semi-tropical vegetation of the valleys near the 
 coast. BuUi (pronounced bull-eye) was reached by the WoUon- 
 gong coach from Campbelltown. The following extracts from 
 letters sent home will give a pretty full account of this journey. 
 
 "Hart Hotel, Wollongong. 
 
 " Friday, January iSt/i, 1878. 
 
 " It is too hot to walk out now, so I will occupy myself with 
 a narration of my doings up to this present. On Wednesday 
 morning I left Sydney for Campbelltown by the 9.45 train. I 
 
96 MY QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 arrived at C by 11.30, but found the coach did not leave 
 
 for Wollongong till 7.30. This is a queer spot. Most of 
 the houses are along one road, one storey high, and built of 
 wood. The town has been laid out most methodically, the 
 streets crossing each other at right angles, and being a good 
 width, but the buildings have yet to appear. The roadways are 
 very rough, cut up with water-runs and grown over with grass, 
 except where the bare rock shows itself. The country is hilly. 
 It is cleared for some distance round, and is mostly used for 
 grazing cattle. Mountains form a picturesque background to 
 the small town, and give it an air of security and repose. Aloes 
 grow along the wood fences which bound the roads. They can 
 boast three or four churches, one evidently Roman Catholic. 
 
 " At 7.30 I left by the ' Coach,' as they call it, with three 
 raw-boned horses, an Egyptian driver, eight passengers, the mails 
 and baggage. After going eleven miles we stopped at a wood 
 shanty, where the horses were changed while we refreshed our- 
 selves with eggs, bread and butter and coffee. This was at 9.30. 
 The road ran through the bush all the way, and in many places 
 the straggling remains of bush fires could be seen. Though the 
 sky was cloudy, it was not dark, because of the moon. Hence 
 we needed no lamps. About five minutes after we started for 
 the second time, we had to get down and walk up a steep and 
 rough hill. The road was a sad affair, incessantly up and down, 
 at times rough and rocky, then covered with several inches of 
 sand, never level, and mostly very steep. Of course we could 
 but take it as cheerfully as possible, and laugh over the numerous 
 accidents that had happened recently. In some places 'corduroy 
 roads ' had been made with round timber laid transversely. 
 This was an agreeable change. 
 
 " I had secured a seat by the coloured driver, a native of 
 Upper Egypt, and a very agreeable companion. At various 
 places we stopped to deliver or receive letters, or perhaps to 
 leave a bundle of meat for some solitary road-makers or surveyors 
 camping out in the bush. Stories of bush-rangers enlivened this 
 part of the journey very considerably. After the BuUi Mountain 
 was reached, and we began the downward road, the scenery was 
 grand, though of course subdued by the hazy light. Of this I 
 shall be better able to speak when I see it by daylight on my 
 return. This road is known as the Bulli Pass. At the bottom 
 
OVERLAND TO MELBOURNE. 97 
 
 of the mountain lies the h'ttle town of BuHi, not more than a 
 mile from the sea, I determined to stay here for the night, so 
 as to have the opportunity of looking around next morning. 
 Although we had only gone twenty-seven miles, it was now 
 2.30, a.m., Wollongong being another seven miles further. We 
 drew up at the post office. I ran across the road and roused the 
 landlord of the Black Dimond Hotel (as it was painted) — a low 
 one-storey building like the rest there. Finding they had a 
 vacant bed, I got my portmanteau down, and bade Egypt 
 farewell. As to the accommodation I found, the less said the 
 better. 
 
 " Bulli is smaller than Campbelltown. Most of the inhabitants 
 are coal-miners, or supply the miners' wants. In the morning 
 I went to the coal mine a little distance up the mountain. On 
 the road I had a yarn with the driver of a bullock-team drawing 
 timber. Horses are not so well suited for this rough uphill work. 
 The stolid cattle, eight in number, slowly plodded away, little 
 affected either by speech or whip. The overseer of the mine 
 very kindly accompanied me through many of its winding passages 
 and to the further end of the workings. There is no shaft, but 
 it is entered by two tunnels, and ventilated by a huge furnace. 
 About two hundred men are employed. They use naked lights. 
 The coal is taken to the coast, about two miles off, by a steam 
 tram, the lines being carried out on a pier, alongside of which 
 the vessels load. After dinner I walked down to the shore. In 
 the gully by which I went, bangalows and cabbage trees 
 grow abundantly. The trees here are the largest I have 
 seen in Australia, many of the gums reaching a magnificent 
 height. 
 
 " This (Friday) morning I left Bulli for Wollongong at 9 o'clock. 
 I was kept awake most of last night by some drunken miners in 
 the yard which my window overlooked. The road from Bulli 
 runs along the coast at the foot of the mountains, and about a 
 mile from the shore. For my companion I had an American 
 miner, who talked much about the States, and in a glowing style. 
 After reaching here I walked to the Tom Thumb Lagoon — a 
 large expanse of water at high tide, but which was now for the 
 most part a great sandy desert. It has a small outlet into the 
 sea. The view seawards was very beautiful. Wollongong is 
 a small seaport." 
 
 7 
 
98 MY QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 " Dixon's Hotel, Goulburn, 
 
 ^^ Sunday, January 2oth, 1878. 
 
 "Yesterday morning at 9 o'clock I left WoUongong for 
 Campbelltown by the ' Coach.' This time I was better able to 
 do justice to the beautiful scenery of the Bulli Pass. After passing 
 through Bulli, the coast road is left, and we commence to ascend 
 the mountain. The prospect as the road rises becomes more 
 and more extensive, until, from the highest point, many miles of 
 coast can be seen stretching away far beneath. The foliage is 
 the most luxuriant I have been through, and adds much beauty 
 and richness to the grandeur of the scenery. Tree-ferns grow in 
 abundance, looking so much more natural and beautiful than 
 ever I could have imagined from hot-house specimens seen in 
 England. The bangalow and cabbage-tree give a tropical appear- 
 ance to the country. Aloes and lilies grow to a great size. Some 
 of the former were in flower, though only a few. The flower-stem 
 rises from fifteen to twenty feet, and the flowers are a light yellow. 
 Grass-trees are abundant, and ferns grow everywhere. Occasion- 
 ally wild raspberries and strawberries tempted us to get down and 
 walk. 
 
 " From out this rich mass of undergrowth, the trees rise to a 
 great height. At one part of the road you can look right down 
 upon all this rich and wild growth, which seems struggling to 
 reach up to you from the depth beneath, while yet the steep rock 
 rises high overhead. Here the tree-ferns may be seen in all their 
 glory, spreading out their huge fronds so gracefully, while their 
 rather crude stems are hidden from sight. Truly they were 
 meant to grow in valleys, and to be looked down upon from 
 mountain heights. If the Grose Valley is the grandest and 
 wildest scenery I have ever beheld, this is by far the most 
 beautiful, and has considerable grandeur too. 
 
 "Just before Appin was reached, at the King's Falls, we 
 changed horses and had dinner. We arrived at Campbelltown at 
 3.40 in the afternoon. At 7.5 I took the train for Goulburn, 
 reaching my hotel by 12. 45, a.m. Goulburn is 134 miles from 
 Sydney and 100 from Campbelltown. It is 2,000 feet above sea 
 level. Little could be seen of the country on the way, save a 
 few bush fires. The land is parched with drought, and further 
 north and west the stock is dying for want of water and food. 
 This is the fourth dry year they have had. This morning I 
 
OVERLAND TO MELBOURNE. 99 
 
 walked across the hills to a river with some outlandish name. 
 The grass is scorched up, and the river has become a series of 
 stagnant ponds. The trees are cleared for several miles round, and 
 in some places, I imagine, never grew. Mountains form the back- 
 ground in every direction. The landlord tells me that Goulburn 
 has 4,500 inhabitants. There are some good shops, and the 
 main streets are very wide, as usual, to allow the large droves of 
 cattle to pass through. 
 
 " You will naturally be a litde anxious about the future I 
 propose to myself, after all the change I have undergone. At 
 present the way is hardly cleared up, beyond my intention to 
 go to New York. My mind has become much more settled 
 after recent disturbances, and if I find I can reasonably trust 
 my strength, I think I shall try to enter the Unitarian ministry. 
 From what I have seen of the tendency of Free Thought, I 
 think there is the most earnest need for Freethinkers to con- 
 tend with the materialism and secularism into which so many 
 have drifted. It is with much pain that I have observed this ; 
 and if my life may be spent in counteracting it, it may not be 
 altogether wasted. Economy has been defined as the art of 
 making the best use of everything ; and I am anxious to 
 economise myself in this sense, and to put to the best possible 
 use the life that God has given me. One reason why, when 
 I went to Liverpool, I chose literature rather than the ministry, 
 was want of strength. Now that my heart is again finding 
 some definite rest of faith and hope, I return to the old desires, 
 though in another form. But I still may not be strong enough 
 for preaching. If not, writing must do. 
 
 " Some people probably envy me in my wanderings. They 
 need not. I get very weary of them, and long to settle down 
 to work, though I am far enough from that as yet. In the mean- 
 time I have again and again to decide what to do next. So life 
 is running on. At present I have done nothing. Well, I think 
 I am learning much, at any rate ; and hope that some day these 
 experiences will make me more helpful to others." 
 
 Melbourne, yrt«?/a>3' 28///, 1878, 
 "At 4, p.m., on Monday last I left Goulburn by train for 
 Cootamundra, where the line from Sydney ends. We arrived 
 at 9.30, having travelled 120 miles and dropped i.ooo feet. 
 
loo MY QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 The journey was not of sufficient interest to be worthy of remark. 
 Endless bush, with a few fires, houses, camps, etc., are not 
 matters for narrative. The hotel at Cootamundra was very 
 Colonial — wooden, one-storied, rambling and awkward. My 
 bedroom opened out of the dining room, from which, as from 
 the room on the other side, it was only separated by thin 
 boarding. As considerable drinking was going on, I did not 
 go to bed till late, and then was kept awake for some time. At 
 5, a.m., I was called, and at six the coach started for Wagga 
 Wagga (pronounced Wogga). I had to ride inside, as the box 
 seats were taken. The country was parched, the grass all 
 scorched up. Very few animals of any kind were to be seen. 
 
 " My companions were such as one might expect to find 
 in the bush. They had but one source of inspiration — the 
 terrible drought. Those who have been shepherds are mostly 
 intensely silent owing to their secluded and solitary lives. I 
 have spoken to some who seemed to have to be awakened and 
 brought back from some distant land of dreams, and then but 
 a monosyllable could be got from them by way of reply. The 
 life of the bush shepherd is not unlike that of a sailor in one 
 of its aspects, and leads to the same evil results — more evil, 
 indeed, because its conditions are even worse. He ekes out 
 a lonely, joyless life in the bush for several months, then takes 
 a cheque for ^£'30 or ;£4o, goes to the hotel of some little town, 
 hands the cheque over to the landlord, and stops there drinking 
 all the time until the landlord thinks he has drunk his cheque 
 out. Then he is sent off with a bottle of whisky under each 
 arm, and the landlord gets the credit for being a real good 
 fellow. This is what is called ' lambing it down,' and many 
 a cheque must be ' lambed down ' which might go to make 
 a man a happy home. Sad specimens, indeed, did I meet of 
 this wretched class at the difi"erent places at which we stopped — 
 each dignified with a name as if it were a flourishing town, but 
 usually consisting solely of the hotel where we changed horses. 
 
 "The road was very dusty and rough, mostly through the 
 bush, with no fences or clearing even. At Wagga Wagga I found 
 a very comfortable hotel. It is a far prettier town than Goulburn. 
 Trees grow in the streets, which are not so outrageously wide as 
 in Goulburn, though the Colonial main roads are all wide because 
 of the cattle and sheep — generally three chains across, and some- 
 
OVERLAND TO MELBOURNE. loi 
 
 times four. The town is more compact, the surroundings more 
 cheerful The Murrumbidgee River runs through it. A neat 
 block of shops in red brick called Tichborne Buildings marks 
 the spot where Arthur Orton, alias Castro, sold meat to the 
 Wagga Wagga public. Wooden shanties similar to his are still 
 standing, though his is demolished. It is a wonder they did not 
 bring it over to England for a show. The distance from Coota- 
 mundra here was fifty-seven miles, done in nine hours. The 
 stages are each about twelve miles. The largest town we passed 
 consisted of three hotels and a store. 
 
 " In the afternoon, after a good dinner, I wandered about the 
 town, and saw some new scenes of Colonial life. In the evening 
 I went to the Masonic Hall, where " Alone in London " was 
 performed by a travelling company to a very highly wrought 
 audience. On Wednesday morning I should have been called 
 at 5.30, but was left till 6.30, when the coach for Albury, which 
 should have started at six, was announced to be waiting for me. 
 The distance to be travelled was eighty-four miles ; time, thirteen 
 hours ; stages, seven. Endless bush, drought, dust and flies, 
 with such bumping up and down ! Happily I had a seat on the 
 box, and so my hat did not get crushed by frequent contact with 
 the roof as it did on the previous day. About eight miles from 
 Albury, on the New South Wales frontier, the distant Buffalo 
 Mountains inspired new thoughts. After all, staging is not amiss. 
 Having had thirteen hours of it, I descended at our destination 
 with some regret, which is more than could be said after thirteen 
 hours in a train. 
 
 "As Wagga Wagga is prettier than Goulburn, so Albury is 
 prettier than Wagga Wagga. Poplars reminded me of old scenes 
 in the English fens. But the vineyards are the chief beauty of 
 the place, having a strangely joyous look, suggesting thrift, 
 contentment and pleasing toil."— (I hope the pious Socialist reader 
 will pardon this superficial remark, and remember that when it 
 was written I was only twenty-two !)—" The real beauty of the 
 vine I had never understood before, even though I had seen it 
 growing so gloriously on the sunny slopes and terraces of the 
 Rhine. The vine is most beautiful when growing up the poor 
 man's verandah, sheltering him with its leaves from the burning 
 sun. Henceforth the jocund vine will have a new charm for me. 
 -—But people get drunk too !— On Thursday 1 visited Fallon's 
 
I02 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 wine cellars, where some of the best Colonial wines are made. 
 Then I walked to the River Murray, which here divides Victoria 
 from New South Wales. It was a swift but shallow stream at 
 this part of its course, its bed, however, scattered with huge trunks 
 of trees washed down by winter floods. It is three or four years, 
 now, since they have had any heavy rain here. 
 
 "At 2.30, p.m., the bus left the hotel for Wodonga, on the 
 other side of the river, and about two miles distant. The only 
 sign of passing into another Colony was our suddenly leaving the 
 road, driving swiftly past the Custom House, and then on to the 
 road again, while a Custom House official turned out as we passed 
 and gave the driver a nod. A large trunk had been put inside the 
 bus to my great inconvenience and surprise. Now that I under- 
 stood the reason, I found it less in my way, for had it been on the 
 top I suppose we must have stopped to have it examined. At 
 Wodonga I again took train, with a ticket for Wangaratta, where 
 I was to leave the main line for Beechworth, to see the old gold 
 diggings there. Owing to the visit of a circus to the town, the 
 train was delayed until 11, p.m. We did not reach Beechworth 
 till 1.30, a.m. It is 1,800 ft. above the sea; and for two miles 
 the road rises i in 30. With a heavy excursion train, we had 
 only one engine to pull us up. Her w'heels flew round, and 
 the steam roared away, yet we scarcely moved. Some of the 
 women screamed to add to the amusement. 
 
 " On Friday morning I walked Ito a tunnel which is being 
 made through the granite under Beechworth for conveying water 
 from the gold diggings above the town. The stream which has 
 been used hitherto has been rendered useless, since they have 
 carried the diggings so low down that the fall of water is not 
 enough to deal with the wash-dirt, although the bed of it has 
 been blasted out a considerable depth to lay the sluices in. 
 These sluices are deep troughs into which the wash-dirt is put. 
 The water running continually over it carries the dirt away, and 
 leaves the gold behind. I stayed to witness the operations of 
 boring and blasting, which are very interesting. It will be two 
 years yet before the tunnel is finished. The work is carried on 
 day and night, with three shifts of men working eight hours 
 each. 
 
 " In the afternoon I wandered over some deserted diggings, 
 and had a talk with a man who was breaking stones. He 
 
OVERLAND TO MELBOURNE. 103 
 
 detected me as a ' new chum,' and was very friendly and com- 
 municative. When he was through with his work, he went to his 
 house near by, got a tin pan, filled it promiscuously with some of 
 the earth where we stood, washed it round and round the pan 
 with water from the stream, at each round letting some of the 
 water and dirt flow out, until, in a few minutes, behold a few 
 grains of gold were left at the bottom ! Water is the great need 
 here, the fields being entirely stopped for want of it. 
 
 " Beech worth is a very pretty town, with some 5,000 in- 
 habitants I suppose. But its palmy days are gone by. The 
 past is worshipped, not the future. The diggings are worked out 
 for the most part, and closed stores show that business is 
 decaying. This is the story all through Victoria— one of the 
 features which distinguish it from New South Wales. The 
 mining is all in the hands of companies, since nearly all the gold 
 has now to be crushed out of the quartz with expensive machinery ; 
 and a yield of an ounce of gold from a ton of quartz is enough to 
 keep them going. There is a deal of gambling speculation in 
 connection with these companies, and the sudden rising and 
 falling they experience causes money to change hands very 
 rapidly. Many a poor man here has once had a large fortune. 
 
 " On Saturday morning I started for Melbourne by the 7.16 train, 
 and reached my destination at 3 o'clock. The country is 
 much better settled and cultivated than New South Wales. 
 Melbourne, too, is a finer city than Sydney, though by no means 
 so beautifully or so healthily situated." 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 BACK TO SYDNEY. 
 
 From my first arrival in Melbourne I was unwell, and unfor- 
 tunately found it necessary, for the sake of economy, to take 
 very second-rate lodgings, the bad odour of which I can still 
 recall. The heat was intense and oppressive, so that I did not 
 go out much, save in the evening. I read a good deal, and wrote 
 much. Diarrhoea set in ; I grew very weak, and determined to 
 return to Sydney. But my resolve came too late. Other symptoms 
 appeared which suggested blood-poisoning; and so it was that, on 
 the day on which I commenced to pack, I had to send for a 
 doctor. I was in bed several days, and never felt so lonely, or 
 so near dying, or so wishful to die. It broke me down pretty 
 badly, especially since it caused me again to lose that confidence 
 in myself which was so much needed to enable me to face my 
 destiny. By confidence in myself I mean the feeling that I could 
 rely on my physical ability to follow the path along which the 
 realisation of my higher life and aims seemed to lie. Ever since 
 the collapse which drove me from England, the inability to do this 
 has dogged me. It has, of course, cost me a good deal, but I am 
 sure it has not mattered. I have learned to see that this " thorn 
 in the flesh " has its place in the divine economy of my life, 
 though I still sometimes wriggle about under it, especially when 
 it pricks from some unexpected quarter. 
 
 I have long had a very profound conviction that Paul had hold 
 of a solid fact when he said, " All things work together for good 
 to them that love God," though he associated it with his very 
 extraordinary and original Christian dogma. In the consecrated 
 life nothing matters ; or, to put it more truly, everything tells. 
 The man with a fixed aim is like the wild barley we put up our 
 sleeves in the afternoon and find in our socks at night. Yet I 
 
 104 
 

 
 
 ^ , ■, i '^ ^ ^ ■ 
 
 [To face p. 104. 
 
BACK TO SYDNEY. 105 
 
 am not exactly an Optimist, at least in thinking of the lot of my 
 fellows ; and most certainly I am no dummy of a Quietist either. 
 Only in the background lies the profound conviction that nothing 
 matters, everything tells — in my own life anyhow ; and that what 
 I was born to do will somehow be worked out. 
 
 We will now return to the letters. The first extract was written 
 after the severity of the attack had abated, and a few days before 
 I left for Sydney. 
 
 "Melbourne, February i8i/t, 1878. 
 
 " 1 must try to write a few lines this afternoon. This illness 
 was very trying at first, and indeed is somewhat so now. It has 
 shown me how little I can depend on myself, and that I shall 
 probably have to struggle on, as of old, to the end of the chapter. 
 For one thing I am deeply grateful. I have been brought nearer 
 to God, in a more childlike and simple way, than I have known 
 for many a long day. He is more definite to me now, and I 
 feel more assured of his presence. As to fear of death — I have 
 not once felt it ; indeed, on two or three occasions I wanted to 
 die — life looked so hard, and the odds against me so heavy. But 
 I am glad to be getting better again, and think I am prepared 
 to carry on life's battle once more as soon as the time comes. 
 
 " As to whether I shall ever be a minister, I think it more than 
 doubtful. For a while I felt very hopeful about it, but I could 
 not avoid the conviction that I had not the necessary strength. 
 The day I was at Beech worth I felt very buoyant as I walked 
 about, without being more fatigued than when I started ; but in 
 the afternoon my nose bled two or three times, and in the 
 evening I was completely done up. When I reached Melbourne 
 I was quite tired out. Somehow I seem doomed. As soon as I 
 had found lodgings here, I felt that I musf do something. So 
 I began writing a story that has been long in my mind, and stuck 
 at it as long as I could think. At least the work kept me in 
 good spirits. 
 
 "Since I have been here I have had no small difficulty in 
 trying to decide whether I should not go to London rather than 
 New York. I cannot help feeling that London would offer me 
 greater chances of success ; and then I am half afraid of the 
 New York climate — so hot and so cold. How I wish I could 
 talk with you all on the subject. But I cannot. Undoul)tcdly 
 
io6 M-y QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 it would be very hard for me to live in England again. There 
 can be no real communion with those I love best — all is so 
 changed now ! I fear, too, that my presence in England would 
 be more painful to my friends ; they would realise my change of 
 belief so much more fully. It is very difficult to know what to 
 do. I thought I had decided, and now all has to be gone over 
 again. Oh, how I long to get settled ! " 
 
 " Wednesday, February 20th, 1878. 
 
 " I often feel most painfully how little I have done, yet I am 
 in good spirits in respect to the future. My purposes are becoming 
 more definite with experience, and my heart firmer. In New 
 York I expect to have a hard battle to fight, but if I can keep 
 strong I don't feel that I have anything to fear. This fear of 
 weakness is the one difficulty. It makes everything seem so 
 much more complicated when I want to decide for the future. 
 Then there is the way in which my money is going, and must 
 continue to go for some time to come. I cannot help feeling 
 now that weakness has really taught me enough, and that hence- 
 forth I must be strong, and able to work right away at what I 
 please, living in cheap lodgings, with few comforts, and never 
 spending a penny on pleasure till I have earned the right to do 
 it. I have tried it here, and now have a doctor's bill to pay, and 
 have done practically nothing. Yet all this has taught me much. 
 So it ever is. I learn and learn and learn. When shall I get 
 earnestly to work ? 
 
 "They seem to be in a fine muddle in the States. This at 
 first rather alarmed me ; but I want to learn something of Social 
 questions, and shall there have a good opportunity. Oh, how 
 thankful I shall be to get into the great world once more ! Here 
 I seem just buried alive. It will be better there, surely. I 
 don't think I could possibly live in the Colonies. There is no 
 intellectual excitement of any kind. It is like living in a small 
 provincial town, and not seeing a London paper. One never 
 sees a really fine-looking, well-dressed gentleman. I get sick of 
 mediocrity. 
 
 " As to being a minister, I must give up that, and not alone 
 for the reasons I have already stated. My mind must be per- 
 fectly free to grow as new light comes. I dare not mark out any 
 course of conviction, and say, ' I will follow that.' In a week 
 
BACK TO SYDNEY. 107 
 
 the fetters might have to burst ; or, worse still, I might find 
 myself in a position in which part of the truth might have to be 
 suppressed. A minister, after all, is hired to intensify the existing 
 faith of his hearers. If he do not that, battle ensues, with various 
 consequences." 
 
 Little did I know, when writing the above, how prophetic it 
 was of the experience I should have years after. Still, every 
 calling in life has its temptations and dangers, which can only 
 be avoided by getting out of the world altogether. No position 
 in life is honourable save to an honourable man. 
 
 As to the writing which I commenced in Melbourne, my mind 
 has always been too serious and subjective to make novel-writing 
 possible. At that time it was especially out of the question, for 
 I was in the midst of a very hard mental struggle, and I had 
 neither that commanding view of life, nor that easy objective 
 relationship to it, which the novelist needs to enable him to give 
 individual life to his characters. Undoubtedly I was always 
 meant to be in some way or another a preacher, though I have 
 never had the power to succeed in preaching. But that does not 
 matter. There are many kinds of pulpits and platforms, and 
 this that I now have hold of is one of them. And then pulpits 
 are so wanting in humour, and there is such a solemn stuffiness 
 about them. But, for all that, I am afraid to go even into a little 
 village church, and hear even the woodenest of clerical sermons, 
 because I am sure to come out in a state of mental excitement 
 caused by considering how delightful it would be to set up in 
 that very village my own heretical platform, and prove that 
 villagers, even, can be got to understand how great they are, and 
 how near God is to them, and how they should rouse themselves 
 up to live, both personally and socially, to the height of their high 
 calling. 
 
 My intention, in returning to Sydney, was to go direct to San 
 Francisco by one of the Pacific steamers, instead of going from 
 Melbourne by way of New Zealand. I had lost so much time 
 through illness, and was getting impatient to bring an end to 
 my wanderings. On Friday, Feb. 22nd, I left Melbourne by 
 steamer for Sydney. It was an uncomfortable voyage. In 
 steaming down the mud-banked Yarra River, we stuck at a bend, 
 and another vessel following us ran into our stern, knocking a 
 
io8 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 hole therein. There we lay all night to the music of the engineers 
 who were rivetting a new plate over the hole. By six in the 
 morning we were able to leave the Yarra, but our discomforts 
 were not ended. The rain fell, the wind blew, and then, suddenly 
 — the engines stopped. Happily the wind was off the land, or 
 we must certainly have been driven on the rocks. After a long 
 time spent on the engines, they were started again, but only to 
 stop again soon after. The hours passed drearily enough as 
 we rolled helplessly about, the small rags that could be set up 
 being practically useless, save to cause us to drift further out to 
 sea. However, we did get off again, and landed at last in Sydney 
 Harbour at seven o'clock on Monday evening. I may here say 
 that none of my affectionate thoughts of the sea are associated in 
 any way with steamers. 
 
 Anxious to make my money hold out as long as possible, I 
 went to cheaper apartments in Sydney than those I had formerly 
 occupied. Ants, bugs and huge water-rats became my nightly 
 companions. It was a miserable time. In three weeks I had 
 three different rooms because of these pests. I was obliged to 
 stay out the week in each case, since I had to pay for my lodgings 
 in advance. 
 
 The day after my arrival I went on board one of the Pacific 
 steamers to look at the steerage accommodation which I had 
 bravely determined to take. I found it to be just the kind of 
 accommodation which is provided in a London doss-house, only 
 with less air-space and less ventilation, and we had to cross the 
 tropics. Further, I was told that the passengers would be mostly 
 Chinese. I could have crossed very comfortably in the sailors' 
 fo'castle; but this was too much for my pious determination. 
 Yet I could not afford to pay saloon fare. In this predicament I 
 was fortunate in meeting the captain of a large iron sailing vessel. 
 He told me he was going to sail for 'Frisco in a few days, and 
 after some conversation agreed to take me for ^25. We did not 
 sail, however, for more than three weeks. Thus I had the 
 opportunity, already mentioned, of experiencing a phase of 
 Sydney life which had not before come under my notice. It has 
 not, however, wiped out of my memory the exceeding beauty of 
 climate and situation which Sydney enjoys. 
 
 My ride across a very small corner of the vast Australian 
 continent impressed me deeply with the conviction that, for many 
 
BACK TO SYDNEY. 109 
 
 a year, many an age, perhaps, Australia could not become a great 
 country. Beyond the coast fringe it was a desert, blasted with 
 three years of drought. In Melbourne market they were selling 
 whole sheep at two shillings each. In one of Melbourne's 
 squares stands a fine but pathetic monument — bronze figures 
 of the famous Burke and Wills, who died from starvation in 
 attempting to cross that terrible continent. Before I left Australia, 
 prayers were offered in the Churches for rain, so serious to the 
 whole country were the effects of this long drought. As I left, 
 cattle and sheep were being drowned by floods caused by a 
 sudden downpour. I was told that it was the alternation of 
 long dry seasons and long wet seasons which made the country 
 so difficult to occupy inland. Along the belt of coast it is 
 different. But inland, the free-selector, as he was called, would 
 go further and further during a series of wet years, only to be 
 driven out with the loss of everything when a series of dry years 
 followed. It will be long before Australia can raise men robust 
 enough to conquer such a climate as that; for the climate on 
 the coast belt, however healthy and luxurious, is scarcely 
 calculated to raise a nation of heroes. 
 
 In 1877-78 the easy-going, shifty man had the run of things — 
 the man whose sole idea seemed to be to exploit the country for 
 all it was worth. Whether the Labour Movement has succeeded 
 in bringing conscience and consideration for the future into 
 Australian politics, I know not; but only some such movement 
 can redeem her. A truly religious sense of responsibility to 
 God and man was needed to make the most of the country, 
 and is still needed. As it is, its wealth has been gambled for 
 and squandered away with a heedlessness and a selfishness which 
 is nothing less than tragic. If ever the Prophet of Repentance 
 had a mission in any land, in Australia he might surely find it. 
 
 Moreover, I am sure that in Colonial life itself there lies an 
 insidious weakness, the causes and effects of which it may be 
 impossible to estimate accurately, but which exist none the less 
 formidably. In Australia I was struck with the shoddiness of 
 everything. I never saw a straight up and down man in the 
 street that I wanted to turn round to look at. It was as though 
 every noteworthy man had been seized and executed. The 
 public life seemed to be on the level of that of some English 
 watering-place, where the ruling passion is to attract visitors, so 
 
no MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 that the pubHc man may profit by them in his private 
 capacity. Downright wickedness I can endure better than this 
 slovenUness and commonplaceness, because great wickedness 
 does bring about a reaction at last. As Emerson remarks, " Bad 
 kings help us, if they are bad enough." A country whose affairs 
 are managed by little people has got itself into a parlous state, 
 from which it is difficult to see a way out. It is like a man 
 brought up in an easy-going liberal faith— not true enough to 
 live by nor false enough to be abandoned. Intensity is essential 
 to progress. 
 
 It is this frightful mediocrity that Colonialism seems to lead 
 to. When I landed at San Francisco, I saw the difference 
 immediately. The men were smart, energetic, well dressed, with 
 a precision and directness about them as of a tool accurately 
 adapted to its purpose, and with no superfluous metal. They 
 looked like men who knew what they wanted to do, and knew that 
 they were going to do it. On the journey from San Francisco 
 four or five men got on the cars, and I was iaimediately struck 
 with the demeanour with which I had grown so familiar in 
 Australia. After they had left the cars, a man who had been 
 talking with them told me they were Canadians. I understood 
 at once. It may well be that San Francisco was wickeder all 
 round than any Colonial city, but I had far more hope in it. 
 There was energy, there was hfe, there was confidence; there 
 was a wiry strength that appeared equal to all emergencies — 
 an integral and self-conscious part of a mighty nation still in its 
 untamed youth, and aware that it had a past to be proud of and 
 a future that would be glorious. 
 
 For all this development of power there must be the national 
 spirit. One magnetic thrill of independence, of self-sufficiency, 
 of unity before any outside enemy, of enthusiasm for the flag 
 which stands for the past history and the future mission of the 
 country— this must, from time to time, rush from frontier to 
 frontier, and back from frontier to frontier again, like the pulsing 
 of one mighty heart, if true national greatness is to be realised. 
 It is this national self-consciousness which is part of the stuff 
 out of which the coming self-consciousness of Humanity must 
 be welded. 
 
 In a Colony this spirit is feeble and divided. A senti- 
 mental regard for the mother country, crossed every now and 
 
BACK TO SYDNEY. in 
 
 again by local interests — this is what it comes to. England will 
 then rise to the height of her destiny, already mighty among the 
 peoples, when her Colonies have learned to become Nations, 
 and have acquired the strong virtues of nationality, and when 
 all English-speaking nations are federated for international pur- 
 poses, not in sentiment only, but in reality. Independence alone 
 can nourish the collective self-consciousness out of which a still 
 wider self-consciousness must grow. 
 
 And I am increasingly convinced that this principle is equally 
 true in regard to the present subordination of the masses to the 
 classes. He who desires to raise the whole level of Humanity — 
 to make Humanity in any real sense possible — must seek to raise 
 its politically and industrially weakest sections into self-conscious- 
 ness through independence. There is no other way. It is 
 difficult, ugly, dangerous, and very awkward for the ruling 
 interests ; yet no other way will work that which we profess to 
 wish to accomplish. Whether we have regard to Ireland, to 
 Labour, to Woman — the same principle of Independence, Self- 
 consciousness, and then free Federation, still holds good; and 
 our eyes and our hearts must be opened wide to this truth if 
 we would be world-workers with God. In a constantly deepening 
 and expanding Self-consciousness, World-consciousness, God-con- 
 sciousness, lies the real progress of Humanity . 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 SYDNEY TO SAN FRANCISCO. 
 
 It was on March 25th, 1878, that we left Sydney for San Francisco. 
 I wish I could call back in clear remembrance the romance of that 
 strange time, which helped me so largely to bear my loneliness, 
 and the burden of my great quest. It all lives in me. Nothing 
 is really lost. What I made my own, by living on it, is part of my 
 present life. But I cannot recall the deep emotions of those 
 creative days ; and I wish I could. It seems an act of unfaith- 
 fulness to forget what the sea said to me in her wayward beauty 
 and power ; and what the sky said, with its new revelations of 
 colour and darkness and light ; and so to be unable to tell all I 
 owe to our companionship in those days ; and how, brooding 
 over the Chaos of my soul, they began to form therein the germs 
 of a new Cosmos which is still growing. But it is the same with 
 companionships more sacred still than this. The joy of every 
 memory of love is tempered with a sense of ungracious forget- 
 fulness, when we set ourselves to be quite honest with our past. 
 
 This voyage across the Pacific was in some respects more 
 impressive than that across the Atlantic. What I remember most 
 clearly of the earlier voyage is a memory of the North — the 
 Roaring Forties, the Albatross, the great gales, the dark loneli- 
 ness of the heavy sea as we were daily driven eastward. What I 
 remember most clearly of the later voyage is a memory of the 
 South — blazing splendours of sunset, which made all past and 
 all succeeding sunsets dull and ineffectual ; tropical islands, 
 towards which, in hours of dejection, the mind mournfully turns, 
 thinking of a beauty and a peace it may not know here, but which 
 there would seem easy of attainment ; long calms, beneath the 
 blazing sun by day and the brilliant moon by night, but once 
 in the midst of a dense fog, which clung to us in our dark 
 
SYDNEY TO SAN FRANCISCO. 113 
 
 motionlessness like a shroud of Universal Death ; the shark, the 
 dolphin, the flying-fish, and the large and beautiful insects that 
 visited us as we lay becalmed off the Sandwich Islands ; the 
 Golden Gate of the West, through which we sailed, after a voyage 
 of nearly eleven weeks, a ruddy vision in my memory, bathed in 
 the mid-day sun of June. 
 
 And yet we had crossed the tropics on the Atlantic ; and off 
 San Francisco had lain in a cold fog, among seals and blowing 
 whales. But our memories are impressed by our moods ; and 
 if I have more gracious thoughts of the Pacific, it is due to the 
 growth, while crossing it, of a more gracious condition of mind. 
 The coldness of that sudden Doubt was losing itself in a set 
 purpose, built of Hope, if not yet of Faith. I had accepted my 
 fate, I had told the terrible truth to my little world, and already, 
 in the darkness, I had begun to discover the outlines of my 
 future task, and could believe that my early instincts towards a 
 Mission might yet be fulfilled, perhaps beyond my earlier 
 dreams. 
 
 In some respects the second voyage had much the same effect 
 on me as reading the second of two books on the same subject. 
 I came to it with an already informed mind ; more capable of 
 comparison and of reception, therefore ; but with the sense of 
 novelty worn off. Certainly it has not the place in my religious 
 life which the Atlantic voyage has. And yet it has a place far 
 more agreeable to recall. If the first book made me frightfully 
 aware of my ignorance, the second made me aware that I was 
 now beginning to learn. And for that my memory is warmed 
 with a sense of gratitude. 
 
 Along with a pale reawakening of my confidence in God, the 
 experiences of this time deepened a certain human sensitiveness 
 which was growing up within me, and which, in various ways, has 
 since so largely determined my development. The last three 
 uncomfortable weeks at Sydney, when I became the companion 
 of bugs and ants and water-rats, and brooded much on the 
 mystery of their existence, and accepted them, and all they stood 
 for, as part of the discipline of fife, thus finding a place for them as 
 well as for myself in the new Cosmos I was building — all this, and 
 the very lonely illness and sense of defeat which I had experienced 
 in Melbourne, had had a strangely humanising effect on me, 
 furthering greatly the influence of the Atlantic voyage. It opened 
 
 8 
 
114 ^^ QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 my heart more deeply to the profound pathos of existence, and 
 helped me towards that sense of oneness with all things which 
 is one of the most real elements in the evolution of religious life. 
 And yet, because I could endure these things, and accept the 
 discomfort and the sense of degradation they brought, and find 
 a place for them in the purifying and unfolding of my own life, 
 and feel that, in coming down to the level of their society, I had 
 unexpectedly found myself lifted up, this deep sense of the pathos 
 of existence — "the tears of things" which the Pagan so keenly 
 felt — was no element of despair in my quest for God, but an 
 element of lively hope. It was as if I had gone to the bottom of 
 the ladder of life, and been rendered a very humble and yet very 
 helpful service by the things I found there in the dark. 
 
 To learn to feel pity and reverence towards that we must yet 
 destroy, is to have taken a tremendous step in life ; for 1 am 
 sure that the Indian Ascetic, who would remain the companion 
 of these things rather than destroy them, has quite missed the 
 mark. It is always a dual attitude we must inwardly retain 
 towards all the facts of life, though at one time we may be able 
 to give but one attitude its practical and conclusive expression — 
 as when we kill a bug — the reasons for which action introduce 
 us to the whole vast complexity of our earthly life, in the midst 
 of which we have to learn to grow in oneness of heart, and in 
 truth in the inward parts. 
 
 My association with the sailors on the Atlantic had already 
 been a great help towards this humane growth. I had no 
 message for the dying sailor ; but I could do a httle to relieve 
 his pain, and his poverty of things, and his frightful solitude ; and 
 could express my sorrow that he should suffer so. My heart 
 went out to all the sailors, too, with their hard lives, their kind 
 and simple hearts, and their many unconscious virtues, hidden 
 from the Pharisaic eye beneath their sins, conventional and real. 
 Now that I was rid of my Christian Creed, I could regard them 
 naturally, from the heart. So I began to enter into the awe and 
 mystery and love of Humanity, and to understand what Human- 
 kindness means — not the mere sentiment of kindness, which 
 even a philanthropist may feel ; but rather the consciousness of 
 being of the same Kin, because one in beginning and end, with 
 all Human Kind. It is in this way, by the growth of an inward 
 sense of union, that I have learned that our religious life grows. 
 
SVDA/EV TO SAN FRANCISCO. 
 
 115 
 
 The Way of Life, the Revelation of Life — what is it, but going 
 into a ship's fo'castle, without airs, and coming out again with 
 our sense of oneness deepened and broadened ? Every advance 
 we make in this direction is an advance towards that God-con- 
 sciousness, which is the full flower and fruit of human existence. 
 
 There is an episode of this voyage which I will record here, 
 since it has a certain human quality, the frank humour of which 
 sends our righteous criticism to sleep. During the calms, one 
 of the occupations of the watch off duty was catching sharks. 
 On one occasion a younger specimen than usual was caught. 
 The second officer assured me that it would be good eating, and 
 asked me to join him in a steak. Systematically open to every 
 new experience, I assented readily enough. While it was cook- 
 ing, I stood talking with the cook at the galley door. A sailor 
 joined us. The cook drew the conversation round to shark as 
 an article of diet. In dumb astonishment I heard him declare 
 that it was wholly unfit for human food, that it caused violent 
 sickness, and brought out hideous boils. The sailor, at the close 
 of the discourse, turned on his heel, remarking, " Yes, I believe 
 that's about right." Then I remonstrated with the cook. " You 
 see," he replied, " I never encourage the men to eat fish. If I 
 did, I should have enough to do to be cooking for them." Then 
 he pointed proudly to the two steaks which he was frying for 
 the officer and myself, told me just how he was going to serve 
 them, and proceeded to praise young shark as making a most 
 excellent dish. 
 
 The shark revealed to me another trait in human nature which, 
 in this instance at least, I did not find so pardonable. During a 
 long calm, the captain daily, and many times each day, swore at 
 the weather like any common sailor, but with an added severity 
 of intention which, by the irresponsible sailor, is scarcely to be 
 attained. He said swear, and he meant swear, in all bitter- 
 ness and resentment of heart. But one day he noticed a fine 
 shark, lying, as if asleep, at the stern of the ship. He called for 
 his gun. In another minute, where the shark had been, the blue 
 water was stained with blood. During the remainder of that 
 calm no oath against the weather crossed his lips. On the 
 contrary, they wore a placid smile. In the poor shark's blood he 
 had washed out that overwhelming sense of helplessness which 
 had so galled his autocratic mind. 
 
Ii6 MY QUEST FOR GOD, 
 
 The most original experience of this voyage was having two 
 Sundays in succession. One Saturday night, near midnight, we 
 crossed i8o° of longitute. Then we had to throw in an extra 
 day to keep us right with the people who were not sailing with us 
 round the world. The captain— though a brute to his officers, yet 
 always considerate with his crew— declared that the added day 
 should be Sunday, and ordered a second Sunday's dinner to be 
 served. It was very queer to go to bed on Sunday night and to 
 wake up on Sunday morning. One seemed to get no forwarder 
 —as though the Solar System had not been wound up. It was 
 strange enough to have to be continually altering our watches on 
 the Atlantic, thus learning something of the instability of things ; 
 but that was nothing to throwing in a whole day on the Pacific. 
 I have always believed that this voyage round the world added 
 years to my life. I know it added a day to it. 
 
 In the tropics I sometimes slept on deck, and on more than 
 one occasion was waked by some considerate sailor, who found 
 the moon shining on me, lest I should become a lunatic from the 
 malign influence of Luna's rays. Argument was useless ; so if I 
 wished for an undisturbed night, I had to retire to my berth. 
 Indeed, in the topics, I could almost myself feel that there was a 
 certain godless temerity, attended with risk of revenge, in sinking 
 thus into unconscious slumber beneath the cold caresses of the 
 Queen of the Night. 
 
 It is difficult not to be superstitious at sea. One is embosomed 
 in Nature so, and so dependent— at least when not on a godless 
 steamer. I could quite sympathise with the sailors when they 
 threw a penny overboard to buy a capful of wind. The sea 
 looked so exactly like a power that only needed to be propiti- 
 ated in order to become one's friend. But more often the men 
 consoled themselves with the very mundane proverb—" More 
 days, more dollars " ; or— when it came to box-hauling all 
 through a watch, in hope of catching every faint puff of breeze 
 — " Growl you may, work you must." Two other proverbs they 
 used on other occasions which have stuck in my memory— 
 " Different ships, different fashions," and, " Wash once a week, 
 whether you want it or no." The last I once thought of using 
 for a text ; but it seemed in itself so complete a sermon, that 
 I feared to weaken it by paraphrase. 
 
 Genial, humanising influences, all of them, which helped my 
 
SYDNEY TO SAN FRANCISCO, 117 
 
 mind to open out more and more from its narrow past. And not 
 only to my fellows, and to Nature, but to God also. In my lonely 
 illness I had felt very near to God. This so beautiful universe, 
 and my relations with it, and with her I loved, all the result of 
 a fortuitous concourse of atoms — ! I could not possibly get all 
 the facts inside such a Scheme of Things as that ; any more than 
 I could again get them inside that Scheme of Redemption which 
 had to burst up so violently. I myself, I knew, was bigger than 
 that — even lying ill at Melbourne, helpless and lonely and near 
 death, and suffering so much ; yet loyally accepting my fate, 
 and finding in it a discipline towards Life. To him who under- 
 stands Gethsemane, no Scheme of Things can include all life, 
 though he may still feel as if walking doubtfully in the twilight. 
 At least I had a strong negative faith — a clear limitation in my 
 uncertainty of things — " This world is not dead and demoniacal." 
 And sometimes, in moments of deep feeling, I could almost 
 add, " but godlike." And then I hoped that I might some day 
 say further, in fullest confidence — " and my Father's." 
 
 My awaking humanism and reviving faith combined to deter- 
 mine me towards the ministry. There grew up within me a sense 
 of the loneliness and self-sufficiency of Literature as a life mission, 
 and a strong desire to carry on my work, whatever it might be, 
 in association with my fellows. In true feeling I believe I was 
 more really Christian at this time, than at that time in Liverpool 
 when I definitely marked out Literature for my career ; for this 
 inseparable association of oneness with man and oneness with 
 God, and of the love of man with the love of God, so that the 
 service of either is the service of the other too, is surely one 
 of the most essential elements in the life of Jesus — an element 
 which, in spite of its dogmatic interpretation, has been a very 
 real contribution towards the world's progress. 
 
 Thus I was led to cling tenaciously to that idea of being 
 a minister, which before I had rejected ; though now with feelings 
 more truly ministerial than I formerly had. Then, it was the 
 preacher, the messenger, I wished to be — the proclaimer to men 
 of the realities of human life ; and I could do my proclaiming 
 just as well by pen as by voice. Now there grew up in my mind 
 a keen sense of man's loneliness and sorrow, and a strong desire 
 to help him in his need. It w^as rather the personal touch of 
 the minister's life, the sense of being one of a brotherhood, that 
 
ii8 MY QUESl FOR GOD. 
 
 appealed to me in that desperately lonely time. So it was that 
 I determined at least to prepare for the ministry. The effects 
 of my illness in Melbourne had left me during the voyage, and 
 I had faith enough in God to believe that faith would grow. 
 
 For I still understood that the foundation of any real ministry 
 of man to man must be a conscious ministry to God discovered 
 in human life. But how should I ever be sure enough of God 
 to minister in his name ? Fitful gleams I had of faith. How 
 was I to rise to that full assurance of faith I had once known ? 
 Were not those right who presented the alternative, of Revelation 
 on the one hand, or, on the other, utter ignorance of God and 
 of the meaning of man's earthly life ? On what material, in this 
 very complex world, could I ever build up a perfectly invincible 
 conviction of God, so that one day I might learn the Method 
 of religious knowledge? 
 
 In this perplexity, a thought flashed into my mind which filled 
 me with the greatest hope. Jesus had had to learn of God, 
 without book, as I now had. All his teaching showed this to be 
 one of the most significant facts of his experience. He had had 
 to give up the Letter, and go straight to Life. It was this which 
 gave such strong realism to all he said, which convinced people 
 that he spoke of what he knew, which made him appeal to them 
 with an authority far other than that claimed by the Scribes 
 and Pharisees, an authority the foundations of which lay in the 
 experiences and emotions of their own human hearts. This 
 thought, unspeakably helpful as it was, did not set me on reading 
 the Bible again to try to give a new interpretation to it ; it never 
 made me think that, in a new sense, I might again become a 
 disciple of Christ ; it only made me feel that I, in my way, need 
 not despair of attaining to that deep certitude of God to which 
 Jesus had attained in his. 
 
 In such a condition, the only religious denomination to which 
 I could look for help was the Unitarian, of which I knew but 
 little. When a boy, I was told that Unitarians did not believe 
 in the divinity of Christ, or in the doctrine of the atonement ; 
 that they, therefore, expected to get to heaven by their own 
 righteousness ; and that the reason why they were such ex- 
 ceptionally moral people was, that they had only their own good- 
 ness to rely on for salvation. Yet, as a boy, I was warned against 
 the Antinomian heresy ; while, on the other hand, I grew up 
 
SYDNEY TO SAN FRANCISCO. 119 
 
 with the idea that it was safer to be a wicked than a moral man, 
 because a wicked man was more likely to be convinced of sin, 
 and to seek salvation through Christ. 
 
 At Norwich I had learned something of the good work of 
 these dangerously moral people in the way of education ; but I 
 had no more thought of attending their chapel than I could have 
 thought of frequenting a public house. Indeed, I am sure my 
 friends would rather have discovered me in the latter place than 
 in the former, and would have been less hopeless of my future 
 fate. At Sydney, however, I had heard a good deal about them 
 from the friend made on the voyage. Especially I understood 
 that, on seeking admission to a Unitarian College, I should be 
 submitted to no doctrinal test. In such a College, it seemed to 
 me, I might remain for a time, perfectly uncommitted on questions 
 of faith, and in an atmosphere in which any faith possible to me 
 would most naturally grow. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE NARROW WAY. 
 
 On June 7th, 1878, we sailed through the famous Golden Gate 
 of the West, and I found myself in the city of San Francisco. 
 Here I received letters from England which had been forwarded 
 from Sydney — the first replies to the terrible news I had sent 
 home. The following extracts from what I wrote at this time 
 will indicate my state of mind better than anything I can write 
 from memory now. 
 
 " Russ House, San Francisco. 
 
 Jutie loth, 1878. 
 
 ^' There is much, very much, I want to say ; and yet it seems 
 difficult to know how to say anything at all. I am so thankful to 
 have received your letters before leaving here ; for although they 
 have not altered my plans for the future, yet they have made me 
 go over again, more earnestly than ever, the reasons which led 
 me to my present resolution. It is better, far better, to have 
 done this before taking any steps which might have committed me 
 to a certain course — better to realise now how you all feel about 
 me, than to learn later when it would be so much harder to 
 bear. . . . 
 
 " I know that faith in God is man's one need, and I hope to 
 be allowed to help to keep alive that faith in some small spot on 
 God's earth some day. ... I long to touch the world somewhere, 
 to take my place among others in its work, to enter at some 
 point into sympathy with its joys and sorrows. I have long been 
 sick of remaining on the outside of everything, like a ball tossed 
 over the heads of folk. I trust this sort of life, cold and 
 deadening as it is, will soon be ended. . . . 
 
 " You will still think, perhaps, that I should be an Architect. 
 God knows I have had difficulties enough to drive me to it, if 
 
 I20 
 
THE .NARROW WAY. 121 
 
 such a course were possible. You will not understand me in 
 this, perhaps ; but will think I am making a wish into a necessity. 
 Again and again have I probed my heart to see whether this were 
 not so. But when I fairly faced the matter, it ever remained 
 clearer to me that there were certain things which I could not 
 do, and that this was one of them. ... My hope has long been 
 that I might preach ; and when that has seemed impossible, then 
 I have had to take refuge in writing. 
 
 " I called on Mr. this morning, and he has given me the 
 
 addresses of two colleges in the States— one at Cambridge, Mass., 
 the other at Meadville, Pa. ... As to my views, it matters 
 not what I believe, so I hold a good character. My intention 
 now is to leave this for Chicago the day after to-morrow, and 
 then to communicate with both colleges. ... The very thought 
 of college seems as good as heaven after all the wanderings of 
 body and mind I have been through. Yet I must not allow 
 my desire for rest to coerce me into taking what I ought not 
 to have. And it may not be as good as I expect, though I 
 must indulge in the hope that it will be, so as to keep the 
 present a little more bright. It is almost unbearable to me, 
 at times, to have nothing but the world about me, and no 
 spiritual being to talk to. Books, and God's sea and sky, have, 
 after all, been but poor substitutes. But it's all good for a body, 
 especially for a body so ambitious as I am. I trust the time is 
 coming when I shall learn to value it from the sympathy and 
 tenderness it will give me in helping others. For the present, 
 I fear, it has often hardened me; but surely there must be treasure 
 gathered in to be of value some day. I cannot think that 
 anything is wasted. ... 
 
 u Thank for her letter. Glad, indeed, am I that she did 
 
 not wait a month before answering mine, for then I should 
 probably not have received it for some three months. Would that 
 I could answer it ; but I dare not now. And if it gives pain, yet 
 it gives strength and earnestness, which only pain can afford. In 
 some other part of our Father's land we shall reap the joy of it, 
 when all this will be better understood. And if much we once 
 had in common has now passed away, much is still left— the root 
 of the whole matter after all. In the meantime we are each 
 learning lessons which will one day help us to a fuller knowledge 
 of God's love, and a richer blessedness in our own. 
 
122 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 "You ask me what I think of Christ. — 'God manifest in 
 the flesh,' as every great man is. Is not the whole earth ' the 
 Living Garment of God ' ? Christ taught us to say, ' Our Father' ; 
 and we find it in our heart to say it. But not only Christ, not only 
 the noble men and women who have lived, not only sunshine 
 and flowers, springtime and the song of birds, but sin also and 
 misery, storm and destruction, cruelty and vice— all must be 
 considered if we would know God. He made all. It is for 
 us to learn of him from all that he has made." 
 
 The above extracts but faintly describe the efl"ect which the 
 letters from home produced in my mind. I was becoming 
 accustomed to my new life. The wound caused by the loss of 
 the old faith was healing up. I was hardening myself to remain 
 away from her I loved. These letters carried me all the way 
 back to the sorrow and sense of loss and loneliness that I had 
 been through. It was so hard to bear, that, though I knew it 
 was impossible for me to return to Christianity, I thought that 
 I might, perhaps, make myself go back to Architecture, since 
 such a step would so much relieve the sorrow of those I loved. 
 And I would have gone back — if I could. But the way was 
 barred — all ways were barred, but just this one of the ministry. 
 I felt that a power not to be resisted had laid its hand on me, 
 and was urging me along the path I had to take. Many a 
 time has that almost awful experience been repeated since. I 
 could see many roads before me, but only one could I possibly 
 follow. 
 
 I suppose this is what all men who seek to live with God feel 
 again and again in the various crises of their lives. It is as 
 though we begin by asking permission to do God's will in the 
 world, and consecrating ourselves to the doing of it ; only to find 
 later that we have been taken so seriously at our word that we 
 have quite lost our freedom. Only so can I account for the 
 exceedingly narrow line to which my own life has again and 
 again been limited, and yet a line of continuous development in 
 life and service. I dance about at times, as though I were a free 
 man ; but it is only during some noontide halt on the journey. 
 Suddenly the bugle sounds, and again I must march. 
 
 On the whole, one gets accustomed to this way of living ; but, 
 for my own part, I am too liable to forget its conditions. This 
 
THE NARROW WAY. 123 
 
 forgetfulness, it is, that has made the mental strain of such a life 
 tell on me so badly. I will go on scheming and contriving and 
 wearing my brain to pieces in face of each day's difficulties, 
 instead of having confidence enough to go straight forward with 
 each day's duties. But what is the day's duty ? Are we this day 
 to continue to sacrifice the happiness of our friends ? Are we to 
 go on with our work, heedless of the risk of bankruptcy, or of 
 loss of health, or of calumny, or of foolish controversy ? Or are 
 we to let go this piece of work or that, which it seems madness to 
 pursue any longer ? How can we tell the difference between 
 faith and folly, between our vain imaginings, and the true insight 
 which refuses to be blinded by the external show of things ? 
 
 There is no answer to these questionings but the answer that 
 each man's character, experience and training enable him to give 
 as each new difficulty or complication of difficulties arises. But 
 I am sure we ought to recognise more than we do the need of 
 disciplining ourselves in this matter, so that time and strength 
 are not wasted in turning over all sorts of reasons for this course 
 or that ; but that we should be able instinctively to see the right 
 path each time several paths open before us. It is the Art of 
 living and working with God that we have to learn by continued 
 experience in doing it. And yet, if we are called to carry 
 forward a work for which we have not the physical strength, or 
 in some other way are commanded to make bricks without straw, 
 then we must expect complications of difficulties, and must not 
 be discouraged if they often stagger us. Each of us has to learn 
 how to play his part in this matter; but certainly it should be 
 his aim to train himself to carry on his work quiedy under fire ; 
 and, once having taken up a position, to stick to it, until he 
 gets his clear marching orders. Ars longa, vita brevis est, 
 wrote my old schoolmaster ; and it is even so. And this life 
 appears but a very elementary school to prepare us for a higher ; 
 where, if the Art be long, the Life shall be long also. 
 
 This burden of God's presence is no new matter. All through 
 the prophetic Jewish literature we find how keenly, and sometimes 
 awfully, men felt it. People laugh at the story of Jonah ; but 
 that story shows more knowledge of the bottom realities of life 
 than those who simply laugh at it could dream of. Read the 
 139th Psalm. You will find some verses towards the end which 
 are open enough to criticism ; but what man who ever realised 
 
124 ^y QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 the pressure of God all around him as the writer of this Psalm 
 did, would not feel instinctively that they had been inserted by 
 some other hand, and simply read past them to the end ? Pass 
 on from the eighteenth verse to the twenty-third ; read the whole 
 Psalm thus ; and then see whether you can enter into all the 
 complex thought and activity of this end of the Nineteenth 
 Century, and feel God weighing down upon it all, and guiding 
 you through it all, as the Psalmist felt respecting the little world 
 in which he lived. If not, you are not keeping up with the 
 progress of the world. 
 
 The fact is, the problem of life seems to be growing more 
 complex at a rate greater than that at which man himself is 
 growing. It was possible for a Jewish Prophet to grasp life as 
 a whole, with God all around and within it, just as it was possible 
 for Aristotle to grasp all Science as a whole, and write all that 
 could then be known of its branches. The only way for man 
 to keep up with the march of the world is for him to set the 
 Art of Living with God first before him as the one necessary 
 attainment from which all else must emanate, and then all the 
 knowledge and experience and skill which he can acquire will 
 be unified around this one Divine Art of Life as its centre, all 
 blessing and benefiting the whole of Humankind. Only then 
 shall we be able to command for human weal the tremendous 
 forces that we discover and handle ; only then shall we be rid 
 of these awful prophecies of aerial armaments and electrical 
 death-zones which now haunt our godless imaginations. I repeat 
 — only when all the activities of life radiate from a life lived with 
 God can we possibly command all human knowledge and power 
 to the common end of human well-being. Only so can be realised 
 any sort of Kingdom of God on Earth. 
 
 All this I was beginning to learn at the Russ House in San 
 Francisco, where I had that hard struggle over my letters from 
 England. For the sake of those who sent them, and all whom 
 they represented, I would renounce my plans, return to Archi- 
 tecture, and thus show that reasonable regard for my worldly 
 welfare which would give them the greater hope for my spiritual 
 well-being. Not that I put it in quite that form to myself, for I 
 did not then recognise how strangely Orthodoxy and getting on 
 were associated. I only recognised that such an act would be 
 regarded as indicative of stability of character. But stability in 
 
THE NARROW WAY. 125 
 
 stagnation is one thing, stability in development another. I have 
 had to learn, from my own experience, that change does not 
 necessarily mean changeability. My real business, at any rate, 
 was to grow, and to steadily pursue my quest. 
 
 And, indeed, if one realises what may be done in the short 
 span of our earthly life — what must be done, indeed, if our brief 
 existence here is to yield any adequate fruitage — there must be 
 much continual changing of some sort. We appear on the scene 
 in utter ignorance ; the things we are told we have to take on 
 trust ; especially those that go deepest. We have to live and 
 learn and think and do so strenuously, that, in some forty years, 
 we shall have discovered and verified the first elements of our 
 relations with our fellows, with Nature, with God. I say, in forty 
 years ; because few are capable of making new departures after 
 that. By forty the lines must be laid down along which further 
 development must go. What wonder, then, if we must frequently 
 strike our tents and march ? 
 
 Later on I did return to Architecture, when my life became 
 more complex, and new considerations arose which made that 
 step inevitable. It was a severe discipline, indeed ; but one 
 which was worth much ; though, while it lasted, I could not see 
 its worth. For the present, in spite of all I felt, I was destined 
 to keep along the path I had marked out, and knew that it was 
 useless to resist my fate. So, with a heavy heart for those at 
 home, I finally renounced Architecture as being, in any sense, a 
 Way of Life for me. 
 
 About three months after this decision, I wrote, in reference 
 to it, " I must keep going. I dare not stand still. There are 
 times when I could hardly live at all did I not have the assurance 
 that my life was not stagnant, that it would one day be helpful, 
 that the work I was doing had some other object than earning a 
 living. It is the way I was put together, and I must act in 
 accordance wdth what I am." 
 
 The dual consciousness of Self-determination and of Fate which I 
 experienced at this time, no Philosophy can account for or reconcile. 
 The Necessarian Philosophy and the Libertarian equally fail us 
 here. There are the facts ; and the reconciliation of these facts 
 is a most important branch of the Art of Life. No one can 
 reconcile them for us. We must do it for ourselves. No theory 
 can explain the facts. We must come into immediate contact 
 
126 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 with them, and work with them, and wrestle with them, until, in 
 our own living, some harmony of them has been practically 
 realised. In so doing we shall learn that we are much too great 
 to be able quite to understand ourselves. 
 
 For my own part, looking back on my life from the time when 
 I left Norwich for Liverpool, the time when I first began to live 
 really from within, and to take in hand the direction of my own 
 living — looking back from the time when first my own Will began 
 to clearly assert itself, and I began to cast off the leading of 
 convention and creed — along with a growing Self-determination 
 and Self-realisation, I see also a growing Necessity closing in the 
 lines of my life, until, at the present moment, I find my way 
 narrowed down, hedged in, as it never before has been. That is 
 in the practical life, in the midst of this show of things. In the 
 deeper and more real life, a sense of boundlessness has come, 
 which makes me accept the thorn hedge good-naturedly, because 
 I know it cannot last, being only a discipline to enable me, among 
 other things, to learn what boundlessness means. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 ^-^A^ FRANCISCO TO MEADVILLE. 
 
 The journey from San Francisco to Chicago on the emigrant 
 train was one of my finest experiences of travel, and vastly more 
 interesting than if I had gone by express. We went much 
 more slowly, and stopped much more frequently ; so that we had 
 far better opportunities for looking about, and coming in contact 
 with things. It was an exciting time then in the Western States. 
 In San Francisco the working men were arming and drilling 
 to fight against the cheap labour of the Chinese ; and along the 
 line an Indian tribe was on the war path, and soldiers were 
 gathering for a fight. The scenery on crossing the Sierra Nevadas 
 and the Rocky Mountains was impressively grand, the vastest 
 view that lives in my memory being that from the highest point 
 where we crossed the Rockies, its grandeur enhanced by a 
 thunderstorm going forward along the summits of the distant 
 snow-clad mountains. In Nevada I stayed a day, and saw 
 something very real of the Western Miner's life We ran through 
 many miles of snow-sheds where the snow lay deep in June, 
 crossed the Great American Desert, passed along the shore 
 of the Great Salt Lake, rode through the Devil's Gate and Echo 
 Canyon, spent two days in crossing the rolling prairies, and, 
 after nine days and nights of travelling, had a night in bed at 
 Omaha. Thence we went by express train to Chicago, and 
 had no more fun. We were no longer allowed to roam about 
 the cars at will, as we were before, even to riding on the top ; we 
 had no long stoppages, and no time to see things, and gradually 
 lost all interest in the journey the nearer civilisation was 
 approached. 
 
 On Sunday evening, June 23rd, we reached Chicago, after an 
 eleven days' ride. I only remained three days in the city, but 
 some personal memories still live in my heart. I had letters 
 
 127 
 
128 MY QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 of introduction to Dr. Brooke Herford and Dr. Robert Collyer, 
 both Englishmen, and Unitarian ministers in Chicago. How 
 kind they were to me, and how cheering their kindness w^as ! 
 Robert Collyer used to be a Yorkshire blacksmith, and was 
 a good Yorkshireman still. First he became a Methodist 
 minister, and then Unitarian. Some old friends gave him, years 
 since, the anvil on which he used to work. And there he was 
 at his anvil, working on it still, pen in hand. At first he made 
 me feel like an intruder ; said " Yes," and " Oh ! " until, like 
 Artemus Ward on the canal boat, " I wished I hadn't come." 
 Then he said, " Do you smoke ? " " Yes." " Then we'll sit 
 and talk over a cigar. Pull up that chair. Now, tell me, how 
 are things going in Australia?" Then we sailed along. I 
 suppose those two cigars contained more than the proverbial two 
 drops of nicotine that would poison a cat. Anyway on that 
 occasion they laid a sympathetic track, along which one of the 
 strongest and tenderest of hearts came to the help of a very 
 lonely and unhappy one. 
 
 In Chicago I gained the information I sought about the 
 Colleges at Cambridge and Meadville. The educational require- 
 ments at Cambridge were quite beyond me, because my education 
 had been so early cut short — at least that kind of education which 
 colleges can recognise. Therefore I decided to go to Meadville, 
 where the curriculum was not so exacting, and where I could 
 make good my shortcomings in Latin and Greek. On June 26th 
 1 left Chicago, and reached Meadville, in the North West corner 
 of Pennsylvania, the next day. In the evening I called on the 
 President of the College, Dr. Livermore, in whom I found the 
 most perfect gentleman I can remember ever to have met. It 
 was a type of gentility quite new to me ; and made me, for the 
 first time, fully understand what is implied in that term. He was 
 perfectly simple, perfectly natural, perfectly honest, perfectly kind \ 
 and I felt all this, and more, the moment he offered me his hand. 
 There was an inward grace and beauty shining through the face 
 and expressed in the demeanour of that man that I shall never 
 forget. You felt that he must have been made just like that ; 
 and yet you felt, too, that he had had his sorrows and his difficulties 
 and his disciplines, which had given him such perfect possession 
 of himself, that the self was kept just in its right place. It was 
 an art that hid the art. 
 
SAN FRANCISCO TO MEADVILLE. 129 
 
 The other two Professors at the College were gentlemen of 
 much the same type — all three patient, genial, unwearying in 
 their work, and with a certain quiet power about them which 
 compelled deep respect. From my experience I should say that 
 the United States, at least the old Eastern States, are very rich 
 in gentlemen of this type. Emerson must have been an ideal 
 man of this sort. But not men to be taken cheap either. On 
 occasion our Professors, usually so gentle, could act firmly enough. 
 I imagine it is the blood of the old Pilgrim Fathers that runs in 
 the veins of these men, which, after generations of cultivation, gives 
 them such singular tenderness, self-reliance and strength. Look 
 at old John Brown — what a perfect gentleman he was, even when 
 lying battered and bleeding at Harper's Ferry, surrounded by an 
 infuriated mob ! — or Walt Whitman, walking the hospitals at the 
 South, daily fighting the battle of Love against Death ! — men in 
 life, worthy to rank with Colonel Newcome or my Uncle Toby 
 in literature ; though different, of course, as all true gentlemen are. 
 The long vacation had just commenced. I took a room in the 
 college, but had my meals in the town. Through the summer 
 I read a considerable amount. Some of the students were about, 
 which kept me from being too lonely ; and, all things considered, 
 1 had a good time. One of the students was married, and had 
 a house in the town. I often went with him and his brother 
 to the woods, to fell trees for firewood for the winter. Also one 
 of the students, who had been an actor, gave me lessons in 
 reading and elocution. I went to a Negro camp-meeting, 
 attended service at the Coloured Church, in both camp and 
 Church hearing some most eloquent preaching. As soon as the 
 Unitarian Church re-opened I took a class in the Sunday School ; 
 it being usual in America for several of the Churches in a town 
 to close for the summer. On Monday, Sept. 23rd, 1878, the 
 college re-opened ; and I settled down in full earnest to the 
 life of a student. 
 
 It is not my intention to give any details of my student life 
 at Meadville ; but of the effect of it all I must say something ; 
 and I find it very difficult to know how to say it. From the 
 day 1 went to Meadville until now I have been enormously 
 indebted to Unitarians for the free opportunity their institutions 
 have provided for my development, and for the greatest personal 
 kindness and help, rendered in a manner which has made it 
 
 9 
 
I30 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 doubly acceptable. My respect for individual Unitarians is 
 unbounded. And yet their religious position as a denomination 
 is one which I have always deeply regretted. For want of 
 something, I know not what, all their freedom, all their know- 
 ledge, all their generosity, all their high personal character— 
 everything which seems to mark them out as the one denomina- 
 tion to lead the van of religious and social emancipation — never 
 comes to the point of making them a great reforming power. 
 People, with qualities in many respects far inferior to theirs, are 
 moving the world to-day; while they, perplexed and pained 
 as they are, and anxious to find the road by which they may 
 march forward, are scarcely able to maintain the status of their 
 own churches. 
 
 It is with unspeakable sorrow that I write this. Again and 
 again have I felt deeply depressed by the Unitarian situation. 
 Long have I waited to see the passionate Reformer arise among 
 them, who would sweep all hindrances away, and call them forth 
 to follow him into the wilderness where the God of Progress 
 always shrouds himself, save to that heroic faith which determines 
 to find him at all hazards. To throw off the trammels of the 
 past is not enough ; there must be the prophetic insight into 
 the future. But not even the trammels of the past are quite 
 thrown off. Unitarianism does not mean Free Religion ; it 
 means Free Christianity. It is the last word of the Old Gospel, 
 sifted small through the riddle of the Intellect ; not the first 
 word of the New Gospel, bursting up irresistibly from the 
 Spirit. 
 
 Unitarians are often heard to say that the reason why they do 
 not make more progress is that other Churches are coming to their 
 position. What does this mean but the conception of a God who 
 tired himself out when he made the Unitarian Church, and now 
 cannot go any further ? I should have thought that such a state- 
 ment would have startled such an advanced body into calling 
 upon God for marching orders to take up a more dangerous post, 
 even if they had to leave their tents behind them. But the 
 statement is repeated year after year, and nothing happens. There 
 is one thing needful to Unitarians. God alone knows what it 
 is, but he does not tell them. Is it for want of their asking ? 
 
 Yet they are so ready, individually, to help those who do go 
 out into the wilderness, as I know well by my own experience, and 
 
SAN FRANCISCO TO MEADVILLE. 131 
 
 as I am sure many another must know also. From the general 
 tenor of their preaching you would suppose that living Faith might 
 now give way to enlightened religious opinion — that enthusiasm 
 and personal abandonment were no longer characteristics of divine 
 fellowship. From their practice you will find that men of no other 
 denomination are so ready to give their money, not only to un- 
 denominational purposes, but to work which they admire because 
 of its enthusiasm and yet cannot wholly agree with. Why God has 
 given a Church so many virtues, and yet not chosen it to do the 
 rough work at the front to-day, is to me a very perplexing mystery. 
 
 At Meadville I was greatly discouraged by the conservatism of 
 some of the teaching ; and still more by hearing constantly repeated 
 the terms of my old Christian faith, but emptied of all their 
 old intensity of meaning. It seemed to me to be simply a ques- 
 tion of how many of the old terms could be retained as a proof 
 that Unitarians were still good Christians. The method of 
 Unitarianism appeared to me to be that of explaining away 
 everything in regard to Christianity, and yet retaining the Christian 
 name and the Christian phraseology. The Sydney Free Thought 
 Society compelled me to plead for a constructive programme. 
 Meadville compelled me to plead in defence of destruction, and 
 made me a somewhat intolerant iconoclast. 
 
 I have before me the first college sermon which I preached at 
 Meadville. It is a staggerer. At bottom I believe it is all true 
 enough, but — well, I was very young, and very earnest, and very 
 ignorant, and very egotistical. When I think of those three 
 excellent professors sitting opposite me through it all, and saying 
 nothing, not even smiling, I feel a little ridiculous. And I 
 entitled my sermon. Almighty Reality ! I cannot remember 
 that I was ever reproved for it, save by a kindly remark of 
 Professor Livermore's which I had the good sense to apply rightly. 
 But thenceforth it was made a rule that no sermon should be 
 preached until it had been submitted to the faculty. Had I 
 destroyed that sermon, I should have remembered it as a very 
 fine and courageous performance; and should have regretted 
 deeply that I was unable to quote from it. I have just been 
 looking through it, however ; and do not feel the least desire to 
 quote from it. 
 
 This incident, coming in the midst of all this brave writing of 
 myself^this sudden check on my complacency, and challenge to 
 
132 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 the worth of my whole story— brings back to me a thought which 
 has sometimes struck me as with a blow, and at other times has 
 fallen as a benediction, in the midst of the felt unreality of much 
 within and around me — that a day will come to us, here or 
 hereafter, when we shall see all our past, not merely as our 
 unbiassed better self might be supposed to see it, but as God 
 himself sees it. Especially since I began to write this book has 
 the thought haunted me, that one day my own past will lie all 
 before me, with the clear Eternal Light thrown upon it, and not 
 merely as it lives in my own flattering memory. Unspeakably 
 awful as such an experience might well be— or unspeakably 
 glad as I can also, not without reason, imagine it— my most 
 real moments having also been incomparably my most joyous — 
 it is an experience which I trust is in store for each of us ; and I 
 think it must be ; for we shall never quite know either God or 
 ourselves until we have passed through it. 
 
 Which thought induces a mood very different from that in 
 which much of this has been written— a mood in which one 
 seems to be sinking down and down into the awful depths of 
 Being, as in some waking nightmare ; yet not hopelessly either, 
 however fearfully. But, thank God, there is room in our life with 
 him for all our moods ; and only in the full freedom of that life 
 is there perfect sanity. Infinite room— no barriers — that is what 
 my conception of Religion is— and always and everywhere the 
 ever changing and eternal glory of the Divine Presence— ever 
 changing to us, and yet ever the same eternal One. The 
 obsession of any single idea is not consistent with religious 
 freedom, and shows that we misunderstand God considerably. 
 Owin^ to the limitations of human nature, and the conditions 
 under which our life-work has to be accomplished, we may be 
 driven to take sides, or even to stand stifl^y by one idea which we 
 see is being neglected. In worldly affairs concentration is always 
 needed. But if we take this concentration into our relations 
 with God, we shall become cranks or fanatics. In God is our 
 opportunity for infinite expansion in all directions, and hence the 
 corrective to the limitations that practical life imposes on us. 
 Apart from living with God, I do not see how the fullest and 
 strongest life of both concentration and expansion can be 
 possible. It would mean never to go out of the workshop, never 
 to free the soul from bending over the bench, never to let it 
 
SAN FRANCISCO TO MEADVILLE. 133 
 
 loose among the flowers or the stars. But then, the healthy soul, 
 understanding its relations with these, will be willing to go back 
 to the bench again, and will catch the smile of God in the curl of 
 the falling shavings. 
 
 I learnt much at Meadville, especially in the world of Philosophy, 
 under the generous and patient teaching of Professor Gary. But 
 my relations with Philosophy have been very like my relations with 
 Unitarianism. I have been immensely helped by it, and yet 
 cannot accept any of its many systems. From all I have learned 
 something new about life ; yet, at bottom, none of them appear 
 to me tenable. This seems to me another illustration of the 
 truth, that the Intellect cannot possibly grasp the whole of life, 
 and unify all its complexities ; and, indeed, that no System, 
 either of Philosophy or of Religion, can do it. It is a work that 
 remains for the free individual soul to accomplish ; and we shall 
 never, I believe, fully realise the One in the Many in our own 
 consciousness, save by each of us living in immediate and original 
 relations with things, getting hints from Systems, but rejecting 
 all of them. 
 
 The Philosophy taught at Meadville was of the type of Sir 
 William Hamilton's ; indeed, we used Hamilton for our text- 
 book. The effect of its Idealism was to send me over to the 
 Sensationalists. In spite of the ever patient and almost tender 
 arguing of Professor Gary, and the wise prophecy that one day 
 I should grow to see things differently, whatever Religion I had 
 when I left Meadville was still more an emotional survival than 
 ever. Of course I now see the meaning of this reaction. 
 Idealism was presented to me as explaining the Universe, and 
 Sensationalism condemned as not explaining it. I saw clearly 
 enough that the former did not explain everything, and that the 
 latter did certainly explain many things. In later years, after I 
 had learned more of the Sensational Philosophy, I found that it, 
 too, failed most hopelessly to explain everything. Indeed, I have 
 long defined the Universe, as conceived by this School, in the 
 terms of the definition of a hole — ^Nothing, with something 
 
 ROUND IT. 
 
 I repeat — it is not in the power of Philosophy to resolve into 
 harmony this complex Dualism of Life, which causes the quarrels 
 of the Schools. Only the perfectly sane individual can do it ; 
 and that, not by his intellect, which would only attemi)t to frame 
 
134 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 some new System, but rather by the sum of his vital energies 
 operating freely among the energies of the Universe, refusing to 
 go maimed in thought or action in any one direction. A life 
 thus lived proves the Universe infinitely vaster than any con- 
 ceivable System. When Religion is understood to be just such 
 a life, then it will become the one progressive and creative force 
 in man's evolution ; and will take its rightful place in the inspira- 
 tion and unification of man's conceptions and activities. The 
 idea of calling the position of the Agnostic or the Secularist an 
 advanced one ! This life of ours, this Universe it inhabits — can 
 it be HOLLOW ? But, to this. Dogma has brought us — Religion 
 reactionary. Advanced Thought stultifying. It is not for Philo- 
 sophy, but for our own emancipated religious life, to save us 
 from this hopeless swing from insanity to insanity again. 
 
 The work at Meadville which struck me as most masterly, was 
 Professor Gary's exegesis of the New Testament. It was all so 
 new to me —this cool and natural and honest way of treating the 
 Bible. Step by step, fact by fact, I was placed in a position from 
 which the conclusions followed with fatal precision. Some of 
 the students came to the College prepared to defend orthodox 
 conceptions of Hebrew Literature. Not one of them went away 
 in the same mental condition. The new light, the higher truth, 
 were irresistible. For my own part, it was a great strength to me 
 to find that the Intellect could so completely justify the con- 
 clusion to which my own untrained instincts had led me. But 
 it all made me feel more and more the unreality of the Unitarian 
 position, and the absolute need of launching out boldly into Life 
 itself to discover and declare the real foundations of Religion. 
 In this direction Meadville had nothing whatever to offer ; nor, 
 I believe, has any Theological College. At best they teach a 
 kind of Apologetics, which comes to this — that, if you do believe 
 in God — you may ! 
 
 It was at Meadville that I first understood Emerson. I had 
 read him on the Atlantic, and could make nothing of him. In 
 Sydney I read him, and wrote home, that I found him " a hard 
 nut to crack." In Meadville I again attacked him, and wrote 
 home a criticism which showed how small I was. — " I don't 
 think I shall ever get very deeply in love with Emerson. To me 
 his writings do not seem so much the works of a genius, or even 
 of a grand man, as the works of several thoughtful men boiled 
 
[To face p. 134. 
 
SAN FRANCISCO TO MEADVILLE. 135 
 
 down into a condensed compound. He is a sort of Extract of 
 Genius." Three months after I wrote, "Though I have read 
 very little of Emerson, what I have read has become part of me." 
 Later I was to go through much the same experience with Walt 
 Whitman. What Emerson did for me was, not to give me a 
 formula, but to stimulate my faith— I do not mean faith of any 
 theological sort, but rather that commanding confidence in the 
 soundness of life which is the first step towards true self-confidence, 
 true courage, and true Religion. I can only have any true self- 
 confidence when I realise my oneness with a Universe that I can 
 confide in. To have this belief in the Universe, and this belief 
 in oneself as part of it, is to have entered the gate of salvation. 
 Only then can a man begin to unfold his life freely and fearlessly 
 in all directions ; only then can he begin to enter into that self- 
 possession w^hich is the possession of God also. I must not fill 
 this book with quotations ; but if the reader will turn to Emerson's 
 poem, Give all to Love, he will understand me. 
 
 Heartily know, 
 When half-gods go, 
 The gods arrive. 
 
 More than once have I had to fling down my glove to circum- 
 stances with these divine words inspiring me — for my Bible is 
 a very large one. 
 
 Another invaluable help I derived from Emerson. He set 
 my already conceived lifetask more clearly before me, so that 
 I could see it in his pages when I was in danger of losing the 
 vision of it in my own soul. Again I must restrain my desire 
 to quote within reasonable limits. I will take the opening 
 paragraph of the Introduction to his series of short essays on 
 Nature — not the longer single essay on the same subject. 
 
 "Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the 
 fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The 
 foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, 
 through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original 
 relation to the universe ? Why should not we have a poetry and 
 philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by 
 revelation to us, and not the history of theirs ? Embosomed for 
 a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through 
 us, and invite us by the powers they supply to action proportioned 
 
136 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, 
 or put the hving generations into masquerade out of its faded 
 wardrobe ! The sun shines to-day also. There is more wool 
 and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new men, new 
 thoughts. Let us demand our own works, and laws, and worship." 
 
 With such an American in our hearts, it is hard to look upon 
 America. Why does God send such men into the world, and 
 allow the world to waste them ? " Of whom the world was not 
 worthy " — ! We are accustomed to reflect on the wastefulness 
 of Nature — the million seeds scattered profusely abroad, only 
 one of which can realise itself In another way God appears to 
 be as wasteful with human souls. But — there is Emerson ! 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 MEADVILLE TO WEST CHESTER. 
 
 It is evident that I went to Meadville, not as a Unitarian, indeed, 
 but in the hope that a three years' course at the College might 
 turn me out a Unitarian minister. I now see that I was under- 
 going a process of development which could not possibly have 
 ended in Unitarianism. In my own case Protestant Christianity 
 had been given up absolutely, and I had neither the hope nor 
 the desire to return to it in any form whatever — least of all in 
 the form of this ever diminishing residue, wasting away beneath 
 the free play of the Intellect. With the memories of the intense 
 religious faith I had been compelled to abandon still so painfully 
 clear, a merely residual religion could not have any attraction 
 for me. For my revolt against Christianity has never been an 
 intellectual so much as a spiritual one. It was because my life 
 was fettered by it that I grew out of it. My intellect was but 
 the midwife to the new life within me ; and the change in that 
 life was analogous to that sharp transition which marks the 
 change from a dependent life to an increasingly independent 
 one. I began to make my own blood, by breathing the free 
 air, taking my own food, and carrying on my own digestion. 
 
 Unitarians, I believe, started the cry, now echoed from many 
 of the Orthodox Churches, that we must return from Christianity 
 to the religion of Jesus. It is an attractive programme, and not 
 expensive. But there cannot possibly be such a return, save in 
 the field of research and speculation ; and even there attended with 
 difficulties greater than those met by the intellect. The difficulty 
 of interpreting Jesus is the difficulty of being Jesus, as well as 
 the difficulty of knowing what, in the varied records of him, 
 is leally authentic. Certainly all the Christian Churches mis- 
 interpret the great Galilean Carpenter in one way or in another ; 
 
 137 
 
138 MV QUEST FOR GOD, 
 
 and I should think the Unitarian as much as any ; for it, 
 more than most, seems to miss the revolutionising passion of 
 the Reformer. And in a world where Sorrow, Oppression and 
 Wrong stalk abroad, absence of passion indicates absence 
 of life, however keen the intellect. Among those who really 
 live, passion of some sort must arise, whether with a blessing 
 on its lips, or a curse ; for the wild curse, as Jesus cursed, is 
 infinitely more hopeful than a mere mild message of good will, 
 or the method of following the line of least resistance. At best 
 the Churches still linger with Jesus in Galilee. They have not 
 begun to understand the Jesus of Jerusalem. 
 
 But our work to-day must be, not to restore the old, but to 
 build the new. A ruin may still be a living thing ; a restoration 
 cannot be. It may be sound and weather-tight, and divine 
 service may be decorously conducted beneath its shelter ; but 
 the life has departed from it. You cannot bring back the Stone 
 Age by teaching men to make stone implements. You cannot 
 bring back the age of Greece by bringing a ship-load of marbles 
 to England. You cannot bring back the age of Gethsemane and 
 Calvary, of Rome and Jerusalem, by learning all that is to be 
 known about them. " The Age of Ruins is past," says Sidonia 
 the Jew in Coningsby. Since Darwin, this may be taught as 
 a scientific verity. 
 
 And I would urge this consideration upon all Liberal Chris- 
 tians, especially upon Christian Socialists. The restoration of 
 Athens or of Rome is a dead task. So is the restoration of 
 Jerusalem. You may exhume the body ; you cannot exhume 
 the soul which made the body a creative agent. In their own 
 day each of these cities stood for human advancement. Not 
 to be a Greek or a Roman or a follower of Jesus meant, each in 
 its respective period, not to be in the vanguard of the advancing 
 army. To-day we must make our own life great, sacred, divine, 
 as they made theirs ; and believe in our own epoch as they did. 
 In London, New York, Berlin, Paris, our opportunity for creation 
 lies ; and in them and in ourselves, and in the reaction between 
 them and ourselves, must lie our inspiration also. We have 
 not to convert these cities to the creative thought that made 
 ancient cities or religions glorious. We have to find in each 
 its own creative thought, and abandon our lives to its develop- 
 ment. The old irrevocably dies, in order that we, in our 
 
MEADVILLE TO WEST CHESTER. 139 
 
 turn, may not be robbed of our share in the everlasting unfolding 
 of the Divine Idea, at the point which it has reached in our own 
 epoch. 
 
 Of course I am here expressing thoughts which, at the time of 
 which I write, only operated in my mind as sub-conscious instincts. 
 If I can state them now as conclusions, it is because, during the 
 intervening years, I have worked out their meaning through living 
 by them. Just the manner in which they guided me at Mead- 
 ville I cannot recall ; but I know that, after a year of study, 
 I concluded that I must again go out into the wilderness. It did 
 not seem possible, then, to take a Unitarian Church as a Reformer 
 within the pale, though afterwards I was to attempt it. My 
 mind was too hot in its reaction ; so much so that I could not 
 have w'orked through another year at the college. I feel most 
 painfully guilty of ingratitude as I write this. Meadville did so 
 much for me — how much it is impossible to estimate. I have 
 often looked back on my year there as the strongest in my life — 
 the one in which I was freest from the hindrance of subjective 
 weaknesses, only one other year having equalled it in this 
 respect, the first year of the Labour Church in Manchester, before 
 I had to withdraw into the country. Meadville educated me 
 unspeakably, gave me companions, kept my mind occupied, and 
 left me to think and speak in perfect freedom. I love and honour 
 its three professors — one only still living. The memory of these 
 men makes me feel a fool for all my criticism — yet it must stand 
 — I cannot help but let it. But certainly no other religious 
 denomination could have given me all the help and the free 
 opportunity that the Unitarian then gave, and has since given, 
 unstintingly. 
 
 An incident occurred in connection with Easter Sunday which 
 brought to a head my revolt against Unitarianism — an incident 
 which affected me too deeply to go unrecorded. The super- 
 intendent of the Sunday School resigned, and I was elected to 
 take his place. I was greatly encouraged by this mark of 
 confidence, the more so that I was only in my first year at the 
 college. I felt, moreover, that an opportunity for good work had 
 come to me worth more than all my studies. Alas, how soon 
 were my hopes to be blighted ! Easter Sunday approached. It 
 was usual to have a special musical service for the children 
 in the church in the afternoon. The minister prepared the 
 
I40 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 programme. I knew his opinions about the resurrection, and was 
 thus astonished exceedingly to find that the words of the service 
 explicidy declared the actual bodily resurrection of Jesus, and 
 that the whole impression of the service on the children would 
 be, that we had met to celebrate that resurrection, and that our 
 belief in immortality rested upon it. I called on the minister, 
 and told him how I felt. He did not pretend to say he believed 
 in the resurrection any more than I did ; yet he would not alter 
 the programme. I was staggered. It was a bad experience for 
 me. The sermon on Sunday morning was equally equivocal. 
 With a heavy heart I took my place at the afternoon service as 
 superintendent. It was more than I could bear. On the follow- 
 ing Sunday I announced my resignation. I said to some who 
 had tried to dissuade me from this step, " If I could act so 
 dishonestly in regard to my beliefs, I should now be at home 
 in England. Because I cannot, I am a lonely exile." 
 
 I find, on reference to my diary, that it was on the Wednesday 
 after this Easter Sunday that I preached my college sermon on 
 Almighty Reality, the reading of which just now so humbled 
 me. I had quite forgotten then the circumstances that drove 
 me to be so desperate. My feelings were those of shame, 
 vexation and unspeakable sadness ; and I poured them all out 
 in that unhappy sermon. This condition of mind was further 
 intensified by the fact that correspondence with my wife had now 
 ceased. She still held by the old faith ; and my letters only 
 served to remind her of the apparently impassable gulf between 
 us, unfitting her thus for living her own life truly. So she rightly 
 judged it her duty to break off our communications. Afterwards 
 she knew that, even at this time, the old faith was already failing 
 her ; and I imagine that her decision was one of the effects of 
 this, though she was not conscious of it. 
 
 My love and my religion had been so inseparable, that this 
 deeper loneliness had a very withering effect on my faith. This, 
 and Philosophy, and what I felt to be the impossibility of the 
 Unitarian position, all combined to make me increasingly agnostic. 
 Still I worshipped the veiled God. My religion was rather a 
 Theism which had retired into sub-consciousness. A month after 
 the Easter Sunday incident just recorded, it was my turn to lead 
 our weekly conference. I see that I took for my subject, The 
 Maintenance of Spiritual Life in the School — or College, 
 
MEADVILLE TO WEST CHESTER. [41 
 
 as we should call it in England. I have no record or remem- 
 brance of what I said, but my choice of subject shows that it was 
 still a spiritual religious life that I lived by and sought to deepen. 
 I never lost my fundamental faith in things, never approached at 
 all near to Pessimism, never failed in my enthusiasm to be a 
 religious Reformer. Throughout the whole time my health 
 remained good, and I maintained a certain buoyancy of spirits 
 in spite of the mental strain I continually endured. But I grew 
 more embittered and destructive, and the deeper love of God was 
 slowly ebbing. In its place I began to put principle and practice, 
 instead of these being, as before, based upon and inspired by it. 
 Truth was the first quality I adored, then Love and Faith 
 cultivated securely thereon. But nowhere around me could I 
 hear that clear ring of Truth which could fill my soul with 
 confidence — only the dying echoes of Truths, that once had been, 
 and were not. 
 
 From my farewell letter to my wife there is one passage which 
 I will quote, because it indicates my aims at this period. 
 
 " In reading J. S. Mill's Autobiography, I came across some 
 lines which expressed exactly my own feelings in deciding to 
 be a minister. — ' I am now convinced,' he says, ' that no great 
 improvements in the lot of mankind are possible, until a great 
 change takes place in the fundamental principles of their modes 
 of thought. The old opinions in religion, morals and politics 
 are so much discredited in the more intellectual minds as to 
 have lost the greater part of their efficacy for good, while they 
 have still life enough in them to be a powerful obstacle to the 
 growing up of any better opinions on these subjects. When 
 the philosophic minds of the world can no longer believe its 
 religion, or can only believe it with modifications amounting 
 to an essential change of its character, a transitional period 
 commences, of weak convictions, paralysed efforts, and growing 
 laxity of principle, which cannot terminate until a renovation 
 has been effected in the basis of their belief, leading to the 
 evolution of some faith, whether religious or merely human, 
 which they can really believe : and when things are in this 
 state, all thinking or writing which does not tend to such a 
 revolution, is of very little value beyond the moment.' — I may 
 say, however, that my sympathies extend, not so much to the 
 
142 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 ' philosophic minds,' as to those simpler hearts who want a faith 
 they can believe, and, amidst the wrangle of sects, cannot 
 find. Still, the one thing needful is setting forth this credible 
 faith ; and the world must have it. A storm is brewing in the 
 earth, and poor Man needs some new anchors forged beforehand. 
 To such a work I wish to devote my life — and I think I shall 
 yet have thee to help me." 
 
 To a relative I wrote later : — 
 
 "You perhaps think of me as still struggling in a sea of 
 doubt, my religion little more than a denial of what I formerly 
 believed. But this is really not so; though, in my loneliness, 
 I do find it hard work to keep near to God and in intimate 
 fellowship with him, and sometimes fear I shall always find 
 it thus. I know it ought not to be ; but when nearness to God 
 only makes me feel more painfully, as at present it does, all 
 I miss in my life of love and human fellowship, it is difficult 
 to enter the hallowed circle of pain, and to leave the more 
 easy state of commonplace living. I know, however, that these 
 difficulties are only the earth through which the weak plant 
 must grow and become strong." 
 
 Thus I began to descend the dark valley, the bottom of 
 which I was to reach later in England. By going down 
 to the bottom, with set teeth, as it were, and trying to be 
 faithful in the descent which lay before me, I was preparing 
 for the time when I could trust myself while climbing high on 
 the other side. I had to learn the worth of the valley, even, 
 to the soul that seeks above all things to remain faithful. But, 
 for this descent, there was a reason deeper and stronger than 
 any I have here recorded, the effect of which was a slow wearing 
 away of my religious life until it almost died out, save that the 
 cry for it never died out, nor the conviction that, in some way 
 or another, it would come. I wish it were possible to write 
 quite freely of this, because it would enable me to present a 
 study of the method of religious life of the utmost value. But 
 it may not be. In my own heart alone must this experience 
 live, only helping others so far as it has influenced all my 
 thinking and all my doing. 
 
 The causes of this experience were wholly external to myself; 
 
MEADVILLE TO WEST CHESTER. 143 
 
 none the less they were such as struck at the very root of my 
 up-growing confidence, both in God and in the worth of my own 
 integrity. Slowly but surely they cleared away all the ruin of my 
 former faith that was still left standing, and for long kept me 
 from building up any other in its place. That this final clearance 
 was made is, of course, a matter of supreme satisfaction ; yet I 
 wish with all my heart that so inevitable a result had been brought 
 about by other methods. But it has educated me unspeakably, 
 though with an education that I have often writhed under. ' 
 Against my own will it has individualised me where least I desired 
 to be individualised ; succeeding experiences having enforced the 
 same lesson, though not in so severe a fashion — the lesson that 
 God and the soul are one in their relationship, with a oneness 
 into which no other soul may quite enter. I was in danger of 
 not going down to the bottom reality of life, the central unit of 
 it, the impregnable personality of it; and from this my hard 
 discipline saved me. It has made me understand, in a way I 
 cannot explain, that the reality of manhood and womanhood is 
 only attained through real oneness with God. It has cheapened 
 the phenomenal human life very considerably for me, but raised 
 the real, living man and woman to the level of divinity. For a 
 time it injured me, maimed me, took the virtue out of me. In 
 individualising me, it left me very naked and helpless and dis- 
 heartened. It has ended by teaching me that my lonely self is 
 nothing, that my self in God is indefinitely capable of expansion. 
 It has made me think now of my lonely self and its doings with 
 comparative indifference, and of my self in God with supreme 
 confidence and satisfaction. It has led me to see that evil is not 
 absolute, but only relative ; that it is not real, but only phenomenal. 
 More than any other, I believe, this experience has kept open 
 the way of my development, so that I have never stopped growing, 
 and know that I can never stop. The terrible nightmare of my 
 childhood— the looking into a room rapidly expanding without 
 limit, into which my own self had to enter and expand with equal 
 rapidity — was but a physical expression of what I realise now as 
 the fact of my real existence, and realise joyfully, though at times 
 with a joy which is painful in its intensity, our bodies being only 
 occasionally capable of bearing with gladness the emotions which 
 our life with God awakens in them. 
 
 All these things I owe to this experience, which fell upon me 
 
144 ^^^ QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 at the time like a blinding curse, which I had long to live under 
 and work through, with a heart full of wonder and heaviness. 
 Now, as I write, I see its meaning as I never did before — a 
 meaning that words cannot express to another, but only hint at. 
 And now I am supremely satisfied about it — unspeakably satisfied 
 with the part God had in it ; and for the rest — the mystery and 
 the pain and the weakness of the years of my darkness — w^hat 
 does it matter ? And she who nobly shared those years of dark- 
 ness with me, and bore with all my impatiences and failures — will 
 not she also look back on them now in the light of God as I do — 
 but clearer because nearer ? 
 
 There are other experiences of my life, both glad and sad, 
 which I should like to tell, but may not ; and from which I have 
 learned as much, perhaps, as I have from this— learning in the 
 inevitable way in which Life teaches us, the conclusions reaching 
 out far and wide, and harmonising and illuminating whole tracts 
 of human thought and action. These enforced silences about 
 our deepest experiences, and the strongest influences in our 
 development, suggest that each of us must enter into his own 
 relations with God, and that all we can do for each other is to 
 give a few^ hints from our own discipline as far as we are permitted. 
 But may not these few hints be like the silent taking of the hand 
 of a friend in sorrow, which helps him more than any word we 
 can utter ? 
 
 One of the students at Meadville was a remarkable man, who 
 influenced me considerably. He was some years older than 
 myself, and was separated from his wife and children because of 
 his loyalty to truth. He was in his third year, and was to graduate 
 at the end of the session. He suffered greatly, and was always 
 in a state of revolt. He formed a branch of Francis Ellingwood 
 Abbott's Liberal League at Meadville; but, not satisfied to 
 stay there, he drew up a scheme of his own for the formation 
 of Religious Societies, in the furtherance of which scheme 
 I was to help him. His Agnosticism was of much the same type 
 as my own, and doubtless he influenced me in his direction. I 
 remember one starlight night we were walking out together, 
 when, in the midst of a discussion, he pointed to the sky and 
 said :— "God may mean me to reach that star ; but, if he does, 
 I shall have to get there myself." It seems to me now much 
 like the answer of the American boy when asked, " Who made 
 
MEADVILLE TO WEST CHESTER. 145 
 
 you?" — "God made me so high, and I grew the rest." — An 
 answer truer and more honest than the one expected of him, 
 but yet more smart than truthful, Hke much else that is still an 
 improvement on the conventional. 
 
 Just before the session at Meadville closed, I learned, through 
 a letter in some paper, that there was an opening for one of our 
 Religious Societies in West Chester, Pa. After some corre- 
 spondence with the writer, I packed up, and went^but by a 
 roundabout way. I knew that nothing could be done publicly 
 until the Autumn, and was anxious for a real change before 
 making a start. I visited the Niagara Falls, spent a day at the 
 Oneida community, then at Oneida in New York State, had five 
 days in Boston, three in Florence where Cosmian Hall and its 
 people were the attraction, descended the Hudson River by 
 steamer from Albany to New York, spent a night in New York, 
 and had a few hours in Philadelphia, reaching West Chester the 
 same evening. At Boston I saw Bunker Hill Monument, met 
 several of the Theological Students at Cambridge, and had two 
 enjoyable interviews with Dr. Felix Adler, the founder of the 
 Ethical Societies in America. 
 
 While at Boston I might have seen Emerson, but did not. 
 Some of the Cambridge Theological Students were going to call 
 on him at his home at Concord, and invited me to accompany 
 them, assuring me that I should find a ready welcome. If I 
 remember rightly, they were free to visit him every Thursday. 
 The reason I gave for not accompanying them was, that Emerson 
 was now too old for a stranger to intrude upon. I had heard of 
 his loss of memory ; and there was something shocking and vulgar 
 to my mind in a raw youth, hot with new schemes for the regenera- 
 tion of man, intruding upon the privacy of so august a personage, 
 who had now completed his life work, and over whom the shadow 
 of the hand of Death was peacefully falling. Emerson was more 
 to me, then, than any man, living or dead ; and it seemed to 
 me that it would be a vain and weak thing — a sacrilegious act 
 — to go and look at him as one might go and look at any 
 monarch or murderer. So I stayed away, and kept my self- 
 respect. But there is no man with whom I would rather have 
 really conversed than with Emerson. One cannot classify one's 
 handful of Heroes. Each holds a unique place in one's heart, all 
 equally first. Yet I sometimes think that Emerson holds his 
 
 10 
 
146 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 rank with me more easily than the rest — till I recall a John 
 Brown, as serene as Emerson himself, though marching all his 
 hfe to the gallows. 
 
 I have mentioned the Oneida Community. I spent a very 
 pleasant day there, and saw, once for all, that there was no 
 economic difficulty in the way of living comfortably on earth. 
 I found a man leisurely weeding a garden path. I asked him 
 how many hours he had to work. He said he did not Aave to 
 work at all — he could do just as he liked. I asked him when he 
 began work, and when he left off. He said, when he wanted to. 
 I felt as though, up to that moment, I had been a fool — the 
 world's fool — and that in future I must live more wisely among 
 real things. I attended their family gathering in the evening, 
 where they discussed all their affairs as a family should. It was 
 very striking — the harmony that reigned there, and the sense of 
 a problem solved. A very remarkable fact, too, that these good 
 people should be driven out of their beautiful estate some years 
 later, because of their morals ! At the Oneida railway station I 
 asked a boy how much he charged to black boots. He said, " Five 
 cents." When he had blacked my boots, I handed him five cents. 
 He said, " Five cents each." The community that reared that 
 boy drove out the Oneida Community. None the less I would 
 rather live in this wicked and foolish world. Oneida struck me 
 as stuffy. It struck me, too, as a thing that was done with. 
 When I had built and rigged and sailed my boat, I always wanted 
 to start another. At Oneida the boat was built and rigged and 
 sailed, and seemed about as interesting now as a boat under a 
 glass case. 
 
 Moreover, the problem of a Community is not the problem of 
 the world. It is infinitesimal as compared with the world- 
 problem, and in no way tends to solve it. The problem that 
 the Community solves, when it does solve it, is purely personal — 
 how a small number of people, of like ideas and sympathies, with 
 a very narrow range of life, or a very definite purpose in view, 
 can organise their industry and their intercourse to their liking. 
 Their success or their failure in doing this has no bearing on the 
 great Social Question. It is obvious the Communities have not 
 had the least effect on the industrial or social development of 
 America. The reason is, that they get out of that vast current 
 of life in which America has to work and to live ; so that, while 
 
MEADVILLE TO WEST CHESTER. 147 
 
 they may settle their own affairs very satisfactorily to themselves, 
 they do nothing towards settling the affairs of the nation. But a 
 nation which can tolerate— rather boastfully— a New York or a 
 Chicago, but feels obliged to evict an Oneida Community because 
 of its morals, must be frightfully wanting in humour. 
 
 This journey lasted a fortnight, and landed me at West Chester 
 on Wednesday, July 2nd, 1879. '^Vest Chester is the chief town 
 of Chester County, Pa. It was very largely inhabited by Friends 
 — both Orthodox and Hicksite. Near it is the celebrated Long- 
 wood Meeting, the home of the Progressive P>iends. One 
 Sunday I went over to Longwood Meeting, and met the veteran 
 Oliver Johnson and other religious pioneers. It was among the 
 Progressive Friends that I was to find support for our work. For 
 more than two months I read hard, and called on everybody 
 who had about them any suspicion of heterodoxy. It was heavy 
 work, but I kept well and in good spirits, although the thermometer 
 during part of the time registered from 95° to 100° in the shade. 
 
 On Friday evening, August 8th, a meeting was held of the few 
 who had any real sympathy with the proposed Society. Eleven 
 were present besides myself. I gave an address on the objects 
 of the new movement, and we were to have another meeting in 
 a week to arrange for preliminary organisation. On the following 
 Wednesday all my plans were cut short by a letter received from 
 my wife. She had completely lost her old faith, and was des- 
 perately wretched, and did not know what to do. All the 
 circumstances of the situation pointed to the necessity of my 
 going home. I decided to do so, but with the intention of 
 returning in time to take up the new work in October. On 
 Thursday, August 28th, I landed in Liverpool, my birthplace, 
 having completed the circle of the world. 
 
CHAPTER XVII r. 
 
 HOME AGAIN. 
 
 I SHOULD never have known the meaning of patriotism had I 
 not Hved in America. The Colonies did not awaken in me 
 any sentiment for the Mother Country. I was under the British 
 flag still. But in America I was under a foreign flag; yet, 
 though I liked the people and the country, and had some most 
 excellent friends, and was everywhere received the more cordially 
 because I was an Englishman, yet I had always a strange sense 
 of having no right to live and work in the country — of being 
 there, indeed, on suff'erance only. Deep lay the longing to return 
 to " my OWN, my native, land." I not only believed in England 
 as still the centre of the highest influences in the world ; but she 
 was my own country, and I longed to live again in that land in 
 which I could feel I had a right to be and to do. 
 
 And I wanted badly to meet the old folk again — the wide 
 circle of relatives and friends — as well as her I loved. I 
 resolved that I would not talk of our religious differences, but 
 would keep simply to those things in which we still alike had 
 some part, and so hoped to bridge the gulf that had opened 
 between us. All the tenderest chords of my heart vibrated at 
 the thought of finding myself once more with those whom I now 
 regarded with more affection and esteem than ever. Alas, the 
 illusion could not last ! There was the same kindness and 
 affection — but — ! I ought to have known that it would be so. 
 They had not changed. I had changed even more than I had 
 known. And they were so sorely anxious on my account ! 
 Even when any reference to my lost faith could be avoided, our 
 silence had more reality than our speech ; and when it could not 
 be avoided, the pain was very deep. A relative said to me that 
 she would rather I had returned home guilty of some great 
 crime, than without faith in the blood of Christ. 
 
 148 
 
HOME AGAIN. 149 
 
 Truth and Love — the conflict between these is one of the 
 saddest tragedies of life, and few can have experienced its awful 
 meaning more than I have. I have written of DuaHsm. The 
 Moral Law itself is dual also — Thou shalt tell no lie ! — Thou 
 shalt do no unkind deed ! In the reality of things, as they are 
 in God, these two may be harmonised. On earth they can 
 never be — will always be the upper and nether millstones 
 between which some of the very tenderest and truest hearts 
 will be crushed. Why ? Ask God. There is the fact ; and 
 we must shape our lives by facts as best we may. People talk 
 of attaining perfection ! They do not understand that there 
 is ever a choice to be made, not only between virtue and vice, 
 but between virtue and virtue. 
 
 Only when we have realised this can we understand the vast 
 complexity of life, and how infinitely bigger it is than we are. 
 Only as this strange conflict has sunk deep into our own hearts 
 — with all the suff'ering it brings, but without any blinding of 
 our eyes — can we realise how small a distance the Intellect 
 carries us, even in the moral life ; and how it must serve rather 
 than guide the sum of the life of man. There are plenty of 
 glib expressions to be found in the poets —Truth being followed 
 until at last she turns on us and we find her to be Love too — 
 but it is not so on earth — not always. Truth has compelled me 
 to be cruel again and again to the old folk, wounding them to 
 the very heart, and wounding me too, and her perhaps worst of 
 all who was ere long to be my wife. 
 
 Let there be no misunderstanding. Most are so superficial 
 in these things, and repeat some cheap formula in face of the 
 most terrible facts which the formula does not cover. It is not 
 any conflict between our duty to God and our duty to man that 
 I write of. There is no conflict there. Neither is there any 
 conflict between our Love to God and our Duty to God. But 
 the moral law itself comes to us in a dual form — Thou shalt 
 be true !— Thou shalt be kind ! Jesus spoke of love to God 
 and love to man. Yet he cursed the Pharisees, and broke his 
 mother's heart, and set man with man at strife. It is to me 
 an awful fact — this sacrifice of Love that Truth demands of us 
 as the condition of the progress of the world. 
 
 Before I left England I saw the nature of this conflict, tliough 
 only dimly then. Truth was my ideal ; all had to bend to that. 
 
ISO 
 
 MV QUEST FOR GOD, 
 
 When charged with being hard, I acknowledged the fact, adding, 
 that Truth was the only rock on which I dare let tenderness 
 grow, and that the time for tenderness would come with riper 
 years and deeper peace. On my return to England, the problem 
 of how to be true to those who loved us, and how to be kind 
 to them also, had to be wrestled with long and sore. I knew 
 that, not merely our future happiness, but the whole worth of 
 our lives to each other and to the world, was at stake. On this 
 I insisted as passionately as ever I had prayed to escape from 
 Hell. I was sure that otherwise my soul would rot, that the 
 still unsolved problem of the religious life would have to remain 
 unsolved for me, that I should have to sink to the level of a 
 mere plotter and schemer in the world. 
 
 It was that hard time with us when we had to act, not on our 
 faith, but on our doubts ; when our whole future depended upon 
 fidelity to what we did not believe. It was the greatest crisis and 
 the severest struggle in the upbuilding of my religious life. Once, 
 for a short time, I gave way. But the sense of spiritual suicide 
 which weighed upon me compelled me to return to my allegiance 
 to Truth, and then the crisis was past. 
 
 There are no Rules, I have often said. Our fate demanded 
 this path. The fate of others might make the more comfortable 
 and conformable path right. It is not for me to judge. I am 
 quite sure, however, that, for us, the hard and cruel and true path 
 was right ; and I must have sacrificed all I hoped for in love and 
 home rather than have followed any other. But this sacrifice was 
 not demanded. Truth won, and Love for those whom we hurt 
 became thenceforth a pain and a mystery to us. There are those 
 who regard the days of all intense things as past — miracles, 
 crucifixions, burnings, and the like. Not yet. Life is still volcanic 
 enough. And Conformity still escapes, walking blindfolded along 
 her straggling way. 
 
 Although this battle for Truth was won, I still feel the wounds 
 of the long fight. But 1 am sure I bear something more real in 
 me too. It has given me a clearer insight into the reality of 
 things. The fact that I have been compelled, for my soul's needs, 
 to live upon a principle that only eternity can justify — of what 
 tremendous import is that ! The fact that, when, for Love, I 
 wavered in my allegiance to Truth, my soul began to rot within 
 me, till I seemed to begin to stink, and that yet my soul's life 
 
HOME AGAIN. 151 
 
 demanded the pain of other hearts, and that I dared not, could 
 not, sacrifice my soul to save their pain — of what tremendous 
 import is that ! But it means nothing to another, save by way of 
 suggestion and hint. It cannot be put down in a book, and 
 worked up into a rule. Only the same experience in another, 
 bought at the same terrible cost, can produce any real and abiding 
 growth. 
 
 In following out this experience I have run ahead of my story. 
 The first effect of my return home was, not unnaturally, to 
 quicken my former faith in God. Circumstances made it 
 necessary that I should remain in England, and my own will 
 readily gave assent. So I had to write letters of explanation to 
 my friends at West Chester, and to get my things sent home. 
 After due enquiries, I found that there would be no difficulty 
 placed in the way of my obtaining a Unitarian pulpit, if I could 
 find a congregation that would have me , though of course I was 
 told that my non-Christian position would create a difficulty. I 
 should, for instance, have to find a Church where they had neither 
 a communion service nor infant baptism. Meanwhile I was able 
 to attend lectures at Manchester New College, then in London ; 
 now Manchester College of Oxford. Thus again the freedom of 
 and generosity of Unitarianism were manifested. 
 
 In one of my letters, written from London at the end of 1879, 
 I find a clear statement given of my position in response to a 
 question on the subject. 
 
 " I believe in God, and I trust him in everything. I believe 
 that he is working for the best, and that he expects me to co- 
 operate intelligently with his workings, and to live in accordance 
 with his laws. I don't know much about God — just enough to 
 feel sure I may trust him, and that is all. The child knows very 
 little of its father, but its confidence in him is perfect. I do not 
 make happiness the aim of life, but holiness, believing that I am 
 thus living in accordance with God's laws, and leaving the results 
 of my life in assurance that all will be well. 
 
 " I believe in prayer; not in the sense of causing God to come 
 to my help when otherwise he would not do it, but in the sense 
 of communing with the Father of my Spirit, by which communion 
 I bring myself into relationship with him, and lift myself up by 
 contact with his holiness and greatness. Prayer with me is 
 
152 MV QUEST FOR GOD 
 
 rather an aspiration of my soul towards God than a begging for 
 things I have not got. If God is working out his will in all 
 things, how can I ask him to alter his conduct in any respect ? 
 And if life brings me any new duty, I cannot expect that God 
 will do it for me. But I can alter my relationship to him by 
 seeking fellowship with him, and I can make my duty less burden- 
 some by so doing. Prayer is a fulfilment of the conditions of 
 spiritual growth, and gives to our souls what sunlight gives to the 
 flowers. 
 
 " I believe in the immortality of the soul. What our life in a 
 future state will be, I cannot tell ; but surely we may suppose it 
 will be one of continuous progress towards the great Source of all 
 things. 
 
 " My chief aim, however, will be, not to preach belief, but 
 action. The man who is doing his duty has the highest revelation 
 of God he can have. The great remedy for doubt is action." 
 — I did not, of course, mean by this, what so many Christians mean 
 when they use this formula — the continuance of action along the 
 lines of the doctrine doubted. — " Membership in a Church should 
 not be held open to those who believe the most, but to those 
 who are willing to do the most. I should want a Church of 
 workers; and if a man came along and said, 'I don't believe 
 much, but want to help to raise the fallen and feed the hungry,' 
 he should be welcome." 
 
 It was in this faith that I preached in a good many Unitarian 
 pulpits between November 1879 ^"^ May 1880. Everywhere 
 I went I found those who were ready for a freer and more 
 advanced position than that of Unitarian Christianity, and also 
 I found a great deal of pure Agnosticism. But the Churches 
 seemed all more or less dependent upon a few wealthy sub- 
 scribers, or at any rate upon what I may call orthodox Unitarians. 
 As in America, so in England, I felt that the Unitarian body was 
 a survival from the past instead of being the advance guard of 
 the future. Still there were so many who seemed anxious for 
 a real advance, that it seemed to me that this fact, together with 
 the freedom offered, gave me the opportunity I needed. 
 
 One of the poorer London Churches invited me to be their 
 minister. I should have accepted the invitation, but there was 
 the difficulty of the sacraments — Christening and the Lord's 
 
HOME AGAIN. 153 
 
 Supper. Upon my stating these as hindrances, I was told that 
 I might exchange pulpits whenever these sacraments had to be 
 administered ; but I could not feel satisfied with such an arrange- 
 ment. Moreover, I was myself beginning to feel that I still had 
 not a sufficiently sure foundation for my own faith to be able 
 to work and preach successfully under the depressing conditions 
 which Unitarian ism as a whole offered. The real reason, how- 
 ever, for this want of faith lay in the gradual working out of the 
 causes named in the previous chapter. My spiritual life was 
 gradually breaking down beneath burdens greater than it could 
 bear. I saw that it must be built up far more strongly yet before 
 I could become a preacher. 
 
 There was no choice for it, then, but to return to Architecture. 
 It was a bitter experience ; yet I can quite believe it was for the 
 best. Like a former experience in Norwich, it showed me that 
 there were limits to my powers of burden-bearing ; and that, with 
 the most devoted will to work, there were conditions under which 
 I could not go forward. It means, of course, that what we can 
 do depends absolutely on what we are ; and that what we are 
 is not entirely a matter of our own responsibility. But there is 
 something humiliating, sometimes crushing, in being forced to 
 recognise one's limitations. In my own experience I have often 
 had reason to suppose that God thinks much more of our educa- 
 tion than he does of our achievements. 
 
 I still have the notes of the sermons I preached in England 
 at this time. What appears from them is, that my beliefs were 
 matters of faith alone ; that I had not then had sufficient experience 
 to rise higher than this. Indeed, I was drifting into the position 
 so cleverly described by Browning in Bishop Blougram's 
 Apology. 
 
 All wc have gained then by our unbelief, 
 
 Is a life of doubt diversified by faith, 
 
 For one of faith diversified by doubt; 
 
 We called the chess-board white, — we call it black. 
 
 From the notes of the last sermon of this period, preached at 
 Canterbury, I will give a few extracts. 
 
 Man's Place in the Universe. 
 
 "The growing knowledge of the age appals us. It comes on 
 us like a flood, and well-nigh wrecks our little crafts. We must 
 
154 ^y QUEST FOR GOD, 
 
 keep our heads bravely to the sea, or we shall be surely swamped. 
 The Psalmist, with his little knowledge of the Universe, cried, 
 with deep emotion, ' When I consider thy heavens, the work of 
 thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained ; 
 what is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man 
 that thou visitest him ? ' With feelings almost too deep, we utter 
 the same words to-day. Our knowledge of our position in the 
 Universe weighs upon us too heavily if we realise it at all ade- 
 quately. Man seems such a mere dash of spray on the infinite 
 ocean of life, that faith in his glorious destiny well nigh fails. . . . 
 
 " We must be willing to accept the facts of life as they come 
 to us. Science is teaching us with a vengeance how foolish our 
 former self-regard was. Are we willing to learn our lesson ? It 
 is far nobler to do so. Are we ready to take the higher course 
 that opens before us, and to develop a yet higher virtue than the 
 world has seen ; or must we still, like little children, demand to 
 be kissed and petted and caressed before we will do our task ? 
 Here Hes the point. Life is demanding of man a higher virtue. 
 Will man respond, and still go forward? Religion in the past 
 has had too much self-regard. Will a Religion in which self- 
 regard has little place gain man's homage in the future? The 
 Religion of the past has directed man's longing eyes to heaven. 
 The Religion of the future will make large demands on his eyes 
 for use on earth. It will no longer point him to choirs of 
 cherubim and seraphim and redeemed saints praising God to 
 all eternity ; neither will it point him to an alternative of endless 
 burning in Hell. It will say, sternly, yet kindly, ' Do your duty 
 here, and leave the rest with God. On all sides you are sur- 
 rounded by lives in which you can lose yourself, and which you 
 can brighten by acts of sympathy and love. Attend to these; 
 regard their needs, their joys, their sorrows. For the rest, trust 
 that the Great Spirit whose laws you seek to obey will take care 
 of your own little life; but, even if faith fail, you must yet 
 go on.' . . . 
 
 " And now I ask you, friends, if a man is thus willing to grow 
 great before his doubts and fears, can there be any reason to 
 believe that he will, in the end, lose faith in God, and feel himself 
 to be such a momentary bubble on the surface of the infinite sea 
 of being ? I am assured we need have no fear. But all man's 
 hope for the future depends just on this — that, in proportion to 
 
HOME AGAIN. 
 
 155 
 
 the increase of his knowledge, so shall his moral strength increase. 
 We see the starry heavens without set over against the moral law 
 within. If man lets the moral law fail to be accomplished in 
 him, the starry heavens will utterly overwhelm his soul with their 
 magnificence. Instead of shining lovingly upon him, they will 
 burn despair into his heart. . . . 
 
 " Man must face the infinity about him. He 7nHst realise, far 
 more than he has yet done, what a bubble on life's current 
 his mere earthly career is. And if he would stand unappalled 
 before the starry sky, that shall hold long, long watch over his 
 narrow grave, he must do so from a sense of the infinity of the 
 moral law within, and must obey that in all that it may call on 
 him to do." 
 
 It is needless to dwell on the imperfect grasp of the religious 
 life which all these sermons reveal. At least they show the 
 beginnings of faith, and the conditions out of which the higher 
 knowledge must grow. Although I think I have now reached far 
 beyond where I then was, I am more conscious than ever of the 
 boundlessness of our life with God and of the little we can learn 
 of it here. Yet, as in Science, so in Religion, it is permitted 
 to us to know that we have set our feet upon the rock, and have 
 attained to something real. But my growth to this was not to be 
 from the point I had then reached. I had to go back, to sink 
 deeper into doubt, to look on life, and on my own life, sometimes 
 almost with despair. 
 
 Happily I thoroughly liked my old profession, as far as it went ; 
 and had been fairly well grounded in it. Once having made up 
 my mind to go back, I found the way easier than I had expected. 
 For some time I acted as clerk of the works on a building in 
 London, which added greatly to my practical knowledge. Then 
 I took a practice at Folkestone, and some time after opened a 
 second office at Dover. For more than three years I worked hard 
 at my calling. In the early days, when work was sometimes 
 slack, I did some writing to keep my ideal from dying out ; but 
 for the greater part of the time I was far too busy to give my hobby 
 a ride. Often I had to work far into the night, and sometimes all 
 night ; and I entered heartily into all that I did. Still, my real 
 life lay languishing outside, finding no freedom to grow. 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 LETTERS FROM FOLKESTONE. 
 
 On December ist, 1880, I commenced practice as an Architect 
 in Folkestone ; and was married on July 28th, 1 881, at a registry 
 office in London. From memory alone it would be impossible to 
 give any account of my condition at this time, save a very vague and 
 inaccurate one. The fact of having had to go back to Architecture 
 sometimes filled me with a sense that my life had been degraded, 
 that all the virtue had gone out of me. My circumstances were 
 such as drove me to extreme statements ; as this, for instance : — 
 " Experience teaches me that I am far better outside a Church. 
 Even for my own life it is better I should stay away ; and as a 
 question of external conduct it is more consistent. Why should 
 my character raise the credit of a Church, when it might raise the 
 credit of Atheism ? My influence cannot be much. Why, then, 
 should I put it in the wrong scale ? " 
 
 I think the extracts which follow will show that I was far 
 enough from Atheism of any sort ; that, through all the trials of 
 that time, my faith in God was really striking deeper root— going 
 down to those bare foundations in myself on which the truest 
 religious life must always rest. I began to grapple with weaknesses 
 and difficulties in the strength of my own will, inspired by my 
 own ideals, and supported by that strange power, not my own, of 
 which I became so deeply aware in San Francisco. 
 
 "Folkestone, November 24^//, 1880. 
 <' My heart is very full to-night : I had been dreaming away in 
 a busy whirl, and am suddenly awakened to feel something of the 
 depth that Ues beneath the current of our lives ; the unknown 
 depth which we cannot fathom. Would that I could talk to 
 thee. , . . And yet I know not what I should say, for all is so 
 
 156 
 
' i 
 
 iTofaccp. 156. 
 
LETTERS FROM FOLKESTONE. 157 
 
 vague and shadowy. That which is most real most eludes our 
 grasp. . . . 
 
 " I said, I felt compelled to ask myself as to my life — what it 
 was, and whether all it ought to be. Well, I am trying to be 
 true and pure and honest, to walk in a straight line, to be simple 
 and loving. Yet I am never what I wish to be. The straight 
 line becomes a zigzag, simplicity becomes complication, kindness 
 becomes self-interest. . . . Sometimes I try to make myself 
 satisfied with my life. I say that I am living the life that is 
 natural to me ; and that the whole duty of man is to do that, and 
 rest contented. But I am not contented. I want to be more a 
 man, to live more above circumstances than it seems possible for 
 me to do now. 
 
 "Most of life seems so superficial. This Architecture, for 
 instance — what is it ? Our fathers built one way ; we build 
 another ; those who follow will build another. And yet, if we 
 go deeper than the surface, we reach the unfathomable, the 
 impenetrable. We return, and try to delight our hearts with the 
 surface ; but something awakens us once more, and we grow 
 restless and anxious again. 
 
 " My heart sleeps long sleeps, but it is not dead. It needs 
 sleep. It could not live long if it were as often awake as it used 
 to be. Would that the possibilities of life vvere otherwise ! '' 
 
 "Folkestone, February 'Jth, 1881. 
 
 " Carlyle is dead — simply worn out. Such men do not surprise 
 me. I only wonder that they are so rare. Why should he be the 
 greatest literary figure in this age, and Gladstone the greatest 
 statesman ? Better are conceivable, and will yet come. I do 
 not undervalue these; I reverence them. But my ideal of 
 Humanity is far ahead of facts. 
 
 " What strikes me about Carlyle is that character is everything 
 in him. He is above all things a man. So with Emerson. 
 Such men make me value beliefs at almost 7iiL Why should we 
 worry about trying to believe something ? Let us be something, 
 and allow that to suffice. 
 
 " Yet one's actions and endeavours must lead to beliefs. But 
 what I want is that these should be spontaneous ; and that we 
 should not base our life on them, but them on our life. Regarding 
 action, I should say, ' Be in earnest ! Work ! ' Regarding beliefs 
 
158 MY QUEST FOR GOD, 
 
 I should say, ' Drift ! ' Let your life of action lead you whither 
 it will into the land of speculation, and live a man apart from 
 your speculations. I am sure this is a higher ideal than such 
 as — ' I can't be good if I don't believe in God ' ; or, ' If the Bible 
 be not inspired, what matters it how I act ? ' 
 
 " The question of Immortality does not trouble me. I have 
 no interest in it, even, just now. Carlyle's death awakens no 
 thoughts of the future. I ask myself, ' How can I live to emulate 
 Carlyle in his goodness and greatness ? ' I always contend that, 
 if I am immortal, I best fit myself for Immortality thus, and not 
 by worrying about it. 
 
 "So, with regard to a personal Father — I do not deny the 
 existence of such. I have studied the question very earnestly, 
 and conclude that it is not worth troubling about. Character, 
 life — these interest me. And so does the Power about me, and 
 the beauty and the joy, and the ugliness and the misery. But 
 I can form no conclusions in these regions, and have little interest 
 left in forming any. I leave these to appeal to me. I do not 
 appeal to them. . . . 
 
 " To me these questions are supremely attractive. Architecture 
 is nothing — mere play to pass away time, make a living, get a hold 
 on practical every-day life, and build a platform to work from. 
 
 " The first aim in our married life must be to learn. We must 
 read all we can together. We have something more to live for 
 than our immediate relationship. We are part of one human 
 family, and must live as such. . . . 
 
 " Our inspiration will come from within and from without. 
 Our fellows will inspire us, and so will this great sea. In all lives, 
 whatever the beliefs, there are times when inspiration fails, and 
 so will there be in ours. We must help each other to bear such 
 seasons, and work on in hope, knowing they are necessary and 
 temporary. Day implies night, and has its glory enhanced by the 
 contrast. 
 
 " I am going to try to get some reading done this evening, as 
 long as I can keep awake. I have brought Emerson from Norwich 
 to read occasionally as a Bible. No striving after belief there ! 
 
 " Is it not terribly sad about Ireland ? I am inclined towards 
 Home Rule, and even entire severance if necessary. If I were 
 Parnell, I think 1 would act much as he has done ; certainly I 
 should agitate and obstruct. Whatever may be said against them. 
 
LETTERS FROM FOLKESTONE. 
 
 59 
 
 their course has succeeded admirably, and was the only one to 
 succeed. What could make our selfish country care two pins 
 about Ireland, but the worrying she has had of late ? " 
 
 "Folkestone, March c^th, 1881. 
 " I enclose Street's lecture."— The late George Edmund Street, 
 P.R.I. B.A.—" It has made me feel again that I shall never be 
 an Architect worthy of the name, and that I must do something 
 more than that if I am to make the most of my life. I am quite 
 content to go on as I am now for some time, but must look for- 
 ward to better work some day to put alongside of this. I send 
 the lecture that you may understand something of the feelings 
 which led me before to give up Architecture. I cannot put my 
 whole soul into it as I ought, because I cannot see the supreme 
 good of doing so. I must limit my energy to something, but 
 cannot be content to put the limit there. I can only remain in 
 the profession as a stepping-stone to something better." 
 
 "Folkestone, April 2,0th, 1881. 
 " What I have feared most has been that I should lose my 
 virtue— manly energy— as Samson is supposed to have lost his 
 when he lost his hair. While I can be myself, maintain my 
 integrity, hold myself under control, and be independent and free, 
 so long do I feel that life is worth living. But when I begin to 
 compromise myself to please others, then I lose all purpose in 
 life, all hope, all inspiration, all joy. Nature has no voice for me, 
 art does not please, life is clouded by a funeral pall." 
 
 "Folkestone, May ^\st, 1881. 
 
 " I send Sesame and Lilies for you to read the Lecture on 
 Lilies. Such food as this did I find most congenial to me as 
 I was growing up into life, and on such food was my manhood 
 nurtured. So deeply did I drink in the high ideals presented 
 to me, that at last I dared not read some books lest they should 
 overpower my own individualism and character. I weaned 
 myself, and became more manly; but I doubt not that if I 
 read that lecture again, the old hopes and passions and yearnings 
 would be aroused as before, and I should feel that life was mean, 
 indeed, compared with what it ought to be. 
 
 "Thou wilt learn, there, on what my ideal of womanhood 
 
i6o MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 was built. My ideal is not lower now, I know ; and though it 
 may, perhaps, be altered, it is now yet more exalted. One thing 
 thou wilt find there, one ideal to which my heart dings, that 
 woman should be the angel power in a man's life, the inspiration 
 of his actions, the overpowering good. Talent, even genius, a 
 man may have ; and yet never be a whole man unless some 
 woman's soul inspire his genius. I know not what my talents 
 may be ; but, whatever they are, they will be of little service 
 to mankind unless thou become the very soul of them. . . . 
 
 " I know you have sometimes thought my ideal of manhood 
 and womanhood too high. But remember this : — No man has 
 the power to lower his ideals. The highest beauty, the loftiest 
 grandeur, we have seen, become for us thenceforth standards of 
 all beauty and grandeur. Those solemn and glorious sunset 
 skies on the tropical Pacific have for ever paled the beauty of 
 any I may witness here. 
 
 "And so no man has any power to satisfy his soul with a 
 lower life than he has once lived. I know that, with all its 
 rough faults, my life at Meadville was a true and manly one ; 
 and I sadly know that since then it has been for the most part 
 an unmanly one. Yet, no ; I will not say quite that ; for the 
 battle I have had to fight has been too terrible for me to admit 
 that. Yet I have been at times unmanly and altogether un- 
 manned through the conflict of my ideal with that which I have 
 been asked to accept. Nevertheless, I have no power to lower 
 my ideal ; I have no power to change it, even, unless it be by 
 merging it into one larger and more perfect. For I do not 
 regard my ideal as final. I want to expand it, and make it 
 more universal and comprehensive. To marriage have I ever 
 looked forward as the one means to this end." 
 
 "Folkestone, July 4ih, i88i. 
 " That strange power in me, which always will have its way, 
 warned me that I had stepped out on the wrong path. . . . Now 
 I am compelled to do what then I might have done from choice. 
 I question whether you quite understand this inner power in my 
 life. It was when I was in San PVancisco that I first realised its 
 presence. If I do not let it have its own way, it will kill me. At 
 Meadville it had its own way, and I was free, and comparatively 
 happy. . . . Ever since then I have had so much to fight against 
 
LETTERS FROM FOLKESTONE. i6i 
 
 in one form or another, that I have never regained quite that old 
 freedom, never had quite the same control over my life. But I 
 mean to get back my old power and inspiration somehow, and 
 I mean to begin to-night." 
 
 " . . . It is in such things as these that my faith manifests 
 Itself. I can trust life after all. I know there is a mighty power 
 at work on which I can rely. It is that power which, when I 
 would take a false path, steps in and says, No ! It is that power 
 which has hitherto driven me on through life, and which demands 
 of me just one thing-that I shall be honest. As I look into the 
 future now, I have absolutely no fear. I did not want to be quite 
 the man I must be, but I have no choice. I acquiesce, and will 
 be happy and strong over it, knowing that after all I am not alone 
 not self-dependent, but that beyond and above me and all around 
 me there is a power which sways me beyond my own choosing." 
 
 " Folkestone, y/</y 20///, 1881. 
 " Having gained so much, we must together make fresh 
 demands on life ; and may we not hope to be able to say at last, 
 
 in a far higher sense than that in which used the words', 
 
 " We have had everything we wanted ? " But I am in no hurry.' 
 I have always been ready to wait ; and will do so still, if need be. 
 I only wish to be ready and waiting for the right moment, so that 
 I may use it when it comes. All the past arranges itself in review 
 as one grand series of lessons to school us for the real life which 
 awaits us. Nothing will be wasted. Here is the grand remedy 
 for all regrets— the perception that all can be used. But we can 
 only have this perception while we are on the highest path we 
 know, . . . 
 
 " Here I am reading a book which will always be remembered 
 by me as marking a great step forward into life. David Elginbrod 
 was the first of the series, and I am so glad that I am still such 
 that yet another can be added to the list. I have sometimes 
 regretted being so impressionable, and yet I know I ought to 
 value it very highly, while I can control it, and make it take me 
 ever higher to the topmost ideal of which I am capable. It is 
 this quality which keeps men ever young, and the world ever 
 fresh to them. It is the tender touch of childlikcness, which 
 makes old age in a few cases so rich and ripe. 
 
 "And yet what awful battles, what sad defeats, this impres- 
 
i62 MY QUEST FOR GOD, 
 
 sionability of mine has caused. Thou knowest all however- 
 how evil shades off and blends into good; how nearly allied are 
 the passion which blesses and makes noble, and the passion which 
 makes wretched and degrades. I trust I shall never forget how 
 near the blaze of destruction this hot soul of mine once was, and 
 from what a hard struggle thy love is saving me." 
 
 This last sentence refers to the early days of my life in lodgings 
 in Norwich. In addition to what I have already said on the 
 subject, and in further illustration of it, I may say here that, 
 during my long absence from England, my love and reverence 
 for the woman who was now to be my wife still kept me free 
 from the temptations which had once made me so desperately 
 miserable. My love was a religious cult, and it so absorbed me 
 that I was shielded from all harm. While I strongly deprecate 
 asceticism, and know that the more completely and naturally we 
 employ all our faculties the more we shall understand God, yet 
 I am quite sure that, in circumstances demanding it, we may be 
 raised completely above our sensual nature by a strong spiritual 
 communion and love. This is a living fact ; but the moment we 
 make a doctrine of it for the direction of the individual or of 
 society, we kill the life of it, and forge it into a cruel fetter. 
 Centuries ago we were taught to hold the truth in love. We 
 have yet to understand that we must hold the truth in freedom 
 
 also. 
 
 To a friend I wrote during this same period :— 
 
 " Since first doubting the truth of Christian doctrine, I have 
 always held this to be the only possible basis of my life— to act 
 out whatever convictions I may have, and to be as faithful to my 
 doubts as to my beliefs. I have said that whoever renounced a 
 dogmatic belief must make utter shipwreck of life, unless he was 
 faithful and true to his inmost thought. And I have found that 
 if I abandon this principle of Integrity, for the sake of saving 
 others from pain, I abandon all that makes life worth living; all, 
 indeed, that makes life possible. ^ ^ 
 
 " To me Atheism consists in making mere happiness one's aim 
 in life, in acknowledging no obligation to live in obedience to 
 law. I wish to acknowledge a Higher Power in all I do; I 
 cannot live an Atheistic, lawless life; I must have confidence 
 that my efforts after integrity will lead to the greatest blessing 
 
LETTERS FROM FOLKESTONE. 163 
 
 for all of us, even though their immediate effect be sorrow and 
 pam. I must believe that there is a Power to overrule all honest 
 action to the best ends ; and find it impossible to believe that 
 there is any need for me, by a lie, to endeavour to relieve the 
 least or the greatest sorrow. . . 
 
 " I can only fall back on the assurance that no evil can come 
 from what I do uprightly, and in acknowledgment of the high 
 laws by which we live. I dare not take the control of my life 
 into my own hands; I must abandon myself to that Law in my 
 nature which tells of a Power other than my own. It is not 
 as an act of self assertion that I make this stand, but as an act 
 of obedience and faith. . . . 
 
 'nVith all my heart, I say, 'Surely to be true is the best 
 acknowledgment of God. There is service, there is worship, 
 there is sacredness and holiness and consecration.' ... 
 
 " I have asked myself whether I am right in saying, ' Integrity 
 first, Altruism afterwards.' "-By Altruism I here meant simply 
 pleasing others, as opposed to being true to them.—" I have tried 
 to work out the other creed, ' Altruism first. Integrity afterwards.' 
 But I find this latter too godless for me, even, who am supposed 
 to have no God. I dare not go so far on the road to Atheism as 
 that. I dare not, by any action of mine, deny the Moral Power 
 of the Universe. I wish to tread a path towards a higher faith 
 than the one I now possess, to a stronger hold on the Infinite. 
 I regard this deification of Opinion as too mean a creed to 
 confess ; and if ever I offer to bow my knee to such a God, 
 never trust me thenceforth. . . 
 
 The world's golden opinions cannot be bought so. He who 
 wins golden opinions is he who least lives to win them. The 
 world will not think well of us for trying to please it. It will not 
 thank us for our obsequiousness. What it really feels at heart 
 IS—' Regard not our own opinions ; flout them as you will ; 
 they are only the expression of our ennui, of our longing for 
 something holy and true. Go on your own path. At first we 
 will decry you ; but go on. If you dare brave us, you will win 
 our homage; and we, who began with deriding you, will at last 
 reverence you.' . . . 
 
 " Most people wish to be honest, but few really know what 
 honesty is. To most it is endeavouring to seem what they are. 
 To me it means endeavouring to be what we are. We may rest 
 
i64 MY QUEST FOR GOD, 
 
 assured that the latter ideal achieves both ends, while the former 
 achieves neither. If we endeavour to act strictly in accordance 
 with what we are, the world will come to understand us without 
 our going out of our way to please it. If we are always seeking 
 to explain ourselves, we shall always be misunderstood, if not 
 despised. 
 
 " Character must come before all else. The man who intensely 
 is will be revered and trusted ; and if he be a whole man, full 
 of sympathy, he will be loved. He is the man to whom the 
 sinner will appeal for help, the sorrowful for comfort, the weak 
 for strength, the perplexed for guidance. He will continually 
 be healing the sick, the lame, the blind ; for virtue is in him, and 
 must go forth from him. . . . 
 
 " Perhaps the path I have followed may seem too selfish, too 
 egotistic. It may be that you have thought that, for the sake 
 of others, we ought to sacrifice something of character, even, 
 rather than maintain our character at their expense. This is the 
 view I have tried hard to take, but have failed. If we take 
 Pleasing for our guide, and break our spirits for the sake of 
 friends who love us, we render our lives useless for the rest of 
 Humanity. Also, I cannot see that, in the highest sense, we are 
 faithful to our friends in compromising ourselves for their sake. 
 A higher sense of responsibility to them, even, would, I am sure, 
 demand a higher integrity." 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 MARRIAGE AND LONELINESS. 
 
 It was only when I was married that I knew what ease and 
 repose meant. All through my life the genial sunshine of 
 existence had been denied me. I had lived through almost 
 every experience but that of home-happiness, and the settled peace 
 and freedom it brings. Any expansion of the mind or of the 
 affections brought only a reaction of pain ; all my development 
 was attended with difficulty, and sometimes with despair. I was 
 like a mushroom growing beneath a flag-stone. The mushroom 
 did lift the stone, but it was badly flattened out. What made 
 it worse for me was, that it was my nature to expand rapidly, 
 because I saw and felt keenly ; and yet I was too sensitive 
 in mind and body to make of these oppositions to growth a 
 source of inward strength. Indeed, there has always been in 
 my life a want of proportion between impulse and power ; and 
 I have sometimes thought that a free and happy childhood would 
 have remedied this evil. On the other hand, it might have 
 weakened my impulses, and reduced me to the level of a 
 common-place respectable man — ^just the type of man I find 
 it now so easy both to respect and dislike— the man who is 
 always reasonable, and who is never moved to attempt anything 
 beyond the limitations of his strength and his circumstances 
 — the man who, in the mass, is the frightful dead weight that 
 every Reformer has to lift, or himself be crushed. 
 
 At Meadville I remember being forcibly struck with the 
 hopelessness of the married students for reform. There was 
 a good deal of static force about them; no dynamic. It 
 helped to reconcile me with my hard and lonely lot. They 
 always talked of Peace, and Love, and the recognition of Facts, 
 and the growth of the Spiritual Life. While I was burning for 
 
 i6c; 
 
i66 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 some hot Crusade against the Conformity, the ConventionaUty, 
 the Compromise which were paralysing Unitarian work, these 
 married students saw nothing wanting but the cultivation of all 
 the graces in a hot-house. It worried me — though I liked the 
 men themselves greatly, in spite of their calm and smiling 
 superiority. 
 
 Of course the married life is itself a kind of hot-house wherein 
 the tenderer graces grow very comfortably ; and of course it was 
 just what I needed to reduce to sanity my already too rampant 
 nature. The danger of marriage to me lay in its tendency to 
 make me unduly sane ; to give me a sanity which was incapable 
 of movement or direction. From this, I believe, the effect of 
 loneliness after marriage has saved me. Before I was married, 
 I cannot remember that solitude had ever the paralysing effect 
 on me that it has since had. Whatever I had to suffer, I never 
 found myself unable to work ; indeed, work was always my great 
 stimulus in soHtude. Even after my return to Architecture, and 
 up to the time of my marriage, I never found my difficulties 
 or my sense of loneliness interfere with my working capacity. 
 Since marriage, however congenial my work, the absence of my 
 wife from home has always produced the same paralysis, which 
 no conditions could do more than palliate. On the first day 
 of her absence I would get along fairly well ; by the end of 
 the second day the disease would have a good hold on me ; 
 and thenceforward the paralysis might fluctuate, but would never 
 leave me. On my wife's return, if only after a week's absence, I 
 had to recover as if from an illness. 
 
 I have spoken of this effect as a kind of paralysis ; but this is 
 a very incomplete description of it. The cause of the paralysis 
 has been the sudden outbreaking of all the old impulses and 
 impatiences with such force as to quite unfit me for immediate 
 duties. I believe that it has been during these periods of loneli- 
 ness since marriage that all my forward movements have had 
 their birth. An overwhelming discontent has seized me. All 
 existing facts have seemed almost contemptible. Old ideals and 
 new ideals have rushed upon me as in a kind of nightmare. All 
 t-he past has seemed meaningless, all the future has looked hope- 
 less, save so far as I have then determined that these ideals must 
 and should be realised. Desperate times these of loneliness have 
 often been to me — times in which my feelings have become so 
 
MARRIAGE AND LONELINESS. 167 
 
 intense that my whole nature— mental, moral, spiritual — has been 
 as if overthrown by them ; and yet times of new birth and new 
 insight, wherein new ventures have been initiated. 
 
 But I could never realise anything in loneliness. For action 
 upon the impulses of these volcanic periods, the return of the 
 home love has always been necessary. After these returns, the 
 life-work has been taken up afresh, with new strength and new 
 insight and higher purpose. So have I stumbled forward, my 
 hours of vision having been mostly hours of bitterness, even of 
 a sense of degradation, sometimes of despair. But I have been 
 saved by them from the arrest of development, the acceptance of 
 accomplished facts, which marriage is too apt to bring. 
 
 I will now give some extracts from letters written during my 
 first period of solitude after marriage. 
 
 "Folkestone, November 20///, 1881. 
 
 " This has been a very lonely day, and one which I shall be 
 glad to see the end of Last evening I began to get very lone- 
 some, and grew rather unhappy at the little work I had to do. 
 So, after a cup of tea at 9 o'clock, I set my brain to develop some 
 schemes whereby I might bring work if it would not come. The 
 result was that I did not get to bed until twelve, and did not go 
 to sleep till after one. My schemes were as follows. ... All 
 these kept whirling about in my brain, kaleidoscope-fashion, till 
 I seemed no longer master of my own thoughts. . . . 
 
 " I get very sick of all this scheming to get on. How I wish 
 I could throw all my energies into one settled purpose as I did 
 when I thought to preach. But that cannot be. I must do the 
 best I can under far more difficult circumstances. . . . Any way, 
 though I cannot preach, I don't mean to fold my hands and do 
 nothing." 
 
 "FoLKESTONF, Novciubcr 2']th, 1881. 
 
 " I have just finished Westward Ho ! It has made me think 
 deeply ; and, as always when deeply stirred, I knelt down to 
 think out what might come. And there came, naturally enough, 
 as so often before, a longing to get out of all this self-seeking, 
 and to get at some work which would absorb me in thoughts for 
 others, some work which would more beautifully sanctify the 
 sacredness of our love, and make us continually feci tliat lile 
 
i68 MY QUEST FOR GOD, -^ ■ 
 
 was a brave and holy thing. Others, in their longing for this, 
 go to church. I must go to work. 
 
 " I do not rebel at the self-seeking. It is part of the true life ; 
 and, therefore, I doubt not, may be made a true and noble part. 
 And I would not wish to undertake any work which would 
 prevent me from making thee a comfortable, though always 
 a simple, home. 
 
 " And then I thought of my want of definite faith in God, and 
 of the deep and powerful faith which still lives in me, and 
 which the strange experiences and trials of my life have made it 
 impossible for me to lose. And I longed to be able to tell my 
 tale to the world, and to feel free from all the burden of the past, 
 and better prepared for the work of the future. 
 
 " I need inspiration, which means to me inspiring work. I 
 have had it, and must have it again. I am not impatient. It 
 will come ; and I think I shall be ready when the first possibility 
 of it appears. It may come now, or it may be years off; but, 
 whenever it may be, I shall have thee to help me to realise my 
 hopeful dreams." 
 
 In the following year came another time of loneliness, when 
 our little boy was about two and a half months old. 
 
 "Folkestone, Aitgiist 2Sih, 1882. 
 
 " I don't seem as though I could do any good at anything, 
 or care about anything, when you are away. I am very disgusted 
 with myself; but I simply can't help being lonely and restless 
 and moody and indifferent, and so I must tell you of it. I often 
 think w^hether I cannot avoid it, but I can see no help. Life 
 is not worth living when you are out of the house. After tea 
 I read Wordsworth's Happy Warrior, and thought what a weak 
 thing I was." 
 
 "Folkestone, August 29///, 1882. 
 
 " I am hoping that my lonely time may produce good fruit in 
 the lessons it will teach me. I have been feeling that my life 
 is wanting in the moral element, that there is no real earnestness 
 and self-sacrifice in it, no devotion to anything which will ennoble 
 my existence ; and I have thought of this deficiency as a wrong 
 to thee as well as to the world and myself. . . . 
 
MARRIAGE AND LONELINESS. 169 
 
 " I do not write this with any deeply repentant feelings. My 
 life had been one of bitter and almost hopeless struggles. For 
 a year I have had a life of ease. My life had been one of almost 
 impossible aspirations. For more than a year it has had for its 
 chief aim to get on. No wonder, then, that I should feel at the 
 end of the year that the pendulum has swung too flir in the other 
 direction. The half fanatic I once was and the half worldling 
 I now am must unite, and for the future years of our union make 
 for thee and ours a full-hearted man. 
 
 " I used to have an intense realisation of the high law which 
 binds our lives. Happiness land scepticism have unite I to hide 
 from me the constant perception of that ruling power. I have 
 become too self-sufficient, too self-complaisant. I must call back 
 the old sense, the high instinct. The voice of Nature does not 
 sound in my ears, because I account myself my own master rather 
 than her child. My love for thee tends to degenerate with use, 
 because I have forgotten to recognise that we are bound by a 
 power beyond the choice of our own will ; although, on the other 
 hand, all that has happened since our marriage has made our 
 union increasingly sacred to me. . . . 
 
 " I need a fresh consecration to Duty, like that which drove 
 me to hold thee at arm's length until the path of Duty should 
 lead us together. I never did believe that Truth and Duty would 
 separate us, and I have infinitely less reason to think so now. 
 Our love is boundless. It overrides all circumstances and con- 
 ditions. It ever grows more real. But I need to return to the 
 old feeling that we must hold our love for each other in the 
 second place, our love for Law and Truth in the first. We must 
 not feel that we are taking our joy, but that it comes to us. 
 
 " I begin to hope that, after all, I may learn the Way of Life. 
 I still long to be a teacher, but have hitherto felt that I had not 
 learnt any lesson myself, that all my experiences had left me 
 without any principle of life at all. But now I have more hope 
 in the future. . . . 
 
 " I am as one waking from a dream ; one who, happy as his 
 dream has been, finds his waking thoughts more beautiful. I am 
 not enthusiastic or impatient. I look for growth and development, 
 for labour and battle, for sunshine and rest. . . . 
 
 " Whatever may happen in the future, I shall have had one 
 clear vision 'of life, such as I feared I should never enjoy. For 
 
I70 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 once, just once, my head has got above the clouds of common 
 Hfe, not to enter a perfectly clear almosphere, perhaps, but at 
 least to reach the sunnier clouds beyond. For once, just once, 
 I know what it is to be so enriched in thought and spirit, that 
 I regard the blessing as a treasure stored for use during the whole 
 of my future life. I am happy, not so much in what I have, 
 as in what I am to enjoy. An annuity from heaven has been 
 setded on me, not enough to retire upon, but sufficient to relieve 
 me from much anxiety as to the future. 
 
 " I thought I had done with epochs, with spiritual spring-tides, 
 with revelations from which a man can never fall back. Yet here 
 I am, settled in business, settled in my work, a wife, a child, to 
 call my own, and now the best moment of all has come, a moment 
 to be remembered beyond every other so far. Other lessons have 
 come from books, from external aids. This is a gift from Life, 
 the natural product of existence. 
 
 " It is not so much that I have found something. It is grander 
 than that. I see clearly that there is something to find. Where 
 I saw only the dull grey mist, I now see a glorious landscape. I 
 will travel towards the beautiful land. Though the mists may 
 again envelop it, I have had a vision of its glory. There is that 
 which is worth living for, suffering for. There is a goal towards 
 which our feet may tread." 
 
 "Folkestone, September '^rd, 1882. 
 
 " I feel to have taken quite a fresh step in life, to have come 
 from the ranks of the negatives to those of the affirmatives. The 
 difference is great. In the latter are life and growth, flower and 
 fruit. . . . 
 
 " I was thinking this morning that if I were not married I 
 should love to throw up Architecture, and live as economically as 
 possible until I could make money by writing. Probably it is 
 well for me that I cannot follow my own devices ; but my heart 
 is in writing, and I don't care a little bit about Architecture. Any 
 way, the thought reveals my heart." 
 
 In the following year I had opened a second office at Dover, 
 and was kept very hard at work. I was thus closed in more than 
 ever, and more ready than ever to revolt. The conditions were 
 such as to entirely prevent my normal and natural growth. I was 
 
MARRIAGE AND LONELINESS. 171 
 
 beginning to feel that these conditions must be broken up. None 
 the less I worked faithfully at my calling, though realising that the 
 time was coming when I should no longer be able to wait. As 
 usual, it was in periods of loneliness that these feelings broke 
 out. 
 
 " Folkestone, March 20th, 1883. 
 
 " I have been thinking a good deal about this Dover Office. 
 I am getting unhappy at not being able to write, and fear that it 
 will have a very depressing effect on me. I seem to have no 
 outlet, and am engaged in work which is not natural to me. My 
 views of life the last few weeks have been getting more and more 
 gloomy; and I believe the cause lies in my mind being in prison. 
 Of course, if it be necessary, I will face the evil, and try to 
 conquer it ; but it is difficult to believe that what is unnatural is 
 necessary, especially when it makes one a pessimist, as I am fast 
 becoming." 
 
 This time of loneliness was the worst I had had. Circum- 
 stances compelled my wife to remain away longer than usual, and 
 to make matters worse, our servant had to go home because her 
 mother was dying. I thus had to keep the house going and do 
 my own cooking, while I had also two offices to attend to. The 
 time had its humours, however ; as, for instance, when I tried to 
 skin and cook a rabbit that I found in the larder. I could not 
 skin it without pulling its head off, and no amount of boiling 
 would make it tender. 
 
 On looking back over this period of my life I can see that, 
 not only was my natural development arrested, but also I was 
 overworked and overworried in business. In order to build up a 
 good practice, I tried to do the work of two men when I had 
 scarcely the strength of one. It was probably through this that 
 the sharp discipline of sleeplessness first began to fall upon me, 
 slowly but surely growing into a habit from this time forward. 
 Doubtless it has been a constitutional development, but at 
 Folkestone circumstances favoured its appearance. I often had 
 to take tea and coffee to keep myself awake for night work, some- 
 times not going to bed at all, in order that some drawing or 
 specification or set of quantities might be finished by the tmie 
 required. Then I had to bear the loss of a large sum of money, 
 
172 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 due for work done, under circumstances which were exceptionally 
 aggravating. It seems to me now that the pessimism into which 
 I was drifting was largely due to the circumstances attending this 
 loss, for they revealed to me the wide spread rottenness of business 
 morality, and the hopelessness of Right fighting against Might in 
 Her Majesty's Courts of Justice. 
 
 Indeed, before I had withdrawn from business, so deeply was 
 I impressed by my experience of the law, that I resolved that I 
 would never again, save under real necessity, take any part in a 
 law-suit. A judge has described three grades of liars as Liars, 
 Damned Liars, and Experts. But what of the Judges ? One 
 of the ideas bred into me by my good old schoolmaster was, that 
 the British Bench was high above criticism — not merely the 
 symbol but the embodiment of all Wisdom and Justice. I have 
 taken part in technical cases as a witness, and have seen a good 
 deal of the criminal courts also, and I must confess that the 
 British Bench has lost all the glamour which was cast around it 
 in my boyhood. I have seen that a judge may become the fool 
 of his own vanity and ignorance as well as another man — and this 
 long before I knew anything of Trade Union or Socialist cases. 
 
 One judge — a thorough bully — before whom I once gave 
 evidence, was foolish enough to give the reason for the verdict 
 he solemnly delivered. A public body was the plaintiff, and I 
 believe their claim was a perfectly sound one legally, and in 
 accordance with public interest. It was a case for expert evidence 
 on both sides. The reason the judge gave for dismissing the 
 suit of the plaintiff public body was, that their case was supported 
 by expert evidence, which was paid for, and was therefore unreli- 
 able. He entirely overlooked the fact that the defendant had 
 to depend entirely upon expert evidence also. At the very worst 
 the judge should have seen that the value of expert evidence is 
 to keep the balance of lying on both sides as even as counter-lying 
 can make it ; and he should have understood it to be his duty to 
 get at the truth which was to be found undoubtedly among all 
 the lies — putting the evidence down at his own estimate. On the 
 other hand, in a Criminal Court, I have seen a judge — who, in 
 addition to being a bully, was also very deaf — so badger the 
 witnesses and the jury, that the latter, in sheer bewilderment, 
 acquitted the prisoner, who most certainly was guilty. The sur- 
 prise of both prisoner and judge was amusing. The latter turned 
 
MARRIAGE AND LONELINESS. 173 
 
 to the jury and gave them a sound rating ; and then acquitted the 
 prisoner with the advice not to do it again. 
 
 But then to see a girl sentenced to death for kilHng her 
 illegitimate child — ! To hear her sharp scream ring through the 
 court—! To see her fall fainting into the arms of a stolid police- 
 man — ! To see how the court, all along, had insisted on keeping 
 to the Facts of the case, with all the blindness of which only the 
 man of Facts can be guilty — ! To think that Society imposes, 
 year after year, this frightful torture for its own protection — ! 
 To see what a guilty frightened thing this Society is — as though 
 it recognised that, for all its sins. Justice demanded its victims, and 
 so set up its Temples of Justice, to offer human sacrifice therein 
 for its own wrong-doings — ! It was to all this that my eyes were 
 beginning to open at Folkestone, so I might well feel that, with 
 no lifework to support me, I was fast drifting into pessimism. 
 And it was worth suffering the torture of loneliness, if only to 
 discover it. 
 
 But what, I believe, made me more discontented than anything 
 else was the compulsion I was under to compete actively with 
 others for a livelihood. Whatever high-sounding names the 
 Individualist may give to this competition, it still remains the 
 ridiculous, inhuman and godless thing which the man of higher 
 conscience sees it to be. The Individualist has got stranded 
 among the fossils of past forms of life, because his Individualism 
 is of a decaying type. The new living Individualism, which, in 
 its reaction from the old, compels men to call themselves Socialists, 
 sees that Individualism must take on a far higher form than that 
 of the Manchester School, and, from a competitive materialist 
 Individualism, must grow into a spiritual co-operative one. 
 
 This, too, I then began to see ; though I could do little with 
 the social question until the religious question was in the way 
 of solution. It is hopeless to try to throw up your cap in the air, 
 or to throw stones at objectionable objects, until you have some 
 piece of solid ground to stand on. None the less, I grew more 
 and more disgusted with myself when I saw what all my scheming 
 and working to get on meant, and the blinding phrases of In- 
 dividualism could no longer blind me. I could make no Life- 
 ideal out of trying to get work that others needed more than I 
 did, and could perhaps do better. I could not hide from myself 
 the fact that, if I got the work, they did not get it, as most seem 
 
174 MY QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 capable of doing as soon as they feel a little pricking of con- 
 science. I could not go home and rejoice with my wife that I 
 had secured an appointment, when I knew that two or three 
 other men would go home to their wives disappointed. 
 
 In Folkestone I saw, as I had seen in Liverpool, but now with 
 fuller experience, that a complete revolution was needed. But I 
 had no bottom to my own life, no ground to work from. I 
 knew well that within myself I must first find the regenerating 
 life which was needed to regenerate Society. I had not that life. 
 It became more and more evident to me that I should have to 
 go into the wilderness to find it. 
 
CHAPTER XXL 
 
 INTO THE WILDERNESS. 
 
 Democrat as I am, and democratic as I wish my religion to be, 
 I find it difficult not to believe that God and I have entered into 
 a personal and private relationship, which is of the very essence 
 of our being — a relationship existing in the nature of things, my 
 life being now spent in its discovery and unfolding. It was 
 Emerson who first brought fully to my consciousness the con- 
 fidence which has grown into this high faith — the conviction 
 that life was reliable, and that a life of faith would work- 
 could not possibly be a failure. But before Emerson thus helped 
 me, I had already begun to live so, from an instinct which 
 Emerson only made more clear to me. Thus I have found 
 myself, since those early days, acting more and more naturally 
 and necessarily on the understanding, that my business was to 
 follow my fate, to unroll my destiny, convinced at last, beyond 
 the possibility of questioning, that no harm could come to me. 
 Not to live so would be to me absolute suicide. I should become 
 an unreal thing in an unreal Universe immediately ; and should 
 be so convicted of unreality, that the will to live would fail me. 
 
 And now, after living so long a real life among real things, 
 my religion is no matter of opinion, or of faith, or even of 
 knowledge. It is a matter of consciousness. So far as I have 
 lived, so far have I become acquainted with Reality, and the 
 acquaintance grows even as I am writing, so that I find it difficult 
 to get this story done with. The chapter that I prospectively 
 dig out as a canal becomes a tidal river, which taxes my 
 engineering faculties, and makes it very difficult to get my burden 
 of meaning conveyed to the reader. This, at least, will become 
 clear to him— that the life I am trying to describe is inevitable, 
 original \ and that imitation is wholly out of the question. Vou 
 
 I7S 
 
176 MY QUEST FOR GOD, 
 
 may get beliefs so. Creeds can be handed down from generation 
 to generation. The real life, the life in which each of us realises 
 what God meant him to be, the life in which man becomes aware 
 of himself as a reality in a real Universe, only now moving about 
 for his education in a world of phenomena — this life, because 
 it is real, must always be each according to its kind, none like 
 another. Then, when we live with God, is the highest type of 
 Individuality stamped upon us ; and we cannot escape from it. 
 
 Of course the reader will say that man must follow his fate. 
 But there is a difference. I have been aware that I had a destiny, 
 I have believed in it, I have set out to meet it, I have been sure 
 that all I had to do was to discover it. And so God has become 
 revealed in me, and I find my Fate to be my Fortune. But I 
 cannot share my fortune with another. I can only tell how I was 
 led to its discovery. A millionaire myself, all my wealth would 
 not endow a chair in a Theological College. I can only tell the 
 world that there is gold on the Klondike, and that he that is man 
 enough may fetch it — the poorest as well as any. For wealth and 
 a college outfit do not tend to pioneering, but rather to staying 
 at home with the contented discontented ones. 
 
 The real will to live appears to me to be this will to find one's 
 destiny, which I have been describing ;'and this, of course, implies 
 an Eye that can see far beyond our seeing. Indeed, it is really 
 inconceivable — this Blind Will of the pessimist Philosopher. 
 You are called upon to imagine a will from which are withdrawn 
 the essential qualities of willing. Will without purpose is a mere 
 philosphic abstraction, with no real existence, just as the Spencerian 
 Absolute is— a mere Word-fetish— no more respectable than the 
 Wood-fetishes that aroused the withering scorn of the Hebrew 
 Prophets. " They are like a scarecrow in a garden of cucumbers, 
 and speak not ; they mast needs be borne, because they cannot 
 go. Be not afraid of them ; for they cannot do evil ; neither is it 
 in them to do good." " They have mouths, but they speak not ; 
 eyes have they, but they see not ; they have ears, but they hear 
 not ; neither is there any breath in their mouths." But are these 
 wooden things any more unreal and impossible than a Will that 
 cannot know, and an Absolute that cannot be known ? A Will 
 that is unconscious, a First Cause that cannot be related — how 
 can such helpless mental figments have been set up as gods by 
 serious philosophers ; and how can they have drawn around them 
 
INTO THE WILDERNESS. 177 
 
 such a crowd of worshippers ? What have these people done 
 that they should have such an Irony of Fate brought upon them 
 at this end of the Nineteenth Century ? I think that the sin of 
 Philosopher and of People alike is the love of cheapness. 
 Possessed of little of the real wealth of life, they seek a cheap 
 world to live in. And indeed they have it ! But lam drifting too 
 far from my story. 
 
 I am not aware, on the other hand, that I have ever followed other 
 than my own will in directing my life amid its many difficulties ; 
 and I am sure that my will has not been of the passive sort, but 
 rather initiative and constructive, and often very impatient ; yet I 
 know that a higher Will than mine has all the time had a grip of 
 me, if only as Way-opener and Way-closer. For the extreme 
 limitations of my life, the impossibility I find of doing other than 
 one certain thing at a certain time, the warnings I get, like Paul 
 of old, not to kick against the pricks, the manner in which 1 
 find my Way of Life ever closing in more and more about me 
 — the thorns by the wayside closer — together with the knowledge 
 that I have neither the strength nor the ability to do anything 
 out of the common, but only the will to do it, the felt necessity 
 of doing it, in spite of my own unfitness — all this, with much 
 else besides, leaves me no choice as to beliefs ; and indeed 
 makes any question of beliefs seem rather ridiculous. For a 
 man does not believe his experiences. He is conscious of them. 
 And if he finds that they are consistent with each other, and 
 follow a straight line of development, and set him to work far 
 beyond his capacity, and that the work tells, though far below 
 his ideal — then he knows that his experiences are deeply rooted 
 in Reality, and abandons himself to them through all ditticulties 
 and sorrows. It is the Higher Life which Mr. and Mrs. Pearsall 
 Smith taught, based no longer upon Dogma, but upon subjective 
 and objective experiences. 
 
 But it is not a life of Perfection, as they taught. A man's 
 moral life is limited just as his time is limited. He cannot do 
 everything. It is also limited just as his strength is limited 
 He cannot do everything. It is also limited just as the Moral 
 Law itself is limited by its dual demand for Truth and Kindness. 
 He cannot do everything. It is also limited just as his know- 
 ledge is limited. He cannot know how to do everything. The 
 Higher Life is the Highest Art — the Art of Living widi God 
 
 12 
 
178 MY QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 and Man freely — an Art which man may never master fully, and 
 yet in the pursuit of which, if he has worked hard and studied 
 faithfully, he may reach his third period of ease and confidence 
 and liberty — when people \\\\\ admire him hugely or denounce 
 him bitterly, who do not in the least understand him. Yet, 
 Master of his Art as he may be called, you only have to lie on 
 your face on the grass to see how imperfect his Art is — not 
 because his imitation of grass is not perfect, but because, after all, 
 there has not been the majestic simplicity and grace and power in 
 his work which the open eye can begin to see in God's. 
 
 No ; the Higher Life means simply the faithful student of 
 Art ; the Highest Life, the faithful student who is also possessed 
 by his Art — the Master, the Genius. There is no question about 
 perfection. There is only the question of consecration leading 
 slowly and painfully to a certain confident swing and sweep of 
 the brush, where first there was but laboured stippling and 
 glazing — and an occasional sense of pain as we realise that all 
 the ease and power we have trained ourselves to can yet leave us, 
 in our highest achievements, so infinitely far from God. But to 
 have brought our Art so far that we begin to have a fellow-feeHng 
 with God — that is worth everything, even though we sit back 
 disheartened with actual achievements. I sometimes think that 
 the end of all work for God or man is the development of this 
 God-sympathy ; or why does he put so many hindrances in our 
 way in performing it? Is it not that we may learn diviner 
 qualities than success alone can ever teach us? 
 
 All of which has been suggested to me by reaching the point 
 in my story at which I determined to sell out and go into the 
 wilderness. When I had squeezed Folkestone dry, the next 
 fruit fell to me. I had worked up my practice to a point which 
 it could scarcely rise above, at least in my heterodox hands. An 
 opportunity came for selling out, and I gladly seized it. We 
 proposed to take a cheap house near London, where we could 
 live economically, while 1 tried what I could do at writing. It 
 was then that I first discovered over what a frightful area London 
 is eating up the country. It was only in the village of Ballingdon 
 in Essex, separated by the river Stour from Sudbury in Suffolk, 
 that we were able to find the cheap and roomy house that we 
 wanted. 
 
 Ever since that time in Liverpool I had been dreaming that 
 
INTO THE WILDERNESS, 179 
 
 I could write a novel. In Australia I began an attempt in this 
 direction. In Folkestone, before my work had become so 
 exacting, I continued the experiment. At this country house at 
 Ballingdon I carried it still further. Now of course no man who 
 is going through a process of making up his mind, as I was, can 
 produce a novel other than of a very subjective sort. I had come 
 to realise this, and to see that subjectivity was the thing to be 
 avoided. So I tried a very objective story, and wrote a great 
 deal of it. But though I had fine ideas as to what I wanted to 
 do, I could not breathe the breath of life into the characters. 
 And the same with other things I attempted. The only product 
 of this period which I have since thought worth publishing was 
 Life in Apartments, which appeared some years after in the 
 Labour Prophet. It was a series of short sketches suggested by 
 my past life in lodgings, and by the life I was then living in the 
 country. — A very harmless performance. 
 
 This long and faithful apprenticeship in writing was not wasted, 
 however. To it I am indebted for a certain sense of oneness 
 with my pen which makes writing an artistic satisfaction to me — 
 as though I could now entirely trust my pen to express what is in 
 me, with help on its part rather than hindrance. The pen has 
 become, as it were, an extension of my body, a living organ, through 
 which my life flows freely. In those days I found so much 
 difficulty in writing, that, as a kind of heavy-weight exercise, I 
 translated chapter after chapter of what I had written into blank 
 verse, and then translated it back again, trying to retain some 
 added excellence of language, while restoring its former freedom. 
 This, I believe, educated my ear, too ; so that I could hear what 
 I was writing — the fall of the sentences, and the rhythmic sound 
 of their falling— as important to the expression of ideas as clear- 
 ness of utterance is, and as necessary as clearness of utterance to 
 the artistic joy of expression. So great a pleasure is the use of 
 my pen to me now, that I can often write with ease, when want of 
 sleep has made reading impossible — a dangerous ease, and yet 
 one for which I am grateful ; for it enables me to make the most 
 of my limited powers. I have always had the greatest confidence 
 in taking trouble, as the sole condition of the emancipation of our 
 faculties. Only some painstaking apprenticeship can enable us 
 to attain any true liberty. And this liberty must be our own, 
 gained in our own way, and not in another's. 
 
i8o MY QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 I must, by this time, have entirely lost that regard for the 
 Sensational Philosophy which I had acquired at Meadville, at 
 least as an inclusive statement of the facts of life; but I still 
 clung to the idea that a Philosophy was possible which should 
 be really inclusive and unifying. I read Herbert Spencer and 
 Mansel, and concluded that both were on the wrong track in 
 their doctrine of the Absolute. Indeed, so absurd did Herbert 
 Spencer's method of reconciling Religion with Science appear to 
 me, that I commenced making copious notes towards a book on 
 the subject. But the further I got, the more impossible did I 
 find it to see how all the facts of life could be grasped by the 
 Intellect, and reduced to a System of Philosophy. Mr. Spencer 
 does the trick by looking at life with one eye. All the facts 
 which he can get within the embrace of his System he sees. All 
 the rest he turns his blind eye upon. No man who had a grain 
 of humour in his constitution could have presented his famous 
 " Reconciliation " without laughing hugely. I think reading 
 Spencer at this time must have caused me finally to abandon 
 all hope in Philosophy. He filled me alternately with anger and 
 amusement. God alone can write a Synthetic Philosophy, 
 without leaving nine-tenths of life outside. Man has not the 
 grasp of the subject that God has. 
 
 Systems !— When shall we be men enough to live with life at 
 first hand, finding all Systems stuffy ? It is in a man's own daily 
 hfe that the reconciliation of Religion and Science must be worked 
 out, just as the reconciHation between Fate and Free Will is 
 worked out. We do not want Systems, but Facts ; and a whole- 
 souled Man to face the Facts squarely. He will find that his 
 intellect cannot grasp all the complex duahsm of life, but he will 
 learn to accept all and include all, and, in his own living, reduce 
 all to such Synthetic Practice as he can attain to. Then, in 
 place of Systems of Philosophy and Systems of Religion, we shall 
 have Biographies and Autobiographies, which fetter nobody. 
 And it is to be hoped that in those days we shall have no more 
 Disciples, for they would soon bring all the old evils back again. 
 
 And so, too, the idea must vanish of the strait gate which all 
 must enter, and the narrow way which all must take. It is the 
 old folly of supposing that man's intellect can grasp the whole of 
 life, with the added folly of declaring that what one man could 
 see w^as all there was to be seen, and imposing it as a limitation on 
 
INTO THE WILDERNESS. i8i 
 
 everybody. There are as many Ways of Life as there are people 
 to travel along them. No man can stake out the road to God 
 for another. The whole conception of there being Systems and 
 Ways and Masters and Guide-books is a very childish one, and 
 one that man will grow out of — some day. All of which Mr. 
 Spencer helped me to discover. And it was a great clearance to 
 get rid of these Philosophers ; though, of course, when I speak 
 of getting rid of them, I mean only in the sense in which I had 
 already got rid of the Bible. There is a deal to be learned from 
 them — hints, suggestions, inspirations to be gathered — but you 
 no longer concede all the claims made for them, and refuse to 
 shut up your soul between their covers. I have since read 
 Edward Caird and Thomas Hill Green, for instance, with much 
 admiration and advantage ; though their Metaphysic seems very 
 inadequate and inconclusive. 
 
 I suppose I must have felt a good deal run down before leaving 
 Folkestone, for one of the aims I had in going into the country 
 was to make myself stronger by gardening. And we had a very 
 delightful old garden at Ballingdon, with fine trees about us, and 
 the river Stour running along the bottom. Gardening, however, 
 did not answer my expectations. The exercise tired me out too 
 completely, and I found I could get more good in a given time 
 from walking. And yet, in another way, my work in the garden 
 gave me a permanent lift in life, and opened my inward eyes very 
 considerably. The value of these lessons from life is that you 
 never go back from them. Knowledge you may forget — not 
 Art. It becomes a part of you. 
 
 I have never thought much of the saving grace of earning your 
 living on the soil. It may be good for some, but to make a 
 panacea of it is ridiculous. These regulations and limitations 
 make life so extremely little. Yet I thank God for my garden. 
 I worked therein until it became part of me. My self-conscious- 
 ness seemed to include the garden also. I felt with it, under- 
 stood it, and steadied my own restless life by intercourse with 
 its strong quietness. I found myself working with God in that 
 garden — doing my part, and leaving God to do his ; and I learned 
 that God himself could not grow good cabbages there without 
 my faithful assistance. Of course there were the moral lessons 
 learned, but these were quite secondary to the quickening of my 
 spiritual nature which work with spade and hoe brought me. 
 
i82 MY QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 The soil, the crops, the birds, the weeds, the sun, the rain— 
 myself working among them— all coming together and operating 
 together— produced something more than fruit and vegetables. 
 A dawning consciousness of God, and of my being a fellow- 
 worker with God, was evolved out of them. Through this garden 
 I found it easy to understand that all life was animated equally 
 by a Divine Presence, and that everywhere God lurked ready to 
 reveal himself. 
 
 At Ballingdon we had a second son born. These children had 
 a deep influence on me— the reality of them sank into me. They 
 impressed me as being so much more than my children, so much 
 more than Humanity's children— as being, indeed, God's children 
 also. I could not believe that their parents had even the chief 
 concern and responsibility respecting them. Behind us lay 
 generation after generation, away back to the first beginnings of 
 things on this Planet. But, in all this string of events, I found 
 no sufficient cause for those two boys and my love for them. 
 The deep sense of my own feelings towards them demanded 
 infinitely more than a cast-off ball of fire for a background. If 
 I nursed them in sickness, or played with them in health, or, 
 still more, if I bent over them and watched them in their sleep, 
 unconscious and yet so full of life, and realised what they had 
 been and what they might grow to be, and all the endless forces 
 which were at work in them, the effect was an irresistible con- 
 viction that God was here in our children, just as he was in our 
 garden, and that our love for them and our service for them were 
 acts of divine co-operation. 
 
 At the bottom of our garden was a river, I have said; and 
 there were wooden steps down to the water, and all was unpro- 
 tected save by some hazel bushes in places. I commenced 
 making a bank to set a fence on to prevent my little boy from 
 being drowned. After a time his mother said she did not see 
 that anything I could do would quite remove the danger— she 
 would rather trust the child. So I stopped my work, and the 
 little one was told that beyond a certain path he was on no 
 account to go, unless some one was with him. And so discipline 
 and confidence went hand in hand to give the child all the free- 
 dom possible to him, and the child became his own protection 
 against drowning. Often have I gratefully remembered that 
 decision against external fences in favour of the expectation of 
 
INTO THE WILDERNESS. 183 
 
 obedience ; and it became one of the ideals on which we brought 
 up our children. 
 
 Another ideal was, never to allow idling about, but always to 
 see that the children had plenty to do. The result was that we 
 never had any trouble, never any anxiety, save the small amount 
 which is sure to arise when children are by no means dummies. 
 If England would but make up her mind that all mothers should 
 have the opportunity of caring for their little ones so — ! But 
 walk through Drury Lane, and ask yourself — " Where is the 
 children's chance ? " If that do not make you into an ardent 
 Social Reformer, you must have a special brutality and stupidity 
 and ignorance of your own, more dangerous to Society than the 
 same qualities in the denizens of the lowest slums. Give the 
 children a chance ? — Yes, to compete with the German worker, 
 and then go to heaven ! — but not to live their own human lives 
 in all the fulness and beauty that God has made possible for 
 them. 
 
 The third great influence in my life in the country was the 
 stars. It was my habit to go for a walk the last thing at night to 
 enable me to sleep ; for even here was growing upon me that 
 sleeplessness which has been such a constant limitation in my life 
 — twin companion to that other limitation of incapacity to live 
 alone. But I had some compensation in my night walks ; and the 
 stars sank silently down into my soul. I learned the constellations 
 and their names, and became their familiar friend, and parted with 
 them one by one as they sank beneath the horizon, knowing how 
 punctual would be their re-appearance to perform again their 
 march across the mighty vault of the sky. Time and eternity, 
 space and infinity, seemed to combine together in the appalling 
 periods and distances of their movements— I no more in their 
 presence than the grub I trod on in my garden— but yet, in their 
 presence, infinitely more also. For my own life was unspeakably 
 greater than theirs, subject to higher laws, capable of vaster 
 developments. Yet we were one — the stars and I. Often did I 
 lose myself in contemplation. Often, too, did I wonder at my 
 own greatness as it became revealed to me by comparison with 
 theirs. Thus did the stars help me to realise the vast range of 
 my being — a worm, a god ; nothing, everything ; and all that lay 
 between the two extremes. 
 
 But, deeper than anything else, my new religious life was 
 
i84 MY QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 founded on the reality of my home Hfe — on the spiritual union 
 which made it, in my own experience, a piece of the solid rock of 
 things. I cannot write of all this, save in words the most hopelessly 
 inadequate. Clough's Poem, Wirkung in der Ferne, is the 
 only piece of literature that I can call to mind as at all adequately 
 expressing what my home has been, and still is, to me ; and even 
 it fails entirely to carry forward its conception of human union to 
 that divine union of which it is the image in our earthly life, 
 revealing to us, with an intensity of reality and of meaning which 
 makes the words themselves a futile platitude, that God is Love. 
 
 My home has been, and is, the Mother of my soul. It has 
 taught me, chastened me, inspired me, sheltered me from the 
 wild impulses of my own will, and enabled me, so far as I have 
 been able, to convert passion into power. But it has been 
 infinitely more than a maternal care and love in my life. It has 
 been a spiritual fact — as if a piece of very God in my own life, to 
 enable me to know a little of what God is. But only those can 
 understand me here who have themselves experienced the same 
 indescribable blessedness. 
 
 I think this must be, perhaps, the deepest reason why, since 
 marriage, I have lived so ill in solitude — as if the reality of life had 
 departed from me — as if I myself were now no longer real without 
 it, despite all I have said of the individualising experiences I have 
 passed so painfully through. But I do not quite understand it. 
 That it is no mere weakness, I am certain ; any more than it is 
 no mere weakness that I cannot live without oxygen. It is rather, 
 I think, an endowment that carries its needs with it, and links 
 me thus more closely to the chain of real being. 
 
 In such ways as I have tried to tell, my life in the country, 
 centred in my happy home, and radiating all around, even to the 
 stars, built up within me an invincible confidence in God, and the 
 beginning of a consciousness of him which has since continued 
 to deepen. It seemed as though a new life were rising up within 
 me, which I could not explain, or even understand, but which 
 was none the less real and reliable. Three years I lived there, 
 in faith that something would come of it ; and yet often impatient 
 at the way in which life was slipping away, and nothing yet done. 
 The thirty years of which I had written to my wife in Liverpool 
 passed over my head, and still nothing was accomplished. It 
 was sometimes heavy work, this plodding away in faith, and 
 
INTO THE WILDERNESS. 185 
 
 because I could do nothing else. But the result of it all lives 
 in me now, and can never die. In the Art of Life, nothing is 
 ever lost that has once been acquired. 
 
 I know that the contents of this chapter will appear very 
 unsatisfactory to many. They will feel a want of connexion 
 between premise and conclusion, and the very conclusion will 
 elude their grasp. There appears to me to be no help for this. 
 It seems so impossible to communicate in terms of the Intellect 
 the processes of a growing Consciousness. Only some similarity 
 of experience will enable the reader to understand what I mean. 
 Perhaps it may be possible, some day, to make these processes 
 clearer to the undeveloped man ; and yet I question it ; for who 
 could make Love clear to him who had never loved ? When all 
 was said, he would only be able to recognise certain of the 
 phenomena of Love ; but would have no conception whatever of 
 the living impulse which Love itself is. 
 
 I must suppose, indeed, that I myself am but just beginning to 
 understand the meaning of my own experiences ; for certainly 
 I have never so clearly grasped their total significance as I have 
 during this past year of enforced retirement. I still feel that I 
 have almost everything to learn about man's higher life. At the 
 same time I am compelled to the conclusion that the impressions 
 of the senses are not more reliable than the impressions of con- 
 sciousness, the worth and nature of each set of impressions having 
 to be learned by experience. Also, in both cases, the impressions 
 come first, and then the gradual understanding of them. The 
 method of Religion, therefore, from this point of view, becomes 
 that of extending the scope of man's self-consciousness. When 
 this truth has been reached, we find the whole of life appearing 
 to us in a different aspect — how different I do not suppose I have 
 yet learned fully. To me it comes simply as the birth of a new 
 sense, a new power of insight, a new conviction of oneness with 
 all things. It by no means takes me from the practical work of 
 life, but fills the practical work with an altogether fresh beauty, 
 and myself with perfect confidence in helping it forward. Igno- 
 rance and error are not eliminated, but we are taken behind the 
 veil, and see that provision is made for a continuous march 
 forward. 
 
 These three years in the country— how different in their results 
 from the former years at Folkestone ! I had gone to Folkestone 
 
i86 MY QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 in obedience to external necessity, from which I could find no 
 way of escape. It was a step foreign to my whole nature, and 
 apparently quite off the line of my natural development. So 
 the life almost died within me, only showing itself in volcanic 
 outbursts of discontent and despair. I went to the country in 
 obedience to an inward necessity, which I was bold enough to 
 trust in spite of all appearances, and the very reasonable challenges 
 of Mrs. Grundy. Folkestone, for the time being, was a degrada- 
 tion; Ballingdon, a permanent elevation of my whole life, from 
 which I have never receded. Yet I accept Folkestone, too, as 
 part of my necessary discipline. It was crossing a deep valley 
 to reach a higher mountain. But I hope no reader of this will 
 think of following my example. There must be no imitation. 
 Each must find God on the lines of his own development. 
 
CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 POLITICS AND RELIGION. 
 
 All this expansion and deepening of consciousness was taking 
 place in my country home, though it was a slow and stumbling 
 process. Country walks, and the flowers and birds that I watched 
 and learned the names of, and boating on the river, and water- 
 colour sketching, and the village churches wherein we sometimes 
 found ourselves on Sundays, and the quiet grave-yards, and the 
 patient peasantry — all these sank into me, and became part of 
 me, helping me to grow more widely aware of myself and of the 
 world around me. Never before had I understood the intoxication 
 of the Springtide, and the joy of the awakening life of Nature. 
 Since my return to England, God had departed from sea and 
 land and cloud ; but then he was a purely objective God, outside 
 of all things. Now this new sense of oneness with flowers and 
 trees and stars brought me to God in quite a different fashion — 
 but I do not know how to describe it. Like a sponge lying in 
 water, I seemed embosomed in Nature, and to drink in God 
 from my divine environment. 
 
 But I could not formulate anything from this awakening of my 
 being. Long I remained as much a Sceptic and Agnostic as 
 ever. Occasional fits of yearning to preach came over me, but 
 I knew that I had yet no message, and it did not seem that a 
 message was any nearer. Meanwhile I was as anxious as ever 
 to help the people, and was beginning to interest myself actively 
 in political and social problems. I did something towards aiding 
 the effort then being made to re-establish the Agricultural 
 Labourers' Union. I even got so far as to give an address at a 
 little village meeting in a public house. But the whole thing 
 appeared so hopeless — the men so helpless, their difficulties so 
 enormous. I was also much interested in a strike among the 
 mat-weavers at Glemsford, and the formation of a Union among 
 
 187 
 
i88 MY QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 them. What I learned then showed me the weak point of village 
 industries— the workers left in the hands of the employer, with 
 no alternative when work runs slack or wages are abated. I 
 often think with a sad heart of those small Suffolk industries, 
 where the poor are sweated so badly, and the world hears nothing 
 of it. 
 
 During the general election of 1885, I witnessed a village riot 
 which produced a profound impression on me. It was the 
 first election under the extended franchise, and the Squirearchy 
 were doing their best to thwart the act of enfranchisement. On 
 the other hand, the new electors were in a high state of elation, 
 not knowing that political without economic emancipation would 
 be mere wind in their stomachs. The riot in question was 
 really caused by the scandalous injustice of the Tory Justices, 
 who refused to provide a polling place for a large manufacturing 
 village with four hundred voters, the men being thus compelled 
 to vote at another village four miles distant. In this manu- 
 facturing village there was no Squirearchy. The clergyman was 
 a good old man, who was assisted in his duties by his son \ and 
 both were loved for their devotion to their parishioners, quite 
 irrespective of politics. It was well known, indeed, that the 
 four hundred would vote solid for the Liberal candidate, with 
 but three or four exceptions. This action was of very doubtful 
 legality, and was strongly protested against. But, against Tory 
 power, protest was useless. Smarting under a sense of injustice, 
 these four hundred men marched from one village to the other, 
 led by a band, with the view of counteracting the attempt to 
 disfranchise them. On their arrival, they found the arrangements 
 for polling wholly inadequate. Crowding around the polling 
 station, they were assailed with taunts and insults by a Tory 
 farmer. The result was, first the hustling of the farmer, and 
 then stone throwing, and then the reading of the riot act by the 
 Tory Justices from the Conservative Committee Room, and the 
 telegraphing for policemen and soldiers. After that, the village 
 was given over to lawlessness, and one public house was wrecked, 
 and one or two houses had their windows broken. But there 
 was never any connection established between these acts and 
 the outraged voters. And nothing whetever was done to quell 
 the disorder, which was at first mere horse-play, and then allowed 
 to drift into riot through pure incapacity and cowardice. The 
 
POLITICS AND RELIGION. 189 
 
 few policemen in the village stood looking on helplessly. One 
 man, of generous instincts and known integrity, and with a clear 
 head on his shoulders, could have overcome the whole difficulty 
 — save, perhaps, the difficulty which these impossible men in 
 office would have made for him. 
 
 Some sixty soldiers arrived by rail, late in the afternoon, when 
 all was over, and the village perfectly quiet. As they marched 
 through to the police station, the people had a laugh at the folly 
 of their superiors, in making all this display of force when it was 
 now useless. But their superiors laughed last. Darkness fell. 
 There were no lights in the village street. The polling station 
 was still open, but deserted, save by its officials. In the light 
 that shone from the doorway I stood talking with a friend, who, 
 with myself, had witnessed the whole proceedings. A poor old 
 woman and a half idiotic lad joined us. Suddenly they fell to 
 the ground. I then saw dimly, in the darkness, a line of 
 policemen and soldiers advancing past us up the wide village 
 street, the soldiers in the centre, and the police on each side 
 knocking over the people they met with their truncheons. But 
 my friend and I were spared, though the old woman and the 
 semi-idiot boy were bludgeoned, the blood of one of them 
 staining my friend's cuff. Time after time this bloody march 
 through the village was repeated. And then the public houses, 
 to which many had fled for safety, were entered, and the 
 occupants ordered off the premises. Outside, they had to run 
 the gauntlet of a double file of policemen, who belaboured them 
 with their truncheons. A newspaper reporter in one of the 
 houses was allowed to remain. After the clearance, the police 
 returned, and, with most brutal and filthy language, boastfully 
 displayed the blood on their truncheons, one producing his in 
 two halves, broken on the head of some unlucky person. 
 
 On the following Sunday I went to the village Church, to hear 
 what the rector might have to say in his sermon. He was known 
 as a good and generous man. After deploring the disgrace which 
 had befallen their village, and denouncing the sin of disorder, 
 he pleaded with his hearers that they should forgive the poor 
 ignorant rioters. But this did not seem quite so funny as to see 
 a prominent man in office march proudly up the Church, with 
 the Tory colours displayed conspicuously in his buttonhole. 
 And all this in a place devoted to the worship of Jesus ! 
 
I90 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 To further assert the claims of Law and Order, perfectly 
 innocent and harmless men, but who happened to be prominent 
 politically, were summoned, remanded to the Assizes, and tried 
 before a judge, who did his best to get them convicted, aided in 
 his efforts by policemen who lied to the verge of heroism. But 
 the police lied too heavily, and the counsel for the prisoners was 
 too clever, and the jurymen were too honest, for Law and Order 
 to override Justice in this instance — but it was only by the skin 
 of their teeth that these good men, who had no more to do with 
 the riot than I had, escaped a long term of imprisonment. For 
 the judge was just in the mood to righteously make examples 
 of them. 
 
 And then the public were never told the truth by the news- 
 papers. The reporter, for instance, who saw the bludgeoning, 
 and what followed, knew well enough that he was not paid to 
 tell the truth, and did not tell it — save privately. The real facts 
 of the case were suppressed ; only the phenomena of the riot 
 were allowed to be published. Whether the paper were Liberal 
 or Tory, it made no difference ; the public were wilfully deceived 
 by men who knew what was expected of them. And so it is 
 with our press in such matters, as I have since experienced 
 plentifully. And I am describing this episode now, in order to 
 put my readers on their guard — that they may never believe a story 
 of wrong attributed to men smarting under a sense of injustice 
 as reported in any paper whatever that is read by respectable 
 people. It may happen that occasionally the truth does get told, 
 but only so very rarely, that the benefit of the doubt should 
 always be given to the alleged wrong-doer. I speak of what I 
 know. The fundamental facts are kept back ; they are not asked 
 for ; only the phenomenal facts are made known ; even then, 
 with much suppression on the one side, much exaggeration on 
 the other. 
 
 And the Courts of Justice are as false in these matters as the 
 newspapers. There is not a judge in England who would allow 
 counsel to tell a jury the real facts about such a riot as the one 
 I have recorded ; so that, even if these men had been guilty of 
 rioting, it would have been impossible for even-handed justice to 
 have been dealt out in the matter. And the reason is, that we 
 do not set first before us the maintenance of Truth and Justice 
 and Humanity, but of Society and of Systems and of Institutions 
 
POLITICS AND RELIGION. 191 
 
 and of Customs and of Law and Order. These unreal and 
 unsubstantial things we prefer to maintain, at the expense of 
 real things and substantial. And the reason, again, for this is, 
 that we are ourselves unreal ; that we have not yet awakened 
 from the dream of phenomenal existence into the real life of 
 conscious Reality. And so our Journalism and our Justice must 
 remain the mockery they are, until we are evolved into real 
 Men and real Women— a divine process that we may co-operate 
 in. I see no other way for improvement. 
 
 But I am no Orientalist. I call this phenomenal existence 
 a dream, only because it must be so to him who is only aware 
 of phenomena. To him who knows Reality, phenomena have 
 a reality of their own also ; just as a tool is really a tool to a man, 
 but no tool at all to an idiot or a monkey. So deeply are these 
 great moral and social problems rooted in the infinite abyss of 
 Being. Which thought finally settles for me the question of the 
 value of cursing the Scribes and Pharisees, Hypocrites ! It is 
 useless. We have a work of evolution to carry through, with 
 God and the Universe for our partners, and cursing will only 
 waste our time and blind our judgment. It is almost as untrue 
 to facts as the sin we denounce is. Yet cursing is a stage of 
 development far ahead of the comfortable Sunday dinner period, 
 as the Judge dines, and the Journalist, and the Parson who 
 preaches to them, and asks them to pardon wrong-doers. 
 
 I will briefly sketch the sequel to this story of wrong in high 
 places. In the manufacturing village in question, the good old 
 rector died ; and it was hoped and expected that the son, who 
 had served so loyally as his father's curate, would succeed to 
 the vacant living. Strong petitions were sent to the present- 
 ing powers. But they were useless. A High Churchman and a 
 stranger was sent to school the people to a new discipline ; and 
 I think it very probable that the discipline has proved successful. 
 Moreover, the Liberal candidate has long since carried the con- 
 stituency with him into the bosom of the Unionist party, retaining 
 his seat during the time of transition by pledges which he appears 
 to have forgotten. He has, however, interested himself in keeping 
 prison-made matting off the market. So, Ireland waits, and 
 Labour waits, and Justice slumbers. 
 
 I was active in Politics, and helped to form a Liberal Association 
 in Ballingdon. But before I left the country, the glamour of 
 
192 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 Politics had departed. I do not think I understood why at the 
 time ; but, as with the Labourers' Union, so with these Liberal 
 Associations, I felt at last hopeless. I believe it was that I saw 
 that the people were being played with ; that all their enthusiasm, 
 all their hopefulness, all their confidence in their " betters," 
 was being exploited by ambitious men, who had nothing in 
 common with the people — who ostentatiously displayed their 
 superiority, and were forwarded in their own ambitious career, 
 while the people they had used like the cart-wheels of their pro- 
 gress were left as deep in the mud as ever. 
 
 And I felt the pain of the poor man's lot so keenly, and saw 
 how little these Politicians could do for him, and how empty were 
 the cries that the poor man waved his hat to, and how hopeless 
 were the hopes that were flaunted before his eyes while such 
 politicians were trusted. All this energy and enthusiasm wasted 
 for want of a Man to represent it truly in Parliament !— Indeed, 
 how is it possible that the warm heart of the People should pulse 
 through that House of all the Interests —save those of simple 
 Humanity— and that frightful House of Lords behind it ! Will 
 the People themselves arise some day, like some new Cromwell, 
 and clear out these impossible play-actors ? Alas, the People, 
 too, have their own particular follies. We must work on patiendy, 
 through all channels, and try to grow ourselves bigger. 
 
 The question of Immortality exercised my mind somewhat at 
 Ballingdon, and in a peculiar manner. Living so much at home 
 with Nature, communing with all the life about me, and entering 
 into fellowship with the stars, noting with swelling heart the 
 punctual return of the Spring, seeing in the country churchyards 
 the marsh-marigold and the cherry-blossom laid in infinite hope 
 on the humble graves of the dead, all nourished within me an 
 irresistible conviction that not all of us dies at death ; and the 
 new and deeper life growing up within me confirmed that. The 
 only time when I had any real doubt was occasionally when I 
 was waking from sleep, and before full consciousness returned. 
 Then I found within me an unaccountable fear, without cause 
 or reason, that death would end all. When full consciousness 
 came, the impression wholly passed. I can only describe the 
 feeling as being similar to that with which one wakes up in a 
 state of depression and apprehension without at all knowing why 
 — a vague sense of something being wrong, or of some evil lying 
 
POLITICS AND RELIGION. 193 
 
 ahead, which I suppose is famihar to all of us. For some time 
 this mild form of waking nightmare would now and again occur, 
 but it is some years now since I last experienced it. 
 
 I must add, also, that the question of immortality has never 
 given me any personal concern. All my past thinking on the 
 subject has been on account of others, and especially on account 
 of those sadly cramped and undeveloped lives which one sees 
 everywhere. My own life, whatever its sufferings, has always 
 been so deep and full, that the present time has occupied all my 
 real thinking. From the day I became converted, as already 
 recorded. Heaven and Hell ceased to have any vital interest for 
 me, although their interest before had been so tremendous. But 
 where the thought of my own future ceased, there thought for 
 that of others began; and it remained still the same when my 
 faith in Christianity departed. I wanted, for instance, to be 
 able to believe that the poor sailor, dying in the ship's fo'castle, 
 was not sinking away into nothingness. 
 
 Of course the question does not trouble me now, although I 
 know so little about it. God has entered into my life — that 
 I cannot doubt ; and neither can I doubt the permanence of our 
 relationship. Where I can trust for myself, I can trust for all 
 the world. I am not going to have an exclusive, or even a rare, 
 chance. Apart from this conviction, there would still be some- 
 thing of that aristocratic element in my faith, which, as a Christian, 
 I deplored — myself saved, while so many were going to destruction. 
 I wanted a democratic faith, a religion which made me equal 
 with all, though still different from all ; a religion which produced 
 the sense, without any sort of hypocrisy, of a real equality before 
 God, this real equality becoming the ideal of all institutions and 
 customs affecting our earthly existence. But of course not a 
 dead level of equality, but rather one in which infinite differ- 
 ence finds place — an equality based deep in the equal life of all 
 in God, but rescued from deadness by the endless variety of 
 that life — an equality, therefore, out of which true freedom 
 springs. 
 
 In associating these religious ideas with social life, as well as 
 in putting them in this high form, I am again getting beyond 
 the time of which I write. Yet the first cropping up of all this 
 took place then. Unfortunately I have little contemporary 
 evidence of my thinking during this period — a few letters, and 
 
 13 
 
194 MY QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 Life in Apartments, and some notes of political addresses, 
 and the daily Diary of my doings. I will give some extracts 
 from the letters as far as they appear to be of any value. The 
 date of our leaving Folkestone was July 23rd, 1884. 
 
 " Ballingdon, February igfh, 1885. 
 
 "My mind has been much exercised on Politics. This 
 morning I went a long walk to think it all out. I don't know 
 what to do, for it seems I must decide either to do more 
 political work, or less. At first I felt that I ought to do more. 
 I realise, as I never did before, that Politics are of vast im- 
 portance to the future of this country. Somehow, the life of 
 the people must be raised ; and I believe that Politics must be 
 the way. Politics means Sociology now — the whole business of 
 social life. The next ten years, I believe, will decide England's 
 future for perhaps a century. 
 
 " My unfitness for this work lies in my love of home and the 
 quiet enjoyment of life. I don't think I could stand public life. 
 If I thought I could, I believe I should feel obliged to take it 
 up. But then you could not stand it any better than I could, for 
 I should have to be from home so much. 
 
 " Any way, I am beginning to realise the supreme importance, 
 the absolute necessity, indeed, of raising the level of the people's 
 life. It must be done ; and I am sure no work will satisfy me 
 which does not tend in this direction." 
 
 "London, October lyth, 1885. 
 
 " I have been having a long talk on Socialism with . He 
 
 calls me a Pessimist, and says I am as bad as Clough ! He had 
 to leave me about six, but I spent the evening in his room, 
 reading Clough and Kropotkin. To-morrow I propose to hear 
 Mrs. Besant in the morning, Edward Avehng in the afternoon, 
 and William Morris in the evening. 
 
 " One of my old preaching fevers has come on. I am really 
 beginning to feel that I shall be compelled to do it. I mus^ get 
 into immediate contact with the needs of men, and try to help 
 them. But I am in no hurry about it." 
 
 " Ballingdon, January 2gth, 1S86. 
 "Enclosed I have been writing to-day" — the commencement 
 of Life in Apartments. — " It is one of the things that came 
 
POLITICS AND RELIGION. 195 
 
 into my mind some mornings back, and has been running there 
 since. I have the groundwork of another sketch to tack on to 
 it suggested by a picture at the Salon Parisien — the only good 
 painting in the place, and that a really good one. I have been 
 tired to-day — did not sleep so well last night — and was very glad 
 to have this to turn to, as I could not have settled down to other 
 work. What I have written reflects my feelings pretty closely, 
 or did so while I was writing." 
 
 " Ballingdon, February isf, 1886. 
 
 " I don't at all think of coming to Norwich at present." — Our 
 youngest boy was ill there.— "If you stay on indefinitely, how- 
 ever, you will doubtless see me. At the same time I have almost 
 made a solemn vow that I will never be left alone again. I wish 
 you had the faculty for writing deeply philosophical letters that 
 would give me something to think about. I've quite made up 
 my mind to go and live at Cambridge, or in France, or some- 
 where, at the end of the three years. I'm clearly going to the 
 devil, soul and body— and no jolly time by way of compensation. 
 I don't see the good of it. But don't hurry the kid home on my 
 account. . . . 
 
 " This morning, before breakfast, I commenced a sketch from 
 my study window of one of the big elms. I have got it all 
 pencilled in ready to begin colouring to-morrow. It was a 
 beautiful sunrise effect behind the tree that started me on it." 
 
 This sketch, so suddenly commenced in loneliness, was the 
 first start I made in water-colour drawing since the little I had 
 done in Norwich. I have never had any natural aptitude for 
 the work, however, though I have a great love for it. In this, 
 as in everything else with me, even the smallest achievement is 
 laborious and difficult. 
 
 "London, March 18///, 1S87. 
 " I shall not be home till to-morrow, as an Anarchist celebra- 
 tion of the Paris Commune is to be held at South Place this 
 evening, and I want to attend it. I was so glad I was present 
 last night "—at the International celebration of the Commune, 
 where I heard Kropotkin and other speakers—" but it makes me 
 shudder. I made a friend— a strange sort of man, who, after 
 
196 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 considerable conversation, asked me to call on him. He under- 
 stands Socialism thoroughly, but knows little of individual 
 Socialists. He speaks German and French, and is a foreigner 
 of some sort. 
 
 " After the meeting I walked the streets, thinking and seeing — 
 sad thoughts, grim sights. Had one no home, the world would 
 verily seem mad. It is a strange place we have brought our 
 little boys into." 
 
 I have said occasionally that I could not face the social 
 problem until the religious problem was in the way of being 
 solved. This was undoubtedly true to some extent, but con- 
 temporary evidence shows that my memory exaggerated the 
 extent. All through this time at Ballingdon I was really facing 
 both problems, though I still placed the solution of the religious 
 problem first. And it was not until I came to see the relation 
 between the religious life and social reform that I could feel that 
 there was any sound bottom to political effort. That was the 
 time when the conception of the Labour Church dawned upon 
 me — a time still a few years distant. 
 
 During this period I was much interested in a conflict going 
 on among the Unitarians of the United States, which led to the 
 organisation of a separate Western Conference. Some of the 
 Western Churches demanded that Unitarianism should no longer 
 stand upon a Christian, or even a Theistic, basis ; but simply 
 upon an Ethical basis. The difficulty has been healed over since 
 then, and the result shows the danger of putting new wine into 
 old bottles. In connection with this conflict I wrote a letter to 
 Unity, the organ of the Western movement, from which I give 
 some extracts, because they indicate my position at the time. 
 
 " Ballingdon, /w/y 12th, 1886. 
 
 " Through the kindness of a friend I have just received some 
 
 recent numbers of Unity, and Mr. 's pamphlet. I have 
 
 lived in America, studied at Meadville, and should be in a 
 Unitarian pulpit to-day, if I could accept the Theistic and Christian 
 position which Unitarianism demands. With regard to that 
 position I have made no complaint, because it is clearly the 
 right of every religious body to define where it stands. But I 
 have always felt that Unitarianism has been making a great 
 
POLITICS AND RELIGION. 
 
 197 
 
 mistake. It has seemed to me to be seeking an unnatural alliance 
 with Orthodox Christianity, and failing in its duty to help those 
 who cannot accept Christianity at all. It has appeared to rejoice 
 in minimising the beliefs of believers, rather than in elevating the 
 lives of unbelievers. It has not set itself to develop that strong 
 and deep faith which underlies the scepticism of the age. It has 
 been so arduously set on restoring the religion of the first century, 
 that it has lost touch with the possibilities of religious development 
 to-day. 
 
 " Unless Unitarianism is prepared to make a move, it will soon 
 be difficult for it to justify its separate existence. The Orthodox 
 Churches are moving fast enough ; there are numbers of them 
 where Liberal Christians may find a home. But where are the 
 
 Churches in which those whom Mr. calls extremists can 
 
 find a home ? He says that these extremists ' for the most part 
 care nothing for association with us.' I fear he is right if by ' us ' 
 he means Unitarians of the type which he represents. But it 
 makes my wife and myself very unsettled here, when we know 
 that in the Western States of America we might find hearts with 
 whom we could work and worship, and never be asked whether 
 we accepted the Christian faith. You men who stand for fellow- 
 ship in righteousness may be sailing under false colours, as 
 
 Mr. says ; but we should wonderfully like to be in the 
 
 same ship. 
 
 " Sometimes, as I sit in the garden in the cool of the evening, 
 and drink in all the beauty of the quiet time, and think of the 
 Httle ones put safely to bed, and see the mother of them coming 
 to me across the grass, I find it an easy matter to believe in God 
 and a future life. Suddenly, from over the wall, the cries of a 
 child beaten by a passionate parent ring through the air, and 
 make me shudder to the heart. The thermometer of faith frills, 
 and I think how much remains to be done to make the earth 
 what it should be. Am I a worse man, am I really less fit to 
 stand in a pulpit, even, because I am so sensitive to human 
 wrong that the vision of God gets blurred ? 
 
 " I think that men of deepest faith are often those who can 
 say little about it, especially to such as demand faith as a credential. 
 
 If I had to converse with Mr. , I think I should feel myself 
 
 almost an Atheist. But, though I cannot reach them, I rejoice 
 to know that there are men in the West who would not crush the 
 
198 MY QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 little faith I can bring to the surface by demanding more of me. 
 With men of principle a little faith goes a long way. I will not 
 uncharitably say that the converse is true." 
 
 All that I saw going on in America at that time rekindled my 
 hope that Unitarianism might be regenerated, and made a leading 
 force in religious and social reform. I knew well that individual 
 Unitarians were ready for such a movement ; but my reviving 
 religious life was not yet strong enough, when the above letter 
 was written, for me to think it at all practicable to again take up 
 that work. 
 
 Much help and encouragement came to me from America 
 through the Ethical Movement. The published lectures of 
 Dr. Felix Adler, the founder of the movement, and of William 
 Salter, the Ethical lecturer of Chicago, convinced me of the 
 fundamental reality of the moral life as no other writings have 
 done. These men seemed to me to have gone to the bottom 
 rock of life to build afresh a dwelling for the soul of man in 
 place of the Temples that were crumbling, and to have found 
 that rock reliable — still more — to have found not only a solid 
 foundation, but the building material also that was needed. I 
 was not quite satisfied, but I was unspeakably encouraged and 
 helped. Mine was a still deeper search — for the spiritual rock 
 beneath the moral — for that with which my soul could enter into 
 conscious communion, to which, in some of their experiences, 
 they seemed so very near approaching — so near, that at times 
 they seemed as if the very Prophets of it, or at least the fore- 
 tellers of its coming. In Emerson, Adler, Salter and Whitman, 
 America has made the greatest contributions to my religious life 
 which have come to me from literature. Here is an utterance of 
 Felix Adler's in 1885 — the highest I can find : — 
 
 " And now we come to the last point that characterises the 
 goal towards which the entire Ethical movement tends. The 
 ladder of moral experience is that on which alone we can climb 
 to the heights of spiritual truth. There is an eternal kernel 
 at the heart of man. Only the sharp instrument of moral discipline 
 can lay that kernel open to our view, and make us acquainted 
 with the most august and solemn facts concerning ourselves. 
 How otherwise can we find a revelation of the eternal, if we do 
 not find it in our own breasts ? . . . Only if there is a divine 
 
POLITICS AND RELIGION. 199 
 
 element in our own souls, are we capable of understanding a 
 divine truth. And there we must seek it. In the abysses of our 
 own souls speaks- the invisible godhead. Far underneath the 
 swift currents of our superficial daily life is sunk the Rhinegold 
 of our purer, truer self. In the abysses we must seek it, I say. 
 We will not find that divine element on the surface of our 
 existence. We will not become aware of it in our secular pur- 
 suits. We will not lay hold of it by any mere speculative effort 
 of the intellect. Only in our holiest moments, only in the 
 darkest struggles of our conscience, only by sinking deeply into 
 the gulfs of moral experience can we, by actual contact, become 
 sure of that divine and indestructible power at the bottom of 
 our souls." 
 
 Here is the ideal tendency of the Ethical movement, as set 
 forth by its founder. But movements have a way of standing still 
 on the road which their founders mark out for them, if not of 
 deviating from them altogether. I am told that some Ethical 
 friends in England have found a rock of offence in my publication 
 of a pamphlet entitled, From Ethics to Religion— as though 
 they could not trust in Ethics that tended Godward. And yet 
 the whole significance of their movement, the sole reality of it 
 in the world of real things, is expressed in these prophetic words 
 from Dr. Adler. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 FROM COUNTRY TO COLLEGE. 
 
 My three years of free country life gave me what I was seeking 
 — a sufficient confidence in God to commence work with — a 
 confidence which, indeed, demanded to be acted upon, in order 
 that it might deepen through experience. I had found God in 
 Nature, in my home, in myself. It remained now for me to 
 find him in the world of affairs about me. So far had I 
 succeeded in my great quest — to find God with a closed Bible. 
 Ten years of my life had been spent in that. Yet I knew well 
 enough that I had still almost everything to learn ; and after 
 another ten years of progress I have the same sense of need 
 of growth, only more deeply impressed upon me. But I have 
 found a Religion that will work; that will not only grow as 
 life grows, and place no fetters upon it, but will rather be an 
 inward inspiration which will make progress in every direction 
 more rapid — a Religion, not imposed upon human life from 
 without, and calling upon all men to conform to it ; but one 
 growing up naturally from within, as a primal force in personal 
 and social development. 
 
 It would be futile to discuss whether I should have gained 
 more by continuous growth, than I did by temporarily losing so 
 much ground through the break in its continuity. Of course 
 I gained by the break much that I could not have gained by 
 continuity. Whether I should have been stronger and richer 
 for another kind of experience it is impossible to say. It is 
 enough for me to know that, in ten years, I had revolutionised 
 my religious thought and life, and had indefinitely enlarged and 
 deepened its foundations. I had recognised that my growth 
 must be slow. I had accepted the fact that I could not expect 
 to find my life work until I was thirty. Now that I was in my 
 
FROM COUNTRY TO COLLEGE. 201 
 
 thirty-second year I was beginning to get on the track of it. 
 In my forty-second year I can look back all along the line of my 
 development, and see the unity of it, and much of its real 
 meaning — at least so far as to be able to give this account of it. 
 And I trust it will prove that summing up of the past which is 
 sometimes necessary to free us for further progress. 
 
 What had I gained then by my unbelief, and subsequent 
 struggles back to belief again ? Certainly vastly more than 
 Browning's Bishop Blougram allowed. In my new life I found 
 conviction and confidence fundamental, and always rising up the 
 clearer for deep-searching and sincere inquiry. During these ten 
 years I had systematically accustomed myself to face all sorts of 
 influences, and had persistently read and listened to those whose 
 teachings took all sorts of directions. There was no influence 
 and no teaching that I was afraid of, save of course such as was 
 in itself obviously degrading. But even here I was careful not 
 to accept the world's standard, but judged them for myself 
 whenever I thought any good, or even any enlightenment, was at 
 all likely to come from acquaintance with them. 
 
 In this freedom, alone, I found an enormous gain ; and in the 
 fearlessness which it brought me. It was like leaving a sick 
 room, and getting out into the fresh air and the sunshine, and 
 taking part in all the interests and activities of my fellows. It 
 was being able to look all life hopefully in the face, and to feel 
 a strong love for all, and a deep unity with all. There was no 
 divorce in life — as between Nature and Grace, Revelation and 
 Knowledge. There was the buoyant confidence that I should 
 ever be learning more from every source of information, and thus 
 be helped further on my way. But all words fall far, far short of 
 the real change which at last definitely formed itself in my 
 life — the freedom, the confidence, the oneness — and God the 
 supreme reality uniting and quickening all. The language is not 
 yet developed for expressing these things ; or rather, perhaps, it 
 needs the Master Poet to express them. 
 
 With this new life, it seemed not only natural, but necessary, 
 to turn to preaching again. Once more I found Unitarianism 
 the only door open to me ; and, as before, wide open. In the 
 summer of 1887 we removed to London, and in the autumn I 
 commenced a year's course of study at Manchester New College. 
 Thus I was able to further improve my limited education. This 
 
202 MY QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 year was invaluable to me, not so much in advancing my religious 
 life — for I think few men find a Theological College do that for 
 them — but rather in the wider range of intercourse which it 
 opened out to me. After living so long in subjective solitude, 
 the influence of professors and fellow students and other friends 
 was the more beneficial. 
 
 The only contemporary records I have of this period are the 
 notes of the sermons I preached. I have been reading some of 
 them, and have been comparing them with the notes of sermons 
 preached seven years before this. I have never looked through 
 my old sermons before, and could scarcely have believed what 
 frightfully uncomfortable feelings they would produce. After all I 
 had lived through, and all the effort and pain it had cost me, to 
 be able to say only this ! — and to say it so ill ! To think of 
 all that had gone to the making of those sermons — not merely 
 the bitter sorrows and struggles, and the love and happiness of 
 later years, but the sea and the sky and the mountains and the 
 flowers — all my intercourse with Nature and my fellow men ! I 
 often think sadly of the poor results of all my work for others — and 
 now I realise, as I never have before, what a poor result I myself 
 am. All this wealth of education, and so little to show for it ! 
 
 There is another thing that strikes me in looking through these 
 sermons. It is, the bad effect of preaching on the preacher. At 
 least that conviction is impressed upon me very deeply as regards 
 myself. The production of two good sermons a week is, for 
 most men, impossible ; and for all men it is impossible for them 
 to be at their best through two sermons a week. It is quite 
 conceivable that a man may produce his best work through daily 
 drudgery in his study, for there he can drudge when he is in the 
 drudging mood, and fill in the Hfe when his mood is more vital. 
 And he can always irevise and boil down, and limit his quantity 
 in order to improve his quality. So he can live in his work, and 
 make his work living. 
 
 Then there is the effect of the congregation on the minister, 
 which must, on the whole, be a conservative one — one which 
 he must be continually fighting against if he would keep up his 
 own progress. More especially must it be so if he visit his people 
 much, and live his life with them. I always had a high ideal of 
 the preacher being the pastor also, and making much of being 
 the personal friend of those to whom he preached; and I 
 
FROM COUNTRY TO COLLEGE. 203 
 
 remember the shock with which I read the declaration of a 
 popular London minister, that he never visited his people, I 
 know now what a terribly absorbing effect it has on a man ; how, 
 unconsciously to himself, it draws the creative energy out of him ; 
 how it causes him to accept too narrow and personal a view of 
 the duties of the pulpit, and how it hinders his vision from taking 
 that wide sweep and far look which is demanded for reformation 
 and progress. The preacher is too much fettered, too much 
 kept down by custom and routine, too closely associated with 
 all that needs reforming, to be often the prophet also, announcing 
 the dawn of the day that is to be. 
 
 That the creative work of the world goes forward outside the 
 Churches is a fact that has deeply impressed me. They seem, 
 all of them, to stand by the truth of yesterday. The truth 
 of to-morrow, taught by some great man or by some despised 
 movement, comes from outside the Churches, and finds in 
 these, as a mass, its greatest hindrance. I used to blame them 
 for this ; but looking through these old sermons of mine suggests 
 to me that their conservatism arises from the very circumstances 
 of their organisation, and that it is well nigh inevitable. I used 
 to think that the fault lay in the nature of the religion taught in 
 them. Now I fear that every Church, however free in its religion, 
 will always be a backward institution; that their function is 
 gradually to bring up the mass of the people to the level of the 
 new life and leading outside them ; but never themselves to be 
 the homes of the most advanced life and leading. Which means 
 that it is to the Poet and the Prophet that the world must look 
 for its highest message, neither of whom is wanted in the pulpit, 
 or would feel at home in the pulpit. 
 
 In the same direction runs the demand now made upon the 
 preacher to be also the organiser of the practical work of the 
 Churches. A preaching Church that does not practise its preach- 
 ing in collective action has always, until recently, seemed to me 
 an anomaly. I see now that there is much in the very nature 
 of things to justify the preacher who visits nobody and organises 
 nothing — whose congregation organise themselves just sufficiently 
 to provide him with the means of livelihood and a platform. 
 But this can scarcely ever be a common practice, because the 
 Church has to be the larger home of the family, if only for the 
 sake of the children. None the less it is a very great waste of 
 
204 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 the higher forces of human Hfe to set the preacher on so much 
 organised effort that he lives a Hfe of bondage rather than a life 
 of freedom — that he is kept in the atmosphere of his work all 
 the seven days of the week, that he cannot recuperate himself 
 by immersion in outside influences, and that the mere machinery 
 of church life robs him, not only of this, but also of many an 
 hour which ought to be spent in his study, or in free communion 
 with Nature. Certainly, if the Churches are to keep pace with 
 the growing intelligence and dumb spiritual needs of the people, 
 a new race of preachers will be needed who may rank among the 
 Poets and the Prophets as great spiritual leaders. 
 
 I am not sure that, in this matter, the preachers themselves 
 are not equally at fault with their congregations — a very warm- 
 hearted and generous fault, and one which we cannot blame. 
 The preacher, of all men, must feel terribly restless under the 
 charge, whether coming from without or from within, of talking 
 everything and doing nothing. For the Poet it is enough to be 
 a Poet. Few Preachers, indeed, will feel it enough to be a 
 Preacher. And yet I believe that, in the very nature of things, 
 it should be enough, if preaching is to rise to the high level one 
 wants to claim for it. I suppose, after all, the born preacher 
 will take his own course ; and probably that is where we shall 
 have to leave the question. But the danger, as matters now stand, 
 lies in the pulpits either quenching the prophetic fire of their 
 preachers, or in their losing the higher prophetic minds altogether. 
 With greater preaching, how much further the Churches could 
 be got to advance ! How much more light and life and air would 
 be found within them ! 
 
 I write all this because I believe I have been led astray myself 
 in this matter. My instincts were for work. At the very outset 
 these instincts were gratified. On completing my year of study 
 at Manchester New College, I was invited to act as assistant 
 minister to the Rev. P. H. Wicksteed, M.A., of Little Portland 
 Street Chapel, London. My special work was to look after all 
 the practical side of the church life — to visit the people, and to 
 draw more closely together all the organised activities which had 
 grown up around Mr. Wicksteed's ministry. I threw myself into 
 this work with an enthusiasm quite beyond my strength, and 
 developed the organisations beyond the strength of the congrega- 
 tion to maintain them. 
 
FROM COUNTRY TO COLLEGE. 205 
 
 I say, I have been led astray myself in this matter. And yet 
 it all lay along the line of my development, just as did the return 
 to Architecture. It was inevitable and necessary. For my own 
 sake I regret nothing. None the less I am quite sure that all 
 this work, and all that succeeded it until I broke down beneath 
 the strain it brought, caused the arrest of my spiritual develop- 
 ment ; or probably it would be more true to say that it simply 
 consolidated that development, while it did not allow it to grow 
 any further. So far as I can see, my preaching days and my 
 Labour Church days were not days of spiritual growth, but only of 
 clearer practical insight. It was only when I was forced to retire 
 to the Cheshire hills that my spiritual life seemed again to march 
 forward. In the same way, when I had to leave the hills and 
 come to London, my soul went to sleep ; and it has only been 
 during the past year of withdrawal that I have again been able 
 to grow. In the hard work of preaching and public speaking 
 I have always seemed to be repeating things over and over again 
 which I had learned in seclusion and freedom; and I think it 
 is the sense of everything in them being worn to death that has 
 discouraged me so in looking through some of my old sermons. 
 I have always felt sure that my repeated collapses of late years 
 were serving some good purpose, but I have never seen that good 
 purpose so clearly as I do now at the time of writing. 
 
 It is very probable that this is largely a physical matter, and 
 that I have especially needed these alternations of enforced hard 
 work, and of freedom to work as I could, to keep my progress 
 even. At any rate I well know that the practical life, and the 
 spiritual life which must inspire it, should grow up together, and 
 that either divorced from the other is fatal to true personal or social 
 development. But I think that, in the ministry, the difficulty of 
 keeping the two going together should be more clearly recognised, 
 and that, at every right cost, the spirit and power of prophecy 
 should be cultivated as the highest form of ministry. It means, 
 of course, the much higher and wider organisation of human 
 effort, so that each man may be better able to follow his inward 
 calling — the organisation of the division, and also of the inter- 
 change, of ministerial labour. In the Catholic Church this 
 organisation appears to be carried well nigh to perfection. The 
 Protestant Churches, in their reaction, became so very limited 
 in their range of service, that little organisation was required. 
 
2o6 MY QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 Now that they, too, are extending their scope of operation, 
 a wider scope of opportunity must follow. 
 
 Perhaps more than on the organisation of the ministry itself 
 does this question of the prophetic life and energy bear upon 
 the organisation of colleges to prepare men for the ministry. 
 They need revolutionising from Schools of the Students to 
 Schools of the Prophets. The practical and effective Man of 
 God should be at the head of them. Scholarship by all means, 
 and scholarly professors ; but over all some personal incarnation 
 of the union of God with Man. On this point we are far too 
 diffident, especially those who revolt against the cheaper forms of 
 orthodox religious teaching. If the religious life is a reality, 
 the Prophet must be a reality also. It cannot otherwise be 
 possible. I think our failure to recognise this fact is the 
 fundamental cause of the failure of the Churches to lead the 
 advance of Humanity. The difficulty is that the Prophet is 
 unconventional and exacting, and makes people uncomfortable 
 or angry, and never does quite the thing that is expected of him. 
 It is probable, however, that these difficulties w^ould no longer 
 be a hindrance, if there were a better understanding of them, 
 and of their meaning in the divine economy. 
 
 My real growth in London, and later in Manchester, lay in 
 discovering the relation of my own religious life to the world 
 around me, and in getting it to work in the world. It was this 
 growth which led, at last, to the formation of the Labour Church 
 in Manchester. The germs of it were all to be found in my 
 life in the country ; and I never lost the conviction that, for 
 any social regeneration to become possible, a new religious 
 awakening must be the soul of it — that the outer form of social 
 organisation was worth absolutely nothing more than the soul 
 of man could put into it. At the present moment I am 
 convinced of this truth more deeply than ever, and more inclined 
 than ever to throw all my efforts into working at the religious 
 inside of the social problem, as against using them up in working 
 at the political outside of it. I would still work at both if I 
 could, but it is quite impossible ; and I can acquiesce cheerfully 
 in the impossibility, so long as this which I can still do is not 
 denied me. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 PREACHING IN LONDON. 
 
 I FIND from the sermons preached in London that my life in 
 the country had given me a far greater confidence in the inward 
 life as the interpreter of the outer, that I could see more clearly 
 the relation of the religious life to social reform, that I felt that 
 in our work of social reform we were truly fellow-workers with 
 God, that I recognised the need of the Prophet as something 
 greater and nearer to God than the Preacher, that I believed 
 that a revival of religion in the Unitarian Churches was possible 
 
 not a revival of Unitarianism — that the bottom rock of all my 
 
 preaching lay in the happiness and strength of my home life, 
 and that all along I had the greatest hatred of the professionalism 
 of the ministry— the title of Reverend, the gown, the white tie, 
 and all that these things stand for. 
 
 From the notes of some of these sermons I will give a few 
 extracts to indicate my position at this time. It was only very 
 rarely that I read from MS. 
 
 The Inner Life and the Outer. 
 {College Sermon, January 2.0th, 1888.) 
 
 "The world's reformers may be divided roughly into two 
 classes— those who seek to regenerate man from within, and 
 those who endeavour to elevate him from without. Of these 
 two classes, the Preacher and the Politician may be taken as 
 suitable types. I am not going to attempt to decide here which 
 of these has done most to benefit humanity. I believe that 
 both are necessary. 
 
 "There was a time when, anxious to help in the world's 
 forward work, yet with no religious basis on which to rest, I 
 turned to Politics to compass the end I had in view. Two 
 incidents in that period I recall now, from among many others, 
 
 207 
 
2o8 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 all of which tended to make me profoundly dissatisfied with 
 political work — work which endeavours to raise man by improving 
 his external conditions. 
 
 "One was the sight of a fine row of newly built cottages, facing 
 a beautiful tract of open country, and with a long line of hills 
 at their rear. Occupied but a very short time, they were already 
 fast becoming filthy in appearance, because of the slovenly 
 character of the people who inhabited them. I sadly realised 
 that a great deal had to be done for men and women besides 
 putting them into better houses. 
 
 " The other incident was connected with a Socialist meeting in 
 a poor part of London. At the end of his address the speaker 
 told the hard-featured, grimy men before him, that they were 
 slaves because they did not own the means of production ; and 
 he went on to tell his hearers that they had a right, and they 
 ought, to seize the shipping and warehouses and wharfage of the 
 Thames, and to work them on their own behalf. Looking round 
 on the audience, 1 saw that, apart from any question of right, 
 such a seizure would end in the most disastrous results, and most 
 of all to the very men who were being urged thus to improve 
 the condition of their lives. 
 
 " This appears to me to be the grand heresy of Socialism— 
 the teaching that a man can be made better merely by being 
 made more comfortable. . . . The saying that the Devil is a 
 well-dressed gentleman seems to me a profound satire on those 
 who strive only for improvement in the external conditions of 
 living. 
 
 " But this is a question in which he who takes either extreme will 
 find himself on the wrong path. How can families be brought 
 up with fine moral sentiments where all sleep in one room? 
 How can classes of people reach any high standard of life whose 
 wages are not only miserably low, but — which is a still greater 
 evil — terribly intermittent ? 
 
 "Thus, though I myself have grown very dissatisfied with 
 Politics, I fully recognise that there is a great work for politicians 
 to carry out — if only they realise that they are working at but 
 one side of the great problem. Man must have bread to 
 
 live ' Man does not live by bread alone.' Here we have the 
 
 obverse and reverse of the shield, and it is the latter truth that 
 we are specially called to assert. . . . 
 
PREACHING IN LONDON. 209 
 
 " We are here, then, as Reformers of the Inner Life. What 
 does this position which we have adopted suggest to us, but that 
 we are called upon to be Prophets ? When we realise what the 
 Prophet has stood for, and must still stand for, does it not seem 
 the height of egotism to dare to think of taking up a prophetic 
 work ? Yet I cannot escape the conclusion that we who propose 
 to reform human life from within do stand before the world as 
 Prophets, and have a prophetic mission to fulfil. 
 
 "And does such a conclusion tend to egotism? To me the 
 thought that I am called to be a Prophet comes upon me with 
 a crushing force. Like Jonah, I feel constrained to take ship 
 for Tarshish. Egotism !— It is far more likely that if we come 
 to realise the call made upon us, we shall shrink back from our 
 work in despair. 
 
 " I know that God's Prophets appear where least expected. 
 The world is always saying, ' Can any good thing come out of 
 Nazareth ? ' It may be that God's highest Prophets of to-day 
 will arise, are arising, from quarters where we should least expect 
 them ; it may be from quarters outside religious denominations 
 altogether. Be that as it may, our duty is clear. We can only 
 justify the position we have taken by being, each in his measure. 
 Prophets of the Living God. . . . 
 
 " Religion is always revived by a deep mysterious working in 
 the hearts of individual men. It has been so in other Churches ; 
 it must be so in the Unitarian Churches. And— another piece 
 of egotism — we are the men from whom this revival of Religion 
 must spring. If there be no such revival among the students 
 and younger ministers of the Unitarian Churches, then they are 
 doomed to decay, and the burden of a terrible responsibility will 
 rest upon our shoulders. 
 
 " It has always been characteristic of Prophets that they speak 
 to their fellows from a deep living experience of the facts of the 
 religious life. No books, no traditional beliefs, avail the Prophet. 
 He must live face to face with the facts of life— face to face 
 with God. The power of the preacher is the power of the man, 
 and the power of the man is the power of his Inner Life. . . . 
 
 " Well do I remember, when first I commenced preaching, 
 being struck with this thought, that all the experiences of life — 
 not of the outward life alone, but all the joys and sorrows, the 
 temptations, the failures, the victories of the inner life— all could 
 
 14 
 
2IO MY QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 be turned to account in the ministry. And when I was compelled 
 to abandon the work, one thing that made me sadly feel the 
 change was, that in the work I had to fall back upon, all these 
 experiences could have no place. I could not build them into 
 timber and iron, brick and stone. I longed for a sphere of work 
 in which I could build them into the hearts of my fellow men. 
 
 " It is useful to know the world. It is well to have a know- 
 ledge of the ways of man with man. All experience of the 
 outward world will be of great help to us in our work ; but no 
 revival of Religion will spring from that. It is in our conflicts 
 with sin, in our wrestlings with doubt, in the fierce summer 
 campaigns of the soul, in the harder wintry seasons that follow, 
 that we must find our message from God to man. ... It is to 
 this Inner Life that Religion owes everything, from it that all 
 Bibles and all behefs have sprung; and from it alone can the 
 Bibles, the beliefs, the Religion of our own age spring. 
 
 " This ideal of what we should be in our ministry is so high 
 that it suggests despair. How pure, how holy, how true we ought 
 to be, if we are to fulfil our prophetic mission on earth ! As I 
 realise this, it seems as if God's withering glance were piercing 
 to the depths of his would-be servants ; and I can understand 
 well how those old Prophets, to whom God was so real, felt 
 scorched, burned up, in the Awful Presence. Well has Thomas 
 Binney expressed what all must have felt who have devoted 
 themselves to this high service of God : — 
 
 Eternal Light! Eternal Light! 
 
 How pure that soul must be, 
 When, placed within thy searching sight, 
 It shrinks not, but with calm delight, 
 
 Can live and look on thee ! 
 ***** 
 
 " We cannot commend ourselves to our fellow men by the cut 
 of our coats. The age in which we live is too earnest, too 
 realistic, for that. ... It will be by calling out the inner faculties of 
 others, by helping them in the development of their own Inner 
 Life, that we shall justify our mission to men. We shall have to 
 deal largely with doubters ; with those who seek God, and find 
 him not. What can we do with such, but throw them back upon 
 themselves, upon the moral nature within, and say to them, 
 * There, or nowhere, is God ! ' We have to help them to realise 
 
PREACHING IN LONDON. 211 
 
 their own Inner Life, to develop it, to work up, and up, and up 
 from it, till at last they grasp something of what God is in their 
 own inmost being, and in the whole Universe of being around 
 them." 
 
 The Religion of Here and Now. 
 {April isth, 1888.) 
 " As our lives are lived in the present, so most of our inspira- 
 tion should come from the present. Many a man gets muddled 
 and perplexed because he is taught to find his religion within 
 the covers of an ancient book. If such a man could grasp the 
 idea that Religion is to be found in life, in the life of his own 
 country, the Hfe of his own times, the life of his own home, 
 above all in his own individual life, he might find that he was 
 really a religious man, though he had not known it. ... I would 
 say to you, Think over the events of your own life, all the good 
 and the evil there have been in it, all your struggles, your failures, 
 your successes, all your love for others, all their love for you. 
 Ask yourself, ' What have I learned from all this ? What have 
 all these experiences taught me ? How have they taught me to 
 livel' Your real answer to these questions will be your real 
 religion before God. And I would urge you to stand by this 
 answer, always making it larger as life grows larger, deeper as 
 experience and insight deepen, but always standing hard by your 
 answer at any given time. That which you have learned from 
 life to live by, that is your religion." 
 
 Fellow Workers with God. 
 {College Sermon, May iWi, 1888.) 
 
 ** We hear much of the unity of Christendom. This concep- 
 tion of being fellow workers with God raises us to a height from 
 which even the unity of Christendom appears a petty, sectarian 
 thing. It is no more than the unity of one regiment of the 
 mighty army fighting for right against wrong — the mighty army 
 of God. We must rise far higher than that if we would grasp 
 this conception aright. . . . 
 
 "There was a time, not long ago, when man did not under 
 stand his right relationship with Nature. He feared her, trembled 
 before her, and saw in her mysterious forces of evil which did 
 
212 MY QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 not exist. Now man regards himself as a comrade of the great 
 Nature Forces. He even employs them in his service. He has 
 learned to master Nature by knowledge and obedience, and so 
 to conquer more and more the physical conditions of his life. 
 
 " In some such way must man learn to revise his notions of 
 God. As he has risen to regard himself as a Nature Power, 
 so must he rise to the conception that he is a God Power, 
 holding his own place in the Universe, and yet allied by closest 
 affinities with both Nature and God. In both the physical and 
 the spiritual world he will learn that the power and freedom of 
 his manhood lie in the mastery of obedience. As he already 
 stands and labours side by side with Nature, so must he learn to 
 stand and labour side by side with God. . . . This, I beheve, 
 will be the highest reward for the work to which we go forth — 
 that in it we shall find a field of action whereon God and man 
 meet." 
 
 God and the Home. 
 {Ja?iuary \st, 1889.) 
 
 " It is not only that Home gives us noble ideals of ourselves, 
 of Humanity, of God. It brings us into the presence of the deep 
 and eternal Reality of existence, the everlasting rock on which 
 our life is built up. There is a wonderful little poem of Clough's 
 which powerfully reveals this real element in our home relations. 
 
 When the dews are earliest falling, 
 When the evening glen is grey, 
 Ere thou lookest, ere thou speakest, 
 My beloved, 
 
 I depart, and I return to thee — 
 Return, return, return. 
 
 Dost thou watch me while I traverse 
 Haunts of men beneath the sun — 
 Dost thou list while I bespeak them 
 With a voice whose cheer is thine? 
 
 my brothers! men, my brothers, 
 You are mine and I am yours ; 
 
 1 am yours to cheer and succour, 
 I am yours for hope and aid : 
 
 Lo my hand to raise and stay you, 
 Lo, my arm to guard and keep, 
 My voice to rouse and warn you, 
 
PREACHING IN LONDON. 213 
 
 And my heart to warm and calm : 
 
 My heart to lend the life it owes 
 
 To her that is not here, 
 
 In the power of her that dwelleth 
 
 Where you know not — no, nor guess not — 
 
 Whom you see not; unto whom — 
 
 Ere the evening star hath sunken, 
 
 Ere the glow-worm lights its lamp, 
 
 Ere the wearied workman slumbers — 
 
 I return, return, return. 
 
 "Grand as this is, it is no merely ideal picture. It is a picture 
 of real life, realised life, life which is being lived amongst us day 
 by day. But we seldom think of the glory of it ; and then in- 
 adequately, as people in a dream. Yet it is here, in this world 
 of ours; and to me one of the brightest intimations of God's 
 presence with man, making faith in him a deep spiritual necessity. 
 
 " When we speak of God as the home of the soul, we have in 
 mind, doubtless, the thought of man going out from his home 
 in the morning and returning to it at night. So we think of man 
 as coming from God at his birth and going again to him when 
 his earthly life is done. Clough's poem suggests this idea also, 
 but it takes us still nearer the truth than that. It is not only 
 that from God we come and to God we return, but also that in 
 him we really live. He is the real existence in whom we ever 
 are. It is our existence in God which makes our being real. 
 The rest is all life's show and circumstance. This is life 
 itself . . . 
 
 " I have read works of Philosophy, hoping to find God so ; but 
 I found him not — only hints and suggestions that he might be 
 found, if only I could tell how and where. Now I have come 
 to see that here or nowhere is God — here, in the sacredness of 
 human love, in the mystery of human communion, in the deep 
 underlying reality of a shared life. For it is true, in more senses 
 than one, that what we share we are; that what we live in others, 
 and what they live in us, is our real being ; and that God is the 
 permanent ReaHty which makes possible this giving and taking 
 of life. This is the fellowship which we have one with another ; 
 this is the fellowship which we have with God. . . . 
 
 "Jesus was a greater realist than Zola. He took a little child, 
 and set him in the midst of his disciples, and then he took the 
 little child in his arms, and thus pressed to his bosom some- 
 
214 ^y QUEST FOR GOD 
 
 thing of the deep reaUty of life, and made his dull disciples under- 
 stand something of that reality too. Zola has never dreamed 
 of such intense realism as that. Emerson, too, was a greater 
 realist than he, when he wrote to Carlyle of his year-old boy as 
 ' a little bud of God.' 
 
 "'The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament 
 showeth his handiwork ' ; but surely the stars do not speak to us 
 so persuasively of him as our homes do. We talk of worshipping 
 God in the cathedral of Nature whose vast vault is the sky ; but 
 surely it is in the more sacred shrine of our own homes that we 
 enter most closely into communion with the Father of our spirits. 
 We study Philosophy in the hope of finding that beneath the 
 fleeting show of life there is a Reality which abides ; but surely 
 the truest Philosopher is he who best understands the Reality 
 revealed to him at home. We read our Bibles, and study the 
 Religions of the world, trying to touch the fringe of God's garment 
 so; but in our home life is our truest Bible, our sacred book, 
 our story of God's life on earth with man." 
 
 Immortality and the Springtide. 
 (April 2isf, 1889.) 
 
 " To return to the Springtide, and its hints of a renewal of life 
 beyond the grave. Because trees deck themselves with leaf and 
 flower after their winter's sleep, are we to argue that, therefore, 
 man is immortal ? It is needless to say that all through Nature 
 there is absolutely no proof of the doctrine that man shall live 
 through the eternal years of God. Yet the Springtide gladdens 
 us, and fills us with hope, and we feel nearer to the heart of God 
 than at any other season of the year. How is this ? In a 
 despondent mood, indeed, it may well be that even Spring should 
 suggest death and destruction. Sitting at the foot of a black 
 poplar, for instance, we see the ground far around us crimsoned 
 over with multitudes of flowers, fallen only to decay. Even if 
 their red pollen have first fructified some germ of another tree, 
 it is probable that not one seed so formed shall ever be sufficiently 
 favoured as to grow up into a tree. Thus the Spring suggests 
 to us the waste as well as the profusion of life ; and yet for most 
 of us it makes our hearts glad with hope. How is this ? 
 
 " It is that, amidst all this renewal of fife, we discern but a 
 
PREACHING IN LONDON. 215 
 
 passing show ; that thought compels us to seek an eternal element 
 of which this show is but the ever changing surface ; and that 
 man himself, the thinker, shares, not only in the varying scene, 
 but also in the eternal element which underlies it, and makes it 
 possible. When we understand this, then the exuberance and 
 waste of life around us, by their very antithesis, set us musing 
 on eternity, and on our own eternity. And so the beautiful pro- 
 fusion of Spring makes us glad, because we feel that God is about 
 us, working in the laboratory of Nature, thus stimulating us into 
 action who share in his own being. Only can we truly feel at 
 home with Nature when we feel at home with God ; only in real 
 love with Nature when we are in love with God. 
 
 " Above all, the scenes of Nature can only have real meaning 
 and helpfulness for us as they stand for physical types, not 
 merely of spiritual experience, but of our own spiritual experience. 
 Thus the renewal of life in a tree can have little significance for 
 us — it can appeal only to our artistic and not to our spiritual 
 nature — save as we have had our own inner life renewed from 
 time to time, and have thus gained hints of a Power which is 
 always equal to such spiritual as well as physical regeneration. 
 So far as we have awakened to righteousness, so far as our own 
 souls have really lived, so far as from our periods of moral 
 slumber we have been aroused to newness of life, just so far will 
 the bursting life of the Spring bring us into fellowship with the 
 Eternal Life, the Father of our spirits, and teach us to wait in 
 confidence on him through whom we are. Otherwise this glad 
 season may seem beautiful as a love-letter — but with the pathetic 
 beauty of a love-letter not written to us. Nature, like music, 
 takes up and intensifies our moods. What we are, that Nature 
 is to us. It sings us our own song, it tells us the message that 
 we bring, it carols the gladness of our own hearts, or it utters the 
 wail of our own despair. 
 
 " And so this show of life, if it is to mean anything real to us, 
 if it is to enter into our rehgious life, demands an exegesis 
 infinitely more difficult and delicate than that which is taught 
 the youthful student preparing for the ministry — an exegesis 
 whose importance makes that other shrink into all but absolute 
 insignificance. Life is a vast mirror in which we see what we are. 
 
 " Then all interpretations of life must be false ! — Not so ; but 
 rather this solemn truth, which it is for us deeply to ponder. 
 
2 '6 MY QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 The truer the man, the truer the meaning he finds in life Here 
 IS the bitterest curse of our ignorance, our weakness, our folly 
 our sm, that they blind our eyes, and dull our sense for appre- 
 hending the real meaning of things. 
 
 _ " For this reason the preaching of the doctrine of Immortality 
 IS a matter of comparative indifference to me. I may be preaching 
 It to one whose own life gives him no warrant for believing in it 
 Sadder still, for me; I may, myself, have no right to believe in 
 It. I may tell you my hopes ; but does my spiritual condition 
 justify them ? Does yours justify you in sharing them ? Under 
 any circumstances they can only spring out of our own inner life 
 
 The great interpreters of Nature, those alone who can be of 
 any real ;help to us, are those who looked on life for themselves, 
 at farst hand, those who had a strong inner life of their own to 
 guide and sustain them in their search for truth. And it is onlv 
 as we share their inwardness, their independence, their personality, 
 that they can truly help us. To be of real service, they must be 
 to us travelling companions rather than guides, comrades rather 
 than masters, friends rather than teachers. The attitude of 
 discipleship is fatal to us, and also does them wrong. We call 
 such men Seers, and so they are; but we can see no vision 
 through their eyes. They may point us where to look, and tell 
 us what they see; but we must behold for ourselves, and can 
 live only on what we behold. ... . «ii 
 
 "Every revelation of God is personal and private; it cannot 
 be communicated at second hand. Others may try to show us 
 where they have found the water of life, but they cannot draw for 
 us The way in which some people choose their religion reminds 
 me of a self-made man who was suddenly raised to the mayoralty 
 of a large provincial town. He sent to London for patterns of 
 coats of arms, from which to select one to adorn his carriage; not 
 understanding that but one coat of arms, if any, was possible for 
 him, namely, his own. It is thus with our religion also 
 
 " I think we cannot too strongly insist that the only alternative 
 to accepting our beliefs upon authority lies in that enjoyment of 
 an original relation to the universe of which Emerson speaks 
 Our attitude must be either that of those who gaze into the 
 vacated tomb, and return full of the joy of immortal hope ; or of 
 those who look abroad on Nature, and interpret all they see 
 from the experiences of their own hearts, and the determinations 
 
PREACHING IN LONDON. 217 
 
 of their own thoughts, always understanding that, no more in 
 ReHgion than in Science, can man ever know all, but that he 
 can ever be learning more. But if we accept this latter alterna- 
 tive, what a burden of responsibility it brings ! We need no 
 longer charge our consciences with accepting as true documents 
 which wise men tell us are of very doubtful authenticity. We 
 may be able to read weighty reasons for concluding that Jesus 
 never preached the Sermon on the Mount or uttered the Lord's 
 Prayer, without any thought that such conclusions have any 
 relation to our religious life. But though we no longer lie under 
 the very heavy responsibility of taking our religion from a book, 
 and of demanding that others shall do likewise, we lie under a 
 burden of obligation still harder to bear, namely, that of making 
 our own lives and consciences so true that they shall be the 
 means of giving us an interpretation of life, not absolutely true, but 
 on the lines of truth, and of progress towards higher knowledge. 
 
 "There are times when such a responsibility seems to me 
 appalling, overwhelming, especially when I regard my position 
 among you here. Do you wonder that, when I recognise how 
 my own version of life's meaning may be marred by my own 
 weakness, I shrink from preaching doctrines and conclusions, and 
 take refuge in insisting upon methods rather than beliefs, and above 
 all upon the individual responsibihty of each of us to develop his 
 own best life ? When I remind you of all the beauties of the 
 Spring, when I recall scenes in which I have renewed my own 
 life through the renewal of the life of Earth, when I tell you 
 of the memories of the meanings which those scenes had for me, 
 and how they still inspire my life, I cannot forget that my own 
 version of them has been both made and marred by the character 
 of my own inner life — made by every successful struggle with 
 weakness, marred by every fall into sin ; and that, but for constant 
 and repeated failures in the development of inward strength, not 
 only my preaching, but my whole life, might be more blessed in 
 power for good, as well as my apprehension of truth more in 
 accordance with the reality of things. For I know that the joy 
 that the Springtide brings to me is feeble and inconstant com- 
 pared with that which a stronger nature would feel, and that the 
 faith in God and Immortality which it suggests to me is poor 
 and ineffectual compared with what it would be were I myself 
 more faithful. 
 
2i8 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 " This is the burden of responsibihty which the enjoyment of 
 an original relation to the universe lays upon us. But what a 
 spur and incentive to life, too ! Springtide meaningless to us 
 unless we find its meaning in our own hearts ! No hint of 
 immortality there unless we ourselves have begun to live the 
 immortal life ! Our dear Mother Earth, even when decking 
 herself afresh with her bright new robes, not felt to be ' godlike 
 and my Father's,' unless we find the Eternal Spirit of life to be 
 the Father of our own spirit also ! 
 
 " But, on the other hand, what magnificent possibilities of life 
 such a view of Religion opens out to us ! What infinite room 
 for expansion ! What a splendid continent for conquest ! What 
 reward, too, for all the struggles of life successfully passed through, 
 that the result of each is a more abundant entrance into fellow- 
 ship and communion with God ! This is no vague or vain dream. 
 The men who have conquered themselves have been they who 
 have conquered life. The men who have been great in their 
 own hearts have been they who have brought a message of 
 comfort and cheer to their fellows. The men who have ever 
 fought their way forward, against difficulty without and weakness 
 within, are they who have given a new significance to our earthly 
 life, and have helped the world so much nearer to God. For 
 this individual view of Religion does not mean that we can do 
 nothing for our fellow men, and that they can do nothing for us. 
 Though we may not adopt another's conclusions, we may and 
 must help each other to live. This is what our public worship 
 means, what all our intercourse with each other means, what all 
 our work for the world means. We are helping each other to 
 live ; and life is the interpreter of Life." 
 
CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 MANCHESTER MINISTRY. 
 
 It was in November, 1888, that my work at Little Portland 
 Street Chapel commenced; and in June, 1890, that I became 
 minister at Upper Brook Street Free Church, Manchester. When 
 I received the latter appointment, I realised at once that the 
 opportunity of my life had come ; and that if I could not find my 
 work in Manchester, there would be the end of all my dreams. 
 
 I have said already that preaching and working hindered rather 
 than helped the growth of my spiritual life ; while, on the other 
 hand, my eyes were being opened to the necessary relation 
 between Politics and Religion. In this I was undoubtedly helped 
 beyond my knowledge by such intercourse as I enjoyed with Mr. 
 Wicksteed. This intercourse did not amount to much, for he left 
 me absolutely free in the conduct of my work, and when we did 
 meet we usually had a deal of " shop " to talk over. But he is 
 too full a man for even shop talk not to let out something ; and 
 in himself he embodied a very deep and strong religious life 
 and insight, together with the grip of a specialist on economic 
 problems. 
 
 I cannot say how deeply indebted I am to this man who, since 
 first we met, has remained my constant friend and helper. I 
 have so many causes to feel grateful to him — perhaps this the 
 chief — that, from the first, he understood what I meant by 
 the Labour Church. Long before any one else understood, the 
 knowledge of his sympathy with my work cheered and sustained 
 me through many a dark hour. Indeed, I have often said that 
 he knew more of the meaning of my work than I myself did ; 
 and with the new insight I have gained of late into the real 
 nature of what I have been doing, I can see that I spoke truly. 
 Only those can realise the value of such sympathy who have 
 faced the world alone with a new thought, evolved, not by 
 
 219 
 
220 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 scientific, but by spiritual methods— a thought to be fully verified 
 to the world only in some distant future. When, in times of 
 trouble, perplexity and loneliness, I have wondered whether I 
 was but a fool and a crank to stick to my idea, the knowledge 
 that Philip Wicksteed believed in it has saved me from falling 
 into the dungeon of Doubting Castle. 
 
 My acceptance of Socialism, as the great constructive principle 
 of future industrial and social development, was of slow growth. 
 Naturally I recognised the one-sidedness of the Sociahst gospel, 
 and this was a great hindrance to me. It was really only when[ 
 in Manchester, I came into touch, not merely with Socialist 
 theory, but with the life of the Socialist movement, that I began 
 to see its significance more clearly. Meanwhile I was simply 
 drifting into it from extreme aversion to the results of Individualism, 
 and the hopelessness of finding any remedy for them by Individua- 
 list methods. In London these results were appallingly apparent, 
 including the degradation incurred by the successful person! 
 I realised fully that Society was in a state of chaos ; just held 
 together by its old clothes, liable to burst into shreds at any 
 crisis ; and that only a new life could save it. It was because I 
 found the beginning of this new Hfe among the Socialists, that 
 I have since identified myself with them. Before leaving London 
 I said to Mr. Wicksteed, " Can you say anything to stop me from 
 being a Socialist?" He answered, "No; I'm afraid I can't." 
 And my reply was, " I'm gone then." It must not, however, be 
 inferred from this that Mr. Wicksteed is a Socialist. Certainly 
 he would not accept the name without considerable qualification. 
 
 My work in London was chiefly connected with the organisation 
 of Clubs for young people. I saw a good deal of similar work 
 in other parts of London. But by the time I went to Manchester 
 I had concluded that, in face of the real problem, all such work 
 was useless. It was inspired by no revolutionary principle. It 
 was really a conservative force. To seek to elevate the masses 
 by contact with the classes, apart from the inculcation of some 
 revolutionary principle, appears to me as sensible as to seek to 
 reform a boy by sending him to herd with criminals. The vice 
 of all the work of superior people is, that they wish to make the 
 working man what they themselves are. Personally, I like the 
 working man better as he is. The real value of such work is its 
 value to the superior person. 
 
MANCHESTER MINISTRY. 221 
 
 I went to Manchester with another deep feeUng— that of the 
 frightful gulf between the Churches and the World, and of the 
 helplessness of the Churches in facing the World's problems. 
 I already had the instinct developed, half unconsciously, that 
 the World was vastly greater than all the Churches in it. Indeed, 
 the Churches seemed to make a very small show indeed compared 
 with what the World outside was doing. My ideal in going to 
 Manchester was the very ambitious one of building up a Church 
 somewhat equal to the occasion. It was very foolish, but not 
 wholly discreditable. I had not the ability to do it, not to name 
 other limitations. What a Church asks of its minister is to be 
 sent home to eat its dinner in peace and quietness. For Sunday 
 is a day of rest, and of forgetfulness of all one's labours ; and 
 a good deal may be said on behalf of this hygienic religious 
 influence. But what I wanted of those hard-worked Manchester 
 people who asked me to preach to them was, that they should 
 not be able any longer to eat their Sunday dinner in peace and 
 quietness, but with severe self-questionings as to their right to 
 have any dinner at all in a city of such hideous squalor. 
 
 In this matter I had been misled somewhat by memories of 
 my orthodox days. Then the popular preacher was the man who 
 would make people think most of their sins ; and I thought that, 
 human nature being the same everywhere, I might safely follow 
 his example. But I forgot a few things in drawing this con- 
 clusion. The sins were of a very different character, and I could 
 point to no easy way of escape from them. Indeed, I had the 
 worst vice of a preacher. I sent the people home perplexed and 
 uncomfortable. One of my hearers, a large employer of labour, 
 once said to me, " Your predecessor always made me feel satisfied 
 with my life and work ; you never do." 
 
 Besides, I was a poor preacher. I was not physically strong 
 enough to reproduce in the pulpit the deep feelings of the study. 
 The preparation of my sermons cost me too much for me to be 
 able to deliver them freely. It used me up completely. I over- 
 worked myself, too, and slept badly. I never had the faculty 
 of adjusting my burden to my strength. A stronger man might 
 have said all that I said, and yet have given satisfaction ; for 
 eloquence alone has a tendency to mesmerise people, if used 
 to that end by a master. Also, beside my social heresies, I 
 was getting quite hopeless about Unitarianism developing into 
 
222 MY QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 anything better. Its deadness weighed upon me — its utter power- 
 lessness to appeal to the people, and to become a force in their 
 awakening and emancipation. Though I could not call myself 
 a Unitarian, yet I felt my own religious convictions implicated 
 in the Unitarian situation. Was the advance that I advocated 
 towards freedom and natural development simply another step 
 towards the extinction of religious enthusiasm and popular fervour ? 
 Was I doomed to work on in an ever narrowing circle, content 
 to know that I was too wise for the people to understand me, that 
 I had reached too near the truth for the crowd to appreciate 
 my message ? Where I had seen any " advanced " Unitarianism, 
 it seemed to me to differ little from Secularism, and really to 
 have taken the final step towards extinction. Every way I was 
 worried, and the more so that I was in so responsible a position, 
 and had in hand so great an opportunity. 
 
 Moreover, I was wrought up by an accident. Not long before 
 going to Manchester, I was kept in bed for nearly a month by 
 a badly sprained knee, which left me lame for nearly a year after. 
 My wages were not stopped, friends called to see me, grapes and 
 other delicacies followed — and while in bed I read the final 
 Report of the Sweating Commission. The whole thing burned 
 me. I vowed that on my first Sunday in Manchester I would 
 preach on this terrible Report — in Manchester, which had given 
 its name to all that I was politically opposed to. But I was not 
 clever enough. One cannot be everything. And I was already 
 worn out with my work in London, and my lame knee kept me 
 from calling on the people. Doubtless, too, I suffered from 
 swelled head as well as swollen heart. 1 am very, very sorry about 
 it all — for the Church's sake. For myself, it was indeed my 
 opportunity. And that is how it has always been as between 
 myself and Unitarianism. 
 
 This period was one of deep domestic trouble also. Two more 
 boys had been born in London, and the youngest of them was 
 slowly dying. From three months old he fell off, and died when 
 we had been nearly a year in Manchester. When the end came, 
 we knew the sorrow of being thankful that the little one had 
 left us. From this lingering death, and all its associations, my 
 wife never recovered her spirits. 
 
 It was a restless unhappy time, only lived through by hard 
 work. What strikes me most as I look back on it is the amount 
 
MANCHESTER MINISTRY, 223 
 
 of impudence which it needs to get things in this world made 
 better, and just now the thought that this impudence was forth- 
 coming depresses me. Is there not sorrow enough in the world, 
 without our adding to it by the disturbances we make with our 
 discontent ? Is there not goodness enough in the world, but we 
 must set ourselves to upset people and institutions to make them 
 better ? Why could not I at Manchester have taken things more 
 good naturedly, and with more common-sense ? Why could not 
 I have devoted my time and strength to building up the personal 
 life of the good people around me, and to making my own home 
 more happy ? What fate is it that makes some of us so uncom- 
 fortable to live with and work with ; and, by burdening us with 
 ideas, makes us such a burden to those who look to us for support 
 and comfort ? Is it not possible to reform the world without all 
 this sacrifice of peace and happiness ? 
 
 No. There is no other way. All we can do is to make the 
 burden we impose on others as light as possible, and to cheer 
 them as much as possible. But who that is absorbed in an idea 
 does this ? Who that feels the burden of injustice and oppression 
 and wrong in the world can be just to all the goodness and help- 
 fulness there are around him, and can give his life to his home 
 as others may? From morning to night I worked, on and on 
 and on, sometimes far into the night, because I had the frenzy 
 in me to make the world better ; because I had a Church about 
 me which I wanted to be a great living power for religious and 
 social reformation. How clumsy and bungling and heartless it 
 all seems now as I look back upon it ! But I visited the police 
 courts, and the common lodging houses in Angel Meadow, and 
 how could I help myself? Even the lives of the women who 
 came to do our washing were so appallingly wretched, that I 
 felt I could not bear the love of my own home if I did not do 
 all in my power to remove the causes of such helpless misery. 
 But I often think that we who feel called of God to attempt some 
 great work in the world are not so near to him as the strong 
 and patient souls of the wives who make the burden of our work 
 bearable — as if we were men with blood on our hands, and 
 blood-guiltiness in our hearts — and then I envy those who can say. 
 
 The daily round, the common task, 
 Can furnish all I need to ask ; 
 Room to deny myself, a road 
 To lead me nearer to my God. 
 
224 ^y QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 It is in such lives that the steadfast beauty of human Hfe is 
 seen, rather than in the Hves of those who rush forward to do 
 the rough work of the world. In them there is the quiet pose, 
 the strong completeness, the struggle concealed by patience, 
 which makes of them a mighty work of art, an interpretation of 
 the Infinite Quiet which lives at the heart of this stormy whirl 
 of being. The slight records which remain of this time reveal 
 to me how much my wife bore silently while I was bustling 
 around with my work. As it all comes home to me, I feel as 
 though I could not dare to meet her again in a life more real 
 and deep than this. Womanhood ! Wifehood ! Motherhood ! 
 The mystery of the abandonment of self-realisation, and therein 
 coming nearest to the realisation and the revelation of God ! 
 
 I cannot bear to dwell on the memories of those days, and yet 
 I cannot bear to leave them in order to tell of the brooding in 
 my own mind which led to the birth of the Labour Church. It 
 seems almost a desecration to change the subject. And yet I 
 cannot say what I want to say about it. As before some great 
 work of Art, or some vast scene of Nature, I wish to hnger, and 
 gaze, and dream deep into the Infinite Soul of Life. Woman's 
 love, woman's patience, woman's strength, woman's life— all 
 given, given, given ! My own life still impossible, save as it 
 is cradled in a woman's love ! 
 
 I know there are those who think woman's life wasted when 
 given to man so. But they forget God. His being there makes 
 all the difference. Reckoning with him, self-realisation is not a 
 means but an end— the means, giving ourselves away— the man 
 no less than the woman, though each differently, it may be. 
 But all doctrines on this question are hopelessly inadequate— 
 the new no less than the old. My wife and I often discussed 
 them, but never with any result beyond this— that we were glad 
 we were married. For the world, we could discover no rule to 
 guide it. 
 
 We are on an ocean where the waves cross and re-cross, and 
 shift and change with every changing gale. In fair weather we 
 look down deep into the glorious blue, and dream of hiding- 
 places of beauty and repose, and palace caves of eternal joy and 
 calm. But we are built to cross the ocean. If the wind lulls 
 and goes to sleep, and we are rocked by the smooth billows 
 without making any way, we grow impatient with our craft, and 
 
MANCHESTER MINISTRY. 225 
 
 fill her with engines and boilers and furnaces, and force her 
 through storm and calm to the haven where we would be. 
 There are no rules— no rules— only endless difficulties, endless 
 energy to meet them, and God within all. When we have got 
 our newest theories to work, it will still be the same— difficulty, 
 bewilderment, courage, peace ; and nothing ever for long, because 
 we cannot choose but grow. 
 
 Just now these memories rise like blinding spray, falling deadly 
 cold ; but I hear no order to slow up. We are very great. It 
 is the God in us that fills me with these discontents, and that ere 
 long will let me join again in the laughter of the gods. For man 
 can only express the infinity in his finite nature by being every- 
 thing in turns. To allow himself to be bound by his finity to a 
 rigid consistency, is to lower himself to a conventional person or 
 a crank. Let us live with the gods in the open, and laugh with 
 them, and weep. 
 
 15 
 
CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 THE LABOUR CHURCH. 
 
 I FELT that the four walls of that Church in Manchester were 
 like the four walls of a grave, and the roof like the earth above ; 
 but I had no sense of daisies and lesser celandines springing in 
 humble loveliness from the turf. Like Christianity in my earlier 
 days, so now this Church was a prison to my soul ; and I felt it 
 to be a prison to all the souls in it, though they did not. I said 
 on my first Sunday, " We must get outside these four walls." I 
 still believed that the tomb might open, and the dead come forth. 
 It was I who had to come forth. But if one could really raise 
 a Church to life, to go forth unitedly into the world of men and 
 women with all its cerements shed ; to maintain itself, firm and 
 solid as a rock, in the midst of the rushing river of human woe ; 
 to stand, as it ought to stand, on man's side and on God's side 
 against every form of wrong ; to think, and learn, and work, and 
 love its way through every difficulty that man puts in the way 
 of man ! 
 
 It was a vain dream. I asked my friend Wicksteed the other 
 day why Wordsworth never completed his great poetic work. I 
 had thought that perhaps his apparent loss of that insight which 
 he had at the time of the outbreak of the French Revolution was 
 the reason— that he had missed his way through the rivers of 
 blood that flowed from that source— and so the virtue went out 
 of him which he had when he projected that great Poem fore- 
 shadowed in the magnificent fragment of the Recluse. Why 
 had he never completed his life task ? Wicksteed replied, " Be- 
 cause he was not man enough." And that was why I had to 
 leave Upper Brook Street Free Church— the reason that I must 
 accept for myself, whatever reasons other people may choose to 
 give. 
 
 For one thing, I had not yet found what I was seeking — the 
 
 226 
 
THE LABOUR CHURCH, 227 
 
 way to take my subjective religion into the great life of the 
 world. I had not yet seen that what I sought was simply to 
 repeat the old mistake of the Churches over again. I had not 
 learned that what I needed was to discover the subjective 
 religion of the world itself — the real religion of the world, as 
 distinguished from the one talked about — the sub-conscious 
 religion, which my conscious religious life must help towards 
 self-consciousness. Indeed, it is only to-day that I can see what 
 I was driving at, and what all my work has meant. 
 
 A friend once described me as a man of the study, but he was 
 wrong. Circumstances compel me to do my work in a study; 
 but it is not here that I have learned the world's needs, but in 
 the world itself. The man of the study never does a thing which 
 he does not know all about. I have acted, and am now thrown 
 into oblivion for a time that I may learn the meaning of what I 
 did. Books have their place ; but if I had learned chiefly from 
 books, or built up my ideals in the study, and tried to apply 
 them to life itself, then I should never have found myself in the 
 world's swirling current, almost washed away. To the man who 
 lives, his study is not his school but his workshop. It is 
 important that this should be understood. But I am not saying 
 that his study walls should not be lined with books. 
 
 And I can further see to-day that my subjective religious life 
 was not strong enough, not yet sufficiently conscious of itself, to 
 do the work I had laid out for it. Had it been otherwise, I 
 should not have had so restless a time, and my spiritual life 
 would not have been arrested by preaching and work as it was. 
 It was not a retrogression, however. In the quest on which I 
 was now set, I lost nothing that I had previously gained, but 
 I did not keep up my proficiency by practice, through being 
 preoccupied with other things. It happened to me as to one 
 who is learning to skate, and who has not gained proficiency 
 because the frosts have not lasted long enough. Yet, when 
 winter returns, the learner finds he has lost nothing by the long 
 intervention of other activities. He begins again where last 
 winter he left off. 
 
 This fact in the religious life is one worth considering, because 
 it illustrates what I am always insisting on — that Religion is an 
 Art in the first place. An art is never forgotten by disuse. A 
 man can never forget how to walk, or skate, or swim, or ride a 
 
228 MY QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 bicycle. He can never forget how to dig, or plough, or mow, 
 or drive a horse. He can never forget how to wield a hammer, 
 or a chisel, or a brush. I have sometimes done no drawing 
 whatever for a long period, and yet, on returning to it, have 
 found that I could manage the pencil or brush somewhat better 
 than when I used them last. I had forgotten nothing ; but, on 
 the other hand, had gained something which made me more the 
 master of my tools. 
 
 Of course, in returning to an art, there is a certain stiffness or 
 weakness of muscle to overcome, the result of long disuse ; but 
 there is no such thing as having to learn an art twice, once it 
 has been fairly mastered. I cannot imagine a man, who had 
 learned to swim as a boy, ever going into the water wondering 
 whether he would be able to swim, even though he had not 
 swum for twenty or thirty years. Directly he got into the water 
 he would have the swim-feeling all over him, and would spontan- 
 eously throw himself forward and strike out. Of course he would 
 soon tire, and have to rest ; but he would swim with the same 
 confidence and the same stroke as when he was a boy so many 
 years back. 
 
 An art, once acquired, becomes part of the man — mental and 
 physical. It cannot be forgotten as knowledge can. You cannot 
 forget what you can do, as you can forget what you know. And 
 so it is in the religious life, when once you dare to learn how to 
 live from life itself. Base your religion on a book, and the book 
 may be upset, and your religion go with it, at any rate for a long 
 time. Determine that you will base your religion on your own 
 experiences — which means that you will guide your life day by 
 day by your own conclusions — and whatever art of living you 
 acquire you will never lose. Circumstances may hinder you from 
 practising it, your own folly and sin may hinder you, too; but 
 what you have once really acquired has become part of what you 
 are. The man who has once swum knows all over him that he 
 could swim if he jumped into the water. The man who has 
 once lived in real communion with God equally well knows all 
 over him that, however he may have shut the door of that com- 
 munion, it is there for him to enter upon again when he wills, 
 or when he can. For I have lately learned that there are physical 
 conditions under which real communion with God is impossible, 
 while knowledge of the reality of it and confidence in the renewal 
 
THE LABOUR CHURCH. 12C) 
 
 of it still remain. Such is the abiding reality of a spiritual life 
 that has really been made one's own. 
 
 I have dwelt on this subject here, because it gives some 
 answer to a question which used to trouble me in my days of 
 doubt. I used to wonder how it was possible for a man to have 
 any permanent " assurance of faith," without the enlightenment 
 and support of a special divine revelation. I find that provision 
 is made for that in the way in which we are built — that anything 
 which we have practised into self-consciousness is never really 
 lost. I cannot imagine that the time will ever come, whatever 
 my preoccupations meanwhile, or whatever my folly or sin, when 
 I shall be able to look myself or the universe steadfasdy in the 
 face, and not realise that I stand in the presence and am sup- 
 ported by the power of God. On the bosom of the Eternal Sea 
 of Life I know that I can cast myself, without the least thought 
 of being lost in its depths. All of which is becoming clearer to 
 me even as I am writing this. 
 
 And now, as I look back to this time in Manchester, it appears 
 to me that, when our life with God does become quite real, we 
 need not trouble much about its constant presence in self- 
 consciousness. It was necessary that I should discover the 
 relation between my own inner life and the inner life of the world, 
 and it was worth resting on my attainments in self-consciousness 
 to develop the beginnings of a world-consciousness, each of which 
 would, in time, act and react on the other. As to what I have 
 called my spiritual life, I see now that God was making ample 
 provision for its further growth. 
 
 And there is another thing that I have seen of late. In the 
 earlier part of this story I have shown clearly that I went through 
 a great deal of struggle and strife to find my way to God. In 
 noting how frequently the word " struggle " crops up in my 
 sermons, I have been at times almost amused, and at other times 
 have wondered whether I was not now going back from all that 
 into a lower form of life. 
 
 Some few years since I began to learn, in a measure, that 
 struggling was not living, so much as learning to live. I now see 
 that real living is only attained in so far as we have learned to 
 confidently abandon ourselves to life, as the trained artist abandons 
 himself to his art. The swimmer does not struggle to swim, or 
 the skater to skate, or the painter to paint. The beginner does 
 
230 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 that ; but the time comes when, in the sense in which I mean, 
 the days of struggling are over, and boldness and freedom grow. 
 It is so in any real religious life. The day comes when we live 
 most truly by abandonment rather than by struggle, when our 
 freest and most fearless moments are our highest and best, and 
 when want of confidence in abandonment would mean a falling 
 back into the lower struggling life, and a failure to discover new 
 possibilities of living, by the revelation of which we might clear 
 our own vision and help our fellow men. 
 
 From this point of view it seems to me that in Manchester I 
 was simply trusting the spiritual life I had reached through many 
 struggles, and that my struggles then had to go to finding a more 
 definite place for Religion in the arena of affairs. What I had 
 gained for myself could only grow larger, for myself, even, by 
 taking it out to find its place and its work in the great world. It 
 is not that all the desperate wrestling was unnecessary. This is 
 the error of the purely Pagan view of life — or what we conven- 
 tionally call the Pagan view. We dream of doing things easily 
 and naturally as the great artist wields his brush. Our danger is 
 in mistaking the end for the means. It is the danger of all 
 doctrines of Freedom — Antinomian, Pagan or Anarchist. In 
 every art, freedom can only be gained by hard work and discipline. 
 The inspiration of the artist makes the hard work bearable 
 and fruitful. It is so with the Art of Life. Freedom is an 
 inward possession, the secret of which must be earned and learned 
 by wresding with Fate. 
 
 In our religious life, we struggle with the mysteries and diflEi- 
 culties which beset our God-ward path. Then, when we have 
 found God, life becomes simply an act of confident giving up to 
 the inward Will at whatever cost. What wrestling there may be 
 in this life will be of a different type — as that of Jesus at Geth- 
 semane. For the Art of Living with God is no Art for Art's 
 sake, but Art consecrated to a purpose which, in this life, may 
 bring tragic results — from the world's standpoint. If an artist 
 to-day, who had worked hard until he could safely abandon him- 
 self to his Art, were also to abandon himself to God, it is 
 conceivable that his pictures would not sell — if, indeed, God 
 allowed him to continue that work. Jesus learned his Art 
 among the lovely hills of Galilee, where the birds sang, and the 
 flowers bloomed, and the people lived simple lives. His religion 
 
THE LABOUR CHURCH. 231 
 
 had all the freedom and careless ease of a summer's day. Then 
 God took him to Jerusalem. Jesus remained master of the Art 
 he had learned — the Art of Living with God — but the noonday 
 summer's sun of Galilee set in blood on Calvary. 
 
 This was no Art for Art's sake. And I can see now the answer 
 to many questionings I have had of late about my own condition. 
 It has seemed to me that, with all my confidence in God, life 
 ought to be an easy thing ; and indeed, so far as my own inner 
 life goes, I find in it an ease and confidence that I have never 
 known before. Why, then, is not my work easy too ? Why all 
 these difficulties and anxieties which have gone near to killing 
 me, or worse than killing me ? If I really lived with God, would 
 not my life be strong and glad all through, as that of Nature in 
 Spring or of Jesus in Galilee? In hours of deep depression, 
 when all I could do was to bear, I have felt that my whole 
 religious life was challenged, and that if I really had any true 
 life with God, I ought to be able to rouse myself. As the 
 Jews mocked Jesus, so have I mocked myself — If you think 
 yourself God's, rise up out of that ! 
 
 I have also thought, at times, that, having given myself to 
 God and the People, God ought not to let me suffer so. And 
 then I have remembered that God let Jesus pass through 
 Gethsemane to the Cross. And it has seemed all a dark mystery, 
 with no outlook ; all I could do being to sit in the darkness 
 and wait, while trouble and difficulty refused to wait. 
 
 I see it now. The Art of Living with God is Art with a 
 Purpose. In the country I had learned the Art. In Manchester 
 I learned the Purpose. Then these years of ever increasing 
 difficulty began, my way now at last seeming nearly closed up, 
 and I only able to write this as a forlorn hope, on the strength 
 of a physician's poisonous drugs. 
 
 I see it, but I do not in the least understand it. It is 
 part of the whole mystery of Evil, and of the "Education 
 of God," which we must accept and live by along with the other 
 facts of life. No doctrine can be wormed out of it. Nor Church 
 nor Priest can base any claim upon it. It is a fact which we 
 must simply accept as a fact, if we would be always living in 
 constant newness of life. So far as you doctrinise the fact you 
 fossilise it, and this is one of those living facts which God has 
 not yet done with. 
 
232 MY QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 I have dreamed the Pagan dream. Year by year I have 
 found my life growing up from bondage to inward freedom. 
 Indeed, when first I thought of writing this story, From Bondage 
 TO Freedom was the title I thought of giving to it. It is part 
 of the truth, and a part which will again inspire me when this 
 cloud is overpast. I am not bound as I once was. I do not 
 struggle as I once did. In abandonment I have found repose 
 and strength, and at times the very presence of God when I was 
 least thinking of him. That has only happened in Galilee. In 
 Jerusalem I have not found God so. Galilee and Jerusalem — 
 Paganism and Christianity — this life of ours streaked with 
 dualism all through — as though with flowers and blood, the song 
 of birds and the death cry of a mighty spirit. Life is a Mission, 
 as Mazzini has told us. Life and song, sunshine and laughter, 
 freedom and confidence — and then the Mission, seeming to 
 come as fire from Heaven, to scorch it all up — a sacrifice to God 
 and the People, if we will to make it so. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 HOW THE IDEA CAME 
 
 I INTENDED to Write about the Labour Church in the last chapter. 
 Perhaps I shall be more successful here. The difficulty is that, 
 as I write now, thoughts grow out of the memories of the past, 
 and light falls across them, and I see more of the meaning of 
 things than ever I did before. 
 
 I was not satisfied with a sentimental religion, a personal 
 religion, a religion that saved the individual from the world. I 
 wanted a religion that would place a man and a Church side by 
 side with God, as fellow workers with him in unfolding the 
 progressive life of Humanity. That is what I meant by wanting 
 that Church to be a power in Manchester, and to take its 
 rightful place in the revolution of civic affairs. 
 
 I was not going to try Clubs again, and the Pleasant Sunday 
 Afternoon seemed altogether too funny— indeed, something worse 
 than funny, after a visit to Angel Meadow or the Police Courts. 
 It appeared to me that the Churches were making game of God 
 and the Poor. I learned what I could of what others were 
 doing, joining in where there was any opportunity of real 
 usefulness. But they all seemed fooling with the great Social 
 Cancer — or practising their virtues on it. 
 
 In this rooting about I came across a small group of Anarchists, 
 organised as a branch of the Socialist League. One of these 
 was a remarkable man— Anarchist, Communist, Revolutionist, 
 Atheist, and of course very poor. But he was a man of great 
 ability, and a real student by nature. He said to me, once, that 
 if a day passed in which he did not do four hours' reading, he 
 considered he was so far unfit to speak to the people. He 
 believed in knowing what he was talking about. 
 
 One Sunday evening I had been preaching a restless incon- 
 
 233 
 
234 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 elusive sermon on the condition of the poor. After the service 
 I went to attend a meeting of the SociaHst League. It was a 
 cold and wet Manchester evening. At the room of the League 
 the caretaker said that, as it was such a fine evening, they 
 had decided to meet out of doors, and told me where I should 
 find them. At the corner of a busy thoroughfare I found a 
 small group standing in the rain around my friend, who was 
 speaking from a broken chair, while the stream of people flowed 
 past, no one being in the least concerned. 
 
 It was a piece of the infinite pathos of life, the cold rain as 
 if the very tears of Nature ; and it all sank deep, deep into my 
 heart. I had been preaching much the same thing in a beautiful 
 Church, and had been well paid for my labours. Here was the 
 outcast Reformer, preaching on the pavement to the careless 
 crowd that would not stay to hear, who already had been before 
 the magistrates three times, and once imprisoned. That incident 
 put me on the path I was seeking, though just how far it carried 
 me at the time I cannot now remember. It came to this, 
 however, that as before I had had to leave the Bible and go 
 out into the world, so now I had to leave the Church and go 
 out into the world. Thus I w^as led on in my quest for the 
 Living God. 
 
 In another way I had begun to feel the same thing. As I 
 came to learn the nature of the efforts which the working man 
 was making for his own salvation, and for the salvation of the 
 world as he saw it, I asked myself whether I could invite him to 
 come to my Church with any confidence that he would thereby 
 be benefited. With his scanty leisure, and more scanty purse, 
 I saw that it was only as he concentrated himself on these 
 objects in his Socialist or Trade Union organisation that he 
 could ever achieve much. To the working man, the broader 
 culture so easily open to the middle class man is well nigh 
 impossible. His toil is exhausting and stagnating in its in- 
 fluence. If he wakes up to do anything, what he does must 
 be everything to him, and must seem capable of accomplishing 
 everything. He cannot afford to spend Sunday as a day of rest 
 and recreation, rehgious or otherwise. It must be the day of 
 all others on which he most intensely lives and works. And the 
 more I thought of it, the more hopeless did it appear to find a 
 programme for the aroused worker in association with my Church. 
 
HOW THE IDEA CAME. 235 
 
 It seemed to me that, in inviting him to come, I should be 
 inviting him to desert his flag and neglect the true work of his life. 
 
 I am accustomed to hear it said, in criticism of my own state- 
 ments, that there is no difficulty in getting the working man to 
 come to Church; and this Church and that are pointed out as 
 proof of the interesting fact. Of course there is no difficulty 
 in getting the working man to come to Church. There is no 
 difficulty in getting him to the Circus, or the Music Hall, or the 
 Public House. There are working men, and working men — ad 
 infinitum. The kind of working man that I wanted to associate 
 myself with was not the Church goer, or the Circus goer, or the 
 Music Hall goer or the Public House goer. It was what has 
 been called the " Class-conscious " working man that I sought 
 as a fellow worker — he who has become conscious of oneness 
 with his fellows, and of the revolutionary idea that, only by the 
 salvation and emancipation of his fellows can the glorious dream 
 of Humanity ever be realised. 
 
 Labour aroused to self-consciousness — li see now that it was 
 that I sought. And my instincts guided me rightly in recognis- 
 ing that such Labour could not stoop to pass through the portals 
 of my little Church. This is the only real Labour, viewed as 
 a collective reality — not by any means the whole mass of wage- 
 earners or employees. And this awakened ^Labour includes 
 more than mere wage-earners or employees. It includes all who 
 share in what I may call the Labour Consciousness, whatever 
 may be their industrial position. It is this Consciousness that 
 makes the reality of the Labour movement ; and the absence of 
 it makes the working man, or any mass of working men, an 
 unreal thing from the Labour standpoint. 
 
 What I have seen in my present retirement is this — that the 
 most real thing in life that I have come across so far is some form 
 of self-consciousness, and that human development is along the 
 line of the extension of self-consciousness. Consciousness, Self- 
 consciousness, Tribal Consciousness, National Consciousness, 
 Class Consciousness — the world-wide Consciousness of the sub- 
 ordinated mass of Humanity for which a new name is needed — 
 Mass Consciousness rather than Class Consciousness, as being 
 the inner awaking to a higher order of life for the great Mass of 
 Mankind, crossing all lines of Nationality, and creating deeper 
 and more desperate gulfs, which only a world-wide Human Con- 
 
236 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 sciousness can bridge — then this Human Consciousness, World 
 Consciousness, God Consciousness — the goal that Humanity has 
 to reach. 
 
 I did not see all this in my work. This is what my life and 
 my work, ever acting and reacting, always seeking reahty and 
 shrinking from unreality, have enabled me to see; and to see 
 because they have enabled me to grow. For no man can see in 
 the world more than he himself is. The method of life is to be. 
 The growing revelation of God to man is man's own growth. 
 This is how the Universe maps itself out to me now ; and it 
 will be observed that I am still learning to see more clearly 
 as I write. 1 can understand nqw why I wanted to get that 
 congregation outside the walls of that Church. I can understand 
 now why I felt it hopeless to invite the working man to come 
 and worship God with us there. It is all clear at last. There 
 was more reality outside that Church than inside, and I had 
 a strong instinct for the real, which instinct now appears to have 
 been a higher consciousness growing up within me. 
 
 And I can see, too, why I have never been able to answer 
 those who pointed to the good working man going to Church, 
 and those who have blamed me for going outside a Church to 
 do my work, and those who have quarrelled with me over the 
 class question and the question of independence in religious and 
 political action, and why I have always felt that there was some 
 truth in what they said, and yet was sure they were wrong, and 
 yet could never tell them where they were wrong and why I was 
 right. These critics were looking for reasons. I was looking 
 for reality. They were following the lines of intellectual growth. 
 I was following the lines of real growth. The Evolution of Being 
 in the world was going forward in myself ; and, as it went forward, 
 the world lay more and more before me as an open book ; and 
 is opening still as I write. An hour ago I did not see what 
 I now see as I look back over my life and my work. I feel that 
 I have been the victim of the unfolding God just as much as 
 a daisy or a dog — but with a difference infinitely vast. God is 
 letting me into the secret of his unfolding. 
 
 I find it difficult to make way with my story. The incidents 
 of this time come back to me with a revelation of their meaning 
 which I never saw before. 
 
 That broken chair seemed to me a more real thing than my 
 
HOW THE IDEA CAME, 237 
 
 pulpit. But, the reader will exclaim, that Anarchist — Com- 
 munist — Revolutionist — Atheist did not teach the truth from 
 his chair. My good friend. Truth is vastly bigger than you know, 
 and of more sorts. I learnt this from the Salvation Army. 
 
 In the Spring of 1891 I went up to London to attend the 
 National Triennial Conference of Unitarian, Free Christian, 
 Presbyterian and other Non-subscribing Churches ; and I went in 
 a frightfully uncomfortable mood, and yet with a presentiment 
 that something would come of it. The Conference itself had 
 little attraction for me, but I knew I could make use of my visit 
 to learn more of what was being done to save the world. 
 Amongst other means of education and stimulus I went to two 
 Salvation Army Shelters. I was greatly perplexed. Undoubtedly 
 these people were doing much for the salvation of the world ; 
 but undoubtedly their theology, and their economics, too, were 
 quite false. What did it mean ? Could it be that God could 
 work better through a lie than through the truth ? Some time 
 after I saw, and now see more clearly still, how infinite Truth 
 is, when you come to understand that it is not of the Intellect 
 alone, but of the whole range of being. Or I may put it that 
 Intellectual Truth is simply the intellectual perception of Reality, 
 and, compared with Reality, a very small thing. 
 
 What works in the world of men is not so much the 
 possession of intellectual Truth as Being Real ; though, of course, 
 only when Seeing Real and Being Real go hand in hand can 
 man get full power in his work. But this Seeing Real as well 
 as Being Real makes it certain that you will be misunderstood. 
 The man who only Is Real makes the Revivalist, and succeeds. 
 The man who also Sees Real, is the Revolutionist, and fails. The 
 former is, at bottom, a Conservative, in spite of his new methods 
 which shock conservative nerves. He is always saying, " The 
 old was right enough, only you did not work it properly, or did 
 not believe in it sufficiently, or did not understand what it meant." 
 From Moody and Sankey to the Christian Socialist, they are all 
 in the same Conservative boat; these last only urging enough 
 change to keep the Dying Past alive, or seeing in the living 
 movements of to-day only new material with which to get the 
 Past preserved and stuffed. I do not love these Conservatives in 
 Revolutionist clothing. I do try to love them, but I cannot get 
 further than a smile. Thackeray says something very severe 
 
238 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 about the result which is sure to follow when a Priest and a 
 Woman lay their heads together to achieve some end. When 
 Priests and People lay their heads together to achieve Socialism, 
 only God and a whole army of martyrs will be able to drag poor 
 Humanity out of the mess they will make. 
 
 But there is more than this to be said, and this I learned from 
 the Salvation Army too, since enforced by reading the Life of 
 Mrs. Booth at the time it was published. The Salvationist, in a 
 rough way, is true to the facts about the relations between God 
 and the human soul — unspeakably truer than Mr. Herbert Spencer 
 is — and the power of the Salvation Army lies in its being the 
 living incarnation of this truth, and by no means in the false 
 doctrinal form in which it is held. Intellectually false, these 
 Salvationists are none the less spiritually true ; and so far they are 
 a creative power, and so far only. Here is an illustration from 
 the Life of Mrs. Booth — a very mine of religious wealth to him 
 who can sever the gold of life from the ore of doctrine. The story 
 is from an account of Mrs. Ballington Booth's work in Paris. 
 
 " It seemed as though the first convert would never come. 
 The people wept and were evidently impressed ; but as to 
 definitely seeking salvation, it seemed far from them. But one 
 night the Captain made her way to the back of the hall and sat 
 down by a poor dissolute working woman. She put her arms 
 around her neck and asked her if she did not want Jesus as her 
 friend and Saviour. * I love you,' she said, looking into the 
 woman's face, while her tears fell on the hard-worked hand. 
 Those tears melted the heart which no amount of preaching would 
 have broken ; and this touch of Divine love made the poor 
 woman long to find its source. So before the night had passed 
 the Army's first Parisian convert had risen from the penitent form 
 washed in the precious blood of Jesus." 
 
 " God loves you, and here is my love to show it." — This is 
 what I learned to be the truth the Salvation Army had hold of, 
 which gave it its power to lift the people. And this extract 
 illustrates it. Are we not unspeakably nearer to God in the 
 presence of this abandoned lover of souls than in the presence of 
 Mr. Spencer's incapable Absolute ? In Religion truth is a vital 
 thing, an incarnate power, a reproductive and creative energy. 
 The creed it teaches is its language, and, in comparison with 
 
HOW THE IDEA CAME. 239 
 
 the reality of the thing itself, the language is not of the first im- 
 portance. The language is not the truth. The light and love 
 and power expressed by the language are the truth, the language 
 being a subordinate matter. But yet even the language is of 
 very great importance ; and God will have that, too, made truer. 
 But if we make our language truer at the expense of our vital 
 truth, if we get our words right to the loss of being ourselves 
 right — what are we but whited sepulchres? The Life of Mrs. 
 Booth reveals a magnificent rectitude of soul which makes any 
 questioning about the language she used seem almost impertinent. 
 The Life of John Brown produces the same impression. And 
 yet we must insist on the importance of true language also, be- 
 cause people will say — though scarcely the John Browns and the 
 Mrs. Booths, when they see anyhow the fruits of the Spirit — " If 
 you do not speak my tongue, you have no truth in you " — and 
 also for other obvious reasons. 
 
 I need scarcely stay to apply all this to my Atheist friend. Let 
 it suffice to remark that this revolutionist seemed to me, and still 
 seems, unspeakably nearer to God, and truer to God, and more 
 really serviceable to God, than a Church which became dis- 
 contented with me because I tried to send it home discontented 
 to its Sunday dinner. In his society, though I disagreed with 
 him intellectually, I felt in touch with reality. I see the reason 
 now. He had entered into the real life of conscious one- 
 ness with his fellows ; and God was in that, though he did not 
 know it. 
 
 The greatest help which I found from my visit to London 
 came from where I had least expected it — The National Tri- 
 ennial Conference before mentioned. At one of the meetings 
 Philip Wicksteed spoke, and also Ben Tillett. Wicksteed was 
 magnificent. Tillett burst on the audience like a Titan. Yet, 
 though both these men almost prophesied the Labour Church, 
 I returned from London to Manchester, frightfully stimulated, 
 yet still blind and miserable. I have before me the notes of the 
 sermon which I preached on the following Sunday morning, 
 taking the Conference for my subject. These notes show me 
 to have been still feehng as wildly helpless as ever before the 
 great problem. Of one meeting I said, "Each said something 
 true. No one reached the saving truth. — Why these dull, soul- 
 less preachers ? Why these terribly conservative people ? Why 
 
240 A/y QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 these overbearing rich ? Why these unsaved poor ? — No one 
 answered. Much talk of method. Of means, of power, none." 
 Of the meeting already mentioned my notes say : — 
 
 The one meeting which will be remembered as the meeting which made 
 the Conference a success was the last— Wicksteed, on "The Church and 
 Social Questions." Some of you, even, would have been alarmed. You will 
 read the address. You cannot understand, unless you know at his very 
 best the man who delivered it, the intense power with which he seized 
 upon and held spell-bound his great audience. The noblest performance of 
 the week. 
 
 Rev. Jas. Wood. Ben Tillett. 
 
 But this was not what I wanted. 
 
 What I wanted to find was — a gospel. That was what I went to 
 London for. One thing needful. 
 
 So I returned to Manchester without having gained just the 
 one simple conception without which no living movement could 
 be organised. I give some further notes from my sermon to 
 indicate my feelings at the time. 
 
 Supposition, Liberalism in Religion ought to help us. 
 
 Running down of a spring. 
 
 Not too particular about anything. As afraid of enthusiasm as Church 
 in eighteenth century. No Church can stand so. 
 
 Some, seeing this, say, One thing needful — We must call ourselves 
 Christians. Free Christians, truly. As if a church could be organised 
 about a name. That is the last limitation. 
 
 ***** 
 
 What is the one thing we are in dead earnest about ? Is it Liberalism 
 itself? No soul. No life. Hollow tree. Bark may be quite ready to 
 expand, but no inner growth to expand it. 
 
 Here the difficulty. 
 
 How hardly shall the rich enter the Kingdom of Heaven ! 
 
 Liberal is rich in thought. Varied. As in thought, so in conduct. A 
 little of everything. All things appeal to him. 
 
 Yet every successful religious movement means concentration on one 
 thing. 
 
 It takes an intense, and hence narrow, form. 
 
 God and Salvation Army. 
 
 God and our Church ? How many of us can narrow our faith down to 
 this? Not to say, God is nowhere else. Salvationist does not say that. 
 But God is here — and from hence we can radiate his power and grace. 
 
 One thing needful to be learned from the poor. 
 
 Visited Salvation Army. 
 
 What did I learn? 
 
HOW THE IDEA CAME. 241 
 
 God loves you, and here am I with my love to prove it. 
 
 Concentration easy for poor. Hence these movements which concen- 
 trate faith rising among poor. 
 
 Can we have the concentration without the poverty ? 
 
 Can we identify ourselves and our Church with the cause of God in the 
 world, and then consecrate ourselves to God and our Church as simply and 
 ardently as the poorer man to God and the Salvation Army ? 
 
 And SO on — demanding the one thing needful, the single 
 creative conception, and then the entire consecration of ourselves 
 and our Church to it. It was very hard on the Church; but 
 preaching these demands was the only way to find what I wanted. 
 And what I wanted came — that evening. 
 
 I was walking home after the evening service, and overtook 
 a working man, a member of the Church, who had attended 
 very regularly until the last few Sundays. I asked him what 
 was the matter. We had a long talk, pacing up and down 
 the hard pavements, and at last it all came out. He liked me, 
 he liked my sermons, but he could not stand the atmosphere of 
 the Church. He could not breathe freely. He gave examples 
 of the kind of thing that upset him. In answer, I said, that 
 if he could not find a home in that Church, it was no home 
 for me ; and that we must get one started to which we could go 
 together. We shook hands, with the promise on my part that I 
 would form such a Church, and on his that he would help me. 
 That was the first step taken towards founding the Labour 
 Church — Sunday evening, April 26th, 1891. My wife was in 
 Norwich at the time. I lay awake some hours that night, my 
 brain turning over and over this new idea, and fell asleep with the 
 determination that a Working-man's Church should be formed. 
 
 God in the Labour Movement — working through it, as once he 
 had worked through Christianity, for the further salvation of the 
 world — that was the simple conception that I had been seeking, 
 and which at last came to me in the sleepless hours of that night. 
 Now I had a living thought which could make the organisation of 
 fuller life possible. Now I saw how infinitely little were the 
 dimensions of my Free Church. It became plain that I must go 
 outside that Church, and throw myself wholly into the midst of 
 the Self-conscious Labour Movement. In me its self-conscious- 
 ness was realised as God-consciousness. My mission was to 
 spread that realisation far and wide. Now I saw how and where 
 
 16 
 
242 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 we could become God's fellow-workers in the world, and accept 
 our own responsible position in the unfolding of man's high 
 destiny. Man must become the Human Providence of the world, 
 in co-operation with God as the Divine Providence ; and in these 
 times the Labour Movement seemed to be the point at which he 
 could best co-operate — the growing point of the evolution of 
 Humanity Godward. A simple conception, with an infinite 
 sweep, which it will take ages of evolution to justify to the 
 Intellect. 
 
 I had found the work I sought with a vengeance, but still the 
 proposed organisation wanted a name. This came from my 
 Anarchist-Communist-Revolutionist-Atheist friend. I went to 
 him with my proposal to get it criticised. To my surprise 
 he jumped at it. What he saw in it was a kind of Socialist 
 Salvation Army ; and hard experience had taught him the need 
 of some kind of religious enthusiasm to rouse the torpid masses. 
 But he said I must not call the new organisation the Working- 
 man's Church, but the Labour Church, because he was sure I did 
 not wish it to stand so much for a class as for a principle. Thus 
 the idea was completed, and its organic expression found its right 
 name. My own personal development had proceeded until it 
 had brought me into the line of human development, from which 
 sprang that further consciousness of God in the world which was 
 needed to complete and unify the previous results of my long 
 quest. In the rush of work that followed I could not discover 
 the full meaning of what I did. I will try to make that meaning 
 more clear to the reader as it now appears to me. 
 
 All my experiences lead me to conclude that the goal of evolu- 
 tion is the awaking of the consciousness of God in us. It 
 seems to me that no life is Real until it becomes God-conscious, 
 that all unfoldings of consciousness have this as their final cause, 
 and that no form of consciousness becomes complete until the 
 height of God-consciousness is reached. 
 
 From this point of view, the real progress of man consists in 
 the ever higher and wider sweep of his consciousness — Self-con- 
 sciousness, Collective consciousness. Universal consciousness, 
 God-consciousness — until man becomes aware that the reality of 
 his own life and of the life of the whole Universe is God. 
 
 Great movements have always followed this principle of the 
 extension of consciousness, but they have quite unconsciously 
 
HOW THE IDEA CAME, 243 
 
 done so. Even if, in the East, there has not been this limitation, 
 the process has been maimed by asceticism, which rejects part of 
 life, and only unifies into consciousness what is left. This Oriental 
 rejection of a part of life is the great defect which the West must 
 make good. We must reject none of the functions of our being, 
 but must work them all out sincerely, according to their place 
 and purpose in us, knowing that the end of this working out lies 
 in finding God in them all, and the reality of them all in God. 
 So, too, we must not reject the world. We must live in it, work 
 in it, share in its activities, always along the line of the discovery 
 of God. Until the whole of life becomes our own, made real to 
 us and unified by the discovery of God in every part, we have 
 not fully realised the meaning and the reality and the harmony of 
 Self, Universe, God. 
 
 Now, if I am right in the conclusion which experience has 
 forced upon me, the work I am trying to do along these lines 
 means, not merely a new departure in religious methods, but the , 
 awaking into human consciousness of the hitherto unconscious \ 
 methods of human growth God-ward — not of individual growth 
 merely, but of collective growth also. 
 
 Moreover, if I am right, we have something here of infinitely 
 greater importance than any discovery in Science. We have the 
 appearance on earth of a new fact in self-consciousness, which 
 Science will some day be able to discover, and place alongside 
 of other facts which are recognised. 
 
 Be this as it may, my method of work in the Labour Church 
 is based on the invincible conviction that I am now able to con- 
 sciously co-operate with God in the process of human evolution. 
 This method was followed instinctively, or sub-consciously, at 
 first. Now the meaning of it is revealed to me. Now I know 
 what I do. This is the Method of Life. 
 
 Does all this seem the wildest folly ? To me, at least, it seems 
 simple and clear enough — the mere alphabet of human progress. 
 And it is just the kind of development that the doctrine of 
 Evolution should lead us to expect. But vast as the effect of 
 Darwin's work has been, it has not yet led the Scientific Man to 
 see that his highest call now is to be on the look-out for the 
 appearance of new unfoldings. He is still the Priest of the old 
 life, not the Prophet of the new. His eyes are hidden by accom- 
 plished facts from the discovery of facts in the making. 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 LIVELIHOOD AND LIFE. 
 
 The opening of the Labour Church on Sunday, October 4th, 1891, 
 was a step which led to two things of the greatest consequence to 
 myself — first, that physical collapse which has brought with it so 
 many difficulties ; and, secondly, a corresponding growth of illumi- 
 nation which still proceeds as I write. 
 
 According to The Rules, I had no business to commence the 
 Labour Church when I did. I had long been overworked and 
 underslept, and had not the strength to run my own Church as I 
 ought, much less to organise a new one in the heart of the Labour 
 Movement. But the idea had come, and the opportunity ; and 
 the next year there was to be a General Election. The fruit was 
 ripe, and must fall. I had it up and down in my mind con- 
 tinually ; discussed it all with my wife, who nobly left me free ; 
 and had to go on — with the inevitable consequence. 
 
 It was great to be alive that first year — but, in the noise of the 
 battle, I neither saw nor heard. I laid out a giant's task, and 
 told my wife that I was not strong enough to break down. Only 
 strong men break down, I said. But in a year I was done for. 
 Since then my time has been spent in discovering the fact. 
 But it was good to know "the joyous swing of advance." I 
 have often looked back with gratitude and regret to those band- 
 and-banner days, when we laughed at our mighty task. 
 
 I had thought to carry my old Church with me into this new 
 life. There was some opposition, of course, when first my pro- 
 posal was brought forward ; but very kindly expressed. One of 
 the principal opponents, as of the kindest, was the Warden of the 
 Church — perhaps the greatest man I have known — Edward Van- 
 sittart Neale. In the gentlest yet warmest manner, the veteran 
 Co-operator — so near his end — told me I was wholly wrong. I 
 feel the pathos of it now more than I did then. All of us 
 
 244 
 
[To face p. 244. 
 
LIVELIHOOD AND LIFE. 245 
 
 put together did not seem worth the little finger of that man, 
 who only sought to serve, and whose soul was the soul of a child. 
 Never was young Reformer more tenderly, though earnestly, 
 remonstrated with by old Reformer, than I was by him, as all 
 who knew him would well understand. But I had full freedom 
 to go on ; and the majority — chiefly the younger and the poorer 
 — were with me in what I proposed. 
 
 But two months after the Labour Church was started I found 
 that I must leave Upper Brook Street, and in another month had 
 left. It was natural that the more responsible members of the 
 Church should be dissatisfied. I was not only associating myself, 
 and so far the Church, with Socialists and Agitators, who some- 
 times said extreme things, which were exaggerated or misrepre- 
 sented by the press ; but also I must have appeared to them like 
 a paid manager, who was using his position as the means to enable 
 him to open a shop on his own account. Moreover, it was better 
 in every way that I should have had to go — not by the least com- 
 pulsion, but because I found that my remaining would create 
 difficulties which nothing but resignation could avert. When the 
 position was kindly but sadly put to me by one of the members 
 for whom I had the highest respect, I saw clearly that I had come 
 to a dividing of the ways, and that only one way was open — the 
 way ahead. This point clear, I resigned ; and did my best, and 
 that successfully, to prevent any secession from those I had to 
 leave. 
 
 It is only just to the memory of a great man to say, that Mr. 
 Neale had no part in this. Indeed, though Warden of the Church, 
 and a regular attendant when in Manchester, which was nearly 
 every Sunday, his home was near London, and he was seldom 
 able to take part in the business affairs of the Church. It was 
 his work for the cause of Co-operation that led him to spend 
 part of the week in Manchester — in lodgings as humble as those 
 of many a Manchester clerk. Nor must it be supposed that 
 Mr. Neale was a Unitarian. It was the undogmatic and cultured 
 preaching of my predecessor that led him to find a home on 
 Sundays at Upper Brook Street. Mr. Neale was really a Trin- 
 itarian and a Tory, but with a Trinitarianism and a Toryism 
 exclusively his own. And I often think of his remaining at the 
 Church after my predecessor had left, listening Sunday after Sun- 
 day to sermons which must often have made him sad, though 
 
246 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 he never said a word, as one of the innumerable examples he 
 gave of a simplicity and grace of character quite marvellous in 
 a man whose opinions were so thoroughly thought out and so 
 tenaciously held, and to which he sacrificed all his time and all his 
 wealth. Indeed, I cannot imagine a character in which strength 
 of purpose and child-likeness of heart could be more highly 
 developed and more perfectly combined. 
 
 1 think I have painted my relations with Upper Brook Street 
 in colours too dark. There was a brighter side to my work there 
 than the one which this story of restless search reveals. The 
 young people of the Church invited me to a farewell meeting, 
 at which they gave me a farewell letter — which I have just 
 taken from a drawer with the intention of quoting a few sentences 
 to show what our relations were, and what the effect of my 
 ministry was, on the younger folk at least. But I find it too 
 sincere and simple to be shown to the outside world ; and it 
 seems to have, too, the quality of some faded flower pressed in 
 an old book, that, to one heart, lives with the life of long ago, 
 but to other hearts is dead. So I put it back in its drawer. 
 Nevertheless, reading it again fills me with gratitude and strength, 
 and a confidence, deeper than words, that all is well. 
 
 I have always thought objections to a paid ministry very 
 shallow — very unreal — far away from facts. When the relations 
 of minister and people are honourable, I think no money is more 
 cleanly earned in this somewhat unclean world. Of course there 
 are possible evils in the relationship ; but there are possible evils 
 in every relationship in life. Danger attends our every step, 
 whatever course we take, the only salvation from which lies in 
 honesty of heart. I do not think we escape by cutting down the 
 scale of life, but rather deceive ourselves thereby. At the same 
 time, if a man feel within himself that he cannot accept a salary 
 to enable him to preach, that is a fact which I respect. What 
 I cannot respect is an attempt to make of such a fact an example, 
 or a theory, which should bind other men. We are in danger, in 
 this direction, of having conduct imposed upon us as unreal as 
 the fasting of the Pharisees. 
 
 But, on the other hand, the man who preaches simply to make 
 a living is beneath contempt — I mean the man who stocks his 
 pulpit as the draper stocks his shop, to suit his customers ; or 
 who is satisfied to meet the demands of his hearers upon him, 
 
LIVELIHOOD AND LIFE, 247 
 
 and never asks a higher message from God — the slovenly soul, 
 that makes so much solid resistance to progress. The impHed 
 understanding, where people and preacher are both honest, is, that 
 livelihood shall cause no anxiety while God's work appears to be 
 getting accomplished. When I found that some of the more 
 responsible members of the Church thought I was not doing God's 
 work, I saw that the reality of our relationship had departed ; and 
 the whole circumstances of the situation were such that the only 
 step possible was to withdraw from it. 
 
 The fatal mistake in all these matters lies in making rules. 
 There are those who declare that no man can live the higher life 
 with God, and yet remain in business relations with the present 
 commercial system. Now, if any man have a right to make such 
 a statement as that, I have. I had to give up Architecture to 
 find God, and I had to give up my pulpit to follow God. Yet 
 I should not dream of generalising from these subjective facts. 
 It seems to me monstrous that any man should declare his way 
 of following and finding God to be The Way. It is Creed and 
 Dogma and Authority all coming back on us ; and, with these, 
 human tyranny too. In social matters there is some excuse for 
 dogma— in other words, law. In the spiritual life there is abso- 
 lutely no excuse ; and the fact that new rules are still being laid 
 down in new movements shows how little we can expect from 
 much of the new life — which is not new after all, but simply a 
 revival of past forms. We have had it all over and over again, 
 for centuries. East and West. 
 
 Men ought now to be big enough to understand that each of 
 us must go to God in his own way by himself, and to let others 
 do the same. But people seem as if they cannot comprehend the 
 magnificent originality and personality of a life lived with God. 
 One would have thought that Walt Whitman would have been a 
 sufficiently fine example of this to' escape these folk ; and yet 
 but the other day I saw him claimed as a Theosophist ! There 
 must be a systematic way of getting to God, which we can all 
 learn together and travel along in flocks ! The great Prophet 
 of Personality claimed as a Theosophist! We might as well 
 seek to impose on men and women a system of falling in love. 
 No two lives are the same, and no two religions are. No man's 
 religion can be described in terms other than God and Walt 
 Whitman, God and Mazzini, God and Jesus, God and Paul. 
 
248 MV QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 Until this uniqueness of the rehgious relationship is understood, 
 Religion will always be the enemy of progress, and suck the life 
 out of every progressive movement. 
 
 The difficulties that I have since got into through giving up 
 my means of livelihood have been such, that I should be sorry 
 to impose my action as a rule for another man. It was the right 
 step for me, however ; and though it has led me into difficulties, 
 these have not proved insuperable — so far. When I have seemed 
 at the edge of the abyss, I have then been able to find some 
 fresh continuation of the path. And here I am now, nearly 
 done for ; but not done for yet. If it has turned out all right, 
 it has been because I followed no rule, but lived hard on facts 
 as best I could. I should not say all this, but that I see the 
 men of rod and rule trying to build walls around the Labour 
 Church, and I cannot get about among those to whom I have 
 consecrated my life, to tell them how infinitely greater and more 
 godlike freedom is than fetters. Self, Humanity, Universe, 
 God— these are the real elements of the religious life ; and no 
 cheap system must make them less real to us, less immediate. 
 
 On giving up my pulpit, I hoped to be able to live in the 
 midst of my new work by journalism. It was very foolish of me. 
 Singularly enough, some good Unitarian friends were so interested 
 in my venture, that they came to my rescue, and gave me, for 
 some time, ample financial help. If this had not happened, I do 
 not know what I should have done ; but I certainly should have 
 found myself in a very tight place. But then it has always been 
 that way with me, as I suppose it must be with every man who 
 lives hard up to the edge of his opportunities, and who does 
 literally " seek first the Kingdom of God." In regard to this 
 help, so unexpectedly and generously offered, I felt as I did 
 about a minister's salary — that the money was perfectly clean 
 while I remained true to myself. I think I have done that ; and 
 though the difficult position to which ill health has reduced me 
 has often been very hard to bear, yet I cannot see that it has, 
 in any way, either blinded my eyes or hardened my heart. It 
 has been my thorn in the flesh — a discipline of a very wholesome 
 though of an exceedingly painful and perplexing sort. 
 
 It may be well to state here the theory which I held in regard 
 to the financial side of my work, and which I still hold. It is 
 part of my deep faith in things, on which 1 have lived since the 
 
LIVELIHOOD AND LIFE. 249 
 
 time I lost my Christianity — a deep confidence in the trust- 
 worthiness of the Universe — or rather a deep confidence that 
 I may trust the Universe, from which I conclude that others 
 may trust it also if they are themselves true. For these things 
 are always above rule and dogma. They are always personal, 
 and must spring from a personal relationship. 
 
 With this confidence, I told the people at one of our early 
 services that they need not trouble themselves about money 
 questions — that what they had to trouble themselves about was 
 the life and the work of our movement — that, these being secured, 
 the money would come. This statement was repeated to a friend 
 of mine, who afterwards wrote me a letter in which he charged 
 me with being a fool, and misleading the people. And yet 
 I know that what I said was true, and have always myself acted 
 upon the principle implied in it. 
 
 I am sure that no movement was ever yet killed for want of 
 money. The only thing that can kill a movement is want of 
 ability, want of power, want of life; and I wish the Labour 
 Movement as a whole could understand this. It is inconceivable 
 to me, for instance, that the Labour Movement is impeded for 
 want of payment of members of Parliament. The real state of 
 the case is, that the demand for Labour representatives is made 
 by a few very earnest people and a larger number of very half- 
 hearted ones. While this is the case, it must be obvious to 
 any person who has any sense of the reality of things — a rare 
 sense, truly — that, though more Labour Members might, through 
 payment by the State, sit in Parliament, such a ParUament 
 would be worth no more to the people than the present one is. 
 As a fact. Labour has thousands upon thousands of pounds in 
 its coffers, which it prefers to spend on strikes, rather than on 
 independent representation in Parliament. The difficulty is not 
 with the money. It is with the men. 
 
 I know what want of money means badly enough. My strength 
 has been broken more by this than by anything else. And I 
 used to think that a private income would have enabled me to 
 help the world. I see, now, that so far as I am ready to help 
 the world, or the world ready to be helped by me, the means 
 most suited to the end will be found, whatever they may be. 
 So I never think now of want of money as being a cause why 
 the work of my hfc should fail. The Universe is not built quite 
 
250 .^K QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 so cheaply as that. Want of money is an effect, not a cause, of 
 failure — in my own case due to the fact that, in Manchester, I 
 undertook a work almost infinitely beyond my strength. More- 
 over, with this conviction in regard to money, whenever funds 
 have run low, I have regarded the situation as a demand for more 
 and better work. This has been hard on me, of course ; but if 
 a man who cannot sleep under anxiety feels compelled to under- 
 take anxious work, he must accept his fate. 
 
 But, it will be said, is it not very demoralising — this continual 
 need to keep work going and money coming in ? Everything is 
 demoralising — and everything is moralising — it depends on your- 
 self. Oxygen quickens the living body, but corrupts the corpse. 
 I have not much patience w^ith people who coddle their virtues, 
 lest they should take a chill. This is a rough world. We were 
 not placed here to have an easy time. We are here for discipline 
 and training, and for the growth in us of love and power and all 
 the gifts of a serviceable life. And until we lift this money 
 question, and all questions, to the level of this high life, we shall 
 always be making realities of mere forms, and forms of realities. 
 Of all things in the world, this Money is among the least real, 
 the most symbolical. To the Reformer it may be a discipline or 
 ^ \ a snare. His salvation lies in understanding its symbolical quality, 
 ^ and what it symbolises. 
 
 At the same time I fully recognise how like my conviction in 
 regard to money is to an error of a very foolish sort. On one 
 occasion, a man who was well off had indicated his desire to 
 help our work, but had not done so. On removing to London I 
 called on him, pointed out how much we needed such help as he 
 could give, and told him the use to which his money might be 
 put. I found that since I had first heard from him he had 
 grown much more spiritual in his view of life. He said he 
 believed the Lord would enable his children to carry on any 
 work he wanted them to do, without their having to trouble 
 about its financial support. And so he declined to help. I 
 hope I need not go over all the ground again to show wherein 
 my position differs from his, and why I think he was guilty of 
 unreality amounting to cant. 
 
 None the less, I can understand people feeling that God's work 
 and financial difficulties go ill together. I can understand that 
 they should think that a man should always be perfectly reason- 
 
 <i 
 
LIVELIHOOD AND LIFE. 251 
 
 able, and never undertake more work than he can perform 
 without the help of others. On this point I judge no man. If 
 I could work on these lines, I would. It would be for my peace 
 and strength. But I cannot think it right — for myself. I know 
 that, with the co-operation of others, I can do much more for the 
 world than I can do alone. I know that there are others who 
 want doing for the world what they and I can do together, and 
 what we cannot do apart. Moreover, in my own case, a certain 
 prescriptive line of duty falls to me now from past labours, from 
 which nothing short of absolute necessity can relieve me. And 
 then, after all has been said, I can do no other than I am doing. 
 After all my reasons, I really have no choice. For me there is 
 no other way ahead — all others absolutely closed up. 
 
 In regard to which, I must repeat, There are no Rules. Each 
 of us who is called to serve the world, by combating old errors 
 and teaching new truths, finds himself surrounded by very many 
 hindrances, but always by some helps. How to get the most for 
 the world out of the situation — that must be his one concern as 
 a fellow worker with God. Some are in danger of making the 
 maintenance of their personal dignity their chief concern. Others 
 are in danger of losing their personal dignity in their anxiety to 
 help. There are dangers on the right hand and on the left, and 
 each must decide on his own path for himself, or follow manfully 
 the path marked out. No two of us are alike, and the circum- 
 stances of no two of us are alike. I will say this, however, that 
 no man can be justified in sacrificing his real life to his work. 
 The moment he begins to conform for the sake of support, he is 
 lost. He, above all others, must, at any cost, live his own life, 
 and let his work follow as it may. 
 
 I might add much more on this important question of money 
 in relation to reforming work. I can see plenty of reasons which 
 could be urged against my faith, but they still do not touch it. 
 It is my own faith. It represents my own growth over things. 
 It is a perception in me of my relations with God and the 
 Universe — a consciousness of what the world is in this respect, 
 and what powers it will succumb to. For, in the growing indi- 
 vidual, and in the growing race, there is a prophetic faculty, which 
 means a growth going forward, but not yet completed. My faith 
 in matters of money is an illustration of this in the individual. It 
 was there, and acting upon it has clarified and deepened it — 
 
252 My QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 there, and as natural for me to discern, as it is for me to discern 
 the coloured lights and shadows of the valley spread before me, 
 and the pathos of the bent old man, digging potatoes for another 
 out of the brown hill side. 
 
 So much for the subjective view of the question. But there 
 is, of course, the objective view — that of the generous man of 
 means, for instance, who almost invariably endows the second- 
 best work, because he has not the prophetic insight to discern 
 the best. One might write bitterly of this fact, for it represents 
 the one fact which, however man progresses in all the virtues, 
 will always, in one form or another, make the best work, not so 
 much a task to be accomplished as a cross to be borne. But 
 bitterness would be entirely out of place, if only because the best 
 work has always certain ugly qualities — I know no better term 
 to use — qualities which make it look ridiculous or immoral or 
 even blasphemous to the ordinary good man. And I imagine 
 this must ever be the case in a world in which progress is made 
 by the continual evolution of higher types of life. In human 
 development there will always be a struggle for existence on the 
 part of the best, more tragic in its consequences to the best than 
 the world has yet begun to understand. When Hans Andersen 
 wrote his Ugly Duckling, I wonder whether he knew what his 
 story really meant — how frightful it is, in a world of ducks, to be 
 born a swan — the awful upsoarings and downsinkings of the life 
 that is more than one step ahead — the Mount of Transfiguration 
 with God, the Mount of Calvary with man, whence, Gethsemane 
 notwithstanding, even God seems to flee away for a time. 
 
 But the subject is too vast, and I am only beginning to see 
 what it all means. Anyhow, my faith has been justified. I 
 am still here ; not yet broken. I have had to give up all my 
 work ; yet it is all going forward in other hands. I am at 
 last incapable of doing anything but write this book ; yet I am 
 doing the best work, the most necessary work, of my life. I 
 hope it will sell, and make my way easier, and my home less 
 overburdened. But if not, my work will not be hindered by 
 want of money ; though there may well be hindrances which 
 take that form on themselves — hindrances which would not 
 be removed, though I commanded the wealth of the world. 
 For my faith is no pious belief, but a perception of the Reality 
 as against the Show of things. 
 
CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 IN THE CHESHIRE HILLS. 
 
 Exactly a year after the inauguration of the Labour Church in 
 Manchester, I broke down ; and though I have again and again 
 made efforts to return to the pubhc Kfe, which my heart desires 
 and my work appears to demand, those efforts have always failed. 
 I lost a certain amount of nerve power at that time, which I 
 have never been able to regain. I had my " Annus Mirabilis," 
 and have paid for it ever since. I have long concluded that I 
 was dragged from the arena to do better work ; but the dragging 
 has had to be repeated again and again, and has been very hard 
 to bear. And the better work is very slow in getting itself 
 accomplished. By better work, I do not mean other work ; but 
 deeper — nearer the foundations of things. 
 
 In the Winter of 1892-93 I spent six weeks with wife and chil- 
 dren among the Welsh Mountains. On returning to Manchester 
 I seemed quite restored, and set about my old labours. But 
 the power for these was gone — for ever gone. In the Spring 
 of 1893 I had to retire permanently from Manchester, and went 
 to live in the Cheshire Hills, at Rulow, near Macclesfield. The 
 view from our little house was magnificent, and often inspired 
 me at my work. But it was very painful, too, to feel the contrast 
 between all this, and the Sodom and Gomorrah from which 
 I had been forced to flee. And I did a deal of looking back. 
 
 Even there, too, were signs of the conditions under which the 
 poor are crushed. On cloudy nights the glare of the furnaces in 
 the Potteries was reflected in the dark sky. On clear days I 
 could sometimes see a cloud of smoke gradually wind around 
 Mow Cop — the furthest hill visible in the direction of the 
 Potteries — and then slowly spread over the Cheshire plain, and 
 go on spreading, until all the plain was hidden from view, and 
 the long line of Welsh Mountains in the far distance was blotted 
 
 253 
 
254 MY QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 out. At other times all the hills around us would be covered 
 with Lancashire smoke. Macclesfield itself, too, was a frightfully 
 poor town, the whole conditions of its industrial life making it 
 almost a hopeless place, though not without hope. I suppose 
 few towns show the insanity of our present industrial system so 
 sadly as Macclesfield. 
 
 In so young a movement, suddenly springing up into such 
 vigorous life, it was inevitable that absenteeism should produce 
 its own set of difficulties, and those of a kind very hard to 
 contend with. Indeed, I had to pass through an experience, 
 similar in some respects to the one which had its ultimate effect 
 in taking me back to Architecture, though the form of it was 
 very different. As to this form, I can only say, that it did not 
 come from the Labour Churches or the Labour Movement. 
 Notwithstanding this, it became almost impossible for me to 
 maintain myself in a position to serve the cause which was, as 
 it were, the flowering of my whole life. Staggered, and nearly 
 overthrown, as I was by these difficulties, and crippled for years 
 by them, I regarded them in much the same way as the financial 
 difficulties of which something has been written. They both were 
 made possible by my inability to carry on publicly the work I had 
 commenced. It was in the nature of things that what happened 
 should happen, in one form or another. I came to see that, 
 however sorely I might be stung, and however badly my work 
 might seem to suffer, I could not really be disabled, while I 
 remained true to myself and my mission. With this proviso, I 
 believed that the only real effect on me and my work would be 
 a deepening and a purifying one. None the less, I was long 
 perplexed and paralysed. 
 
 These two experiences — the earlier and the later — the nature 
 of which I may not discover, both came at first as a profound 
 shock to my whole moral nature. I was staggered by them, and 
 for some time inwardly injured. Yet I can now accept both as 
 having been of inestimable worth in the upbuilding of my life ; 
 though I still sigh a deep sigh of regret that things should happen 
 so. In both cases I see how much my life has gained ; but both 
 have left a sore which nothing in this life can heal. Their effects 
 live in me in an entirely impersonal form. I recognise that what 
 gave them their power was something inherent in the very 
 nature of things. But when some elemental force cuts right 
 
IN THE CHESHIRE HILLS. 255 
 
 across our inmost purposes and our inmost life, and thwarts our 
 natural development, and compels us to courses foreign to our 
 character, then we find ourselves face to face with a fact, the 
 meaning of which, I think, we shall never exhaust in this life. 
 I believe, however, that it is such facts as these that give us hints 
 of the true nature of evil ; and suggest that it is but a temporary 
 form for temporary ends, which one day we shall be able to 
 acquiesce in. 
 
 It is the recognition that these difficulties have their strength 
 in the very nature of things that makes them stagger us so, and 
 keeps us from accepting them as long as we possibly can. At 
 first they seem to cheapen, not only our own life, but Life itself. 
 But we have only to be faithful, and wait, going on with our work 
 as we may. Then we come to see, very gradually, that they are 
 as openings into a wider life which we cannot quite understand ; 
 but the very existence of which fills us full of hope, and gives us 
 greater freedom to grow. They are like the marvellous con- 
 tradictions that the mathematician discovers in his work, if he 
 pushes it far enough — paradoxes which appear to be inherent in 
 the very make-up of our phenomenal life, and which suggest to 
 the deep thinker that there must be a life more vast and real than 
 this, or this, with all its strange inconsistencies, could not possibly 
 subsist. 
 
 It is impossible to return to Galilee from Jerusalem, and find 
 Galilee the same. I had not only learned the meaning of the 
 Staffordshire and Lancashire smoke, as it blotted out the beautiful 
 vision of Nature. I myself was no longer the same. None the 
 less, the hills and the valleys helped me ; and the wide-sweeping, 
 many-coloured plain ; and the lovely lines of mountains, delicately 
 tinted, whereon Sky communed with Earth on clearest days. 
 More changeable than the sea was the scene from my study 
 window — more powerful, more tender, more grand — more troubled 
 in storm, more restful in peace. Through it all the consciousness 
 of the eternal oneness of things sank deep into my heart — myself 
 a Hving and loving part of the whole, whose life and love the 
 beauties of Nature helped to grow. 
 
 Experiences do not repeat themselves — we are so hurried on 
 from growth to growth— yet here I found the Infinite Presence 
 nearer than ever before. In the old country days, Nature sug- 
 gested God. Here God himself came unmistakably into my own 
 
256 MY QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 self-conscious life. In the old days I could not help believing 
 in God. My one solid possession when I left the country was 
 an invincible conviction of God which nothing shook. Now 
 I began to know God himself— to know him in the sense of 
 being acquainted with him, by meeting him unexpectedly as I 
 turned some corner of life. I did not try for this. Indeed, I 
 did not know that this was possible. But it came. Anxious, 
 beset with difficulties, I tried hard to go on with my work as 
 though I were not an exile. But there were seasons when my 
 own individual life grew intense ; and then, when I simply lived 
 most intensely, the surprise of God's presence came. 
 
 Thus the spiritual life justifies itself to those who live it ; but 
 what can we say of its experiences to those who do not under- 
 stand ? This, at least, we can say, that it is a life whose ex- 
 periences are proved real to their possessor, because they remain 
 with him as permanent realities, when brought closest into contact 
 with the objective realities of life. Dreams cannot stand this 
 test. We wake from them, to find that they are but dreams. 
 Wanderings of an overwrought brain do not stand this test. We 
 go out into the world of our fellow men, and they pass away as 
 a summer cloud. Bat from no stage that we have reached in the 
 spiritual life do we ever go back. It becomes a permanent 
 element of our consciousness, and cannot be ever lost. These 
 highest experiences that I have had of God's presence have been 
 rare and brief— flashes of consciousness which have compelled 
 me to exclaim with surprise— God is here ! — or conditions of 
 exaltation and insight, less intense, and only gradually passing 
 away. 
 
 I have severely questioned the worth of these moments of 
 clearer vision. To no soul have I named them until now, lest 
 I should be building my life and work on mere phantasies of the 
 brain. But I find that, after every questioning and test, they 
 stand out to-day as the most real experiences of my life, and 
 experiences which have explained and justified and unified all 
 past experiences and all past growth. Indeed, their reality and 
 their far reaching significance are ever becoming more clear and 
 evident. When they came, I was living the fullest, strongest, 
 sanest, deepest life. I was not seeking them. What I was 
 seeking, with resolute determination, was to five more intensely 
 my own life, with supreme confidence in the worth of my own 
 
IN THE CHESHIRE HILLS. 
 
 257 
 
 convictions and instincts, as against what I knew would be the 
 adverse judgment of the world. It was in the most real seasons 
 that the Real Presence came, and I was aware that I was im- 
 mersed in the infinite ocean of God. 
 
 I know how aggravating all I can say of this will be to most 
 of my readers. There is no help for it. It must be so. God's 
 revelation of himself is personal, and can never be reduced to 
 a revelation of the Guide Book sort. There is no reliable Guide 
 Book. There is Yourself, the Universe, God. Live faithfully 
 by what you are. It is the only way. The gifts of God cannot 
 be communicated or transferred. Ourselves and God, and the 
 relation between ourselves and God, are all too real for that. 
 We may encourage each other, and help each other to live, and 
 we may leave each other free. Beyond this I do not see that 
 there is anything more that we can do. If we could but do this, 
 and be content to do only this, what advances would be made 
 in our religious life, and in all moral and social relationships ! 
 And I do not think we shall make much progress now, until we 
 have learned this lesson. Of course we shall see plenty of 
 changes ; but, apart from this awakening of man's consciousness 
 to the true nature of the religious life, and of the freedom and 
 personality of it, all changes will be but the revolutions of a wheel, 
 whose axis makes no progress. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Labour Church was spreading ; and the move- 
 ment was organised on a representative basis. Through this 
 democratic organisation, I hoped to find myself one of a band 
 of fellow workers to whom the Labour Movement had the same 
 religious significance as it had to myself. At present, however, 
 democratic organisation in the whole Labour Movement means 
 throwing together a mass of conflicting elements, in which he 
 must struggle to maintain a place who thinks it his mission to 
 serve. Moreover, I could not visit the Churches systematically, 
 such attempts as I made from time to time always failing. I 
 could not sleep ; and I could no longer work on short sleep as 
 I once could. Thus I could not keep in that personal touch with 
 the people which an official position demands. As soon, there- 
 fore, as I could believe that I could better serve the cause as an 
 individual rather than as an official, I retired. This withdrawal 
 compelled me to rely more on spiritual forces than on an 
 official position which I was not strong enough to hold ; and it 
 
 17 
 
258 MY QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 made me the more free to concentrate myself on service I could 
 better perform. 
 
 None the less, I was quite aware that mere retirement from 
 ofifice was not any final solution of the problem I had to solve. 
 I still had heavier prescriptive responsibilities to the movement 
 than I could bear alone ; and, further, all my instincts made it 
 natural for me to seek a free companionship, in which my own 
 limitations could be lost in the larger mind of the group. For, 
 though I am such a pronounced Individualist in regard to the 
 religious life, yet I fully recognise the necessity of man associating 
 himself freely with man, if he would achieve his best and most 
 fruitful work. It is a very difficult problem ; but it is certainly 
 necessary, even to individual progress, that the personal life and 
 the collective life should grow hand in hand. 
 
 It was at this time that I conceived the organisation of service 
 for the Labour Churches on quite other lines. In their demo- 
 cratic organisation I could only find a place by taking a position 
 which carried with it certain executive power ; and I found that 
 this position reduced me to the level of a politician, who has to 
 scheme for his own hand. The possession of power, with its 
 attendant limitations and disabilities, seemed to me entirely in- 
 consistent with that living free relationship which I desired to 
 hold towards the movement. I wished, naturally and rightly, to 
 be an influence, and a strong influence, in it ; but I came to see 
 that, in work such as I was attempting, the less power a man has, 
 the more wholesome will be his influence, and the more durable 
 its results, while the arrest of his own growth will be less en- 
 dangered. All that the Reformer needs is freedom to work and 
 grow. 
 
 What I proposed, then, was the organisation of a Labour 
 Brotherhood, which should be a group of those who, like my- 
 self, were anxious to work for the awakening into self-conscious- 
 ness of the religious life of the Labour Movement, and who could 
 be trusted to do this without seeking power and place, or gratify- 
 ing any lower ambition than that of service. It seemed to me that 
 the very existence of such an organisation of free and devoted 
 personal effort in the name of the Religion of the Labour Move- 
 ment would be an example of inestimable value to the whole 
 Labour World, as well as the means of rendering it the highest 
 possible service. 
 
IN THE CHESHIRE HILLS. 259 
 
 There was another difficulty that I hoped might be successfully 
 met by the organisation of a Labour Brotherhood. I am 
 deeply convinced that Labour must work out its own salvation. 
 The chief value of the new Labour Movement just now is that 
 it gives the working man a chance to develop his powers such as 
 he has not had hitherto. His position in the industrial world is, 
 for the most part, that of a cog in a vast machine. He has no 
 opportunity for developing business ability, or efficiency in planning 
 and organising. Day after day he plods along, doing over and 
 over again the same sort of thing, and always under orders as to 
 how and when and where it is to be done. Formerly the work- 
 ing man with brains could exercise and develop his powers by 
 becoming a little master. Happily the day of little masters is 
 passing away ; but, in the present state of things, the workers 
 individually bear the heavy burden of the change. 
 
 Thus it is only in his own political and other organisations that 
 the worker can find that opportunity for mental and moral 
 development that his daily labour denies. From this point of 
 view I am coming more and more to the conclusion that, so far 
 as Labour Organisations are concerned, they are fulfilling their 
 functions the better, the more they are left in the hands of the 
 working man. I would certainly make no rule of this principle. 
 Nevertheless I cannot help feeling that, when working class 
 organisations are in any way officered by middle or upper class 
 men, an element of weakness is introduced, and an opportunity 
 for development lost. 
 
 Of course I am aware that the class leadership of the masses — 
 these are hateful terms, but they represent a hateful fact — does 
 sometimes produce more immediate visible results. But the cost 
 to the masses, and, indeed, to the whole national life, is too great. 
 They cannot awaken into any real self-consciousness so. They 
 are still subordinate ; still allow others to think for them, and act 
 for them ; still extend the evils of their industrial bondage through- 
 out all their activities ; and miss those opportunities which, through 
 new experiences, should quicken their new life. 
 
 And this is true, also, in regard to thinking as well as in regard 
 to acting. The worker to-day has to face, at first hand, the 
 problem of most immediate importance to humanity — the problem 
 of the Emancipation of Labour. I do not minimise the import- 
 ance of Gas-and-water Socialism. But, as compared with the real 
 
26o My QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 question of the freeing of the man who now works for wages, and, 
 above all, the question of humanising his work, and spiritualising 
 it, by making it a divine co-operation — the Gas-and-water question 
 appears unreal and phenomenal. I say — as compared with the 
 real question — for I am still a member of the Fabian Society, 
 though a somewhat heretical member in regard to this supremely 
 vital matter. Let the worker, then, think out his freedom, as well 
 as work out his freedom ; though with all the help the Fabian 
 or any other can give him. What he is, and what he does, is 
 what demands emancipation ; and this emancipation is part, 
 and a very important and inseparable part, of the boundless 
 problem that Man must now awake to — the problem of running 
 this Earth of his intelligently, instead of being run by it as he 
 now is. Merely to victual the Earth, with the Fabian, is a very 
 small part of the question, though not unimportant ; and until 
 we see into the living heart of the whole problem, we shall 
 bungle with it badly. 
 
 From this point of view — and also because we shall not be 
 ready for social salvation until we do actually set ourselves down 
 as toilers, or as helpers of the toilers, and make our toil or our 
 help a real fact in our living — my ideal of the relation of the 
 classes to the masses is, that the former should abandon all 
 thought of leadership, and simply be satisfied to serve — a position 
 which the Fabian Society is taking up with much generosity, 
 though also with some pardonable self-righteousness — pardonable, 
 not only because of the enviable cleverness of its possessors, 
 but also because it is continually throwing a certain salt of 
 humour into the situation, which keeps things fresh and 
 vital. I see very clearly that the whole Labour Movement is 
 badly in need of the service of those who have had such 
 advantages in life as are denied to the working man. What has 
 hitherto made such service so objectionable, and even revolting, 
 has been the element of patronage and leadership in it. All this 
 must be given up. The superior person who goes to the East 
 End to make the East Ender like himself is a mistake. It is 
 something more human, something more brotherly that is needed. 
 I think we reach to a higher level of service when we leave the 
 working man to organise himself, and simply give such 
 personal help as we can, without in the least lessening his 
 independence and freedom. Such help I believe to be the 
 
IN THE CHESHIRE HILLS. 261 
 
 highest religious service which man can render to man to-day — 
 that service of God through the service of man for which all 
 prophets have pleaded. 
 
 And there is another reason for this plea for the independence 
 and freedom of the working man. In him we have an unused-up 
 energy that exists in the same form in no other class ; and an 
 energy without which no genuine reform can be made in the 
 social or religious world. The history of nations suggests that 
 God is always discarding material that is worked up, and always 
 looking out for raw material to work up — as though the Divine 
 Energy loved an opportunity rather than an achievement. In 
 the vast mass of toiling and serving humanity I see the raw 
 material for God's next work in the onward march of Man. 
 What else does this awakening Labour-consciousness mean ? 
 And I am sure no true-hearted man has ever associated personally 
 with the newly awakened workers, without feeling that they 
 have some original powers still strong within them, which culture 
 can never give, but may take away. We cannot afford to lose 
 the free and strong play of these powers through class patronage 
 and leadership. Let us be content simply to serve. 
 
 The difficulty is for the educated man to concentrate, and so 
 he loses force. The working man has no such difficulty, once 
 he takes up with anything. To him an idea is all in all. Hence 
 the concentration of working-class movements. But he has a 
 difficulty of his own, too. He loses sight of the facts that lie on 
 his right hand and on his left. Here the educated man may 
 help him ; but he must do it so as not to weaken his independence 
 and his energy and his wholesome instincts. If he simply make 
 the working man a bad imitation of himself, or a follower of 
 himself, the world loses. The happy medium is only to be 
 discovered by a happy instinct. Or rather, it is not a happy 
 medium that is to be discovered, but a combination of elements 
 into a new quality, without which the man of advantages can 
 never be more than the superior person, with whom neither God 
 nor man can do anything. 
 
 All this is what I mean by the organisation of a Labour 
 Brotherhood. I know that many think the conception a 
 narrow one, as they thought the conception of a Labour Church 
 narrow. The fact is, few can understand how a man can 
 concentrate the full force of a universal idea upon a particular 
 
262 Ml QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 point of the world's progress. Yet that is what is ahvays 
 demanded in any really effective work. Having risen to the 
 height of universal life in God, we must find out what God is 
 doing most effectively in the world to-day, and then take our 
 coats off. I see now that this is what I meant by going first 
 from Folkestone to Ballingdon, and then from Ballingdon to 
 London and on to Manchester. Then I had to go to Rulow 
 to begin to learn the meaning of what I had done. 
 
 A universal idea concentrated upon the growing-point of the 
 world — that is what the Labour Brotherhood means to me. But 
 its organisation, planned in 1894, was deferred for a time by 
 events which swiftly followed. 
 
 My withdrawal to the Cheshire hills had left me still rejoicing 
 in the pride of being. Amidst all my troubled existence, from 
 the time I lost my Christianity, I had found it an inspiration 
 merely to think that I was alive. The thought, It is I, which 
 had so appalled me in childhood, now made me realise that I 
 was greater than the stars. So far I had learned to rise to every 
 event, and had confidence that I always should. Though my 
 band-and-banner days were over, I still felt it great to be. 
 Difficulties were always threatening to crush me ; yet I wanted to 
 live on this earth as long as it lasted, to see this great world- 
 drama through. It was so tremendously interesting ; and I, too, 
 had a part, and could trust my fate. 
 
 One lovely Sunday in June, 1894, I spent the morning on the 
 hill sides with my youngest boy, then six years old. He chattered 
 merrily to me all the while, as we gathered a bunch of mountain 
 pansies to take home to his Mother, his brothers having wandered 
 together further down the valley. He was the pride of my heart 
 — this fine strong child — so resolute in will, yet so tender in 
 feeling — so proud and self-centred, as strong natures are, yet with 
 such capacity for sympathy as is seldom seen in a boy. In his 
 presence I could understand how Emerson called his boy, " a little 
 bud of God." His older brothers respected him ; I reverenced 
 him, and often wondered to what he would grow. It seemed 
 to me that he might be what I wanted to be, and could not. 
 
 On the following Thursday he was kept from school with a 
 cold. On Friday we sent for the doctor, who made light of the 
 matter. On Sunday we learned with horror that our child was 
 beyond human help. The disease seized his throat, and, through 
 
IN THE CHESHIRE HILLS. 263 
 
 that awful night, slowly strangled him to death. Early on 
 Monday morning he died in his mother's arms, talking to us 
 to the last, though all the night through he had been gasping and 
 struggling for breath. It seemed so like murder, to see a strong 
 boy slowly suffocated like that. 
 
 " He was not cared for like the others," was the heart-breaking 
 remark of his mother. We had to make our economies on going 
 to the hills ; and this boy, so strong and sound, did not seem to 
 require the care the others had. On the Thursday morning, when 
 we knew he had a cold, I persuaded his mother to let him go to 
 school. She was not very well, and was very tired ; and had he 
 remained at home, it must have been in her charge. So he went 
 to school, but had to be kept at home in the afternoon because 
 his cold was worse. 
 
 It is a common tale. " Whom the gods love die young," shows 
 how old the story is. What does it mean ? Why should it be ? 
 I know enough of life to be sure that it has a meaning, a reason ; 
 and that one day I shall acquiesce. Meanwhile, one can only 
 work faithfully on and wait. I do not see that any reason given 
 by any religious system can clear up the mystery. 
 
 Then I lost the pride and the joy of life, which hitherto 
 had been a great part of my strength. Then I felt that I should 
 be glad to lay down my work and die. Then the undying life 
 seemed so real and near to me, this dying life so unreal and far 
 from my heart. I grew weary and sick of the earthly show, and 
 longed deeply for the nearer reality of God. That death shook 
 the world's foundations for me ; and made me reahse, as I never 
 had before, what a temporary show it is. And I began to think 
 I had acted in it long enough. It seemed to me that my boy 
 was living a more real life in a more real world than mine. 
 
 Yet I am sure that Other-worldliness is a mistake. Though 
 this earth is but a stage, it has a reality of its own which we must 
 learn to accept. And we must not bow our heads too low to 
 Fate. We are here to learn to manage this earthly life of ours 
 on an ever increasing scale, until Humanity has the Earth beneath 
 its feet. This, too, seems to me a very real thing. And love and 
 hate are real, and joy and pain, and peace and war, and the 
 healing of wounds and the shedding of blood. We must act our 
 part loyally in the old show, although we now and again get 
 gHmpses which reveal to us what a poor show it is, 
 
264 ^y QUEST FOR GOD. 
 
 The complexity of life, and the need still to concentrate ! — The 
 depth of life, and the necessity to act whole-heartedly on its 
 surface ! — The infinite vista beyond, and yet the command to 
 work hard on this little patch of Here and Now ! — How God 
 draws us out with it all, until we ache through and through ! Yet 
 how infinite the growing grasp of it makes us ! But we begin to 
 escape the " Education of God " when we allow our feet to leave 
 the earth. Life and Work, Religion and Reformation, Galilee 
 and Jerusalem — these cannot be separated, any more than God 
 and the World can be separated. All this I began to learn 
 from my boy's death, though I have never seen it all so clearly 
 as now. 
 
 This sorrow had a strange effect on my memory. It took away 
 all perspective from the past ; and still, to this day, all past things 
 seem equally distant from the conscious present. My recent life 
 in London seems as far off as my life at Rulow, or Manchester, 
 or Ballingdon, or Folkestone ; save so far as knowledge corrects 
 the mental impression. My memory looks back on a landscape 
 which is all distance. 
 
 Before the end of this same year a far heavier blow fell. 
 We were beginning to return to life. My wife would have more 
 time now, and would be able to help more with my work. We 
 planned it all out, and made the necessary arrangements in our 
 home. But it was not to be. She had never been the same 
 since our other boy died, though she had resumed her old self- 
 control and strong management of life. But the severe discipline 
 was not to be gone through again. It was evident that her 
 strength was failing — the spring worn out and ready to break. 
 After a consultation with a specialist in Manchester, she became 
 too ill to be taken home ; and in a Manchester hotel, after a 
 fortnight's severe illness, she died. Relations and friends and 
 medical skill did all that could be done for her recovery or relief. 
 But the end had come to her strong and devoted life. 
 
 On the last day she said to me, " I shall always live with you." 
 And I answered, " Yes, you will." Our life together had been 
 a continual progress, in which we learned more and more fully 
 what God meant marriage to be. It did not seem possible, now, 
 that Death should destroy that which had grown so real, and 
 which was growing more real still to the very end. 
 
 It is impossible to write a fitting tribute to the memory of my 
 
IN THE CHESHIRE HILLS, 265 
 
 wife. And yet my whole story is incidentally such a tribute, and 
 one of vastly more value than any obituary notice. Our union 
 was a continual education to me ; and I think I am learning more 
 from it now than ever before. For it was a living education ; 
 and life always unfolds — ceaselessly unfolds — incapable of ex- 
 hausting its powers. And, also, I have again a love and a home, 
 which make the contemplation of the old love and the old home 
 bearable and fruitful, and still creative within me. 
 
 Never to be again ! But many more of its kind 
 
 As good, nay better, perchance : is this your comfort to me ? 
 To me, who must be saved because I cling with my mind 
 
 To the same, same self, same love, same God : ay, what was, shall be. 
 ^ H« H< Ji! sj! ^ 
 
 There shall never be one lost good ! What was, shall live as before ; 
 
 The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound ; 
 What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more ; 
 
 On the earth the broken arcs ; in the heaven, a perfect round. 
 ****** 
 The high that proved too high, the heroic tor earth too hard, 
 
 The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky. 
 Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard ; 
 
 Enough that he heard it once : we shall hear it by-and-by. 
 ****** 
 Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear. 
 
 Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe : 
 But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear ; 
 
 The rest may reason and welcome ; 'tis we musicians know. 
 
 Robert Browning. — Abt Vogler. 
 
CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 AU REVO I R. 
 
 At which point, where the life I hved was completed, and the 
 life I am living commenced, it is necessary now to break my story 
 off, at what time to be resumed I cannot tell. The remainder 
 has been written to date — with its troubles and despairs and pro- 
 tests and risings again — but the ferment is all too fresh for it to 
 be poured forth for the world yet. In the dark it must mellow 
 and sweeten. In my still deeper retirement the meaning of it 
 must become more clear, till the light of God shines through. 
 
 These three unrecorded years seem to me more sacred than 
 any yet, as they have also been more full of difficulty and per- 
 plexity than any, my home alone having made it possible for me 
 to have lived them through. And this sense of sacredness bids 
 me not rashly lift the veil. More rich than any have they been, 
 inasmuch as they have brought me, not only their own return 
 of gold, but much gold from the past also, which, while I was 
 still in the midst of it, I missed. For it is only in the life that 
 I am now living, and in the love that makes it possible, that I 
 have been able to see the past life in a clear and steady light. 
 
 During the present year, 1897, now three parts through, I have 
 been shut up to the writing of this story as the only work I 
 could do, and that toilsomely enough. All else has had to be 
 given up. I have had to withdraw into the heart of Sussex, 
 where now I am writing this, in the midst of hills, less lofty, but 
 more rich and beautiful, than those I loved in the North. For 
 I have experienced another swing of the pendulum — driven 
 from the hills to London, driven thence to the hills again, but 
 now to the hills of the South— another alternation of action, brief 
 enough, and of collapse, long drawn out. 
 
 I hope to tell, also, the story of my year of active work with 
 
 866 
 
[r<>/,<r/.. 2 56. 
 
AU RE VOIR. 267 
 
 the Labour Church. I could not write of it here, for I had not 
 the power to master a place for it in this book. And if I hope 
 this, it is not merely for the part I took in it ; but rather to tell 
 of the excellent company I kept, and of all my friends taught me, 
 and made it possible for me to hope. 
 
 For my long retirement, now stricter than before, has not 
 caused me to lose my love and my faith towards those in fellow- 
 ship with whom a new light seemed suddenly to break forth. 
 And though I know that those days of old can never be for us 
 again, that henceforth our life and our toil on earth must be 
 apart, yet I cannot think that we have done with each other yet, 
 that what was begun then is to be permanently broken off. 
 
 We then co-operated with each other and with God for the 
 progress of the people, for the march of man on earth. That 
 year we were greater than we knew, more real than we knew, 
 nearer to God than we knew, much being hidden from us in the 
 noise and the smoke. Quieter days have followed— days of 
 greater difficulty, of less acclaim— days to try men's souls if they 
 are of the right stuff. And these days, too, have been worth. 
 We have learned what we could not have learned in the bustling 
 strife, have heard what we could not have heard in the cry of 
 battle, have been disciplined as we could not have been disci- 
 plined in the swift advance. 
 
 We have really lived. We have really taken our part with 
 God. We cannot cease to be. And we are of the same army 
 still. If further apart now, more beyond grasp or call, it is only 
 in the show of things. In God we are still one. In him we 
 shall meet again. And I trust, meanwhile, we shall also meet 
 again through another volume of this my Book of Life. 
 
 Of what I now publish, a few words must be said. It was 
 written first in the early months of this year, in circumstances 
 desperate enough, and had then to be put aside. I have now 
 revised the story as far as possible, and re-written a good deal. 
 But there is something in the last few chapters which I fear 
 to touch, lest, with my present limited working power, I should 
 lose the life in attempting to mend the form. These last chapters 
 were written hastily, under a sense of compulsion, lest I should 
 not be able to finish my task. This fact made me think of them 
 as those which would need revision most. But they were also 
 written with a consciousness of growing illumination ; and it is 
 
268 MV QUEST FOR GOD, 
 
 because they reveal something of this process, that I let them 
 stand as they are. 
 
 The reticence that I have been obliged to observe at critical 
 points in my story makes me very dissatisfied, so much so, that, 
 in one particular, I will withdraw from it as far as I can. I have 
 said that my highest experiences of the presence of God in my 
 life were so circumstanced, that I could not give any account of 
 them. I will, however, describe here a minor experience, of 
 which I made notes at the time — the only one of which I made 
 any contemporary note — and will do so, for the most part, in the 
 words I then wrote down. It occurred while we were living 
 at Rulow, in the early summer of 1894, when I was in my 
 fortieth year, the year after the higher experiences mentioned, 
 the first of which occurred in Norwich in 1893. 
 
 One brilliant Sunday morning, my wife and boys went to the 
 Unitarian Chapel in Macclesfield. I felt it impossible to accom- 
 pany them — as though to leave the sunshine on the hills, and 
 go down there to the chapel, would be for the time an act of 
 spiritual suicide. And I felt such need for new inspiration and 
 expansion in my life. So, very reluctantly and sadly, I left my 
 wife and boys to go down into the town, while I went further up 
 into the hills with my stick and my dog. In the loveliness of 
 the morning, and the beauty of the hills and valleys, I soon lost 
 my sense of sadness and regret. For nearly an hour I walked 
 along the road to the " Cat and Fiddle," and then returned. On 
 the way back, suddenly, without warning, I felt that I was in 
 Heaven — an inward state of peace and joy and assurance 
 indescribably intense, accompanied with a sense of being bathed 
 in a warm glow of light, as though this external condition had 
 brought about the internal effect — a feeling of having passed 
 beyond the body, though the scene around me stood out more 
 clearly, and as if nearer to me than before, by reason of the 
 illumination in the midst of which I seemed to be placed. This 
 deep emotion lasted, though with decreasing strength, until I 
 reached home, and for some time after, only gradually passing 
 away. 
 
 My past life then appeared before me as something done with, 
 something finished off, something about which I need be anxious 
 no more. I saw the necessity of it all, the rightness of it all, as 
 a whole. I felt that the foundations of my life were completed, 
 
AU RE VOIR. 269 
 
 the building well commenced, the walls breast high, the scaffold 
 poles now needed— that the outline of the picture was drawn, 
 and all the broad washes laid in, and the lights and the shadows 
 fixed ; that now I might take up my favourite brush, and work 
 fearlessly among the brightest colours, confident that, though not 
 right yet, it would come out right. 
 
 And although I did not, at this time, experience that intense 
 consciousness of God being all about me, which, with similar sud- 
 denness and illumination, I had experienced ,the year before, yet 
 I felt how very near and familiar God was, and how utterly safe 
 my relations with him were— so perfectly so, that there seemed 
 to be a kind of humour in the situation, as though two friends, 
 who had had a misunderstanding and had felt themselves 
 estranged, should suddenly see how foolishly unreal their feel- 
 ings were, and burst out into a great laugh. So I felt as if able 
 to laugh aloud in the face of God, to think I should ever have 
 had any fear of our not being always on good terms, always 
 friends. Indeed, I believe I never felt so exceedingly light- 
 hearted and buoyant and full of inward laughter' as at this time, 
 or so perfectly sure of God and of myself. 
 
 For the experiences of the year before had left me in some 
 doubt as to their worth Godward, though, in regard to the circum- 
 stances which led up to them, their worth was immense, emanci- 
 pating me finally from any possibility of conceiving an antagonism 
 of any kind between the body and the soul, and making me 
 sure that I was then progressing along my own true Way of Life. 
 These earlier experiences were of the illumination of God himself 
 coming into immediate touch with my soul— very simple and brief, 
 but very intense. The later experience which I am now describing 
 was rather of the illumination of the atmosphere in which God 
 dwelt, in which I suddenly found myself— the consciousness that 
 God and I were in the same place— a far more complex and 
 informing experience, throwing light on the whole of my life, and 
 filling me with supreme satisfaction with the result— not self- 
 satisfaction, but satisfaction, rather, in becoming aware that I 
 had been rightly led. 
 
 But such an experience as I have here recorded— coming as 
 if to prepare me for the desolation soon to fall, filling me with 
 a new confidence in God and in myself— is absolutely worth- 
 less to any one else— this one especially so ; for it contains in it 
 
270 MY QUESl FOR GOD. 
 
 nothing from which another can learn, but is only the record of 
 a subjective fact in my own life. From other experiences, if 
 I might have recorded them, I believe much might have been 
 learned. And yet, to me myself, they were of little worth at the 
 time j for I so far doubted their value that I thought once of 
 writing to a friend about them, who I believed would understand 
 them, to ask him what their good was, and how reliable they 
 were. But I wisely refrained from doing so. Whatever answer 
 had come, it could have given me no help. Only further experi- 
 ence could prove the worth of these experiences \ and such further 
 experience I have since had. I know now that these seasons of 
 illumination were the most real and reliable of my life ; and I 
 know it in exactly the same way as I know waking experiences 
 from dreams. 
 
 I may remark, also, that these sudden illuminations have never 
 changed my course of life ; but only confirmed me in it, and 
 carried me further along. They have come as the ripening and 
 falling of fruit, not by any means without much preparation and 
 cultivation, though I did not know what the preparation and culti- 
 vation would produce. I do not regard them as in the smallest 
 degree sent of God in any exceptional sense. I am sure they 
 come to us, or do not come, in the very nature of things. And 
 I believe that one day they will be the common possession of all 
 sound men. Moreover, that my experience is very exceptional, 
 I do not at all believe. In the East, I suppose, such things 
 are common enough ; and, perhaps, far more common than we 
 think in the West too. This opens up a field of inquiry on which, 
 one day, I hope to enter. Its importance cannot be exaggerated ; 
 for here we have the ground on which Religion and Science will 
 meet — Religion the creative Art, of which Science will seek to 
 observe and classify the facts — facts, always increasing in number, 
 and ascending in the scale of being. 
 
 I hope the reader will not think that I have attempted to give 
 here a finished picture of life — a statement of what life ought to 
 be, of the doctrines to which it should conform. I have attempted 
 to describe, as faithfully as I could, the process of my own life — 
 a process which is still going on. He will have missed my 
 purpose entirely if he do not understand me when I say, that 
 the meaning of life is in its process rather than its conclusions. 
 In real living we touch nothing anywhere that has an end. Each 
 
AU RE VOIR. 271 
 
 seeming conclusion is only cinother step of the staircase, leading 
 us on to the next. And I cannot imagine that ever a time will 
 come when there will not be a next. 
 
 My religion, when 1 really think of it now, takes away my 
 breath. The height it places me on makes me giddy, looking 
 down or up. There are seasons of rest in it, of course ; but it 
 is not an Oriental religion of repose. It is a religion of whirling 
 activity, of straining effort, of expansion joyous to the verge of pain. 
 And I know it is real. I know it represents what we are, and how 
 divine we are to be. It is a religion of the West, a religion that 
 will enter, sooner or later, into all western activity, intensifying 
 it still further, by no means lulling it to rest. It is a religion of 
 creative insight and power, which will one day have this ball of 
 Earth wholly in its grip, making it sing a merrier song than now 
 as it spins its way through space. 
 
 The discovery of what I am, and of how God and the Universe 
 and I stand related, seems sometimes more than I can bear. 
 Yet it brings with it a sure confidence, too, and a deep peace, 
 rising up in this infinite ocean of Being, in which I now find 
 myself, as a steadfast rock for my feet. Of which confidence 
 and peace, deeper than all else in my life, I would like to say 
 much ; but words fail. As on the title page of this book I have 
 placed some lines from Walt Whitman's Prayer of Columbus, 
 so here will I end with words from the same poem, borrowing 
 them to express what it needs the Poet to tell. 
 
 That Thou, O God, my life hast lighted, 
 
 With ray of light, steady, ineffable, vouchsafed of Thee, 
 
 Light rare, untellable, lighting the very light, 
 
 Beyond all signs, descriptions, languages; 
 
 For that, O God, be it my latest word, 
 
 Here, on my knees, I thank Thee. 
 
EPILOGUE. 
 
 It is Sunday morning. I am sitting on a bank of grass by a 
 hedge, bathed in the September sun. Before me Hes a great 
 sweeping valley, wooded with oak and underbrush. Ten miles 
 away, the South Downs rise on the horizon, tender and blue. The 
 lowing of cattle, the neighing of horses, the barking of dogs, the 
 crowing of cocks, the twittering of birds, the voices of children- 
 all can be heard, now and again, faintly rising and falling across 
 the floor of this ocean, whose waters are an infinite Silence— a 
 silence as of a Voice self-consciously hushed. It seems to me, 
 now, that it must break forth with loud harmonious passion of 
 the joy of existence— as if it could no longer contain itself. 
 
 Before I set out from home, I had been glancing through the 
 Life of Mrs. Booth. It impresses me deeply to open that book 
 of so real a life. Each time I take it up, I am stirred by it, and 
 made very discontented with myself. Yet, in the end, help and 
 hope arise. 
 
 It is so this morning. I have been asking why I could not 
 make her task mine, why I could not concentrate myself on the 
 old and narrow way, why I could not sweep aside all other con- 
 siderations, and take up the old Cross with the crowd— heavy 
 enough still when truly taken up— instead of shouldering this 
 newer and heavier one alone. 
 
 This work to which we are now called is so complex. The 
 simplicity of the old gospel looks so charming, so dignified, by its 
 side. Why have we to trouble about these many things— Science, 
 Art, Politics, Industry, the wages of the workers, the homes of 
 the poor ? Is not the end of the soul of man still the one thing — 
 for ever to enjoy God ? 
 
 It is always so. When I have read Emerson, I have longed 
 for Emerson's calm. When I have read Carlyle, I have longed 
 for Carlyle's strength. When I have read Whitman, I have 
 
 273 
 
EPILOGUE. 273 
 
 longed for Whitman's joy. When I have read John Brown, I 
 have longed for John Brown's magnanimity in facing life and 
 death. 
 
 Years back I had to learn to accept myself. This Sunday 
 morning I see that I must learn to accept my task. It is not 
 only that it is so vast. It is so lonely. This work, begun in the 
 marching crowd, I must carry on silently alone. Only here, 
 amid these silent trees and hills, do I find a Presence that 
 understands. Only here can I gladly accept the knowledge that 
 Mrs. Booth's concentration on the old gospel is a thing of God's 
 past — for me at least. 
 
 My perplexity is the perplexity of the world itself. I am 
 bewildered by the vastness of the life, the energy, that have to 
 be unified in God. When I try to express it, people say I am 
 vague. The world is not ready yet. It still craves the old 
 limitations, the old concentrations, that it may go more comfort- 
 ably and conformably on its way. 
 
 But it may not be. Life is infinitely more complex to-day 
 than in the days of Jesus and of Paul. Every day it grows more 
 complex. Every hour some new fact crops up, for which the 
 old religion can find no place. Man's religion must grow, or go. 
 There is no other way. 
 
 And it cannot go, any more than I can escape my task. God 
 will not let us stop growing, however we struggle and squirm. 
 " Life is a mission," says Mazzini ; and as a mission we must 
 take it up. " Saviours must not draw back," says Mrs. Booth. 
 There is no easy way to save the world. 
 
 There is a power to be attained, a possession of the soul, 
 greater than Pagan self-realisation, greater than Christian self- 
 loss, greater than anything that can be hyphened on to self — 
 the joy-pain of a creative life welling up within us, that makes us 
 Creators, too — that shakes the frail foundations of our physical 
 life almost to its overthrowing — that sets the soul in the midst of 
 a land of earthquakes and storms, there to serve its apprentice- 
 ship in the creative art — that staggers our intellect when we 
 perceive its significance — that makes our highest thought appear 
 profane, our highest morality immoral, our highest truth false. 
 
 The world is new every morning. In the dark hours of the 
 night the old world has died, and a new one come forth to the 
 light of the new day. It looks the same, but it is not. People 
 
 i8 
 
274 MV QUESl FOR GOD. 
 
 pretend that it is the same; and go on repeating the sayings 
 of yesterday about it, deceiving each other so. This is the great 
 Lie, that hinders discovery and progress. 
 
 And we must accept the burden of living in a new world every 
 day, between the hours of the sun's rising and setting wrestling 
 the heart's meaning out of it. It is an awful task. We feel that 
 we were not equipped for it— that God has made some mistake, 
 handed us out the wrong number, meant a stronger man to 
 shoulder our burden. But no questions are allowed. We must 
 take the burden up, and carry it through. Only so can we learn 
 what we are, what the world is, what God is. Only so can we 
 serve our apprenticeship on earth. Only so can we become 
 Masters, Creators, Fellow-workers with God. 
 
 Thus this infinite ocean of Silence speaks to me, as I listen 
 from this bank by a hedge, bathed in September's sun. And now 
 I envy no man his task. In me the passionate joy of existence 
 wells up, painful to bear, for no language of mine can utter it 
 forth. But I rise to go to my home with a heart unspeakably 
 glad. 
 
 Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury. 
 
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 The Labour Prophet was commenced by John Trevor in January, 1892 For the 
 past twelve months Mr. Beckett has been its editor. The following extract is from 
 an article by Mr. Trevor which appeared in the number for October, 1894. 
 
 " It is a tremendous idea, this, to combine with the ugly revolt of Labour going on 
 to-day, the highest sanctities of the inner life, and ' the peace of God which passeth 
 understanding.' But it is no new idea. Jesus realised it. From the streets of Jeru- 
 salem, where he stood and cursed the 'Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites,' in language 
 more scathing than any I have heard in the Labour Movement, he retired as the 
 shadows of evening fell, to commune with God in secret, and to strengthen his 
 wearied soul for the morrow's conflict. 
 
 ''Such has been the life of the Prophet in all ages-wild and stormy and devastating 
 before the gilded iniquities of his age-calm and trustful and childlike when, 'alone 
 with the Alone,' God quiets the passion and soothes the sorrow of his soul. And it 
 IS for this life of outward conflict with the world, and inward communion with God 
 that the Labour Church stands-or must I say, rather, the ideal Labour Church ? ' 
 
 ******** 
 "Is it possible, right in the heart of the Labour Movement, to build up a Church 
 upon the conception of a 'sweet hidden friendship with God,' as George Dawson so 
 beautifully expressed it ?-PossibIe, or not possible, this is what, three years ago I 
 set before me as the aim of the remainder of my days. 
 
 "Concerning this life lived with God in the midst of the turmoil and the conflict- 
 I plead for no special form of it. It assumes many forms. I only plead for the reality 
 -the inward temple, where the lamp ever burns, and where the soul enters into 
 communion with the great Over-Soul, and is filled with joy and peace and power." 
 
 2 
 
THE LABOUR CHURCH HYMN BOOK. 
 
 Paper covers, id. ; cloth, lined, 2d. By post, iid. and 2id. ; or Qd. and 
 IS. 6d. per dozen (13), carriage free. 
 
 THE LABOUR CHURCH TUNE BOOK. 
 
 Bound in cloth, price is. 6d. net; by post, is. 8d. Six copies, 8s., carriage 
 free Twelve or more copies, 15s. per dozen (12), carriage free. Published 
 both m Staff and Sol-fa notations. In ordering, it is necessary to state 
 which IS required. 
 
 Office of the LABOUR PROPHET, 72, Fleet Street, London, E.G. 
 
 JrX 7 ? ""^ eighty-nine hymns or songs suited for Labour Church 
 
 Services and similar purposes. The Tune Book provides a tune to each hymn, and 
 IS printed in the best type from plates prepared by Messrs. Curwen & Son the well- 
 known music printers and publishers. The following is an extract from the Preface 
 to the Hymn Book, dated September, 1892. 
 
 " The compilation of this Hymn Book has been rendered necessary by the formation 
 of Labour Churches in Manchester and other towns. 
 
 "The Labour Church is an organised effort to develop the religious life inherent in 
 
 turd^e I'd "^'T'"'' '".' '° ^"^ '° ^'^^ ^^"^"^^"^ ^ ^^^-h- Inspiration and a 
 sturdier Independence in the great work of personal and social regeneration that lies 
 before it. It appeals especially to those who have abandoned the Traditional Religion 
 of the day without having found satisfaction in abandoning Religion altogether. 
 
 can be''no''Lib"fty?' '"' '^''"'" '''""' "' ''"' "'^^°"^ "'^'^^^"'^^ '° ^^^'^ Laws there 
 
 "The Gospel of the Labour Church is, that God is in the Labour Movement 
 working through it for the further emancipation of man from the tyranny, both of his 
 own half-developed nature, and of those social conditions which are opposed to h s 
 higher development. ^^ ^ 
 
 "The Call of the Labour Church is to men everywhere to become ' God's fellow- 
 workers in the Era of Reconstruction on which we have entered. 
 
 "The first Labour Church Service was held in Manchester on the first Sunday in 
 October, 1891. In reading, prayer, hymn, and song, the traditional forms and phrases 
 of Religion have been discarded, and every effort has been made to emphasize the 
 Religion not of creed or of history, but of actual everyday life, and especially of the 
 great and growing Labour Movement. f j ^ 
 
 "Although this Hymn Book has been specially compiled for the use of Labour 
 Churches, it is hoped that it may prove serviceable to the cause of Labour generally " 
 
 3 
 
LABOUR PROPHET TRACTS, 
 
 Price Id. ; by post l|d. ; or 9d. per dozen (13), post free. 
 
 Office of the LABOUR PROPHET, 72, Fleet Street, London, E.C, 
 
 FIRST SERIES. 
 
 By JOHN TREVOR. 
 No. I.— THEOLOGY AND THE SLUMS. 
 
 Extract from Theology and the Slums.—" The basis of a Living Church will not 
 be an abstract theory of God, but co-operation for carrying: on God's work in the 
 world. If a theory be held in common, it will be one concerning human rather than 
 divine relations. We shall associate to do this thing or that upon this line or that ; 
 and shall find God, each for himself, in the doing. For the Slums cannot leave us 
 indifferent as to methods of service, once both Knowledge and Feeling are quickened. 
 Such a Church will have a certain secular or worldly appearance to those who go back 
 for God eighteen centuries. But it will differ from secular institutions in its clear 
 recognition of the divine order of things to which all work must conform, as it will 
 differ from the present Churches in abandoning Tradition for Life, and Theology for 
 the Living God." 
 
 No. 2.— FROM ETHICS TO RELIGION. 
 
 Extract from From Ethics to Religion.—" We shall never do away with bondage, 
 and this Religion of Bondage, until we have a Religion of Freedom to put in its place 
 —not any mere theory thereof, but actually incarnating itself in our own flesh and 
 blood. For the great work we have to do, Economics alone will not suffice, neither 
 will Ethics added to Economics. We must expand and grow into the larger life, 
 wherein we enter freely into living and loving fellowship with Man, with Nature, and 
 with God. Only then will Society become a Human Brotherhood, when the Kingdom 
 of God establishes itself in human hearts." 
 
 No. 3.— OUR FIRST PRINCIPLE. 
 
 Extract from Our First Principle.— " The Labour Church, based upon this great 
 conception, is still not that Temple of the Living God which will one day be builded. 
 It is but a gateway to it, which will crumble into ruins when the great Temple arises 
 in all its completeness ; just as the Labour Movement itself will die away, when all 
 men labour for the common good, and share in the common advantage. But the 
 Labour Church is founded in a living movement in accordance with an eternal prin- 
 ciple—that God is most to be found, not where he is most talked about, but where 
 human life is being most forwarded, and human energy most aroused from within to 
 fresh conquests over material conditions. 
 
 4 
 
No. 4.— THE LABOUR CHURCH IN ENGLAND. 
 
 An Unspoken Address to the Foreign Members of the Inter- 
 national Socialist Congress, London, July, 1896. 
 
 Extract from The Labour Church in England.— "Brother socialists of all nations, 
 I appeal to you to orgjanise j'ourselves for the emancipation and development of your 
 religious life, as j'ou have organised yourselves for the emancipation and development 
 of your social and industrial life. Vou are seeking to set free the social instincts of 
 man from the false theories and cruel customs that now crush them. Seek to set free 
 his religious instincts also. . . . What men and women have more right than you to 
 form religious organisations when it is you, more than any, who are going straight to 
 the roots of the misery of the people in the glorious work you are undertaking? 
 What men and women could meet together in the august name of Religion with more 
 right and less hypocrisy than yoUj'^who are engaged all your lives in a self-sacrificing 
 religious service ? In 3'ou and your movement the Eternal Power at the source and 
 centre of all progress is at work, leading 30U forward with struggling steps, urging 
 you to bear heavy burdens, inspiring you to great sacrifices, calling some of you to 
 death, it maybe, that the life of others may be the richer. The great World-Will is 
 with you. I would have you conscious of his presence, and sustained and cheered by 
 this consciousness." 
 
 N.B.—T/its Trad /las been translated into French, German, and Dutch, and copies 
 can be had at the same price as the English Edition. 
 
 SECOND SERIES. 
 
 No. I.— WHAT DOES THE LABOUR CHURCH 
 STAND FOR? 
 
 By PHILIP H. WICKSTEED, M.A. 
 
 Extract from What Does the Labour Church Stand For?—" But what workman 
 can walk into a middle-class congregation with the consciousness that the underlying 
 assumptions, both in the pew and in the pulpit, as to the proper organisation of active 
 industrial life and the justification of social and industrial institutions are, in a 
 militant sense, his own ? And if he cannot do that, then, in asking him to join in the 
 worship, you are not asking him to express and nourish the religious aspects of his 
 own higher life, but to suppress or suspend that life in order that he may share in the 
 devotions of others, who cheerfully accept, and in many cases would stubbornly 
 defend, the things against which it is his mission to fight. To answer that he will 
 occasionally hear a good democratic or socialistic sermon, or that the clergyman has 
 the deepest sympathy with the Labour Movement, is, to say the least of it, to show 
 a very inadequate grasp of the situation ; and as to theology, no doubt the natural 
 affinities of those engaged in the Labour Movement, so far as they are consciously 
 religious at all, are for a simple and robust theology built upon the facts of life and 
 the experiences and aspirations of the human heart; but it must be the facts of their 
 lives and the aspirations oi their hearts, or else something that they realise as higher 
 and truer and not contradictory to them ; and their worship must be with those who, 
 whether or not they share their theology, at any rate share their life. The true 
 militant Labour-democrat cannot feed his religious life in fellowship with those whose 
 conception of the Kingdom of God is not only different from, but radically incompatible 
 with, his own ; or, if he can, it can only be by an exercise of conscious toleration and 
 self-restraint. It will not be with the sense of having his prayer borne upward and 
 deepened by the sympathy of souls in unison with his own. 
 
 "If, then, the Labour Movement is to find religious utterance, there must be a 
 Labour Church." 
 
 5 
 
TRACTS 
 
 FOR FREE DISTRIBUTION. 
 
 The Labour Prophet Tracts are published, 
 not only for sale, but also with a view to 
 free distribution. If any friends can place 
 these Tracts where they will be of service, 
 whether in England or abroad, they are 
 invited to communicate with John Trevor, 
 HoRSTED Keynes, Sussex. 
 
DATE DUE 
 
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